The Last Dance Read online

  “He’s merely asking,” Carella said.

  “No, he’s not merely asking, he seems to think it’s important. He keeps asking me over and over again did I call the police, did I call the police, when you know I called the police, otherwise you wouldn’t be here!”

  “We have to ask certain questions,” Carella said gently.

  “But why that particular question?”

  “Because some people wouldn’t necessarily call the police if they found someone dead from apparent natural causes.”

  “Who would they call? Necessarily?”

  “Relatives, friends, even a lawyer. Not necessarily the police, is all my partner’s saying,” Carella explained gently.

  “Then why doesn’t he say it?” Cynthia snapped. “Instead of asking me all the time did I call the police?”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” Meyer said in his most abject voice. “I didn’t mean to suggest there was anything peculiar about your calling the police.”

  “Well, your partner here seems to think it was peculiar,” Cynthia said, thoroughly confused now. “He seems to think I should have called my husband or my girlfriend or my priest or anybody but the police, what is it with you two?”

  “We simply have to investigate every possibility,” Carella said, more convinced than ever that she was lying. “By all appearances, your father died in bed, possibly from a heart attack, possibly from some other cause, we won’t know that until the autopsy results are …”

  “He was an old man who’d suffered two previous heart attacks,” Cynthia said. “What do you think he died of?”

  “I don’t know, ma’am,” Carella said. “Do you?”

  Cynthia looked him dead in the eye.

  “My husband’s a lawyer, you know,” she said.

  “Is your mother still alive?” Meyer asked, ducking the question and its implied threat.

  “He’s on the way here now,” she said, not turning to look at Meyer, her gaze still fastened on Carella, as if willing him to melt before her very eyes. Green, he noticed. A person could easily melt under a green-eyed laser beam.

  “Is she?” Meyer asked.

  “She’s alive,” Cynthia said. “But they’re divorced.”

  “Any other children besides you?”

  She glared at Carella a moment longer, and then turned to Meyer, seemingly calmer now. “Just me,” she said.

  “How long have they been divorced?” Meyer asked.

  “Five years.”

  “What was his current situation?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your father. Was he living with anyone?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Seeing anyone?”

  “His private life was his own business.”

  “How often did you see your father, Mrs. Keating?”

  “Around once a month.”

  “Had he been complaining about his heart lately?” Carella asked.

  “Not to me, no. But you know how old men are. They don’t take care of themselves.”

  “Was he complaining about his heart to anyone at all?” Meyer asked.

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Then what makes you think he died of a heart attack?” Carella asked.

  Cynthia looked first at him, and then at Meyer, and then at Carella again.

  “I don’t think I like either one of you,” she said and walked out into the kitchen to stand alone by the window.

  One of the technicians had been hovering. He caught Carella’s eye now. Carella nodded and went over to him.

  “Blue cashmere belt,” the technician said. “Blue cashmere fibers over the door hook there. What do you think?”

  “Where’s the belt?”

  “Near the chair there,” he said, and indicated the easy chair near the room’s single dresser. A blue bathrobe was draped over the back of the chair. The belt to the robe was on the floor, alongside the dead man’s shoes and socks.

  “And the hook?”

  “Back of the bathroom door.”

  Carella glanced across the room. The bathroom door was open. A chrome hook was screwed into the door, close to the top.

  “The robe has loops for the belt,” the technician said. “Seems funny it’s loose on the floor.”

  “They fall off all the time,” Carella said.

  “Sure, I know. But it ain’t every day we get a guy dead in bed who looks like maybe he was hanged.”

  “How strong is that hook?”

  “It doesn’t have to be,” the technician said. “All a hanging does is interrupt the flow of blood to the brain. That can be done by the weight of the head alone. We’re talking an average of ten pounds. A picture hook can support that.”

  “You should take the detective’s exam,” Carella suggested, smiling.

  “Thanks, but I’m already Second Grade,” the technician said. “Point is, the belt coulda been knotted around the old man’s neck and then thrown over the hook to hang him. That’s if the fibers match.”

  “And provided he didn’t customarily hang his robe over that hook.”

  “You looking for a hundred excuses to prove he died of natural causes? Or you looking for one that says it could’ve been homicide?”

  “Who said anything about homicide?”

  “Gee, excuse me, I thought that’s what you were looking for, Detective.”

  “How about a suicide made to look like natural causes?”

  “That’d be a good one,” the technician agreed.

  “When will you have the test results?”

  “Late this afternoon sometime?”

  “I’ll call you.”

  “My card,” the technician said.

  “Detective?” a man’s voice said.

  Carella turned toward the kitchen doorway where a burly man in a dark gray coat with a black velvet collar was standing. The shoulders of the coat were damp with rain, and his face was raw and red from the cold outside. He wore a little mustache under his nose, and he had puffy cheeks, and very dark brown eyes.

  “I’m Robert Keating,” he said, walking toward Carella, but not extending his hand in greeting. His wife stood just behind him. They had obviously talked since he’d come into the apartment. There was an anticipatory look on her face, as if she expected her husband to punch one of the detectives. Carella certainly hoped he wouldn’t.

