Page 32 of The Writer

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

THE MYSTERIOUS BOOKSHOP is located just off Broadway on Warren Street in Tribeca. Declan rarely leaves central Manhattan, so it might as well have been a world away. Cordova drives, and they get there just as some kid is packing up a book display on the sidewalk, carrying things in for the night. When Declan shows him his badge, he gets that same worried look most kids get: What have I done lately and where did I slip up?

“We need to speak to your manager,” Cordova tells him, glancing through the open door.

“You want Otto. He’s the owner,” the kid tells them. “Come on in, I’ll get him.”

They follow him inside and watch as he slips through a brown door decorated in crime scene tape and fake bloodstains.

Bookstores remind Declan of the library, and that reminds him of school, and that makes him uncomfortable. Maybe it’s that musty smell. Or maybe it’s the quiet, as if all books hate sound. His mom was a big reader. Romances, mostly, but that stopped when asshole Pops died and she had to take a second job.

Cordova nudges Declan’s shoulder and points up at a camera near the door. There’s another mounted high on one of the shelves capturing the entire room and another at the back pointing forward.

“Took you gentlemen long enough. I figured you’d come by days ago.”

They turn to find an older man standing behind them. He’s balding with white hair and a neatly cropped beard, and he’s wearing a dark blue button-down and black pants. He extends his hand. “I’m Otto Penzler.”

“This is Detective Declan Shaw, and I’m Jarod Cordova.”

“I recognize you from television. You’re here to check on Denise’s alibi, right?”

“What makes you say that?”

“I’ve been publishing and selling mysteries for nearly five decades. Whodunnits tend to have a pattern, a rhythm to them. You’ve got yourselves a whodunnit, and I’d be disappointed if you didn’t look at Denise. Although I’m sure she had nothing to do with it. I’ve known her for years. She might be able to write about some nasty murders, but she’s good people, she doesn’t have it in her.” Otto grins and gestures at the cameras. “Come down to my office, I saved the video for you.”

He disappears through the brown door with the crime scene tape. Declan and Cordova exchange a glance and follow him. The door opens onto a staircase and they descend two flights into a basement office. Every wall is covered in books. There are stacks of books on tables. On the floor. Towers of titles and boxes everywhere. Crammed in the back corner is a large wooden desk, most of its surface also buried. There’s barely enough room for a computer monitor and keyboard. The mouse is perched on a stack of Agatha Christie novels. Otto motions for them to come around so they can see the screen. “You already have the sign-in sheet, right? I sent that over last week.”

Cordova nods. “Sixty people in attendance?”

“Sixty-three if you count me and my staff.” Otto clicks Play. “Here’s Denise when she got here, seven forty-three p.m.”

Declan asks, “How accurate is your time stamp?”

Otto raises an eyebrow. “You mean can I change it if I want to?”

Declan shrugs.

“We replaced the entire system last year when we went to HD. This one pulls in the time from the internet automatically. I imagine there are ways to alter it, but I’ve never tried.”

On-screen, Denise Morrow enters the store wearing her missing black coat. She talks to a couple of people near the entrance before the cashier comes around the counter and leads her through the same door Declan and Cordova just followed Otto through.

“That’s Tom,” Otto explains. “He works for me. Denise waited down here until it was time to start.”

“Any cameras down here?” Cordova asks.

“Just upstairs.” Otto fast-forwards until Denise Morrow appears again. The crowd is settled in folding chairs and Otto goes to a podium at the front of the room and speaks for several moments. The crowd applauds, and Denise steps up beside him, takes her coat off. She drapes it over a chair, shakes Otto’s hand, and addresses the crowd.

Otto taps the rolling time stamp. “Seven fifty-nine.”

Denise Morrow is wearing the same white blouse and black slacks Declan found her in at her apartment. Pristine, recently pressed. No blood.

“There’s Susan Reynolds.” Cordova points. “Second row, third from the left.”

“Susan’s here a lot,” Otto says. “She runs Denise’s fan club. She got here early to set up.”

They watch for about three minutes before Declan asks if there’s a way to speed up the tape. Otto clicks a button a few times until they’re watching at thirty-two times normal speed. He slows it back down as she finishes her talk about forty minutes in. Denise moves from the podium to a table and takes a seat as a line forms in front of her. “She signed books for about twenty minutes or so. Answered questions. Took selfies, but she never left. She—”

“Stop,” Declan orders.

