Strangled - Brian McGrory [128]
“Forget what I said,” he replied. “You really are still a horse’s ass.”
I ignored that, which is my right, and instead gave him the Reader’s Digest version of the Elizabeth Riggs saga. He shook his head in disbelief and said, “This thing’s out of control.”
I changed my tone and said, “Vinny, think back for a second to this past Tuesday, to Lauren Hutchens’s place on Park Drive. When you went down to meet the cops, you never even made it to the elevator, right?”
He replied, “Right. They were just getting off.”
I asked, “Had you pressed the call button yet?”
“No.”
I stayed quiet for a moment. He was looking at me suspiciously, squinting, the wheels turning inside his head just as they were already turning inside of mine.
I said, “I never told Foley on the phone what apartment Lauren Hutchens lived in. It wasn’t on the mailbox. It wasn’t in the phone directory. It wasn’t in any information I could find online.”
I paused, looking at Mongillo sitting there looking at me in the locked confines of a Boston Police visitation room. I asked, “How did they know to come to the fourth floor?”
Mongillo said nothing. He said nothing for many long moments until he asked, “You’re sure you didn’t tell Foley?”
I nodded. “Positive. Something’s been bothering me for a while on this, and I couldn’t figure it out. It came together when I saw Foley walking with Elizabeth toward her room tonight — at the same time I got the driver’s license saying she was a Phantom victim.”
I paused, thinking of the absurdity of it all: the detective as a serial killer, then and now. Then I said, “I never told the cops, but they knew exactly where to go. How?”
Mongillo looked at me hard and said, “Fair Hair, this is a pretty fucking extraordinary allegation you’re bantering about here —”
“Let me check something,” I said, cutting him off. I pulled out my cell phone, snapped it open, and called Elizabeth Riggs. It was three in the morning, but I was pretty certain she wouldn’t be asleep yet. Hell, she and Hank were probably replaying their favorite Jack Flynn moments — or at least that’s what I wanted to think.
Elizabeth picked up on the second ring, sounding not like I woke her up.
“Jack here,” I said, all business now. “Let me ask you something. Were you supposed to meet Mac Foley earlier today instead of tonight?”
Hesitation, then she said, “Yeah. I did. Early this afternoon. We met for an interview in the hotel. But I got a call from the national desk and had to run out on something else just as it began. So he agreed to come back later.”
She paused, then asked, “Why?”
“I’ll explain later,” I said. “Is Hank right there?”
“Yeah, we were just talking about you.”
See?
Hank got on the phone and I said, “I’ll explain this later, but don’t let her out of your sight, and don’t let Mac Foley within it.”
He replied in his easy voice, “I’ll be waiting to hear this one.”
When I hung up, I said to Mongillo, “There was a cop at the scene of the Lauren Hutchens murder who you seemed to know pretty well — Woody, if I remember right. I need you to ask him how he knew the apartment number.”
“Woody Garner,” Vinny replied. He looked at the clock on the wall, which said 3:05, and asked, “Now?”
“As soon as you can.”
He got up, walked over to the Plexiglas, and rapped on the window. The same cop as before came to the door, and Vinny said, “Hey, Ralphie, any chance you could check when Woody Garner’s on the clock again? Knowing him, it’s probably sometime next month.”
Ralphie laughed as if this was funny, then disappeared. He came back two minutes later and said, “Computer shows he’s doing an overnight detail for the gas company as we speak.”
Vinny, sitting across from me again, asked for his cell number.
“Always needing something else,” Ralphie responded. Then he gave it to him and disappeared again.
I offered Vinny my phone, but he reached into his back pocket and pulled out his own.
“They let a prisoner keep a cell phone?” I asked.
“Hey, it’s one thing to