A Plague of Secrets

10

Hardy wasn’t wrong when he said that Schiff and Bracco wouldn’t be far behind him in coming to the conclusion that Dylan Vogler was blackmailing Maya Townshend.

They’d gotten to it almost by osmosis the next morning. At a few minutes after nine A.M. they knocked at the front door of Jansey’s house, figuring that she would most probably have known what dirt her man had had on his boss that he had used not only to keep himself gainfully employed, but that also allowed him to treat her as an underling when she came into her own store.

Last night, in spite of their great frustration at having Dismas Hardy show up at the Townshends’ to limit the free flow of information, the inspectors had learned a great deal. Most importantly, Maya had lied to them about her alibi on Saturday morning. Beyond that, she’d admitted that she’d actually been called down to the murder scene by the victim and had discovered his body and then opted not to call the police and report it. In the eyes of the inspectors these two revelations elevated Maya in a hurry to a person of interest in the homicide.

She had had both the means and the opportunity to have killed Dylan Vogler. If Bracco and Schiff could establish a compelling motive, they would be well on their way to establishing her as their prime suspect. And the fact that Maya had apparently been at Vogler’s beck and call-coming down to the store before dawn on a Saturday morning?-argued strongly, in spite of Hardy’s disclaimers, that theirs was not a simple business relationship.

Vogler must have had something on Maya that she didn’t want revealed. And maybe he’d been threatening her with just that-upping the ante on what she was paying him, making new demands. Maybe she’d just had enough and decided to put an end to it.

It wasn’t much of a leap for either of them to imagine her killing him. And the why of it led them to Jansey’s door again this morning.

She was barefoot in cutoff jeans and wearing her usual T-shirt. “You guys put in some serious hours, you know that? You got another warrant?”

“Not this time,” Schiff said. “We were hoping you’d talk to us about Maya.”

Her forehead crinkled. “Why? I don’t even know her.”

“You know who she is,” Bracco said.

“Well, yeah, of course I know who she is. She owns the shop. Do you guys hang out with the chief of police?”

“I take your point.” Schiff didn’t want to antagonize Jansey, who was at this point about their best hope. “Do you think we could come in and talk for a minute?”

“About Maya? Look, I really don’t know anything about Maya.” But the cops simply nodded until Jansey hesitated, looked behind her, then shrugged, indicating they should follow her. “Robert’s over having some coffee with me,” she explained in advance.

As Maya turned to lead the way back into the house, Bracco flashed his partner a knowing look, and Schiff acknowledged it with a nod as they fell in behind their witness.

In the kitchen Robert Tripp sat at the table, again in his green medical scrubs. He’d heard the doorbell and then the discussion at the door and appeared, if not actively enthusiastic about the police presence, then at least engaged. “Hey.” He stood up, coming around the table and shaking both of their hands. “Jansey and I are just having a cup,” he said. “It’s hot and fresh. Bay Beans’s finest.”

“Sounds good to me. Black.” Schiff would take anything that would give her and Bracco more time to chat with Jansey and Robert. “Where’s Ben this morning?” she asked.

“Preschool. Eight to twelve.” Jansey looked at Bracco. “Inspector? Coffee?”

“Sure,” he said. “Why not? Two sugars, please.”

Jansey was grabbing mugs and putting them on the counter when Tripp declared, “White sugar’ll kill you.”

Bracco let out a halfhearted chuckle. “That,” he said, “or something else. I promise you, sugar’s the least of my worries.” He pulled a chair around and straddled it backward. “So, Robert, let me ask you this. When do you go to school?”

The question, perhaps intended to get a rise, drew only a muted reply. “I got off at midnight. I’m back in at noon. Twelve on, twelve off, this week. Oh, and I’m on call during the off hours every third day, lest we start to catch up on sleep. That would be wrong.”

“They don’t want you to sleep?” Schiff asked. “Isn’t that dangerous for patients?”

“If it turns out it is,” Tripp said, “you’re out of the program. If sleep’s more important to you than medicine, you don’t want to be a doctor bad enough anyway. If lack of sleep affects your performance, you don’t have what it takes. I don’t think there’s an American-trained doctor in the world who hasn’t gone through five years of serious sleep deprivation. It’s part of the culture. If you can’t hack it, get another gig.”

Jansey set the mugs in front of the inspectors. She put a quick hand on Tripp’s shoulder. “Robert’s record is four days without a minute of sleep.”

“That’s a long four days,” Bracco said.

Tripp broke a tired smile. “That was a long month, Inspector, let me tell you. I finally fell asleep outside an OR, standing up in the hall, which I didn’t think was possible until then. Luckily, one of the nurses noticed and got me onto a gurney, pushed me into an empty room.”

Schiff blew over her coffee. Bracco took his first slurping sip and pulled his tiny portable tape recorder out and put it on the table.

