The Guilty: (P.I. Jack Marconi No. 3) Read online

  Judging by the digital readout, it was Michael Levy. I thumbed the green Answer button and put the phone to my ear.

  “Marconi,” I said.

  “Mr. Marconi,” he barked, the tension in his voice already apparent. “What the hell is going on?”

  I told him.

  “You truly believe Sarah’s life is in danger?” he posed, after taking almost a full minute to digest everything I said.

  “I wouldn’t be bothering your writing schedule if I didn’t.”

  “What would you like for me to do?”

  “I’m not asking you to do anything. I’m only informing you of what’s happening and the dangers posed by Sarah’s fiancé, Robert David Jr.”

  “Former fiancé,” Levy said, acid in his tone. But there was something else in his voice also. Something I might have recognized in myself in the months following Fran’s sudden death. Something that can arise only from heartbreak. That’s when it kind of clicked inside my head. I was reminded of what Miller told me about Sarah admitting to her love for her husband.

  “Michael,” I said, “do you still have feelings for Sarah?”

  I couldn’t exactly hear it, but I felt him swallowing something bitter inside a very dry mouth.

  “Yes,” he said. “I still love her. Love her very much.”

  “I understand.”

  “No, you don’t. There’s something else you should know.”

  “What is it?” I said, as Blood pulled off the exit, paid the fifty cent toll, and drove on toward Schenectady’s State Street.

  “Sarah and I had been speaking a lot before her accident. If you want to call it that.”

  “How much is a lot, Michael? I need the truth here.”

  More dry swallowing.

  “I’ll level with you, if you promise to keep things confidential.”

  “You can trust me,” I said. But he needn’t tell me the rest since I already knew exactly what he was going to say. Miller has already confirmed what Sarah had been telling her doctors as of late. That she and Michael Levy still loved one another. But maybe I needed to hear it from him anyway in order to believe it.

  “We were sleeping together again,” he said.

  The brick, five-story hospital loomed large in the distance. I expected an admission of love, but not sex.

  “And allow me to guess,” I said. “Junior somehow got wind of your rekindled love.” It was a question.

  “Yes,” he confirmed. “He was very angry. That night . . . the bad night. February 18th. That was supposed to be the night she was going to tell him and break off the engagement.”

  “Looks like she told him all right,” I said. “Maybe she told him a bunch of things he didn’t like.”

  “Yes, I suppose she did.”

  “Why didn’t you tell all this to the police?”

  “I thought it would make Sarah look terrible—like some cheap harlot who couldn’t be trusted. A fiancée of one of the area’s most powerful and richest men, and she’s cheating on him with her ex-husband of all people.”

  “You should have told the police anyway. They would have understood.”

  “I realize that, Mr. Marconi. Or, I should say, by the time I realized that, it was already too late. Sarah didn’t even remember who I was anymore or that we were in love or even that we had once been married or have a son together. Instead, all she was capable of in her brain-damaged state was professing her love for Junior. It was all quite heartbreaking and strange and more than a little disturbing.”

  We pulled into the lot and took our parking ticket from the man in the booth.

  “I’m at the hospital now, Michael,” I said. “I’m going to make a check on her and call you back.”

  “Don’t bother,” he said. “I’m on my way. I live only a few minutes away.”

  “See you here,” I said.

  49

  BLOOD AND I DIDN’T bother with the information booth inside the main vestibule since it was curiously empty. Nor did we wait for an available elevator. Instead, we took the stairs inside the concrete stairwell, bounding them two at a time until we reached the fifth floor. We burst through the solid metal door, with me out in front and Blood close behind. Our surprise entry onto the circular nurse’s station caused the three or four people who were occupying it to look up at us in complete surprise.

  One of the nurses present was the short, overweight brunette who had taken a disliking to me on my previous visit. I approached her anyway.

  “Where’s Sarah?” I demanded.

  “You are not authorized to be up here,” she said, picking up the phone. “I’m calling security.”

  Blood reached down, pulled the phone out of her hand, and gently hung it back up.

  “My partner has asked you a simple question about Sarah Levy and we both feel it deserves an answer.”

  While her work-mates looked on strangely silent and still, I watched her lips grow tight.

  “Mr. Marconi,” she said. “Sarah is not available.”

  I looked into her glassy, squinted eyes.

  “You mean like she’s presently in therapy,” I said.

  She shook her head.

  “No. She’s not in therapy.”

  “Then where is she?”

  “She’s gone,” she said. “That’s all I know.”

  50

  “WHO TOOK HER?” I said. I was shouting, and it caused the nurse’s glassy eyes to tear up.

  “A man came and checked her out. He followed all the proper procedures.”

  “What man?” I said. “What was his name?”

  She turned to the others with an almost panicked look on her face.

  “I don’t have to tell you anything,” she said, turning back to me. “You should know that we’ve been warned. And if you do anything to harm us, it will only make things worse.”

  I found myself shaking my head without thinking about it. I felt that same icy coldness run up and down my spine again. It made my injured shoulder throb all the more. I also felt the concrete floor beneath my boots slowly turning to mud.

