Killer Look by Linda Fairstein Read Free Book Online Page B

have the relationship with him that you had with your dad as a kid—and by the way? You seem to have reaped the rewards of your father’s smarts, haven’t you?” she said rather snidely. “That’s not what this is about.”
    I understood the strain she was under, but how could she possibly pretend to know whether Savage had been despondent at all, or whether the details of his sexual entanglements had brought him low?
    â€œI apologize, Lily, if I seemed insensitive. Let me call one of the guys and see if he can sit down with you one day this week.”
    â€œâ€˜One day this week’?” she said, mimicking me. “I told you there was an urgency to this.”
    â€œOkay,” I said, knowing the last thing Mike would want today was me sticking my nose into anything he had a role in. “I’ll phone right now. Are you available tonight, when he’s done with his shift?”
    â€œAt three o’clock today, just a couple of hours from now, Reed and Hal have a meeting with the chief medical examiner,” she said, pounding the spoon’s handle onto the tabletop again. “You want urgency, Alex? They want my father’s body released to them this afternoon for burial. They want it released without anautopsy.”

SIX
    Mike beat us to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner on First Avenue and Thirtieth Street. He came down the steps in front of the blue-brick facade of the building when the cab Lily and I rode in pulled up at two forty-five.
    â€œThanks for taking the time to do this, Mike,” I said, introducing him to Lily.
    â€œNiceties to follow, ladies” he said. “Two of the Wolf-pack members are already inside, ready to take Mr. Savage away with them.”
    â€œHas the meeting started?” Lily asked.
    â€œNo,” Mike said. “They’re just waiting on the ME’s lawyer in the conference room.”
    â€œDid you have a chance to check out anything I told you about Lily’s intuitions yet?”
    â€œBottle it for now, Coop.” He wasn’t going to answer my question in front of a potential witness. My bad.
    I jogged up the steps, signed Lily and me into the visitors’ log,then asked the security guard at the desk to buzz us in to the corridor that led to the conference room.
    The two men inside stood up as we entered. Lily walked toward them and kissed each of them on the cheek. All three were appropriately somber.
    â€œAlex, Detective Chapman, I’d like you to meet my uncle, Hal Savage, and my brother, Reed.”
    The nattily attired brother of the deceased, who appeared to be a very fit seventy-year-old, held out his hand to Mike. “Good to meet you, Detective. Although I’m not quite sure why you’re here. I’m Hershel—Hershel Savitsky, in fact.”
    Lily rolled her eyes in my direction.
    â€œReed Savitsky,” Lily’s half-brother said, not moving away from his chair.
    â€œI can see the direction this is taking,” Lily said. “I’m not sure why you’re reclaiming the Savitsky name, gentlemen. Is it just for the purpose of convincing the ME that your motive is really a holy one?”
    â€œThey are the names on our birth certificates, Lily,” her uncle said. “Mind your place here. You’re fortunate that we’ve included you.”
    â€œYou know my father was not a religious man.”
    â€œShows what you get for keeping him at arm’s length all these years, Lily,” Reed said. “
My
father, the man I lived with, was really devout. It went all the way back to his roots. But then you never knew our grandparents, as I did.”
    There was a knock on the door and Jeremy Mayers entered. “Am I interrupting something?”
    â€œNothing at all,” Hal Savitsky-Savage said, starting a new round of introductions.
    Mike and I had known Jeremy for years and relied on his good counsel to the city’s chief