Absolution

by Henry Hack

  “Depends on finding the second man?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what will you do when you find him?”

  I thought for a moment and said, “Depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On him. On who he became. On his story. On a lot of things.”

  “Will you kill him, God forbid, or arrest him?”

  “I can’t answer that now. It all depends on him.”

  “And dinner depends on me getting back over to the stove. Hey, my husband, I love you.”

  “I love you, too, Vivian, and always will.”

  Vivian had put the question right to me and I couldn’t answer it. I had to find him first, and one thing we had not said or considered was he could be dead, but I didn’t think so. He was out there somewhere, always looking over his shoulder waiting for me to appear. Waiting and trembling in fear, I hoped, the murdering bastard.

  . . .

  Paul and Micena were working 4 x12 this Monday and I got back to the routine of running my squad in the absence of another all-consuming whodunit like we experienced with Stern’s murder. After our morning coffee and get-together I opened up the file storage room and, using the step ladder, retrieved the heavy pronto file from the top shelf. I mean, I tried to remove it, before realizing I needed some help. I got Sergeant Megara from his office and we got it down and carried it into my office and placed it on a table. “Looking for an old case in there, Mike?” he asked.

  “That is the case.”

  “You mean three feet of paper comprises one case?”

  “Yeah, Harry. It started out forty-three years ago and has never been solved completely.”

  “Wow, that’s what you call ice-cold. What are you doing with it now?”

  “I’m going to spend some time going through it, and when Paul, Micena, and Charlie Seich get in this afternoon the five of us are going to have a discussion about it.”

  “I have a hundred questions, Mike, but you don’t want to hear them now.”

  “Correct, Harry. That’s why you’re my deputy CO, you always can read my mind.”

  He laughed and said, “See you later.”

  I looked over selected portions of the file and made some notes on a legal pad. I wanted to hit the highpoints and possible solvability factors, before I assigned Paul and Micena to dive into this old pile of crushed trees.

  . . .

  Four o’clock rolled around and my two sergeants, with Richie Paul and John Micena, were with me in my office. I said, “Richie, John, I have a job for you.”

  They looked at each other, then over to the pronto file, and nodded. “That box represents a case that began many years ago, on June 16, 1957 to be exact. It is a legitimate cold case belonging to this squad. Ice-cold, as Harry said this morning. I believe it is partially solved. I believe a second perpetrator was involved, a young man, who would now be about sixty years old , give or take, if he is alive. I want you two to read the appropriate sections of the case – I marked them – to convince yourselves that a second perpetrator was indeed involved.”

  “What if they don’t agree with that, Mike?” asked Charlie.

  “I believe they will, but if they conclude otherwise, and can convince me of their conclusion, I will move this case from Open – Unsolved to Closed.”

  “Do you want us to read this whole thing?” Richie asked.

  “No, only pertinent sections as necessary. For now I want you to read the initial investigation and initial follow-up. Then we will put our heads together and discuss it tomorrow.”

  “Boss, why now?” John Micena asked. “What’s so important about a forty-year old case?”

  “Let me give you a brief summary of the crime and where it stands now. That should answer your questions.”

  “It’s personal, isn’t it?” Paul asked.

  “Oh, yeah. On June 16, 1957 at about one a.m. an intruder, or intruders, cut the screen door on a home in Cambria Heights and entered. The assumption was their intent was burglary, but no items seemed to be missing. In the master bedroom slept a young couple, both twenty-five years old. They had intentionally left the inside front door all the way open, as well as all the windows in their bedroom in the hopes of catching a cross breeze on this unusually hot night.”

  “No AC back then, I remember,” Micena said.

  “No, I wish there had been. A locked front door most likely would have saved their lives. The young man was a Nassau County Police Officer assigned to the Fifth Precinct which, as you know, borders our 105 Precinct. It appears the officer kept his off-duty revolver close by, and when the intruders entered the bedroom and flicked the lights on a shoot out occurred resulting in the death of the couple and one of the intruders. It appears the second intruder fled the scene in panic, empty handed.”

  “If there was a second guy,” Micena said.

  “I’m certain there was, but we’ll discuss that more fully at a later time. When the responding uniformed officers from the 105 Precinct arrived they immediately heard a baby crying from a bedroom down the hall from the master bedroom. When the police officer looked down at the baby, he smiled up at him and reached out to him.”

  “Figuring it was his father, I guess,” Richie said.

  “Yes, that’s what their report concluded, but I certainly have no memory of that moment, of smiling and reaching for my father.”

  There were a few seconds of silence as they stared at me trying to comprehend what they had heard. Micena was the first to speak. “Are you saying that baby was you?”

