Chapter 1
“You want me to frame myself for murder?” Will Pruett stood with his back to a tall arched window overlooking the entire 50-block sweep of Central Park.
“Capital murder, actually.” Zeeva Morgenstern un-parked from the edge of her desk and approached, silk skirt fluttering, a feline roll to her boyish hips. “I want you facing death.”
Twenty minutes earlier, he’d been planted in his office cubicle, two stories below, sneaking in a little RuneScape—his latest favorite online game—because the background research for the new magazine piece had got a little boring. A phone call from Zeeva’s personal secretary had summoned him to the top floor, to a rare private audience with the publisher. He’d spent a ten-minute wait in her antechamber worried that a new, keystroke computer program had revealed his on-the-job gaming habit. But that hadn’t turned out to be the case.
“I should mention,” she’d begun, as soon as they’d been seated, “that I’ve just finished re-reading that death row piece you wrote for last November’s issue.”
He peered across her massive white oak desk. “Yes?”
“For the most part,” she said, “it was a well-balanced piece—an excellent piece—yet its tone and attitude seem to announce a firm opposition to the death penalty.”
“It’s true, I am opposed.”
“And you feel strongly about that?”
“I do.” Gripping his armrests for leverage, Will sat up a little straighter. “The death penalty is racist in that most of the people we end up executing are minorities. It punishes the poor, who can’t afford adequate defense counsel. It condemns the innocent to die, as we’ve learned through modern DNA testing. It’s clearly not a deterrent to violent crime, while it clearly is unconstitutional for being ‘cruel and unusual punishment.’ It’s…it’s barbaric.”
Moisture filmed his eyes by now, the old man in his thoughts. He broke eye contact, blinked a couple of times to squeegee away the fluid.
“I’m in complete agreement,” she said softly, before resuming her normal, strident tone. “On a political note, New Jersey recently abolished its death penalty, as I’m sure you know. The first time that’s happened in over thirty years. And it looks as though New York may follow suit. Last month Governor Nowland appointed a blue ribbon commission to review the state’s capital punishment laws.”
Will nodded. “Just as Nowland promised he’d do during his election campaign. But the pro death penalty forces…”
“That’s right. They’re formidable, and you can bet they’ll go all-out to prevent that second domino from falling. What are you working on these days?”
“Right now, a book review for the September issue. Bob Woodward’s latest, on Obama. And I’ve got an investigative piece in the pipeline. You know the one. Missing Matisse sketch? The one the Nazis stole during the war? Turned up rather mysteriously in a Brooklyn warehouse after sixty-seven years?”
“Right, you pitched that during the last editorial meeting. I thought we’d killed it.”
“I talked Fran into letting me run with it some more.” He didn’t mention that he’d threatened to take a leave of absence to pursue the story, freelance it, be his own boss for a change. Maybe even write his first book on the subject. “It really could turn into something special. There’s this art historian who—”
“Never mind about that now. I have another assignment for you instead.”
“Oh?” he said.
Her rapt gaze, for which she was famous, seemed incapable of a simple eye blink. “You can turn it down, if you’d prefer, because it’s…well, hazardous duty. And more than a little unorthodox.”
“Hazardous duty? You make it sound as if I’m heading for the Middle East.”
“No, I don’t mean that kind of hazard.”
“What then?”
She rocked back in her swivel chair, head cocked to one side, eyeballing Will like some objet d’art. She was forty-five, but still fit and would forever be striking with that bone structure.
Her investment banker husband, Sheldon Cohn, had bought Manhattanite magazine as a trophy asset seven or eight years earlier and installed his largely untested trophy wife at its helm. No one had predicted the awards and circulation increases to follow.
Zeeva leaned forward again, fingers interlocking beneath the mild swell of her bosom. “I have an investigative piece in mind for you. A controversial piece, in the same way that it was controversial for the New York Times to expose one of our nation’s war secrets—the National Security Agency’s perfectly legal practice of conducting warrant-less eavesdropping on the phone calls of those inside America suspected of terrorist links. Or controversial in the way it was for those Daily News reporters to test airport security checkpoints by boarding commercial aircraft concealing contraband box cutters and razor knives.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Test our criminal justice system.”
“I don’t follow.”
