And damn that Carmen Reyes, too, disappearing at just the wrong moment.
16
THE DRIVE BACK to Melanie’s office was slow because of holiday traffic, but not slow enough to come to terms with the evidence she held in her hand. A glassine bag, stamped GOLPE in red ink, sealed inside a clear plastic evidence envelope. Unlike the empty glassines recovered from Whitney Seward’s bedroom, this one still held its stash of grainy white powder. On the outside of the evidence envelope, Ray-Ray Wong had neatly printed his initials, the date, and the place of discovery: “Miss Holbrooke’s School. Locker of Carmen Reyes.”
Why was Melanie so disappointed? So what if Carmen was the one who’d corrupted her friends, who’d provided the heroin that killed them? What did Melanie care? She hadn’t even known the girl. Too often in life, the ugly, cynical explanation was the right one. She should just grow up and get used to that.
Ray-Ray dropped Melanie in front of her building and headed off to the DEA lab to get the heroin tested. She ran for the door, the bitter wind cutting right through her coat. The sky was an ugly grayish white, and she felt exhausted, cold to the bone, depressed. This case was pretty much over, and she didn’t like the way it was turning out, but there wasn’t much she could do about it. Juan Carlos Peralta had been remanded to custody and was refusing to talk any further. They’d seized heroin from him and from Carmen’s locker. The only missing link-literally-was Carmen herself, who presumably would be found and arrested in short order. Juvie charges, but still enough to wreck her life and break her father’s heart. Melanie told herself she should just accept the evidence the way it was coming in. Yet something didn’t feel right.
There was a yellow Post-it stuck to her office door with a virtually illegible message scrawled on it. Melanie picked it off and squinted at it. Her best guess was: “Made arrest, 6th Floor, Dan.” Man, he had terrible handwriting. And, mierda, she was infatuated. Because learning that new fact about Dan made her feel all warm and gooey inside. His handwriting sucks, how cute! Barf. Melanie hung her coat on the rack, slapped herself lightly on both cheeks, and muttered, “Snap out of it,” under her breath. Only then did she go looking for him in the interview rooms on the sixth floor.
Dan and Bridget Mulqueen were debriefing a strange-looking kid Melanie didn’t recognize. Pale and pimply, with long brown dreadlocks, his face riddled with eyebrow and lip piercings, an angry line of Chinese characters tattooed down his left cheek. The second Melanie stuck her head in the room, Dan leaped to his feet and came outside to speak with her.
“Who’s that?” she asked. Dan pulled the door shut behind him and came to stand beside her-way too close to her, in fact. As if she didn’t already have enough trouble ignoring his looks, his height, the clean way he smelled. She took a step backward.
“Name’s Trevor Leonard,” Dan said. “We picked him up about an hour ago on a failure to appear. Kid had an outstanding warrant for wire fraud from some Internet hacking scam. Heard about it from Brianna Meyers’s mother.”
She nodded. “Oh, right, Trevor Leonard. The school psychologist at Holbrooke says he was Brianna’s boyfriend.”
“I’ll tell ya, he’s a fucking treasure trove of information about these girls.”
“So he’s talking?”
“Yup. I grabbed him on the warrant, and come to find out he had twenty tabs of ecstasy in his jacket pocket. With the drug charge piled on, he rolled in a heartbeat.”
“Great. I’ll sit in with you so we can lock him into a statement.”
“Yeah, sure, but one thing you should know first.” Dan moved even closer. He was leaning down, practically whispering in her ear. There was no call for it. Yes, they were standing right outside the interview room where Bridget held the prisoner. But the door was closed. Dan couldn’t reasonably think they would be overheard. Melanie took another step back, heart beating way too fast.
“What?”
“Bridget got Whitney Seward’s phone records already,” was all he said. “That wack job actually has good phone-company contacts, I’ll say that for her. Anyway, you’ll never guess who’s all over Whitney’s phones-cell and landline.”
“Who?” Melanie asked.
“Jay Esposito. That nightclub guy.”
“Right, the school psychologist mentioned him, too. Who is he?”
“Remember a few years back it was all over the papers? Wiseguy wannabe, owned a string of nightclubs, investigated for moving product?”
“Club drugs?”
“Nah, serious shit. Heroin, cocaine. I just talked to a guy I know on the squad that did the investigation. They were looking at Esposito for running a string of heroin mules. Moving Colombian product from Puerto Rico to New York.”
“But they never arrested him?”
“They were just about to go up on a wire on his phone when their main snitch got fished out of the East River. Minus his head, which they never found.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. Esposito doesn’t fuck around. Since then, as you can imagine, nobody’s been willing to flip on the guy. You never hear about him, unless he’s in ‘Page Six’ with some model.”
“And you say he shows up in Whitney’s phone records?”
“Yeah, big time. We got numerous calls, including-get this-a call placed last night at nine-fourteen from the Sewards’ home telephone to Esposito’s cell phone, meaning Whitney called Esposito during the incident.”
“Or someone else called Esposito from her telephone,” Melanie pointed out.
“Excellent point, Counselor. You’re very smart, you know that?” He gazed at her, grinning. Was he flirting with her?
“ Puerto Rico is an important transshipment point for Colombian narcotics, because it’s a domestic flight. No customs inspections,” she said hurriedly, blurting the first thing that popped into her head to quiet her fluttering heart. She was beginning to think she should’ve refused to work with Dan. Not that Bernadette had given her any option.
“Mmm-hmm.” He was still looking at her.
“You’re thinking maybe Esposito supplied the heroin that killed the girls?” Melanie asked.
“There’s another angle I’m just getting into with this kid, and it’s even beyond that. It’s gonna surprise you.”
BACK IN THE INTERVIEW ROOM, Bridget and Trevor Leonard sat next to each other on one side of the conference table, Bridget cradling her head on folded arms. She jerked up when Melanie and Dan walked in.
“Finally! I was getting tired of shooting the shit with Beavis here all by myself.”
“That’s not too secure a posture, Bridget,” Dan chided as he took a seat on the other side of the table.
“What? Kid’s a pussycat. Plus, he’s cuffed to the chair, right, Trev?”
Trevor didn’t say anything. Underneath his fearsome looks, he seemed vulnerable and young.
“How old are you, Trevor?” Melanie asked, sliding into the seat next to Dan. If Trevor was a juvenile, they shouldn’t be interviewing him without counsel and a parent present.