Dead of Winter (CSI: NY) Page 14

  “And take a couple of uniforms with us?” he asked.

  Stella nodded and reached into her pocket for the small plastic bottle of tablets Sheldon Hawkes had given her less than an hour ago.

  “Might make you more tired,” Hawkes had said. “But it’ll numb you down.”

  She opened the bottle.

  The name of the young man who had confessed to the murder of Charles Lutnikov was Jordan Breeze, who lived on the third floor of the Belvedere Towers in a studio apartment. Breeze, a Drexel University graduate, was a computer programmer for an Indian company on 55th Street. His job was to create software programs to help track and map the universe.

  Mac looked up from the folder in his hands into the eyes of Jordan Breeze and then back at the folder. Breeze had never been in trouble with the police, didn’t belong to any radical groups. After questioning the neighbors, Mac had determined that he was a quiet tenant who always had a “good morning” for others. However, he had been seen less and less over the past few months. A number of other tenants had seen him at the Starbucks two blocks away working on his computer and a Grande Latte, but not for a while. Mac turned on the tape recorder.

  “You’re sure you don’t want a lawyer?” Mac asked.

  “Certain,” said Breeze.

  “Why did you kill him?” asked Mac.

  “He called me a queer,” said Breeze. “Not just once. Many times. I shuddered when I left my apartment in the morning or went back in the evening, afraid I’d run into him. I see the question in your eyes.”

  “What question?” asked Mac.

  “Am I gay,” said Breeze. “I’m not, but some of my friends are, and I’m not going to suffer homophobic fools. I took it for almost a year.”

  “And then,” said Mac. “You killed him. How?”

  “With a gun,” said Breeze. “He was on the elevator. I could have avoided him if I had chosen to go down the stairs, but he would have seen me.”

  “You had the gun with you?” asked Mac.

  “I did.”

  “You planned to kill him the next time he started in on you?”

  “Yes,” said Breeze. “I got in the elevator. The doors closed. He started…”

  “He called me a skinny-ass fag,” said Breeze. “The gun was in the outer pocket of my computer case. There is some shit I will not eat.”

  Mac nodded, looked at the file folder again and then up at Jordan Breeze.

  “Where did you get the gun?” he asked.

  “It was my father’s,” said Breeze. “He died a few years ago, cancer.”

  “What kind of gun?”

  “A .22 millimeter.”

  “What were you doing on the elevator to the upper floors?”

  “I followed Lutnikov when he got off and changed elevators,” said Breeze. “He seemed surprised and amused.”

  “You got on the elevator because you planned to kill him,” said Mac.

  “Yes.”

  “What did you do with the gun after you killed Charles Lutnikov?”

  “Got off the elevator and sent it up. Then I trudged happily through the snow to the East River and threw it in,” said Breeze. “It went through a thin layer of ice. I threw the leather gloves I was wearing into the river too. I’m afraid you have me on charges of murder and polluting the river.”

  “How many times did you shoot Lutnikov?”

  “Twice,” said Breeze. “Once when he was standing and again when he fell.”

  “The doorman doesn’t remember you going out,” Mac said.

  “I waited till the afternoon and lots of people were going in and out.”

  “How well do you know Louisa Cormier?” asked Mac.

  “Never met her,” he said. “Don’t even know if I’ve even seen her in the building. I know she’s in the penthouse. I haven’t been in the building that long.”

  “Do you mind if we look at your apartment? We can get a warrant.”

  “Please,” said Breeze, “by all means examine my apartment and check my storage locker in the basement.”

  There was a calm smile on Breeze’s face, close to the contented smile of cult members who are certain they know the truth about life and have reduced its mystery to a simple loyalty.

  Mac turned off the tape recorder, rose, and went to the door. As he opened it, Breeze stood on shaking legs.

  When Jordan Breeze had been taken away, Aiden entered the interrogation room where Mac sat tapping the thin folder on the table.

  “You don’t think he did it?” she said.

