Triple Crown (36 page)

There was considerable confusion and I seemed to be the cause of most of it.

Initially, in spite of my protestations that I was all right, I was dispatched by ambulance to the emergency room of a local hospital to have my arm dealt with. The bleeding had decreased to a
mere ooze, but there was still a nasty gash that required treatment.

It was while a doctor was cleaning and stitching the wound under local anaesthetic that more police turned up at the hospital to arrest me for the murder of one federal special agent, namely
Stephanie Dean, and for the grievous bodily harm of another,
viz
Robert Wade.

Try as I might to explain to them that it had been Robert Wade who had killed Stephanie and that I had been the one they had shot at first, I was eventually handcuffed and frogmarched out of the
hospital and into a waiting squad car.

At the police station, I was photographed and fingerprinted, plus I had a swab taken of my saliva for DNA. However, it was the discovery in my pocket of a groom’s ID card in the name of
Patrick Sean Murphy that caused the greatest excitement, and not only because the photograph on it didn’t resemble me as I now was.

It transpired that the said Patrick Sean Murphy, an Irishman, was being sought as the prime suspect in the murder of the dead groom.

My repeated pleas to the lead detective that I was, in fact, one Jefferson Roosevelt Hinkley, an Englishman, on loan from the British Horseracing Authority to the Federal Anti-Corruption in
Sports Agency, fell on deaf ears.

‘Call the Deputy Director of the agency,’ I told him. ‘He’ll vouch for me.’

But the detective didn’t believe me and the discovery of an United States Permanent Resident Card in my wallet, also in the name of Patrick Sean Murphy and with my matching thumbprint, was
all the proof he needed that I was lying.

He kept asking me the same questions over and over again, and I gave him the same answers on each occasion.

‘Why did you kill a federal law-enforcement officer?’

He clearly took a very dim view of that.

‘I didn’t.’

‘Why did you shoot at another?’

The police had already done a powder-residue test on my hands. I was sure it had registered positive. And my prints would be on Steffi’s gun.

‘Because he was trying to kill me.’

‘And why would that be? Was it because you had already killed his colleague?’

I told him the whole story from the beginning at least four times but it was quite clear he didn’t believe me. It sounded too improbable, even to my ears.

‘Go and look in the roof space,’ I said. ‘You’ll find the broken bulbs and a bullet hole in the stepladder. And who do you think shot me?’

I showed him the stitches in my arm, which were now hurting again as the local anaesthetic wore off.

The detective changed tactics.

‘Why did you kill the groom?’

‘I didn’t. I don’t even know which groom has been killed.’

The detective consulted his papers.

‘Mr Ríos, a US citizen from Puerto Rico. Diego Manuel Ríos.’

I stared at him.

‘His cousin, Miss Maria Quintero, says that you and Mr Ríos had an ongoing feud and she claims you killed him.’

She was right. I had killed him.

I had asked Tony to email his Deputy Director predecessor stating that he had a lead on how trainers were being tipped off: the groom who looked after Debenture was prepared to talk. That would
normally have been me but, due to my feigned illness, Keith had detailed Diego to look after the horse instead.

And because of that, Bob Wade had killed Diego and not me.

‘Where was he found?’ I asked.

‘Where you left him – in a barn, with a pitchfork stuck deep in his chest.’

Bob Wade must have acquired that idea from Hayden Ryder, who had tried to do the same to him at Churchill Downs. But Diego hadn’t been wearing a bulletproof vest or a special agent badge
as protection.

‘I’ve already told you, I didn’t see Diego Ríos at any time this afternoon. I was over at the racetrack, not at the barns.’

‘Can you prove that? Do you have any witnesses?’

No, of course I didn’t. I had spent the afternoon trying to be as inconspicuous as possible.

‘So why did you kill him?’

‘I didn’t.’

‘The murder weapon has your fingerprints all over it.’

Hell, I thought. That wasn’t good.

‘All the grooms have used all the pitchforks at one time or another. They will have all our fingerprints on them.’

‘What was the feud between you and Mr Ríos all about?’

I was not going there. It would sound far too incriminating if I told him it was over advances I had made towards his cousin. It was not a feud anyway. A true feud needed animosity in both
directions. Diego’s had all been one-way.