  “I understand you’ve been hassling my wife,” Keating said.

  “I wasn’t aware of that, sir,” Carella said.

  “I’m here to tell you that better not be the case.”

  Carella was thinking it better not be the case that your wife came in here and found her father hanging from the bathroom door and took him down and carried him to the bed. That had better not be the case here.

  “I’m sorry if there was any misunderstanding, sir,” he said.

  “There had better not be any misunderstanding,” Keating said.

  “Just so there won’t be,” Carella said, “let me make our intentions clear. If your father-in-law died of a heart attack, you can bury him in the morning, and you’ll never see us again as long as you live. But if he died for some other reason, then we’ll be trying to find out why, and you’re liable to see us around for quite a while. Okay, sir?”

  “This is a crime scene, sir,” the technician said. “Want to clear the premises, please?”

  “What?” Keating said.

  At four-thirty that afternoon, Carella called the lab downtown and asked to talk to Detective/Second Grade Anthony Moreno. Moreno got on the phone and told him the fibers they’d lifted from the hook on the bathroom door positively matched sample fibers from the robe’s blue cashmere belt.

  Not ten minutes later, Carl Blaney called Carella to tell him that the autopsy findings in the death of Andrew Henry Hale were consistent with postmortem appearances in asphyxial deaths.

  Carella wondered if Cynthia Keating’s husband would accompany her to the squadroom when they asked her to come in.


  Robert Keating turned out to be a corporate lawyer who was wise enough to recognize that the police wouldn’t be dragging his wife in unless they had reason to believe a crime had been committed. He’d called a friend of his who practiced criminal law, and the man was here now, demanding to know what his client was doing in a police station, even though he’d already been informed that Mrs. Keating had been invited here, and had arrived of her own volition, escorted only by her husband.

  Todd Alexander was a stout little blond man wearing a navy blue sports jacket over a checkered vest and gray flannel trousers. He looked as if he might be more at home attending a yachting meet than standing here in one of the city’s grubbier squadrooms, but his manner was that of a man who had dealt with countless bogus charges brought by hundreds of reckless police officers, and he seemed completely unruffled by the present venue or the circumstances that necessitated his being here.

  “So tell me what this is all about,” he demanded. “In twenty-five words or less.”

  Carella didn’t even blink.

  “We have a necropsy report indicating that Andrew Hale died of asphyxia,” he said. “Is that twenty-five words or less?”

  “Twelve,” Meyer said. “But who’s counting?”

  “Evidence would seem to indicate that the belt from Mr. Hale’s cashmere robe was knotted and looped around his neck,” Carella said, “and then dropped over the hook on the bathroom door in order to effect hanging, either suicidal or homicidal.”

  “What’s that got to do with my client?”

  “Your client seems to think her father died in bed.”

  “Is that what you told them?”

  “I told them I found him in bed.”

  “Dead?”

  “Yes,” Cynthia said.

  “Has Mrs. Keating been informed of her rights?” Alexander asked.

  “We haven’t asked her any questions yet,” Carella said.

  “She just told me …”

  “That was at the scene.”

  “You haven’t talked to her since she arrived here?”

  “She got here literally three minutes before you did.”

  “Has she been charged with anything?”

  “No.”

  “Why is she here?”

  “We want to ask her some questions.”

  “Then read her her rights.”

  “Sure.”

  “Don’t sound so surprised, Detective. She’s in custody, you’re throwing around words like homicide, I want her to hear her rights. Then we’ll decide whether she wants to answer any questions.”

  “Sure,” Carella said again, and began the recitation he knew by heart. “In keeping with the Supreme Court decision in the case of Miranda versus Escobedo,” he intoned, and advised her that she had the right to remain silent, asking her every step along the way if she understood what he was saying, told her she had the right to consult a lawyer, which she already had done, told her they would obtain a lawyer for her if she didn’t have one, which no longer applied, told her that if she decided to answer questions with or without her lawyer present, she could call off the questioning at any time, do you understand, and finally asked if she wished to answer questions at this time, to which she responded, “I have nothing to hide.”

  “Does that mean yes?” Carella asked.

  “Yes. I’ll answer any questions you have.”

  “Where’s that autopsy report?” Alexander asked.

  “Right there on my desk.”

  Alexander picked it up, looked at it briefly …

  “Who signed it?” he asked.

  “Carl Blaney.”

  … seemed abruptly bored by it, and tossed it back onto the desk again.

  “Did you also speak to Blaney in person?” he asked.

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Did he have anything to add to his findings?”

  “Only that because the ligature around the neck was soft and wide, there was only a faint impression of the loop on the skin. But the knot caused a typical abrasion under the chin.”

  “All right, ask your questions,” Alexander said. “We haven’t got all day here.”

  “Mrs. Keating,” Carella said, “what time did you get to your father’s apartment this morning?”

  “A little after ten.”

  “Did you call the Emergency Service number at ten-oh-seven A.M.?”

