The Squad Room

by John Cutter

  “Oh yeah?” Morrison said, perking up. “What’d O’Malley say about him?”

  “Well, it was a few weeks ago,” Simmons said, nodding somberly. “Dave was stopping by the squad room after an arrest, and Galipoli, that fuck, he’s juss talking about ’mself—talking up his time in the military, what he done there, you know, putting the res’ of us down for not serving, that kind of thing. He didn’t see Dave when Dave came in, so Dave just stands there, listen’ to him for a few minutes. He was in the air cavalry, you know—the patch with the horse on it and the stripe across it, like that guy from Apocalypse Now, Ronnie somebody—”

  “Right,” Morrison said, eager to hear the point. “And what’d Dave say?”

  “Dave said the shit Galipoli was saying was all wrong. He told Lou he was full-of-shit”—he emphasized these words with jabs of his finger against his palm—“about his tour of duty in Iraq. He said that, right to his face.”

  “What’d Galipoli say?”

  “Well, thass the funny thing,” Simmons laughed. “Galipoli didn’ say anything—he just got up and walked out the room, like he just got caught lying to his parents or some’m.”

  “You don’t say,” Morrison said, feeling a thrill of vindication. “That’s interesting—I may need to talk to O’Malley about that.”

  “Oh, yeah, you should,” Simmons said. He tapped his ear. “He’ll give you a earful!”

  “Thanks, Andre; you may have made my night.”

  “All in a day’s work, Sir—!”

  Simmons made an attempt to stand up straight and salute, tipping comically to one side in his eagerness. Both men laughed.

  “How’re you getting home tonight, anyway, buddy?” Morrison asked, holding him up.

  “Oh, I’m takin’ a cab tonight, don’t worry,” Simmons assured him. “I don’t want to ride no subway like this—definitely no car.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Morrison smiled, and meant it. In the past, cops generally got a pass if they were pulled over for driving with a few in them; but there’d been far too many tragedies as a result, and those days were long gone.

  “Oh, sure,” Simmons slurred. “Fact, I think it’s just about time for me to get going—I’m startin’ to feel a bit buzzed.” They laughed again.

  “All right, then, Simmons,” Morrison said, helping him with his coat. “Get home safe. And thanks again for the info about Galipoli—I’ll be sure to check that out.”

  29

  Tina Koreski was already in the office the next morning when Morrison emerged from the bunk room at 0800. The celebration at Kelley’s had gone late, and aside from Medveded, who was always early no matter what, Morrison was surprised to see anyone there on time. Detectives’ days generally don’t end on time, so their starting times had a bit of leeway too. But Koreski was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and got up to follow him to his office.

  “Hey, Cap, before everyone comes in, I’d like to have a quick word with you, if I might,” she said.

  “Sure, Tina, come on in,” he said, filling his coffee cup on the way in. He reached into the file cabinet behind his desk for the bottle of Jameson, thought about it, then put the bottle back unopened. Maybe Claudia really was making a difference. “What’s up?”

  “I just wanted to thank you for the other day,” she said, “for giving me a shot.”

  He smiled. “I think I should be the one thanking you for the other day,” he said. “You said you had a feeling about Rutherford, and you were right. I should’ve listened to you the first time, and given you the first crack at him—I don’t think anyone else could have gotten him to talk the way you did.”

  “I appreciate that, Cap—it means a lot to me that you felt I did a good job. You know, I actually surprised myself that night; there were a couple of times I wanted to puke just being so close to that piece of shit. But I was surprised—I held it together.”

  “That’s an understatement, Koreski. You impressed everyone that night. And I’ll admit,” he added, “I’m glad the sicko gets to suffer the indignity of you taking him down physically on top of that. It’s typical of these cowards who prey on the weak—they talk a big game when they think you’re weaker, but when they’re faced with someone who can handle themselves, they crumble like that.” He snapped his fingers. “And you really handled yourself well, Detective.”

  She nodded. “Thanks, Cap,” she said quietly. “It means a lot.”

  “Good. Now get back to work, will you?” he said good-naturedly. “We want to make sure these assholes don’t see the outside of a prison for a good long time.”

  “Yes sir,” she smiled on her way out.

  Despite the general good mood that prevailed over Rutherford and Anderson’s arrest, the day moved along at a pretty hectic pace. Everyone was working on one aspect of the case or another—banging on computer keyboards, putting in phone calls, and meticulously going over each and every Detective Follow-up Report produced throughout the case. The two suspects would eventually be extradited from Boston to New York to face charges, and as always, every i in the case file needed to be dotted and every t crossed before it could be brought to the District Attorney for court preparation.

  With the suspects behind bars, the city was able to breathe a sigh of relief. Captain Morrison, on the other hand, was far from relaxed. The evidence against their guys having committed the fourth homicide was very compelling, so he’d tasked Detective Medveded—whose paperwork was long since done—to revisit everything they had on it, particularly those aspects it shared with the first three murders that were reported on in the media. The similarities were striking; and if it turned out that these details were nowhere to be found in the public record, they might readily assume their third killer had had some more intimate connection with the crimes or their perpetrators.

