Michele Martinez - The Finishing School

“I’d like to talk to the Crime Scene detectives.”

“Sure thing. Yo, Butch,” Leary called.

Butch Brennan from the Crime Scene team came over to them.

“Hey, Melanie.”

“Hey, Butch, what’s up?”

“Ms. Vargas here thinks based on the case she’s doing there’s a chance our boy was whacked,” Leary said. “You got anything points to that?”

Butch smiled. “Funny you should mention that. C’mon outside.”

Butch opened a nearly invisible door faced in the same concrete as the wall. “We dusted the doorknob. Pretty interesting in itself. Nothing. Wiped clean,” he said.

They stepped out into a narrow back alley that was covered in a pristine carpet of fresh snow. A horde of pigeons that had been eating from a Dumpster took off with a flapping of wings.

Butch pointed out several faint indentations in the snow in a small area cordoned off with blue police barricades.

“See here? We photographed three footprints around four o’clock this morning. Right, left, right, leading away from the door. Snow’s picked up since then, so they got kinda blurry, but they were real clear when we shot ’em.”

“Could you tell what kind of shoe made them?” Melanie asked.

“I’m gonna say a male. Looks like a sneaker. More specific than that, we need to consult our footprint guy.”

“When were they made?”

“The snow wasn’t crusted or nothing, so they looked pretty fresh. I’d say late last night. But this is the interesting part. Take a look at the left print here.”

Butch knelt down, took a little handheld broom from his pocket, and began dusting at the middle impression. “Don’t worry. We already photographed it and took samples and everything.”

As Butch carefully removed the top layer of fluffy new snow, a small patch of dark purple appeared.

“Blood,” Melanie said.

“Yup. I’m betting it was the victim’s. Lab’ll confirm that. We’re photographing the black floor inside with the infrared to get a better look at any footprints in the blood spatters. There should be some. He had to pick the blood up someplace, right?”

“So the shooter stepped in Esposito’s blood when he was leaving and tracked it outside into the alley?” Leary asked.

“That’s what I’m thinking,” Butch replied.

“He’s not as smart as he thinks he is,” Melanie said, nodding enthusiastically. “We’ll get him.”

DETECTIVE LEARY WAS a nice guy. When Melanie couldn’t get a cab in the snow, he left his partner in charge at Noir and drove her back to her office so she wouldn’t have to lug her suitcase on the subway. Melanie loved that about cops. They’d drive you anywhere, at the drop of a hat.

“So you got my little cousin on this case, I understand. Bridget Mulqueen,” Leary said, maneuvering his unmarked sedan expertly down the slick avenue at top speed.

“Oh, right, Bridget’s your cousin. I forgot.”

“How’s she doing?”

Melanie looked out at the falling snow. “You know. She’s doing okay.”

“Yeah, she’s green,” he said with a smile.

“She’s all right. She has the makings of a decent cop,” Melanie said, quoting Dan.

Leary glanced over at her quizzically, like he wondered if she was bullshitting him. “Well, just so you know, the job wasn’t exactly her lifelong dream.”

“No?”

“She was a phenomenal soccer player, Bridget. Did everything you could do with it. You Google her, she still comes up as the top scorer in her division. She wanted to go semipro.”

“So what happened?”

“Her old man was against it. My Uncle Jimmy’s an A-plus guy, but he’s a ballbreaker. I can say that, ’cause I love him to death. Larger than life, Jimmy Mulqueen. Definitely the type who needs somebody to follow in his footsteps. Aunt Beattie didn’t give him no boys. Four girls, he has. Bridget’s the youngest, and he wanted her on the job.”

“Oh. I see.”

“You know how it is with girls and their fathers sometimes.”

“Yes,” Melanie said. “I definitely know that.”

“Bridget’s crazy about her dad. So she came on when maybe it’s not the ideal life for her.”

“That’s a shame.”

They pulled up in front of Melanie’s office building. Leary looked at her with mild, trusting eyes. “Listen, you’d be doing me a big favor if you could watch out for her. She’s a good kid.”

For a second, Melanie wished that she didn’t want the one thing in life that Bridget so obviously wanted, too. But there was nothing she could do about it. With every day that passed, Melanie was more convinced that she and Dan O’Reilly were born for each other. Besides, didn’t she need Dan more than Bridget did? Here was Bridget, part of a cozy NYPD family, with this and that relative looking out for her. Bridget could get along without Dan. Melanie wasn’t so sure she could say the same for herself.

“I’ll do my best. Thanks for the ride,” Melanie said, feeling a sharp stab of guilt.

“Don’t mention it. I’ll call ya if we get anything interesting off this Williamsburg warehouse thing. And be careful, okay? Whoever got to Expo’s still out there.”

MELANIE PLOPPED DOWN at her desk with her coat still on and called home. Sandy told her Maya was fine. No fever, no vomiting, sleeping peacefully. So Melanie heaved a sigh of relief and dialed into her voice mail. She still hadn’t bothered to remove her coat, which was a lucky thing, because otherwise she would’ve just had to put it right back on again.

The message was only twenty minutes old.

“Mel, Stew Steinberg. This is the type of call you know I don’t make lightly, but a young Latina woman’s safety is at stake, so I’m considering cooperating a client. I’m sure that comes as a shock to you. Defendant’s name is Juan Carlos Peralta, a hardworking kid from the projects, wrongly accused. He says you were trying to pin those rich-bitch ODs on him. Let me emphasize, Juan Carlos knows nothing about the OD case. But he does have some information about a girl named Carmen Reyes, who got herself mixed up in some type of embezzlement scheme that may have led to her abduction. He thinks he can help you find her, if you’re willing to drop charges. Give a call so we can get over to the MCC and proffer him ASAP.”

Embezzlement? The more Melanie thought about that one, the more she scratched her head. But who was she to quibble at this point in her investigation? Carmen and Trevor were still missing. Every moment that passed left her feeling more hopeless and desperate about their fates. Jay Esposito, her most promising target, was lost to the silence of the grave. The circumstances of his death further convinced Melanie that somebody else was out there pulling the strings. In short, she was desperate for a fresh lead. Juan Carlos and embezzlement would have to do.

But it was a snowy Friday afternoon. Christmas was Tuesday, so nobody was around, and whoever was, wasn’t doing any work. After several messages the receptionist at Legal Aid finally called back to tell her Stewart had last been sighted heading to the chief judge’s Christmas party. Melanie paged Stewart five times to no avail, then decided to go out looking for him. She wandered around the near-deserted courthouse for a while and dropped in on a few Christmas parties that Stewart had been at but just left. Eventually she found him eating a late lunch at the mob diner. She had to wait for Stewart to finish his meal, walk over to the Metropolitan Correctional Center, wait for the CO on duty to decide to help them, and wait endlessly for the guards to bring Juan Carlos Peralta down to the claustrophobically tiny interview room. Hours had passed already. Finally Juan Carlos appeared on the other side of the wire-mesh screen, clad in a bright orange prison jumpsuit, looking none too happy.