“Totally.”
“He’s claiming you insulted him, Chapman. That you were too rude to a well-respected ally of the mayor to represent the NYPD.”
“Rude would have been telling him what I really thought of him. I held back, Loo, out of respect for you,” I said, smiling at Peterson, who didn’t find any humor in the situation.
“The cash you found-twenty-seven thousand-did you tell Shipley about that?”
“No way. But I’m sure he was there looking for dough.”
“Why?”
“I assume Wilson was skimming some off the top. Keesh had to have a sense of Wilson’s weekly draw and how much he spent on her to keep her around. No real way for anyone at the center to know how much money people were mailing in or offering the reverend under the table, and that’s just the way Shipley liked it. Long as he could trust Wynan Wilson…”
“The minute you find out anything from the lab, you let me know. Got that, Chapman?”
“So I’m on the case, right?”
“Yeah. Shipley had no business being at the apartment while you were working it, and the mayor’s wife certainly doesn’t get to call the shots in my squad.” The ashes on the tip of Peterson’s cigarette were about to singe his lips. He removed the stub and used it to light the next one.
“Then I’m back in business,” I said. “Thanks, Loo. I’ll head down to the DA’s office and get a search warrant.”
“Pug McBride does the warrant. Talk him through it. Sending you into Shipley’s place today would be like sticking the reverend with a red-hot poker.”
“Pug? Give me a break, will you? He won’t have a clue what he’s looking for. And I can’t tell him. It’s like porn, boss. I’ll just know it when I see it.”
“What kind of search warrant would that be, Chapman? A little too loosey-goosey to pass muster in a court of law,” Peterson said. “We go in tight and clean on this operation.”
“Let me pick who searches with Pug?”
“Shoot.”
“Jimmy. Jimmy North.”
Peterson tilted his head and took another drag. “Good choice. Smart kid.”
Jimmy North had been third grade for a couple of years. He was new to homicide, but he was a really fine detective. He was a third-generation cop, with two younger brothers in uniform. North was that rare combination I sort of identified with my own policing skills-his college education hadn’t fucked up his street instincts. We all liked teaching him and he soaked up the knowledge like a sponge.
“Alexandra isn’t handling this one with you, is she?”
“She took the day off, Loo. I haven’t talked to her.”
He seemed not to trust my answer. “Well, best if she stays on the sidelines. She and Shipley have a history.”
“That’s where she’ll be,” I said. “You keeping me on a leash, too?”
“Now that I dragged you in, why don’t you work this shift, Chapman? Get your case loaded up in the system. Stay close in the event Commissioner Scully gets pushback.”
“Where’s Jimmy?”
“In the field. Who do I send him to at the DA’s office?”
“Talk to Coop’s secretary. Someone in the white-collar division has Shipley on a fraud watch. But this homicide has all the signs of domestic violence. The DV assistant who’s catching today should work on the warrant together with him.”
I closed Peterson’s door behind me and walked through the grim squad room to my desk.
I settled in with my steno pad to do my case reports. I punched in the UF 61 number for the homicide of Wynan Wilson-the Uniformed Force document that had been filled out by the first cop on the scene-and the file came right up on my screen.
The NYPD was probably the last institution to join the computer age. Until very recently, I had done all my reports on a typewriter. Now every crime was entered into the Enterprise Case Management system, and every person working on the matter could access it and contribute as evidence developed. Officers in patrol cars had iPads that gave them rap sheets of suspects and case dispositions in real time, and could even provide information on the number of gun arrests at a building location when they responded to a robbery in progress.
Not only was the Wilson 61 already uploaded, but so were Lee Petrie’s digital photographs of the crime scene and evidence.
I closed the screen without starting my report. I pulled up the motor vehicle bureau site and searched for cars registered to Hal Shipley and the Gotham City Humanity Activists’ center.
Shipley owned two cars-a silver Mercedes sedan and a light-blue BMW two-seater convertible. I guess activists like their money going to well-wheeled leaders.
Three of the machines registered to the Gotham center were SUVs, and the fourth was a minivan. Shipley could man a small protest anywhere in the city just by filling up his own fleet.
I checked the plates, but none of them ended in C78. I’d do that search later to find who had been chauffeuring Hal to the Wilson apartment. The plate number might not matter at all.
It was almost five o’clock when I finished entering all my case reports into the computer program. I spent another twenty minutes on the phone talking Jimmy North through the search of Shipley’s office and what to look for.
Nan Toth, one of Coop’s closest friends, would handle the warrant but couldn’t go before a judge to get it signed till tomorrow morning. The tricky part she had to navigate was to make it all about Wynan Wilson but allow us to get our mitts on Shipley’s paper trail.
The ME called to confirm that I would be present for the autopsy, also in the morning, at nine o’clock.
I turned my attention back to the information I had about Takeesha Falls. I left a message for Angela Wilson, asking how she was doing and whether she could give me names of friends of her father’s who might tell me more about Keesh. I still had a few hours in which I could try to do some interviews.
Guys were in and out of the squad at the four o’clock shift change. You never just worked a solid eight hours in homicide. Witnesses were hard to find and interviews ran over, so the day detectives were only now signing out.
I didn’t look up at the footsteps behind me, though they were lighter than most of the guys’.
“Heard you got a live one.” Vickee Eaton kissed me on top of my head. “Don’t you go making work for us at public info, Mike.”
“Detective Eaton, since when did you start making house calls?”
She shrugged. “I’m on my way home. Mercer’s working late, so it’s just me and Logan, and he’s happy hanging out with my sister, getting his sugar high from the candy she feeds him.”
“Manhattan North isn’t remotely on your path to Queens, and I just had the pleasure of your company last night, so this must be an emergency stop for-”
“No emergency. Just-”
“For advice to the lovelorn. Is that it, Vickee?”
“I don’t have any advice, Mike. You know that.”
“Then what?”
“Two things. I know you spoke to Catherine today. She really doesn’t want to be caught up in the middle of anything between you and Alex. It’s one of the reasons I’m here, ’cause she got what she knows from me. The second thing is that I’m getting nervous. I mean, I wasn’t until a little bit ago.”
“Why now?” I said, pretending to lose myself in a photograph of Wynan Wilson’s head.
“I was tough on Alex last night, okay? I thought she’d be happy about Tanner, but I didn’t know much about what had gone on with Estevez until Catherine told me today. I pushed some mean buttons-even about you.”
“So?”
“Well, yes, Alex has got a terrible temper. When I heard she was playing hooky, I felt like I was part of the cause. But she’d never disappear without telling Laura to cover for her. She’s never left Laura hanging, even if she planted a white lie to take a day off.”
I hadn’t thought of that, but it was probably true.
“Mike, I couldn’t do this to you on the phone. Tell you-”