“For sure. Thanks for sticking your head in.”
Howard left and Mercer motioned me back to my office as he finished the conversation and hung up.
“It’s not good news, Alex.”
“Won’t they give you the phone records?”
“I can pick them up in the morning,” Mercer said. “Problem is, it turns out that flurry of calls to nine-one-one yesterday that we thought were from Salma Zunega’s landline?”
“Yeah?”
“She was telling the truth. She never made those calls.”
“I don’t understand. I thought everyone was so certain they originated from her apartment.”
“That’s what showed up as the incoming line on the caller ID,” he said. “That’s what it looked like till they did the actual computer search today. She was spoofed.”
“What?”
“Spoofed. Somebody wanted us to think she was crazy. Somebody wanted to make sure that cops wouldn’t respond if she called again.”
Phone “phreaks,” as they were known in the trade, had mastered dozens of ways to alter the caller ID information on the telephones of individuals whose numbers they knew. Web sites had developed as commercial enterprises to sell the software to anyone interesting in spoofing, either as a prank or as a criminal enterprise, and law enforcement agencies had been slow to shut the programs down.
“Can’t we get the real number?” I asked. “Can’t we get to the number of the person who made the calls?”
“It’s laborious, Alex. These guys use Internet services with all kinds of blind lines and different providers that link to the real number.” Mercer rarely displayed any sign of a temper, but he was angry now. “They even come with scramblers to disguise the voice of the caller. Damn it, it’s going to take days to find the real person behind all this.”
“No wonder Salma was so hostile to all of you last night.”
“Shame on me for not even thinking she was telling the truth.”
“There’s nothing different you could have done, Mercer,” I said. “Why would any of us think it was a death spoof?”
TWENTY
“Did you call the commissioner yet?” Mike asked.
He was the last one to arrive in the conference room, where Mercer and I had taken our place with Nan and Catherine, and a large chalkboard to map out the links between the various crime scenes.
“Scully, Battaglia, the mayor,” Mercer said. “They’re all tied up at City Hall. Coop’s been assured by Rose Malone that it doesn’t involve us.”
“He’s going to be ripped that his department got spoofed,” Mike said. “He’ll be loaded for bear.”
“It’s not a first,” Nan said. “There was a major incident in a Carolina town last year. Someone spoof-called a hostage situation and the entire SWAT team responded. The lady inside had a heart attack.”
“Bet that lawsuit set the department up for a pretty settlement. Remind me not to tell that one to Scully.”
“I’ll get you some better examples.”
Mike reached up and turned on the television set that was mounted over the long conference table. “Might as well see what’s got their blood boiling at City Hall.”
He was flipping to the local all-news channel when he stopped on the Jeopardy! game board.
“I know better than to say it’s inappropriate, don’t I?” Nan asked.
“I’ve already got a mother. Two, if you count Coop’s more-than-occasional nagging,” Mike said, reaching for half of a ham-and-cheese sandwich. “A few minutes too early for the big prize. Let’s check the Blue Room.”
There were a handful of reporters standing on the steps at City Hall. They were the young men and women assigned to the local political beat, not the raucous tabloid crowd that I presumed was still keeping vigil outside the Zunega apartment.
We picked up the sound as the NY1 correspondent was talking. “… don’t know why this flurry of activity escalated inside the mayor’s office, but he was joined this evening by District Attorney Paul Battaglia and Commissioner Keith Scully. Those names put crime on everyone’s mind, as we wait out these unexpected appearances.”
“I think it’s all a ruse so the mayor doesn’t have to show up at Gracie Mansion and face that music,” Mike said.
“Ssssh,” I said. “You want to know what’s happening or not?”
I was at the board, drawing a map of the location of the shipwreck in Queens and the various sites in Manhattan that seemed to be in play.
“And over my left shoulder,” the reporter continued, “you can see that the lights are still on in the City Council, where some kind of special session seems to be in progress.
“In the meantime, at the bottom of the steps here, the security detail made an interesting discovery this morning.”
“Coop made one too,” Mike said. “That her formerly skinny ass was taking on so much fromage-am I right? How’s that for a cheesy Frenchman?-that she crashed right through the tarp and went jawbone-to-jawbone with a colonial corpse.”
“That’s not where I fell, Inspector Clouseau.”
“No, Alex,” Mercer said, moving closer to the screen. “But this guy’s talking about the other burial pit right below the front steps. See?”
The reporter was standing with a Parks Department employee who had removed a section of fence to expose another piece of green tarp like the one I had fallen through behind the building.
“A minor accident here today refocused attention on the abandoned project that involved determining the occupants of these centuries-old graves that predated the construction of City Hall. Budget cuts put a halt to the excavations years ago, and a previous mayor’s protocol mandated that intact remains were not to be excavated.
“Uncovering the tarp today, which is riddled with large tears and damage from foul weather, we learned that these burial grounds have become a resting place for a wide assortment of objects that probably wouldn’t make it past the metal detectors at the top of the staircase, in the lobby of City Hall.”
“Nice take,” Mike said, swigging his soda.
“Mixed among the human remains, park crews found four switchblade knives, two box cutters, a whole bunch of sharp tools and instruments that were made long after the Half Moon sailed through these waters. You’d be surprised at the number of papers and identification cards that were just discarded like junk, here at the very entrance to the controls of our city government.”
“No different than the courthouse,” I said.
Every morning, perps and their entourages approached our building, often forgetting until they walked in the doorway that the metal detectors would reveal any weapons they were carrying. The first shift of court officers searched the two-foot-wide dirt perimeter daily, looking for discarded weapons.