Arbor Hill Read online

  “You’re all correct,” Miller said.

  “In what?” I said.

  “Missy didn’t open the door for a stranger,” he said. “The killer wasn’t a stranger and she didn’t open the door for him.”

  “Jason McNamee,” I said. “His name keeps coming up, doesn’t it?”

  Miller turned to me, looked me in the eye.

  “Keeper,” he said, “you are hereby officially no longer a suspect in the class A felony homicide case of Missy Neal McNamee. And I’ll make sure the DA knows precisely how I feel about the subject.”

  “That mean we goin’ after McNamee?” Blood asked.

  “Yup,” Miller said.

  “But where do we start?” I said. “We already know he doesn’t work for the State. Not that he’d be in his office this time of night.”

  “We could go back to Arbor Hill,” Blood said. “Maybe he hiding in one of the apartments he owns.”

  “Gentlemen,” Georgie interrupted. “If I may be so bold as to add my two cents to the conversation.”

  “Please do,” Miller said.

  “I don’t think you need to go anywhere to find your man,” Georgie said.

  “Say what?” Blood said.

  “He’s right here, right now,” Georgie said.

  17

  Georgie’s theory went something like this. If McNamee was able to get his hands on some pretty sophisticated drugs like the stuff he used to paralyze Missy, and also the pharmaceuticals he was allegedly pushing on the mean streets of Arbor Hill, he could, in fact, be working inside the Albany Medical Center.

  “There’s more than just one hospital in Albany, Georgie,” I said.

  “Agreed,” he said. “But no better place to start. You’re already here.”

  “You really think he here at this hour?” Blood inquired.

  “I’m beginning to think it’s possible he’s following us,” I said.

  Miller drew his service weapon. He pulled back the slide, allowed a round to enter the chamber. He thumbed the safety on and reholstered the semi-automatic.

  “You and Blood are packing, I assume?” he said.

  “One in the chamber ready to go,” I said.

  “This is a hospital,” Miller said. “We don’t need to turn it into the O.K. Corral if you get my drift.”

  “No black men at the O.K. Corral,” Blood pointed out. “That why it such a screw-up.”

  “Thanks for that radically charged assessment, Blood,” I said. Then, to Miller. “How do you wanna handle this, Chief? Walk the corridors together, or go the efficient route and split up.”

  Miller turned to Georgie.

  “Doc,” he said, “how you feel about joining me in a search of the basement?”

  “I get to wear a little deputy’s badge?” Georgie asked, grinning like he was seven years old again.

  “No stinkin’ badges,” Miller said. “But I do need you to make a call to hospital security and alert them to what’s happening. Should they need to speak to me directly, I’m happy to do it. Meanwhile, I’ll alert the APD to the possibility of a murder suspect on the premises.” He looked me in the eye. “Keeper, you and Blood head up to the seventh floor and start working your way down. Take the maintenance elevators. We’ll meet you half way. Unless one of us gets lucky first.”

  “We ain’t got walkie talkies,” Blood said. “We keep the cell phones close.”

  “I’ve got both of you on speed-dial,” Miller said.

  “You do love us after all,” I said.

  He didn’t laugh.

  Blood and I headed for the maintenance elevators.

  18

  Blood didn’t say anything in the elevator as it began its ascent to the top floor. He was thinking. I could almost smell the wheels grinding inside his brain. He was one of the smartest men I knew, and that, taken along with his prime physical condition, made him a good man to have around in a pinch. A great man to have around.

  Finally, he turned to me. “This medical center a huge place,” he said. “Could take us forever to search every nook and cranny. Be better to think this over logically.”

  “Agreed,” I said.

  The elevator stopped and the doors opened.

  “If you were pimping pharmaceuticals on the street, what part of the hospital would you be workin’ in?” he asked.

  “Not maintenance,” I said.

  That’s when it hit me.

  “McNamee used to work for the New York State Department of Civil Engineering.”