Zeeva’s open laptop beeped with a new email message or IM. She tapped a few keys and returned her attention to him.
“Will, I’m talking about making the ultimate anti-death penalty statement here. We show the world how easy it is for a completely innocent man to be charged and convicted of homicide and sentenced to death, based on little more than a coincidence or two. We expose the prejudices of the cops and the prosecutors, the self-righteous ‘gut instinct’ or selfish careerism that takes over, and sweeps away such niceties as hard evidence. We expose—”
Her desk phone rang. “Yes?” she answered. Palming the mouthpiece with her free hand, she whispered to Will, “I need to take this.”
And so Will had left his seat and strayed to the window in the corner, overlooking Central Park. By the time Zeeva had hung up on her caller, he’d come to understand her intentions. Now she stood before him by the window, silently asking him to speak.
“What an extraordinary idea,” he said. “Mad, certainly, but also extraordinary. How could it possibly work?”
“Leave that to me. Me and J. Brewster Finch. I’ve already retained him to advise us.”
Will knew the name, of course. Finch was a renowned defense attorney with a rich and famous clientele, known for his courtroom eloquence, dapper style, and ever-changing arm candy.
“But how?” Will insisted.
Zeeva’s eyes were humid with excitement. “We wait for the right case to come along. There are three murders in this city every day, on average, so we won’t have to wait long. Although I do want to hold out for capital murder.”
“Oh, hell, let’s hold out for mass murder too.”
She grinned for the time it took to cross her arms. “We choose a case in which we’re sure the cops don’t have much in the way of leads or evidence, and then we make our move. Maybe there was an eyewitness who’d seen a potential suspect in a tweed sports coat, walking a dachshund down the sidewalk around the time of the murder. So we buy you the same type of sports coat, the same kind of dog too, and put you on the same sidewalk, and have you pass right beneath the nose of that eyewitness. In other words, we create our own circumstantial evidence. If we’re clever enough about it, sooner or later, the cops will show up on your doorstep.”
“Good God,” Will said. “Isn’t that illegal? ‘Obstructing justice,’ or some horrible turn of phrase like that?”
“It’s not against the law for you to buy a sports coat, Will. Or a dachshund. Or to walk in a particular neighborhood.” She swirled and stepped away, re-parking her bottom on the edge of her desk and crossing her legs. “But it’s true you’ll have to be careful about what you say and do. Which is why I’ve retained J. Brewster, despite his outlandish rate. You can’t, for example, make false statements to the police, but you can certainly refuse to answer questions, and that always sounds incriminating to them.”
Will’s right palm flew to his forehead, an act of comfort to his reeling brain. “So…so I get myself charged with a murder I had absolutely nothing to do with, and then—”
“Convicted.”
He sighed. “Of course. And how do I do that?”
“The old-fashioned way. Through inept representation. We’ll get you a kid, some recent, bottom-tier law school graduate, or else an old, broken down alcoholic.”
“Thanks.” He felt miles away from his little cubicle now, from his safe, sanitized world of online research and phone calls, of keying in text and kicking monster butt throughout the realm of Gielinor.
“Now, remember, you’ll be chronicling everything that happens for your investigative piece, the whole wild ride. So I think it makes sense, for the sake of drama, and to provide some first-person insights, if we have you spend at least a few weeks on death row, before I come forward and bail you out.”
“Oh, goody,” Will said. “You won’t forget?”
She laughed. It sounded like rapid-fire hiccups. “No.”
“And just how are you going to bail me out?”
“We’ll have our own evidence, naturally. The receipt for that tweed sports coat you’d bought the day after the murder. Not to mention the dog’s. An affidavit from me, of course, and evidence of your true whereabouts at the time of the murder. We’ll compile a complete and overwhelming package.”
Will took a step in Zeeva’s direction. “And then what? I can’t believe the cops and the prosecutors won’t come after us, after making them look like fools. We’ll be guilty of something, surely. Like maybe helping the true murderer escape justice.”
Zeeva sighed and stood. “We listen to J. Brewster Finch and we’ll be fine, you better believe it. But there’s something else you should know, Will. No one charged those New York Times reporters with high treason for breaking the NSA eavesdropping story, though they were clearly guilty of it. No one charged those Daily News reporters for their box cutters either. And do you know why? Because we’re the fourth estate, that’s why. We work in the public’s interest. And the public—at least the thinking public—will appreciate what we’ve done for them.
“Yes, at the end of the day, we may accidentally help some sleazeball get away with a heinous crime, and leave a grieving family with unanswered questions, but we’ll be serving a larger good here. As educators and activists. We’ll be part of a movement to repeal the death penalty, and that, Will, affects oh so many lives. Remember what you wrote in your death row piece. ‘America is the only fully developed and democratic nation on Earth still perpetuating this medievalism.’ ”
“ ‘In the Western hemisphere,’ ” Will corrected. “There’s Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan in the Eastern.”
He retreated to the window. Forty stories below, automobiles and pedestrians streamed by the statues on Columbus Circle. He pressed his hands against the glass, its surface surprisingly cold for July.
Was it madness or genius, this plan of hers? To arrange a simple coincidence or two and show beyond dispute how it could cost an innocent man his neck?
“I’ll need some time to think about it.”
“That’s unfortunate.”
“Why?” He heard steps padding up from behind. A moment later he smelled her perfume, Chanel No. 5, the olfactory equivalent of a Mercedes S-Class. Probably saved her Bentley for social galas.
“I’ve got our crime beat reporter on top of this thing already, and he—”
“Jerry Bucholz?”
“Of course. That was him on the phone earlier. He has an excellent contact inside the Ninth precinct. They have a fresh DOA as of thirty minutes ago, and Jerry just got confirmation the vic is an NYPD uniformed cop. Homicide’s just now heading out to the scene. Jerry thinks this could be the one for us.”
“Aren’t we being premature? What if there’s an eyewitness? Incriminating fingerprints? A confession?”
“Then we go with a different homicide. All I know is, every time a good candidate comes along, I want you showing up at the murder scene. Let the neighbors see you, the police too. It’ll look suspicious in retrospect, once you become a suspect.”
Will sighed. He thought of his mother. How would she take hearing her son had been charged with a cop’s murder? Or convicted of the crime? When she couldn’t even stand his being a journalist? When he had a father who—.
“Will,” Zeeva said, draping a hand on his shoulder. “You know what this means, if we pull it off, don’t you? Television appearances. Lecture fees. Book contracts. Quite possibly a Pulitzer. A golden opportunity to make a name for yourself, to catapult yourself up into the top ranks of your profession overnight. The potential upside is huge.”
Startled pigeons atop the battleship Maine monument flew off in a starburst. “But what about the potential downside?” he said. “Like if a killer remained free because of me? My personal and/or professional reputation being tarnished? New criminal charges being brought once our little hoax came to light? Last, but not least, what about the risk of lethal injection?
“The poison needle. The big bee sting. Stainless steel sleep. Liquid parole. No one, not even J. Brewster Finch, can guarantee I won’t get stuck by that nasty syringe in the end.” Her Chanel No. 5 titillated his nostrils, his brainstem. He turned to face her. “I’m more than a little terrified to tell you, ‘Yes.’ ”
“I don’t blame you.”
“I may even be a little terrified of you.”
“It’s happened before.”
“You think I’ll do this because my father’s on death row?”
“No, no. Not solely—”
“And for God’s sake, Zeeva, I’m a black man.”
She smiled. “Well, you have to admit, your skin color is a definite plus for this caper.”
“Too big a plus is what worries me.”
Chapter 2
She’d seen enough blood over the years to paint Broadway in crimson. Not just the boulevard, but the walls of the playhouses, the billboards, and the restaurants too. She’d seen mutilations of the human form Picasso had never imagined, smelled enough rotting flesh to pilot an East River trash barge without a mask. Yet nothing could have prepared Samantha Ortiz for what lay before her: The defiled corpse of fellow New York City police officer, Gary Lynch.
She hadn’t liked him much in life, at least from what she’d heard. But that was moot now. She felt queasy and a tad lightheaded, as if she were a rookie cop again, seeing her first stiff. Mostly, though, she felt outrage.
