St. Patrick's Day Murder (25 page)

Petra had the door open a crack, and we went in without saying much. She had put a robe on over a white nightgown,
yards of which swirled around her ankles. She looked only half-awake.

“I was sleeping,” she said.

“I’m sorry.” I sat down in my coat, feeling cold and tired myself. It was a gamble, and if she was clever—or innocent—it wouldn’t work. Jack and I had agreed to let me make the first try. He stood away from us, admiring Petra’s pretty things, but I knew he was listening to every word. “You found the letter in Ray’s apartment when you were there alone a couple of months ago.”

Her eyes opened. “What letter?”

“And you told Tom Macklin about it.” It was the only name I knew.

Her body flinched, then stiffened. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said, but it was clear that she did.

“How could you do that to Ray?”

“Do what? I love Ray. You know that. We love each other. I believe in him. He’s innocent. I’m his witness.”

“Petra, Ray left you alone in his apartment a couple of months ago while he went out to buy something.”

“It’s possible,” she said. “I don’t remember everything that ever happened. Do you?”

“But you remember that because someone asked you to dig up something ugly about Ray. You read the letter and you left it there, so he wouldn’t know you had seen it. You set him up, Petra.” I had a hard time saying it. I still only half believed it, and if she kept denying it, I was lost.

“I thought you were my friend.” Her voice shook and her mouth trembled.

“I was your friend. But you betrayed Ray.”

“Get out of here,” she said in a voice nearly out of control. “Both of you. Now. Don’t ever come back.”

“Come on, Chris,” Jack said.

I got up. “I’m sorry, Petra, but we know the truth. You gave someone your key to Ray’s apartment, so they could get in while Ray was being arrested. They left incriminating evidence there, false evidence, evidence that might convict him.”

“How dare you! I never did that. I never gave anyone the key. Never.” She was awake now, enraged. When I had accused
her of finding the letter, she had been surprised but relatively calm. She wasn’t calm now, she was furious. I had a sense that I was beginning to understand the truth.

Jack had the door open and when he closed it, we heard the bolt snap and the chain shoved angrily into place. “Let’s go,” he said, and immediately put a finger to his lips.

The elevator was still there. He pressed the button, and, when the door opened noisily, he reached in, pushed a button, and stepped out. The door closed, again noisily, and the elevator went down. Quietly we walked back to Petra’s door and listened. We could hear her voice, although what she was saying was pretty much unintelligible, except when she said “No!” loudly. The building was solid and the only reason we heard anything was the absolute silence of everything else on the floor.

The conversation ended abruptly. Then we heard Petra’s voice again, this time at a lower volume. It was a short call, and I wasn’t entirely sure when it ended. Jack signaled me away from the door. We went down one flight of stairs, where the elevator was waiting, and rode the rest of the way to the lobby.

“Let’s give it some time,” he said as we walked to the car. “She may be going somewhere.”

“I didn’t do very well.”

“You did fine. She knows we’re onto her.”

“You know, Jack, I had the feeling she definitely read that letter from Jean and passed the contents along, but she was so enraged about the key, maybe she didn’t give it to anyone. Maybe she changed her mind between January and March.”

“Could be. Look down the street.”

A private cab was coming slowly toward us, stopping to check house numbers. Petra was on the move. As though I had awakened from a restful sleep, I felt myself suddenly get a second wind. I was alert again. The taxi stopped right at the entrance to her apartment house. Two minutes later a woman, wrapped in a warm coat, came out and slid into the backseat. It wasn’t all that easy to identify her in the darkness, but I was sure it was Petra. Jack turned the key, waited for the cab to pass, made a U, and started to follow. He was halfway down the block before he put his lights on.

We kept well behind as the taxi led us through Brooklyn streets. It was too dark to read the street names, and I felt thoroughly lost until we turned into a wide street.

“You know where we’re going?” Jack asked.

“I have an idea.”

A car turned in from a side street, putting a little distance between us and the cab, but it wasn’t hard to keep an eye on our prey. In fact, it made me feel a little easier in case the cabbie glanced in his rearview mirror once in a while. When he made the next turn, I tensed.

“I don’t believe it,” I said.

“Neither do I.”

