I nodded, and Marx pushed into the room.
43
JONNA LEANED back when we entered, and laced her fingers. She seemed completely at ease-not relaxed the way you’re relaxed when you’re just hanging around, but comfortable like an experienced athlete. Marx and Bastilla had agreed to let Bastilla do the talking, woman to woman. They wanted me in the room because Jonna and I had something in common. Her sister.
Bastilla and I sat, but Marx stood in the corner. Bastilla placed a brown manila envelope on the table, but did not open it.
Bastilla said, “How you doing?”
“Pretty well, considering.”
“All right. You know Mr. Cole?”
“Yeah. He’s the one who started all this.”
“And Chief Marx?”
She nodded.
“You know this is being recorded?”
“I don’t care. I didn’t have anything to do with this. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Bastilla rested her palms on the envelope.
“Here you are, Yvonne Bennett’s sister, and you just happened to get tight with the man who was accused of murdering her, just happened to use a false name while doing so, and just happened to do all this in the days immediately preceding his death. What are we supposed to think?”
“I can’t help it if I knew the guy. I thought he was someone named Lonnie Jones.”
Marx moved in the corner.
“You knew he was Lionel Byrd because Alan Levy told you.”
“That isn’t true.”
“You hated Levy. Your mother told us you used to call his office and send him hate mail.”
“She’s old.”
“So you were probably surprised when Levy contacted you. I’m thinking that’s what happened, isn’t it, Jonna? He probably told you how guilty he felt, how sorry he was, some bullshit like that-”
Jonna’s face darkened, but the darkness was her only reaction.
“-how Byrd had fooled him back then, but now Byrd was out there killing people and he wanted to do something about it. Am I getting close here? Ten ring? The eight?”
Bastilla said, “Take it easy, Chief. C’mon.”
Good cop, bad cop.
Bastilla took the pictures from the envelope. Each picture was in a sealed plastic sleeve. They were the actual pictures from the album, still smudged from the SID work. Bastilla dealt them out one by one. Sondra Frostokovich. Janice Evansfield. Every victim except Yvonne Bennett.
Jonna barely glanced at them as Bastilla dealt them out.
“You know Byrd didn’t take them because you gave them to him. You know the absolute truth about that. These pictures were taken by the person who murdered them. It couldn’t have been any other way.”
“You don’t know. The police took them. They take pictures like this when people are murdered.”
“Is that what Levy told you? Is that how he explained where he got them?”
Bastilla took a stapled report from the envelope and placed it in front of Jonna.
“This is the forensic analysis of the pictures. It explains how we determined when the pictures were taken. You can read it, if you want. If you don’t understand it, we can have the SID people explain what it means. We’re not lying to you about this.”
Bastilla touched the picture of Janice Evansfield and pointed out the streamer of blood. She touched the drops that had fallen from Sondra Frostokovich’s nose, then produced the coroner investigator’s photograph showing a much larger puddle. While Bastilla was explaining these things, I slipped the CI’s picture of Yvonne Bennett from the envelope and waited my turn.
Then I pushed aside the other pictures and put the Polaroid of Yvonne on the table. Jonna leaned forward when she saw her sister.
“Do you see this?”
I touched the blood bubble, then placed the CI’s picture of Yvonne beside the Polaroid so she could see the difference.
“It was a bubble made in her blood. It formed as she died. It popped a few seconds later.”
Jonna stared at the pictures, but I could tell she wasn’t seeing them.
“You know I worked for Levy on behalf of Lionel Byrd?”
Her eyes came up, but they might have been focused on something a thousand yards away.
“Uh-huh.”
Bastilla touched me under the table, and Marx smiled from the corner.
“Levy told you about me, didn’t he?”
She shook her head vaguely, then went back to the pictures.
Bastilla said, “Cole’s involvement was never mentioned on TV or in the papers. He never personally mentioned it to you, and we haven’t talked about it with you or in your presence. You would have no other way to know that he worked for Alan Levy.”
I said, “Jonna, look at me.”
Her eyes came up again, but now they seemed dull and opaque.
“Levy used me the same way he used you, and I never saw it coming. I worked with him, talked to him almost every day, and he totally played me. That’s how good he is. Lionel Byrd didn’t kill your sister. I know you believe he killed her, but he didn’t. If Levy gave you the pictures, then Levy killed her, and now we have to prove it.”
Jonna said, “Levy.”
“Levy’s been using me to find out what the police know. He’s also been pushing me to find you. I believe he intends to kill you. We know from your phone he’s been calling you a lot. We also know you haven’t been answering his calls or calling him back. I think this is because you sense something is wrong with the guy.”
Marx stepped out of the corner.
“We see you as a victim here, too. We want to handle it that way. I can’t promise you won’t pull some time, but we’ll cut a good deal. Get you a reduced sentence and early parole if you cooperate.”
She looked at Yvonne’s picture again, the close-up showing the ugly red bubble of blood. She touched it, and her face settled into the same humorless, determined lines I had seen in her high school portrait. She picked up the picture, kissed it, then dropped it with the others. She once more seemed at ease.
“What do you want?”
“A recorded admission of guilt.”
“Okay. Whatever.”
Bastilla shook her head.
“Not you. Levy. Your testimony won’t be enough. We need him to acknowledge he gave you the pictures or helped plan the murder. All he has to do is indicate he had knowledge of these things, and that would be enough.”
“You want me to call him?”
“Levy’s too smart to make an incriminating statement over the phone, but we think Cole can bring him out.”
I said, “If I find you, I’m supposed to call him.”
“So he can kill me.”
“That would be my guess. He will probably try to kill me, too.”
Bastilla said, “We would pick a secure location. We would have plenty of protection, and-”
Jonna cut her off.
“I don’t care. I want to go get him.”
She said it without hesitation or remorse. Munson had been right. She was totally cold.
44
MARX COMMANDEERED a conference room, then called out an elite SWAT tactical team with supervisors and plus-one team leaders to plan the mission. They let me participate because my role was key-the task was not simply to capture Alan Levy, but to elicit a confession. They broke down a plan, selected a location, and deployed surveillance and tactical teams even before I made the call. We didn’t know if Levy would agree to meet, but the SWAT boys wanted everyone in place asap. If the plan changed, they would roll with it. They were the best in the business.
A surveillance technician named Frank Kilane stuck his head into the room and gave us the thumbs-up. Marx patted me on the back.
“Ready to make the call?”
I grinned, but my grin was too large and strained.
“I live for making calls like this.”
“Want some more of that coffee?”
“You trying to kill me?”
Marx grinned back with the same fractured leer.
“Not until after we get this bastard.”