David ed. - Face Off (2014) Anthology

“The question,” Lucas Davenport spat out, “is who’s setting her up?”

Lincoln agreed. That was the only question. There was no doubt in the minds of Lucas, Amelia, and Lincoln that Lily was innocent.

However much of a shit Jim Bob Verlaine had been, however guilty he was of sadistic murder—and however much of a tough number Lily Rothenburg was—there was no way she’d take him out like that.

The team was back in Lincoln’s town house—all of them except Lily, of course, who was still being detained.

And whose absence was glaringly obvious.

“So,” Lucas repeated. “Who’s behind it?”

“Somebody with a grudge?” Amelia offered.

“Could be,” Lucas said. “She’s made some enemies in her day. Or maybe some asshole wants to derail a case she’s running.”

“And what about Verlaine?” Amelia asked. “Did he kill those women? Or was he being set up, too? And what’s the reason behind that?”

Lincoln’s view, admittedly myopic at times, as to the questions why and who was generally best answered by how and what: that is, by the evidence. “Why waste fucking time speculating? Look at the facts .”

“You ever in a good mood, Lincoln?” Lucas asked.

A grunt suggested that the answer might be no.

But Lucas took his point. “What do we have to prove the suicide was faked?”

Looking over Amelia’s photos of the body, Mel Cooper said, “Powder burns and muzzle stamp’re consistent with a close-contact gunshot.”

Lucas regarded the pictures, too. “And the tissue, blood, and bone on the receiver of the piece confirm that. But it was a temple shot. That’s rare in self-inflicted wounds. Usually the poor bastard bites the muzzle.”

“Which means somebody could’ve pulled out the piece when Verlaine was turned away, come up behind or beside him, and shot. So, maybe he knew the shooter.”

Cooper said, “But there was gunshot residue on Verlaine’s hands.”

Firing any pistol, and most rifles, results in burnt gunpowder particles and gases contaminating the hand holding the weapon.

But Lucas muttered, “Fuck, that’s easy. He fired twice.”

“Yes!” Lincoln said enthusiastically. “Good. Verlaine lets the perp in. He—or she—stands beside him and blows his brains out. Then the perp puts the gun in Verlaine’s hand and pulls the trigger again. Bang . . . Verlaine’s fingerprints’re on the piece, and GSR’s on his hand. Perp collects the second shell and leaves the gun on the floor.”

“But where’s the other slug?” Cooper asked.

Lucas, clearly pissed his friend had been set up, snapped, “Christ, just look at the pictures of the scene! The whole goddamn studio’s like a gun-range bullet trap—a thousand hunks of metal. Half of his quote art looks like a monkey pounded on it with a hammer. Nobody’d spot a bullet ding.”

Amelia said, “Okay, that could work. But the big issue: what about Lily’s fingerprint on the shell casing fired from the murder weapon? How the hell did the perp finesse that?” She tossed her long red hair over a shoulder. Lincoln was amused to see Lucas following the sweep closely. He reflected: Just ’cause you’re a faithful husband doesn’t mean you are blind.

Lincoln said, “Internal Affairs is claiming that Lily picked the gun up at the scene where she shot Levon Pitt—rescuing his son. What was the name again?”

“The boy?” Mel Cooper asked, flipping through a file. “Andy.”

Lucas then snapped his fingers. “Hold on. Something’s wrong here. It’s Levon Pitt’s gun—and presumably it was loaded with Pitt’s ammo. Why would Lily reload the mag with her rounds? That makes no sense. I’m not saying she’d take somebody out like that, but if she did, she wouldn’t be stupid about it.”

Amelia said, “Somebody stole one of her cartridges and popped it in the mag.”

“Wore gloves.”

“Or knuckled it,” Lucas said, referring to loading a weapon by holding the bullets between your fingers, never letting the tips come in contact with the brass or slug.

Lucas nodded. “Our friend Markowitz ain’t real crazy about the boys and girls from Narcotics being involved. But it’s leaning that way to me.”

“Well, IA’s not going to take our word for it,” Cooper pointed out. “How do we prove somebody copped a spent shell from Lily?”

An idea occurred to Lincoln. “Call Ballistics. Have them test fire a round from the bottom of the mag of the gun at Verlaine’s suicide. I want three-D images of that shell compared with the one with Lily’s prints on it. And I fucking want them now.”

“Will do.”

Not that fast, but it wasn’t bad. A half hour later the images were on the big monitor in front of them.

Lincoln glanced toward Lucas then Amelia. “You two are the shoot-em-up mavens. What do you think?”

It took no more than a fast glance. They nodded at each other. Lucas said, “The shell with Lily’s prints was machined to fit the receiver of Pitt’s gun. The real perp got one of her cartridges and altered it.”

“Yep,” Amelia agreed. “So whoever did it knows weapons and metalwork. It’s real high quality, close tolerances.”

“Okay, that proves she was set up. But it doesn’t get us any closer to who’s setting Lily up,” Cooper said.

Breaking a lengthy silence, Lucas said, “Maybe it does. Amelia, you know somebody in the NYPD evidence room?”

“Know somebody?” she asked, laughing. “It’s my home away from home.”

STAN MARKOWITZ STOOD AT THE podium beside the police commissioner, along with some minion from the mayor’s office and a Public Affairs officer or two. They were in the Press Room in One Police Plaza.

Microphones and cameras and cell phones in video mode bristled like RPGs and machine guns, aimed the officials’ way—though Markowitz, it seemed, was the preferred prey in the crosshairs, to judge from the tight shots.

“I don’t think your boss’s having a good day,” Lincoln said to Amelia. They sat beside each other, watching on the big-screen TV in the corner of his parlor.

Lucas was elsewhere, preparing.

“Doesn’t look it. And what do you think?” she mused. “Half the city’s watching?”

“Half the country, ” Lincoln countered. “No good serial killers in the news lately. All the sharks want a piece of this one.”

Every media outlet except CSPAN and Telemundo, it seemed, was represented.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Markowitz began reasonably, though with a tone that suggested he actually viewed them as sharks.

He was drowned out by their shouted questions.

“What was the motive for the torture?”

“Is it significant that the victims were minorities?”

“Is there a connection between this case and the Bekker case a few years ago, involving Lucas Davenport?”

“Could you fill us in about Verlaine’s sex life?”

Frenzy.

Markowitz had obviously done this before and he began speaking very softly—an old trick. Suddenly the sharks realized that they weren’t going to hear anything if they kept yammering away and they spontaneously, to a fish, fell silent.

The COD gave it a beat and then continued. “As you are probably aware, a thorough examination and analysis of evidence and behavioral profiling led investigators to believe that a resident of Manhattan, James Robert Verlaine, was the perpetrator in the spate of recent killings of women in the city. Mr. Verlaine appeared to take his own life as a result of said investigation. And evidence supported that supposition.”

Lincoln muttered, “Ah, sooo pleased to see that they still teach courses at the academy in using ten words when one will do.”