“I know nothing about any of this.”
“Again, not really my question. Did you have sex with Sara Ewes?”
“I don’t have to answer that.”
Ekman interjected, “No, but your refusal comes with consequences. And she did name you as the father, just so you know.”
Devine now swiveled his gaze in the man’s direction. “And it’s totally legal for cops to lie to suspects to trick them into saying something. So that could be a load of bullshit. Show me where she says that.”
Shoemaker said, “Paul, this guy sounds like a lawyer. Who woulda thought that about a fine Army lad.”
Devine knew all about this because the CID had interrogated him after Hawkins’s death, tried to screw with his head, lied to him, tried to get him to confess, pounded him with everything they had. Only the body had been so torn up by animals that the forensics were of no use in assigning legal blame to Devine, and the injuries he had incurred in his fight with Hawkins were minimal and inconclusive. All soldiers had bumps and bruises and cuts. And any DNA of one man found on the other was also inconclusive, since they served in close proximity to one another. No witnesses, no other evidence, and a time of death that was all over the place allowed Devine to reasonably argue that he had an alibi for the broad time window in question. The CID had finally given up. Devine also assumed that they didn’t want to pursue it more thoroughly because doing so might open up for scrutiny the whitewash investigation they had done of Blankenship’s supposed suicide.
“You can take my prints and my DNA. I did not kill her.”
“How about a polygraph? Will you take one of those?”
Devine sat back. “Which means you found no DNA and no prints at the murder scene. Or maybe you just didn’t find any of mine. And you’re trying to railroad me into a confession so you can clear this one off your list and make your boss happy and Wall Street rest easy. Only if you did pin it on me, the killer would still be out there. But I’ll make a deal with you.”
“I don’t remember asking for a deal,” said Ekman.
“I’ll take a polygraph if you show me where Sara names me as the father and you swear in an affidavit that it’s legit and not made up to get me to confess to something I didn’t do.”
“You watch too many cop shows,” said Shoemaker. “But while we can make deceptive statements to you in an interrogation, we can’t manufacture evidence. That would be a crime.”
“Do I take that as a no-go on my offer, then?”
“Where were you between the hours of midnight and four a.m. on Friday?”
Devine grimaced impatiently. “Come on, I already told the other guy all that.”
“What other guy?” said Shoemaker sharply.
“Hancock.”
“Hancock?” parroted Ekman.
“Detective Karl Hancock with NYPD. I guess he’s working the case with you two.”
The two men exchanged a glance that Devine couldn’t really read, but didn’t like.
“When did this Hancock talk to you?” asked Ekman.
“He was waiting for me at the train station near my place in Mount Kisco, this was on Friday. And he was waiting for me at my house the next day when I got home from work.”
“And you told him where you were that night?”
“Yes, and he wrote it down.”
“Describe him,” said Shoemaker.
“Black guy, around six one, bald, athletic build, in his forties. Dressed like you guys, and he said he was driving a coffee-and-cigarette motor pool piece of crap, at least in so many words. Because NYPD hadn’t bought new cars in ten years, at least that’s what he said. He also told me he lived in Trenton, New Jersey.” He looked between the two men. “Don’t you know him? How many homicide detectives are there in the city?”
“Manhattan South Homicide, where we’re from, has ten of them, down from twenty-six in 2001. And you’re looking at two of them.”
“He had a badge that looked real. And he talked like a cop. He was the one who told me that Sara hadn’t killed herself. That she was murdered.”
“He said that?” exclaimed Ekman. “On Saturday?”
“Yeah. And he knew all about my background in the Army.”
“Exactly what about the crime did he know?” asked Ekman.
Devine told them everything, including the straight-line ligature versus the inverted. But he didn’t tell them about the similar case in the Army that he had mentioned to Hancock. “He said that proved it was a murder and not a suicide.”
Shoemaker gave his partner a nervous glance, one that showed he was no longer fully in control of the situation. His partner seemed to read this like a cue card.
“Okay, let’s move on for now. Where were you between those times?” asked Ekman.
“At home in bed until four. Then I was doing my workout at the high school next to where I live. Then I showered, dressed, and took the six twenty train just like always. Must be cameras in the station to show me coming in. Not that many people are there at that hour.”
Shoemaker said, “You could have killed her that night, taken the train home, and come back into town on the six twenty.”
“But again, the train station may have cameras, and the office building has a security guard.”
“You didn’t have to take the train,” Ekman pointed out. “And the guard makes rounds.”
“But you need a security card to get in the building. There’s a record of coming and going because of that.”
And it shows me coming and me going at the critical time in question, so why are you jerking my chain on all this other crap? wondered Devine.
“We’re checking all that,” said Shoemaker. “It’s taking a little time to pull the records.”
And I won’t be happy with what you find.
“You get up at four a.m. to work out?” said Ekman.
“Doesn’t everybody?”
“Anybody corroborate this?”
“No. I slept alone and I worked out alone. Nobody else around.”
“No roommates?”
“Yeah. Three. But they were asleep at that hour, like most normal people. They can’t alibi me.”
“How do you know?” asked Ekman.
“Because I asked them if they could when this Hancock guy showed up and seemed to be trying to pin all this on me. But they couldn’t. And I wouldn’t ask them to lie.”
Shoemaker studied him so closely that Devine was sure the man was going to read him his rights and cuff him. “What a nice guy you are,” he said, but there didn’t seem to be much acid behind it. The big cop just looked truly confused.
“If you saw this Hancock again, would you recognize him?” asked Ekman.
“Hell yes I would. I don’t like getting played. And why pick on me in the first place? That’s what I don’t get.”
“Well, maybe there’s something special about you, Devine, at least when it comes to Sara Ewes,” said Shoemaker.
Devine didn’t like any bit of that remark.
The two men rose as though connected by string. “You don’t leave the area,” warned Shoemaker.
“I have no intention of doing that. I have a job to do.”
Shoemaker looked around. “Yeah, making dough at this place.”
“That’s not the job I’m referring to.”
And it wasn’t. He was thinking about Emerson Campbell and the mission. He was also thinking about dead Sara Ewes.
Shoemaker and Ekman exchanged curious glances and then left.
Devine sat there for a few minutes digesting everything that had just happened and trying to place it neatly into certain boxes in his mind that would make the most sense. Some of it did, much of it didn’t.