Kiss Me, Kill Me

TWENTY-EIGHT

Lucy prepared Suzanne and Detective Panetta for the interview. She first convinced Suzanne to interview Dennis Barnett at NYPD headquarters, because the bustling atmosphere with uniforms and guns screamed authority and Lucy believed Dennis Barnett would be unusually obedient to authority.

She then cautioned the cops against leading or browbeating him in any way. “Any competent defense attorney will get a confession thrown out.”

Panetta said, “His IQ isn’t low enough to qualify for medical deficiency, and even if it were, the D.A. would still prosecute. There’s enough precedent.”

“It’s low enough that counsel could argue his natural obedience to authority led him to say whatever he thought you wanted to hear.”

“How many interviews have you conducted, Ms. Kincaid?” Panetta asked.

Lucy couldn’t respond. The detective was right; she wasn’t a cop. Her experience hadn’t prepared her for this; what was she even thinking agreeing to act as psychologist? She had a master’s degree, that was it. No experience other than what life had handed her.

Suzanne said, “We’re not going to browbeat anyone. But I want to nail him, and I want it airtight. How do we get a confession?”

Lucy said, “He wants to please, and you have to convince him that only the complete truth will make you happy.”

“How do you know that?” she asked.

“I read his statement to you, when you talked to him in his brother’s apartment. He wants to be good and do the right thing, but because of his relationship with his brothers, I think he’ll respond better to the detective.” She glanced at Panetta and encountered his disbelieving frown. She straightened her spine and continued.

“His entire life he has looked up to CJ and Wade,” she said. “He parrots what they say, as you can tell if you read his statement closely. CJ’s disapproval over Wade’s lifestyle came through clearly, though Dennis doesn’t feel the same. He sees Wade as both his corrector and defender. Wade wants Dennis to be normal because he wants a brother, so he takes him to the parties and to shows and other places. But Dennis is slow and clumsy, and Wade gets frustrated. Dennis will do anything to please Wade, and Wade will say anything to protect Dennis. If Wade is innocent, and believes Dennis is guilty, he’ll confess.”

“If he’s innocent?” Panetta shook his head. “Only in the movies. I get people confessing to everything under the sun mostly for attention, but I’ve never had anyone confess to protect someone unless they were threatened.”

“He is threatened,” Lucy said. “If Dennis goes to jail for murder, the guilt will eat him up. He’ll blame himself for not seeing it, or not stopping it.”

“Or Wade will be in prison, too, if they did it together,” Suzanne said, “Probably on death row.”

“He’ll consider himself a failure because he couldn’t raise his brother.”

“He’s only five years older.”

“Their mother abdicated the responsibility for raising Dennis to CJ and Wade. CJ became the father, a financial genius who turned their settlement into a fortune, and Wade became the mother, the playmate.”

Lucy was losing them. She wasn’t good at this; she’d always had Hans or her brother Dillon to bounce her ideas off of first.

“I’ve read every interview and statement, and all articles I could find on the brothers. It’s clear that when their father was killed in the workplace accident, CJ became the male father figure-he was fourteen. He pressured Wade to grow up, which is why Wade is both responsible outwardly-historic preservation, philanthropy, civic responsibility-and extremely childish. He sleeps around with numerous women, he’s obsessed with baseball, and he’s jealous of Dennis.”

“Why?”

“Because Dennis gets to be a kid forever. Wade was forced by his father’s death and his older brother’s disapproval to grow up before he was ready.”

“So is Dennis guilty?” Suzanne asked. “Or were they a team?”

“If Dennis is guilty, he’ll confess. He’ll tell the truth, whether Wade was involved or knew about it. He’s scared of getting in trouble. I can’t be certain without seeing Dennis with his mother, but his brief statement, and the fact that he didn’t ask for his mother or want her with him, makes me think he doesn’t have a strong bond with her, which also supports my theory that the brothers raised him. I can speculate why, but I honestly don’t know without interviewing her or seeing them together.”

