She’d phoned him the night before.
Now for the big question about Nola.
“So what do I do now, Cass?”
She shrugged in back-lit, bulky silhouette against the wide window.
“Hell, that’s entirely up to you, bro.”
Nell and Looper sat in the unmarked on West Eighty-third Street and checked Nell’s list of families who’d lost someone to a killer-alleged killer-who had walked, either through a legal technicality or because the jurors behaved in a way incomprehensible to the public. Near the top of the list was the Dixon family.
Lloyd and Greta Dixon’s teenage daughter Genelle was raped and murdered in Central Park four years ago. The alleged killer, Bradley Aimes, who hung out with Genelle’s group of teenage friends, was from a wealthy family and had the advantage of high-priced legal counsel. They managed to quash the introduction of damning evidence. Though the jury wasn’t allowed to consider this evidence, they certainly knew about it from wide media coverage, yet nevertheless chose to turn in a controversial not guilty verdict.
“You do this one,” Looper said. “I’ll observe.”
That was the technique they used-one would be the interviewer, the other would simply interject something now and then, but was mainly there to observe the family. Sometimes faces revealed what words concealed.
Nell didn’t argue. Not only was it her turn to be the interviewer, but she remembered the case. Bradley Aimes had been a handsome, smug twenty-something sadist who’d seemed to know from the start that his family’s money and connections would enable him to walk away from a murder charge. He was right. The Dixon family was left to suffer the loss of their ravaged and murdered daughter. If one of them turned out to be the Justice Killer, Nell wondered if she’d have the professionalism to make an arrest.
The Dixons lived in a modest brick and brownstone building not in the best repair. Looper worked the intercom, identified himself and Nell, and they were buzzed up to a second floor apartment.
Mrs. Dixon, Greta, opened the door when they knocked. She was a medium-height, dark-haired woman who was attractive despite her worn down expression. Nell made the introductions, and after glancing at their shields, Greta let them in.
They were in a modestly furnished living room with a woven oval rug over hardwood flooring. A sofa that looked as if it had once been expensive and handsome now sagged in the middle. One wall was lined with a mix of books, paperback and hardcover, and some stacked magazines. Most of the books were novels. The top magazine was a Time.
Two matching green chairs were angled to the couch, and a TV was placed where it was visible to anyone seated in the room. On a far wall was a mahogany secretary that made everything else seem cheap and functional and looked as if it might be a family heirloom.
A thin, round-shouldered man wearing a white shirt with its sleeves rolled up, suspenders, and pleated slacks, came in from a doorway that led to a short hall and kitchen. The kind of guy who looked like he should be wearing sleeve garters and a green eye shade, and whose books never balanced. He was chewing. When he saw Nell and Looper, he quickly swallowed. There was a furtiveness about him, as if he’d been caught eating something forbidden.
“My husband Lloyd,” Greta said.
“We interrupted your dinner,” Nell said.
“Not at all,” said Greta. “We were just finishing.”
“You’re police?” the man asked. He wore rimless glasses and had a narrow, pointed chin. He and Greta were in their early fifties, Nell guessed.
“’Fraid so,” Looper said.
“We hate to disturb you,” Nell said, “but it’s part of our investigation.”
“Investigation?” Lloyd Dixon seemed unfamiliar with the word.
“About the Justice Killer,” said a voice from the doorway behind Lloyd.
A young woman entered the room. Nell was struck by her dark-haired beauty, so like her mother must have looked when younger. So like her newspaper photographs.
But Genelle Dixon is dead.
“You seem startled,” Greta said with a slight smile. “This is Gina, Genelle’s twin sister.”
“She might be the one you want to talk to,” Lloyd said. “Gina and Genelle were close.”
“Twins are,” Greta said. “Were.”
“You knew Bradley Aimes?” Nell asked Gina.
“He was a bastard. I’m sure he still is.”
“Why don’t we all sit down?” Greta asked. The family peacemaker.
Lloyd sat first, in a corner of the sagging sofa. Nell and Lloyd took the green chairs, which meant that Greta and Gina sat side by side next to Lloyd. Mother and daughter looked like an aged and younger version of the same woman. In the apartment upstairs someone began playing a piano. Not loud enough to be a bother, but it was clearly audible. Nell thought she recognized the tune from her childhood’s brief run of piano lessons; something by Beethoven, Fur Elise. It was often used as a piano exercise.
“Did you two ever meet Aimes?” Nell asked Greta and Lloyd.
“Never laid eyes on him,” Lloyd said.
Gina gave a slight smile like her mother’s. “Genelle was too smart to bring him around.”
“Why do you say that?” Nell asked.
“He was older than the rest of us. Twenty-six, as we learned during the trial. But he looked younger. We thought he might be nineteen.”
“Did he act nineteen?”
“He acted even younger. For us. Our crowd was fifteen and sixteen. He seemed like an older kid to us, but not that much older. I’m twenty-one now, and I realize how he was manipulating us.”
“Did he hang with you because he didn’t have friends his own age?”
“Exactly,” Gina said. “He was too mixed up and too big a prick.”
“Gina!” A cautioning word from her mother, who laid a hand on Gina’s knee as she spoke.
“I’m only telling the truth, Mom.”
“I know, dear.”
The piano player upstairs reached the end of the piece. Something, maybe a bench leg, scraped over wood.
“Brad was useful to us,” Gina said. “He bought us liquor, using what he said was fake ID. And a couple of times he got us weed or crack.”
“Gina!”
“It was all in the trial, Mom.”
“She’s right,” Nell said. “We read the transcript.”
“Then why are you here?” Gina asked. “Do you think one of my parents is the Justice Killer?”
Nell smiled. “They have alibis. So have you, by the way.”
Gina seemed taken aback. She hadn’t considered herself a suspect in anything, much less a series of murders.
“We do preliminary work before interviews,” Looper explained.
“The night your sister was killed,” Nell said, “you were at a pajama party. How come Genelle wasn’t there.”
“She and the girl who gave the party had an argument the day before and hadn’t made up. So instead of being at the party, she wound up in the park with that scum Bradley Aimes, and she wound up dead.”
“You have a way of driving to the truth,” Looper said. “You should be a cop.”
“Never. They should have shot Bradley Aimes when they had the chance. Then they shouldn’t have let him go free after he killed my sister.”
“We’re not going to argue those points,” Nell said.
“You’d lose if you did. Genelle is dead. Bradley Aimes is still partying with his rich friends.”
“Things have a way of leveling out,” Looper said.
Gina laughed without humor. “I don’t see much that’s level in the world.”
“What are you doing now?” Nell asked.
