A Cold Day in Hell Page 21

The high temperatures of the summer had faded at the end of August, breaking Buffalo’s record heat wave, and melted into a spectacular September. By the third week of the month the leaves had already started to change. Lauren hung her hand out of the Impala’s window to catch the breeze as they drove over the Skyway. She loved the fall. The weather had chilled, but the nights stayed warm. The breeze off the lake felt like a deliciously cool kiss after the blistering summer. The turning of the page on her kitchen calendar that morning had reminded her that the grand finale was getting near. The trial would start soon, and once it was over, she could concentrate on what to do about Mark. Her life could be her own again.

  But first came Vinita Ortiz.

  They turned off onto Tifft Street, past the nature preserve, past Bishop Timon High School’s football field into the heart of South Buffalo. Every street held a memory for Lauren, from waiting for the bus on South Park Avenue to take her downtown, to the beautiful tree-lined McKinley Parkway, where she’d grown up with her parents and sister. Shannon Pilski lived past Mercy Hospital, where both of Lauren’s daughters had been born.

  “I want to drive past Dad’s old station,” Reese told her, heading down McKinley Parkway and cutting up Kimberly Avenue to Abbott Road. “He used to bring me there all the time when I was a kid.”

  “Sure.” Lauren nodded. They continued down Abbott Road, rolling by Reese’s father’s old firehouse. The firefighters were sitting in lawn chairs out in front, drinking coffee, enjoying the sunny day while a young guy, probably a rookie, polished the brass on the rig just inside the bay doors. Lauren pictured Reese as a kid, climbing on the trucks there, his dad’s fire helmet on. The look on his face as they passed by told her it was a good memory for him, maybe one of his best.

  Past Mercy Hospital, Abbott Road was starting to get a little rough. There were some closed businesses, run-down bars, and, Lauren realized as they pulled up to the curb, rooming houses. Those had never been there when she was growing up. Things change, she thought, climbing out of the car. I can’t complain. I don’t even live here anymore.

  They made their way into the two-story building that needed a guy from Code Enforcement to pay a visit right away. Pilski’s address was thankfully listed as one of the ground-floor rooms. All the lights in the hallway were smashed out, making them pick their way through a maze of debris to Shannon Pilski’s door. Instead of knocking with her hand, Lauren banged the butt end of her radio against the wood. No way she was touching anything in that place.

  The smell of stale beer and unwashed clothes assaulted Lauren’s nose when Shannon Pilski cracked open her door. Trying not to brush up against the garbage bags that overflowed next to Pilski’s door, Riley and Reese were forced to stand single file in the hallway of the rooming house. Shannon’s face, now ruddy and bloated with her alcoholism peeked through the door. “Yeah?” she demanded suspiously, looking Lauren up and down.

  “Shannon Pilski?”

  “Who wants to know?” A cockroach scuttled across the floor behind her.

  “I’m Detective Riley and this is Detective Reese. We were wondering if we could come in for a minute and talk to you.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “About what? I didn’t call you. Are you from Child Protective Services?”

  “No, ma’am. We’re from the Buffalo Police Department. Can we come in and talk?”

  “Buffalo Police? What’s this about?” The door closed a hair.

  “We want to talk to you about an old case.” Lauren inched a little closer, trying to get her boot in the crack. “Can we come inside out of the hallway? It’s pretty cramped out here.”

  “What old case?”

  “We could go downtown if you don’t want to talk here,” Reese offered up.

  Her eyes focused in on Reese. Her lip curled up, revealing two rotten front teeth. “What do you want to talk to me about?”

  “You don’t want your neighbors knowing your business, do you?” Lauren asked.

  “Fuck you. Talk to my lawyer.” With that Pilski slammed the door in Lauren’s face, deadbolt turning with a solid thunk.

  “That went well,” Reese laughed, backing out of the garbage path.

  “Maybe you should have used your magnetic charms on her.” Lauren’s face burned as she tried to control her anger.

