Half a mile from where she’d started at the Beresford, Joe saw Lauren safely enter the rear doors of the Met. Trusting the museum security guards would do their job from there, he wound his way back to where he’d parked the police car and drove to a café to wait for McCormick.
Ten minutes later, the young officer arrived, a paper envelope beneath his arm. His cheeks were ruddy as he slid into the booth and slapped it on the table.
Joe poured him a mug of coffee from the carafe the waitress had already brought. “Did you look at them yet?”
“No, I just picked them up on the way here.”
Joe tasted the coffee—Ferrara’s it was not—and set the mug down. “Let’s see.”
McCormick opened the flap and withdrew the photographs he’d taken Saturday morning at the library.
Joe flipped through them.
“Will they work?” McCormick asked.
“These should.” Several photos were of the doctor’s back, but one was in profile, and a few others captured his front. “I’ll meet with Mr. Sanderson and ask if he recognizes anyone in the photos. I suspect he’ll be able to ID him as the elusive Daniel Bradford.” Joe had considered inviting Mr. Sanderson to Saturday’s meeting in person, but if Dr. DeVries spied him, he might have bolted before a positive ID could be made. The photos would be better. Besides, McCormick’s presence had prompted Lauren to share a few more pieces to the puzzle.
Joe slid the photos back into the envelope. “I owe you one, kid.”
“Uh, sir? Make that two. I found another photo you need to see. But this one, I didn’t take.” From inside his jacket, McCormick pulled an envelope and slid it across the table to Joe. “I mean, Itookit, from my desk where I found it stuck inside a city directory, but I didn’t, you know,takethe picture.” He mimed holding a camera.
“I get it, Mick.”
He grinned at the abbreviation of his surname. “Mick. Yeah, I like it. Does that mean I can call you Cara?”
“No.”
Joe’s smile vanished when he slid the photograph out of the envelope. In it were a few people on the street in front of a brick building. One of them was Wade Martin. Someone had drawn an X in black marker over his head. On the back, Martin’s name had been written.
Blood turned to ice in Joe’s veins. He looked around the café, but other than the waitress smoking behind the breakfast counter, they were alone. From somewhere in the kitchen, a radio played the song “There’s Egypt in Your Dreamy Eyes,” its mood discordant with his own.
“Has anyone else seen this?”
“Just you so far. I figured you’d know what to do with it.”
Joe nodded. “Tell me again where you found it.”
“Like I said, I was going through one of the city directories and found it wedged right up into the spine in theMsection.”
“A city directory in your desk,” Joe clarified. “The desk that had been Connor Boyle’s.”
“Bingo.”
Joe dropped the photo on the table and looked at it again. That building in the background was the waterfront-warehouse-turned-speakeasy where Wade Martin had been killed. In the photo, he was exiting the building. Joe looked closer and saw that the frame had been stamped with the date. It was taken four days before the raid.
Wade Martin’s death wasn’t an accident, and it wasn’t self-defense. It was premeditated murder, and Connor had been the trigger.
———
McCormick returned to the station long before Joe was ready. Questions clamored faster than he could pen them to paper. Who wanted Wade Martin dead? Who would benefit from Martin’s death, or stood to lose something if he lived? And why on God’s green earth had Connor been the killer?
On a fresh page in his notebook, Joe listed the facts he did know in chronological order.
In June 1923, Connor stopped frequenting Callahan’s.
From June 1923 to May 1925, four guns went missing every month from the property seized by the police. Connor Boyle was involved in every raid that had seized those guns. According to Big Red, those guns were never sold on the black market.
In June 1923, Connor began giving Doreen empty wine bottles. Connor said they were all confiscated on Prohibition raids. I couldn’t find them in the records.
