I parked on the street. It was a little before noon, so when I went through the open door, the place was so empty I thought they might still be closed. Then the portly manager, whom I used to see all the time, wobbled into view from the kitchen.
He looked at me for a moment, then recognition dawned on him. A broad smile swept across his face. “Here by yourself? Where are all those beautiful kids of yours? I’m lucky I didn’t go bankrupt when you stopped coming by.” He let out a good cackle.
I approached him and stuck out my hand. As we shook, I said, “We’d still be coming, but you know how it goes—as they get older, there are more and more school and sports events we’ve got to go to.”
The manager grinned. “Maybe I can lure you back with a good hamburger for lunch.”
I started to shake my head.
The manager said, “Some homemade lemon chicken salad?”
“I’m actually not here to eat. You remember I’m with the NYPD, right?”
He nodded carefully. The kind of nod cops get from people who think they might be suspects and start doing a mental rewind of their recent past. That kind of self-censoring slows down investigations.
I eased his mind. “I’m looking into a pair of homicides. The one thing they had in common was a photograph taken at this bar.” I showed him both photos on my phone. “The same man appears in both of them, though it’s hard to get a good look at his face.”
The chubby man studied the photos carefully, then looked over his shoulder to confirm exactly where in the bar they’d been taken. He wasted no time in leading me over to a hallway that featured a couple of Pop-A-Shot games. “Here’s where one photo was taken. I can tell by the TV in the back. The other was obviously taken near the bar. You can see the mirror and all of our NFL gear.”
“Do you think we could figure out when these photos were taken?”
“I dunno…maybe you can figure out the date of the game going on behind the girl? I can see it’s the Yankees and the Red Sox.”
I sat at the bar, checked a few websites, and made a few calls. I was able to figure out the six dates when the Yankees and Red Sox had played recently. All of the games had broadcast on the same channel here, and all had started at 7 p.m. And all the dates were within the last two months. I was onto something.
Lunchtime business in the bar picked up while I was busy on the phone. To his credit, the manager kept himself free to help me if I needed it. We searched through the security videos he had on hand. Of the six dates, he still had security videos from four of the nights.
He set me up in his rear office with a computer. He even brought me a Coke and a sandwich. We both figured I was going to be here awhile.
I started watching the first security video, and fast-forwarded to 7 p.m. I couldn’t believe my luck—I struck pay dirt within two minutes. I was easily able to identify Marilyn Shaw from her photograph, and barely another minute of searching turned up the man who appeared in both Lila’s and Marilyn’s photos. He was a tall white man with sandy hair and an athletic build, and looked to be in his mid to late thirties.
I tried to get a feel for their relationship. They held hands and laughed together, and while the video wasn’t perfect, I was at least able to pull some full-face stills of the mystery man off of it and run them through the state photo-ID database.
Then fate stepped in.
Chapter 67
As a philosophy major, I’ve read dozens of quotes about fate. How it favors one person over another. Some sayings assert that fate favors the prepared. Or the determined. Or the virtuous. But often it simply favors the lucky. There’s no other way to explain it. And every homicide detective in the world will admit to having a number of cases solved by lucky breaks.
I’d just gotten back to my car when my phone rang. The number was an NYPD exchange, and it turned out to be main dispatch sending through a call from a uniformed patrol officer named Janelle Gibbs.
Officer Gibbs said, “Detective Bennett, I’m sorry to bother you, but I just heard something odd at a domestic and I thought I should pass it along to you.”
“It’s no bother. Whatcha got?”
“I’m in Brooklyn, in Cobble Hill, at a nice brownstone. Like I said, I got called to this domestic. The husband left and the wife is really, really pissed off.”
“I’m listening.”
“She confronted her husband about some burner phones she found in the house. He threatened her and stormed out. But the wife’s no dummy. She knew they were phones he used for girlfriends.” Officer Gibbs sounded sharp. “Anyway, she found out one of the girlfriends’ names, and when she told it to me, I recognized it as being the same as one of the victims murdered by that serial killer you’re investigating.”
“What was the victim’s name?”
“Marilyn Shaw.”
I felt a rush of excitement. Can this be the mystery man from Marilyn’s—and Lila’s—photo?
“I’ll be right there. Don’t leave and don’t give any info to the wife.”
“No problem. I told her I’d be writing reports in my car for a little bit. She’s busy with a toddler anyway.”
Officer Gibbs gave me the address and I was on my way, yet another trek from one end of the city to the other. I was starting to feel like an Uber driver. In this case, I caught a lucky break and found the FDR open all the way down to the Brooklyn Bridge.
Officer Gibbs was a tall, attractive black woman who seemed way too young to be a cop. Or maybe I was just getting older. I could tell by the look on her face that Gibbs was shocked I’d gotten to the brownstone in Cobble Hill so quickly after her call.
But she had her shit together. She had the info all ready and laid out for me as I walked up.
“The wife is inside with the kid. I haven’t reached out to the husband,” Officer Gibbs said as she concluded her report.
“You’ve done a tremendous job. Do you mind coming up to the house with me? Sounds like you and the wife already have a rapport. I don’t want to intimidate her.”
As we climbed the stairs to the top of the stoop, a woman with messy brown hair stepped out of the open front door with a little boy in her arms.
“Mrs. Cedar, this is Detective Bennett,” Officer Gibbs said.
“Please, call me Lauren,” the woman said. She hefted the toddler on her hip. “And this is Tyler.”
Tyler had blond hair and big, beautiful brown eyes. He smiled, then giggled when I tickled his bare feet.
“Come on inside,” Lauren told us.
As soon as I stepped into the living room and looked at the photos lined up on the small fireplace mantel, I had the confirmation I needed, that Lauren Cedar’s husband was definitely the same man from the sports bar.
I talked to her for a minute more but didn’t want to give out too much information. She was still shaken.
Lauren sniffled, recounting for me the outburst from her husband that had prompted the call to the police. It had started when she found a couple of burner cell phones and confronted him with them, accusing him of cheating on her. Instead of denying it, he’d gone on the offensive, yelling and throwing things around.
She said, “I told him he was being too loud and that he was scaring Tyler. That he was even scaring me. You know what he said?”