Jansey got herself settled into the chair next to Tripp, reached over and touched his hand on the table, then brought her hands back, clenched in front of her. “So, back to what you came for, I don’t really know what I can tell you about Maya. I’ve only met her a couple of times.”

Bracco and Schiff exchanged a glance and Bracco took the lead. “We’re looking at the possibility that Dylan might have been blackmailing her.”

The news didn’t seem to startle Jansey. Still, she asked, “Why do you say that?”

“Couple of reasons,” Bracco went on. “First, his salary. She paid him ninety grand a year. For comparison the same job at Starbucks pays around forty.”

“Yeah, but he’d been there nine years.”

“Okay, so say he got raises every year. That brings him up to fifty, or even sixty. Ninety’s still a good ways out of the box. Second, some employees at the shop have told us that when Maya came in, which wasn’t very often, Dylan treated her like she was the help, like he had something on her. And if he did, it’s hard to believe he wouldn’t have mentioned at least something about it to you at some time.”

The young woman stared down at the table.

“Jansey,” Schiff put in, “if he was blackmailing her, it may have been part of the reason he was killed.”

This brought her head up. “You mean she might have killed him?”

“We don’t know,” Bracco said. “If we’ve got a blackmail situation, that’d be something we’d be forced to consider.”

Schiff expanded on the theme. “It might have just been an ongoing thing covered in his salary. So it wasn’t like she was paying him every month out of her own cash.”

“Even the ninety wasn’t enough,” Jansey said. “It was only sixty after taxes, you know. Why do you think he needed to sell weed? If he was blackmailing her, he could have just asked for a raise, and she would have had to give it to him, right?”

“Maybe,” Bracco said. “But also maybe she told him she was at the limit, she couldn’t or wouldn’t go any higher. Her husband wouldn’t let her, I don’t know, something. Did he tell you he wanted to ask her for more money recently? Something that would have made him a danger to her again?”

“He always wanted more money.” She looked across from one of them to the other. “You’re right, though, about him not being afraid of her, or of losing the job.”

“But he never talked about why?” Schiff asked.

“The most he ever said was that she owed him.”

“There you go.” Bracco leaned forward. “Did he say what she owed him for?”

For a second she appeared to think about it. “It wasn’t like we really ever talked about it,” she said. “Once or twice he might have said something like, ‘She won’t fire me. She owes me her life.’ But that was just Dylan being dramatic. She owed him her life. I’m sure.”

“If that’s a grieving woman,” Bracco said as soon as they were rolling in their car again, “I’m the shah of Iran.”

“I don’t think there’s been a shah in Iran for a few years, Darrel.”

“Lucky for me,” Bracco replied. “And I don’t really want a leadership role in Iran anyway. Just think about it, no booze, no women. Talk about dull parties. I can’t even imagine what the inaugural ball must be like. But I wasn’t so much talking about Iran as the grieving part. If those two don’t have something going on, they will soon, don’t you think?”

“If body language talks, it’s already happening. And the little kid’s gone every morning for four hours when Tripp’s home. I’m tempted to give them fifteen minutes and go back and catch them in the act. Then we’ll at least have caught the future Dr. Tripp in a lie, and it might lead to something else, like their meshing alibis.”

“You think it might have been them together?”

“I think that if they’re an item, and let’s pretend they are, they both wouldn’t mind seeing Dylan dead.”

“Why wouldn’t she just have left him?”

Schiff, driving, thought for a while. “This isn’t a complete list, but offhand here are the first reasons that occur to me. Because of the beatings he had power over her. Two, Ben was Jansey and Dylan’s kid together. Or maybe Tripp wasn’t that serious, just some recreational sex while the old man was at work. Then, finally, Dylan brought in the money and lots of it, where Tripp’s a destitute student. That enough?”

“It’ll get us started, Debra. In fact, assuming Tripp and her are serious, killing Dylan’s a solution to three of their problems, maybe even all four if Tripp’s good for taking over the father role. But I’ll tell you something else.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m getting sick of all this theorizing. You ever get tired of people lying to you?”

“No. It’s my favorite. But who this time?”

“Jansey.”

“You think she knows what the blackmail’s about?”

“You don’t? She’s lived with the guy for like five or six years and doesn’t know something that basic to Dylan’s work? To their whole situation? If Dylan was blackmailing Maya, she might have known about it, might have even been part of it.”

“Might might might.”

“I know. I agree. And if she-Jansey-and Dylan were in cahoots on that, where does that take us?”

“It gives her less of a motive to shoot him, if that’s their business together. And that puts Maya back square in the middle of the picture.”

“Except if Jansey’s really in love with Tripp and wants out with Dylan.”

“So we’ve got Maya alone? Or Jansey alone? Or Jansey and Tripp together? Or a random shooter out for a stroll?”

“I’m not leaning toward random shooter.”

“No, me neither.”

The two inspectors rode along in silence for a couple of blocks, until at last Schiff said, “We’ve got to figure out a way to turn up the heat.”