I wasn't walking back the cat anymore, I was running with him.
Ross Kehoe-Joe's trusted employee, his driver, the genius with every kind of electrical equipment. That day at the Imperial Theatre, moments before he walked Lucy behind the curtain to put her up on the swing, it was Ross Kehoe who stood on the stage, directing the guy in charge of the lighting to give him something cooler, to bring down the brightness. Why didn't Mike or I realize then that Kehoe had a specialty, an area of expertise that had all to do with electricity?
Last night, when the lights went out in my home, when someone broke into or scammed his way into the building and shut down the power in the A line of apartments, why didn't I think of Kehoe's electrical prowess when I racked my brain for possible suspects connected to the investigation?
And when Joe Berk stepped on a manhole that was wired to jolt him into the great beyond, why didn't any of us figure that the man who used to chauffeur him would know exactly where to park the car, know exactly what sewer cover Joe would step on when he came out of his apartment to get across the street to go to dinner with his wayward son? How easy for someone with Kehoe's ability to cut the wrapping on the insulation in the power box-just minutes before Berk and his son left the Belasco to go to dinner-in order to mimic the tragic accidents that had electrocuted unsuspecting pedestrians in Manhattan in years past.
Of course Briggs had told Mona about the dinner plans. Of course Kehoe had the opportunity to stage-what had the ME called it?-an "electrical event" and wait in the wings, on the dark street, to make sure Joe Berk was his only victim.
So Joe Berk had been meant to die last Sunday, just two nights after Natalya Galinova's murder. And shortly after his beloved Briggs had dropped the lawsuit against him, hoping for reconciliation. It was Briggs who had been escorting Joe out to the car on their way to dinner that evening, and undoubtedly Briggs and Mona who had been partners with Ross in Joe Berk's skillful execution.
None of them had counted on Joe's ninth life, short as it was.
Chet Dobbis was also sweating profusely. "Joe Berk's accidental death was supposed to put an end to your investigation."
"How? Why would-"
"Ross made that much clear to me tonight. Talya was killed on Friday. She and Joe were in the middle of a tempest-had been for days-fighting and feuding quite publicly. He missed her performance that night but showed up in her dressing room."
Everything Dobbis said so far made sense.
"She disappeared at the Met that very evening. The best Joe could do was say his driver would vouch for him. Even an idiot knows that one of Joe's employees would swear to anything to keep his job. That's worthless in a court of law."
Dobbis was right. The chauffeur was always a lousy alibi.
"Joe's glove was found near Talya's body. That's what Ross told me. He said he heard it from Joe. Is it true?"
I nodded my head. A glove with Joe Berk's DNA on it-and a good chance now that the other skin cells on the surface would soon be matched to Ross Kehoe, whose profile was in the linkage database from the earlier homicide investigation on Staten Island. All the information in that database that had been rendered useless-paralyzed for the time being-after I appeared in court last week on the Ramon Carido case before Judge McFarland.
"You think Ross couldn't have gotten his hands on a pair of Joe's gloves and planted one at the scene? You think Joe would ever have missed them?"
"Not likely. He probably had-"
"Dozens of pairs. That was his style, Alex. More of everything. Whoever got through the winter without losing a glove somewhere?"
"But Talya's murder? Did Joe really know his way around the Met?"
"He'd been back there scores of times. He was an impresario, courting talent, courting stars. Of course he'd been behind the scenes. They could have been going to any one of the offices," Dobbis said, pausing for several seconds. "Like Ross said to me downstairs, they could have been coming up to my office."
"And they were fighting on the way there," I said.
"Two terrible-tempered people, both volatile and very physical. They argued and Joe became enraged. Struck her, maybe hit her too hard. She passed out and he panicked. Threw her down the shaft."
"He was strong enough?"
"You only saw Joe after he was hurt. He was as strong as he was tough. It gave him the menace to back up his mouth."
I was following Dobbis's story line until he reminded me that it was just the version that Ross Kehoe had expected the police to believe. It was Ross who had actually worked at the Met-worked at almost every theater in Manhattan at one point in time or another. And Ross who knew the place well enough to steal a white-haired wig that would help incriminate Joe Berk, too, having no idea the Met used animal hair to make the wigs.
