“Gay guys?”
“I’ve no idea,” she replied. “I just became the owner of the building a couple of days ago, and I haven’t met my tenants yet.”
“Harry,” Stone said, “you have any interest in my take on this?”
“Not much,” Harry said, “but go ahead.”
“Your suspect is a man named Kevin Keyes, who resides in Wichita, Kansas. He’s an ex — airline pilot who does occasional charter flights, and he’s the ex-boyfriend of Ms. Frank, here. I believe he followed her here after she ended their relationship. Mr. Keyes, or whoever the killer is, probably got into the building by ringing all the doorbells. The guys upstairs buzzed him in. He tried to get past Ms. Frank’s front door and failed. One of the guys upstairs probably wanted to know who he’d let into the building, and he may have come downstairs. Keyes then marched him back upstairs and shot both guys, so they couldn’t identify him. Keyes is registered at the Court Plaza hotel in Times Square, and he’s driving a dark, rented Nissan Altima.
“Pat, you want to give them Keyes’s description?”
“Six-one, two-twenty, dark hair going gray. He’s a bodybuilder and heavily muscled.”
Fred spoke up. “Ms. Frank believes he may be on both steroids and cocaine.”
“A bad mixture,” Stone said. “Pat, would you say that Keyes has a quick temper and is subject to rages?”
“I would,” Pat replied. “And he owns several guns.”
“Who owns this building?” Harry asked.
“I told you, I do,” Pat replied. “My sister made me a gift of it.”
The doorbell rang, and Harry admitted two men with stretchers and another with a large case. He sent them upstairs and returned to Pat’s apartment. “You know what bothers me about this?” he asked nobody in particular.
“The double homicide upstairs?” Stone inquired.
“Nah. It’s too simple — that’s what bothers me. I never walked into a homicide before where I got handed the scenario and the killer on a platter, complete with an address. Jesus, I’m surprised nobody got his Social Security number.”
“I probably have that somewhere,” Pat said, “if you want it.”
“Y’see? It’s all too simple.”
“Feel free to make it more complicated,” Stone said.
“Oh, I don’t have to do that,” Harry said. “It will make itself complicated pretty quick.”
“While it’s getting complicated,” Stone said, “you might send a SWAT team over to the Court Plaza and invite Mr. Keyes up to the precinct for a chat.”
“You telling me how to do my job?” Harry asked.
“Somebody’s got to,” Stone said.
“And why do you think I need a SWAT team?”
“Oh, I don’t know: the suspect is a big, strong, angry man who is known to own several guns and who is probably crazed by a combination of steroids and cocaine. If you’d rather just go over there and ask him a few polite questions, go right ahead.”
“You were always a smart-ass, Barrington.”
“And you were always a stupid ass, Harry.”
The doorbell rang again.
“You get it,” Harry said to his young partner.
He left and came back with two middle-aged men in suits.
“I’m Detective Robert Miller,” one of them said. “This is my partner, Dominic Legano.”
“What the fuck are you two doing here?” Harry asked.
“This is our case — the commissioner sent us,” Miller said. “You can leave now.”
“The fuck we’re leaving,” Harry said.
Miller produced a cell phone. “Let’s see: you’re out of the Nineteenth precinct, right? And your captain is Don Haley?” He started to dial a number.
“Awright, awright,” Harry said. “Take the fucking case and stick it up your ass. Come on,” he said to his partner, and they both walked out of the apartment. At the door, the younger man looked back and shrugged.
“Good day, gentlemen,” Miller called after them. He turned to the group. “All right,” he said, “will somebody fill us in?”
Stone and Fred went through the whole thing again while Legano took notes. When he had finished, Miller got out his cell phone again and pressed a speed-dial button. “This is Bob Miller. I need a SWAT team at the Court Plaza in Times Square to pick up a suspect in a double homicide. Name is Kevin Keyes, registered guest, six-one, two-twenty, dark hair going gray. Consider him armed and dangerous. Possibly high on something.” He chatted for another minute with whoever was on the other end of the line, then hung up. “Okay, Dom, let’s go upstairs and view the carnage, see what the boys have to say about the corpses and the scene. Please excuse us for a few minutes,” he said to Stone, “and I’d be grateful if you’d all remain until we’re done here.”
“Glad to,” Stone said.
“You bet,” Pat said.
“Righto,” Fred echoed.
Another hour passed, during which men with stretchers brought two body bags down in the elevator. The detectives returned.
“Anybody think of anything else?” Miller asked.
Everybody shook their heads.
“Ms. Frank,” Miller said, “you should give some thought to getting out of the house for a few days. Do you have anywhere you can go?”
“She does,” Stone said.
Legano took down their information, and the detectives shook their hands and left.
“I think it’s time we got you to my house, Pat,” Stone said. “Any objections?”
“Not even one,” Pat said, “but I may have a better idea.”
20
Holly arrived at her White House office to find Millie Martindale already at her desk, and she was wearing the dress she had worn yesterday. “Good morning, Millie,” she said.
“Morning, ma’am,” Millie said.
“Tell me, did you get lucky last night, or did you spend the night at your desk?”
“Both,” Millie replied. “Give me a few minutes, and I’ll bring you some stuff.”
Holly went to the adjacent utility room and made coffee. She came back with two mugs and found Millie sitting across from her desk, shuffling papers in her lap. Holly handed her a mug.
“Any cream and sugar?” Millie asked.
“If you drink it black for twenty-one days, you’ll never have it any other way again, and you’ll save yourself a lot of time, too.”
Millie tasted the coffee and made a face.
“Tough it out,” Holly said. “What have you got?”
“Identities for two of our fuzzy photographs.”
“Shoot.”
“I sort of took a shortcut,” Millie said. “I spent my junior year at Oxford, and I have a friend from those days who’s now teaching there. He’s a couple of years older than me, and I knew he went to Eton, so I had a talk with him. His first year there he knew two boys, identical twins, who had unusual accents. Their names were John and James Whittleworth, and he made them as Arabs, though they didn’t look it.”
“And Whittleworth isn’t a very Arabic name,” Holly pointed out.
“They were a little darker of skin but had blond hair.”
“Go on.”
“I got the registrar’s office at Eton at four o’clock this morning — it’s five hours later there — and they dug up the boys’ records. Their father’s name was Martindale, like my last name, and their mother’s Fatima, which might explain their appearance and accents.”
“Makes sense.”
“Not for long. I researched the father, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t exist. Not the mother, either. There was a record of only one visit to the school by the parents, early in the boys’ three-year stay at the school. They never went home for the holidays, even at Christmas, and their school fees were paid by an official of a private bank in London, Devin’s, which turns out to have Middle Eastern owners.”