A.K.A. Read online

  “If you don’t mind, I’d like to get right to it. It’s been one hell of a week, and unfortunately, I’ve got homework.”

  He nodded. “Sure. Let’s get to it.”

  “Follow me.”

  He followed Hank and me down the hall to my home office. “Take a seat,” I told him and pointed to one of three leather club chairs.

  Hank did his doggy-circle thing and laid near Peter’s feet as I walked to a makeshift bar on the corner of my desk. I turned over two tumblers and half-filled them with scotch.

  I handed him one. “Thanks. A little early for me, but when in Rome,” he said and tilted it toward me.

  “You’re going to need it,” I said and proceeded to my office closet and slid open the door. It took me just seconds to open my safe, remove three large envelopes, shut the safe, pick up my tumbler, and sit across from him in a matching chair.

  I placed the envelopes on the coffee table that sat between us. “Before we begin, I have a question.”

  He took a sip of scotch and then said, “Fair enough.”

  “I hired an investigator to look into you.”

  “I knew you would.”

  “On record, you retired because of a nondisclosed medical reason.”

  He nodded.

  “I want the off-record reason.” As an ADA, I’d learned that looking for what’s missing in the evidence, or between the lines, was sometimes more important than what was actually there.

  “You don’t trust me?”

  “Would you?”

  He chuckled. “No, I wouldn’t.” He looked at me for several long beats before continuing. “Will the CliffsNotes do?”

  I nodded.

  “I had two best friends. We grew up in the Bronx, did everything together. Graduated high school together, flunked out of college, went through the academy together, that kind of stuff.”

  “Go on.”

  “On the record, they were killed during a drug bust that went wrong. I investigated, off the record. The truth, they were murdered by bad cops. A dozen bad cops.”

  “And the NYPD wanted to keep your investigation off the record. And that’s why they let you go.”

  “Yes. That’s the short of it.”

  I knew there was more to the CliffsNotes version of his story, but I let it go. “I know you have more evidence than a photo of a woman who looks nothing like me.”

  He raised a brow.

  “Before I show you mine,” I said and nodded toward the envelopes. “Show me yours.”

  He reached for his jacket that he’d draped over the back of the third club chair. He then removed two folded envelopes from the jacket’s inside pocket, handed them to me, and returned his jacket to the back of the chair.

  I opened one of them and laid the contents on the table. I frowned as I looked at four photos. “Where did you get these?”

  “The man who took the photo, the one I showed you in your office, had moved from Miami. It wasn’t easy, but I found him. I asked him if he’d been alone at the hotel. He said he’d been with a group of people.”

  “So you found them and…”

  “Everyone has a smartphone these days, Ms. Steel.”

  I picked up the most damning photo. It was what I had hoped was my only mistake, my mother’s wedding ring.

  “Your ring is unusual, Ms. Steel. That’s the only photo of you wearing it. I’m guessing you didn’t realize you had it on. When you did, you removed it.”

  “So your abrupt visit to my office was to…”

  “Verify the ring on your finger.”

  “How did you connect the ring to me?”

  “Fate.”

  “Fate? I don’t understand.”

  “My wife’s a huge Jack Steel fan. On his website is a photo of the two of you at some awards banquet. You’re holding your hand up and the ring…”

  “So your wife…?”

  He nodded toward the photo in my hand. “I showed her that photo, and she remembered seeing the ring. Like I said, it’s unique.”

  “The odds of you making the connection…”

  “A billion to one, I’d say.”

  “Fate,” I whispered.

  He nodded.

  I sat the photo on the table and picked up the second envelope. I opened it and removed a plastic evidence bag. Inside the bag was a hair. It wasn’t one of mine, or one from the blonde wig I’d worn that day. It looked like one of Hank’s.

  “It was the only hair near Terrance Thomas’s body that wasn’t his. The detectives working his case dismissed it.”

  “You’ve already been here, haven’t you? That’s why Hank acted as if you two were old friends.”

  “Yes. I broke in two days ago. Your security sucks.”

  “So it seems.”

  He smiled.

  “You collected a hair for DNA.”

  “I did.”

  “And it was a match.”

  “Not conclusive. The test would most likely be thrown out if used as evidence. But there was enough hair follicle to—”

  “I understand DNA testing, Mr. Costa.”

  “I’m sure you do, Ms. Steel.”

  I laid the bag on the table. “What do you want?”

  “You’re around murderers every day, Ms. Steel. You know how they function, and you understand what makes them tick. But…”

  “What?”

  “The majority of murderers don’t care, Ms. Steel. You care, and doing so, opened the door for oversights.”

  “What do you want?” I repeated.

  “I want to know why a stunning, smart, ADA from LA killed a man she has no connection to—none that I could find anyway.”

  It was clear he’d won the first match. I had no choice but to place all my game pieces on the board. I picked up the top envelope, opened it, removed a file, and handed to him.

  He set his tumbler on a side table and took the file. “What’s this?”

  “A police report I wasn’t sure you’d seen. But now….”