Otto freezes the image.

“Rewind a little bit.”

He does.

Then Cordova sees it too. “Is that Geller Hoffman?”

Declan nods. “It sure as shit is. Play it again, normal speed.”

On-screen, the attorney enters the bookstore behind the crowd. He stands there for a moment, then bypasses the line and hands Denise Morrow a brown shopping bag. They exchange a look, and she sets the bag under the table. Hoffman leans in and whispers something to her, a long something, takes him nearly a minute. From the look on Morrow’s face, it’s not anything she wants to hear. Then he steps to the side and watches as Denise goes back to addressing the line. The scowl on her face is replaced with a smile as she takes a picture with an older lady holding three of Morrow’s titles.

Cordova reaches for the computer mouse. “May I?”

Otto steps back, holding both hands up.

Cordova speeds up the recording until Denise Morrow finishes with the line and stands. She retrieves the bag and her coat, then says something to one of the bookstore employees.

“Who is that again?”

“Tom,” Otto says.

Tom leads Denise Morrow to the back of the store. When they enter a hall, Otto points at another camera icon on the screen. “You want that one. Double-click it.”

This brings up the narrow hall. Tom ushers Denise Morrow into a room, flicks on the light, and closes the door.

“Bathroom,” Otto tells them.

Tom leaves.

A few minutes tick by before Denise Morrow comes back out. When she does, she’s wearing her black coat buttoned all the way to her neck. The brown paper bag is clutched tightly in her hands. She returns to the main room of the bookstore, locates Geller Hoffman in the thinning crowd, and hands the bag to him. He leaves without another word. She starts working her way toward the entrance too, saying her goodbyes, and is gone a few minutes later.

Cordova stops the recording.

“Fucking three-card monte,” Declan mutters for the second time that night.

Cordova leans against the wall and looks up at the ceiling, putting all this together. “They’re about the same size, right? Morrow and Hoffman?”

Declan nods. “She might have an inch on him, but they’re close.”

“Hoffman could have killed Mia Gomez wearing the same outfit, changed, and brought his bloody clothes to her. She changed into them and wore them home under her coat. Probably had the knife at that point too, right? Must have. She walked it all into her apartment. Then what? It still doesn’t explain how she killed her husband without getting his blood on her.”

“Maybe Hoffman did him too. While she was here.”

Cordova shakes his head. “No sign of Hoffman on the building’s security footage until he shows up later. After you. We confirmed that with the doorman too. He knows Hoffman, said he’s there a lot. He wouldn’t have missed him.” He goes quiet, then looks down at the computer monitor. “We’ll pull his schedule. Find out where he was leading up to all this. Maybe he knows some way in we don’t.”

Caught up in this new evidence, they both nearly forget that Otto is standing there. Declan says, “You can’t mention a word of this to anyone—you understand that, right?”

Otto’s hands are up, palms out, in a Whatever you want gesture. He turns and starts back up the steps. “I’ll leave you gentlemen to it. Take all the time you need.”

He leaves. Declan sits on a corner of the desk and absentmindedly scans the titles on the shelf as he thinks out loud. “The husband was a cheat, killing him lines up, but why kill…”

Declan doesn’t know books. There are few he’d recognize. He can count the ones he’s read cover to cover on one hand. So when his eyes land on a white spine with red print, a colorful image wrapped beneath the text, they lock on it. It’s one of the few titles he knows intimately. One he wishes he’d never heard of. He steps over to the shelf on wobbly legs.

Cordova doesn’t catch any of this; he’s still working the case. Declan barely hears him say, “The husband was a cheater, right? Could he have been sleeping with Gomez?”

Declan pulls the book from the shelf, takes in the familiar cover, then tosses it on the desk. The bang gets Cordova’s attention. The color melts from his partner’s face as he reads the title: Understanding Anatomy and Physiology .

He glances at Declan, then flips open the cover, probably expecting to find the library card. It’s not there. It’s not the same book. It can’t be. But they both know Denise Morrow left it for them because written on that page in carefree script are the words What goes around…