That generated another look from the guy—a series of them, actually—all aimed at me. Who the hell are you? What the hell took you so long to get here? And Can you hurry the hell up?
Granted, I may have been reading a little too much into a single arched eyebrow.
“This way,” said Elizabeth as we entered the bathroom. “He’s in the one on the end.”
As we walked toward the last stall, the only sound I could hear was in my head. That’s my son! That’s my son in there! Somehow it didn’t seem right that I, a total stranger, got to see Aaron VonMiller’s dead son before he did.
Then again, nothing seemed right about anything I was about to see. Except that I was meant to see it. That’s why I got the call from Elizabeth, who was “third-wheeling,” as she put it, on homicides across all precincts.
The killer was talking to us again. To me.
Without a word, Elizabeth stepped back so I could have a full view inside the stall, and for a few seconds I stared at Bryce VonMiller’s lifeless body crumpled on the floor, arms and legs askew. If I didn’t know better, he could’ve just been passed out.
But I knew better. So did Elizabeth.
“Where was it placed on him?” I asked.
Chapter 16
“IT WAS sticking out of his pants, the right front pocket,” said Elizabeth. “It’s been bagged and logged. Eddie’s got it.”
“Who’s Eddie?” I asked.
“That’s me,” came a voice from the doorway.
Eddie was the detective in the Men’s Wearhouse suit. As he walked toward me under the glare of the bright white neon lights mounted on the bathroom walls, it became evident that he was also Eddie of the Hair Club for Men. His plugs looked as natural as Mike Huckabee at a tea dance in Provincetown.
“Eddie, this is Professor Dylan Reinhart,” said Elizabeth, making the introduction. “Dylan, this is Detective Eddie Molson.”
“Like the beer,” he said, shaking my hand.
In his other hand was the evidence bag, exactly like the one Elizabeth had showed me in New Haven at Jojo’s. The difference was the playing card inside. There was no repeat of the king of clubs. Our killer had placed the two of hearts in the pocket of Bryce VonMiller’s pants.
“Anything from the Brat Pack out there?” asked Elizabeth.
Eddie rolled his eyes. “They’ll barely admit to having been in the bathroom,” he said. “They all knew of VonMiller—the kid had a rep—but the card didn’t mean anything to them.”
Although I could hear what Eddie was saying, I was listening more to his body language. The slouched shoulders, the pinching of his brow. Not to mention the way he stole a peek at his watch after our introduction. I wouldn’t expect the guy to be daisy fresh on the graveyard shift, but he still had a job to do. Tired was one thing. This guy was simply going through the motions.
“Did you only question them as a group?” I asked.
You would’ve thought I just insulted his mother. “Excuse me?” he said.
“They’re kids,” I explained. “Last I checked it’s still not cool to tell cops anything.”
Eddie chuckled. “Last you checked, huh?”
“I’m simply saying that one-on-one might work better.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” he said sarcastically. “Do you know what also might work better? Waterboarding. Perhaps we should do that, Professor. One-on-one, of course, not as a group.”
I glanced over at Elizabeth, who was content to simply watch from her perch in Switzerland, albeit with a noticeable smile. Fellow detective or not, Eddie had led with his chin. All bets were off.
“I’m sorry you’re offended, Detective Molson, like the beer, but I was simply making a suggestion,” I said. “Perhaps you couldn’t hear me clearly from where you’re phoning it in tonight.”
Eddie looked like a nine on a standing eight count.
“Christ, where’d you find this guy, Lizzie?” he asked.
Elizabeth winced. She clearly hated being called Lizzie. “Yale,” she said. “Or was it MIT? Professor Reinhart has a PhD from both, so I can’t remember. He was also in Forbes magazine’s “30 Under 30” issue a few years back, but I suspect the dimples had more to do with that than anything else.”
So much for Switzerland. And so much for Eddie.
“Hey, go at it, Professor,” he said, pointing out to the hallway. “Go interview each and every one of those spoiled brats about their little dead friend in here, the club king.”
Wait.
“What did you just say?” I asked.
“I said, you can go interview—”
Elizabeth had heard the same thing. “No—the last part…what did you call him?” she asked.
“The club king,” he said. “That’s what one of the kids called him. I asked if VonMiller partied a lot, and they told me he was always at all the clubs.”
“Well done, Eddie,” I said.
“What’d I do?” he asked.
“You asked the right question,” said Elizabeth.
He was still confused. “You messin’ with me?”
“Not at all,” she said.
“Does this mean you don’t want to do the one-on-one interviews?” he asked hopefully.
“No, but you don’t have to bother asking about the two of hearts,” she said.
“I didn’t know why I was asking about it in the first place,” he said. “What’s it supposed to mean?”
“I’m not sure,” said Elizabeth.
But that wasn’t entirely true. She and I both knew what the two of hearts meant.
We just didn’t know whom it meant.
Chapter 17
THE COPS had all left. So had Eddie.
During the one-on-one interviews, one of the kids “suddenly” remembered hearing something from the direction of the last stall. At the time, he didn’t think too much of it. “A lot of crazy stuff happens in these bathrooms,” he said. “People are weird.”
This from a kid who had pink eyebrows, a double-pierced tongue, and a tattoo of Bea Arthur on his neck.
As for Bryce VonMiller, he’d been wheeled out and taken to the morgue, his father having finally been allowed to see him before he was zipped up in a black body bag. I’d watched for a moment before turning away.
And that was that.
Nearly two hours after she’d first called me, Elizabeth and I were the only ones on the sidewalk outside White Lines, the last of the onlookers having long since dispersed.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Home,” I said. Is that a trick question? Where else would I be going?
Without another word she hit a speed-dial button on her phone. “Where are you right now?” she asked the person on the other end.
I was trying to figure out who that could be at nearly five in the morning and how the answer to her question could be anything besides “In bed.”
Of course, I really should’ve known.
“Christ, I’m starving,” announced Allen Grimes, practically hip-checking me as he slid into our booth fifteen minutes later at the Marigold Diner in Greenwich Village. Not only was he up and awake, it was pretty obvious that our intrepid crime reporter hadn’t been anywhere near his bed yet. Or if he had, it wasn’t to sleep. The guy literally had lipstick on his collar.
Elizabeth summed up Grimes on the ride over. His driver’s license says he’s fifty, his libido thinks he’s twenty, and his liver is convinced he’s Keith Richards.