“Similar how? Was he with someone? Girlfriend?”
“This guy ain’t got a girlfriend,” Len said. “Unless she charges by the hour.”
“Sounds like a charmer.”
“He’s just . . . I don’t know what the word is. Hostile, but it’s all bottled up. I don’t think he has friends either. For both cases, though, his alibi is that he was at work until ten.” She heard the roar again, probably the F going the other way. “That checks out. He does a 1:30-to-10:00 p.m. shift most of the time, unless he’s filling in for someone. After work on the thirteenth, he says he parked his car at home and walked over to a sports bar on Hylan Boulevard. Says he’s a regular there, keeps to himself. Says he was there past midnight. He gave me the same story for this past Friday, when Joe’s ex-girlfriend got clipped.”
“Gotcha. Does he use credit cards?”
“He says he did on at least one of the nights. There’re probably cameras, too, at the place I went by. It’s a neighborhood place, not a dive. Maybe the bartenders can help. That’s what my guy over there is running down. I’ll have it all sorted before I come back on.”
“And no activity with the car after the time he says he parked? For either night?”
“Nope. No tolls. Nothing on the license plate. No evidence he left the island on those nights, at least not in his car.”
“Okay. What do you think?”
“I don’t know,” Len said thoughtfully. “Could this guy Robbie have a motive for the mother? Sure, same as Joe. The girl, though? I don’t see it. He says he only knew her as Joe’s old girlfriend. Saw her once, never talked to her. That was the day after we found Joe, when she went over there and the two of them went to ID the old lady.”
“So he didn’t seem to know anything about the girlfriend? Holly?”
“Not at all, but maybe that’s bullshit and he was fixated on her or something. Just talkin’ out loud here.”
“That’s all we have right now,” Zochi said. “We’ll see what we can confirm on his whereabouts. I’m with you, though—Joe’s a better suspect in terms of motive. Definitely opportunity.”
“We gotta rule the brother out,” Len said. “The DA’s gonna want that. I like Joe for both, though. Kinda sad. He seems like an okay guy. Like a sad sack, not a killer, you know?”
“I know, right?” she said, her eyes drifting back across the street. The dealer was on the move again, walking toward a car stopped in front of the deli. Zochi cursed under her breath and gave her siren a quick squawk, something cops called a “whoop.” The seller looked up, and she gave him a double thumbs-up to shoo him away. He shrugged and walked in the other direction as the car sped off. “He seems decent, but maybe he goes psycho on the bottle and doesn’t know he’s doing it.”
“Oh yeah, like on the murder channel!” Len seemed cheerful at the thought of it. “My wife loves that shit.”
“We’ll grab it eventually. You know, I thought one thing was weird.”
“What?”
“Wilomena, the homeless woman, noticed it.”
“Yeah?”
“I found her earlier today,” Zochi said. “By the Medicaid office on Twenty-First. I was asking about the bra. The inscription on it.”
“Oh, yeah, to see if she recognized it or anything. Long shot.”
“Yeah, she didn’t know anything about the letters. She did notice something, though. She said Lois didn’t have a bra on that night.”
“Okay.”
“Well, it’s weird, right?”
“What, no bra?”
“Yeah, think about it. An old lady is found on the beach, bra wrapped around her neck. So it looks like a strangulation thing, but then you get closer and realize someone snapped her neck. Then you find out from an eyewitness that she wasn’t even wearing a bra. And that’s backed up by the fact that the bra wouldn’t have fit her anyway.”
“Right. So why’s the bra there?”
“That’s the thing. If Wilomena is right, Lois DeSantos wasn’t wearing a bra that night, and the one found wrapped around her neck wasn’t hers.”
“It had those letters written on it, though,” Len said. It sounded like he was munching on something.
“Yeah, so I’m wondering if someone placed it there.” She put a stress on placed. “I mean, if that’s the case, then it changes things, right? It’s not really a crime-of-passion thing. It’s not some keyed-up psycho who snaps and finishes her off with her own clothes, like pantyhose or a bra.”