4:45 Tuesday afternoon to cancel their meeting. She’d neither made nor received any phone calls on her cell phone or home phone in the hour before she canceled with Banker. Earlier in the day she’d made calls to the morgues in Brooklyn and Queens, to her assistant three times, and to the Starbucks where one of the Cinderella Strangler victims worked.
Suzanne was just as frustrated as Sean as they stared at the information. She picked up the phone without a word and called one of the numbers.
While he was waiting, Patrick called. “Thank God you’re done; I want to go home,” Sean said.
“Not so fast. I just spoke to Bascomb and we watched the security feed again. Several times in fact. He IDed every guy involved in the brawl except one.”
Sean leaned forward. “Do we have a good image?”
“Unfortunately, no. The quality was piss-poor as it was and Bascomb IDed people because he knew them well or by what they were wearing. But I called my former brother-in-law, the D.A. in San Diego, and he called the D.A. in New York, and I’m on my way to pick up the original digital copy of the security feed. I have to return it before we leave New York, but—”
“If we have the original I can enhance it,” Sean finished for him.
“We’ll be in Queens in forty-five minutes; hold tight.”
Sean hung up at the same time Suzanne got off her call. “We may have a lead on the guy who started the fight that knocked Theissen off the subway platform,” he told her.
“And Weber wasn’t only working on the Cinderella Strangler case. There was no reason for her to call Queens. I thought that was odd, because none of the victims were killed in Queens. She had called for a copy of Theissen’s autopsy report.” She pushed aside papers until she found the file. “We need to look at it again.”
Sean said, “Maybe she knew something we don’t.”
“I’m getting a headache,” Suzanne mumbled.
“No, seriously—if she pulled Theissen’s report, she may have thought there was something more to his death than an accident. If she knew something personal, or maybe it was the timing, or something we wouldn’t think to look at.”
“We can’t read her mind. We just need to do it all again. Talk to her assistant again. The professor. Rob Banker.” Suzanne started taking notes.
Sean understood why Suzanne was getting a headache. If they were dealing with different crimes, different cases, different suspects, until they knew what was connected and how, they’d be building scenarios that would get them nowhere.
But he had one idea that might help.
He called Lucy.
“How are you?” he asked.
“We couldn’t stop to see Hans,” she said. “Not that it would have helped. He’s still unconscious.”
“I’m really sorry.”
“I’m hiding in my room because I don’t want to face anyone yet. No one knows the truth. Everyone thinks it’s an accident, and I have to hold up that myth.”
“I’m planning on flying back tonight, though it might be late. I have a theory I need to run by you. What if Weber was an anomaly? What if her murder was because she was digging into Dominic Theissen’s accident?”
“Okay, I can see that, but where do Tony and Hans fit in?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“If connected, there’s two people involved.”
“I thought the same thing. But what if Weber was just a quasi-innocent bystander? We just found out that she was looking into Theissen’s accident. Patrick interviewed one of the gangbangers who pled to involuntary manslaughter and he can’t identify everyone involved in the brawl.”
“You’re thinking someone started it.”
“And if that’s the case, he was targeted. Is there any way to find out if Hans, Tony, Theissen, and Stokes worked any other cases together?”
“I don’t know. I’d have to ask Noah if there’s a way to search the data with agent parameters.”
“And more complex, I’d like a matrix of cases where any three of the four were involved, and any two of the four.”
“What might be simpler is to look at Weber’s articles and see what cases she wrote about, then compare that with the agent lists. If there is any—you’re talking about four cops who can’t talk anymore.”
“But that’s presupposing that she is a specific target, and I’m thinking she is a target because of something she learned. She was killed the same day she pulled all Theissen’s files. I think that’s the connection.”
“I’ll find out and call you tonight.”
“Thanks. And I’ll talk to Suzanne about it as well. Be careful,