I decided it was time I asked for a lawyer. Probably well past time.

‘I want a lawyer,’ I said.

‘Why?’

‘It is my right,’ I said.

‘Only guilty men ask for lawyers,’ he responded, and I’m sure he believed it. In his eyes, suspects were all guilty until proved not to be and, even then, he’d probably
still have had his doubts.

‘I’d also like to make a phone call,’ I said, ignoring his remark. ‘I think I have a right to that as well.’

He obviously didn’t like it but he shrugged his shoulders in acceptance. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘One call.’

I made it to Tony Andretti.

‘Where are you?’ he asked angrily. ‘There’s been a disaster at the track.’

‘What sort of disaster?’

‘I’ve lost two of my best agents,’ he said gloomily. ‘One is dead and the other is currently in surgery to save his foot.’

‘They were your moles,’ I said to him. ‘Not one mole, but two. Both of them. Bob Wade and Steffi Dean.’

There was a long pause from the other end of the line.

‘Tony?’ I said eventually. ‘You still there?’

‘Yes,’ he replied slowly. ‘I’m still here.’ He sounded shocked. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Positive.’

He was not happy. ‘I wanted you only to find our moles, not kill them.’

‘I didn’t,’ I said. ‘Steffi Dean was shot dead by Bob Wade from a range of about three feet. She didn’t stand a chance.’

‘Bob Wade says an unknown assailant did it, a man with a black goatee.’

No wonder the cops had come looking for me at the hospital. They would have readily believed a federal special agent. Who wouldn’t?

‘Check the ballistics. The bullet that killed Steffi came from Bob’s gun.’

But I wondered if there would be enough of the expanded bullet remaining to test for barrel marks and scratches.

‘Can you get me out of here?’ I asked. ‘The Nassau County cops have arrested me for murder.’

‘I’ll see what I can do.’

He didn’t sound too hopeful or, indeed, particularly eager.

What had he expected? Perhaps he’d thought that I would silently expose his mole, only then for the villain to be discreetly retired from the service, rather than to face the full force of
the law. Something nice and quiet that would keep the reputation of his agency intact. Maybe even to accept the death of Jason Connor as the accident that the Maryland Medical Examiner believed it
was.

What he clearly hadn’t intended was having to wash FACSA’s dirty laundry in public. For the Nassau County detectives to be investigating the violent death of a special agent under
the intense scrutiny of the intimidating New York City media, hungry for another fatal-shooting story, especially one tinged with more than a whiff of official corruption.

‘Can you at least find me a decent lawyer?’ I asked.

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he repeated, without giving me much confidence that it would happen.

The thought crossed my mind that maybe Tony Andretti would be perfectly happy leaving me to my own devices, at least for a while. The media scrutiny would then continue to be directed solely at
me as the suspect in custody, rather than at him, asking difficult questions like, ‘Why had I been released without charge?’ and, if so, then, ‘Who really had shot Steffi
Dean?’

Part of me even worried that he might be quite happy to sacrifice me permanently, for the good of the agency. Steffi was dead and Bob could be declared medically unfit to continue. The cancer
would have been excised from the body and no one need be any the wiser that it had ever existed.

The only problem would be what to do with me.

After his magic trick in getting me a Green Card from the State Department within twenty-four hours, I’d put nothing past the resourceful Deputy Director of FACSA.

I spent a restless night in a hot and airless police holding cell, in which the bright overhead lamp never went out and the toilet in the corner flushed itself automatically
every fifteen minutes.

My arm throbbed and the stitches itched, but I couldn’t complain about the breakfast.

A segmented metal tray arrived at six o’clock loaded with copious quantities of crisp bacon, scrambled eggs and fried potatoes but, thankfully, with not a single grit anywhere in sight. I
ate the bacon with my fingers and the rest with a white plastic spoon – the officer who delivered it having explained that knives and forks, even plastic ones, were considered too sharp to
issue to violent offenders.

I was pleasantly surprised, and hugely relieved, to find that Tony had sent a lawyer.