  “That mean he an engineer.”

  “Therefore, he’ll be working for Albany Medical Center’s engineering department,” I said. “The engineering department has its own separate facility on the medical center campus.”

  Blood said, “They also got access to security cameras and keys to every lock in the building, Keep. Includin’ the hospital pharmacy. Could be the son of bitch followed us here after all. Could be Mr. McNamee already know we here.” He looked up into the corner of the elevator car where a security camera was located. “Maybe he lookin’ at us right now.”

  I said, “We should have thought this through before we decided to ride the elevator upstairs.”

  That’s when I felt my cell phone vibrate in my jacket pocket. I retrieved the phone.

  “New text from Miller,” I said.

  “Miller not the textin’ type,” Blood said.

  I opened it. Read it. My pulse immediately soared, and my mouth went dry.

  “That’s because the text isn’t from Miller at all,” I said, my eyes glued to a picture of Miller and Georgie on their knees on the tiled floor, their hands appearing to be tied behind their backs, a shotgun barrel pointed at their heads. “This text definitely came from McNamee.”

  19

  I pulled out my gun. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it under the circumstances. But it felt good knowing it was gripped in my shooting hand.

  Blood punched the knob for the basement on the elevator enunciator panel. But the elevator didn’t move. He punched it again. And again. Nothing. He began punching all the buttons. The elevator wasn’t budging.

  “Son of a bitch. McNamee locked the elevator from a remote position,” I said. “We’re trapped up here.”

  “Try the emergency intercom,” I insisted.

  Blood examined the panel. He depressed a speak button.

  “Hello,” he barked. “Hello, hello.”

  Nothing.

  “It’s disabled,” I said.

  Blood punched the emergency alarm. A bell clanged. It was loud. Someone would have to hear it. But then suddenly, the bell stopped clanging. As if it was disengaged from a remote location.

  “How the hell did that happen?” I said.

  “This the twenty-first century, Keep. Nowadays you can disable any electronic device with your smartphone if you have the right app.”

  Blood was right. If McNamee was working for hospital engineering for the sole purpose of stealing drugs, it could be he was plugged into the entire hospital. He could lock or unlock any door at the flip of a digital switch. He could shut down elevators, heating systems, cooling systems, alarm systems, surveillance systems, you name it. And it’s possible he could do it from his smartphone from anywhere inside or outside the hospital.

  The elevator trembled. The car dropped a few feet. Then abruptly caught itself. Both Blood and I reached out for the wall to prevent ourselves from falling onto our backsides.

  “Fuck was that?” Blood asked. He was clearly alarmed, and when he was alarmed you knew the present situation was as serious as a coronary.

  The elevator dropped again. Another couple of feet. I felt the drop in my stomach.

  “Blood,” I said, my mouth dry, my throat constricted. “I got a bad feeling about this.”

  He gazed up at the elevator car ceiling.

  “Trap door!” he barked. “Now!”

  Without his having to ask, I bent at the knees like I was about to perform a deadlift. Only i
nstead of gripping an iron bar connected to three hundred pounds of steel plates, I wrapped my arms around Blood’s thighs and hefted him up.

  He slapped open the panel, pulled himself up onto the car roof.

  “Give me your hand, Keeper,” he insisted.

  He then reached down for my forearm, grabbed hold of it with both his hands and lifted me up. He did it at the precise moment the cable released and the elevator car entered into a freefall.

  20

  All time seemed to slow down to a fraction of its normal speed. One second I was standing on the elevator floor and the next I was being yanked up through a hole in the ceiling, then dropped onto my stomach on a filthy panel. The elevator fell rapidly, the noise of the machine’s wheels and gears spinning out of control deafening. But then, so were our screams.

  I knew in my head that the reason Blood insisted we make our way onto the car roof was to have something to break our fall. If we remained inside the car, we would be crushed as soon as it made contact with its concrete base. It all took just a few seconds, but it seemed like it was taking minutes. Hours.

