Killer Look

TWENTY-FIVE

The experience of being held by captors for days had made me hypervigilant since the rescue. Despite my exhaustion, hunger, and unhappiness, I heard Mike’s key turn in the lock at ten fifteen.

I ran to the door to greet him with a short terry robe wrapped around me.

“Man on the hall,” Mercer said, coming in behind Mike.

“Twofers? How lucky am I,” I said. “Give me a minute.”

I went back to my bedroom to pull on sweats and a fleece jacket. When I returned, the guys were at my bar, calling to me to bring a full ice bucket to them.

“I had this dreadful encounter with Paul Battaglia,” I said, setting the ice on the bar. “I was way out of line, Mike. I know that, but he caught me off guard, lying in wait for me near the driveway and scaring me half to death.”

“Calm down, babe.” He turned to me and put his arms around me. “You’re shaking like a leaf.”

“I may have just thrown away my job.” I buried my head into Mike’s shoulder.

“Hell, you always wanted to be a ballet dancer, didn’t you? You’re a little long in the tooth for that now, but-”

“As I recall,” Mercer said, “you’ve got the district attorney by the short hairs, Alex. He’s not about to do anything.”

“Yet,” I said. “You meant to add ‘yet,’ didn’t you?”

Mike pushed me back and lifted my chin. “Smile for me.”

“I’ve forgotten how to do that.”

“Practice,” Mike said, picking up the half-gallon bottle of Dewar’s. “I’ll let you have a drink with us. You’ve shown remarkable self-restraint.”

“You mean you trust me?”

“Not exactly. But I marked the bottle before we left the house this morning,” he said. “And you got through this little crisis without dipping in. Good for you.”

I didn’t need to confess to my interlude at the Beach Café and the wine at the Met dining room. By the time I’d had my confrontation with Paul Battaglia, I needed a steaming-hot bath more than a cocktail.

“You’re tracking my pours? I can’t believe it.”

“That’s the least of it, Coop. You’re going to start running with me in the mornings, too. Boot camp begins tomorrow.”

Mercer was pouring the drinks.

“I actually bought food for Mike and me, but I dropped the bag on the street when Battaglia shouted my name. I have nothing for you guys to eat.”

“I ordered a pizza on our way up. It’ll be here in half an hour,” Mike said.

“We’ve got a lot to catch up on,” I said. “Tell me what you did after I left.”

“First of all, we missed Jeopardy! because of the presser about the ME’s findings,” Mike said. “My mother taped it for me.”

“Seriously, Mike.”

“Okay, okay. So Jimmy North met me at the morgue, to go back over to the Savage offices. By the time we got there, Hal and Reed had left for lunch, and were going directly from there to the lawyer’s office for the reading of the will. That’s all we were able to get out of the secretary-she wouldn’t budge on who or where the lawyer is-so it shut us down for a while.”

“I got called in because of the Tanya Root piece of the case,” Mercer said. “We’re starting all over on that investigation, now that we know Wolf Savage was her father. We’re linked in with Mike and Jimmy, of course.”

“Murder begets murder,” Mike said. “We just need the ‘why’ and the ‘who.’”

“Catherine will give you warrants for anything you want,” I said.

“Done. She’s way out in front of this. You lose your job? She’ll step right into your shoes. Nothing to worry about.”

“I’m not worried about Catherine or the unit for a minute, Mike. I’m worried about me.”

“We’re going for Wolf’s phones-business and cell, incoming and outgoing-for the last six months. Reed Savage and Uncle Hal, too. And Lily Savitsky.”

“But she’s just-” I blurted out, not sure why I would leap to defend a woman I hadn’t seen for twenty years.

“She’s Tanya’s half-sister, Coop. And the dead man’s daughter. Think big-picture. Everybody’s got a motive till they don’t.”

“Sorry. You’re right, of course,” I said. “Were you able to grab any of the family members after they met with the trusts and estate lawyer?”

“Nope. I don’t know how long the meeting took. But nobody came back to the office. That’s on tap for tomorrow morning, after the autopsy of Wolf Savage,” Mike said. “Mercer and me.”

“I figured that. Battaglia spoke to the commissioner, right? He told me that Dr. Parker let it slip that I was at the morgue with you, and that he doesn’t want me doing any more of that.”

“Don’t inhale that scotch, kid. It’s your one and only, so sip it slow,” Mike said. “Yeah, we went straight from Seventh Avenue to headquarters. Scully knew it was important enough to do a stand-up conference on this one. Did you catch it?”

“I saw a rerun. A clip of it anyway. How much did he give out?”

“Bare bones. That news reports of Savage’s suicide were premature. That his death has been reclassified as a homicide, pending autopsy and an investigation,” Mike said. “Then he had a blow-up of the anthropologist’s reconstruction of Tanya Root’s face, and said that she has been identified as the daughter of Wolf Savage.”

“So far, Alex,” Mercer said, “none of the hundred-plus women in America with that name fits the ’scrip of our Tanya Root. We’re hoping that because this story will get international play, especially coming from Commissioner Scully, that someone who knows her, somewhere in the world, will come forward.”

“Do you have a phone number for her? Any way to retrace her steps here?”

