“Plus we rescued the baby-killing bitch,” Jojo said.
“Really?” Kylie said. “That’s not the way I saw it through the window.”
Joe Salvi looked at her incredulously. “What? You looked through a wire-mesh window that has a hundred years of crap on it, and you think you’re going to be a believable eyewitness? My lawyer will have a field day with that.”
“I don’t think the DA will be needing my testimony, Mr. Salvi,” Kylie said. “There’s a much better eyewitness who was in the room with you the entire time.”
“Who? Him?” he said, gesturing at Dave. “A disgraced cop turned psychokiller? Or how about her? I’m sure she’ll make a fine witness after being chained up and tortured for the last three days.”
Salvi laughed. Jojo joined in.
“No, Mr. Salvi,” Kylie said. “I think we’ve got an unimpeachable witness that will convince any jury what went down here no matter what your lawyers say or do.”
“And where is this so-called witness?” Salvi said.
“It’s right here,” Kylie said, resting her hand on the video camera and pointing at the blinking red light. “And it’s still rolling.”
Chapter 82
Dave Casey was waiting for us in the interrogation room. For a cop who murdered a black drug lord and a Chinese gangbanger and was about to spend the rest of his life locked up among their homeboys and péngyous, he looked remarkably at peace.
“Thanks for coming,” he said as soon as Kylie and I walked in. “Did you watch the videotape?”
“Not yet,” I said. “We came straight here. Are you sure you don’t want a lawyer or a union rep?”
“You’ve already read me my rights. No thanks. The only ones I want to talk to are you.”
“Then it’s just the three of us,” I said, sitting across the table from him. Kylie stood.
“Right. The three of us, plus how many behind the two-way?” he asked, pointing at the large mirror set inside the far wall.
“Seven and counting. Dave, you know how big this is. You’re going to pack a room. Now, should we ask questions, or would you rather just talk?”
“Oh, I’m ready to talk, but first I have a question of my own.”
“Go ahead.”
“That last phone call you made to me. You said that the doorman confessed to murdering Kimi O’Keefe. Was that bullshit?”
“No. It was the real deal,” I said. “We knew you were about to kill Rachael, and we wanted to head you off.”
“Thanks. I couldn’t live with myself if we had…”
He paused, groping for a better phrase than murdered her in cold blood.
“If we had…followed through.”
“But you were okay killing the other four,” Kylie said.
“The other five,” Casey said. “Twelve years ago, back when we were still in high school, Gideon and I killed Joe Salvi’s youngest son, Enzo. He was a vicious, sadistic little punk who terrorized the neighborhood, and we knew it was only going to get worse. Then it did—he raped my sister, Meredith, and Gideon convinced me it was up to the two of us. I’m not blaming Gideon. I was with him all the way.”
Just when I thought I’d seen my last curveball, Dave Casey smoked one right past me. I looked up at Kylie. Her mouth was open, but nothing was coming out.
“From the look on your faces, I’m guessing Salvi didn’t explain why he and his crew were there,” Dave said. “He wouldn’t. It’s family business. He’s been looking for whoever killed Enzo all these years, and he just stumbled on the truth a few days ago. Totally blindsided us.”
“That explains why a guy as high up the food chain as Salvi didn’t send in a hit team,” I said.
“It’s all on the tape,” Casey said.
“That’s the one thing that doesn’t compute,” Kylie said. “Guys like Salvi wrap themselves in secrecy. If there’s a camera in the room, they smash it. Did he not know the tape was rolling?”
“Salvi’s the one who told Jojo to turn it on. All he wanted was to record me and Gideon confessing to Enzo’s murder and bring it home to his wife. I doubt if he planned to pull the trigger on tape, but that’s the funny thing about video cameras—you get distracted, you forget it’s on.”
“What distracted him?” I said.
Dave cracked a smile. “Just watch the movie. I don’t want to ruin the ending for you. By the way, you probably want to send a copy up to the One Oh Six in Howard Beach. They’ve got a twelve-year-old cold case I’m sure they’ll be happy to close.”