“Fine,” the mayor said. “So you can’t find this guy with all that technical mumbo-jumbo. Catch him the old-fashioned way. Legwork.” He stood up. “Irwin, do you need me anymore?”
“No, and I know you have a busy day ahead of you,” Diamond said. “Give me a few more minutes, and I’ll catch up.”
The mayor went through the motions of thanking us and left the room.
“Detectives,” Diamond said, “I don’t have to tell you that this could be a deathblow to the mayor’s reelection campaign.”
“Sir, I don’t know much about politics,” I said, “but Parker-Steele’s video is filled with damning details. I believe she killed Cynthia Pritchard.”
“Of course she did,” Diamond said.
“Then why doesn’t this hurt Muriel Sykes? First she says it’s a bogus confession. Then she flips it and says if Parker-Steele is a murderer, it’s the mayor’s fault that she got off. She’s talking out of both sides of her mouth.”
“You’re right, Detective,” Diamond said. “You don’t know much about politics. Rule number one: Whoever speaks out of both sides of their mouth the best wins the election.”
“With all due respect, Mr. Diamond,” Cates said, “unfortunately, I do know a little about politics, and as long as we’re sworn to secrecy, can we put it all on the table? Information is currency, and the more Detectives Jordan and MacDonald know, the better their chances of solving this.”
Diamond weighed the question in his head. “All right, Captain,” he finally said. He turned to Kylie and me. “Muriel Sykes makes one undisputable point. It was the mayor’s fault that Evelyn Parker-Steele went scot-free. Commissioner Harries wanted a thorough investigation, but Evelyn’s family convinced the mayor to stand behind the coroner’s ruling that it was an accident. He agreed, and the case went away.”
“Convinced?” I said.
“You don’t need to know the details,” Diamond said. “What’s important is that right now the mayor is in a deep hole. And the worst part about it is that he dug it himself.”
Chapter 10
You can never go wrong buddying up to the precinct desk sergeant. One call to Bob McGrath at the One Nine and there was a brand-new Ford Interceptor waiting for us outside the mansion. Keys in the ignition, no numbnuts driver.
I got behind the wheel and turned left onto East End Avenue.
“You think we can nail this guy in a week?” Kylie asked.
“Maybe,” I said. “If we work together as a team.”
Her head snapped around. “What is that supposed to mean? Are you still ragging on me because I didn’t show up the minute you wanted me? Look, I’m sorry I made us late, but give me a break, Zach, we’re still partners.”
“Did you just say you’re sorry you made us late?”
“You heard me. I am sorry, and I appreciate that you covered for me.”
I made a right turn onto 86th Street and pulled the car into a bus stop. I turned in my seat so I could look Kylie in the eyes.
“I don’t know if you’re lying to me,” I said, “or just holding back a big chunk of the truth, but you saying you’re sorry is the same as some guy bringing flowers home to his wife after he spent the afternoon banging his secretary. ‘Sorry I’m late, honey. All kinds of crazy shit happening at the office.’ Look, Kylie, I’m a detective, and I know half a story when I hear one. You’ve been late or off the grid three times in the last month, so either tell me what’s going on, or tell me that the person I trust my life to doesn’t trust me enough to tell me what the hell is going on in hers.”
To her credit, she didn’t waffle. “It’s Spence,” she said. “He really did fall in the shower this morning. He was high on pills.”
She paused to let it sink in. I didn’t change my expression or say a word.
“It’s been three months since…since the incident with The Chameleon,” she said. “The surgeon wrote him a scrip for one Percocet every six hours, but he’s popping them like Tic Tacs. Oh, he’s cagey—the bottle on his dresser goes down a few pills a day as prescribed. But he’s stockpiled them, and has them stashed all over the apartment. Last night, I found fifty of them wrapped in tinfoil inside a sock in his gym bag.”
“Where does he get them?” I asked.
“Dr. Feelgood or any one of those quacks on the Internet who writes scrips from Bolivia,” she said. “Anyway, after they stitched him up at the ER this morning, I confronted him with it. I told him if he weren’t my husband, I’d bust him.”