  He opened the file and scanned it. “Yes, I’ve seen this report. Kelly Watkins,” he said and removed a photo that was a copy of my half-sister’s fake driver’s license. “I have a PI friend in Miami. I asked her to do some digging into Terrance Thomas’s last few months. His name flagged on a Miami-Dade County search. He’d claimed Kelly Watkins’s body from the morgue. He told them Kelly had no living relatives and he was her fiancé. I couldn’t find anything on her, it was a dead end.”

  I opened the second envelope, removed a file, and handed it to him.

  He opened it and looked at the photos of Tara and me. “You knew Kelly Watkins?”

  “Yes and no.”

  “I’m… I’m confused, Ms. Steel. Maybe you should start at the beginning.”

  I downed my scotch, placed the empty tumbler on the coffee table, and began. “My dad called me.”

  He nodded.

  “An editor friend of his, who’d met my half-sister, Tara, called Dad and told him she’d seen a photo on the news of a woman whose body had been found in a dumpster in Miami. She said the woman’s name was Kelly Watkins, but her resemblance to Tara was uncanny.”

  “I didn’t know about a half-sister.”

  “Our mother died when we were young. Tara’s surname was Green, mine Steel. The link between us is public knowledge, but very few make the connection. Perhaps if you’d shown the picture to your wife…”

  He chuckled. “Perhaps.” He picked up the photo of Kelly Watkins and waved it. “Was this the photo that was on the news?”

  “Yes.”

  “Go on.”

  “Dad e-mailed me the link to the news report. After I watched it, I agreed, the resemblance was uncanny. So I called and e-mailed Tara, but she didn’t respond.”

  “Was that unusual?”

  “No. With my hectic court schedule and her travel, we could go three months without connecting.”

  “Her travel?”

  “Tara was a freelance reporter. She travel
ed all over the world.”

  “You have a copy of the file, so I’m assuming you checked into it.”

  “Like I said, we could go months without connecting, but the resemblance concerned me. So I called the police and asked to speak to the detective in charge of Kelly Watkins’s case. I was told that Detective Hector Lopez was unavailable. He’d left the day before on an extended vacation.”

  He lifted a brow. “How convenient.”

  “Yes, too convenient. So I made a call to a friend of mine who’s an ADA in Miami-Dade. I told her I needed some information from the police, ‘unofficially.’ She understood and called me back a few hours later telling me to contact Detective Lia Rice. She said I could trust Rice and she’d get me everything I needed. I called Detective Rice giving her a bogus story, telling her I was working on a case in LA and thought the two cases might be linked. I asked if she would copy every photo and document in Kelly’s file. She agreed, and I told her I would be on the next flight to Miami. When I got to Miami, I called and asked her to meet me for dinner.”

  “And you met.”

  “Yes. She gave me the file, and I went over it. When I got to the part where Detective Lopez had already arrested the assailant, closed her case, and released her body to her fiancé, and said fiancé had the body cremated, I… I couldn’t believe it.”

  “Too efficient.”

  “Incredibly efficient. We both know, even if you’ve made an arrest, the system doesn’t work that fast.”

  “Did you know who he was?”

  “Terrance Thomas?”

  He nodded.

  “No. I might have heard of the senator, but his name didn’t click at the time.”

  “Did Detective Rice know Lopez?”

  “She said they’d never worked together. She was new to the Homicide Unit, had only been assigned there within the last sixty days. She added that the mostly ‘all boys club’ hadn’t been very welcoming.”

  “Go on.”

  “She tried to contact Lopez. When all her calls went to voice mail, she asked a couple of uniforms to stop by his house. The uniforms spoke to a house sitter. All the guy knew was what Hector told him, he was on an extended vacation, for how long, he didn’t know.”

  He frowned.

  “Rice told me she’d been transferred from Vice and knew Lopez had arrested the wrong guy. She knew the man who had confessed to Kelly Watkins’s murder.”

  “Victor Dunn,” he said.

  “Yes, street name, Dunny. Rice said Dunny was a lowlife druggie and part-time pimp, but he wasn’t a murderer. She went to county lockup to talk to Dunn, but she was denied without explanation. When she got back to the station, she did a little digging and found out Dunn had been transferred to Hillsborough County Jail in Tampa. But when she called to check, they had no record of him.”

  “He just disappeared?”

  “Into thin air.”

  “Did you ever contact the Caldwells?”

  “Of course not. But Rice did.”

  “What did she find out?”

  “Nothing. She called the number that Terrance Thomas had given the morgue when he claimed the body. She talked to his PA who told her that Thomas had gone home to bury Kelly’s ashes, and neither he nor his family was to be disturbed during their time of grief.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I flew home and prayed she’d contact me.”

  “But she never did.”

  “No, she didn’t. Two weeks later, I flew to New York and went to her last known address.”

  “Did you find anything?”

  “A guy friend, Lee Berg. They’d been seeing—or I should say, sleeping together for a couple of years. I asked him when he’d last connected with her. He said Tara had texted about two months past, saying she was on her way to the Middle East. I told him about Miami, her photo, Terrance Thomas, everything I knew. He didn’t know anything about it. He told me not to worry, he was sure she was in the Middle East, saying he’d just come from there and it was crazy and it wouldn’t be unusual for her to not make contact.”