A few blocks more and we were in a familiar, quiet residential area. The cab’s brake lights went on and Jack stopped abruptly and turned his lights off, letting the cab pull well ahead of us. We were too far away to identify the house, but I had no doubt whatsoever. Petra was already on her way to Jean McVeigh’s door.

The cab remained in front of Jean’s house. After a minute, the door opened, and Petra went inside. The cab’s lights went off. Inside the McVeigh house, one upstairs light was lit and a couple downstairs.

“I can’t believe Jean is involved in this,” I said.

“Did you mention her name to Petra?”

“No. I was very careful. I only mentioned Tom Macklin.”

Jack left his ignition key turned just enough so that the digital clock was on. Petra stayed inside about twelve minutes. When she came out, she went directly to the cab. The rear lights went on just as the first-floor lights in the house went off.

“Let’s see where she goes next.”

I hoped it would be to Macklin. I needed a concrete connection and everything I had was supposition. Jack followed with his lights off for several blocks. When a series of left turns took us back to the street that led to Brooklyn, Jack turned his lights on, and I resigned myself to driving back to where Petra lived, which is what happened. Jack didn’t bother turning into her street. He stopped at the corner, where we could watch the cab. It let Petra off, and she hurried
into her building. The cab pulled away. She had finished her traveling for the night.

“Let’s get some sleep,” Jack said.

I relaxed and closed my eyes. What I needed to figure out now was where Sister Benedicta was. I had to assume the men on Moore’s team were at least as capable as I at tracking down a witness. If they had interviewed Harry Donner’s next-door neighbor, it wouldn’t have taken much to find his aunt Benny. I drifted into sleep, awakening when Jack put his hand on mine.

“We’re home,” he said. “Can you walk a couple of blocks or should I drop you off at the apartment?”

“I can walk,” I said groggily.

“Sure?”

“Mm-hmm.”

We got out, and he put an arm around me. I wasn’t sure what street we were on. Brooklyn Heights is full of streets with narrow buildings that were once single-family homes and are now split up into apartments. One street looks very much like another, especially at night. We walked around a corner and there was an air of familiarity. Half a block more and we would be home.

We were almost at the front door when someone literally stepped out of the shadows.

“Brooks?”

Jack tensed and I froze. I could sense Jack’s right hand move toward his gun as he stepped in front of me.

“Who’s there?” he said.

“Relax. It’s Tim O’Brien.”

Neither of us relaxed. Jack said, “Stay here,” to me and he moved forward alone as I thought how crazy our lives had become. Two days ago Tim O’Brien was someone we trusted. Tonight everyone had become a suspect.

The men spoke quietly for only a minute. Then Jack turned. “It’s OK, Chris. We’re going up.”

“You guys are really uptight,” O’Brien said as we went up the stairs.

“These days you can’t tell a friend from an enemy.” Jack unlocked the door, and we went in. The answering machine was blinking.

“That’s me,” O’Brien said. “I called a couple of times and finally decided to come over and see if you were in. They found something in Jerry’s car, in the trunk. They called me over to see if I could identify it. It’s a bunch of old clothes that still reek of alcohol and a bag full of rags. The coat hasn’t dried out completely yet. They found something in the pocket that looks like it could be a false beard or something like that. It’s pretty much falling apart now.”

“What do you make of it?” Jack asked.

“It’s crazy. It’s like the stuff actors wear and some of the guys when they work in decoy units. Jerry never worked in a decoy unit. I’ve seen him five days a week for over two years.”

“The homeless man,” I said.

“I really blew that one, didn’t I?”

“There’s something else,” O’Brien said. “They found a gold ring in the clothes. It’s hard to tell if it came out of the pocket, but the guys who took the stuff out of the trunk think it did. It’s a high school ring from Forest Hills High and it has the initials
G.J.B
. in it.”

“Any ideas?” Jack asked.

“I checked with the PBA. They’ve got a George Barker, middle name John. Jerry talked about him once. Said he’d met him somewhere on the job. I asked a few questions. A couple of years ago Barker worked with Gavin Moore.”

“You know who the rest of the team are?”