  Morrison wondered if they’d missed something. Had they pressed those two in Boston hard enough on a possible third suspect? He was sure Anderson would have told Medveded everything he knew, but Rutherford was another story—he only lost his cool long enough to implicate himself; once he’d calmed down, he’d kept his mouth shut. Even given everything he’d told them, there was no way of knowing what he hadn’t—if he’d known. The more disturbing implication was that if it hadn’t been done by an accomplice of the other two, the crime may have originated with a stranger who simply had access to the case—in other words, someone on the inside. Morrison’s team was good, one of the best; but no matter how strong the gag order is, cops talk—especially to fellow cops—and who knew who’d talked to whom.

  He was shaken out of the thought by a hurried knock at the door. Rivera poked his head in.

  “Cap, we got another one,” he said. “Female, late thirties—she didn’t show up to work today, and her coworker went to check on her and found her dead with the apartment door open.”

  “Fuck,” Morrison said. “Where?”

  “Thirtieth and Park.”

  “Shit—that’s only nine blocks from the last one. Not good, Frankie. Who do we have who isn’t busy right now?”

  Rivera shook his head. “Nobody,” he said, “but Koreski, Medveded, and Garriga are heading over to the scene already.”

  “All right, let’s get out there, then,” Morrison said, grabbing his jacket. “I’ll drive.”

  The building on Thirtieth was a small one, only four stories, set back about seventy-five feet from Park Avenue South. It had a four-foot-high wrought-iron gate leading to the front door. As they pulled up in front, Rivera pointed to a building across the street.

  “Doorman over there,” he said. “Maybe we’ll get lucky, and the guys on that door will have seen something. I’ll head over and talk to the guy on duty now, see if he can give me the name of the overnight guy for now—I doubt our copycat would have worked in daylight.”

  “All right, sounds good,” Morrison agreed. “Grease ’em if you have to. I’ll see you up there.”

  He headed through the iron gate and was greeted a
t the front door by a uniformed officer, who pointed him up to the second floor. The door to the street-facing apartment was ajar. Morrison found Detective Williams from Crime Scene in the hallway, bagging evidence.

  “Well, hello again, Otis,” Morrison said. “What have we got here?”

  “A mess, to start with,” Williams answered. “Whoever did this likes doing it, and definitely doesn’t like women. Even more so than the others, I mean.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, by her photos, this girl was a really good-looking woman, and you wouldn’t be able to tell by looking at her now. This guy messed up her face bad.”

  “One of our other cases was similar,” Morrison said. “You didn’t get that one. Now I think of it: when you finish up, would you mind looking at the homicide from Twenty-First and Park Avenue South for me? I’d be interested to hear what you think.”

  “Yeah, of course—I heard about that one, but never saw what they recovered. If it’d help you, I’d be glad to.”

  “Thanks,” Morrison said. Normally his own taskforce would be in charge of any comparisons between crime scenes, but he knew Williams was meticulous in his work, and might see something his own people had missed after so much immersion in the case. “I know you’re still in the middle of processing the scene, but what else can you tell me about it right now?”

  “Well, we found her bound with some rope, similar to the other scenes we’d processed on the Boston guys. We’ve also collected some hairs from the victim’s body that don’t look like hers. She’s got some skin under her nails, too—looks she put up a good fight. I can’t imagine this was a quiet incident; if anyone else was home while she was being attacked, I’m sure they would’ve heard something.”

  “Did you see any bite marks, or any other kind of physical injuries?”

  “No bite marks, but plenty of injuries.”

  “What type of injuries—anything with her lower half?”

  “No,” Williams said. “It mostly just looks like she met a boxer—lots of bruising all over, like he used her as a heavy bag. Like I said, this guy’s a real animal.”

  “All right. Thanks, Otis—let me know when we can get in there and look for ourselves.”

  Morrison met up with his team out in front of the building. They’d completed their initial canvas of the building and block for anyone who might have seen or heard anything in reference to the murder, and were comparing notes as Morrison walked out of the building.

  “Okay,” Morrison said, clapping his hands. “Do we have anything yet that might be useful?”

  Detective Garriga flipped through his notebook. “Yeah, I got one guy—an older gentleman who lives two doors from the victim’s residence. He says around 0100 he’d taken his dog out for a walk; he said he usually doesn’t walk his dog so late, but he was howling and he thought he needed to go—”

  “Come on, Francisco, get to the point.”

  “Just giving you what the guy told me, boss! So anyway, as he’s walking out his door, the street’s fairly dark. Not much of a moon out last night, and the streetlight near his house has been broken for a few weeks. He hears some commotion near where the victim’s house is. He isn’t quite sure which doorway, but he says he sees a pretty big guy and a woman on the steps leading into one of the buildings—could be the victim’s doorway, but he’s not sure. He says she seemed a little intoxicated, by the way she was hanging onto the guy.”

