Lucy.”
“You, too.”
Sean hung up and frowned.
“What’s going on?” Suzanne asked.
“Lucy is worried about Hans,” he said. Then he ran his theory by Suzanne. “Can you think of a way to run it?”
“No, but our analysts might. Except I still have them working on the notes Tony and I found in Rosemary’s attic.”
“Maybe that’s exactly where we should start—find out what stories she wrote that quoted Theissen, then dig up those cases and find out who else was involved.”
“We’re looking for a needle in a haystack.”
“But we have one more thing coming our way—a suspect.”
“Rewind. Why do we have a suspect?”
“The unidentified guy in the subway tape. Patrick will be here in”—he looked at his watch—“twenty-five minutes. With the original security disk. And maybe we can round up that Bartz guy again. Because we know that Rosemary was writing a book about the Cinderella Strangler, but she was also looking into her friend Theissen’s death. She could have been killed for either reason.”
“Or something completely different,” Suzanne said.
*
“Watch the guy in the gray jacket and dark baseball cap,” Patrick told Sean, Suzanne and DeLucca thirty minutes later.
Patrick had come through with the original digital security disk from Theissen’s accident. “He’s already there when Theissen comes down the stairs. There he is,” Patrick said, pointing to a clean-cut man wearing slacks, a dark polo shirt, and baseball cap. He could be twenty or forty, the quality was poor and the images in black-and-white. The perspective was distorted because of the wide-angle camera.
The suspect was watching Theissen as he came down the stairs. A group of seven teenage boys walked behind him, a bit rowdy. This was the main station near Citi Field. According to the report, Theissen used the subway every day to commute to and from work, even though he left at different times. This was the end of his day.
“I watched the earlier footage,” Patrick said, “and Mr. Ball Cap was there for twelve minutes, coming in on one train and just standing. But during that time, several trains, local and express, went through the station. He didn’t get on any of them.”
As they watched, a group of four—two girls, two boys—got off one train and crossed the platform. The two groups eyed each other. It was crowded, the end of rush hour. Ball Cap moved between the two groups and said something to one of them, then bumped him. The kid responded by pushing him, but as Sean watched he realized that though Ball Cap had been pushed, the reaction was aimed at the kid on the other side of him.
What had Ball Cap said? Had he passed the blame for the verbal assault off on another person?
Theissen turned and kept his eye on the groups, and Ball Cap moved around the outside. There were two distinct situations—one was the pending brawl and the people drawn into it; everyone else moved to the perimeter, not wanting to get in the middle. Theissen stayed on the periphery, watching as a cop might to determine if the situation was getting out of control.
Ball Cap pushed Bascomb, the guy in prison for involuntary manslaughter, directly into Theissen. Theissen stumbled back. On the surface, Ball Cap appeared to be trying to get away from the fray.
“Did you see that?” Patrick said.
Everyone had missed it, so Patrick went back.
“Watch his foot,” Patrick said.
As the scene replayed, Sean kept his eyes on Ball Cap’s feet. After he pushed Bascomb into Theissen, Ball Cap moved to get away and in the process tripped Theissen as Theissen staggered back and tried to catch himself. The retired agent stumbled and Ball Cap used the crowd as a shield to slip away as Theissen fell onto the tracks.
“He kicked him,” DeLucca said. “When Theissen stumbled, Ball Cap tripped him, then kicked him using the crowd’s movement to hide his attack.”
“Exactly. The fight was a diversion he caused. At first glance, he looks like he was defending himself, but when you see the whole thing and focus on his individual actions, it’s deliberate,” Patrick said. “Now here’s the interesting thing—I talked to the transit cops and they said there was another incident very similar two days before. They don’t keep the tapes this long unless there’s an open investigation, but one of the officers said he remembered it because when he was called to the brawl he thought, Not again. Theissen was at the first brawl as well, and gave a witness report. What if Ball Cap attempted it once