  “What are you talking about?” I said.

  “They’re coming,” she said.

  I heard the elevator doors open then. I heard the sounds of heavy footsteps. Turning, I made out two uniformed security guards coming at Blood and me.

  “Don’t move!” they shouted.

  The security guards weren’t alone. They were accompanied by three other men. I recognized Detective Nick Miller easily enough and the two men behind him by the blue uniforms they were wearing. APD uniforms.

  “This ain’t good,” Blood said.

  “Nick,” I said, “you were going to Junior’s house with a search warrant.”

  “Stay where you are, Keeper,” he said, voice terse, strained. His smooth face was pale.

  The blue uniforms had their side-arms drawn.

  “You three, move out of the way!” Miller shouted at the medical staff standing in the nurse’s station. They moved back away from Blood and me. Then he said, “Jack ‘Keeper’ Marconi, get down on your knees, your hands above your head.”

  I just stood there.

  “Do it!” he shouted, pulling his weapon from his holster.

  Crouching, I dropped down to my knees. But because of my bad shoulder, there was no way I was going to raise my hands above my head or at all for that matter.

  “You too, Blood!” he said.

  Blood did as he was told.

  I was immediately disarmed by one of the cops while another cuffed my good arm to my bad arm.

  “Nick,” I said, feeling the pain of the cuffs cutting into my skin and the strain in my injured shoulder. “Tell. Me. What’s. Happening.”

  “You are under arrest,” he said.

  “For what impossible reason?”

  “For the murder of Daphne Williams.”

  51

  BLOOD AND I WERE carted out to three awaiting blue and whites. A crowd gathered to watch the festivities, includ
ing a couple of local reporters who must have been tipped off to the event over their smartphone police scanner apps. Out the corner of my eye, I caught sight of a stocky, eyeglasses wearing middle-aged man who was dressed in jeans, boots, and a T-shirt that was tight around his chest and biceps. He stared at me hard but said not a word as I was escorted past him. So close to him, that I could almost smell his breath.

  I harbored little doubt in my mind that the man was none other than Michael Levy, Sarah’s ex-husband, and I also had little doubt that he was now as confused as me. Which would explain why I cocked my head over my wounded shoulder and barked, “She’s gone, Michael! Somebody took her!”

  I would have said more, but the cop behind me told me to “Shut up!” as he opened the backseat door to the cruiser, pushed the back of my head down, and shoved me inside.

  Keeper, the defeated.

  52

  AN HOUR LATER, I was seated inside an interview room at the Albany Police Department. Three of the four walls that surrounded me were constructed of concrete block which had been painted a dull white. The fourth wall—the one facing me—was also made from concrete blocks. The only difference between this wall and the others was that it had a large one-way mirror installed in its center so that the cops behind it could study me and record my every word and gesture. The concrete floor was covered with gray tile squares. The overhead lighting was a bright white LED. The table I was seated at was made entirely of metal. It had a thick metal ring bolted to its underside to which the chains from my shackles were secured and to which the exposed nerves that throbbed in my right shoulder seemed attached.

  My watch had been stripped from me, along with most of my clothing, so I had no real idea of what time it was. I could only guess that it must have been around seven in the evening. I was dressed only in my boxer shorts, an orange jumper, and slippers for shoes. I’d been through this song and dance before and I knew full well that Miller was leaving me alone with my thoughts for a while.

  My thoughts and my pain.

  It was a confusion and anxiety-inducing tactic that I knew all too well. I was a former prison warden, after all.

  Truth is, I wasn’t concerned for myself or for Blood. We hadn’t done anything wrong. I was more concerned first for Sarah. Someone had taken her away and it was very possible that someone had been Junior and/or his father or one of the goons working for them. I was also concerned for Daphne, but since she was already dead, my concern amounted to what exactly had happened to her and why Miller was so convinced I’d played a part in it.

  When the solid wood door opened, I knew I was about to find out.

  Miller entered the room, a manila folder gripped in his right hand. He sat down across from me.

  “Allow me to break the fucking ice,” I said. “Fastest collar on record for you. Maybe get you promoted to Captain.”

  He exhaled, ran his left hand over his closely cropped gray and white hair, then loosened the knot on his tie and unbuttoned the top button.

  “We knew you’d run,” he said, sitting back. “I knew you’d run.”

  “I’ve been through this shit before. And you’re right. I would have run. Fast.”

  “Exactly,” he said. “I wasn’t taking any chances.”

  “And now Junior’s snagged Sarah right out from under our noses.”

  “You don’t know that for sure.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  I glanced at the black glass. I knew that behind it someone was studying me. Studying my words.

  Turning back to the dick, I said, “Instead of searching Junior’s house, you arrest me. No lawyer, no representation. No due fucking progress. Not even an Advil for my shoulder. Maybe when you get your jarhead out of your ass, you can tell me what’s going on and why you’re making me out to be a patsy.”

  “I read you your Miranda’s,” he said, opening up the folder, pulling out an eight-by-ten color glossy, spinning it around so that I could see it right side up. For a brief second, the picture sucked the air from my lungs. It was Daphne. From what I could gather in the close-up shot, she lay in a bed, her head nearly decapitated from her naked torso.

