“I think you should call the cops.”
I raised my hands in defeat. “Fine, I’ll call the cops. Which ones?”
“NYPD,” Julie said.
“I don’t even know what precinct that would be.” Using Dad’s laptop, we concluded it was the seventh. I entered a number on the Web site into my cell phone. “Here goes,” I said to Julie while I waited for the connection.
“Yeah, hello,” I said when someone picked up. “I need to talk to a…I guess I need to talk to a detective.”
“Is that an emergency call, sir?”
“No, it’s not. I mean, it’s important, but it’s not an emergency.”
“Hold on.”
A few seconds later, someone else picked up. A man with a gruff voice. “Simpkins.”
“Hi, my name is Ray Kilbride. I’m calling from Promise Falls.”
“What can I do for you, Mr. Kilbride?”
“Okay, this is going to sound kind of crazy, but I just need you to hear me out. My brother may have witnessed a homicide. Or something.”
“What’s your brother’s name?”
“Thomas Kilbride.”
“And the reason you’re calling and he isn’t?”
“I think he’s more comfortable if I do this.”
“And that’s because?”
“Look, that really doesn’t matter, and the thing is, he’s not really the only witness.”
“Who else is a witness? Are you a witness, Mr. Kilbride?”
“Sort of. The thing is, there could be a great many witnesses. There’s a record of the crime on the Internet. At least, there was.”
A pause at the other end of the line. “I see. Who got killed, Mr. Kilbride?”
“Okay, I don’t know for certain that anyone did, but it looks like someone being killed in a window. And it might be a woman named Allison Fitch.”
“Is this something you saw posted on YouTube, sir?” the detective asked, his voice already filled with skepticism.
“No, it was on Whirl360, where you can-”
“I know what it is. You telling me your brother thinks he saw a homicide on that site?”
“That’s right. Listen, at first I thought he was imagining it, but-”
“Why would you have thought he was imagining it, sir?”
“Because my brother has a history of psychiatric problems and-”
Click.
I looked at Julie.
“You don’t have to tell me,” she said. “I’d have hung up, too. Could you have laid it out for him any worse?”
“I told you it was a bad idea.”
Julie threw her hands up. “Okay, you were right, I was wrong. You want to stay out of this, not get Thomas involved, I suppose that makes perfect sense. You’ve got no stake in this personally. And even if someone did see you with that printout, they’ve got no idea who you are.”
“That’s right. I didn’t give anyone my name.”
“Well, there you go,” Julie said. “You’ve got nothing to worry about.”
FORTY-TWO
“Let me have a look at the picture again?” the woman behind the counter said.
Lewis Blocker handed her the printout at the art store in Lower Manhattan. It was a screen-capture image from the surveillance video shot through the door of the Fitch apartment. It was the best image he’d been able to get of the man who’d come knocking with the Whirl360 image in hand. The face was slightly fish-eyed, but Lewis thought it was good enough for someone to make an identification.
She’d already glanced at it once and said she didn’t know the guy, then decided she wanted to have another look at it.
“So what’d this guy do, exactly?”
“Credit card fraud,” Lewis said. “Identity theft.”
“Oh yeah,” she said. “That’s a big problem.”
Lewis guessed the woman was around thirty. Jet black hair, skin like Morticia Addams, ruby red lipstick. She had studs in her ears, one through her right nostril, and another just below her lip. Lewis wondered how many other piercings she had that weren’t visible, where they might be.
She held the sheet in her hand and cocked her head to one side. “His face looks kind of puffy.”
“That’s just the way the camera makes it look,” Lewis explained.
“I don’t know. I thought maybe I recognized him, but now I’m not so sure.”
“Let me tell you what this guy’s been up to,” Lewis said, hopeful that once she knew what a bad person he was she’d be more inclined to help. He hadn’t actually told her he was a cop, but had flashed an open wallet at her, just long enough for her to get the idea. “He rips off real credit card numbers from real people, then makes new cards with all that personal data transferred onto it, goes on a wild buying spree for a couple of days, then ditches the card. Usually, by that time, the credit company has caught on to the fact that the usual spending for this card has changed, has alerted the owner, and shut the card down.”
She shook her head in wonder. “Fuckin’ amazing.” There was a hint of admiration there, like maybe she was wishing she could figure out how to do this herself. “I thought, ever since everyone started using those chip cards, this stuff didn’t happen anymore.”
“If only,” Lewis said. “New technology just slows the bad guys a while until they figure out a new way around it.”
He told her when he believed the man had been in the store. A couple of mornings ago.
“I was on, but I don’t remember this guy,” she said. She looked across the store, saw a tall, dark man restocking brushes. “Tarek, you got a second?”
Tarek came over and stood across the counter from the woman, next to Lewis.
“This cop here’s trying to find this dude,” she said. “I don’t recognize him, but he says he was in and bought some shit couple mornings ago.”
“What’s he done?” Tarek asked, examining the printout.
Lewis went through it again.
“We still get paid, though,” Tarek said. “If it’s credit card fraud, the credit card company pays back the cardholder.”
“I know,” Lewis said. “But that doesn’t mean it’s not in your interest to try to help get this guy.”
“Yeah, well, it won’t make any difference with him,” Tarek said.
“What do you mean?”
“I remember him. He paid cash.”
“Cash?” Lewis said. Who the hell paid cash anymore?
“He bought some airbrush supplies, I think, and some markers.”
“Do you know who he is? Has he shopped here before?”
“I don’t know who he is, but yeah, he’s been here before. At least that’s what he said. Said every time he’s in the city, he pops in.”
“He’s from out of town?”
“Yeah.”
“Did he say where?”