  “I don’t think I’m her type.”

  She half turned back toward the door. “I should just arrest her right now.”

  “This was her one chance to talk. The DA will get her a lawyer and offer her a preindictment plea,” Reese reasoned. “Don’t rush things because she told you to screw off.”

  “I think she told us both to screw off.” Lauren stomped down the steps and out into the changing autumn air. It was warm out, but that leafy tinge now hung in the atmosphere. She thought of the copy of the DNA report she had in her folder, stating that the unknown female blood found on the knife, clothes, and street matched the sample Shannon Pilski had to give when she got her third felony DWI. With the statements from her former boyfriend, the bartender, and Luz, it was more than enough to put the cuffs on her. The district attorney liked to take cold cases slow, though. And at this point in the game, with everything going on, she wasn’t about to rock the boat. She’d let the DA make the preindictment offer, especially if it would save Luz from having to testify about that night. Opening this wound again had almost given the woman a nervous breakdown. She called Lauren’s cell and left a message every day asking for an update, saying she thought she had seen the woman at the mall or that she had strange blocked numbers showing up on her phone. Lauren couldn’t imagine Luz on the stand.

  “It’ll feel good when you get to put those handcuffs on,” Reese told her as they approached the car.

  “If you say so,” Lauren replied, trying to get the feeling of cockroaches crawling on her to leave. “But remind me to disinfect them afterwards.”

  65

  It was during this down time, while Frank Violanti was preparing for the start of the trial, that his wife Kim knocked on the door of his home office. September had bled into a dazzling October, with red and orange leaves blazing in the trees and Buffalo Bills football frenzy reaching its peak. As he had helped his wife put up the Halloween decorations earlier, like she did every October 1st, he knew he had been spending too much time alone, too much time obsessing about the trial. He knew he had been neglecting her. So when she came in with two big glasses of iced tea, he accepted his with a smile and not the usual scowl for her interrupting his work.

  “Thanks, babe,” he said and sipped it. She made perfect iced tea, complete with lemon slices floating in the glass, and just the right amount of ice.

  “You’re in a good mood,” she commented, taking her usual seat across from him in the floral easy chair. It had been in their first

  apartment and survived the move into the new house. Its matching sofa had not been so lucky.

  “I see the light at the end of the tunnel. Pretty soon this trial will be over and I can have my life back. We can have our lives back.”

  She nodded in approval. “I was hoping you’d say that because there’s something I need to tell you.”

  “Oh, yeah? What? Are we going to Aruba for Christmas like you’ve wanted to? Anything you want, Kim. You’ve been a saint about all this.” He smiled because he meant it. He knew he could be hard to live with and distant when he caught a big case. All she’d ever done was support him. Now that the hard part was coming up, he needed her to know how much he appreciated her.

  “Not Aruba. Not this year, Frank.” She traced the flower pattern on the armrest with her index finger.

  “We’re not? Then what?”

  “I’m pregnant.”

  It took a good five seconds for the words to sink in. They’d been trying for over four years. The doctors had found nothing wrong with either of them. These things sometimes take time, they’d been as
sured over and over. Every month, Kim cried as she got hit with another slap in the face. They’d taken fertility drugs, gotten treatments, but nothing seemed to work. That past April she had turned thirty-eight, which seemed to be a kind of milestone for her. No more treatments, she said, no more shots. I’m done. If there’s nothing wrong, maybe we weren’t meant to have a baby. Violanti knew better. Every month when he heard her sobbing in the bathroom, he knew better.

  She saw his puzzled look and repeated herself, “We’re having a baby.”

  “We’re having a baby?”

  Now tears were running down her face. “I wanted to be sure. I waited to tell you.”

  “When? When are we having a baby?’

  “I’m four months pregnant.”

  “Four months?” Had it really been four months since he’d heard her crying? Or hadn’t he been paying attention? He got up and wrapped his arms around her. “I love you. I love you so much. I love our baby … ” Now he was crying too.

