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“I did.” I turned my body slightly so I could draw and aim if I needed to. These guys held grudges that went on forever. They treated revenge like other people celebrated birthdays. They loved it. I wondered how Sal was related to Joe Paltrice. Without thinking, my hand ended up on the butt of my duty pistol.
Sal took another step closer. His eyes narrowed. “Jimmy Vale was my godson. I was going crazy until you grabbed that animal, Paltrice. Too bad no one has the balls to use the chair anymore.”
It was like I was looking at an entirely different man. His posture had changed and he was using his hands to talk. I said, “I remember the case. It was about six years ago. Paltrice tricked Jimmy into following him into an empty store. Then he strangled him.”
Sal shook his head. “He even knew Jimmy was protected. No respect. No common sense. Now there’s three kids without a dad and a grieving widow.”
It was like chatting with an old colleague. I said, “I broke the case because of a simple fingerprint on the door. Then I got a warrant for a DNA sample from Paltrice. I still remember the look on his face the day I arrested him.”
Sal chuckled and said, “You’re okay with me. We all decided not to do that kind of business in upper Manhattan anymore. It was all because of you. A newspaper article called you ‘dogged.’”
One of the Brooklyn brats heard him say that. The young man whined, “Sal, what the hell? We need our money.”
Sal called over his shoulder, “Not today, boys. I owe this guy.”
It’s nice to be surprised this way once in a while. I liked how Sal scolded his young comrades as he ushered them toward his Cadillac.
Sal looked at me and said, “This was sort of chickenshit. I was just showing the boys the old-school way of handling problems. You have my word that they won’t bother this pawnbroker again. But tell him he needs to know who he’s dealing with in the future.”
We nodded our good-byes. I needed to have a good, stern talk with Ronald Higdon.
Chapter68
FIRST THING INthe morning, I was sitting in Manhattan North Homicide’s conference room. I was still a little groggy after my evening entertaining a local organized crime figure. I could’ve charged the punks from Brooklyn with attempted burglary or some kind of destruction of personal property, but they wouldn’t have spent ten minutes in jail. I hate to quote Sal Ventri, but it didn’t seem worth clogging up the court system with petty bullshit.
Now Walter Jackson, Terri Hernandez, and my lieutenant, Harry Grissom, sat around a pressboard table that had seen better days. We had a lot of information from different sources that we needed to turn into an actual investigation. Something that led us toward the identity of whoever had killed Estella Abreu, Suzanne Morton, and Emma Schrade. I was convinced they were all connected whether we had the evidence to link them or not. I was trying not to get tunnel vision and just focus on one suspect. That’s why it was good to sit down and talk things through with other people familiar with the case.
One thing about my lieutenant: he doesn’t need to run every meeting. Harry likes to listen. Don’t get me wrong. He offers advice and insights, but he isn’t so insecure that he feels like he needs to prove he’s in charge.
That left me to turn to Walter and say, “You’re the one with all the information from The Girlfriend Experience burner phone. Was Allie Pritz right when she said she thought most of the calls came from other burner phones?”
The big man nodded. “Whoever set up this whole enterprise was very bright. You said this girl, Allie, also seemed sharp. There’s no way we would’ve known about it if someone hadn’t talked. The use of burner phones and keeping their profile low means they were able to operate without any concern about the police. You told me Allie was worried about her parents finding out? I think that was more likely than the police finding out.”
Walter had a slightly different demeanor whenever a supervisor was in the room. More monotone and less outgoing. I noticed he held back his urge to make puns on everything. I greatly preferred talking to my gregarious friend and listening to his puns in the privacy of his office at the side of the squad bay.
He picked up several sheets of paper with printouts of numbers and addresses. “Almost all the calls to this main burner phone were also from throwaway phones or phones that can’t be traced easily.” Walter slid a single sheet of paper to each of us. We each looked down at our sheets. Walter’s narration picked up again. “There are six names I was able to come up with so far.”
Terri looked up from her sheet and said, “Even a doctor was calling the line.”
“Not really. He’s just a veterinarian.” Walter sounded dismissive.
I threw in, “Still, they have to go through a lot of medical training.”
“But they also solve problems by euthanizing their patients. That is nowhere close to what a medical doctor does. Certainly they don’t adhere to the Hippocratic oath.”
I didn’t know what Walter’s problem with veterinarians was, but now wasn’t the time to explore it. I looked down the list of the other names and no one jumped out at me.
Harry Grissom looked directly at me and said, “How do you feel about this suspect, Kyle Banning?”
“Certainly he’s smart enough to use a burner phone. And the fact that he knew two of the three victims is a pretty good indicator. But his sixteen-year-old brother, Jaden, is also a decent suspect. And he can be connected to the third victim.” I shook my head. “If I could’ve just had another two or three minutes to talk with Kyle Banning before their father shut me down…There’s no way to check out an alibi unless someone tells you theyhavean alibi.”
Terri said, “I like the timeline Walter drew up for us. He gives us something definite to look at with each suspect. We know, within twelve hours, when Estella Abreu was murdered. I have a two-day window when Emma Schrade could have been murdered. The wild card is Suzanne Morton. The best the medical examiner could give us about a time of death was a one-week window. I say we focus on Estella and see if we can figure out where either of the Bannings were during that window.”
As usual, Terri Hernandez had expressed a practical and intelligent way of going about investigating these murders. The good news was that there were no new bodies. That made sense if our suspect knew we were looking at him.
And with the new names and numbers Walter had provided, we had plenty of work ahead of us.
Chapter69