“You know anybody who goes swimming in the East River with a phone, Coop?” Mike said. “We don’t even know that the name she gave the plastic surgeon is her real one.”

“So maybe I got some information today that will move you forward.”

“Let’s hear about your little escapade,” Mike said. “It’s always interesting when the patients get out of their straitjackets for a few hours.”

“Yeah, quite refreshing for me, actually. Off my meds. No keeper,” I said. “I just got lucky, is all it is. I didn’t have any reason to know what I was going to walk into.”

I started to detail my conversation with Tiziana Bolt while Mercer took notes.

My information was coming out in bits and pieces. “We need to know more than what the gossip columnists have printed about his third, fourth, and fifth wives over the years,” I said.

“We’re on that,” Mercer said.

“You already knew about them? That they were-?”

“‘Women of color’ is what Scully called them. He made Vickee research the guy’s bio from decades of press clips about him,” Mercer said. “That’s one thing that benefits us from his living such a public life.”

“So Reed’s mother was his first wife, and she’s long dead,” I said. “Then he married Lily’s mother.”

“Then the third wife is the Brit who raised Reed,” Mercer said. “Alive and well-the recluse who lives outside of London.”

“She’s not supposed to be an issue in this,” Mike said. “Reed told us his father took good care of her when they split, and local police in her village say she hasn’t set foot out of town in ten years.”

I was sketching a family tree as I sat on the sofa with a legal pad.

“Did she figure out four and five?”

“You know Vickee. She’s a relentless researcher,” Mercer said. “The fourth wife is from the Caribbean originally. Nevis. She lives in New Orleans now. She met Wolf when she was trying to break into modeling here in the city as a teenager. Married him when she was twenty-one, and the only job she could land was in a showroom of a glove manufacturer.”

“Great hands, I guess,” Mike said. “Not a total bust.”

“Short marriage. No kids,” Mercer said. “I talked to her on the phone. She’s remarried, to a former Saint.”

“A saint?” I asked.

“Think football, Coop. New Orleans Saints.”

“Happy and healthy, and very comfortable answering my questions,” Mercer said. “Holds no grudge for Wolf. The man treated her like a queen.”

“Did she know about Reed?” I asked. “And Lily?”

“Met Reed. Heard about Lily but never met her. And no, she never knew anything about an illegitimate child. Never heard of Tanya Root.”

“The woman had to come from somewhere,” I said.

“She’s going to stay in touch with me. She remembers that Wolf Savage was very familiar with New Orleans, and told her he’d spent time there in a relationship with another woman,” Mercer said. “She’s going to see if she can find that woman’s name in one of her old journals or diaries.”

“That would be great,” I said. “If my math is correct, Tanya was conceived sometime between the third and fourth marriages, right?”

“Seems to be so.”

“Did Vickee come up with anything on the fifth wife?”

“An African woman.”

“Ethiopian?” I asked, telling them the story of Samira.

“No,” Mercer said. “This one was from Ghana. A young businesswoman, actually. We haven’t been able to reach her by phone. Thirtysomething when Wolf married her, according to the tabloids. She stole a bundle of money from him. Got nothing in the divorce and went back to Ghana a year later, where she started her own company. Vickee can’t find her name in any of the newspapers since she left the States.”

“You guys really have your hands full,” I said, holding the chilled glass against my forehead. “Does Dr. Parker know what killed Tanya?”

“Blunt-force trauma confirmed,” Mercer said. “Her skull was crushed in the rear.”

“Which is nothing like Wolf’s death,” I said.

“Right. I take his autopsy at nine, then Mercer and I try a new approach to the brother and the uncle,” Mike said. “Track Lily down to see how she fared in the will.”

“You need to get the two hotel housekeepers,” I said. “Wolf recommended Josie-the one who took off-for the job. We’ve got to find out where in life their paths originally crossed. Then there’s Wanda. The one who found the body. She told us she babysat for a child whose mother was going out with Wolf. She assumed it was his wife and child, from somewhere abroad.”

“Not a wife,” Mike said. “A lover, maybe. But there’s no evidence of another marriage.”

“Even so,” I said, “Wanda can give you a better description. Maybe a way to figure out who they are.”

Mike barely acknowledged my ideas, while Mercer wrote everything down. I knew Mike wanted me to keep my nose out of this entire affair.

“Then there’s the business side of things. You’re going to have to talk to Tiziana.” I looked in my contacts and gave Mercer the number. “She probably has more reason to give you the real story than the brother and son.”

“Good work, Alex,” Mercer said, clinking his glass against mine.

“You should both be at the Savage show at the Met on Monday night,” I said. “It will be a chance for all the interested parties to be under the same roof.”

The intercom rang. “There’s your pizza,” I said.

Mike went to answer it while I grabbed some plates and napkins.

“I agree with you, Alex,” Mercer said. “The outfit that does security for Fashion Week is run by a guy who used to be a detective in the Nineteenth. I told Scully I’d call him and see if I can fake my way onto his staff.”

“If you’re going in undercover, Detective Wallace, then I’m going to be your date.”

“You know how I feel about you, Alexandra, but Commissioner Scully would have my head for that. Think of yourself as a wallflower, Alex. This may be one ball you just have to sit out.”