  “Yes, that was me. And the dead couple in the bed in the master bedroom was my parents – Andrew and Veronica Simon.”

  “Holy shit,” two or three of them said simultaneously.

  “Indeed. And I want you, John, and you, Richie, to find the second perpetrator and identify him to me. Will you take this task on?”

  “We’ll take it on, Mike,” Micena said. “If he’s out there, we’ll find him, and we’ll collar him, and deliver him to you on a silver platter.”

  “No, John, identify him and tell me where he is, and I’ll take it from there.”

  “Uh, Boss, remember what we went through on the Rosario case?” Richie asked. “If you pop this guy…”

  “I didn’t say I was going to kill him, although that could happen.”

  “What are you going to do with him?” John asked.

  “As I told my wife the other night, it depends. It depends entirely on him.”

  “I’m not getting you,” Seich said.

  “It depends on who he is now, what kind of life he has led, what his level of involvement in the murders was, and his state of mind. I want justice, and I need closure. One way or another I will get it. If you find him for me.”

  “We’ll find him, Mike” Richie Paul said “As soon as you get these two useless sergeants the hell out of this office we two first-grade detectives will scrape the frost off this ancient box and get started right now.”

  TWENTY

  I felt bad about taking my two top detectives away from the regular duty chart, and I said to Harry and Charlie, “Listen, guys, this won’t be a full-time assignment. Use them to catch routine cases, but don’t give them a complicated whodunit for a while.”

  They would have none of it. Megara said, “Are you kidding, Boss? They will work your case full-time. And if they need assistance, Charlie and I will provide it personally.”

  Who could ask for anything better? Two loyal sergeants. Two sergeants who were more than co-workers. They were my friends. They would go to the wall for me, as I would for them.


  Richie and John started reading the case file and began making notes on a legal pad. I left them in my office and went out to the squad room to see what was going on. The squad team – the two detectives assigned to catch cases in this tour – was out in the field on a possible murder/suicide and Sergeant Seich got ready to ride out with them.

  Around 5:15 I went back into my office and neither detective looked up as they concentrated on the files. “I’m heading home,” I said. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  They mumbled a good-bye as I left the office.

  . . .

  Micena and Paul were in my office the next day at 3:45 p.m. with cups of coffee in their hands. “Whenever you’re ready, Boss,” Richie said.

  “Fire away, guys.”

  “First,” John said, “we both agree, as far as we have read, those detectives back then did a first-class, thorough investigation.”

  “I agree.”

  “To get to the point, we also believe, as they and you concluded, a second person was definitely involved.”

  “What convinced you?”

  “Although the partial fingerprint could have come from anyone, the same cannot be said about the Type A negative blood stains. They were wet and fresh – not old and dried out. The lab was easily able to get the type.”

  “And you agree he panicked and ran?”

  “Yes,” John said. “Either he didn’t think to take Selewski’s car, or he was afraid to do so.”

  “Yeah,” Richie said, “if he did take it the dicks would have known for certain a second person was involved when the car eventually turned up.”

  “They kept the existence of that second guy to themselves for a while,” I said, “but when the interviews were over, and no second suspect showed up, they had to tip their hand.”

  “And ask for fingerprints – voluntarily – from Selewski’s associates,” Richie said.

  “Which never happened,” John said, “because the father of one of Pete’s friends was a lawyer for the ACLU and convinced everyone not to cooperate with the big, bad cops.”

  “Is that about as far as you got?” I asked.

  “Yes,” John said.

  “Good, I marked the files with a red card where I want you to begin tonight. The stuff in the middle can be ignored for now, more likely ignored forever.”

  “I guess you read through this mess a few times, huh?” Richie asked.

  I nodded and said, “More than a few.”

  “Oh, Richie and I were wondering why this paper still existed. Aren’t cases this old all on microfiche?”

  “Yes, including this one, but I rescued it from the shredder and took it home years ago when I was a detective here. I brought it back here about a year ago, but never got around to look at it again. But something recently happened that may provide the break we need.”

  “What?” asked Richie.

  “First, that Type A bloodstain has now been profiled for its DNA. As you know, the FBI established a nationwide DNA database called CODIS – the Combined DNA Index System. Our suspect’s DNA profile has been put in there, but so far, no matches have been found.”

  “So if our guy gets popped for a serious crime we should get a hit?” Richie asked.

  “Yes, but that’s a long shot. The automated fingerprint system – AFIS – has been around much longer, over twenty years. And that’s where we may find something.”

  “Do you want us to read that back section which contains those possibilities?” John asked.

  “Yes, I have been working with a detective in the Latent Prints Section in the Lab in Manhattan. His name is Joe Brala, and I want you to sit down with him soon and see what he has to say.”

