"You catch all the bad guys? "Nana asked from her catbird seat at the table. A paperback book called The Color of Water was propped in front of her.
"We're moving in the right direction. The bad guy made a couple of mistakes finally. He's taking a lot of chances. I'm more hopeful than I was. You like the book?" I asked. I wanted to change the subject. I was home.
Nana pursed her lips, gave me a half-smile. "I'm hopeful. The man can certainly write up a storm. Don't stray off my topic, though. Sit down and talk to me, Alex."
"Can I stand and talk, and maybe put together a little supper for myself?"
Nana frowned, shook her head in disbelief. "They didn't feed you on the airplane?"
"Dinner on the flight was honey-roasted peanuts and a small plastic cup of Coke. It fit with the rest of the day. This chicken and biscuits any good?"
Nana slanted her head to one side. She frowned at me from the sideways angle. "No, it's spoiled. I put it away spoiled. What do you think, Alex? Of course it's good. It's a down-home culinary masterpiece."
I stopped peering into the fridge and stared over at her. "Excuse me. Are we having a fight?"
"Not at all. You'd know it if we were. How are you? I'm fine myself. You're working too hard again. But you seem to thrive on it. Still the Dragonslayer, right? Live by the sword and all that?"
I took the chicken out of the fridge. I was famished. Probably could have eaten it cold. "Maybe this whacked-out case will be over soon."
"Then there'll be another one and another one after that. I saw a pretty good saying the other day there's always room for improvement -then you die. What do you think of that one?"
I nodded and let out a deep sigh. "You tired of being with a homicide detective, too? Can't say that I blame you."
Nana crinkled up her face. "No, not at all. Actually, I enjoy it. But I do understand why it might not be to everyone's liking."
"I do, too, especially on days like today. I don't like what happened between Christine and me. I hate it, actually. Makes me sad. Hurts my heart. But I do understand what she was afraid of. It scares me too."
Nana's head bobbed slowly. "Even if it can't be Christine, you still need someone. So do Jannie and Damon. How about you get those priorities straight."
"I spend a lot of time with the kids. But I'll work on it," I said as I plopped the cold chicken and fixings in a pan.
"How can you, Alex? You're always working on murder cases. That seems to be your priority these days."
Nana's statement hurt. Was it the truth? "These days, there seem to be a lot of bad murder cases. I'll find someone. Has to be somebody out there will think I'm worth a little trouble."
Nana cackled. "Probably some serial killer. They sure seem attracted to you."
I finally trudged up to bed around one o'clock. I was at the top of the stairs when the phone started to ring. Damn it! I cursed and hurried to my room. I picked up before it woke the whole house.
"Yeah?"
"Sorry. "I heard a whispering voice. "I'm sorry, Alex."
It was Betsey.
I was glad to hear her voice anyway. "It's all right. What's up," I asked.
"Alex, we have a break in the case. It's good news. Something just happened. A fifteen-year-old girl in Brooklyn made a claim on the
9m insurance-company reward! This is being taken very seriously in New York. The girl says her father was one of the men involved in the Metro Hartford job. She knows the others involved too. Alex, they're New York police detectives. The Mastermind is a cop."
Chapter Eighty-Two
The Mastermind is a cop. If it was true, it made sense out of a whole lot of things. It partly explained how he'd known so much about bank security, and about us.
At five-fifteen in the morning, I met Betsey Cavalierre and four other FBI agents at Boiling Field. A helicopter was waiting for us. We took off into a thick, gray soup that made the ground disappear seconds after we were airborne.
We were pumped up and extremely curious. Betsey sat in the first row with one of her senior agents, Michael Doud. She was wearing a light gray suit with a white blouse, and she looked serious and official again. Agent Doud handed out folders on the suspected New York City detectives.
I read the background material as we flew steadily toward New York. The detectives in question were from Brooklyn. They worked out of the Sixty-first Precinct, which was near Coney Island and Sheepshead Bay. The crib notes said the precinct was a mix of cultures and assorted criminals: Mafia, Russian mob, Asians, Hispanics, Blacks. The five suspected detectives had worked together for a dozen years and were reportedly close friends.
They were supposed to be 'good cops," the file said. There had been warning signals, though. They'd used their weapons more than average, even for narcotics detectives. Three of the five had been disciplined repeatedly. They jokingly called one another 'goomba'. "The leader of the pack was Detective Brian Macdougall.
There were also about a half-dozen pages on the fifteen-year-old witness: Detective Brian Macdougall's daughter. She was an honor student at Ursuline High School. She was apparently a loner there and never had many friends. She seemed to be responsible and solid and
9m believable, according to the NYPD detectives who had interviewed her. Her reason for giving up her father was credible too he drank and struck her mother often when he was home. "And he's guilty of the Metro Hartford kidnapping. He and his detective pals did it," said the girl.
Actually, I felt very good about this. It was the way police work usually went. You put out a lot of nets, you checked them, and every so often something was actually in one of the nets. More often than not, it came from a relative or friend of the perp. Like an angry daughter who wanted retribution against her father.
At seven-thirty, we entered the conference room at One Police Plaza and met up with several members of the NYPD, including the chief of detectives. I was the representative from the Washington police, and I knew Kyle Craig was instrumental in getting me into the meeting. He wanted me to hear the girl's story first-hand.
Kyle wanted to know if I believed her.
Chapter Eighty-Three
Veronica Macdougall was already in the large conference room. She wore wrinkled blue jeans and a ratty green sweatshirt. Her curly red hair was unkempt. The darkish, puffy rings under both eyes told me she hadn't slept in a while.