  “I’ll look into it. If he didn’t do it, someone gave him a lot of information on the killing,” said Mac. “And we keep on the with the investigation of Louisa Cormier.”

  “You could be wrong,” she said.

  “I could be,” Mac agreed.

  12

  STEVIE COULDN’T GET THE FIRST CAR he tried to start. It had been almost fifty years since he had boosted a car. Sometimes you do forget how to ride a bicycle.

  The car was a green Ford Escort parked half a block from where he had left the two men from the bakery, one doubled over in pain, the other trying to stop the bleeding from his nose. He had been sure they were hurt too badly to try to follow him. He had considered killing them both, but that would leave two bodies. Better to let them crawl away.

  The problem was that Stevie also had to almost crawl away. He was losing blood and trying to think of where he could go.

  One of the back doors of the Escort had been open, the lock broken. Should have been easy. But Stevie had no screw driver, no knife. Nothing he could use to steal a car.

  He had gotten out of the car, looked back at the doorway where he had left the two men. He half hoped they had recovered enough to come after him instead of crawling away. Stevie had taken the gun from the one he had hit first. He wiped his fingerprints from the weapon and threw it over a brick wall a few feet away. He knew how to use his hands. He knew he had more trouble using his mind.

  The second car he tried, a 1992 white Oldsmobile Cutlass Calais, almost renewed his faith in God. The window pushed down with pressure until he was able, just barely, to reach back and open the door. He slid into the driver’s seat and tried to figure out what to do.

  He opened the glove compartment searching for a tool he could use. Nothing, but there was a dark leather coin holder. He opened it. A key, a plastic Oldsmobile key.

  The car turned over almost immediately and Stevie was on his way. To where? The Jockey. He wasn’t sure he could trust Jake Laudano. What they had was more like an occasional business pairing than a friendship, the slow powerful big guy and the nervous little man. Neither man was quick of wit or ambitious.

  Not much choice, Stevie thought. Either the Jockey or a hospital, if I can even make it to the Jockey’s.

  No, there was no “if” he decided as he drove. He would make it.

  The next forty minutes were lost. When he woke up, the dull sunlight was coming through a window and he was lying on a lumpy sofa too small for him.

  He sat up slowly. His leg was bandaged. The throbbing was tolerable. Determination was strong. He was in a small studio apartment, sofa against one wall, a Murphy bed across the room tilted back up into the wall.

  The door to the apartment suddenly opened. Stevie tried to get to his feet, but his leg sat him down again.

  The Jockey came in with a paper bag in one hand.

  “Brought you some coffee,” he said. “And a couple doughnuts.”

  “Thanks,” said Stevie, looking inside the bag Jake handed him and taking out the coffee.

  He felt queasy. The coffee and doughnuts might help. He didn’t know, didn’t care. He was hungry. He picked up a doughnut and laughed.

  “What’s funny?” asked Jake.

  “Yesterday was my birthday,” said Stevie.

  “No shit,” said the Jockey. “Happy birthday.”

  Anders Kindem, Associate Professor of Linguistics at Columbia University, retained only a trace of a Norwegi
an accent.

  Mac had read about him in a New York Times article. Kindem had, supposedly, definitively confirmed that whoever William Shakespeare was, he was certainly not Christopher Marlowe, Sir Walter Raleigh, or John Grisham.

  Kindem, blonde straight hair, slightly gawky, with a constant smile, wasn’t yet forty. He was addicted to coffee, which he drank from an oversized white mug covered with the word “words” in various colors. A tepid cup of hazelnut, which he had brewed from the tall green jar of whole beans he kept next to the grinder and coffeemaker in his office, stood next to one of four computer screens.

  Kindem had two of the computers on a desk. Two others were on another desk facing the first two computers. The professor sat on a swivel chair between the four computers.

  Mac sat watching him swivel, turn, move from computer to computer, looking more like a musician at an elaborate keyboard than a scientist.

