Outside, waiting for the elevator, Erin and Vic were both just about ready to explode. They went off simultaneously.
“What are you—” Vic began.
“I can’t believe—” Erin said over him.
“One at a time,” Webb said.
“Ladies first,” Vic said. “Or Erin, in the absence of ladies.”
“I can’t believe we walked out of there,” Erin said. “They knew something. Paulie was ready to spill!”
“And they were about to lawyer up,” Webb said. “That was everything we were going to get with the old man present. We want to lean on Paulie, we have to get him alone. If I’d pressed him, Lorenzo would’ve called his lawyer. And believe me, Lorenzo’s lawyer is going to be well-connected and extremely well-versed in criminal statutes. Then the whole thing gets shut down, along with any chance of Paulie telling us anything more. Besides, he pretty much confirmed he gave the chocolates to Rocky.”
“You think he poisoned them?” Erin asked.
“I don’t know,” Webb said thoughtfully. “If so, I’m surprised he was so ready to admit it. And I don’t see the point, unless it’s what passes for a friendly prank for these guys.”
“You’ve really thought this through,” Vic said.
“Wisdom comes with age and experience,” Webb said.
“It takes the place of muscle tone and bladder control,” Vic said to Erin.
“Laugh now,” Webb said. “Live long enough, you won’t think it’s so funny.”
Chapter 8
“It’d be easier to nail down a suspect if we knew who the intended victim was,” Vic muttered. He and Erin were staring at the whiteboard in Major Crimes. They’d laid out a chain of custody for the deadly chocolate. It started at the Bianchi household, passing from Paulie to Rocky Nicoletti, then to Amber Hayward, and ending up in Norman Ridgeway’s stomach.
“Makes the motive simpler,” Erin agreed.
“Let’s see if I’ve got this straight,” Vic went on. “Hayward might’ve poisoned Ridgeway because he was screwing the Berkley chick. But Berkley had access to the candy beforehand, so she might’ve done it to take out Ridgeway, Hayward, or maybe both. Nicoletti gave the candy to Hayward, and he knew she was cheating on him, so maybe he wanted to kill her, or her boyfriend, or both. But he got the candy from Paulie Bianchi. Damned if I know why Bianchi would want to kill Nicoletti. Maybe he was skimming on the drugs he was dealing. Usually gangsters take care of that sort of thing with a gun or a knife, but who knows? And then there’s the possibility the candy was already poisoned when Bianchi got his hands on it, in which case none of this makes a damn bit of difference.”
“That’s about it,” she said. “I guess one of us better call the candy company.”
“They’ll have a whole file cabinet full of threatening letters,” he gloomily predicted.
“You got a better idea?”
“No.”
That was how Erin ended up spending her afternoon sorting through dozens of e-mails and scanned letters from deranged New Yorkers. The chocolate company rep was eager to help. He was almost pathetically glad to provide anything she needed. Erin got the feeling he was imagining banner headlines screaming about tainted sweets, leading to the company’s stock going into free-fall and massive staff cuts, including himself. The only thing he asked in return was that the NYPD not issue any sort of public-health warning without talking to his office beforehand.
The letters were a blend of commonplace extortion attempts, health-food fixations, apocalyptic rants, and deeply weird psychotic manifestos. Erin learned, over the next few hours, that chocolate was to blame for global warming, acid rain, teenage acne, sexual impotence, and North Korea. She wasn’t clear on the logic of that last one, but the writer was both well-educated and clinically insane, so his four-page, single-spaced typing was strangely compelling. Or maybe compellingly strange.
“Well?” Webb asked just before five.
“I don’t know, sir,” she said. “Once you weed out the crazies, there’s a few that might be credible threats, but we may not even be able to trace them.”
“If they’re e-mails, I can put Computer Crimes on it,” he said.
“I’ll forward them to you,” she said. “What a waste of a day.”
“Every lead’s a waste,” Webb said. “Except the ones that solve the case. And we don’t know which those are until we solve it.”
Erin smiled. “You’re right. I’m just tired, hungry, and cranky.”
“Don’t sweat it,” Webb said. “I think this one will keep for a day or two. No need to pull overtime on it. I’d like to brace Paulie again, preferably without his dad in the picture, but a guy like that, I think I’ll let him sweat. It’s not like anyone else is going to die in the meantime. Go on, get out of here, you two. I’ll stick around a while. You young people have lives to get back to.”
“I’m actually dead,” Vic said. “Still got a pulse, and some residual EKG activity, but it’s fading fast.”
“I suspected as much,” Erin said. “It explains your report writing. See you tomorrow.”
“That’s optimistic of you,” he said.
* * *
One of the advantages of not trying to hide her relationship from the Irish Mob was that Erin could go back to the Barley Corner, Carlyle’s pub. She’d saved it from being blown up the previous year, which meant, according to the unwritten code of bar owners, that her drinks were on the house. She liked the atmosphere of the place. Sure, it was full of mob associates, but that was part of the charm. These folks might inhabit the dark side of Erin’s world, but it was the same world and they understood one another. Plus, when you stripped away the outer layers, they were the same sort of blue-collar Irish guys she’d grown up with.
She spotted Carlyle right away, in his usual place at the bar. He saw her come in and gave her a nod and a smile. As she and Rolf slipped through the after-work crowd, she