Her fallen comrade lay face down on the floor of his own living room, arms at his sides, head twisted to the right as if peering at the evidence tech who knelt nearby, outlining Lynch’s body with white masking tape. Lynch was in full uniform save for his hat, which had settled upside down on the carpet, about two feet north of his head. His face had a bluish tinge, his eyes and mouth frozen open in shock, like the Mahi Mahi she’d seen reeled in aboard her father’s fishing boat as a child in Punta Cana.
Lynch was about six feet tall, wide-bodied, and bulked with muscles. A single gunshot had punched a gaping hole on the right side of his skull, gray matter sprayed about, matting coarse black hair at the wound’s rim.
Lynch’s gun belt, uniform pants, and jockey shorts had all been yanked down below his knees, just above a pair of scuffed Matterhorn boots. Lodged in his rectum—nearly halfway up there, from what she could see—was a familiar object, a phallic object, a shiny black billy club. Considering his past indiscretions, it raised a whole host of possibilities …
“Satanás es verdadero,” she whispered, crossing herself.
“Huh?” Joe McGuigan stood off to her right, the young officer’s no-liquor-without-ID face uncreased by illness or ill temper. She guessed he hadn’t been in blue long enough to take the murder of a fellow cop personally. “What was that?”
“I said, ‘The Devil is real’.”
Joe eyed her. “You all right, Sam? You look a little pale.”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Had some bad sushi last night. Keeps repeating on me.” She pressed the tip of her pen to her notepad. Just her luck Harry was on vacation. She sure could’ve used her partner’s help. This day promised to be a circus. “Fill me in on what you know.”
“Well, me and Paul were cruising the neighborhood around eleven a.m. when we got a call from dispatch saying check on Lynch at this address, because he’d missed roll call and wasn’t answering his phone. We knocked, got no answer. Door wasn’t locked, so we came in. Found him lying here, just like he is now.” He motioned to the body with a nod of his head. “After that, we secured the scene and called for back up.”
The flash from a cameraman snapping photos blinded her for a moment. The techie using the mini-vac sweeper shuffled by behind her, stooped over, brushing his rear end against hers without apology. It wasn’t sexual harassment, at least not this time. The twenty-by-ten room was simply overcrowded, even without the medical examiner on the scene. At least the furniture hadn’t been overturned or the knick-knacks scattered everywhere in a struggle.
She fished out her Mini-Maglite from her bag and shone it on the floor. A Rorschach pattern of body fluids and brain tissue spattered the oatmeal-beige carpeting. All she could see in the pattern were long days ahead.
She took a deep breath through her nose and let it out slow. In the presence of fresh blood the air always had a semi-sweet, coppery scent. This scent was rather stale, suggesting Lynch had been dead for a number of hours. The ME would no doubt find the body in full rigor mortis. Her stomach threatened to spew lunch.
Just two more semesters—less than a year’s time—and she’d receive her degree from Fordham Law. With a little luck she’d pass the bar on her first try and get a job as an assistant DA in some backwater town in Jersey or Connecticut. She’d loved this life once, but it was time to get out, escape the erratic hours, the excessive overtime. Then she could spend more time with Cici. Be there for her like a real mom.
She turned back to McGuigan. “Any changes to the scene since you got here?”
“It was bright when we arrived, sun streaming directly on the body, so we pulled the curtains to preserve wet evidence. That’s it. Oh, and I shut off the coffee maker in the kitchen. It was burning pretty good. Must have been on since last night. I yanked the plug out so I wouldn’t destroy any fresh prints on the switch.”
“Good boy. You graduate top of your class?”
“Sure, give or take fifty cadets.”
“How many in your class?”
“Fifty one.”
She made a note to find out whether Lynch had lived with anyone else at this address. Then another note to check on whether he’d worked an extra shift yesterday. Why else would he be in uniform, besides the obvious?
“You done any sexual role-playing in your blues yet, Joe? Handcuffs and all?”
His smooth face flushed. “Uh, no.”
“Liar.” She pointed her pen down at Lynch’s back. “You never touched our victim, right?”
“No, Ma’am. I knew right off I couldn’t help him.”
“Anything else I should know?”
“Yeah.” He flicked his eyes down at the body. “Whoever did this has to pay.”