  Further detracting from Kindem’s image as a scientist were his new-looking jeans and a green sweat shirt with rolled up sleeves. Across the front of the sweat shirt in white letters were the words YOU JUST HAVE TO KNOW WHERE TO LOOK.

  Music had been playing when Mac had entered Kindem’s lab, carrying a briefcase containing the disks of Louisa Cormier’s novels.

  Kindem had turned down the volume and said, “Detective Taylor, I deduce.”

  Mac shook his hand.

  “Music bother you? Helps me move, think,” said Kindem.

  “Bach,” said Mac. “Synthesizer.”

  “Switched-On Bach,” Kindem confirmed.

  Mac looked around the room. The computer setup used half the room. The other half contained a desk with still another computer on it and three chairs facing the computer screen. Framed degrees and awards hung on the walls.

  Kindem followed the detective’s eyes and said, “I hold small seminars, discussions really, with the graduate students I advise.”

  He nodded at the three chairs.

  “Very small seminars. And the adornments on the wall? What can I say? I’m ambitious and possess a small streak of academic vanity. The disks?”

  Mac found a spot at the end of one of the desks holding two computers. He opened his briefcase, took out the disks, each in a marked sleeve, and handed them to Kindem.

  “You’ll want to read them,” Mac said. “You can give me a call when you know something.”

  Mac handed Kindem a card. Kindem had placed the disks between two of the computers. “Don’t have to read them,” Kindem said. “Don’t want to read them, certainly not on a computer screen. I spend enough time reading things on screens. When I read a book, I want it in my hands and on a page.”

  Mac agreed, but said nothing.

  Kindem was smiling.

  “I can tell you some things quickly,” he said. “If your questions are simple. If you want a full analysis, give me a day. I’ll have one of my grad students prepare and print out or E-mail you a report.”

  “Sounds fine,” said Mac.

  “Okay,” said Kindem loading each disk into a tower between two computers.

  Each of the six disks went in with a whir and a click.

  “So,” he said. “What am I looking for?”

  “I want to know if the same person wrote all these books,” said Mac.

  “And?” asked Kindem.

  “Whatever else you can tell me about the author,” said Mac.

  Kindem went to work displaying his keyboard virtuosity, turning up the volume of the CD he was playing, looking even more like a musician playing along with the music.

  “Words, easy,” said Kindem as he punched instructions moving from one computer to the next. “But don’t tell my department chair. He thinks its hard. He pretends to understand it. I never call him on his encyclopedic misinformation. Words, easy. Music is harder. Give me two pieces of music and I can program them, feed them into the computer, and tell you if the same person wrote them. Did you know Mozart stole from Bach?”

  “No,” said Mac.

  “Because he didn’t,” said Kindem. “I proved it for a supposed scholar who had worked the academic scam for a full professorship in Leipzig.”

  He went on for about ten minutes, talking constantly, drinking coffee, and then turned from one computer to another.

  “Exclamation marks,” he said. “Good place to start. I don’t like them, don’t use them in my articles. Almost no exclamation marks in scientific and academic writing. Shows a lack of confidence in one’s words. Same is true of fiction. Author is afraid to let the words carry the impact so they want to give those words a boost. Punctuation, vocabulary, word repetition, how often adverbs, adjectives are used. Like fingerprints.”

  Mac nodded.

  “First three books,” said Kindem. “Overloaded with exclamation marks. Over two hundred and fifty of them in each book. Then, in every book after that, the exclamation marks disappear. The author has seen the light or…”

  “We have a different author,” said Mac.

  “You’ve got it,” said Kindem. “But there’s a lot more. In the first three books, the word ‘said’ appears on an average of thirty times per book. I’ll check, but the writer seems to be avoiding the word ‘said,’ almost certainly looking for other ways to ascribe dialogue. So, instead of ‘she said,’ the author writes, ‘she exclaimed’ or ‘she gasped.’ The later books average two hundred eighty-six uses of the word ‘said.’ Growing confidence? Not that extreme, not that soon. You want more?”

