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“The press, that’s a good one.”
“You’ll figure it out, I’m sure.”
“I appreciate this, Max. You have no idea.”
“I do. Have some idea. Anyway,” he sighs. “The senator wants his son’s death put to bed. He doesn’t need any bad press, not with elections coming up. Sympathy is fine. Skeletons coming out of the closet are not.”
“Got it. No problem. You’re doing me a solid. I won’t mess it up.” I owe Max plenty of favors, but we both know this isn’t really that. He’s throwing me a bone. He’s aware of the financial incentive on my end. Unlike Max, I’m on my own payroll. He’ll always have more cases than he has time to solve. And a pension at that.
Of course, what Max doesn’t know is that I am personally involved with a suspect in the case. Or that I have a stake that’s more than merely financial. He doesn’t know that I’m sleeping with a woman who is potentially tied to Lucas Bennett, or that the woman in the trench coat matches Ali’s description to a T.
All things considered, especially the last one, how could I possibly tell Max no?
* * *
The neighbor,Alfred Favero III, an old man easily pushing eighty, has a memory like an elephant. I tell him this after he describes seeing a woman that looks exactly like Ali. He recalls the exact date and time of her coming and going.
“You just wait until you have nothing to do but watch the comings and goings of your neighbors. It isn’t the blessing you think it is,” he says.
This man doesn’t know that this is already the case and I’m half his age, but I want him to feel special. I’ll get more information that way.
His hands shake as he speaks. “Lloyd’s Plumbing Co.,” he tells me. “That was the name of the company I read on the front of the man’s shirt.” He points to the apartment across the hall. “He came from that apartment. Bennett’s apartment.”
“And the woman? Had you seen her before?”
“I can’t recall seeing her, no. But it was late when I saw her, and usually I go to bed by 10:30. Just shortly after the ten o'clock news. That night, however, I’d had terrible indigestion brought on by Mildred’s lasagna. It kept me up.” He looks down the hall, one way and then the other. “Mildred’s my sister.”
"She sounds lovely.”
“You’d have to know her.” He leans on his cane and shifts his footing. “Sometimes I have insomnia. But that night it had been for sure Mildred’s lasagna. I always eat it, and I always call her to tell her how much I enjoyed it, even though it’s a lie. Just a little white one, though. She gets mad if I don’t. And trust me, you don’t want to see Millie mad.”
“Women,” I say, with an eye roll.
“I feel bad, but I know how much effort it takes to recreate the dish mother was famous for, Millie makes sure to tell me every time. So, I eat it. Even if it nearly kills me each time.”
Mr. Favero III describes hearing a knock across the hall on Lucas Bennett’s door around one a.m. the morning before Lucas’s body was discovered. Alfred tells me he was worried because sometimes the kid liked to have parties that kept him up and he was concerned this would be one of those nights.
“I’d been meaning to have a talk with him,” Alfred sighs. “I just never saw him in the daytime. He tended to come and go at night.”
“And the plumber? You didn’t see anyone else? Any friends of Lucas’s? People that regularly came by?”
“The plumber I saw come and go several times. The woman, she knocked on the door in the early morning hours. Like I said, maybe around one or so. When Lucas opened the door, she called out, ‘Surprise!’”
“And then what happened?”
“Then she opened the coat, and let it fall until it was just hanging there, off her shoulders. It finally stopped down around her elbows. She was naked underneath!”
My eyes narrow. “You saw all this through the peephole?”
“Sure did. Despite the indigestion, it turned out to be the best night I’ve had in a long time. I promised myself I’d make a point of staying up late more often.”
* * *
I sitat my desk thinking of Lucas Bennett’s neighbor and what he told me. Based on his description, the woman sure sounds like Ali.
But I’ve run a lot of investigations, and I know how eyewitness testimony can be. I shuffle through the case file and then look at the neighbor’s statement. I’ve seen this scenario dozens of times. I just have to give it some thought. It’s been a while.
Before our home was invaded and Abby was killed, I worked for the FBI. I’d had many roles over the years, but at that time I was working for the FBI's National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC) as a criminal investigative analyst, also known as a criminal profiler. My job was to compile and compare data from similar crimes and offenders to create a profile of a suspect. The basic premise is that behavior reflects personality. For example, in a homicide case, it was my job as an FBI agent to glean insight into personality through questions about the murderer's behavior at four crime phases. First, I’d consider what fantasy or plan, or both, the murderer might have had in place before the act. What triggered the murderer to act some days and not others?