  “I don’t know the exact time.”

  “Would this refresh your memory?” Carella asked, and started to hand her a computer printout.

  “May I see that, please?” Alexander said, and took it from Carella’s hand. Again, he looked at the document only perfunctorily, handed it to Cynthia, and asked, “Did you make this call?”

  “Well, may I see it?” she said.

  He handed her the printout. She read it silently and said, “Yes, I did.”

  “Is the time correct?” Carella asked.

  “Well, that’s the time listed here, so I guess that’s the time it was.”

  “Ten-oh-seven.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you tell the operator that you’d just come into your father’s apartment and found him dead in bed?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Did you ask her to send someone right away?”

  “I did.”

  “Here’s the call sheet from Adam Two,” Carella said. “Their time of arrival …”

  “Adam Two?” Alexander asked.

  “From the precinct here. One of the cars patrolling Adam Sector from eight A.M. to four P.M. today. Mr. Hale’s apartment is in Adam Sector. They list their time of arrival as ten-fifteen A.M. And this is my own Detective Division report, which lists the time of our arrival as ten-thirty-one. My partner and I. Detective Meyer and myself.”

  “All of which is intended to prove what, Detective?”

  “Nothing at all, sir, except the sequence of events.”

  “Remarkable,” Alexander said. “Not twenty-four minutes after Mrs. Keating called 911, there were no fewer than four policemen at the scene! Wonderful! But before you ask any more questions, may I ask where all this is going?”

  “I want Mrs. Keating to tell me what she did before she called 911.”

  “She’s already told you. She came into the apartment, found her father dead in his own bed, and immediately called the police. That’s what she did, Detective.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “What do you think she did?”

  “I don’t know. But I do know she was in that apartment for almost forty minutes before she called the emergency number.”

  “I see. And how do you know that?”

  “The super told me he saw her going in at nine-thirty.”

  “Is that true, Cynthia?”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “In which case, I’d like to suggest that we call off the questioning and go about our more productive endeavors. Detective Carella, Detective Meyer, it’s been a distinct …”

  “He’s down the hall,” Carella said. “In the lieutenant’s office. Shall I ask him to come in?”

  “Who is down the hall?”

  “The super. Mr. Zabriski. He remembers it was nine-thirty because that’s when he puts out the garbage cans each morning. The truck comes by at nine-forty-five.”

  The room was silent for a moment.

  “Assuming you do have this super …” Alexander said.

  “Oh, I have him, all right.”

  “And assuming he did see Mrs. Keating entering the building at nine-thirty …”

  “That’s what he told me.”

  “What exactly do you think happened in that apartment between then and ten-oh-seven, when she called the emergency number?”

  “Well,” Carella said, “assuming she herself didn’t hang her father from that bathroom hook—”

  “Goodbye, Mr. Carella,” Alexander said, and rose abruptly. “Cynthia,” he said, “leave us hie yonder. Bob,” he said to her husband, “it’s a good thing y
ou called me. Mr. Carella here is fishing for a murder charge.”

  “Try Obstruction,” Carella said.

  “What?”

  “Or Tampering with Evidence.”

  “What?”

  “Or both. You want to know what I think happened, Mr. Alexander? I think Mrs. Keating found her father hanging from that hook …”

  “Let’s go, Cynthia.”

  “… and took him down and carried him to the bed. I think she removed …”

  “Time’s up,” Alexander said cheerfully. “Goodbye, Detec …”

  “… the belt from his neck, took off his shoes and socks, and pulled a blanket up over him. Then she called the police.”

  “For what purpose?” Alexander asked.

  “Ask her, why don’t you? All I know is that Obstructing Governmental Administration is a violation of Section 195.05 of the Penal Law. And Tampering with Evidence is a violation of Section 215.40. Obstructing is a mere A-Mis, but …”

  “You have no evidence of either crime!” Alexander said.

  “I know that body was moved!” Carella said. “And that’s Tampering! And for that one, she can get four years in jail!”

  Cynthia Keating suddenly burst into tears.

  The way she tells it …

  “Cynthia, I think I should advise you,” her attorney keeps interrupting over and over again, but tell it she will, the way all of them—sooner or later—will tell it if they will.

  “The way it happened,” she says, and now there are three detectives listening to her, Carella and Meyer who caught the squeal, joined by Lieutenant Byrnes, because all of a sudden this is interesting enough to drag him out of his corner office and into the interrogation room. Byrnes is wearing a brown suit, a wheat-colored button-down shirt, a darker brown tie with a neat Windsor knot. Even dressed as he is, he gives the impression of a flinty Irishman who’s just come in off the bogs where he’s been gathering peat. Maybe it’s the haircut. His gray hair looks windblown, even though there isn’t a breeze stirring in this windowless room. His eyes are a dangerous blue; he doesn’t like anyone messing with the law, male or female.

  “I stopped by to see him,” Cynthia says, “because he really hadn’t been feeling too good these days, and I was worried about him. I’d spoken to him the night before …”

  “What time was that?” Carella asks.