  Mac nodded.

  “Far more compound and longer sentences in the first three books,” said Kindem, looking at the screen. “Casual reader might not be consciously aware of these things, but subconsciously…you’d have to go to someone in the Pysch Department.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Everything else,” said Kindem. “Vocabulary. For example, the word ‘reciprocated’ appears on average eleven times in each of the first three books. It appears in none of the others.”

  “Couldn’t the change after the first three books be a decision to change style or a honing of the author’s skills?”

  “Not that big a change,” said Kindem. “And I think I’ll turn up more if you give me another few hours.”

  “The formula in all the books is pretty much the same,” said Mac. “Woman is a widow or not yet married though she’s in her mid thirties. She has or is responsible for a child who turns out to be in danger from a vengeful relative, the mafia, a serial killer. Police don’t help much. Woman has to protect herself and the child. And somewhere in the last thirty pages, the woman confronts the bad guy or guys and prevails with a new man in her life who she’s met along the way.”

  “Which means that whoever wrote those books followed the formula,” said Kindem. “Not that it was the same person.”

  Mac was sure now. Louisa Cormier had written the first three books. Charles Lutnikov had written the rest.

  But why would she shoot him, Mac thought. An argument? Over what? Money?

  “You want printouts?” asked Kindem.

  “E-mail,” said Mac. “Address is on my card.”

  “Are you going to need me to testify at a trial?”

  “Possibly,” said Mac.

  “Good,” said Kindem. “I’ve always wanted to do that. Now back to the works of the now-exposed Louisa Cormier.”

  Stella sat in the car, drowsy and aching, while Danny drove. For the eighth time, Stella went over the Alberta Spanio file, which was in her lap.

  She looked at the crime-scene photographs — body, bed, walls, side table. She looked at the bathroom photos — toilet, floor, tub, open window over the tub.

  Something tickled at her brain. Something wrong. It felt like trying to remember the name of an actor or writer or the girl who sat next to you in a calculus class in high school. You should know, were sure it was inside you. You could go through the alphabet ten, fifteen times and not come up with the name and then, suddenly, it would be there.

  She turned to the testim
ony of the two men who had been guarding Alberta Spanio, Taxx and the dead Collier.

  Then as she continued to read, it struck her. She went back to the photographs of the bathroom, her photographs.

  Collier had told Flack that he had stood in the tub to check and look out the window. If the killer came through the window, he or she had to have pushed the pile of snow blocking the window into the tub. There should have been some melted snow in the tub when Collier stepped in it. But there was no sign of moisture in the tub in Stella’s photographs and no footprints from Collier’s shoes, even though the bottoms of his shoes should have been wet from standing in the melted snow.

  Why, she thought, had Collier lied?

  Sheldon Hawkes sat at the desk next to Mac, looking at the videotape on the monitor in front of him.

  “Once more,” said Hawkes, leaning closer to the screen.

  Mac rewound the tape and sipped coffee while Hawkes watched the twenty-minute tape again, sometimes fast-forwarding and halting.

  “Let’s hear the interrogation tape again.”

  Mac rewound the tape he had made of the interview of Jordan Breeze and played it again.

  “You want to see him in his cell?” asked Mac. “My guess is it will confirm what we already know.”

  Hawkes stood and said, “You’re right.”

  Mac listened while Hawkes told him what he had observed.

  “Sure,” said Mathew Drietch.

  He was wiry, about forty, with sparse yellow hair and a boxer’s face. He had answered Aiden Burn’s request to see the .22 Louisa Cormier had used for target practice on the firing range, which was just outside the door to the office in which they now sat.

  “You like the sound of gunfire?” Drietch asked.

  “Not particularly,” she said.

  “I do,” he said, looking past her at the glass-paneled door through which he could see the stations of the hand gun range. “The crack, the power. You know what I mean?”

  “Not really,” said Aiden. “Now, can you show me the gun?”