  His next thought was, I have to call my mom.

  All the frustration and tension melted away like chocolate on a hot sidewalk. After this trial was over, he was going to be a father.

  66

  While Frank Violanti was overcome with happiness at the news he was going to be a dad, Joe Wheeler was internalizing all his feelings about Lauren and morphing them into rage as the trial got closer. He was hearing rumors, whispers about a plausible defense. That his cut-and-dried case was not so cut-and-dried. He sat in his office, mentally rehashing the last meeting he had with Church. The trial was a little more than a week away. The case was strong, but Violanti was a smart little bastard. He could twist things.

  He toyed with the file in his hand. He had been holding it back, like an insurance policy. He had thought the kid looked familiar when they scooped him up. He remembered looking at David as he sat in their interrogation room and asking himself, Where do I know this kid from?

  He was too busy with the murder case to follow up on his gut then, but the feeling kept gnawing at him. Now that he had some down time, a little digging into the old files produced his answer: another case starring David Spencer.

  He hadn’t brought the old file to Church’s attention at first because, in reality, he could have done more of an investigation back then. Now, he thought he should give Church the file—he might be able to use it as leverage somehow, if only to make that little turd Violanti sweat about his client.

  He tapped the manila folder on the corner of his desk. Thin file. Not much of an investigation. When the situation went down, it had seemed a waste of his time and resources. Just a case of boys being boys. He had disposed of it and relegated the case to closed status as quickly was possible.

  He’d take the hit on that. He had bigger fish to fry.

  67

  The conference room on the sixth floor of the district attorney’s office was stifling. With floor-to-ceiling windows that didn’t open, it let in the light, trapped the heat, and turned the air inside to a thick soup. Despite the crisp October air outside, in that room it was stuffy as hell.

  “Five DWIs, two petty larceny convictions, three assault and harassment charges, two possession of a controlled substance.” Kevin King let the papers of Shannon Pilski’s rap sheet flutter to the table. “Seven to fifteen years on a manslaughter one charge is a gift.”

  “My client has three children … ”

  “Two of which she lost custody of years ago and another no one can locate.” The Kinger had asked that this case be assigned to him. After the disaster at Freddie Stenz’s house, he clearly wanted this slam dunk. If Shannon Pilski’s young, hippyish court-appointed lawyer thought he could sway Assistant District Attorney King with an appeal for mercy, he was dead wrong. “Let’s stop playing games. If she takes it to trial she’s looking at twenty to life.”

  Lauren and Reese sat on either side of King, across the conference table from the public defender and his client. Pilski was slumped in her chair, radiating the smell of booze from every pore. Lauren’s mind flashed back to family parties as a child. Her grandmother would get drunk every holiday and berate everyone in the room, including her, the same smell rolling off her in waves. She died of a massive heart attack when Lauren was fourteen, and they never spoke of her again, except in the most general of terms. In Lauren’s Irish/Polish catholic family, her grandmother’s disease was not to be talked about and the damage she had caused the family was buried under denial.

  Pilski’s lawyer tried to play that angle. “My client has a serious alcohol problem dating back before this crime was committed.”

  “And I see she walked out of court-mandated rehab after her last DWI. And never went to her outpatient treatments for her prior convictions, which is why she spent a year of weekends at the county jail in 2014.”

  “I have a problem!” She slammed her hand on the table. Her ponytail-wearing, patchouli-scented attorney tried to shush her. “How can you charge me for something that happened so long ago? Like it even matters now.”

  “It matters to Vinita Ortiz’s children,” Kevin snapped, the flush of anger making the freckles across his cheeks stand out.

  “That bitch spit on me! What was I supposed to do? Huh? What the hell would you have done?” She was trying to get up out of her seat, her lawyer practically throwing himself on top of her.

  “If your client can’t control herself, I’ll have to call in the deputies,” Kevin told him.

