police file, the one that Sellitto let him look through. They’d been discovered in the man’s desk. John had claimed to be involved in real estate work, so who would have thought twice about finding these folders? No one did.
But Eddie Caruso had.
Because why would John Westerfield have copies of permits for construction of buildings he’d had nothing to do with?
There was only one reason, which became clear when Caruso had noted that these three permits were for pouring foundations.
What better way to dispose of a body than to drop it into a pylon about to be filled with concrete?
But which building was it? Eddie Caruso’s commitment to Carmel Rodriguez was to find out
As he looked down at the permits he suddenly realized how he could find out.
He copied the first pages of all three permits, after getting change from another customer because, yeah, his dollars’d all been rejected by the temperamental Xerox machine. Then, returning to the cubicle, he carefully—and painfully—worked the industrial-sized staples from the paper and replaced the originals with the copies.
This was surely a misdemeanor of some kind, but he’d developed quite an affection for Mrs. Carmel Rodriguez (he had dropped his rate by another twenty-five dollars an hour). And, by the by, he’d come to form an affection for the late Mrs. Sarah Lieberman, too. Nothing was going to stop him from learning where the poor woman was resting in peace.
To his relief, the clerk missed the theft, and with a sincere smile Caruso thanked her and wandered outside.
Lord be praised, there was no ticket and in a half hour he was parked outside the private forensic lab he sometimes used. He hurried inside and paid a premium for expedited service. Then he strolled down to the waiting room, where to his delight, he found a new capsule coffee machine.
Eddie Caruso didn’t drink coffee much and he never drank tea. But he loved hot chocolate. He had recipes for eighty different types and you needed recipes—you couldn’t wing it. (And you
But the Keurig did a pretty good job, provided you chocked the resulting cocoa full of Mini-Moo half and half, which Eddie Caruso now did. He sat back to enjoy the frothy beverage, flipping through a
In ten minutes, a forensic tech—a young Asian woman in a white jacket and goggles around her neck—joined him. He’d been planning on asking her out for some time. Three years and four months, to be exact. He hadn’t been courageous, or motivated, enough to do so then. And he wasn’t now.
She said. “Okay, Eddie, here’s what we’ve got. We’ve isolated identifiable prints of six individuals on the permit documents from the city commission you brought me.”
Technicians were always soooo precise.
“Two of them, negative. No record in any commercial or law enforcement database. One set are yours.” She regarded him with what might pass for irony, at least in a forensic tech, and said, “I can report that you are not in any criminal databases either. It is likely, however, that that might not be the case much longer if the police find out how you came to be in possession of an original permit, which by law has to remain on file with the city department in question.”
“Oh,” Eddie said offhandedly, “I found ‘em on the street. The permits.”
No skipped beats. She continued, “I have to tell you none are John Westerfield’s.”
This was a surprise and a disappointment.
“But I could identify one other person who touched the documents. We got his prints from military records.”
“Not criminal?”
“No.”
“Who is he?”
“His name’s Daniel Rodriguez.”
It took five seconds.
Carmel’s husband.
# # #
Whatever you call your profession, security or investigation, you need to be as professional as any cop.
Eddie Caruso was now in his office, number-crunching what he’d found, not letting a single fact wander away or distort.
Was this true? Could Daniel Rodriguez be the third conspirator, the one who’d actually disposed of Sarah Lieberman’s body?
There was no other conclusion.
He’d worked in Sarah’s building and would have been very familiar with John and Miriam Westerfield. And they had known that Daniel, with three girls approaching college age, would need all the money he could get. He was involved in the trades and would know his way around construction sites. He probably even had friends in the building whose foundation was now Sarah Lieberman’s grave.
Finally, Daniel hadn’t wanted his wife to pursue her plan to find out where Sarah’s body was. He claimed this was because it was dangerous. But, thinking about it, Caruso decided that was crazy. The odds of the other guy finding out were minimal. No, Daniel just didn’t want anybody looking into the case again.
And whatta I do now? Caruso wondered.
Well, there wasn’t much choice. All PIs are under an obligation to inform the police if they’re aware of a felon at large. Besides, anybody who’d participated, however slightly, in such a terrible crime had to go to jail.
Still, was there anything he could do to mitigate the horror that Carmel and their daughters would feel when he broke the news?
Nothing occurred to him. Tomorrow would be a mass of disappointment.
Still, he had to be sure. He needed as much proof of guilt as a cop would. That’s what Game required: resolution, good or bad. Game is never ambiguous.
He assembled some of his tools of the trade. And then decided he needed something else. After all, a man who can toss the body of an elderly woman into a building site can just as easily kill someone who’s discovered he did that. He unlocked the box containing his pistol, nothing sexy, just a revolver, the sort you didn’t see much anymore.
He found the bullets, too. They weren’t green. Which meant, Eddie Caruso assumed, that they still worked.
# # #
The next day Caruso rented an SUV with tinted windows and spent hours following Daniel. It was boring and unproductive, as 99 percent of tailing usually is.
On the surface, round Daniel Rodriguez was a harmless, cheerful man, who seemed to joke a lot and seemed to get along with the construction crews he worked with. Eddie Caruso had expected—and half-hoped—to find him selling crack to school kids. If that had been the case, it would have been easier to report him to the police.
And easier to break the news to his wife and daughters? Caruso wondered. No. Nothing could relieve the sting of that.
Daniel returned home to his small but well-kept house in Queens. Caruso cruised past slowly, parked up the block and stepped outside, making his way to a park across the street, dressed like anybody else in the casual, residential neighborhood—shorts and an Izod shirt, along with sunglasses and a baseball cap. He found a bench and plopped down, pretending to read his iPad, but actually observing the family through the device’s video
