MARY CLARK - Piece of My Heart

“You want me to fight a septuagenarian? Friend, I’m only forty-seven years old.”

The man immediately began to apologize, stumbling to explain that he could never guess a person’s age accurately, until he noticed the broad smile break out across Leo’s face.

“You got me, man. Good one.”

“I’m not actually here to box. I’m looking for a guy named Mason Rollins.”

Leo had gone first to the NYU campus, where Rollins worked in the janitorial department. A co-worker said that Rollins was a regular at this boxing gym and could probably be found here before his shift.

The man rose from the bench and did a quick visual scan. Two fighters practiced in the ring at the center of the space while a few men looked on, but most of the gym’s customers were working out with weights or punching bags. “There’s Mason. Past the ring, along that brick wall. You see that row of speed bags? The guy in the back corner. Bright blue trunks.”

Leo thanked the man for his help and headed toward Rollins. Rollins’s hands flew in high and fast circles as he bounced the speed bag. Right, right, left, left. Leo was only ten feet away and Rollins still hadn’t shifted his gaze from the bag. But as Leo was about to speak, Rollins came to a sudden halt, grabbing the bag with both hands to stop it.

“Pleased to meet you, Leo Farley.” Rollins’s dark hair was shaved nearly to his scalp, and he sported a short goatee that had not appeared in any of his booking photos. He was trim, but his loose-fitting Brooklyn Nets tank top exposed arms that reflected hours at the gym.

“You recognize me,” Leo said.

“When some convict accuses you of killing a man you never heard of, you tend to pay attention to the details. You’re the one who put Darren Gunther behind bars. If I had to guess, you might be the one person who’s certain I’m innocent.”

“Innocent on that particular day, at least.”

“Touché, Deputy Commissioner. I made some mistakes as a younger man, but I did not stab Lou Finney.”

“No, but Darren Gunther’s not just ‘some convict,’ is he? You were at Finn’s Bar that night, before the fight broke out. You were celebrating Gunther’s twenty-first birthday with him, because the two of you were friends. Close enough friends that he was the one who posted bail after your first arrest.”

Mason flashed a knowing smile, revealing a missing tooth on the right side of his mouth. “I was wondering when someone would figure it out.”

Leo had had all of the police reports on both Gunther and Rollins for weeks. But the connection between the two men couldn’t be found in the NYPD’s records. Realizing that they had located Summer Carver through the prison visitation records, Leo had instead done a search of both men’s corrections histories. Among the documents he received were the archived records from the jail when Mason Rollins was bailed out for his first arrest, an assault at the age of nineteen. The person who posted his $250 bail was Darren Gunther.

“How’d the two of you know each other?” Leo asked.

“Our mothers were housekeepers for the same service. They’d help each other out—switch shifts as needed, or one would cook meals for the both of us while the other worked. So Darren and I got pretty tight in the process. He got the big scholarship to prep school and Vassar. I didn’t, but we stayed in touch—until you arrested him, of course.”

“Was the knife yours?” Leo asked.

Rollins shook his head. “Used to be, though, until that day. It was my birthday gift to him. He’d always admired it.”

“You were talented with a knife,” Leo said. “You could throw one in the air and catch it by the blade between your fingers.”

Smile again. “You surely did your research.”

Rollins’s first assault arrest stemmed from an argument after he was performing his knife tricks at a party and another guest complained and asked him to stop.

“I’m surprised you’re being so forthcoming,” Leo said.

“I told Darren from the very beginning I wasn’t going to lie for him. That stint I did upstate? I know it’s a cliché, but it actually changed me. I got my high school equivalence degree, even a couple of college credits. Got off drugs. Gave myself up to a higher power. I’m no saint, but I steer clear of trouble.”

“But you knew Gunther was accusing you of a crime that he committed.”

“He read an article about new DNA testing. High-speed magician stuff, where the lab could get my DNA off this speed bag years from now.” Rollins gave the bag a quick jab for emphasis.

“It’s called touch DNA,” Leo said.

“When I gave him the knife for his birthday, he wanted me to show him my knife tricks, so he knew I’d been handling the blade between my fingers that night. He said he managed to wipe down the handle of the knife with his shirt in the chaos after that bar owner went down, but didn’t touch the blade because it would seem too obvious if it were clean. When he read that article, he got a lightbulb over that big brain of his, wondering if I might have left some DNA behind on the blade.”

“And that’s why he filed the petition for new DNA testing?” Leo asked.

A corner of Rollins’s mouth lifted. “Can you believe it? The whole thing was a Hail Mary pass. He figured that another person’s DNA on the blade might be enough to get his conviction thrown out. Turns out they found it at the top edge of the handle, so he must have missed a spot. He actually didn’t realize there’d be a sample of my DNA in a database for comparison. I’m not entirely sure I believe him, but he at least says he didn’t mean for my name to get dragged into it.”

“You make it sound like you’ve been speaking to him on a regular basis. Was this on the prison phones? I’m surprised he’d be so risky.”

“Darren’s much too smart to make that kind of mistake. He sent someone else to deliver his messages.”

Leo was fairly certain he knew who that person was. “Toby Carver?” he asked, holding up his phone to display a photograph of Summer’s half brother.

“You know your stuff, Farley.”

“The district attorney’s investigator tried to interview you. You declined. Why not defend yourself then?”

Rollins held his gaze for several seconds before speaking. “I didn’t feel the need to talk to that man, because he didn’t know the connection between me and Darren. You did, so the jig is up, as they say. I meant it when I said I don’t want to get on the wrong side of the law again. Declining an interview’s not a crime. Lying to a cop, on the other hand, might be, as I understand it.”

“My guess is Darren also promised to share his court settlement with you if you kept quiet.”

Mason said nothing.

“Do you remember the waitress who was working at the bar that night?” Leo scrolled on his phone to an old photo of Clarissa DeSanto that he had gotten from Samantha Finney. “This is Clarissa DeSanto. She saw the two of you together, didn’t she?”

“I think I’m done talking to you, Deputy Commissioner.”

“Then I guess I’ll add your name to the charge of conspiracy to commit murder.”

“Whoa, whoa—I told you, I was long gone by the time that man was killed.”

“I’m not talking about Lou Finney, Rollins. Clarissa DeSanto was killed three months ago. Toby Carver ran her car off the side of the road in a fatal rollover crash. But you already knew that, didn’t you? Because you helped him and Darren Gunther plan it, to make sure she wasn’t around to tell other people that the two of you were friends.”

Mason’s face contorted with fear. When he spoke again, his cool demeanor was replaced by genuine panic. “She’s… dead ? I swear, I had no idea. I just assumed she was getting paid off, too.”