  “He’s a reporter?”

  “Photojournalist.”

  “So then what?”

  “I came home and told myself not to worry.”

  “But you worried?”

  “Yes, I worried.”

  “And you began to think she could be the woman found in the dumpster.”

  “Yes.”

  “How much older was she?”

  “Eleven years. When our mom died, she was… well, she was the only stable person in my life for many years.”

  “What about your dad?”

  “Jack was… Let’s just say he didn’t handle my mother’s death well. There was a time I thought my nanny’s boyfriend was my father.”

  “You were how old when your mom died?”

  “Three.”

  “When was the last time you talked to or connected with Tara?”

  “She called me about two months before the photo was on the news. Our conversation was… strange.”

  “Strange?”

  “She wanted to know if I knew where Jack was. He wasn’t answering his cell.”

  “Why did she want to talk to your dad?”

  “Something about Frank.”

  “Frank?”

  “Her dad, Frank Green.”

  “Go on.”

  “Frank had been looking into our mother’s accident.”

  “Not following.”

  “Our mother was a pilot. She was killed in a plane crash.”

  “Why was Tara’s dad, Frank, looking into it?”

  “That’s what she wanted to know. I think she was hoping that Frank had spoken to Jack.”

  “Did they speak?”

  “No.”

  “What happened to Frank?”

  “He died months before, cancer. Tara was just then cleaning out his house and found some papers or something. I told her Jack was editing, and he didn’t talk to anybody when he was editing. But as soon as he came up for air, I’d have him call her.”

  “Did he?”

  “He tried, but her phone went to voice mail.”

  I stood, grabbed the bottle of scotch from my desk, and sat back down. I sighed heavily as I poured myself another two fingers, and then placed the bottle on the coffee table. “I’ve gone over our conversation a million times. When she called, I was in the middle of prep for a big case. I didn’t give her my full attention.”

  “You couldn’t have known it would be the last time you two would speak to each other. That is where this is going, right? Tara’s aka, Kelly Watkins.”

  I nodded. “But knowing doesn’t take away the sting of regret,” I told him as I picked up the next file and handed it to him.

  He took it, opened it, and examined the first photo. He looked back at me, his expression unreadable, but his eyes clouded over with uncertainty. “Who is—is this Tara?”

  “Yes.”

  He turned his attention to the next few photos. As he looked them over, he blew out a steady, slow breath. They were difficult to look at, even for a former NYPD homicide detective. When he reached photo number ten, of fifteen, he looked back at me. “These are….” He paused and swallowed what I could only guess was bile.

  “I know they’re difficult to look at, but I need you to continue.”

  He blew out another breath and continued. When he finished, his complexion was nearly green. “She was pregnant.”

  “Yes. You’re looking at my nephew. There’s a typed note attached to the back of the last photo.”

  He turned over the last photo and read the note out loud.

  Ms. Steel,

  I was told your sister was still breathing when the devil cut her son from her womb.

  “Dear God,” he whispered. “How…? Where did you get these?”

  I removed one more file from the second envelope and handed it to him. “They were sent to me by the same person who sent me these.”

  He op
ened the file and looked at several photos. “Holy baby Jesus,” he uttered and shook his head. “Who are—were they?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I just… I can’t…” He closed his eyes as if wishing to unsee them. I knew from experience, he would never be able to block the memory of what he’d seen. He’d never be able to get their images, or Tara’s, out of his head. “When? How did you get theses? What does this mean?”

  “They were FedExed to my office two weeks after I’d received the photos of Tara.”

  He scanned them again. “All blondes.”

  “Yes.”

  I opened the third envelope, removed a letter, and handed it to him. “This was enclosed with the photos.”

  He took the letter and read it out loud.

  Ms. Steel,

  What are you thinking? Are you thinking these photos are some kind of hoax, some kind of sick joke? Are you thinking the photos of your half-sister and her son can’t be real? Do you think they’re from the set of a horror movie? That’s what I wanted to think. I wanted them to be a movie, a dream, a nightmare. But they are not.

  The photos reveal the ugly truth of what really happened to Tara, her unborn son, and the other women who have had the misfortune of crossing paths with Terrance Thomas Caldwell III.

  He paused and looked at me. “Oh my God.”

  I nodded my understanding.

  He continued to read.

  There are more victims, Ms. Steel. How many…?

  Terrance Thomas Caldwell is the devil, Ms. Steel. He’s Lucifer in the flesh, unredeemable. Maybe I am as well. I’m a coward, for sure. I confess to this and pray to God every day to forgive me for the part I’ve played in this hell.

  I know you’ll want to go to the authority with this information. Please don’t. Doing so will put your life in danger and every stone you turn over will come to a dead end.

  If I’ve come across as being overly dramatic, I assure you, I am not. These people possess unbelievable power. They own me; they own all of us. We are all pawns in this game, except for you, Ms. Steel. You are the queen who will checkmate Terrance Thomas and give your sister, her unborn son, and all the others the justice they deserve.

  I know you won’t let me down, Ms. Steel, because you are my hero.