  Then we hit bottom.

  The elevator exploded into a thousand wood, plastic, and metal pieces. The doors blew out while Blood and I spilled onto the corridor floor—bruised and beat up, but miracle of miracles, no worse for wear.

  The dust cloud that followed fogged up the corridor.

  “You okay, Blood?” I asked, as soon as I could work up enough breath to speak.

  “One hell of a ride,” he said, patting himself down. “Nothing broken, I think.”

  He slowly rose to his feet, pulling his 9mm from his hip holster.

  “I think it’s time we had a come to Jesus with this McNamee character,” he added.

  I got up, brushed myself off. I made a quick search through the rubble, found my .45, dusted it off.

  “Couldn’t agree more,” I said. Then, “The picture from Miller’s phone. The room was covered in tile. They gotta still be in the morgue.”

  We double-timed it to the morgue. When we kicked in the doors, the first thing we laid eyes on was McNamee, the barrel of his shotgun aimed at our heads. Pointblank.

  21

  “I hate it when I’m right,” I said.

  “That why you not right too often,” Blood said.

  “You boys don’t die so easily,” McNamee said.

  Like I’ve pointed out before, he was a small man. But now he seemed even smaller gripping that shotgun. He was wearing the same jacket and trousers he had on when he first arrived at my office. His shirt was different. This one was white with blue stripes. His tie was hanging crookedly off his neck, and the top button on his shirt was undone. His thick and curly salt and pepper hair was all over the place like he didn’t really care what it looked like and it provided a stark contrast to his red, tight-as-a-tick face. He was so tense, I thought his eyeglasses might crack.

  “Drop your guns, please, Mr. Marconi, Mr. Blood,” he said.

  “At least he polite,” Blood said. “You want me to shoot him now?”

  “Do what he says,” Miller said from down on his knees.

  “The Chief wants him alive,” Georgie said. “Wants to see him rot behind bars.”

  “No choice, Blood,” I said, crouching, setting my .45 onto the tile floor, Blood following suit.

  Then, straightening up.

  “Why’d you do it, Jason?” I said. “Why’d you kill her? It can’t be because she took you for eight thousand bucks—”

  “—Nine thousand,” Blood interjected.

  “Nine thousand,” I said.

  He looked at me, his eyes watery and exhausted and wired. He back-stepped, pressing his spine up against the table where his ex-wife was laid out. He shifted the shotgun so that it was gripped in his shooting hand, freeing up his left hand. He laid the left hand on her belly, caressing it.

  “Before I kill all of you,” he said, his voice soft, weak, almost effeminate, “I just want you to know that I still loved my wife very much. She was the love of my life, and our boy, Teddy, was the apple of my eye.”

  Here comes the big but, I thought to myself.

  “But Missy was a woman of the world,” he said. “She wanted more than I could ever give her. She was a world class dancer, and she had an effect on both men and women. She possessed an allure like no other. I was able to keep her in check for a while. And when I got her pregnant, I thought she would settle down to being a nice mother. But instead, she spent more money than I could possibly ever make at my job. Not even the rents from the properties I bought could keep up with her habits. I stole some office supplies from state Civil Engineering. A couple laser levels and a drone that I tried to sell on eBay. When I got caught, they threatened to have me arrested, but they fired me instead. Awfully nice of them. We got further and further into debt until we lost our home in North Albany and we had to move into one of our apartments. I had no choice but to choose another route to make ends meet.”

  “That’s when you decided to start selling street junk,” I said.

  He nodded, sadly.

  “I’m a Catholic, Mr. Marconi,” he said. “I believe in doing the right thing, and that the people I am good too will, in turn, do the right thing for me. But Missy was different. Missy hated me. And she took that hatred out on me by bedding down other men. Many of whom would fall under her spell. They became obsessed with her like I had. And then . . .”

  His voice trailed off.

  “And then?” I said.