  “Can we assume this is all we got as far as physical evidence is concerned?” John asked.

  “This is it,” I said. “If we can’t narrow the print base down sufficiently, this guy will never be caught.”

  “We’ll do our best, Mike,” John said.

  I smiled and said, “You always do.”

  . . .

  The next day I was surprised to see Richie and John in the office when I arrived at 8:30. “We switched to a day tour,” John said. “We have an appointment with Brala at 11:00 a.m. over at the Lab. I hope he has something better than what his last report said.”

  “You mean the list of suspects has been narrowed down from millions to a mere 350,000?” I said with a grin.

  “You may think that’s funny, Mike, but that’s a lot of people to scrutinize, even for a couple of crackerjacks like me and Richie.”

  “Go spend some time with Brala. We’ll talk when you get back.”

  Micena and Paul were back a bit before three o’clock and seemed eager to discuss their day at the Lab with me. John said, “Detective Joe Brala is a bulldog. When he gets his teeth into a problem he doesn’t ever want to let go.”

  “Sounds like you two. Continue.”

  “He took the list of 350,000, which by the way is increasing every day, and he emailed it over to our computer data center downtown. They are going to crosscheck those names with their blood types, although not all of them have a blood type listed.”

  “A sizable percentage does not,” Richie said, “but the military records do. If our guy was in the service, we could narrow the list.”

  “The computer guys,” John said, “will also try to narrow the list further by the age of the suspect by assuming he was 16-24 at the time of the crime, and they will manipulate the data by concentrating on those residing in Queens at that time.”

  “How long will this take,” I asked.

  “They figure at least a week because the machines can only do so much before manual effort becomes necessary.”

  “Take another day or two to finish reading the case, then go back into the duty chart until you hear back from Brala. But I’ll tell Megara and Seich to assign you only routine cases during that time.”

  “Thanks, Boss,” John said. “I’m beginning to get itchy now. I smell the bastard, although he’s not yet in my vision.”

  . . .

  On Monday of the following week, with Paul and Micena back on day tours, they informed me they had finished reading the files and had an idea that might be worth following up on. “Let’s have it,” I said.

  “What do you do when you get out of high school?” John asked. “Don’t answer, because I’ll tell you. You go to work, to college, or into the service. Those are your options.”

  “Or you can laze around the house smoking dope and shooting pool and drinking at the corner bar,” I said.

  “True Mike, although the killer, Pete Selewski, did have a job even though he was a heroin addict.”

  “Here’s where we are going,” Richie said. “The only one of those three options where you get fingerprinted is in the service. And your blood gets typed also. John and I are going to compile a list of names of friends, associates, and co-workers of Selewski and get it over to Brala. He’ll have the computer guys research the military’s databases to find out who from among his cronies went into the service. Then they’ll cross-check that info with what they’re working on already when it’s completed.”

  “Assuming our guy did go in,” I said, “but those two other options comprise a much larger group of possibles.”

  “They do,” John said, “but I have a hunch here. What did you do when you were eighteen years old and hit over the head with the news of who you were, and what happened to your mom and dad?”

  “I mulled it over a couple of days and then enlisted in the army.”

  “You ran away from a
horrible situation,” Richie said. “We have a feeling our second suspect may have done likewise.”

  I thought this over for a few seconds and said, “You two may be onto something here. Keep me informed, as always.”

  . . .

  The days dragged by, and another week passed as we awaited word from Brala. Finally, on a Wednesday afternoon, John and Richie came into my office and John said, “We’re going over to the Lab first thing in the morning. Brala and the computer geeks finished their compilations. They need us to make sense of it, based on our knowledge of the case.”

  “Sounds like we may be getting somewhere,” I said. “Are you going there directly from home?”

  “Yes, and we’ll call you right away if we find something valuable,” Richie said.

  Now that something positive seemed to be happening I wanted to jump in with my two guys, but I refrained from interfering. I had lived with this case for twenty years, and I could live with it a bit longer. John and Richie didn’t need me looking over their shoulders and sticking my nose in. They were pros. If they needed my advice, or help, they’d ask for it. I said, “Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  When they hadn’t called by lunchtime I got Sergeant Megara to join me for a couple of slices of pizza at Angelo’s a couple of blocks away. He said, “I know you’re preoccupied Mike, but rest assured the squad is running smoothly under my sure hand.”

  “I know Harry, and you have my thanks. We’re hoping to catch a break soon.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  When I finished he said, “That does sound promising. Mike, have you ever thought about what you’d do if you found him?”

  “Every day for the past twenty years.”

  “And?”

  “It depends.”

  Harry thought for a moment and said, “I think I know what you mean. This guy could be the president for crying out loud.”