“Your mother went to prison for killing her husband,” Iorio said. “That’s tragic. It must have been a heavy burden for you and your sister.”
Desmond stared at her. He couldn’t stand anyone defaming his mother. Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth. There was Marcus Aurelius again, backing him up. His grandmother didn’t like him quoting a Roman emperor. Godless heathen, his grandmother called the Stoic. It was ironic, given that her quotes from the Bible and Desmond’s from Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations weren’t worlds apart.
“The tragedy is my mother died in prison,” Desmond said. “The tragedy is she had ovarian cancer that wasn’t found in time or treated properly. The tragedy was that she never got to clear her name.”
There was more crackling energy between Reich and Iorio as they took that in. This was what Desmond had feared: the NYPD was more interested in rehashing gossip from the past than investigating a crime disguised as an accident.
“What I need to tell you about is the call my sister made to me from the house where she died.” Desmond realized he needed to take charge of this interview, instead of answering questions that didn’t have anything to do with Dominique’s death. “She thought she and Gary were being kidnapped on Friday, but it turned out to be something Gary staged.”
“Staged?”
“He hired a man named Max to kidnap them.” He turned his palms up and shrugged. “Don’t ask me. I didn’t know Gary well. I can tell you Dominique was really upset about it, though. She was also worried about Gary’s wife. She thought that woman was in danger.”
“Gary sounds like a piece of work,” Iorio observed.
“He was a damn fine boxer in his day,” her partner threw in. “At least until that mess he got himself into.”
Iorio gave him an exasperated look. “Please don’t talk sports. I hate it when you do that.”
Desmond was getting bored with the back-and-forth between the cops. He got the sense that they’d rather he weren’t in the room. “Gary’s friend Tom Klepper set him up with Max. He’s also Gary’s lawyer. I talked to Klepper last night. I was with him at his office when he got a call from Max demanding a ransom for Gary. He was told to go to Lighthouse Park on Roosevelt Island to deliver the cash. I went instead. I waited a long time, but no one showed up.”
“You still have the cash?” Reich asked, suddenly interested.
“I never had the cash. Tom Klepper gave me a bag of newspaper.”
“Some friend.” Iorio made a face.
Desmond passed a slip of paper with the phone numbers he had for Klepper across the table to Iorio. She didn’t pick it up. “Klepper says Max uses burner phones, but you might want to check on that. The call last night came in around eight-thirty.”
“Thanks for telling us how to do our jobs,” Iorio said drily. “You have any other crime-solving tips?”
Desmond pretended not to bristle at her dismissive attitude. “Someone’s got to find Gary’s wife. The cops in the Poconos tried, but she was gone. Her doorman said she left in a hurry on Friday night.”
The cops looked at each other, and Desmond could see they were done listening to him.
“Mr. Edgars, you need to understand something,” Iorio said. “Obviously, you’re grieving the loss of your sister. We get that, and we’re sorry for it. But sometimes, people want to see an accident as a crime. They want to find a bad guy behind it, someone they can blame.”
“This is not my overactive imagination at work,” Desmond seethed. “Dominique was murdered. Gary was murdered. Someone tried to kill me.”
“Not in New York City,” Reich shot back.
“Someone was trying to shake Tom Klepper down for cash right here in Manhattan,” Desmond answered. “That’s in your jurisdiction.”
“Maybe the guy made up a story to get away from you,” Reich snarked back. “Because he thought you were unhinged.”
“If the police force in the Poconos asks for help, obviously we’ll assist them,” Iorio said. “But, at this time, the best thing you can do is leave everything in their hands.”
Desmond felt sick to his stomach, but he stood. It had been a mistake to talk to these people. He’d owed it to Dominique to do it, against his gut instinct. But these strangers didn’t give a damn about finding out what really happened. The only way his sister would have any justice was if Desmond obtained it himself.
Chapter 32
It was ten-thirty in the morning when Desmond left the police station, heading north along Third Avenue. He dropped Iorio’s business card in the first trash bin he passed. That had been a first-class exercise in pointlessness. It didn’t matter, though, because he had questions for Tom Klepper and he was going to get answers.
His route to the Empire State Building let him keep a wide berth from his sister’s apartment. The security guard who’d signed him in on Sunday evening was still at his post, which made Desmond wonder what hours the man was working. There was no ring on his finger, but he had the haggard, put-upon look of a man with too many mouths to feed.
The guard called upstairs and sent him up. There was a receptionist answering the door today, a tall, heavyset woman with arresting curves. Her hair was a startling mix of unnatural colors.
“I’m here to see Tom Klepper.”
“Sure,” she answered, obviously unconcerned. “His office is back that way. Want me to call him?”
“That’s okay. I know my way back.”
He strolled down the corridor. Klepper’s door was locked shut. Desmond
