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I CONTINUED TOsit at my desk, considering what Sergeant Pagan had told me. Perry Martin had been a danger to women during college. Did that mean he was a murderer too? That could be a leap. I needed to fill in a lot of gaps in the case.
I spent an hour figuring out what I needed to verify about Perry Martin. Then I had my team with me. Terri Hernandez, Walter Jackson, and Harry Grissom all sat around a table in our squad bay. It took me about ten minutes to bring them completely up to speed.
Harry Grissom said, “This is all good info we could use to put together a case, but not nearly enough to charge a man with murder. I’m not dismissing the assault on a woman more than fifteen years ago. I’m saying that a defense attorney would eat us alive if we tried to introduce this information in court.”
Terri Hernandez chimed in. “And we’d have to really cover this from every angle. We’ve had so many suspects turn out to be dead ends that any conviction is going to be difficult at best.”
I looked at Walter Jackson to see how pessimistic he was.
He chuckled and raised his hands. “I just find the information out; you’re the one who has to make the case.”
I said, “We need to find a way to verify that he was calling The Girlfriend Experience. We can’t rely on a statement from Thomas Sloan.”
Walter said, “I’ve got about a dozen numbers that are connected to burner phones.” He picked up the sheet of numbers Allie Pritz had provided. NYPD tech guys had also managed to grab the records from Allie’s phone. Walter had done some reorganizing. Each sheet was arranged by the number that had called The Girlfriend Experience. Two of the phones had called the service only once. A few had called two times. There were three phones that had called the service multiple times. I studied the three sheets of paper. One of the phones had a big gap between a flurry of calls. Last year and this year the phone called in September, October, and November. Then it hit me.
I pulled out my phone and started scrambling to find the calendar. My colleagues just stared at me as I quickly checked each date. Then I looked up and said, “Every call from this phone listed on your sheet was during football season and most of the calls were on a Wednesday or Thursday. Martin’s ex-fiancée said he was always looking for an edge in football. Even Thomas Sloan told us the coach said it helped him focus and he called plays better on Fridays if he used The Girlfriend Experience.” I jabbed my finger on the page and said, “This is the phone we need to look at closely. Maybe we can get lucky and connect it to Martin.”
Harry Grissom nodded his head. “That’s as good a plan as any. Maybe we can find a way to use this young woman you guys found, Allie what’s-her-name.”
I immediately said, “Pritz. I’m not sure it’s worth the risk. She keeps calling, telling me she wants to help. But let’s see what we can find out first.”
No one lingered after our quick meeting. Everyone had a job to do, and we realized we needed to make an arrest before another girl ended up dead.
Chapter90
EACH OF USjumped on an assignment. Terri tracked down infoon the burner phone we were trying to link to Perry Martin. Walter scoured the computer for anything he could find that put Perry Martin in the vicinity of our homicide victims. Even Harry Grissom briefed command staff on what could be a touchy case. Once the media got wind of a string of connected homicides, there’d be a feeding frenzy. They liked nothing more than to report on a serial killer loose in New York.
I drove north to Yonkers, where Coach Martin lived at the end of a quiet street. The coach’s house was cute but tiny. I saw his little boy and girl playing in the front yard while their pretty mother looked on from a porch only big enough to hold two chairs. This didn’t look like the kind of place where a guy who could spend a thousand to fifteen hundred dollars a night on dates lived. It looked like a schoolteacher’s house.
I felt a pang of sadness. The repercussions from a murder affect so many people. The victim, of course. The victim’s family is always devastated, sometimes torn apart. The other side of that coin, which few people ever look at, are the effects on the family of the killer. If Perry Martin was our killer, and we got a conviction, those poor kids would grow up without their father through no fault of their own. His young wife would be crushed and doubt every future relationship. I wanted to go tell Martin’s wife to grab the kids and leave right now. But I knew I couldn’t.
Suddenly I realized how Coach Martin could afford to call The Girlfriend Experience. Then I ran by the Bronxville Police Department to talk to my new friend Detective Ed Horvath.
He didn’t exactly seem thrilled to see me. His greeting was “What do you want now?”
“I’m just curious—have you noticed any problems out at the Wolfson Academy? When I was there one day, I heard someone mention some missing money.”
Horvath said, “Are you kidding me? Everything goes missing at that place. They lost about six thousand dollars in cash over the last year. The administration fired two secretaries and a janitor over it. Even after I told that goofy headmaster they couldn’t have been responsible. What an asshole.” Amid the mountain of paper on his desk and on top of the credenza behind him, he pulled one sheet out of a stack like he knew exactly where it would be.
“There were a couple of cars broken into over the year. The burglars knew exactly which ones to hit. They got five hundred dollars in cash from one and a computer from the other. Plus, a couple of the classrooms have been burglarized. The headmaster thinks it might be some of the students. I’m not so sure.”
Pieces of the puzzle were starting to fall into place.
Chapter91
TERRI MET MEback in the city. She’d learned that the burner phone that had called The Girlfriend Experience in the fall last year and this year had been purchased from a kiosk at a tiny mall in Yonkers. Not too far from where the coach lived. Terri also told me that Allie Pritz had called her again to tell her she really wanted to help. Terri said, “For once it sounds like we have a cooperating witness who really wants to do the right thing and not just work off charges. She’s pissed. She wants justice. This guy murdered her friends.”
I looked at Terri and said, “I checked the schedule and there are two more football games left on the Wolfson Academy schedule. One is this Friday. If the coach follows his schedule, he’ll call The Girlfriend Experience tomorrow or the next day. Or maybe Wednesday or Thursday of next week.”
Terri said, “You don’t think Martin would be worried? He’s killed at least three women. He can’t be so clueless that he thinks the cops aren’t looking into it.”
“I doubt he has any idea. I think he floats along in life, following his impulses, and doesn’t really consider the consequences. We just have to make a case that sticks.”
“If we can interview him and get a DNA swab, maybe the medical examiner can go back over the bodies, find something to link him to one of the murders. But that’s a big if.”
I said, “I hate saying this, but we’re going to have to bring Allie Pritz in on the case. We’ve already got The Girlfriend Experience phone. All we need to do is have her answer it. Martin would probably recognize her voice since he’s called so many times. He should be satisfied everything is okay.”
Terri said, “I’ll have someone from the Tech Unit work it out so Allie can answer the phone from her house while we keep it in evidence. We’ll set up a recorder so any call coming in on the line is automatically saved.”