His name was Marty Mandalay and he arrived as I was finishing my breakfast. He was young and brash, with a snazzy three-piece suit and slicked-back black hair, held in place by copious
quantities of wax. I wasn’t sure I would have bought a second-hand car from him but his business card stated that he was a graduate of Harvard Law School and I assumed that, in spite of my
earlier concerns, Tony wouldn’t have sent me a dud.

‘Don’t say anything at the interview,’ Marty instructed seriously in my cell. ‘Nothing at all. I will answer all the questions for you. Got that?’

‘OK,’ I said, nodding.

‘Not a word,’ Marty reiterated. ‘No matter what I say. Zilch! Keep those lips of yours tightly zipped. And don’t ask to speak to me privately. Trust me. Just sit on your
hands and keep schtum. I know what I’m doing.’

‘I’ve got the message,’ I assured him.

‘Good.’

This time, the interview was conducted by the same detective as before but with someone from the State Prosecutor’s office sitting alongside him.

‘Now, Mr Murphy,’ said the detective, ‘let’s start again from the beginning, shall we? Why did you kill the groom Diego Ríos?’

I would have thought a simple ‘No comment’ would have been adequate but Marty clearly had other ideas.

‘My client, Mr Murphy, exercises his right under the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution not to answer that question on the grounds he might incriminate himself.’

Marty had told me to keep my lips tightly zipped but, instead, my jaw hung open in surprise. For a start, I wasn’t Mr Murphy, I was Mr Hinkley. And surely one ‘took the Fifth’
only in court, not in a police interview. If I knew that, then my Harvard-trained attorney undoubtedly should have known it as well.

I wanted to say something – to complain that my lawyer was an idiot – but he had also said to trust him, he knew what he was doing.

I closed my mouth again and kept it that way.

The detective, meanwhile, wore a semi-satisfied expression as if he felt he was getting somewhere.

‘Why did you kill Federal Special Agent Stephanie Dean?’

‘My client exercises his right under the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution not to answer that question on the grounds he might incriminate himself.’ Marty said it again without
any trace of emotion in his voice.

And so the interview progressed.

Question from the detective, same answer from Marty.

Neither of them seemed to tire of the game as question after question was answered in identical fashion. I remained seated throughout on Marty’s right, stock-still and stony-faced, while
all the time squirming inside at the guilty picture the answers were painting in everyone’s mind, mine included.

Finally, after about two hours, the detective stood up and went outside with the prosecutor.

‘What the hell do you think you are doing?’ I said to Marty.

He didn’t answer. He just put a finger to his lips, pointed at the mirror to my right and raised his eyebrows.

Yes. Stupid of me. I understood, all right.

One-way glass and, no doubt, a microphone picking up everything we said.

We sat in silence for a good ten minutes, until the prosecutor returned.

‘Patrick Sean Murphy,’ he said formally, ‘I am indicting you for the first-degree murders of Diego Manuel Ríos and Stephanie Mary Dean and for the malicious wounding of
Robert Earl Wade.’

He went on to outline the date and time of the alleged crimes, and then he read me some further rights, but I wasn’t really listening.

First-degree murder.

There had to be some mistake.

It wasn’t Diego who made the trip to Rikers Island in chains.

It was me, as Patrick Sean Murphy.

I spent a second night in custody, this time in what was appropriately named the ‘County Lockup’, a metal cage made of inch-thick steel bars solidly embedded into the concrete floor
and the ceiling.

I had complained to Marty Mandalay, my so-called lawyer, that, in my opinion, his bizarre replies to the detective’s questions had done nothing but make it more likely I would be indicted
for first-degree murder.

‘I thought lawyers were meant to help their clients,’ I’d said to him sarcastically.

‘Trust me,’ he had replied. And then he’d winked at me, leaving me totally confused. I now wondered if, far from trying to get me released, he had actually been doing his best
to get me charged.

The time seemed to drag on for ever, not helped again by having the bright overhead light blazing away all night. There was an electric fan situated behind a grille in one corner of the cage but
either it didn’t work or the staff refused to turn it on when I asked them to.

Probably the latter.

I was not the flavour of the month with the lockup staff. ‘Cop killer,’ I heard one of them say to a colleague, so I would clearly receive no acts of kindness from this lot.