The Shadow of Your Smile

68

On Tuesday morning, Detectives Barry Tucker and Dennis Flynn were sitting in the private office of Department Chief Jack Stanton, sipping coffee and reviewing the case with him. It had been five days since Renée Carter’s body had been found.

“Some of this just doesn’t add up,” Tucker told the chief. “Gannon had the motive, the opportunity, and a very convenient memory blackout. Not to mention the hundred thousand bucks hidden in the drawer in his office.”

“What doesn’t add up?” Stanton asked.

“We tracked down three of the patrons who were in the bar where Carter and Gannon met. Two of them remembered hearing them arguing but didn’t know what it was about. Both of them noticed Carter leaving the bar with Gannon right behind her.”

“The third guy we spoke to is the one who’s most important,” Dennis Flynn said. “He claimed that he had left the bar less than a minute later, and that he saw a man he’s pretty sure was Gannon walking down York Avenue alone.”

“Which is consistent with what Gannon claimed,” Tucker said. “This guy swears he didn’t see Carter, that she was already gone.”

“How reliable is this witness?” Stanton demanded.

“He’s an engineer. A one-drink-only regular customer. No connection to anyone involved. No axe to grind. Even though he’s not a hundred percent sure it was Gannon that he saw, put him on the witness stand and it’s more than enough to give the jury reasonable doubt.” Barry Tucker stared into his coffee cup, wishing he had not put so much sugar in it. “If this guy is right, Carter must have gotten into a car,” he said. “But what car? Whose car? Peter Gannon’s BMW hasn’t been out of his garage in a week. We checked the garage records. On top of that, we’ve gone over the car with a fine-tooth comb. There’s no trace of Carter ever having been in it.”

“She had that heavy shopping bag,” Flynn pointed out to his boss. “Odds are if Gannon did walk away from her, she got into a cab or one of those cruising limos. We’ve checked out all the licensed cabs and none of them picked her up. If she got into one of those gypsy limos, what did the guy who was driving see? A good-looking, well-dressed babe, who according to the babysitter was wearing some decent jewelry. We both know what may have happened next.”

“Her jewelry was gone. Her purse was gone. Let’s suppose our mystery limo driver killed her,” Tucker suggested. “How does he end up going to Gannon’s office and hiding all that cash? Why would he put that kind of money back? How would he get into the office in the first place? And where does he stash the body for more than twenty-four hours before he wraps it in a garbage bag and stuffs it under a park bench? None of it makes sense.”

Stanton leaned back in his chair. “Let’s look at this scenario. Somebody was parked near that bar because he knew Gannon was meeting Carter there. After Gannon stumbled off, that person offered Carter a ride. She wasn’t dumb. She probably wouldn’t have gotten into a car, other than one of those gypsy limos, with someone she didn’t know.”

Tucker nodded. “That’s where I’ve been going. And think about this. Peter Gannon’s fingerprints were all over the cash and the shopping bag, but there were no fingerprints in the false bottom of the drawer where the money was hidden. Was he smart enough, or drunk enough, to put on gloves to hide the money, but dumb enough to dump the shopping bag into the wastepaper basket where anyone could see it?”

Tucker’s phone rang. He glanced at the ID of the caller. “It’s the lab,” he said, as he answered. “What’s up? Oh. Thanks for the rush job.” He snapped the phone closed. “The lab has finished going over the clothing that Gannon was wearing that night and the clothing that Renée Carter was found in. There is no trace of Carter’s blood or hair or fibers from her clothes on anything he was wearing, and there’s nothing on her clothing that came from him.”

The chief had been reading the Gannon file before Tucker and Flynn arrived at his office. He turned to a page and reread it. “According to the statement Peter Gannon gave, he had, only a few days earlier, requested a loan of one million dollars from the Gannon family foundation to pay off Renée Carter, but the most the board members would advance him was one hundred thousand dollars. That means that whoever is on the board knew about Renée and her demands. We both know that some of these family foundations are pretty shaky. I would say your next move is to talk to those people and see what you can find.”

Tucker nodded, stood up, and stretched. “I’m beginning to think I should get a job working for the Gannon defense team,” he said. “Because that’s just about what we may be doing now.”

As he and Flynn made their way through the cluttered outer office to their desks, a young detective passed them. “Barry, you looked real good on page three of the News,” he commented. “My girlfriend says she likes your crooked smile.”

“So does my wife,” Barry retorted. “But the way this case is going, she’s not going to get much chance to enjoy it for a while.”