  “Did he get a closer look at them?”

  “He said he didn’t walk off his stoop, and waited for them to go inside before he took Trevor for his walk. Trevor’s the dog.”

  Morrison stared at him. “Yeah, I kind of figured that one out. Anything else?”

  “Not really—he said when he was walking past the victim’s house, he saw someone close the window in the front of the apartment. He said he only noticed it because it made a squeaking noise as it was being shut.”

  “Did he get a look at who shut the window?”

  “He said he didn’t, but he did say he heard a man’s voice saying something like We’re going to have some fun.”

  “Jesus. Do you think he’s giving you everything?”

  “Yeah, boss. He was an older guy—very cooperative. He wasn’t holding back.”

  “Okay, great. Anybody else get anything?”

  Medveded and Koreski shook their heads. As Morrison was about to speak, Rivera came walking up to them from across the street, a smile on his face.

  “I might have something,” he said. “Not great, but it’s better than nothing.”

  “Go ahead, Frankie.”

  “The guy working the day tour was really helpful,” Rivera said. “He got the night doorman on the phone for me, and the guy told me that somewhere between 0030 and 0130—he isn’t sure of the exact time—he saw a dark-colored sedan park just off the corner of Park Avenue South, I guess just down there.” He pointed down the block. “He said a guy got out of the driver’s-side door and proceeded to drag a woman, who could barely stand, out of the passenger seat. He could hear them talking, and he said the guy was saying some pretty nasty stuff to the woman. He says he’s used to people passing by his building, especially at that time if night, talking all kinds of shit to each other, but this was different.”

  “How so?”

  “He said they were only on the street for a few minutes, but the whole time this guy was talking, the woman wasn’t saying a word—like she was unconscious.”

  “If he saw the guy again, does he think he could recognize him?”

  “No—he said that side of the street was dark, with the trees in front of the house and one of the streetlights out.”

  “How about the car, we get anything on that?”

  “No, he didn’t pay it much mind. Once they were inside, he went back in his building.”

  “Okay,” Morrison said. “We got two people who saw something, which is good, even if neither one can identify anyone; we have a time frame to work with. I want you guys to do a canvas of Park Avenue South, and see if there’s any video that might have picked up the car for a possible make, model or plate number. I’m going to stick around here, in case Crime Scene finishes up soon.”

  The other three detectives nodded somberly, and started off silently down the block.

  30

  The first news truck pulled up a few minutes later. Morrison shook his head, wondering again how they’d found out so quickly. He did have his suspicions.

  He paused for a moment at the door to tell the uniformed cop to move the yellow police tape and increase the size of the crime scene. Before he could get back inside, the first reporter was upon him, sticking a mic in his face.

  “Is this the work of a copycat killer, Detective?” the reporter asked.

  Morrison was taken aback for a moment, then quickly shook his head. “No comment,” he said, retreating into the vestibule.

  Once inside, he got out his phone and dialed Chief Arndt.

  “Chief,” he said curtly when Arndt had picked up, fighting back his frustration. “Did anyone in your office use the words ‘copycat killer’ today, by any chance?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Captain—and watch your tone,” Arndt answered. Something in his voice told Morrison he’d just caught a man with his hand in the cookie jar.

  “Well you know, Chief, a reporter just asked me about the copycat killer,” he said. “Wherever he heard it from, it’s not good that the information’s out.”

  “Now, calm down, Captain,” Arndt said. “It’ll be fine. You’ll just have to step up to the plate a little. Assuming you’re the right man to lead the taskforce, I mean.”

  “What are you—” Morrison snarled. Arndt hung up on him.

  Morrison hung up, fuming. He knew Arndt was the one leaking the information to the press; he had to be. It was just like him to put his own connections ahead of the integrity of a case. The press was going to have a field day with it, previous arrests be damned.


  The detectives from Crime Scene walked out past him.

  “We’re finished, Cap,” Williams said to him. “Looks like our copycat is at it a—”

  “Hey, Williams, you mind not using that word?” Morrison interrupted him irritably. “The media’s already starting with it.”

  Williams shrugged. “Sorry, Cap, I’ll try to keep it down—but it definitely looks like the same guy or guys as before. I called the other team that handled the other murder you’d mentioned, and ran a few things by them; they confirmed the items we recovered all appear to be the same as the ones used a few blocks away.”

  “Jesus,” Morrison said. “Well, thanks for looking into that for me. And don’t mind me—it’s just shaping up to be a tough day. I didn’t mean to take it out on you.”

  “No worries, Cap, I know the story. What have you done for me lately, right?”

  “Yeah, exactly. Thanks, Otis—be seeing you.”

  Morrison was interrupted on his way into the apartment by his cell phone ringing. