Page 17

Seventeen

Tuesday 1pm

Murphy insisted on sitting as far away from the other customers as possible. “Because this is a copy of the NYPD files on Roger Sully’s death, and you shouldn’t be looking at it.”

That meant sitting inside the coffee shop, a small, multi-level space, seeming very dark after the bright sunshine outside. They settled in a booth in the darkest corner. Murphy ordered coffee and bagels with smoked salmon and cream cheese without consulting Charlie. When the waiter left, Charlie protested and was told, “You need to eat.” After that they waited in silence.

Charlie picked at his food, knowing that Murphy was right. It was only a sandwich, and starving himself wouldn’t make Tom any better. After a few bites he felt actual hunger, and when the bagel was gone, the smell of warm, sugary goodness filled his nostrils.

“I’m getting a cinnamon bun,” he said. “Do you want one?” Murphy nodded.

“More coffee while you’re there,” he said.

The cinnamon bun was perfect. The ache in Charlie’s heart hadn’t gone, but he could concentrate on the file Murphy opened without his stomach growling.

Kaylan’s father had died just after Kaylan himself had returned to the USA, in a drive-by shooting in the middle of the city. According to the NYPD files, the killer pointed a gun out of the window of a black SUV, tentatively identified as a Range Rover Autograph.

“That’s like a regular Range Rover, but with extra chrome,” Murphy told Charlie.

“That’s the car the shooter at Blue Wave Books drove off in,” Charlie said. “But no one seems interested in trying to find it.”

“There’s a note on the file saying that the DMV has been contacted for a list of all the Autographs registered locally, but there’s no actual list. Also, both your shooter and Roger Sully’s had no rear license plate, so the car could be from out of state.”

“Still not joining the dots, then,” Charlie said. “Two shootings, two black SUVs, both members of the same family.”

Murphy sat back against the bench seat.

“It’s suggestive, but that’s all it is.”

Charlie thought it was a lot more than suggestive but he moved on anyway.

“What do we know about Roger Sully’s business? Sabrina told me it was, and I quote, the biggest cybersecurity business in the mid-west. But that was last year. Now she’s saying that Kaylan caused them to lose all their money and that the cybersecurity company was on the East Coast. I don’t get the move from Chicago to New York.”

Murphy turned over some pages in the file.

“I don’t know about the biggest firm in the mid-west, but they were doing well. They were — are — based in Chicago. Sully was killed on a visit to New York.” He shuffled through a few more pages. “He’d come to see his brother-in-law, Andrew Dwyer.”

“Sabrina implied that Dwyer was standing between her and the workhouse. Or her personal equivalent — having to use a cheap gym.”

Murphy smiled. “Poor woman. Seriously, Andrew Dwyer could keep a lot of people in expensive gyms. He’s a rich man. A big donor to the nuttier wing of the Republican Party. Trump supporter and proud of it.”

“Kaylan said both his parents were Trump supporters, that he’d specifically chosen a college course and a teacher with diametrically opposed ideas. He was proud of upsetting them.”

“That’s the professor who murdered the other student?”

Charlie nodded. “Inigo Vitruvius, yes. I’ll be honest, I still don’t know whose idea it was to let Rico Pepperdine die — Vitruvius or Kaylan. But Vitruvius pleaded guilty to manslaughter and the FBI brought Kaylan back here and now he’s dead. We should maybe look at Rico’s parents, except I met them and they were just sad … not demanding revenge. People change though.”

Murphy closed the file, and put his hands on top of it.

“You can’t have it both ways, Charlie. If the two shootings are connected, what reason would Rico Pepperdine’s parents have for killing Roger Sully?”

Which was a reasonable question. Not that Charlie could imagine the devastated Pepperdines killing anyone.

“Anything else in the file?” Charlie asked. They were the only two people in the cafe now, and Charlie could hear the baristas teasing each other as they cleaned up their station. People were sitting outside, enjoying the sunshine. That was me a few days ago.

“Not really,” Murphy said. “Dwyer confirmed that Roger Sully had come to New York to meet him, but declined to say anything about the subject of the meeting. Some of Sully’s co-workers hinted that the company might be in trouble, which bears out your conversation with Mrs Sully. The detectives didn’t appear to have any leads, and though it’s still a live investigation, the reality is that it’s dead.”

“Hang on,” Charlie said, “Roger Sully was shot heading into a multi-storey car park?”

Murphy nodded.

“Why would he have a car? He was here on a visit. There are buses and cabs and the subway, and Ubers. There’s no need to have a car in the city. Surely, he didn’t drive from Chicago? How long does that even take?”

“Twelve hours? Something like that. But we don’t know that he had a car, only that he was going into a parking garage.”

Charlie raised both eyebrows.

Murphy started leafing through the file again. “That appears to be another unanswered question,” he said.

“I’d like to talk to Roger Sully’s co-workers. If the firm was in trouble, is there a motive there? And did any of them know why Scully was talking to Dwyer? But I guess that means going to Chicago.” Which Charlie was absolutely not going to do, not with Tom in a coma in New York.

“You might get lucky,” Murphy said. He got his phone out and pulled up a screenshot. It advertised the National Cybersecurity Convention, an event happening this week in a convention centre somewhere in the city. “Want to see if we can find them?”

* * *

The convention centre was in the Bronx, not far from the Yankee Stadium. Tom and Charlie had planned to watch a game at some point, though Tom had said baseball had more impenetrable jargon than cricket and was less exciting than watching paint dry. “It’s a good afternoon out, though.”

Charlie watched with interest as Murphy, a supposed New York police officer, struggled to find the simple subway route to the venue. He wondered what had happened to the car.