The Shadow of Your Smile

78

It was Thursday morning, two days after Monica had been assaulted at her apartment. “Looks as though we’ve got the whole rotten bunch of them,” Detective Barry Tucker commented with satisfaction. He and his partner, Dennis Flynn, along with Detectives Carl Forrest and Jim Whelan, were at headquarters, in the office of Chief Jack Stanton. They were rehashing the series of events since Tuesday night.

“When Dr. Hadley broke down and confessed the minute we walked into his office to question him, he told us that he knew we would be coming. He admitted he suffocated that poor old woman. He even handed over the bloody pillowcase before we asked for it,” Flynn said.

“Langdon isn’t talking, but his girlfriend, Pamela, can’t stop talking,” Carl Forrest said, his voice scornful. “She knows she has no way out of this. Greg Gannon got suspicious of her and found out about the apartment she was keeping with Langdon. Renée Carter’s purse and a card with that address written in Scott Alterman’s handwriting were both there. Pamela admits that Carter got into the car with her and Langdon. They promised to pay her the other nine hundred thousand that Carter was demanding, and she fell for it. She went back to the apartment with them. They gave her a drink with knockout drops and then he strangled her. They kept her body there until they could safely dump it.”

Forrest picked up a glass of water, and swallowed. “Pamela Gannon is one cold fish. She admits she gave Hadley and Langdon the orders to get rid of Olivia Morrow and Dr. Farrell. She also told us that Langdon had hired Sammy Barber to kill Monica Farrell. We got a search warrant for Barber’s apartment and found a tape of him and Langdon talking about getting rid of Dr. Farrell. So they’re both cooked. Not to mention Larry Walker, who tried to abduct Farrell outside her apartment. He said that Barber had hired him to kill her since there was too much heat on him. Sammy has taken off, but there’s a warrant out for him. We’ll find him.”

“Why was Scott Alterman ever fool enough to go to that apartment?” Stanton asked.

“Pamela was in the Southampton House when he got there. She told him she was divorcing Greg, that he had been miserable to live with, and she had found proof that his uncle had an heir. Alterman walked into her trap that night. When he went to the apartment, she put just enough knockout drops in his drink to make him look drunk, and then Langdon hustled him down to the river. The poor guy never had a chance,” Forrest answered.

“Langdon planted the money and the shopping bag in Peter’s office to set him up,” he continued. “He went directly to Peter’s private office after he killed Renée Carter. He never realized that Peter was sleeping it off in the next room. It’s a good thing that Langdon didn’t see him there or I don’t think he’d still be alive.

“Now the way it looks, Greg Gannon will spend the next twenty years or so in prison. Everything he owns will be sold to pay back the investors he defrauded. Everything Pamela Gannon has will be taken from her, not that she’ll have any use for any of it. She’s looking at several life sentences.”

“I’ll take it from here, Jack,” Barry Tucker said, briskly. “The DA is going to dismiss the charges against Peter Gannon.” He dropped his notebook in his pocket. “And we’ll all get a few days off.”

“Oh, I forgot. Your wife likes your crooked smile,” Forrest said. “Isn’t that what you told somebody the other day?”

“It seems more like a year ago. The pity is that even if she could manage to prove she’s Alexander Gannon’s granddaughter, Dr. Farrell probably will never see a nickel of the Gannon money. Langdon, Hadley, and Pamela Gannon have been hemorrhaging it into their own pockets. The foundation money that went into some of Peter Gannon’s theatre projects may cause him trouble with the IRS.”

Jack Stanton stood up. “Good job, all of you,” he said. Hopefully at least some of the money that Langdon and Hadley stole from the foundation will be recovered when they seize their assets. That means if Monica Farrell could actually prove she was the granddaughter, other properties like Alexander Gannon’s home in Southampton may be hers. But I gather at this point she can’t prove anything. Look-alike pictures don’t cut the mustard in court.”

“Carl, does anyone know who Dr. Farrell’s grandmother actually was?” Dennis Flynn asked.

“Dr. Hadley told us that she was Olivia Morrow’s older cousin, a young woman who later became a nun and is presently being considered for beatification by the Catholic Church. He thinks that the file with the proof of her relationship with Gannon was destroyed by Morrow before she died.”

Stanton looked from one to the other of his detectives. “Obviously all of this has to be included in the detectives’ reports. Can you imagine the gossip Dr. Farrell will have to deal with when it comes out? As it is, she’s already survived two attempts on her life. If our guys hadn’t been covering her outside her apartment Tuesday night, she’d be in the river just like Scott Alterman.”

Stanton took a long breath. “Okay, guys, now it’s time to do the paperwork and wrap this up.”