So McGuigan had been on the force long enough after all. “They will,” she said, “they will.” She checked her Timex. Half past noon. A siren wailed five stories below. “I’m done with you for now, Joe. Go ahead and split.”
McGuigan nodded. “Thanks.”
“Get that field report to me ASAP. Tomorrow at the latest.”
“You got it.”
She slipped on a set of latex gloves then shone her flashlight into the dark corners of the living room. Standard upscale East Village three-room rat hole. Probably two grand a month, rent controlled. One thing stood out for sure: Lynch had a taste for the finer things. Tufted Italian leather. Lots of shiny glass and brass. Modern art prints with odd-shaped swatches of bright colors. A framed oil-based painting of a three-breasted woman that looked like it was plucked from some chic SoHo gallery.
The entertainment system seemed torn from the pages of Audio Digest: a big screen plasma TV that took up half the far wall, a surround sound receiver with more buttons than an airplane console, floor-to-ceiling speakers, wireless touchscreen remote. Not bad for someone on a patrol cop’s salary.
With the furniture undisturbed and no signs of forced entry, she jotted down another note—Likely knew his killer—before taking up her flashlight again to explore the rest of the apartment. The stale air, stench, and stifling body heat of the living room faded in a narrow hallway at the back of the apartment.
She always conducted a CSI in two stages. She’d start by making a freehand sketch of the scene, documenting the location of all doors, windows, furniture, the victim, and anything else that might prove pertinent. Next she’d take some basic measurements to show the size of the area drawn, the width and height of anything of importance. On a high profile case like this one the evidence techies would do elaborate, scaled sketches, but she trusted her own handiwork more. If things broke right, perhaps she’d notice something obvious that could be entered into evidence. That would be gravy.
Second time around she’d focus on the minutiae. Divide the scene into a grid and work outward from the body. Scrutinize every square inch of the location. At this stage minor or insignificant details did not exist. A speck of lint or a pea-size clump of dirt might prove the key factor in solving a case.
She nudged open the bedroom door. Inside was a small, square room not much larger than a jail cell. A king-sized waterbed ate up three-quarters of the floor space, its lighted, mirrored headboard extending halfway up the back wall.
The smell of stale tobacco and beer mingled with the rancid cologne of death. Her gaze settled on a crumb-filled ceramic plate sitting atop an open notebook on a mahogany dresser. When she snatched up the plate to check for any writing, a fat cockroach scampered out from underneath and darted out of sight. She jumped back.
“Shit!”
“La cucaracha!” a voice called out from somewhere behind her. Sam whipped her head around. In the doorway stood Sex Crimes detective Kevin Jacobs, smirking like a playground bully who hears lunch money jingling.
“What’s the matter?” he said. “Scared of a little bug?”
“You I can always shoot. Cockroaches are too small and fast.”
“Good to see you, too, Sam.” He sauntered toward the bed, yanking up wrinkled black chinos over a ponderous gut that hung low over his beltline as if he’d just swallowed a beachball. He pointed to the nightstand. “Hey, check this out.”
Sam sidled up to him, eyeing a glass vial on the table’s surface with a label in bold black lettering shouting: DECA-DURABOLIN. An empty syringe lay next to the vial, fluid congealed at the tip of the needle.
“Yeah, boy,” he said. “Looks like old Gary was into the ’roids.”
“Don’t tell me you’re surprised.”
He shrugged. “After twenty years on the force, I wouldn’t be surprised if the ghost of the Virgin Mary went down on the Pope after Sunday mass in the Vatican.” Jacobs rattled a handful of Tic-Tacs into his palm and popped them into his mouth. The guy fought his bad breath the way a glass of water fights a forest fire. He offered her a mint. “So where’s your partner?”
“Paradise Island. Back tomorrow.” She waved off the Tic-Tac.
“Lucky him. He won’t have that revolting image back there in the living room seared into his brain.”
She nodded. “Is the M.E. here yet?”
“Yeah, Cargill. I rode up in the elevator with him. He can’t process this one fast enough, far as I’m concerned. It’s a fucking insult to the badge.”
“You saying this is some kind of message? To us? Payback for DeShawn Tyson?”