“I found out tonight. There’s a Ricardo Ramirez, a Paul Dorgan, and a Tom Macklin. At one time or another, I heard Jerry mention all of them.”

“Figures.”

“Our homeless man must have dropped his ring in his coat pocket last Friday night,” I said, “so you wouldn’t see the gold.”

“You know who this guy is?”

We explained.

Then I added what I had finally decided really happened over two and a half years ago. “After Gavin Moore talked to Harry Donner about what was going on in his buy-and-bust team, Donner started asking questions. Someone in that group killed him and Moore knew why. He was nervous that
summer and took his family out of New York. But when they got back, he was sure they were going to kill him. I think he even guessed the night it would happen. Maybe he decided not to show up that night, maybe he couldn’t make up his mind. He drove to a park that wasn’t on the way to the place where they were meeting, but someone was following him. I think it must have been Tom Macklin. He saw his chance to kill Moore right there, but a bunch of kids got to him first. Macklin knew who those kids were and he’s probably kept an eye on them since the killing. He picked up that one last Friday night because that was the night they planned to kill Jerry McMahon.”

“Because they were tailing him and they figured out he was trying to help Ray Hansen,” Tim said.

“Right. And solving the Moore killing when McMahon disappeared would prevent anyone from connecting McMahon to the Moore team.”

“Not bad,” Jack said.

“I want to see the kid who was arrested last week, the one who named names. I want to ask him if Macklin was in the park that night two and a half years ago. And in case it wasn’t Macklin, we’ll need photos of the other members of the team.”

“That’s tough,” Jack said. “Especially on a Saturday.”

O’Brien was rubbing his forehead. “I’ve got a friend in Personnel, someone I worked for. He’s a very straight arrow. He’ll do it for me.”

“On Saturday?”

“He’ll have to. I’ll meet him at headquarters, get the pictures, and make up some photo layouts. I’ll meet you at Rikers.”

I shivered at the prospect, but we agreed on a time and place. I had the sense that we were getting somewhere, that the end was close. But I was too tired to think about it. For me, the long Friday night was finally over.

It was a busy Saturday. Jack made arrangements to interview the prisoner whose name was Johnny Waldo. When he finally hung up from making all his calls, the phone rang. It was Jean McVeigh. Jack did more listening than talking.

Afterward he said, “Petra told her you and I knew about the letter and wanted to make it public to smear Jean’s name. At least that’s what Jean got out of that unannounced visit. Petra said she was doing her best to protect Jean, that she’d been questioned this week about whether she knew of a relationship between Ray and Jean and that she’d denied having any knowledge of it. Jean’s feeling a little confused. I told her Petra was just covering herself, looking for support. I promised we wouldn’t say anything to anyone. By the way, she said she called last night and left a message. I guess I should have listened to that tape.” He pressed the Play button.

The first message caught me by surprise. It was a solemn female voice, speaking slowly and carefully. “This is Melanie Gross. I am trying to reach Sergeant Jack Brooks of the New York Police Department. I must speak to Chris immediately. If I have reached the right number, please call me right away.”

I said, “Uh-oh,” and went to the telephone. The next message was from Jean. The last three were from Tim O’Brien. “I’d better call.”

“Make it quick. We have to meet O’Brien.”

Mel was overjoyed to hear from me. “You won’t believe this, but you have a guest.”

“A what?”

“A nun named Sister Benedicta.”

“She came to visit
me?”

“I found her on your doorstep around dinnertime. You know, you’ve never given me Jack’s address or phone number, but I was pretty sure it was Brooklyn. You wouldn’t believe how many messages I left last night.”

“You’re an angel, Mel. Is she all right?”

“She’s terrific. I’m thinking of opening a home for friends of Chris Bennett. They’re all so nice. She’s reading to the kids now and they’re teaching her to play some of their games. Is it all right if she gambles?”

I laughed. “She knows exactly what’s right for her. Mel, I can’t get home till tonight. Do you have a pencil?”

“In my hand.”

“I’m going to give you four names. Ask her to think about them, whether she recognizes them or not.” I dictated the names, and Mel read them back to me.

“Dare I ask if you’re making progress?”

“Tremendous progress. We just don’t quite have it all in place. I’ll see you tonight and I thank you more than I can say.”