"You already asked me that. What's going on?" Jack frowned.
"Well, the case is coming together." The detective sat down and took out a notebook and a pen.
Something about the way they were acting made him nervous. Sanchez sat down and took out a similar black-and-white speckled notebook. Now they were all sitting at the table. The notebooks were out. Jack had no idea what was happening, whether it was good or bad. His viable hand began to tremble. He wasn't doing well.
Woo turned some pages, checking her notes, then looked up. "Last Friday when I visited you, you told me someone was calling you, someone whose voice and phone number you didn't know. Have you had any more of those calls?"
He exhaled and realized that he had been holding his breath. "No. No. That situation seems to have resolved itself. Why do you ask?"
"Something odd came up this morning. I want to run this by you." That flat look was so unsettling.
"What?"
"There was a match between a number on the victim's caller ID list and yours."
Jack's heart jumped like a fish on a chopping block. Now Bernardino was the victim. "What does that mean?" he said softly.
"It means there might be a link between you and the killer."
"What do you mean, might be a link?" The air in the room was so heavy Jack felt as though he were breathing through a thick wad of cotton. How could he know a killer?
"It could be a coincidence, but we always work on the premise that there are no coincidences in police work." She said this with no expression.
"Whose number is it?" he asked in a small voice.
"It's a number in the York U phone system. Do you know anyone at York?"
Jack inhaled, taking a moment to digest the question. "Well, sure. I'm an alum. I know lots of people there. Al Frayme, in the development office, Wendy Vivendi, the vice president. I know the president, too, Dr. Warmsley. Marty Baldwin. Some of my professors are friends now. Professor Callum is on the board of my company," he said slowly. "All kinds of people have my number. It's in the donor data bank. I get calls all the time. Whose number is it?"
"The number comes from the School of Social Work."
"The School of Social Work?" Jack placed it near Washington Square. He passed by the building every night on his walk with Sheba. But not since the incident. Now, because of the reporters, they had a dog walker taking Sheba out. He shivered at the way the two cops were looking at him.
"Do you know anybody in the social work school?" Woo's pen was poised for the answer.
"No, not a soul. Whose phone is it?"
"Dr. Foster."
Jack shook his head. "I've never heard of him."
"It's a woman. She's a professor, and she's been out of the country for several weeks. Ring a bell?"
Jack shivered again. "No."
Woo glanced at Sanchez. "We'll need a list of everyone you've been in contact with at the university, everyone you know. That okay with you?" he said.
Jack nodded. "Of course, but I have a question-is it all right to ask? What was the connection to the… deceased?" His tongue faltered over the word. He hadn't been on the block where Bernardino had died. He didn't know him. How could there be a connection between him and a murder victim? Lisa would be terrified. Sheba wouldn't like it, either. His arm started to throb for the first time since the weekend. And April Woo was busy taking notes. She didn't answer the question.
"The connection is just the fact that I was there when it happened, right?" Jack said, figuring that the murderer got in touch after he saw him on the news.
People who appeared on the news were at risk; he'd known that from the get-go.
"No, the number on your phone predates the murder," she said. Matter-of-fact.
His eyes widened as he tried to absorb the possibility that a murderer knew him and maybe he knew a murderer. The detectives let it sink in, and he wondered how long they'd known. It was an eerie sensation, more than eerie. As he flushed under the unfamiliar feeling of real fear, his eye strayed to the man behind the viewing window. The man who looked like a bear was getting restless. He was tapping his huge feet, eager to get out of there. Jack wanted to flee, too. He glanced back at Woo and Sanchez. Their faces didn't tell him a thing.
Twenty-nine
Late Tuesday afternoon Bill Bernardino bowed under heavy pressure and finally agreed to allow a search of his house and car without a warrant because he didn't want the media attention that the serving of a search warrant would bring on him and his family. The Department had given his father a good send-off. He owed them. Mike and two detectives proceeded to his home in Brooklyn, where they took the spacious family house apart as neatly as possible.
The three men did the search with a minimum of fuss and conversation, and Mike was the one to come across Bill's workout bag and sweaty gym clothes from which a strong odor of camphor and spearmint emanated. When he searched the inside pocket, he found a half-used bottle of Tiger Liniment. He seized it and a second bottle of Tiger Liniment, this one unopened, that Bill had stored in his medicine cabinet. Mike showed no reaction whatsoever to either of the other two detectives or to Bill about his find. But he was excited. They were a step closer.
Of all analgesics for muscle pain, Tiger Liniment was about the messiest. It was packaged in little bronze-colored glass bottles for an old-fashioned look, and some of it had spilled out into Bill's gym bag. The oil seemed an unusual choice for a no-nonsense kind of guy like Bill. As Ducci had pointed out on Saturday when they visited him in the lab, the newer patches with some of the same ingredients were easier to use and just as readily available. There wasn't a huge market for this.
Bill watched them packing up the contents of his medicine cabinet with a puzzled expression but didn't say a word. They dumped his gym bag and unwashed workout clothes in a carton. Not a word. He started protesting when his laptop computer full of files on the cases he'd been working for the DA's office was removed from the house. Then, practically frothing at the mouth, he called the office from which he had been suspended to see what could be done about it. The answer came back-nothing. His boss was furious because he hadn't thought to cleanse the computer before he left.
Thirty
Tuesday afternoon while Mike was in Brooklyn nailing Bill, April played it safe and followed up on the phone call to Jack Devereaux from York U. It was a halfhearted effort. She didn't expect much when she paid a visit to the brick building that housed the York University School of Social Work. It was a former mansion just off Washington Square with a center hall and a lounge on one side, offices and classrooms on the other side. In the middle was a tall staircase leading to the second and third floors. Professor Foster's office was at the top of the stairs, first door on the left, where anybody could walk right in if the door were left open. But the door was always locked and Foster was away for the semester, so she was told.
April met with the dean in her office to discuss the matter of the telephones and the locked door. Diane Crease was a tall woman who looked a lot like the first female attorney general of the United States. A string bean with a pleasant expression, Dr. Crease wore no makeup, had short, wavy, graying hair, and was wearing a springy pink-and-black tweed suit. On one lapel was a stiff pink plastic rose with a black center.
"What is this about, Sergeant Woo?" she asked, careful to see that the door was shut before she spoke.
"I'm investigating the homicide near the university last week," April told her.
"Ah, yes." The dean's eyes flickered. "Yes, I remember. A police officer, I believe. How can I be of assistance to you?" She stayed smack in the middle of her office, far from the safety of her desk.
"We're trying to follow up on a phone call that was made from Professor Foster's office to the murder victim." April was tired. Out of loyalty to the family, she hadn't wanted to be involved with Mike's search of Bill's house. But this scut work of looking for some phone caller was hardly a satisfying alternative. She coughed to clear her dry throat.