MediCore Pharmacueticals
Office of Andrea MacLean
January 15, 2001
10:15 am
Ed had barely taken a sip of his first cup of coffee that morning when the phone on his desk rang. He looked at it curiously, wondering who would be calling him at 8:20 am. He figured it might be Lennie, as his partner drew the short straw and had to spend his morning testifying on a prior case. He lifted the receiver, giving it a short, "Green" and waited for Lennie to begin grousing about his morning so far.
Instead, he was greeted by the voice of Andrea MacLean. Seems she'd gotten to work early that morning and as she sat and sipped a mug of coffee, she read through her email. She skimmed through the usual assortment of messages, but stopped when she came across the message titled "Important Information: For Your Eyes Only." She didn't recognize the sending email address, but since news leaked about the acquisition, she'd received all sorts of emails from concerned employees. She opened it, expecting to find questions about mergers and lay offs but instead found a message warning her not to testify.
After the initial shock wore off, she pulled Detective Green's card from her desk drawer and called him. He promised to come down as soon as he could. He approached the open door to her office and knocked on the frame.
"Come in," she called, looking up from her work. Ed could see the concern etched on her features.
"Ms. MacLean?" he began, walking in.
"Detective," she offered him a smile, "Come in, please. I'm sorry to bother you, but…"
"Don't apologize," he dismissed, "Can I see the email?"
She nodded, pulling it up on her screen as he walked behind the desk. As he leaned over her shoulder to read, he could smell her perfume. It was a subtle scent of roses and damn sexy. Closing his eyes for a moment, he forced his mind to focus on the email.
"Have you had your network people isolate the email?" he asked.
She nodded, handing him a business card. "This is our Network administrator. He said to have your guys contact him to exchange the info."
"Great," he slipped the card into his shirt pocket, then studied her for a moment. "Its okay, Ms. MacLean. We're going to get this sorted out."
Andrea nodded, "Ms. Carmichael from the DA's office had called to tell me they'd presented their witness list to the defense. I guess something had to happen, huh?"
"Hey," he softly said, placing his hand on her shoulder. "They're trying to scare you off, that's all."
"I'm sorry, Detective, but these are the same people who killed a cabbie and damn near killed Walter Tsai. What makes you think they won't decide to take me out, too?" She stopped, obviously trying to reign in her emotions.
"Because," he simply said, "We won't let them."
She sighed. "I'm sorry; I'm acting like some kind of hysterical drama queen. I'm just not used to getting death threats."
He pulled a business card from his pocket, turned it over and wrote something on the back of the card. Once he'd finished, he handed her the card.
"What's this?"
"That's my cell phone number," he began, slipping his pen back into his jacket pocket. "If you need it, just call."
"Detective…" she said, studying the telephone number.
"The DA needs you to testify, Suskind's people know it," he explained, wondering if he'd taken it a step too far. "They're going to try to scare you off. Just call that your insurance policy. NYPD can't provide you 24 hour protection, but this is the next best thing."
She smiled at him. "I guess I owe you one, huh?"
"Nah," he replied, flashing a smile, "They made me take this oath saying I'd protect and serve. I like to do it one citizen at a time."
She laughed, "Well, lucky for me, you pulled the case."
"Lucky for you," he laughed with her. "I'm going to go down and speak to your network administrator."
"Thank you, Detective," she seriously said, watching as he walked to the door.
"You take care, Ms. MacLean."
"Drea," she quickly said. "You can call me Drea."
"Drea," he repeated. "Take care, Drea."
27th Precinct
January 15, 2001
2:15 pm
"So," Lennie began, sitting down at his desk, "What did I miss?"
"How was court?"
"Long, boring," Lennie shrugged, "You should've offered to go in my place."
"No way," Ed laughed. "I did the last three trials; you've got to catch up."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Lennie laughed, looking at the paperwork on Ed's desk. "What's that?"
"Stuff on the Suskind case. Drea MacLean received a death threat this morning. It was traced back to Suskind's camp," Ed explained.
Lennie raised a brow. "Drea? Since when is she Drea?"
"Since this morning, when I went out to investigate the threatening email," he shrugged. "She was kinda freaked out."
"And she told you to call her Drea," Lennie laughed.
"Something like that," he shrugged.
Lennie shook his head, "Eddie, you've got the hots for her."
"Me?" Ed sniffed. "Nah, man. It ain't like that."
"Ain't it?" he went on, eyes twinkling; "Do you end up on a first name basis with every witness?"
Ed shook his head, "Lennie."
"Okay, okay. I'm going for coffee."
6:15 pm
"Eddie," Lennie began, slipping on his top coat. "You heading out of here soon?"
"I just want to finish this witness statement," Ed replied, looking up from his computer. "You have a good night."
"Yeah, you too," Lennie smiled. As he turned to leave, the telephone on his desk rang. He lifted the receiver and barked, "Briscoe."
Ed watched as his expression changed from mildly aggravated to down right pissed off. Lennie thanked the caller and looked at Ed.
"That was Bellevue, Walter Tsai just died."
"What?"
Lennie nodded, "Embolism after surgery." He shook his head, "Raise the murder count to two."
"Wonderful," Ed shook his head.
Office of the District Attorney
January, 16, 2001
11:15 am
"So, we've got two dead men, one survivor set to testify, and a religious fanatic accused of murder," Jack McCoy said, looking up from the folder in his hands.
"That about sums it up," Abbie Carmichael nodded. "But something just doesn't sit right with me on this one."
"It does look pretty simple," he agreed. "I don't trust the ones that are cut and dried."
