His reply surprised her. “You really don’t know?”
“No.”
Brandon looked at her skeptically.
“Yo, Donovan?”
Kat turned toward the familiar voice. Captain Stagger stood by the stairway. “My office,” he said.
“I’m in the middle of—”
“This won’t take long.”
His tone left no room for debate. Kat looked at Brandon. “Wait here a second, okay?”
Brandon looked off, nodded.
Kat rose. Stagger hadn’t waited for her. Kat hurried down the stairs and followed him into his office. Stagger closed the door behind her. He didn’t circle back to his desk or delay.
“Monte Leburne died this morning.”
She slumped against the wall. “Damn.”
“Well, that’s not exactly my reaction, but I thought you’d want to know.”
For the past two weeks, she had tried repeatedly to get close to him again. It hadn’t worked. Now time had run out. “Thanks.”
The two of them stood there awkwardly for a few moments.
“Anything else?” Kat asked.
“No. I just thought you’d want to know.”
“I appreciate it.”
“I assume you’ve been investigating what he said.”
“I have, yes.”
“And?”
“And nothing, Captain,” Kat said. “I’ve found nothing.”
He nodded slowly. “Okay, you can go.”
She started for the door. “Is there going to be a funeral?”
“What, for Leburne?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know. Why?”
“No reason.”
Or maybe there was. Leburne had a family. They’d changed names and moved out of state, but maybe they’d be interested in the remains. Maybe they’d know something. Maybe, now that dear Monte was dead, they’d want to prove his innocence, at least in one case.
Long shot.
Kat headed out of Stagger’s office, trying to sort through her feelings. She just felt numb. So much of her life felt like unanswered questions. She was a cop. She liked closed cases. Something bad happened. You figure out who did it and why. You don’t get all the answers. But you get enough.
Her own life suddenly felt like one giant open case. She hated that.
Didn’t matter. She could have her little pity party later. Right now, she had to get back and concentrate on Brandon and his missing-mom case. But when she got back up to her floor, the chair in front of her desk was empty. She sat, figuring that maybe the kid had gone to the bathroom or something, when she spotted the note:
HAD TO GO. PLEASE FIND MY MOM. YOU HAVE MY PHONE IF YOU NEED TO REACH ME.—BRANDON
She read the note again. Something about the whole thing—the missing mom, seeking Kat out specifically, all of it really—felt more than wrong. She was missing something here. Kat took a look at her notes.
Dana Phelps.
What harm could it do to take a quick look into the name?
Her desk phone trilled. She picked it up and said, “Donovan.”
“Hey, Kat.” It was Chris Harrop from Corrections. “Sorry it took so long to get back to you, but like I said, the logs aren’t computerized and I had to send a man up to the warehouse in Albany. And then, well, I had to wait.”
“Wait for what?”
“Your boy Monte Leburne to die. It is complicated but basically showing you this could be a violation of his rights unless he waives them or you get a court order, blah, blah, you know the deal. But now that he’s dead . . .”
“You have the list?”
“I do.”
“Could you fax it to me?”
“Fax? What is this, 1996? How about I send it to you via Telex? It’s in an e-mail. I just sent it. Besides, there’s nothing on it that’s going to help you.”
“What do you mean?”
“The day you asked for, the only person who visited him was his attorney, a guy named Alex Khowaylo.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. Oh, and two feds. I got their names here. And an NYPD cop named Thomas Stagger.”
Chapter 12
Stagger wasn’t in his office.
Still standing in front of his office door, Kat typed up a text saying that she needed to talk to him right away. Her fingers shook, but she managed to hit the SEND button. She stood there and stared at the screen for two full minutes.
No reply.
This made no sense. Monte Leburne had been picked up by the FBI, more specifically the feds working RICO, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. NYPD wasn’t involved in the arrest at all. The feds suspected him of murdering two members of a rival crime family. A few days later, they’d also uncovered information that Leburne had been the triggerman in the death of her father.
So why had Stagger visited Leburne before that, the day after his arrest?
Kat needed some air. A small twinge sent a reminder that she had also skipped lunch. Kat wasn’t good when skipping meals. She tended to lose focus and get grumpy. She hurried down the stairs and asked Keith Inchierca at the front desk to contact her as soon as Stagger came back. Inchierca frowned.
“I look like your secretary?” he said.
“Good one.”
“What?”
“Please? It’s important, okay?”
He waved at her to go away.
She found a falafel stand on Third Avenue and then, remembering Brandon Phelps’s home address, she figured, well, why not? She started walking north. Seven blocks later, she arrived at a fairly unassuming high-rise. On the street level, there was a Duane Reade pharmacy and a store called Scoop, which Kat had wrongly assumed was an ice-cream parlor when, in fact, it was a trendy boutique. The apartment building entrance was on 74th Street. Kat flashed her badge at the doorman.
“I’m here about Dana Phelps,” she said. “Apartment 8J.”
The doorman stared at her badge. Then he said, “Wrong building.”
“You don’t have a Dana Phelps here?”
“We don’t have a Dana Phelps. We also don’t have an apartment 8J. We don’t do letters. The apartments on the eighth floor run from 801 to 816.”
Kat put her badge away. “Is this 1279 Third Avenue?”
“No, this is 200 East 74th Street.”
“But you’re on the corner of Third Avenue.”
The doorman just stared at her. “Uh, yeah, so?”
“But it says 1279 Third Avenue on this building.”
He made a face. “You think, what, I’m lying about the address?”
“No.”
“Please, Detective, by all means. Go up to apartment 8J. With my blessing.”
New Yorkers. “Look, I’m trying to find apartment 8J at 1279 Third Avenue.”
“I can’t help you.”
Kat headed back outside and turned the corner. The awning did indeed say 200 East 74th Street. Kat moved back to Third Avenue. The 1279 was actually above the entrance to Duane Reade. What the hell? She entered, found the manager, and asked, “Do you have any apartments above you?”
“Uh, we’re a pharmacy.”
New Yorkers. “I know that, but I mean, how do I get to the apartments above you?”
“You know a lot of people who walk through pharmacies to get to their apartment? The entrance is around the corner on 74th.”
She didn’t bother with follow-up questions. The answer was now pretty damn apparent. Brandon Phelps, if that was his name, had given her the wrong—or, more likely, a false—address.
• • •
Back at the precinct, Google gave Kat some of the answers, but they didn’t clarify much.
There was a Dana Phelps with a son named Brandon, but they didn’t live on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The Phelpses resided in a rather tony section of Greenwich, Connecticut. Brandon’s father had been a big-time hedge fund manager. Beaucoup bucks. He died when he was forty-one. The obituary gave no cause of death. Kat looked for a charity—people often requested donations made to a heart disease or cancer or whatever cause—but there was nothing listed.
So why had Brandon sought out a specific NYPD cop?
Kat checked out other residences the Phelps might have owned. There was, of course, a chance that a wealthy family from Greenwich might own a place on the Upper East Side, but nothing in Manhattan came up. She ran Brandon’s cell phone number through the system. Whoa. It was a prepaid phone. Most rich kids from Greenwich don’t use those. Most people who use them either have poor credit ratings or, well, don’t want to be traced. Of course, what most people didn’t know was that it was rather easy to trace disposable phones. In fact, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit had ruled that you could even “ping” a location without getting a warrant. She didn’t need to go that far. At least not yet.