“If we can figure out where the other three victims went missing from, we might find a witness who can give us a better description of the car or the perps,” I said. “We’re going to start with the second victim, Sebastian Catt. He lived right around here—Eighty-Fourth and York.”
“What’s his story?” Cates asked.
“We don’t have anything new on him yet,” I said. “Just what’s in Donovan and Boyle’s pathetic little file.”
“I’ll be honest with you,” Cates said. “I’m so caught up in all the political bullshit that I haven’t had time to read any of the files—as skinny as they might be.”
Kylie looked surprised. “Political bullshit?” she said. “First I’ve heard about it. Thank you for sparing us, Captain.”
Cates cracked a smile. “And thank you for the laugh, Detective. With the mayor and the PC breathing down my neck, it very well may be my last. Tell me what you have on Sebastian Catt.”
“He was a ‘fashion photographer,’” Kylie said, using air quotes.
Cates knows cop-speak when she hears it, and she shook her head in disgust. “And who did he like to photograph? Little boys? Little girls?”
“Young women,” Kylie said. “He’d find them on Craigslist, offer them a modeling career, then get them jobs doing webcam shows or modeling sleazy lingerie at private parties. Plus he was a sex addict. He’d get these kids—some of them underage—stoned, naked, and in the sack. He’d live with one or two, then rotate them out to make room for fresh meat.”
“Hard to believe somebody would want to kill him,” Cates said.
“He murdered one of his models first,” I said. “Her name was Savannah Lee. She was nineteen, he was forty-nine, but this girl was different. He fell in love with her. It lasted maybe two months, then one night Savannah was found stabbed to death a few blocks from Catt’s place. Her knapsack was missing, and it looked like a robbery gone bad, but the cops didn’t buy it. They suspected Catt, but there was nothing to connect him.”
“Then a witness showed up—Hattie LaFleur,” Kylie said. “She and her husband lived in the apartment next door to Catt. She was in her early seventies—managed the Daffodil Grill on York Avenue. She was a feisty old broad—everyone in the neighborhood loved her.”
“You’re talking about her in the past tense,” Cates said.
“She was Catt’s second victim,” Kylie said. “Hattie would buy Savannah lunch at the restaurant a couple of times a week. She finally convinced the girl to dump Catt and get on with her life. The night Savannah was murdered, Hattie was out walking her dog. It was one in the morning, which was smack in the middle of the time-of-death window, and she swore to the cops that she saw Catt sneaking back into the building, all disheveled, and carrying Savannah’s knapsack. He was arrested, made bail, then a week before the trial, Hattie was out doing her regular one a.m. dog walk, and she was knifed.”
“Another so-called robbery gone bad,” Cates said.
“Everyone knew who killed her,” Kylie said. “Especially since Hattie’s dog was never found. I mean, as long as you’re getting rid of the woman who can put you away for murder, why not get rid of the annoying little dog who lives next door? But there was no hard evidence, and he got away with murder. Twice.”
“And we know that for a fact,” I said, “because Catt confessed to both murders on the video that got posted. He also admitted breaking the dog’s neck and tossing it in the East River.”
“Sebastian’s body was dumped next to the International Center for Photography on West Forty-Third Street,” Kylie said, “but we have no idea when he was kidnapped, or even where he was taken from. That’s because he’s the kind of guy that nobody missed when he disappeared. So we’re going to see if we can nail something down. We’re starting with Catt’s next-door neighbor—Hattie’s husband, Horton LaFleur.”
Chapter 31
“I have to make a quick pit stop,” Kylie said when we left Cates’s office. “Get the car and meet me outside.”
“It must be nice to have your own car and driver,” I said, never missing an opportunity to do a little ballbusting. “Just like Police Commissioner Harries.”
“Not really,” she said. “I met the PC’s driver, and he knows how to keep his mouth shut.”
She headed for the ladies’ room, and I was walking down the front steps of the precinct house when it happened.