The Finishing School

10

DAN HAD ACKNOWLEDGED MELANIE with a curt nod right when he first walked in, and now he wouldn’t meet her eyes. He sat at the far end of the table, with a few empty chairs between him and everybody else, flipping absentmindedly through one of the evidence binders Bridget had brought. Melanie made herself pretend he wasn’t there.

“Vito, were you aware these two made an arrest this morning?” Bernadette was saying.

“Yeah. Ray-Ray beeped me an hour ago.”

“Oh, so I’m the only idiot in the dark here? Thanks a lot. Good communicating, Melanie.”

“Take it easy, Bernadette,” Albano said. “Give the kids a break. This pinch looks real promising. Salvadoran kid. Grabbed ’im with twelve decks in his sock, right, Ray-Ray?”

“Yes, sir.”

Bernadette raised her eyebrows, seeming appeased. “Really? Well, that is good. It’s fabulous, in fact. We’ll have something to report at the press conference.”

“I don’t think you should announce this to the press yet,” Melanie said. She could imagine the headlines-the tabloids screaming that Carmen Reyes had scored heroin from her gangster boyfriend, given it to the other girls, watched them OD, and then fled. She kicked herself for not warning Carmen’s father of the possibility.

“Press relationships are my domain, Melanie, but I’ll hear you out. Why don’t you think it should be announced?” Bernadette asked.

Everyone turned to look at Melanie. She felt Dan’s eyes on her, but if she met his gaze, she wouldn’t be able to think straight.

“It’s premature, and it could burn the investigation,” she replied, looking only at Bernadette. “This Salvadoran kid, Juan Carlos Peralta, may have been dating the daughter of the superintendent in Seward’s building, whose name is Carmen Reyes. Carmen was a classmate of the two girls who died. She’s missing. We need to establish the link between the two of them and confirm that he gave Carmen the heroin. Then we’ll have a case.”

“But there’s a major countervailing consideration. With an arrest this quick, we look golden, don’t you see? Wait even one day and we lose that impact. Believe me, I understand how the media works.”

“ Bern,” Melanie said, “there’s a strong possibility Carmen ran away last night. That she’s out there right now, cold and hungry, thinking about coming home. If she finds out her boyfriend is in custody, she may decide to keep running and not look back. Then we lose a critical link in the chain between Peralta and the dead girls.”

“We arrested him with twelve glassines. How is that not a case already?” Bernadette demanded.

“Right now all we can charge him with is those glassines, and they don’t even add up to federal weight. Plus, they aren’t the same stamp the girls ingested last night. Let’s do the legwork to tie him to the heroin that killed the girls. Then we can charge distribution resulting in death. That has teeth.”

“How long do you need to establish the connection?” Bernadette asked, crossing her arms and looking doubtful.

“Hard to say. If Peralta talks, or if we find Carmen this morning and she gives him up as the supplier, not long at all. If we have to pound the pavement, then a bit longer,” Melanie said. She paused for a moment, then added, “We should probably pound the pavement anyway.”

“No substitute for shoe leather,” Albano said, nodding.

“Whatever we come up with will be useful down the road if we take Peralta to trial,” Melanie noted.

“What steps are you thinking about, specifically?” Bernadette asked.

“We start with the victims,” Melanie said. “Whitney Seward and Brianna Meyers. We should subpoena their cell and landline telephone records right away. Who knows, maybe they called Peralta directly.”

“Okay, I see your point. But don’t lose the forest for the trees. Stay focused on charging the ODs, and don’t worry about pulling every last toll record. Oh, and I assume this is obvious, but skip the records on James Seward’s home phone. Too many political implications to that.”

“ Bern, we need those!” Melanie protested.

“Nobody gets treated with kid gloves on my watch, Bernadette. Fair’s fair,” Albano said.

“You’re asking for trouble, Vito. Seward’s extremely well connected. I don’t need to get in hot water over pulling his tolls and finding some phone-sex line or something,” Bernadette said.

“Who gives a shit? Long as we don’t leak it, how’s he even gonna know?” Albano said.

“Of course he’ll know. Anybody in his position has spies. If I subpoenaed your phone, you think somebody wouldn’t snitch to you?”

“Okay, maybe, but so? It’s a normal investigative step to take. The dickwad gives you trouble, talk to me, and I’ll take it up with the commissioner,” Albano said.

“I can call the commissioner myself. That’s not the point. I want to keep you happy on this case, Vito, but I have to think of my other interests, too. Why stir up a hornets’ nest for nothing?”

“It’s not for nothing, Bern,” Melanie put in. “There’s something screwy about the timing of Seward finding out about the ODs and calling the police. I can’t put my finger on it, but it bothers me. I think we should take a closer look at him.”

“Please, spare me the far-fetched theories,” Bernadette said, rolling her eyes. “He’s the victim’s stepfather, and he should be treated with respect. Understood?”

“I follow the trail wherever it leads,” Albano insisted, puffing out his chest. “That’s the way I work. You and me need a private meeting to talk about rules of engagement here, Bernadette. Okay?”

Bernadette locked eyes with the lieutenant. Albano ’s a dead man, Melanie thought, and waited for her boss to explode. But instead, after a long moment, Bernadette smiled girlishly.

“That’s probably a good idea, Vito. Maybe we can do it over lunch later.”

Albano flushed slightly. “Sure. Sounds good.”

“Um,” Melanie said after an awkward pause, “so I have the green light to pull Seward’s tolls?”

“All right,” Bernadette said. “But obviously grand-jury secrecy rules apply. No leaks.”

“Course not,” Albano agreed, still looking at Bernadette. “Code of silence. By the way, Melanie, we picked up the girls’ cell phones from the scene last night. You might be able to get the numbers right off ’em.” He nodded at Bridget Mulqueen, who sifted through the evidence binders and pulled out two heat-sealed envelopes, which she passed down the table to Melanie. The first contained a small silver Motorola flip phone, the second a shiny pink Nokia with a screen.

“The silver one was in Brianna Meyers’s backpack,” Albano said. “The pink one was on the bedside table, so we’re assuming it was Whitney’s.”

“The pink one is a camera phone, right?” Melanie asked, examining it.

“Yeah, that tiny hole there is the lens,” Albano said. “We haven’t checked the memory for stored photos yet, though. We wanted to ask you-”

“If you need a search warrant?” Melanie said, finishing his sentence for him. “It depends. If the phones are registered to the victims, no, because their privacy rights died with them. But these girls were minors, so the phones are probably registered to their parents. I’ll write up warrants this afternoon, just to be safe. While I’m at it, I’ll include their computers, too, so we can get their e-mails and the Web sites they visited.”

“All right,” Bernadette said. “Does anybody have anything else before we break?”

“One quick question,” Dan said, looking up from the binders. Melanie caught her breath. Those eyes. How was she going to get through this?

Dan pulled an eight-by-ten crime-scene glossy from its plastic sleeve and held it up for everyone to see. It showed Whitney Seward’s bedroom, looking toward the wall where her desk was, in the opposite direction from the bodies on the bed.

“What about it?” Albano said. “That’s just the Crime Scene guys documenting the room.”

“Just out of curiosity,” Dan asked, “anybody know who opened all the windows?”