Amelia said, “Okay, that could work. But the big issue: what about Lily’s fingerprint on the shell casing fired from the murder weapon? How the hell did the perp finesse that?” She tossed her long red hair over a shoulder. Lincoln was amused to see Lucas following the sweep closely. He reflected: Just ’cause you’re a faithful husband doesn’t mean you are blind.
Lincoln said, “Internal Affairs is claiming that Lily picked the gun up at the scene where she shot Levon Pitt — rescuing his son. What was the name again?”
“The boy?” Mel Cooper asked, flipping through a file. “Andy.”
Lucas then snapped his fingers. “Hold on. Something’s wrong here. It’s Levon Pitt’s gun — and presumably it was loaded with Pitt’s ammo. Why would Lily reload the mag with her rounds? That makes no sense. I’m not saying she’d take somebody out like that, but if she did, she wouldn’t be stupid about it.”
Amelia said, “Somebody stole one of her cartridges and popped it in the mag.”
“Wore gloves.”
“Or knuckled it,” Lucas said, referring to loading a weapon by holding the bullets between your fingers, never letting the tips come in contact with the brass or slug.
Lucas nodded. “Our friend Markowitz ain’t real crazy about the boys and girls from Narcotics being involved. But it’s leaning that way to me.”
“Well, IA’s not going to take our word for it,” Cooper pointed out. “How do we prove somebody copped a spent shell from Lily?”
An idea occurred to Lincoln. “Call Ballistics. Have them test fire a round from the bottom of the mag of the gun at Verlaine’s suicide. I want three-D images of that shell compared with the one with Lily’s prints on it. And I fucking want them now.”
“Will do.”
Not that fast, but it wasn’t bad. A half hour later the images were on the big monitor in front of them.
Lincoln glanced toward Lucas then Amelia. “You two are the shoot-em-up mavens. What do you think?”
It took no more than a fast glance. They nodded at each other. Lucas said, “The shell with Lily’s prints was machined to fit the receiver of Pitt’s gun. The real perp got one of her cartridges and altered it.”
“Yep,” Amelia agreed. “So whoever did it knows weapons and metalwork. It’s real high quality, close tolerances.”
“Okay, that proves she was set up. But it doesn’t get us any closer to who’s setting Lily up,” Cooper said.
Breaking a lengthy silence, Lucas said, “Maybe it does. Amelia, you know somebody in the NYPD evidence room?”
“Know somebody?” she asked, laughing. “It’s my home away from home.”
Stan Markowitz stood at the podium beside the police commissioner, along with some minion from the mayor’s office and a Public Affairs officer or two. They were in the Press Room in One Police Plaza.
Microphones and cameras and cell phones in video mode bristled like RPGs and machine guns, aimed the officials’ way — though Markowitz, it seemed, was the preferred prey in the crosshairs, to judge from the tight shots.
“I don’t think your boss’s having a good day,” Lincoln said to Amelia. They sat beside each other, watching on the big-screen TV in the corner of his parlor.
Lucas was elsewhere, preparing.
“Doesn’t look it. And what do you think?” she mused. “Half the city’s watching?”
“Half the country,” Lincoln countered. “No good serial killers in the news lately. All the sharks want a piece of this one.”
Every media outlet except CSPAN and Telemundo, it seemed, was represented.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Markowitz began reasonably, though with a tone that suggested he actually viewed them as sharks.
He was drowned out by their shouted questions.
“What was the motive for the torture?”
“Is it significant that the victims were minorities?”
“Is there a connection between this case and the Bekker case a few years ago, involving Lucas Davenport?”
“Could you fill us in about Verlaine’s sex life?”
Frenzy.
Markowitz had obviously done this before and he began speaking very softly — an old trick. Suddenly the sharks realized that they weren’t going to hear anything if they kept yammering away and they spontaneously, to a fish, fell silent.
The COD gave it a beat and then continued. “As you are probably aware, a thorough examination and analysis of evidence and behavioral profiling led investigators to believe that a resident of Manhattan, James Robert Verlaine, was the perpetrator in the spate of recent killings of women in the city. Mr. Verlaine appeared to take his own life as a result of said investigation. And evidence supported that supposition.”
Lincoln muttered, “Ah, sooo pleased to see that they still teach courses at the academy in using ten words when one will do.”
Amelia laughed and kissed his neck.
“You are probably also aware that it was believed that an NYPD detective shot and killed Mr. Verlaine and attempted to cover up the murder by making it appear that the death was a suicide.
“Further investigation has determined that the detective, Lily Rothenburg, was not, in fact, involved in the death of Mr. Verlaine. A person or persons intentionally planted evidence in an attempt to implicate the detective. This officer has been exonerated. It now appears, too, that Mr. Verlaine was not the perpetrator behind the murder of the women. Detective Rothenburg is once again in charge of the task force investigating the killings. We expect to have a suspect in custody soon. I have no further comments at this time.”
“Does that mean, Chief of Detectives, that Verlaine was murdered by this suspect as well?…”
A new microphone logo popped into sight. Telemundo had arrived.
“Can you tell us what leads Detective Rothenburg is working on?… Can you reassure the people of New York that no one else is at risk?”
Markowitz studied the sharks for a moment and Lincoln thought he was actually going to say, “How fucking stupid do you have to be not to understand ‘I have no further comments’?”
Instead: “Thank you.” He turned and walked off the stage.
Amelia made a few calls to the television stations, posing as an angry cop, and told them that Lily was at Lincoln’s town house. “She’s guilty, she’s the one who did it, you got to get on her,” she told the newsies.
Within the hour, there were six news crews and fifty rubberneckers on the sidewalk outside of Lincoln’s town house. One of them finally came up and pounded on the door, and Amelia peeked out and asked what they wanted.
They wanted Lily.
After some back-and-forth, Lily went out on the stoop, told them that she would make one statement for the record, and that would be it.
“I have some very clear ideas of how this may have happened,” she began.
“Are you guilty?” somebody shouted.
“Of course I’m not guilty,” Lily said. “I’m not guilty of anything except trying to track down a torture-killer. But the possibilities now are quite few: the logical possibilities. I’ll knock them down one at a time, and when I’m finished, we’ll have this madman. Within the next day or two. I’m confident of that.”
The press conference lasted for another two or three minutes, then she said she would not talk anymore about it, and went back inside. The news crews dispersed, with the exception of a radio reporter. The rubberneckers went with them.
An hour later, Lucas stuck his head out the door. “If you’re waiting for Lily, she went out the back a half hour ago.”