“I think it is. Hot… and thirty years younger than her husband.”
“So she took her bra off and gave him a heart attack. Murder- by-boob isn’t in the penal code.”
“You know what I mean.”
“You mean she wanted somebody younger. So do I. So does everybody. Well, not you, ’cause nobody younger would give you the time of day.”
“And there was this feeling I got at the house. She wasn’t really in mourning. She was in a black dress, yeah, but it was tighter than anything I’d ever let my daughter wear, and her red eyes? It was like she’d been rubbing them. I didn’t buy the grieving widow thing.”
“You ain’t marshalling Boston Legal evidence here, son.”
“There’s more.” Malloy pulled the limp copy of Prescott’s obit out of his pocket. He tapped a portion. “I realized where my feeling came from. See this part about the personal physician?”
“Yeah. So?”
“You read books, DeLeon?”
“Yeah, I can read. I can tie my shoes. I can fieldstrip a Glock in one minute sixteen seconds. Oh, and put it back together, too, without any missing parts. What’s your point?”
“You know how if you read a book and you like it and it’s a good book, it stays with you? Parts of it do? Well, I read a book a few years ago. In it this guy has to kill a terrorist, but if the terrorist is murdered there’d be an international incident, so it has to look like a natural death.”
“How’d they set it up?”
“It was really smart. They shot him in the head three times with a Bushmaster.”
“That’s fairly unnatural.”
“It’s natural because that’s how the victim’s ‘personal physician’ ”-Malloy did the quote things with his fingers “-signed the death certificate: cerebral hemorrhage following a stroke. Your doctor does that, the death doesn’t have to go to the coroner. The police weren’t involved. The body was cremated. The whole thing went away.”
“Hmm. Not bad. All you need is a gun, a shitload of money, and a crooked doctor. I’m starting to like these particular particulars.”
“And what’s particularly interesting is that it was one of Prescott’s books that Aaron Reilly co-wrote. And the wife remembered it. That was why I went to see her.”
“Check out the doctor.”
“I tried. He’s Spanish.”
“So’s half the city, in case you didn’t know. We got translators, hijo.”
“Not Latino. Spanish. From Spain. He’s back home and I can’t track him down.”
The department secretary stuck her head in the doorway. “Jimmy, you got a call from a Frank Lester.”
“Who’d be?…”
“A book agent. Worked with that guy Prescott you were talking about.”
The former agent. “How’d he get my number?”
“I don’t know. He said he heard you were planning some memorial service and he wanted to get together with you to talk about it.”
DeLeon frowned. “Memorial?”
“I had to make up something to get to see the wife.” Malloy took the number, a Manhattan c ell-phone area code, he noticed. Called. It went to voice mail. He didn’t leave a message.
Malloy turned back to his partner. “There’s more. An hour ago I talked with some deputies up in Vermont. They told me that it was a private ambulance took the body away. Not one of the local outfits. The sheriff bought into the heart-attack thing but he still sent a few people to the place where Prescott was hiking just to take some statements. After the ambulance left, one of the deputies saw somebody leaving the area. Male, he thinks. No description other than that, except he was carrying what looked like a briefcase or small suitcase.”
“Breakdown rifle?”
“What I was thinking. And when this guy saw the cop car, he vanished fast.”
“A pro?”
“Maybe. I was thinking that co-author might’ve come across some connected guys in doing his research. Maybe it was this Aaron Reilly.”
“You got any ideas on how to find out?”
“As a matter of fact, I do.”
Standing in the dim frosted-glass corridor of a luxurious SoHo condo, Jimmy Malloy made sure his gun was unobstructed and rang the buzzer.
The large door swung open.
“Aaron Reilly?” Even though he recognized the co-author from the picture at Prescott’s funeral.
“Yes, that’s right.” The man gave a cautious grin.
Which remained in place, though it grew a wrinkle of surprise when the shield appeared. Malloy tried to figure out if the man had been expecting him-because Jane Prescott had called ahead of time-but couldn’t tell.
“Come on inside, detective.”
Reilly, in his late thirties, Malloy remembered, was the opposite of Jane Prescott. He was in faded jeans and a work shirt, sleeves rolled up. A Japanese product, not a Swiss, told him the time and there was no gold dangling on him anywhere. His shoes were scuffed. He was good-looking, with thick longish hair and no wedding ring.
The condo-in chic SoHo-had every right to be opulent, but, though large, it was modest and lived-in.
Not an original piece of art in the place.
Zero sculpture.
And unlike the Widow Prescott’s abode, Reilly’s was chock- a-block with books.
He gestured the cop to sit. Malloy picked a leather chair that lowered him six inches toward the ground as it wheezed contentedly. On the wall nearby was a shelf of the books. Malloy noted one: The Paris Deception. “J.B. Prescott with Aaron Reilly” was on the spine.
Malloy was struck by the word, “with.” He wondered if Reilly felt bad, defensive maybe, that his contribution to the literary world was embodied in that preposition.
And if so, did he feel bad enough to kill the man who’d bestowed it and relegated him to second-class status?
“That’s one of my favorites.”
“So you’re a fan, too.”
“Yep. That’s why I volunteered to come talk to you. First, I have to say I really admire your work.”
“Thank you.”
Malloy kept scanning the bookshelves. And found what he’d been looking for: two entire shelves were filled with books about guns and shooting. There had to be something in one of them about rifles that could be broken down and hidden in small suitcases. They were, Malloy knew, easy to find.
“What exactly can I do for you, detective?”
Malloy looked back. “Just a routine matter mostly. Now, technically John Prescott was a resident of the city, so his death falls partly under our jurisdiction.”
“Yes, I suppose.” Reilly still looked perplexed.
“Whenever there’s a large estate, we’re sometimes asked to look into the death, even if it’s ruled accidental or illness related.”
“Why would you look into it?” Reilly asked, frowning.
“Tax revenue mostly.”
“Really? That’s funny. It was my understanding that only department of revenue agents had jurisdiction to make inquiries like that. In fact, I researched a similar issue for one of our books. We had Jacob Sharpe following the money-you know, to find the ultimate bad guy. The police department couldn’t help him. He had to go to revenue.”
It was an oops moment, and Malloy realized he should have known better. Of course, the co-author would know all about police and law enforcement procedures.
“Unless what you’re really saying is that you-or somebody-think that John’s death might not have been an illness at all. That it was intentional… But how could it be?”
Malloy didn’t want to give away his theory about the crooked doctor. He said, “Let’s say I know you’re a diabetic and if you don’t get your insulin you’ll die. I keep you from getting your injection, there’s an argument that I’m guilty of murder.”
“And you think somebody was with him at the time he had the heart attack and didn’t call for help?”