Eye of the Beholder

with Stoletti. They both make a point of sitting across from me. Stoletti plays with a folder resting in front of her.

“I confess,” I say, trying to lighten the moment, but I get no takers.

McDermott stares at me with the poker face.

“You’ll need to follow up on those messenger services with that last letter,” I add. “See how he got the envelope into my building.”

“We will,” he says. He rubs his face. “Riley, I’m fucking tired. And I’m in a hurry, because our offender seems to be, too. So help me get my arms around a few things.”

“Shoot.”

“You don’t have to-it’s up to you to answer or not.”

I stare at him, then at Stoletti. “You sound like a guy who’s trying to read me my Miranda rights without reading them to me.”

As I finish the sentence, I lose my smile. That matches the expression on the faces of the two cops across from me.

“You’re here voluntarily,” Stoletti says.

That’s what you tell people to avoid a Miranda warning.

I adjust in my seat. “Why don’t you tell me what the hell is going on?”

“Why’s this guy picking you?” he asks me.

“Because I’m the poster boy. I’m the guy who put away Terry Burgos.”

“So he sends you cryptic notes?”

I can’t read this asshole’s mind. I point that out to them.

“Ever heard of the Sherwood Executive Center?” he asks.

I shake my head. I have no idea what he’s talking about.

“Fred Ciancio,” he says. “He’s working that shopping mall as a security guard, right?”

“Right,” I say.

“Well, in June of 1989-about a week before the murders-he puts in for a temporary reassignment. He asks for a transfer.”

“To the Sherwood Executive Center?” I gather.

“Give the man a prize.” A joke without a smile.

“What’s significant about that?”

McDermott makes a face but doesn’t answer. He wants me to answer.

“I have no idea,” I say.

“Cassie Bentley’s doctors were at the Sherwood Executive Center,” he tells me. “Sherwood Heights is right by Highland Woods, where she lived.”

“Okay?” I don’t know what conclusion I’m supposed to draw from that.

“Think it’s a coincidence?” he asks me.

I don’t answer. I wouldn’t know how.

“Reason Fred Ciancio gave for the transfer,” he continues. “He said that his mother was undergoing chemotherapy at the building. He wanted to be close to her. He asked for a three-week reassignment to that building, to cover the course of her treatment.”

I think about that. Fred Ciancio got himself transferred by Bristol Security to one of their other buildings-a building that housed Cassie Bentley’s doctors. I’m not a big fan of coincidences, but life can be strange, and, when it comes to coincidences, this is not exactly earth-shattering.

“The problem,” McDermott adds, “is that Ciancio’s mother had been dead for ten years. So I don’t see where chemo was going to help her much.” Now, that’s a little closer to shaking the earth. I feel a flutter in my stomach.

“Ciancio used an excuse to work at that building, where Cassie’s doctors were, right around when the murders occurred.” This time it’s Stoletti. A one-two punch. She would be the bad cop, but neither of them is showing me much collegiality. “And then, Ciancio calls Carolyn Pendry and says he wants to talk about the Burgos case. But he gets cold feet.”

Why would a security guard make up a reason to be assigned to a building? I can only think of one reason.

“He helped someone break in,” I assume. “Someone paid him off to get into one of the offices in that building.”

McDermott’s eyebrows rise. The notion, of course, has already occurred to him.

“And you think this is related to Cassie being pregnant,” I add. “And/or having an abortion.”

“What do you think?” she asks me.

I shrug. I find myself lacking a lot of answers right now. But it makes sense.

“You’d never heard about Cassie being pregnant, or having an abortion, back then?”

She already knows my answer. I gave it to her right after we talked to Professor Albany.

“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.” Now she’s provoking me, enjoying it.

“Do I need a lawyer?” I ask.

Stoletti looks at her partner. “He doesn’t want to answer, Detective. That’s his right.”

“I had never heard anything about Cassie having an abortion or even being pregnant,” I say, not hiding the anger. “You want to tell me what the hell is going on?”

McDermott speaks again. “Usually, when you’re on a case, you work up the victim’s background. How is it you didn’t know Cassie was pregnant right before she was murdered?”

An icy smile creeps across my face. “First of all,” I say, “we don’t know she was pregnant or had an abortion. We just have a suspicion. You may have learned in cop school about the difference between facts and hunches. And second of all, the reason we didn’t delve deeply into Cassie’s background is-”

I freeze on that. From the faces of the cops across from me, this is the next topic.

“Because you dropped the charges on Cassie’s murder,” Stoletti says. “At the request of Harland Bentley, I assume?” She slides the photograph across from me, the one of Harland and the reporters, with the ghoulish guy with the scar in the background. “The same Harland Bentley in this photo, which we found in Fred Ciancio’s closet, hidden in a shoe box?”

“The same Harland Bentley,” McDermott joins in, “who hired you and gave you all of his legal business, less than a year later?”

“You, a guy who’d practiced criminal law his whole life,” Stoletti punches, “suddenly given responsibility for millions of dollars of civil litigation for BentleyCo.”

I sit back in my chair and take a moment. My insides are on fire. I feel the sweat on my forehead, my heart pounding against my shirt.

In my law practice, I will often counsel people who are targets of a criminal investigation. I give them all the same advice. Don’t talk about the case with anyone. You never know