  Tears started falling down his face, his eyeglasses slipping down the crown of his nose.

  “And then she sued me for divorce. When she told me, I thought my heart would stop, I was so devastated. I had no choice but to lock her up inside that house in Arbor Hill. No choice but to have her watched twenty-four-seven. I just had no choice.”

  Or course, that’s when it hits me.

  “You didn’t hire me to get your money back,” I said. “You hired me to keep a watch on her. To make note of how many men came and went from your place. You knew that I would include it in my report to you.”

  “You see, Mr. Marconi,” he went on, “she wasn’t supposed to be able to unlock the door. But she somehow managed to get a key. No matter how many times I’d have the lock changed out, she’d find her way to getting a key for it. It was the power she’d had over all those men. They’d do anything for her. Give her money, jewelry, and yes, keys to all the locks that bound her to that high castle in Arbor Hill.”

  I recalled the backside of her apartment door. The new lock, and scars left behind by old locks that Missy must have tripped or unlocked with her own secret key. I remember the damage done to the frame indicating the door had been jimmied with a pinch bar or a hammer claw. McNamee didn’t install those locks to keep the bad element out. He installed them to keep her in. She and Teddy. My guess was she wasn’t doing tricks just to spite her husband, or because she loved dangerous sex. She simply did it as a way to make money. Enough money to get the hell out of Arbor Hill. Get out of Albany. Start a new life with her boy.

  “So now what, McNamee?” I said. “You can’t get out of this. There’s no way.”

  That’s when I made out the policemen, dressed in riot gear, silently making their way into the morgue via the back door off Georgie’s office. Six of them stealthily taking up positions along the perimeter wall, the barrels of their AR15s aimed for McNamee, the brilliant, linear, never still, red laser light sights connecting with his torso and head.

  The strange thing was this: I think he was perfectly aware of them. But he chose not to do anything about them. He just gravitated toward his wife, or ex-wife, I should say, shifting himself toward her head so that he could lean down over her and kiss her lips.

  “You boys should know something,” Georgie said, from down on his knees. “I didn’t tell you everything about Missy’s exam.”

  “We’re listening, Georgie,” Miller said. “So is McNamee. Aren’t you, McNamee?”
/>   McNamee was openly weeping now, caressing her face with his.

  “She wasn’t pregnant like she would have you believe, Keeper,” Georgie explained. “But an internal exam showed her positive for sexual activity.” He exhaled disgusted. “Her ex-husband had sex with her . . . Sex with her after she’d died.”

  My stomach turned over on itself. A wave of dizziness consumed me. I glanced at Blood. I knew him like a brother, knew how disgusted and sick he felt right now. For a split second, I considered going for my gun, ending the pathetic excuse for a life that was Jason McNamee with two ees.

  But suddenly, McNamee stood up straight. He looked me in the eye.

  “You were with her,” he said. “Before she died.” His eyes shifted to Blood. “So were you. You big black animal of a man. You were with her. You both were with her. Did you fuck her? Did you give her what she wanted? You both know first-hand how much she hated it with a condom on. How much she had to have real skin pressing against her hot insides. So, is that how you did it with her? Without a condom?”

  Once more, he gripped the shotgun with both hands. Aimed both barrels at Blood and me. The laser lights were flashing off the glazed tile walls. He must have known by then that he was a dead man if he attempted to shoot us.

  “Don’t do it, McNamee,” Miller said. The old cop was sensing something—that McNamee was about to take the coward’s way out. “You can still save yourself. Let the law run its course. Put the shotgun down, McNamee. You hear me? Put it down, and we can talk this through.”

  That’s when McNamee did something very strange. He painted his face with a smile. He looked up at the ceiling and whispered, “It’s okay, Missy. I’m coming home.”

  He shifted himself back toward her prone body, set the side of his head down on her face. He then turned the shotgun barrel around so that the business end entered his mouth, while the thumb on his right hand rested on the trigger.