Hicks stuck his head into the interview room. “Barnett and his lawyer are here.”

“Put him next door,” Panetta said.

Hicks handed Panetta a file. “This came in from the lab last night. The FBI called Friday to find out where it was.” He shot Suzanne a look.

“I didn’t call about a lab report,” Suzanne said.

Lucy cleared her throat. “I did. It was the residue test from the first victim. The report wasn’t attached to the autopsy, and I didn’t know if it had gotten lost or they hadn’t gotten to it.”

Hicks said, “They ran it yesterday, put it at the top of the pile.” He winked. “Must be your sexy voice.”

“Get our suspect,” Panetta ordered and opened the report. He skimmed it. “The black powder is ninety-eight percent ultrafine charcoal and two percent gum.”

“Gum?” Lucy questioned. “Could she have aspirated a piece of gum when she was being suffocated?”

Panetta handed her the report. She read it, but didn’t understand it-except it wasn’t chewing gum.

“As you pointed out,” Suzanne said, “the first murder was spontaneous. You were at the crime scene this morning; those abandoned buildings are neither clean nor sanitary. The killer could have grabbed whatever was handy.”

“Maybe our suspect had charcoal in a bag to go home and barbecue after he killed her,” Panetta reasoned.

Lucy gathered up her files. Panetta wasn’t serious. She thought this report was important simply because it was an anomaly, but she needed to think it through, and right now both Panetta and Suzanne were itching to talk to Dennis Barnett.

“In your first conversation, Suzanne, he talked about Wade’s girlfriends who were mean to him,” Lucy said. “Find out how they were mean. What they did, how that made him feel, what his actions were. Did he ever defend himself and how? Was it always Wade standing up for him? And you’ll have to ask about his mother, his childhood.”

“So he has mommy issues,” Panetta said, obviously irritated.

“Everyone has mommy issues,” Lucy countered. “I didn’t say it was an excuse to kill.”

They left the small conference room and went next door. A one-way mirror showed Dennis Barnett with his attorney. Dennis was wide-eyed and curious. Maybe a bit scared, but more interested in the room. His attorney was older and dressed in a suit. He didn’t look happy.

Lucy focused on Dennis. He was broad-shouldered and muscular. He had blue eyes and an inquisitive childlike gaze. He also fidgeted.

He turned around to look behind him, at the blank wall, and Lucy had a flash of recognition. She stopped Panetta from opening the door.

The detective looked at her, irritated. He hadn’t liked her assessment, he was old-school-the “psychobabble” wouldn’t appeal to his investigative approach.

“Suzanne, where’s the witness drawing?” Without waiting for her response, Lucy riffled through her file folders until she found a copy.

“It’s him. His profile.”

Suzanne looked at the drawing, then at Dennis Barnett. “I didn’t see it at first, but I think you’re right.”

Panetta walked over and frowned. “I didn’t see it either, but it’s the profile. But everything is a bit exaggerated in the picture.”

Lucy agreed. “He looks mean in the drawing, but not sitting in the room. He appears harmless now.”

“It was done from an older memory,” Suzanne said. “Unless the witness views a lineup and identifies him, I don’t think we’ll be able to use it.”

Until now, Lucy hadn’t believed that Dennis Barnett was guilty. She was certain that the killer was obsessed with Wade Barnett, either an ex-girlfriend or someone who knew him well, such as a secretary.

She was wrong. How many other things had she been wrong about? Why was she even here in the first place?

She sent Sean a message.

I was wrong. The man the witness drew with Alanna Andrews the night she was killed is Dennis Barnett.

Sean considered breaking into Charles Barnett’s Brooklyn Heights penthouse apartment a challenge. It was a secure building with state-of-the-art locks, a doorman, and a security camera. But it was still just a place, and Sean had never yet been defeated by a building, or a computer system.

It took less than ten minutes to assess the best approach to breaching the twelve-story building, then one minute to bypass the electronic lock that led to the parking garage under the building.

