Page 43 of The Writer
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
EVEN WITH THE FLASHERS and siren, it’s after eleven by the time Cordova gets back to the city. He doesn’t find Declan at his apartment; he doesn’t find him at his own apartment either. He probably dialed him two dozen times, and every call went straight to voicemail. Aside from a few of the late-shift cops, the station is deserted. None of the cops there have seen Declan.
Cordova grabs a cup of tar-thick coffee from the machine, drops in front of his computer, and checks the carpool logs. Nothing registered to Declan. He doesn’t have a car of his own and hasn’t taken out a PD vehicle in more than three weeks. Cordova minimizes that window, opens another, and logs into Fog Reveal, their mobile phone-tracking software. He keys in Declan’s cell number, waits as the machine chugs away, then swears softly when it comes back with Device offline .
The coffee tastes like shit, but he needs it. Needs the caffeine. He forces it down and looks up at the crime board.
David Morrow and Mia Gomez silently stare at him. So do Denise Morrow and a handful of others. There are photos of the bodies. Of the various murder weapons. Of the blood smear on the Morrows’ door frame.
Declan’s blood.
Declan is a hothead, always has been, but a murderer?
Cordova just doesn’t see it.
So why is the kid hiding?
Cordova picks up a pencil, taps it on the edge of the desk a few times, then reaches for his phone and dials IT. Despite the late hour, someone answers.
“Barksdale.”
“Hey, it’s Jarod Cordova from Twenty. I need you to do something for me.”
“What’s up?”
“Can you pull the CCTV footage for the Eighty-First Street subway station for the night of Friday the tenth between eight and nine?”
“The station under the museum?” Barksdale goes quiet for a moment. “I didn’t see anything in the papers. Did we lose another—”
Everyone in the department knows that station.
“No, not this time. I think someone might have been scoping it out, though. Can you call me back with what you find?”
“Yeah. Sure.” A slight quiver in his voice.
“Just keep it to yourself, all right? No need to start any rumors.”
“You got it.”
Cordova didn’t want to go there; he knows word will get out now. The blue grapevine is like that. A lot of You didn’t hear it from me, but… He has no choice, though. Declan is in deep, and proof of him in that station when both David Morrow and Mia Gomez were killed will keep the bracelets off his wrists. If Declan is in the wind, Cordova can use that footage to stall Daniels until his partner turns up.
If he turns up.
Christ. What if Declan is on the platform at the Eighty-First Street station right now? What if he went there earlier? What if that’s why he isn’t picking up?
He dials the Central Park Precinct and asks when they last patrolled the station.
An hour ago, they say.
Nobody was there, dead or otherwise.
At least there’s that, Cordova thinks.
He swallows the rest of the coffee, has to squeeze his eyes shut to do it, then looks back up at the board.
Denise Morrow couldn’t have killed either victim, not from across town.
Geller Hoffman had time to kill Mia Gomez.
It’s very possible Denise Morrow put him up to it.
Lucero fingered Hoffman for the Maggie Marshall murder. Maybe he also told Denise Morrow about that. Maybe she found proof and used that as leverage on Hoffman: You kill my husband’s lover for me, and this never gets out .
Could Hoffman have killed David Morrow too?
How far would Geller Hoffman go to keep a secret like that?
Damn far. If it’s true and it gets out, his life is over.
If it’s true.
So why give his bloody clothes to Denise Morrow and make her wear them?
Three-card monte.
Shuffle the evidence.
Muddy the case.
Declan might just be right about that.
Maybe Declan is right about all of it.
Across the bullpen, Lieutenant Daniels’s office is dark. The door’s closed.
If Lucero told Daniels about Hoffman, why didn’t Daniels tell him or Declan? Lucero was their case.
Investigating the investigation is Harrison’s case. IAU’s case.
Cordova grabs a sheet of paper and scribbles out a possible timeline:
Lucero tells Denise Morrow about Geller Hoffman.
Denise Morrow tells Harrison.
Harrison tells her to call Daniels, gives her the lieutenant’s personal cell number.
Daniels drives up to Dannemora to talk to Lucero himself.
He returns and has every file related to the Lucero investigation brought to his office.
Those files aren’t there anymore.
Cordova is in the LT’s office all the time. They’re gone.
That means either he didn’t find anything worth pursuing and he put it all back—or he found something worth pursuing, something so damning that he had everything moved to someplace more private.
Private like IAU.
Cordova and Daniels go back nearly sixteen years. If Daniels found something, he’d tell him, right?
Right?
Maybe not if it implicated Declan. IAU wouldn’t let him. But how would a tip on Geller Hoffman be tied to Declan?
Then it clicks, and the second it does, Cordova wants the thought out of his head. Wants it gone. But it digs in its claws. What if Declan heard about Hoffman too? What if he uncovered something that proved it was true after they put away Lucero? What if Declan buried it? What if he learned they’d put away the wrong man?
That might explain why his partner was standing on that subway platform.
Guilt.
It would explain why Daniels has gone quiet, why he’s working with IAU. As LT, he ran point on that case. He was just as responsible for putting away Lucero as Cordova and Declan.
Cordova scratches his temple. Could Geller Hoffman have killed Maggie Marshall?
Cordova can’t picture it. Not the man he knew from court, from the press.
But Hoffman has the bloody clothes. The murder weapon. All evidence points at him for Gomez and more.
Cordova looks at the photo of Mia Gomez after they pulled her from the dumpster, her body ravaged by stab wounds. If Geller Hoffman killed her… if he did that …
Could the man who did that kill Maggie Marshall?
Yes.
Cordova needs to talk to Hoffman. Tonight. Now.
Because there’s another angle to this. If Daniels put the pieces together with IAU, there’s a very good chance he and Harrison have teamed up to put it all on Declan.
Declan keeps insisting he’s being framed.
Maybe he’s right about that too.