NYPD Red 2(78)

“Yes, sir,” Kylie said. “Vidmar was the doorman on duty the night Rachael O’Keefe’s daughter was murdered. He testified against her in court.”

He nodded. “It seems he’s not the solid citizen the prosecution made him out to be. He’s a thief. The tenants all leave house keys with the super in case of emergency. Vidmar would take one out of the storage box, enter an apartment, and help himself to something small—usually one or two pieces of jewelry, or if he found cash, he’d take some, but never enough to be noticed. And if it was, the victims didn’t report it. They either thought it went lost, or in one case, a tenant fired her cleaning lady, thinking it was an inside job.”

“Is there any evidence he was in O’Keefe’s apartment the night Kimi was murdered?” I asked.

“Catapano got a search warrant for Vidmar’s apartment in the Bronx and found several pieces of jewelry that he hadn’t had time to unload. And this.”

He put an eight-by-ten photo on the table. It was Mookie—the stuffed pink monkey, identical to the one taken from Kimi O’Keefe’s bedroom.

“How long before we can get DNA to see if it’s hers?” Kylie said.

“We don’t have to wait. Catapano told Vidmar he’d be smarter to confess now rather than let the evidence hang him. He started crying again and then spilled his guts. It was a botched robbery. The girl woke up and started screaming. He panicked, put a pillow over her face, and you know the rest—he didn’t mean to kill her; it just happened. He put the body in a trash bag, left her out for the morning pickup, and let the mom take the fall.”

I felt as if I’d just been hit by the Hiroshima of bombshells. The jury had gotten it right. Rachael had told the truth.

“So maybe now I won’t have to take the rap for turning a child killer loose,” the mayor said.

“Mr. Mayor, if we release the news that O’Keefe is innocent, she’s a dead woman,” the PC said. “The men who took her plan to torture a confession out of her, but the minute they find out that Vidmar did it, they’ll kill her on the spot.”

“And if you think people hated you when O’Keefe beat the rap,” Irwin said, “they’ll hate you even more when it turns out that she’s innocent, didn’t get the police protection she asked for, and was murdered on your watch.”

“Then where the hell are we on the Hazmat case?” the mayor said, looking right at me.

I couldn’t let Cates know that we’d gone over her head and put an unauthorized tail on two cops. And I certainly couldn’t tell the mayor that Muriel Sykes had spent an hour behind closed doors with our two prime suspects. I was groping for an answer when Diamond interrupted.

“The last time we spoke, you were getting a list of everyone who knew where O’Keefe was going when she was released. Did you question them all?”

“All but two from the DA’s office,” I said. “We plan to connect with them in the morning.”

“The goddamn election is in four days,” Spellman said. “I don’t have time for you to connect with them in the morning. Talk to them now. Find out where they live and drag them out of bed.” He turned to the commissioner. “Richard, we can’t crap around anymore. Find her.”

The PC is appointed by the mayor. If Spellman got voted out, Harries would get swept out along with him. He turned to Kylie and me. “Who from the DA’s office haven’t you talked to yet?”

“ADA Wilson and one of his assistants,” I said.

“Damn,” Harries said. “Mick Wilson is a pain in the ass, and the last person I want to wake up in the middle of the night.”

“So then, don’t wake him?” I said.

“Hell, no. Just make sure he’s last. Wake the assistant first.”





Chapter 73



I’d been sucker punched more than a few times in my career, but this one hit me the hardest. I never saw it coming. I was right there with the rest of the world, branding Rachael O’Keefe as the Worst Mother in America, and I wondered if my prejudice had any bearing on how hard I had been working to find her.

East End Avenue was dark, deserted, and eerily calming, and we drove without saying a word, both of us trying to process the news in our own way.

Kylie finally broke the silence. “That poor, poor woman. Her daughter was murdered. She had to be overwhelmed with guilt, and then when they accused her, nobody believed in her. Nobody. Including me.”

She turned slowly in her seat and rested a hand on my knee. She had my undivided attention. “Zach…,” she said.