  I looked up at Miller, my empty stomach feeling more than a little queasy.

  “Look me in the eye,” I said, my mouth going dry, heart racing, “and tell me you think I’m capable of something like this?”

  He glanced down at the photograph, picked it up with the tips of his fingers, and returned it to the folder.

  “No,” he exhaled. “I don’t believe you are. But that doesn’t mean you didn’t do it.”

  “I was set up.”

  “She was discovered inside your Sherman Street crib in your bed. Her fucking prints were all over the place. Yours and hers. No one else’s.”

  “It was a setup. I enjoy the use of only one arm right now. I’m not physically capable of that knife work, and you know it. How’d you find her?”

  “Anonymous tip.”

  “From who? Junior?”

  “I just told you, it was anonymous.”

  “The same anonymous who stole Sarah from Valley View?”

  He shot me a hard look. I was getting to him.

  “Daphne came to see me the same evening I was shot. She had things to tell me about Junior. Bad things, Nick. Things he made Sarah do with other people. Things he got off on. His fifty shades of play-rape.”

  More staring. Staring without blinking.

  “Come on, Nick, I have an alibi,” I went on. “Blood will back me up.”

  “A noted drug dealer,” he whispered.

  “Former drug dealer.”

  “That’s your opinion.”

  “Did you or did you not raid Junior’s house?”

  He nodded.

  “Did you put the computer back that we both stole?” I said it loud while looking directly at the one-way glass so there would be no mistaking what I said.

  Miller issued me a one thousand mile stare. Then, raising both his hands up, he crossed them rapidly signaling something to stop.

  “That’s it,” he said. “That’s enough. Show’s over.”

  He stood up. A voice sounded over the intercom.

  “You want us to stop recording?” said the tinny voice.

  “Yes, that’s what I just fucking said.”

  An even brighter overhead light came on as it does in the movie theaters as they start rolling the credits.

  “I had no choice but to bust you, Keeper,” he said. “The evidence against you is overwhelming . . . Physical. Evidence.” He smiled, cynically. “Okay, maybe too overwhelming. But I have a job to do and I did it. And yeah, I suspect the anonymous tip could have very well come from Junior or someone working for the Davids.”

  When I pulled on the shackles, it sent a shock wave of pain up into my wounded shoulder.

  “Where’s Sarah?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Where’s Sarah?” I repeated, raising my voice.

  He exhaled again.

  “We don’t know,” he said.

  “You. Don’t. Know.”

  “She went to bed last night, and this morning she was gone.”

  “Cameras must have picked up an image of her leaving the facility.”

  “You would think that wouldn’t you,” he said. “But there’s an issue of some missing surveillance video.”

  “What happened?”

  “My personal opinion?” he said. “Somebody paid somebody to sabotage the facility’s security system for the entire time it took Sarah to be stolen.”

  “Witnesses?”

  He shook his head.

  If my hands weren’t bound in shackles, I would have pounded the table.

  “You alert her father?”

  “And her ex-husband,” he said. “He arrived on the scene same time you did. When we busted you.”

  “I saw him,” I said.

  “Frankly, we think Michael Levy has been very quiet.”

  “You focusing on him now?
You think he could have stolen her?”

  He smiled, but I knew then that they didn’t consider the writer a suspect. Or they didn’t consider him a suspect any longer anyway.

  “Hey, we thought you might have cut a woman’s head off,” he said further stressing his confusion and helplessness in this case.

  “I get it,” I said. “Anything is possible. You’re leaving no stone unturned.” I pulled on the shackles again. “Can you please get me out of these?”

  He looked into the one-way glass again, cocked his head in my direction. A few seconds later, a man came in. He was overweight and dressed in civies. Without a word, he unlocked me.

  “My clothes?” I said to the man.

  “Somebody will retrieve them for you,” he said and left the room, taking the shackles with him.

  “Coffee,” I said turning to Miller. “I need coffee. And Advil.”

  “How about something stronger?” he said, standing.

  “Least you can do.”

  “My office,” he said.

  I followed.

  53

  “WHAT ABOUT BLOOD?” I said as Miller poured me a shot of Dewars into an empty coffee mug.

  We occupied his small office located on the opposite side of the precinct’s first floor booking room. The blinds on his windows and door were closed so that no one could look in. Cop or criminal. My shoulder ached and throbbed. I knew the bandage should be changed, but for now I was shit out of luck. Visions of an infection filled my brain. Amputation. No choice but to ignore it.

  “I sent him back home along with your 4Runner,” he said, pouring his own shot into a blue coffee mug that had the letters NYPD printed on it in white lettering. “You might find a more savory sidekick.”

  “He’s not a sidekick and he’s one of the most upright people I know. The world dished him a shit sandwich when he was born to a fourteen-year-old mother and a father he never once met. He did what he had to do to survive and it landed him in my prison. He’s still doing what he has to do to survive, only differently. He helps other people who’ve been handed a shit sandwich in life.”