‘What kind of trauma would bring on the bleeding and the cramps?’
‘Oh, something that would cost her peace of mind and sleep. Bed rest was important. It isn’t unusual for some women with her medical profile to spend the entire pregnancy in bed.’
‘Give me the reasons why she might want to get rid of the baby,’ said Mallory. ‘I know she wasn’t a hardship case. I’ve seen her bank account.’
‘Maybe there was some disclosure about the baby’s father or his past, something that made her revolt at the idea of bearing his child. She was just entering the second trimester of the pregnancy. I have no idea when she told the father about it. He may have recently disclosed some genetic problem.’
‘But you would have done tests for that, right?’
‘She wasn’t a good candidate for amniocentesis. It was a very delicate pregnancy. I’d need a pretty good reason to put a needle into the womb to extract the necessary fluid. But Amanda never mentioned genetic problems, or any other problems. She was a very happy woman – before she lost the baby.’
‘Can you think of any other possibilities?’
‘Women will abort in cases of rape. Of course, that wouldn’t apply here, but it’s the fact that the man is so repugnant to them that makes them abort the issue of a rapist. The emotional trauma could have been caused by any number of things, but it would have to be something horrible to make her abort her child.’
The doctor’s face was set in real grief.
‘I liked Amanda very much.’ His eyes strayed back to the autopsy photos. He reached out and pushed them off the edge of his desk. ‘The bank account you mentioned – that was the down payment for a house. She wanted a house with a yard for the child to play in.’
At the end of the day, in Coffey’s office, which was still called Markowitz’s office, Riker was saying, ‘And the perp gets Mallory’s good-housekeeping commendation.’
Coffey turned to Mallory. ‘Did Forensics turn up anything?’
‘Heller’s team found a cap gun in the building trash bin. He thinks it’s tied to Bosch’s apartment.’
‘He got prints off it?’
‘No,’ said Mallory. ‘That’s why he thinks it’s tied. The toy gun was wiped clean. It’s a replica of an old six-shooter.’
‘I didn’t know they still made cap guns like that.’
‘Only a few companies do,’ said Riker, looking down at his notebook. ‘But that won’t help. This one was manufactured thirty years ago. It might have belonged to the perp when he was a kid.’
‘You think he tried to scare her with it?’
‘Could be,’ said Riker. ‘You gotta wonder about a grown man who keeps his toys.’
A baseball with a Mickey Mantle autograph sat on the desk between them. Coffey smiled with no trace of ruffling, no rising to the bait. Riker shrugged.
‘What have we got on motive – anything?’
‘She had something on him and threatened him,’ said Mallory. ‘He panicked and killed her.’
‘Where is this coming from, Mallory?’
‘She was a researcher and a fact-checker. He was the father of her child – ’
‘You don’t know that.’ Or did she?
‘If he was the father of her child, it would make sense for her to check him out,’ said Mallory. ‘So she must have turned up something. It fits. No holes in it.’
‘But it’s a lot of supposition, isn’t it? Unless you were holding out on me. You wouldn’t do that, would you?’
Of course she would. He looked to Riker, and gave the man credit for not rolling his eyes.
‘No, I’m not,’ she said.
But Coffey decided she was seconds too late in saying it.
‘So you made an ID on the corpse. Good job, Mallory. But the Coventry Arms address is flimsy. I can’t interrogate these people based on what you’ve got – not without getting harassment complaints from the governor’s personal guest list. We’ve got zip for physical evidence. If the park is the crime site, the lack of an alibi for the six minutes it takes to do a murder won’t hold up in court. We’ve got a twenty-four-hour period where he could have gone into Bosch’s apartment. He didn’t even need to do the clean-up in one block of time. So we question every male in the building, and where does it get us? I can’t do that just because there’s a card missing from a file. We don’t know that Bosch didn’t toss out the address card herself. Maybe she dropped Hyde as a client.’
‘She didn’t toss the card. There are also cards in the hard copy file for inactive clients. This woman never tossed anything.’
Except a half-created baby.
‘It’s not enough to bring anybody in.’
‘I’m not asking you to bring anybody in. You could move me into the building,’ said Mallory. ‘One of those apartments has to be vacant. Somebody’s out of town, somebody’s relocated.’
‘So you think you can move into a sublet or a vacancy without alerting the suspect? We’re still getting calls from people who think you’re dead because they saw your face on TV.’
‘I know he’s tied to that building. If I can’t flush him out, I’ll never get him.’
‘You can’t catch them all, Mallory.’
‘The killer is in a circle that overlaps with Bosch and Hyde, and there are notes on a social relationship with Hyde. This woman might have introduced them, or maybe Bosch and the killer met while she was visiting Hyde. I know he’s tied to that address.’
‘You’re sure that Hyde doesn’t figure in this?’
‘I can place her in Australia on the day of the killing. No way she could get back in time. She’s over sixty and she won’t fit the height requirement.’
‘But it’s her name on the missing card. Hired talent maybe? The MO won’t fit a pro hit, but all hit men start out as amateurs.’
‘It won’t fit at all. Amanda Bosch had a personal relationship with her killer. She went to the park that morning to meet the perp. The murder wasn’t premeditated – no weapon was brought to the crime scene. He used a rock and his hands.’
‘Why don’t we invite Miss Hyde in for questioning? We could do the interview as a request for assistance.’
‘No. I don’t want to alert anybody to the death of Amanda Bosch. The rest of her clients are in midtown and the Village area. Her only connection on the Upper West Side was that building. It was only the address the perp wanted to hide.’
‘Mallory, you’ve got nothing solid. You don’t know that he lives in the Coventry Arms.’
‘I know where he lives because I know him. He spent a lot of time with the body, working her hands over, making pulp out of them. He took his time. After he got over the initial panic, he was comfortable in that place. It was close to home.’
Coffey slid a folder across the desk. It had Heller’s initials on it.
‘Heller’s backing you up on the park as the original crime scene. How’d you talk him into going back? They found the blood splatters on the underside of kicked over rocks by the water. He was in here half an hour ago. Says you authorized the overtime.’
‘That also backs up the Coventry Arms as the perp’s residence. He took the card to keep us from tracking her back to that address. Get me in there.’
‘Get me something solid, then we’ll talk about a surveillance nest.’
‘If you won’t do anything else to help me, at least don’t release the name of the victim. If I’m going to flush him out, I need that edge.’
‘You got my word. Nobody gets the name.’
‘Yeah, right. Thanks,’ she said, and the words for nothing remained unspoken and hanging in the air for minutes after she left the room.