"Here's what's eating me," Abbie explained. "How was Suskind able to time it so that he knew the cab with Tsai and MacLean was crossing Park?"
"Either he had an accomplice or he monitored the taxi service radio?" Jack tried.
"And how did he know they would be in that particular cab? Apparently, there were quite a few people getting into cabs at that time. There was no way that Suskind could have been on 64th St watching them get into the cab, then some how doubled back onto Park in time to speed up and hit them."
"Okay, so that takes us back to the accomplice," McCoy decided. "Someone tipped him off to the cab number that Tsai and MacLean were in."
"Unless," began the voice of DA Nora Lewin, "Tsai wasn't the target."
McCoy and Carmichael looked at her.
"Did the detectives do background checks on all of the cab's occupants?"
Abbie looked through the papers in front of her. "Yes, they didn't turn up anything on either one of them."
"What about the driver?"
"Henrick Agwe," she reported. "Emigrated from Haiti in 1998, lives in the Bronx with his cousin, obtained his hack license six months after coming into the country. No record."
"Look around a little more, I have a gut feeling about the cabbie…" Nora advised, then walked out of the room.
27th Precinct
January 16, 2001
1:30 pm
Ed hung up the phone and looked at Lennie with a triumphant grin.
"Okay, I give, what's going on?" Lennie laughed.
"Three weeks before the Reverend took out the taxi, Mrs. Suskind received treatment from a Doctor Randall Zoltan," Ed explained.
"And this helps us how?"
"Dr Zoltan is an ob/gyn on Park Avenue. He's apparently quite popular with those in the upper class who desire to have their pregnancies terminated."
Lennie raised a brow. "So, the Misses had an abortion?"
"We don't know that, yet. But considering her normal gyn is listed as a Dr. Stein out of Beth Israel, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say yes."
"Hm…so, maybe the Reverend had just found out and was so distraught that he crashed into the first cab he saw?"
"Nah, I don't buy it…"
"Well, he couldn't have been going after Tsai for the morning after pill. Not if she had a surgical abortion."
"And we already figured out that Drea wasn't the target…"
"So," Abbie Carmichael's voice began, as she approached their desks. "What about the cabbie?"
"The cabbie? What could he possibly have to do with it?"
"That's what we need to find out."
"Let's see if we can find out," Abbie smiled.
Sunshine Cab Company
January 16, 2001
2:12pm
"I don't know what I can tell you, Folks," Roger Szimeiwicz began, "Agwe was a decent driver. Never gave me any problems."
"Do you know anything about his personal life?" Abbie asked.
"Nothing, 'cept he lived with a cousin in the Bronx."
"Do you have the address?" Lennie asked.
"Yeah," Roger said, flipping through is rolodex and pulling out a card. "Here. I don't need it any more."
Apartment of Cyrus Agwe
January 16, 2001
4:00 pm
"My cousin was a good man," Cyrus Agwe began. "He never had any trouble with the law. He was studying to become a citizen and working two jobs."
"Two jobs?" Ed asked.
"Yes," Cyrus nodded. "He drove the cab and also did some private work, driving for some wealthy people."
"Did he do this through the cab company?" Lennie asked.
Cyrus shook his head, "No, he did it on his own. The last family he worked for hired him to drive the wife around. They paid him cash."
"You don't happen to have the name of this family, do you?" Ed prompted.
"No, I'm sorry, Henrick never said their names."
"Do you have any idea where they lived?" Abbie tried.
"That," Cyrus began with a smile, "I do have…" He walked to the cabinet and rifled through it, finally producing a small yellow paper. "This is a parking ticket that my cousin got when he was parked in front of their house."
Abbie took the paper from his out stretched hand, "Look at this," she smiled. "Does this address look familiar?"
Lennie, who was reading over her shoulder, smiled. "Hello, Reverend Suskind."
Good News Church
January 17, 2001
9:45 am
"We really don't know anything about Mrs. Suskind's driver," Doreen Nichols said. "The Reverend hired him to take her around, so that she wasn't traveling the city unattended."
"Why would he be concerned with her traveling unattended?" Lennie asked.
"Because Mrs Suskind can't go anywhere alone," began the young blond man who walked into the office.
"And you are?" Lennie asked.
"Dan Driscoll," he returned, "Reverend Dan Driscoll."
"Why can't Mrs. Suskind travel alone?" Ed asked.
"Because he doesn't trust her," Driscoll simply said.
"Reverend!" Doreen gasped.
"Come on, Doreen, I'm not telling anything that isn't common knowledge," he tiredly said.
"Why wouldn't he trust her?"
"Mrs. Suskind tended to…stray…if she wasn't watched."
"Stray?" Abbie asked. "As in…"
"Mrs. Suskind had a wandering eye," Driscoll explained.
"Ah, I get it," Lennie nodded. "So, the Reverend hired a private driver to keep an eye on her."
Driscoll nodded.
"But why hire him under the table?" Abbie asked.
"People liked to try to dig up dirt on the Reverend; he thought that by keeping the driver off the books, he'd keep those details to himself."
"Reverend," Ed began, "Did having this driver keep Mrs. Suskind from wandering?"
This time, Doreen spoke up, "Only because she was so fascinated by her driver."
"She was involved with her driver?"
"You didn't hear that from me," Doreen nodded. "Seems she discovered that she liked things on the dark side. No offense, Detective."
"None taken, Ma'am," Ed nodded. "Is there anything else you can tell us?"
"I'm afraid that's all I know," Doreen shrugged. "But if I hear anything else, I'll be sure to give you a call."
