“Did you stay overnight?”
“Of course not! Mom would kill me!” Vivian paused awkwardly. “I mean, she’d be mad. She wouldn’t actually kill me. Like, for real.”
“Could you give me your address and your mother’s phone number?” Erin asked. “In case we need to double-check anything.”
“You don’t have to tell her about Norman, do you?” Vivian asked. “Mom and Dad say he’s way too old for me. You’d think I was still sixteen or something. They just don’t get that I’m grown up now.”
“Right,” Erin said, noticing that the girl seemed almost as upset at her parents’ view of her love life as she was at the news her boyfriend was dead. “If you could just write down that contact information, I think that’ll do it for now.”
“Okay.” Vivian reached for the notepad on Erin’s desk, then paused. “Hey, can I get, like, a selfie with you?”
Webb looked up from his paperwork and raised his eyebrows at Erin.
“Police don’t give selfies during an ongoing investigation,” Erin said with a straight face. She was pretty sure that wasn’t in the Patrol Guide, but she was equally sure Vivian Berkley hadn’t read the Patrol Guide.
* * *
“Well?” Webb asked, as the echoing click of Vivian’s high heels died away in the stairwell. “Think she’s a murderer?”
Erin shook her head. “I’m not seeing it. But I guess if she did want to kill him, it’d make sense to use poison. Maybe she wasn’t trying to take him out, just get his attention.”
“Like with suicide attempts,” Webb said. Every cop who’d worked Patrol had been called to at least one scene where some unhappy girl had swallowed a bunch of pills. The victim often didn’t really want to die. That made it all the more tragically pointless when they sometimes died anyway.
“If she gave him cyanide to get him to notice her, I’d hate to see what she’d do if she was pissed off,” Vic said.
“We can’t rule it out,” Webb said. “O’Reilly, you worked that poisoning case last year, the Heartbreak Killer. Didn’t he use the same poison?”
“Yeah,” she said. “But that was a totally different MO. His scenes were always carefully staged. This? This is almost accidental. Anyone could’ve eaten those chocolates. Hell, the hygienist, Hayward, could’ve just as easily gone for an almond candy and it’d be her on a slab.”
“That’s what I don’t like about it,” Webb said. “Has it occurred to anyone else that the candy might’ve been doctored before it was even sold?”
Vic snapped his fingers. “Yeah. Like that asshole in Britain back in the Eighties. I forget his name. Rodney something-or-other. He was poisoning baby food on store shelves. Put some kids in the hospital. Didn’t Reader’s Digest do a story on him?”
“I didn’t follow Reader’s Digest growing up,” Erin said. “But I remember hearing about that. My dad told us when they caught him. The thing I remember is, that guy was a former cop. That was how he kept ahead of the police for as long as he did. It was a blackmail attempt on the food company.” She looked at Webb. “Sir, you don’t think…?”
“It’s a possibility,” he said, looking unhappy. “If that’s the case, we can expect some sort of demand for money, probably to the candy company.”
“I can call them, see if they’ve gotten any blackmail letters,” Vic suggested.
“If that’s what’s going on,” Erin said, “we can expect another poisoning or two.”
“I’m aware of that,” Webb said.
“Do you have any idea how much chocolate gets sold in New York for Valentine’s Day?” Vic asked rhetorically.
“We’re not putting out a citywide warning,” Webb said. “Not unless New York is prepared for a multi-million-dollar lawsuit from every candy company on the eastern seaboard, not to mention a general panic.”
“What if someone else gets poisoned?” Erin replied.
“Then we inform the Captain, the Captain talks to the Commissioner, and the Commissioner takes it to the Mayor,” Webb replied. “This shit rolls uphill. Then we have a panic.”
“On the plus side, maybe it’ll help New Yorkers with their diet programs,” Vic said.
“I’ll put out the word so we hear about any other cyanide poisonings,” Webb said. “That’s as far as we’re going down that road. In the meantime, let’s assume this was a personal killing. I want to dig into Ridgeway, find out what other skeletons he’s got in his closet. This is the sort of guy who stole dinner reservations and juggled girlfriends. I don’t care if he liked to talk dinosaurs with little boys. Let’s face it, people were going to want to hurt him.”
That was how Erin ended up spending her afternoon digging through a dead dentist’s financial records. Not for the first time, she found herself missing Kira Jones and her knack for sifting data. It was like doing someone else’s taxes, someone who didn’t save receipts but insisted on itemizing everything. She found some little irregularities, but nothing damning. By the time they knocked off for the day, she had a dull, pounding headache. What she wanted was to go home, get a stiff drink, and crash in front of the TV. But she had a prior obligation. Carlyle was expecting her.
She had a little time to herself, at least. She took Rolf to the local park and did some detection training. She had training aids containing trace amounts of various explosives. She hid several fake items along with the real thing. Rolf unerringly detected the right sample, sitting in front of it and wagging his tail, but staying otherwise motionless. Erin rewarded him with his favorite chew-toy. Watching the K-9 happily gnawing, she felt a little better. Then it was time to shower, feed the dog and herself, and figure out what to wear.
Her closet was well-equipped for police work and athletics, somewhat less so for evening attire, and decidedly weak on gangster garb. She remembered Kira had worked as a gang task force liaison, and wondered if she should