He smiled as he drove his GT into the structure and parked in 12A, Charles Barnett’s empty slot. He was in Europe, Wade Barnett was still at Rikers, and by now, the FBI would be interviewing Dennis Barnett. The apartment should be empty.

Once he was upstairs, Sean picked the lock of Barnett’s apartment and slipped inside, quietly closing the door behind him. He had left his gun in his trunk-on the off chance that someone was living in Barnett’s apartment, Sean might be able to talk himself out of an arrest for breaking and entering, but not if he was armed. Still, if his hunch was right, no one would be there.

He listened for any hint that someone was in the apartment, but it was dead silent. The place was tidy but not immaculate. There were a few glasses on the counter in the kitchen, the kitchen chairs weren’t pushed in, and the cushions on the couch weren’t aligned. It didn’t necessarily mean anything.

But even through the steady drizzle, Sean could see the Brooklyn Bridge outside the picture windows.

There were three bedrooms. One was small and appeared unused. The second had a hastily made bed, the dresser littered with coins and crumpled dollars. Sean went through the items and found a receipt from Abercrombie amp; Fitch for $310.07. The credit card was in the name of Dennis Barnett.

He’d brought the tag from Kirsten’s shirt with him. It, too, was from Abercrombie amp; Fitch, and he compared the item number to the receipt.

Match.

Dennis had bought her two pairs of sweatpants, a sweater, two shirts, and four pairs of underwear. Sean searched the bedroom and found no other clothing from the receipt.

He then went to the master bedroom and knew this was where Kirsten had stayed for five days.

The bed had been stripped and made, but the dirty bloodstained sheets were in the hamper. Bloody bandages were in the bathroom garbage, and supplies from a local pharmacy were spread out on the nightstand: gauze, bandage tape, topical antibiotics, pain relievers.

Sean went to the den and booted up the computer. He looked through the browser history and saw that Kirsten had definitely sent the message from this computer on Thursday morning.

He stared out the window as he put together the final pieces of the puzzle. Dennis Barnett had been caring for Kirsten here in this apartment. Why had he not taken her to the hospital when it was clear that she was very sick? Had she convinced him that someone was trying to kill her? Or had she gradually gotten worse, leaving him with no choice?

Did Wade Barnett know? And if he did, why hadn’t he gone to the police or the hospital? What was he trying to hide?

Sean didn’t have all the answers, but if Dennis Barnett had gone out of his way to bring Kirsten home from the party, nurse her, then leave her at the church when he couldn’t care for her any longer, he didn’t see how he could coldly kill five other young women.

He sent Lucy a message detailing what he’d found, letting her reach her own conclusions.

He saw her message about the man in the drawing being Dennis Barnett. What had the artist said? That she’d seen someone with Alanna the night she died. Dennis Barnett already admitted to being a driver to the parties that his brother attended; it didn’t mean he’d killed Alanna.

Sean sat back down at Charles Barnett’s computer and logged on to the secure RCK East server to access the Party Girl website that Patrick rebuilt. But Patrick had taken it one step further: He’d created an index of all content, including all registered users.

He scanned the list of registered users for any name that might be Wade Barnett. Most people used something familiar to them, something that was part of their personal identity. He clicked through a couple of promising names; neither of them was Wade Barnett.

Then he found what he was looking for near the end of the alphabetical list.

YankeeFan00

He clicked through and smiled. While it didn’t have Wade Barnett’s photograph, it had two important pointers:

He’d posted that he was a twenty-six-year-old preservationist from New York.

And among his friends were Erica Ripley, Heather Garcia, Jessica Bell, and Kirsten Benton, all under false names, but all with their real images.

He sent the data to Lucy and Suzanne, logged off the RCK site, and wiped memory of the visit from the computer while leaving all else intact, then left.

In his car, he called FBI agent Noah Armstrong. He and Noah didn’t see eye to eye on everything, but Noah had vouched for him with Suzanne Madeaux.

He needed someone with the clout to get him into Rikers Island.