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“That’s the way I read it, too, so this morning I watched the videotape of each person signing the guest book, while I ticked off their names, and this is what I discovered. . . .” He turned to the VCR on the credenza. The videotape had already stopped at the end, and he did a quick, brief rewind; then he pressed the
play button as he said, “This is the best shot we have of Valente’s emissary, Mrs. Marie Angelini.” The tape showed a well-dressed, gray-haired woman with her hands in Leigh Manning’s.
“What’s the relationship?” Shrader asked.
“Marie Angelini is Valente’s aunt. She raised him along with her sons, Angelo and Dominick. Angelo died in a fight twenty-five years ago, when he was in his early twenties. Dominick, whose picture you have, became a CPA and has a firm of his own. Guess who his biggest client is?”
“Valente,” Womack said.
McCord nodded. “Right—Valente in all his many and varied corporate entities. One of those entities, a very minor one, is a large restaurant and market in the East Village called Angelini’s. According to the records filed with the secretary of state in Albany, Marie Rosalie Angelini is the sole owner, but when the Feds were investigating Valente, they discovered that he put up all the capital for the new restaurant and the expansion of the original market next door. He also owns the buildings they’re in.”
“I’ve heard of Angelini’s,” Sam said, startled. “It’s very popular. It takes weeks to get a reservation.”
“The market and the restaurant are both cash businesses,” Womack put in, “which makes them a very convenient place for Valente to launder some money.”
“That’s what the state prosecutors think, but they haven’t been able to prove it.” McCord paused to turn off the VCR; then he looked at the people gathered around his desk. “Now let’s talk about what we know, and what we need to find out. Right now, all we know is that someone held Manning’s thirty-eight to his right temple and blew his brains out. Then they wiped their prints off the gun, wrapped Manning’s hand around it and fired it again, this time through the open window on the passenger side of the vehicle.
“The lab is still going over all the fibers, hairs, and particles that CSU collected from the vehicle and the house, but that’s going to take time and I’m not counting on any great revelations from the lab. I think it’s possible, even likely, that Valente and Leigh Manning were at the cabin together at some point, cleaning up. We know Manning drank wine with someone before he died, but both glasses had been rinsed—with snow, I presume—and then carefully wiped clean of all prints. The floor in the closet was coated in dust, but the rest of the floor was freshly swept to make certain we couldn’t get any footprints.”
He reached for a yellow tablet and glanced at his notes before he said, “That’s all we know right now. In order to build our case against Valente, we need to establish that he’s involved with Leigh Manning. We also need to find out if Logan Manning knew about it. If he suspected his wife was screwing Valente, then he probably told somebody else. We need to find out who he talked to, and what he said. I’d like to know why he suddenly invited Valente to his home for a party, and I’d like to know the real reason he bought that gun. I think it’s possible he bought it because of Valente. It’s even possible that he invited Valente to the cabin in the mountains and threatened him with it. Or tried to use it on him.
“Leigh Manning isn’t going to talk to us about Valente, but you can bet she’s confided some of the tender details of her affair to someone else, probably another woman. I’ve never met a woman yet who could keep an extramarital affair a total secret. We need to find out who she’s talked to and what she’s said.
“On the other hand, I can guarantee you that Valente hasn’t talked to anyone about anything, so there’s no point in looking for his confidants. I’m getting Valente’s telephone records, but don’t count on seeing any calls to Leigh Manning on them. He’s too cagey for that. He’ll have used a phone that can’t be traced to him.”
Womack rubbed his shoulder as he said, “I just want to be clear on what we’re after, Lieutenant. Obviously, we want to hang Manning’s murder on Valente. But when I talked to Captain Holland this morning, I got the impression that we’re also trying to use the Manning murder investigation as a means to investigate Valente from other aspects, too.”
“The answer to that question has three parts, so listen very closely, Womack: One, we want to hang Manning’s murder on whoever killed him and whoever conspired with the killer. I have no doubt that Valente conspired with Leigh Manning in that murder. Two, we want to use this murder investigation as a means to investigate Valente from every possible angle. That should be easier for us to do than it was for the Feds because in the process of investigating a murder at the local level, we’ll be able to get our local judges to sign wiretap authorizations, search warrants, and whatever else we need. Three—and this is just as important as number one and number two—Captain Holland isn’t calling the shots in this investigation, I am. I report to Commissioner Trumanti, and for the duration of this investigation, you report to me, not Captain Holland. Is that clear?”
Womack looked fascinated and agreeable, but not particularly intimidated. “I hear you, Lieutenant.”
