“He was selling stolen jewelry.”
“Yes. No! I didn’t know, I just thought, you know?” Bartz was wringing his hands, the cuffs jangling. “I said I didn’t have the money to buy it, and he said keep it. Said he couldn’t look at it without thinking about his girlfriend.”
“And you didn’t find this suspicious?”
“You’d be surprised what people give me. It’s the God’s honest truth, ask Kramer; he knows when I’m bullshitting. I swear, he gave it to me.” He paused. “Is there a reward? Because I found the ring and all?”
Joe and Suzanne stepped out without answering his question.
“What a ridiculous story,” Suzanne said.
“He’s telling the truth.”
“Damn, I thought so, too. I just hoped that I was wrong.”
Joe said, “The killer reads the article, worries that we’re going to start looking at other motives and that he might be under the gun, but he’s smart enough not to hock the ring himself. Gives it to a street vendor knowing there’s a better than good chance the guy will pawn it.”
“He’s got to know we’ll track the guy,” Suzanne said.
“You heard Jimmy. He can’t even ID the guy.”
“You should get a sketch artist in here anyway.”
Joe concurred. “I’m also going to check and see if there’s a security camera that caught Bartz yesterday at that subway station. We might get lucky. And I know Kramer; I’ll see what he says about this guy.” Joe shook his head. “I don’t see Bartz as the killer.”
“And that’s why his story has a ring of truth. Shit, we’re back where we started.”
“No, we have an advantage. Your friend Tony played the killer, and the killer did exactly what we wanted-pawned the ring. He just used a middleman.”
Suzanne stared at Bartz through the window, but she was thinking about the guy in the cap. Smart, but he’d have to know Bartz’s story would never hold water. “Do we pressure him or let him think he deceived us?”
Joe said, “Give the killer a little breathing room? Announce that we’re interrogating a suspect?”
“Except that the killer would know Bartz’s story is pathetic. He can’t possibly know that Bartz won’t be able to ID him.”
“Let’s see what we can learn from the sketch artist and security cameras. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
Sean was driving toward Bridget Weber’s house on the Upper East Side when Lucy’s cell phone rang; she was surprised to hear Noah Armstrong on the other end.
“Hello, Noah.”
“Lucy, there’s been an accident.”
Flashes of friends and family, bloody and dying, flew through her head. “Who?” Her voice cracked.
“Hans. He’s in critical condition at Prince William Hospital. I can’t talk on the phone, but I need you back at Quantico now.”
“What happened?”
“I’ll explain when you get here. Don’t discuss this with anyone except Sean. Let me talk to Rogan.”
Lucy handed the phone to Sean. He listened for a long minute. Lucy watched his face but couldn’t read his expression. “Got it,” Sean said, and hung up. He handed Lucy back her phone. “Noah wants me to put you on a plane ASAP.”
“Put me on a plane?”
“Commercial. He’s made a reservation for you; it leaves in an hour. He asked me and Patrick to stay here and follow through.”
“What happened to Hans?”
“He didn’t say-he was vague. He said, ‘Follow up on the assignment Hans gave you.’ My guess, it wasn’t an accident.”
First Tony, now Hans. “It’s all connected to what happened to Rosemary Weber.”
Sean maneuvered through New York traffic like a native and merged onto a freeway.
“It all connects here in New York,” Sean said. “I’m going to call Suzanne and find out where she is, fill her in on the news about Hans, and have her or her cop friend pull the files on Theissen.”
“Be careful,” Lucy said.
Sean took her hand. “You, too, princess.”
*
“What’s going on?” Suzanne demanded when she met Sean in front of the Webers’ narrow three-story town house on the Upper East Side. “You’re thirty minutes late, and you tell me to wait? Sunday is usually the only day off I get, and yet I was up at the butt crack of dawn to interview a suspect, then ordered to rush over here, only to be kept waiting by a friggin’ P.I.?”
Sean smiled and handed her coffee. “Black and sweet, right?”
She grabbed the coffee but didn’t return his smile. “Where’s Lucy?”
“Headed back to Quantico.”
“Why?”
“It has to stay between you and me. Can’t even tell your boyfriend.”
“DeLucca isn’t my boyfriend.”
Sean coughed a laugh. “I was speaking metaphorically, but good to know.”
She glared at him from under the brim of her Mets hat, all fire.
“Hans Vigo had an accident yesterday. He’s in critical condition. Lucy was called back in, and my guess is that it wasn’t really an accident.”
“Why are you still here?”
“Hans asked me to find Peter McMahon. That’s what I’m doing.”
“Back up-is this the Peter McMahon whose sister was murdered when he was a kid? The case Tony was so curious about?”
“Four people involved in his sister’s investigation are dead under mysterious circumstances.”
Her brow furrowed. “Four people? Who?”
Sean ticked them off on his fingers. “Weber, Bob Stokes, Dominic Theissen, and Tony Presidio.” He explained the suspicious circumstances of Stokes’s and Theissen’s deaths and how they might not have been accidents, or natural.
“McMahon has been completely off the grid for the last six years,” Sean said. “No death certificate, no Social Security number in use, nothing. FBI is going through their channels; I’m going through mine. I traced him to college at SU; then he seemed to just vanish.”
“There has to be something else.”
“Agent Presidio’s personal file on the McMahon investigation disappeared from his office the day he died. Something is going on, maybe it has nothing to do with Peter McMahon, but it’s not easy to go completely off the grid.”
“So you’re thinking he’s targeting cops who worked his sister’s case because why?”
“I don’t think anything at this point,” Sean said. “I’m just going to find him.”
“And you think Bridget Weber knows something she didn’t tell me?” Suzanne sounded skeptical.
“I think Rosemary Weber has a lot of files and information on the McMahon investigation that may shed light on these deaths.”
“So you don’t think her murder has anything to do with the Cinderella Strangler case?”
“We’re not going to know until the feds are done with their forensic investigation.” Sean walked up the steps to the front door. “Hopefully, there’ll be enough answers here to give us a clear direction.”
Bridget Weber was five years younger than her sister, but judging by Rosemary’s author photo on her book, they had looked very much alike-blond hair, blue eyes, and deep dimples.
“Thank you for agreeing to see us on such short notice,” Suzanne said.
Bridget tried to smile but didn’t quite make it. “Do you have information about Rosie’s murder?”
“We’re pursuing every possible lead,” Suzanne said. “We just have a few questions. Did your sister discuss her books or what she was working on with you?”
“Sometimes. But I travel a lot for work, and when she’s in the middle of a project she’s very focused, doesn’t talk to anyone but her research assistant, if that.”
Sean said, “Did you talk about her current project?”
“The Cinderella Strangler? A little-she was excited about it. She said it had all the hallmarks of a bestseller.” Bridget paused, then said, a bit sheepishly, “Rosie’s first book was a big hit. None of her other books did as well as Sex, Lies, and Family Secrets. She was always looking for what she called a big, juicy story, and she thought this new one fit.”
“Did she say why?” Sean asked.
“Not specifically, but anyone could see that the case was alluring. Underground sex parties, drugs, prostitution-the backdrop was more interesting than the crimes themselves.”