  “Call in the deputies. What about these two right here?” She leaned forward, spittle flying from her mouth in a spray. “I guess this one has nothing better to do than go around arresting white people. Isn’t that right?” She turned her venom on Reese. “I bet you love locking up white people, don’t you?”

  When Reese just sat there looking calmly at her, she picked a pencil off the table and threw it at him, barely missing his head. He didn’t even flinch, which pissed her off even more. Lauren marveled at his self-control.

  “Fuck you!” Pilski thrust the paperwork in front of her at him, sending reports flying around the room.

  “Enough!” Her lawyer yanked her up and shoved her toward the door. “I’ll be in touch,” he hollered, trying to get her into the hallway. Reese and Riley exchanged glances. The commotion continued outside, with drunken shouts and threats and the sound of the court deputies running up.

  “Detectives,” Kevin said, shoveling his paperwork into his polished leather briefcase, “I think we’ll have a plea agreement shortly.”

  Lauren walked out of the DA’s office with her head full of lists of things to do. She had to get all the paperwork straight in case Pilski did take the plea. She would still have to go through the arrest process, only her lawyer would deliver her to the court.

  Reese decided to go meet with an old informant over at the holding center, probably to walk off the urge to punch Shannon Pilski, so Lauren agreed to take the file back to the office. The DA’s office was right across the street from police headquarters. Lauren crossed the four lanes of traffic at the crosswalk, cutting through the side parking lot that ran alongside her building. She had a lot to put together. The Invisible Man would want all the details when Kinger indicted. Ticking them off, one by one in her head, she pulled out her phone and started making notes. The older she got, the more she found herself relying on her To Do list. It was as if she’d reached maximum storage in her brain and now needed an external hard drive to keep everything in order. As she walked through the lot, a shadow fell across her.

  Anthony Vine was standing in front of her.

  What is it with me and parking lots? she thought, stopping up short.

  He was blocking her way, beefy hands folded neatly in front of him, like a middle-aged nightclub bouncer with badly dyed black hair. His red tee shirt was stretched across his oddly muscled torso. It was like someone had sewn an old man’s head onto a young man’s body. That d
idn’t concern her as much as the guy standing ten feet away, also muscled, but young and thuggish.

  “Mr. Vine.” Lauren asked, “What can I do for you?”

  “Why are you poking around in my life?” His voice was soft and flat.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your little runt boss of a defense attorney put me on his witness list. Me. Why are you looking at me and not David Spencer? Why would you do that? Do you need the money that bad? Are they not paying you enough on the city payroll?” He didn’t sound threatening, just genuinely puzzled.

  “Mr. Vine, if you want to sit down and have a conversation, we can go right to Mr. Violanti’s office. With the trial starting next week I’m more than willing to listen to what you have to say—”

  He raised a hulking arm and waved that thought away. “I’m just trying to wrap my head around a person who took an oath to protect and serve, who then tries to get killers off and frame innocent victims.”

  She took a step back. “Mr. Vine, this is not the time or the place for this.” The smell of the car fumes in the lot started to make her feel lightheaded. It was as if every car decided to leave the lot simultaneously and needed to exhale as much carbon monoxide as possible.

  “My wife,” he continued, moving forward to match her step, “was a sick woman. She was diagnosed bipolar and suffered from paranoia. I tried to help her.”

  “By drugging her up and putting a tracker on her car?” Lauren’s temper started to rise. Even though his tone was more condescending than threatening, she was tired of getting bullied, tired of getting pushed around.

  “I was trying to get her back to reality. Did you know she bought ten thousand dollars’ worth of crystals a month before she was murdered? She thought they could cure the voices that told her to do things. I was trying to save her life.”

  “Having an affair was saving her life?”

  He gave a hard laugh. “I never said I was a good husband. But I didn’t kill my wife, and you’re trying to make me look guilty instead of that kid.”