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He pushed his hands over his face. “Lieutenant, I’ve been a boss for some years, and rarely work the streets. Rarely work cases. I supervise them. That was a deliberate choice on my part. I assist, I advise, I coordinate. I’ve taken primary on an investigation no more than a dozen times in the last six years.”
“You’re in charge and therefore responsible. That’s both reality and perception.”
“You’re saying this could have come through any of the cases any of my men worked.”
“Yes. I believe you had some active part, some visibility or gained some credit. He has not, as far as we know, sought revenge against any of your men. But on you. And the revenge was enacted shortly after your promotion was announced.”
Now his face was stricken. “He killed her because I got bars?”
She took the shot, dead-on, unsure if it would shock or revive. “Captain, he was always going to kill her. I’m sorry for it, but that’s the reality.”
He pushed up, lurched toward the windows to stare out.
“Go on, Lieutenant,” Whitney ordered.
“The timing may be important. You were promoted, Captain, and Deena was alone in the house for a period of time. In that part, I do believe he seized an opportunity. I think Dr. Mira’s opinions and theories will be valuable, but until I confer with her, we’ll approach it this way. We’ll go back ten years to start, and begin with terminations and/or arrests and imprisonments resulting in death. Next, arrests or imprisonments resulting in grievous injuries. Then life stretches.”
She paused as MacMasters stayed where he was, said nothing. Whitney signaled for her to continue.
“This was no small deal. To murder, to plan, to risk, it had to matter a great deal. We look for a connection to the perpetrator who corresponds with the age zone of our suspect.
“You get me the names,” she added, “I’ll run them down. Right now, give me the gut. Who pops out?”
With his back to the room, MacMasters took a breath that shuddered. “Leonard and Gia Wentz. They ran a cookshop, used primarily minors for dealers, to drum up trade around schools and vid dens. I had four detectives on that. We ran an op that busted them in January. Leonard drew down, and there was a brief firefight. Two of my men were injured. He’s doing a hard twenty-five, and she’s in for fifteen.”
“I remember that. Mid-January. It’s too close. Nothing this year. He stole the ID New Year’s Eve. He was already planning. Go back more.”
MacMasters turned from the window to pace. “My men do good work. It’s like trying to hold back the tide, but we do good work. We have a solid arrest and conviction rate. Low termination percentage.”
“Don’t overthink it, Captain. Don’t justify it. I’ll get us some coffee.”
Eve moved into the kitchen. It wasn’t going to work, she thought. Not yet in any case. He couldn’t pull himself out and think cop. Why should he? How could he?
But she got coffee together, took it out.
“We ruin lives,” she said. “If you look at it from the other end, some guy’s doing what he does—raping, killing, stealing, dealing, whatever. It’s what he does, or what he did this time for whatever reason. We come along and we stop him. More, we do whatever we can to put him in a cage for it. He loses his freedom, his scratch. Could lose his home or family if he’s got one. Sometimes if things go south, he loses his life.”
She drank coffee, hoping she was getting through. “We ruined it. We’re responsible. You’re responsible. Think about the lives you’ve ruined. Think about it that way, not about doing the job, but the results. From the other side.”
“Okay.” He took the coffee, met her eyes. “Okay. Nattie Simpson. She’s an accountant, nice little place on the Upper East, decent income, husband, one kid. On the side Nattie was dealing illegals and cooking the books for a mid-level operation. When we took it down, we took her down with it. She’s in Rikers doing the last year of five. They lost the nice little place on the Upper East. The husband divorced her two years ago, got full custody of the kid.”
“How old’s the kid?”
“He’d be about ten, twelve.”
“Too young. Maybe she has a brother, a lover. We’ll look at her.”
MacMasters dragged a hand over his hair. She could see him grasping, reaching, trying to come back. “Maybe this was a hired hit.”
“I don’t think so. Give me one more name, off the top.”
“Cecil Banks. Bad guy. Dealt Zeus, hunted runaways and kids who ran the streets, got them hooked, pimped them out. Ran an underage sex business. We worked with SVU on that. When we busted the main operation he tried to rabbit. He went out a window, missed the fire escape, and took a header down four stories. A lot of people lost heavy income and access when we took him and his operations out.”
“When?”
“Two years ago last September.”
“Family?”