“Good. In the future, if you have any further questions or comments, you take them to me, not Captain Holland. I’ll keep him informed as I see necessary. Is that also clear?”
Womack nodded, and McCord looked satisfied. “We’ve already had one setback with Valente.”
“What setback is that?” Shrader asked.
“Ever since the media found out Leigh Manning was with Valente in his helicopter last week, they’ve been speculating and investigating on their own, and stirring up a stink in the process. Valente knows it, and he’ll be even more careful than usual. Our job is to get information about him from witnesses, without appearing to be too interested in him.”
“Too bad we couldn’t ask the media to back off,” Shrader said.
McCord gave a short, mirthless laugh. “Don’t even think about it. If you ask reporters to back off on an investigation like this one, they not only intensify it, they start investigating you, looking for a connection or complicity.”
He walked over to the chalkboard and picked up a piece of yellow chalk. “Okay, let’s start talking to people. Thanks to Mrs. Manning, we have carte blanche to question everyone she and Manning knew, including their shrink and Manning’s business associates. Let’s start with the names she mentioned, make out a preliminary list, and see where they lead us.”
He wrote down four names in the top left-hand corner: Jason Solomon, Sheila Winters, Theta Berenson, Sybil Haywood. “Naturally, we’ll want to talk to the people at Manning’s office as well.” As he said that he wrote Manning Development under Sybil Haywood’s name. He paused and looked over his shoulder. “There’s one more person we should talk to soon.” He wrote Jane Sebring’s name on the board, then turned and said, “I was watching that videotape last night, and it seemed to me that Miss Sebring seemed unusually sympathetic and distraught for an ambitious, self-centered sex goddess with a reputation for using everybody she knows to get whatever she wants.”
“Where did you hear that about her?” Shrader asked, his forehead furrowed.
“It was in the Enquirer last week.”
Shrader laughed out loud. “You read the Enquirer, Lieutenant?”
“Of course not. I happened to notice the article on the front page”—as he finished the sentence he looked at Sam and smiled as if sharing a private joke with her—“while I was standing in line at the grocery store.”
Instead of sharing his little joke, Sam lifted her brows and looked at him with an expression of “And so?”
He actually looked a little rebuffed by her distant reaction. “Shrader,” he continued, “you and Womack start interviewing the people at Manning’s office today—” He broke off to answer the telephone. “McCord,” he said irritably, but his expression cleared within moments. He hung up and looked at the three detectives. “The Good Samaritan who rescued Leigh Manning the night of her accident has just turned up.”
“Where is he?” Shrader asked.
“Downstairs with his attorney. He wants to make a deal before he’ll talk to us.”
“What kind of de
al?” Womack asked quickly.
“I don’t know, but let’s find out.”
Chapter 36
* * *
Shrader and Womack watched through the two-way mirror as the man they’d dubbed the “Good Samaritan” sat down with his attorney in the interviewing room. McCord and Littleton sat down across the table from them.
“I’m Julie Cosgrove,” the attorney said, “and this is Mr. Roswell.” Roswell was in his mid-sixties, with a dissipated, weathered face, bad teeth, and a guilty, nervous smile. His jacket was torn at the right elbow, and the soiled cap that he politely removed as he sat down proclaimed him to be an aficionado of Coors.
“Mr. Roswell has answers to all your questions,” the attorney continued. “However, we want your assurance that if he gives you a statement, nothing he tells you here will be used to prosecute him.”
McCord leaned back in his chair, idly tapping his pencil on the yellow pad he’d carried into the interview room, until Roswell squirmed in his chair and looked uneasily at his attorney. “Just what does he think we would prosecute him for?” McCord said finally. “Other than withholding information and leaving the scene of an accident.”
“He didn’t leave the scene of the accident, he brought the victim to a safe location and asked someone to phone for help. As far as withholding information goes, his Fifth Amendment rights allow him to withhold information that might be self-incriminating. He’s here now because Mr. Manning was found murdered, and it’s been on the news that you thought there could be a connection between the murderer and whoever found Mrs. Manning that night and then disappeared.”
“What is it that he’s afraid we will prosecute him for?” McCord repeated implacably.
The attorney cleared her throat. “For operating a motor vehicle without a valid New York driver’s license on the night of November twenty-ninth.”
In comparison to the things Sam had been imagining, that was such a minor offense it was nonsensical, and she pressed her lips together to hide a wayward smile. Even McCord’s voice lost its edge. “Since that offense was not committed within my jurisdiction, I can’t guarantee that. However, I can guarantee that I will not feel inclined to report what I now know to the local authorities in the Catskills or to the state police. Will that suffice?”
