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“Ms. Green,” I said, “do you know why you’re here?”
She shook her head.
I remembered the emotional look on her face when Cedar jumped out his office window. I needed to determine the nature of their relationship.
“Ms. Green, you worked for Mr. Cedar. Did you date him too?”
She looked genuinely stunned by the accusation, and so did her attorney.
“Never,” she said. “I’m an old friend of Lauren’s. I babysit Tyler all the time.”
“Did you know that earlier today Lauren called the police?”
“No,” she said. “Is she all right? Is Tyler hurt?”
“Tyler is fine,” I said. “But Lauren showed me a bruise on her arm in the shape of her husband’s hand. She said he hurt her when she confronted him with evidence he’d been cheating on her. Both of the women he’d been seeing are dead. And he may have had other victims.”
“Jeffrey may have a temper, and I believe he may have cheated, but he’s not a killer,” the receptionist protested.
Olivia Green was quite insistent. She was also wrong.
“A killer is exactly what he was,” I said. “And note my use of the past tense. I’m sorry to inform you that Jeffrey Cedar is dead. He died trying to escape arrest for the crimes he committed. And in order to avoid your own arrest, I need you to corroborate Mr. Cedar’s whereabouts on the dates of multiple homicides currently under investigation by the NYPD.”
She opened her mouth to speak, until her lawyer cut in.
“My client has nothing to say at this time.”
A uniformed officer brought in boxes containing the contents of the receptionist’s desk and placed them on the table.
“You’re a meticulous record keeper, Ms. Green,” I said. “We’ve collected paper calendars going back years. Show us the current one. And the mileage logs on the car Mr. Cedar claimed as a business expense.”
With a trembling hand, she opened the boxes, looking through the contents until she found the requested documents and set them on the table.
“Did Mr. Cedar travel much?” I asked.
“Before Tyler was born, yes,” she said. “Not so much recently. But he did drive his car all over the city.”
And there, in Olivia Green’s perfect handwriting, was all the proof I needed. Cedar had almost certainly murdered Marilyn Shaw and Lila Stein—but on the evening Chloe Tumber was killed, he’d been in court, awaiting the decision of a deliberating jury. And the records showed equally airtight alibis for the murders of Elaine Anastas and the other two victims in Brooklyn and the Bronx.
Now I was positive. Jeffrey Cedar was a copycat. We still had the real killer to catch.
Chapter 74
As I came out of the interview room, I ran into Harry Grissom. He had been observing my questioning of Olivia Green.
“Great work, Mike,” my lieutenant said. “Now I need you to go home and get some rest. You’re no good to me or the investigation if you’re exhausted and distracted.”
“I’ve been exhausted and distracted for over a month.”
“Well, I don’t want it to go any further. Take tomorrow off if you ne
ed it. Spend some time with that beautiful family of yours.”
I took his word as command.
I came in the front door just before dinnertime, about the same time as Brian. He was carrying his small duffel bag and nodded hello. He shrugged when I asked how it was going. Was this the new normal in communication with my oldest boy?
Before I could get into any further questions with him, we both heard crying. When you have ten kids, the sound of crying isn’t immediately concerning, since it’s not all that uncommon—it’s likely that someone’s just annoyed with someone else.