"So then Ross set up Joe Berk's electrocution. Which would have been a neat way for the police to close the case, had it worked. The killer gets his just deserts. And that's why Mona Berk came to the Belasco the night Joe was supposed to die. She was going to leave enough evidence-videotapes, maybe-something connecting Joe to the threats that Talya had been making. Something that would have given him a motive to murder his diva. Case closed."
Chet Dobbis raised his hands again to wipe away the sweat. "You know he's going to kill us. You understand Ross has that rope here so that he can-"
He stopped abruptly, unable to speak the words.
"But why?"
"Because Joe Berk lived too long. One week too long. Joe spent a lot of time with you, with the detectives last week. Ross doesn't think any of you believe Joe killed Talya. He wants to take the heat off himself. He wants to make it look like I-"
Dobbis choked on his own words.
"See that rope?" he asked me.
I looked at the thick pile on the floor near his feet. "He wants to make it look like you committed suicide?"
He nodded his head, and now the rivulets of sweat merged with the teardrops.
"I guess he figures that it's easy to make a case that Talya was on her way to my office when she was killed. Old lovers, everyone knew that. Make the case that I was jealous of Berk, jealous of Hubert Alden."
"But why would he do it here, in the dome, if no one would find you?"
"That wasn't the plan. At least not until you showed up. He had the gun. He was trying to force me to go up to the fly gallery-backstage-just before you got there. He must have more rope. Think how easy it would be to hang me from the fly," Dobbis said. "Make it look like I killed myself."
No wonder Chet Dobbis had said he was glad to see us when Mercer and I surprised him in the auditorium.
Ross Kehoe walked over to the bar, turned his back, and leaned against it.
"Make me a drink," he said to Mona.
"Don't give me orders," she said, looking petulant and unhappy.
"I'm doing all the work. Make me a drink."
She walked toward the counter and poured from one of the decanters. They had been quarreling with each other, from the look on her face. Kehoe must have felt as trapped as Dobbis and I did. There was no need to fuel that mix of desperation and nerves with alcohol.
"Your arrival tonight makes things much harder for us," Kehoe said to me. "And that's why you're making it so much harder for yourself."
"You don't know my partners very well. They're out of that steel trap by now and they won't leave this building until they've found me."
Kehoe looked at his watch, took a sip of his drink, and smiled at me.
"The front entrance to the theater was completely barred," I said. "They know none of us went out that way, and if they go back the way we came in through the office tower, the security guard will tell them we never passed by there again."
"You're giving that dumb bastard a lot more credit than I would. And I guess you don't know there's a series of exits right behind the stage. Three doors and a truck bay wide enough to fit a container shipment. That would be the logical way to take anybody out of here quickly," Kehoe said, running his tongue round and around his lips. "Those doors are the first things your buddies would have seen when the release went up on the firewall."
I looked at Dobbis and he nodded in agreement.
"I guarantee you they'll look everywhere else before they even figure out there's an entrance to this dome," Kehoe said, as Mona Berk took the glass from his hand and sipped at it. "It sits in the middle of this city like a gigantic ball, and it's never had any use at all."
"The noise-"
"You got a lot of degrees, maybe, but you don't know anything important, do you? Like everything else in a theater, that door is soundproofed. Scream, Miss Prosecutor, and maybe a passing pigeon'll hear you up above, but nobody else will."
He reached into his pants pocket and withdrew something. They were small objects that I couldn't see, but I could hear the metallic sound as he jiggled them together in his fingers.
Kehoe opened the chamber of his revolver. He lifted his hand to his mouth and I watched in horror as he kissed the tip of a bullet and placed it in the gun. He grinned at me and sucked in air again, kissing a second bullet and loading it in the chamber.
"I wasn't counting on two of you," he said. "I hate to waste the lead."
I raised my head and tried to scoff at his arrogance, which frightened me every bit as much as it did Chet Dobbis. I knew there was no way out, but Ross Kehoe must have known that, too. We were all trapped here together. "They're not stupid enough to think a woman disappeared from within a theater and simply couldn't be found anywhere."
"Don't be so sure of yourself, Alex," Kehoe said, pointing the gun at me and cocking his head, as though he was practicing taking aim. "That theory didn't do anything to help Natalya Galinova get out of the Met alive, did it?"