“Yeah, well, your prints are still in the IAFIS database.”
“So?”
“They were found on Terry Farina’s mailbox.”
“We also found this,” Hogan said, and handed Steve a sheet of paper.
It was a photocopy of his department business card. On the reverse side in his handwriting was, “Terry—Congrats! Knock ’em dead.”
“Want to tell us about this?”
Steve stared at the photocopy for a long moment. His handwriting. His words. He could even see his hand with the blue razor point pen he kept in his car visor moving to inscribe the message on the back of his card. He’d done it on his knee before he got out and headed for her front door.
Like a Polaroid photograph rapidly developing, it came back to him. “Son of a bitch.”
He sank into a chair, staring at the note. “I put them in the mailbox, the sunglasses and the bottle of champagne.”
“What’s that?”
“That’s it!”
“What’s it? What you talking about?”
He grinned at them. “I remember. I met her the afternoon of June second at Conor Larkins…” And he told them what he recalled—meeting her while she was finishing up a final. Having a drink with her. Her leaving. His having a couple more drinks and something to eat. Finding her sunglasses. Calling her. Getting the champagne on the way over…
“So why didn’t you tell us this?”
“Because I had blacked out on medication.”
“But you were one of the last to see her alive. Steve, you withheld information relevant to the investigation.”
“Because I had no recollection of being up there and no way to prove that I hadn’t.”
Dacey shot Hogan a look of bewilderment. “But we’ve got the proof.”
He nodded. “Were my prints found anywhere inside?”
“No.”
Steve felt his organs settle back into place. “I wanted to tell the truth except I didn’t know what the hell it was. But now I remember. I called to say she’d left her sunglasses in the pub, and that’s when she said she’d just gotten word of the scholarship. The UPS delivery. It’s all coming back.”
Dacey made skeptical eyes at him. “You know we’re going to need a statement from you.”
“Sure.” With the uniforms outside, they were prepared to arrest him. But they wanted to do so without incident and fanfare. Back at headquarters he imagined that Reardon was apoplectic that it had come to this—the lead investigator now prime suspect. “You have a print kit with you?”
“A print kit? It’s in the car.”
“Good. I’ll give you my statement on the way.”
“On the way where?”
Hogan drove while Steve and Dacey sat in the back. The two squad cars tailed them. On the way, Steve made his statement into a tape recorder, going moment-to-moment from what he recalled of that afternoon.
In twenty minutes, they parked in a spot across the street from 123 Payson Road in Jamaica Plain. On Dacey’s order the uniforms remained in their cars.
“Trust me,” Steve said. “If this doesn’t pan out, Miranda me.”
Terry Farina’s apartment was no longer an active crime scene and had been released to Mrs. Sabo. The day after the funeral, Cynthia Morgan and her brother removed their sister’s personal items—photographs, paperwork, files from her desk. Because they lived out of state, they had not yet made arrangements to remove the rest of her belongings.
Mrs. Sabo was home, because he could see her television flicker through the windows.
“Steve, you’re on the other side of this now, you can’t go in there with us.”
“It’s because I’m on the other side I want this done right. It’s my ass we’re investigating.”
“Yeah, but it’s like the fox inspecting the chicken coop. We can’t do this.”
“Except this fox is your friend and colleague. And I’m the only one who can prove I didn’t do it. And you don’t know what to look for.”
Hogan looked at Dacey and nodded. “Yeah, fuck it.”
Dacey nodded and went over to the patrol cars to explain. When she returned the three of them went to Mrs. Sabo’s door. Dacey explained that they wanted to check the apartment one more time, and she led them upstairs and inside, then went back down.
The interior looked the same as it had the last time they were here. But because of all the traffic, it was useless as a crime scene. Nonetheless, Steve asked them to put on latex gloves and began with the dining-room china cabinet. Nothing. They next checked the commode across from the small dining-room table. Nothing. The same with the hall closet.
Then they went through the cabinets in the kitchen beginning with those beside the sink, then under the sink and above the stove.
“Here,” Steve said.
Above the refrigerator was a small storage space. Sitting amongst some bottles of liquors and white wine was a bottle of Veuve Clicquot. The liquor store had had it in stock after all. And he had never gone in to check, fearing he’d be recognized. Son of a bitch!
With rubber gloves he removed the bottle by the foil creased around the cork knob and placed it on the countertop. He made a nod and Dacey opened the fingerprint kit and began to dust the surface with a camel hairbrush. When she finished, she took close-up photos, then with lengths of tape she removed each print. She inked a pad and had Steve put his prints on a blank sheet. When she was finished, she used a magnifying viewer and inspected each of the prints.
“Okay, we’ve got a match.”
But there were some stray prints also on the bottle. “My guess is those belong to Terry and the liquor store people. You file her prints with IAFIS?”
“Yeah, of course.”
Farina’s laptop still sat on the floor. Steve plugged it into the wall. “Go ahead, call them up.”
“Steve, this is not protocol.”
“Marie, you came to me on suspicion that I came up here and killed Terry Farina. I didn’t and I’m going to prove that to you. That’s protocol enough.”
She looked at him without expression then looked to Hogan, who nodded.
Dacey sat at the laptop and after a few minutes had retrieved the fingerprints of Terry Farina from the database. Through the magnifier she studied the prints on the bottle. “Yeah, they match.”
Steve found the sunglasses in a case in a kitchen drawer. Using the same procedure, Dacey lifted some partials from a lens. It was Steve’s. Another was Farina’s. No others were found.
Steve removed the receipt from his wallet. “I called ahead then stopped at Central Street Liquors for the champagne.” He showed them. “Purchased at 6:22 P.M. Her UPS was half an hour earlier. I dropped it off with the glasses and note in the mailbox then headed home. You can check that it’s the same bottle because there’s the retailer’s code under the UPC on the back label.”
Dacey passed the receipt to Hogan, who nodded.
Steve then pulled his PDA from his belt and scrolled down the outgoing calls to Farina’s number, which showed the call being made at 5:53 on June second. Steve pressed the SEND button and the telephone rang. Hogan picked it up and heard Steve’s voice.
“Somebody else was here after me.”
“How do you figure that?” Hogan asked.
“The champagne she was drinking was Taittinger. Someone else brought it.”
“So how did the Clicquot and glasses get up here if you didn’t bring them up?”
“Probably Terry. Maybe she went down to open the door and saw them in the box.”
“Why not your second visitor?” Hogan said. “He shows up with his own champagne then brings up both, but they drink the Taittinger instead.”
Steve shook his head. “Except the bottle wasn’t wiped clean.”
“Maybe he handled it without getting his prints on the bottle.”