She certainly couldn’t discount the possibility. It was perhaps the most infamous case of police brutality on record in New York. A little over a year ago, Lynch had been charged with sodomizing Tyson, a suspected drug dealer, with a broomstick. The jury acquitted him on a technicality, but from the evidence presented at trial, anyone with a brain could see he was guilty as hell. Sparked a summer of racial tensions in the city and a feeding frenzy for the press.
“Either that,” Jacobs said, “or Lynch was a fudge packer and some S & M game got out of hand.”
“You think he was gay?”
“Sure, why not?” He crunched the mints in his teeth. “It’s the M.O. with these pumped up bodybuilder types. Besides, let’s not forget what he did to Tyson. You can’t tell me a one hundred percent heterosexual male is gonna ramrod a suspect up the poop shoot.” His thumbs slid inside his front pant pockets. “Speaking of hundred percent heteros, how about dinner one night, you and me? I’ll take you someplace real nice. Candlelight, a bottle of vino, a little music. Then we could go back to my place and get horizontal under the covers. Put that tight little body of yours to good use.”
She rolled her eyes. “You give me that same line every time I see you, Jacobs. You’re like that stray dog in my neighborhood who keeps chasing cars. Trust me, you’ll never sink your teeth into my fender.”
“Ooh, I like a feisty woman.”
“Then maybe you should call my mom in Punta Cana. She’ll give you all you can handle.”
Her cell phone chirped. She checked caller ID. Crap, her lieutenant. She stepped out into the hallway. “Hi Brian. What—”
“I just got word the mayor is on his way over.”
“The mayor?”
“Yep. He’ll be giving a press conference outside the apartment building.”
“When? Can’t he wait until the media finds out about this on their own?”
“He’ll be there soon. Maybe an hour. Listen Ortiz, I’m counting on you to come through on this, quick. No room for fuck-ups, comprende?”
“Jeez, Brian. Give me more credit than that. I—”
“Do I have to remind you of the Zalletti case?”
Through the hallway arch she could see into the living room, make out the corpse’s Matterhorn boots. The ME, Benny Cargill, stood just behind the feet, arguing loudly with some livid uniformed cop with a military style buzz cut.
“Who the hell is that?” she said into the phone.
“Zalletti?” Brian said. “Don’t start in with—”
“Can’t talk now, Brian. My crime scene is reeling out of control.”
She snapped the phone shut and launched herself into the living room, smelling bad Voodoo more than blood and decay, cursing her missing partner and Paradise Island.
“Hey!” she said as Buzz Cut pressed two meaty hands on Cargill’s chest and shoved him into the curtain blinds. He ignored her, sinking down into a catcher’s squat and yanking the billy club from Lynch’s anus.
Fuck! For a fraction of a second, she froze, but her Glock was in his face before the man could stand up. “Drop the weapon.”
The billy club fell from his grip. Buzz Cut raised his hands high and resumed his full height. His badge told her he worked in an uptown precinct.
“I’m done,” he said. “I only did what I had to do.”
She read his nameplate. “ ‘Panetta.’ Who the fuck are you?”
“His partner.” He cast a glance down at the body on the floor.
Sam sighed and holstered her firearm. “Ortiz. Homicide.” Panetta lowered his hands. “If you were anyone else, I’d bust you for that felony you just committed, badge or no badge. You might’ve just replaced the doer’s only fingerprints with your own. ”
“They put a fucking woman in charge? No wonder Gary still had that club up inside him. You bitches are all used to that.”
She fisted her hands on her hips. If ever a hiss were appropriate…
Cargill emerged from the curtains. Panetta pointed at him. “He wouldn’t process that fucking billy club first. Gary’s one of us. For Christ sakes, show him some dignity.”
“I’m showing you the door,” she said, “before I change my mind and show you my cuffs and the back seat of a cruiser instead.”
“Fuck that. I want in on this. He was my partner, goddammit.”
This guy, she thought, could toss me like a Frisbee. She got in his face anyway, close enough to smell the corned beef on his breath. “Don’t pull your macho bullshit with me, Panetta. Ever again. Now leave or be escorted out. Your choice.”
“Fine,” he said, teeth gnashed. “But I’m doing my own investigation, on my own time. And you damned well better catch whoever did this before I do. Cause if I get to him first, there won’t be anything left to prosecute.”