The uniformed cops looked at each other and back at him. “For real?”
“The police in Pennsylvania were supposed to call the NYPD.” Desmond looked from one to the other. “You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”
“No, but we can call over to get a detective over here,” the female cop offered.
“Or maybe you want to go to the station? Talk to people there?” her counterpart asked.
Voluntarily walking into a police station ranked somewhere on Desmond’s wish list between crashing his helicopter and getting rabies. “Sure,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Chapter 31
Your sister was this boxer’s mistress?”
Desmond stared at the NYPD detective in front of him. They were in an interview room at Manhattan’s Thirteenth Precinct on East Twenty-First Street. Reich had been the name given while a vise of a handshake was administered. The man was white, with hair the color of a dirty bristle brush cut into short spikes. He reclined in a chair with his chest puffed out under a shiny blue dress shirt that surely had a disco somewhere worried about its absence. His arms were spread wide, making the shirt seem tight and showcasing his dedication to the gym.
Desmond looked at the man for a long time without speaking. Fangs out was the way he’d have described him in the service. This was exactly the type of situation he needed Marcus Aurelius for. Take care not to feel toward the inhuman as they feel toward men. Stoic philosophy or not, it wouldn’t take much more of a push to beat Reich until his shirt turned purple. Marcus Aurelius was all about subduing anger, which was part of the reason Desmond had connected with him in the first place. He’d discovered him almost by accident, after his mother had gone to prison and his grandmother had forced him to attend a Jesuit-run school. They weren’t Catholic; it was just the strictest school she could find. His Latin teacher had assigned each student a different chapter of the Meditations to translate, and Desmond had been captivated. Through the calmness Marcus Aurelius preached, he could tell that the philosopher was a man full of anger and passion, much like Desmond himself. The philosopher had had to rein himself in because failing to do so would’ve cracked his heart and soul apart. Desmond understood all too well. Stoic philosophy didn’t answer everything for him, but it made him feel that, whenever he found himself in the dark, he knew how to reach for the light.
“That’s not what I said,” he finally answered Reich.
The detective cricked his head to the side, as if his neck were cramping under the pressure of all that muscle. “She was dating a married man, so…”
“Let’s move on,” his partner interjected. Detective Iorio wasn’t pretty, but she was striking: tall, athletic, brown-haired, and olive-skinned. She didn’t seem any more amused by Reich than Desmond was. “We need to talk to the state troopers who found her, but it would be helpful if you could fill in some background for us.”
“You can talk to a cop named Westergren,” Desmond said. “There’s a CSI tech who’s already collected samples from the house in the Poconos. Westergren can put you in touch with him, too.” He leaned back. “What kind of background do you need?”
“Well, you said your sister and her boyfriend were murdered, that the carbon monoxide poisoning wasn’t an accident. You have any proof of that?”
“The cops in the Poconos are working on the crime scene, so they’ll fill you in on that part. What I can tell you is this: someone else was in that house when I walked in. There was a car parked at the front, a black Honda. Whoever was driving it locked me in the basement. I had to break through the cellar door to get out. The house was filled with carbon monoxide at that point. That person tried to kill me.”
Reich started to say something, but Desmond put up his hand. “The police already found that someone recently sealed all the windows in the house. The caulking is still fresh. So someone wanted to make sure the poison in the air didn’t escape. The house was a death trap.”
“Who would have motive? Has anyone threatened your sister, to your knowledge?”
“No.” Desmond blinked. That question hadn’t occurred to him. It was obvious to him that Dominique died because she was ensnared in Gary’s plans, not because she was a target. “I don’t know anyone who’d want to hurt her, except maybe Gary’s wife.” He felt slightly cruel casting aspersions on a woman he didn’t know. Maybe Gary had other enemies, but it didn’t hurt to start with the one at home.
“Was Dominique ever married?”
“No.”
“Then how come you have different last names?” Iorio asked.
“Our mother was married twice. My father was in the Army. He died when I was three. My mother took me back to Chicago after that. When I was nine, she remarried. That man’s name was Mr. Monaghan.” The name popped out of his mouth reflexively. Mr. Monaghan. He could see how strange that sounded to the cops. “Eli Monaghan, I mean. Dominique was born a year after that.”
“Is her father still alive?”
“No.”
An almost electric current passed between Iorio and Reich. “When did he die?”
“Look, this is going to come up in your investigation sooner or later, so you might as well know it up front.” Desmond took a deep breath. “My mother went to prison for shooting Dominique’s father. He died when my sister was four.”
That caught both detectives by surprise. “Was it an abuse situation?” Reich asked.
Part of Desmond’s memory flickered to life, and he struggled to put it back in the compartment he usually housed it in. “That’s not an unfair description.”
“So, who raised Dominique? And you, because you would have been, what, fourteen?” Iorio could do math.
“Our grandmother. My mother’s mother, I mean. She took us in.”
“Did you have to move?”
“Not far. She lived just a few blocks away. We’d
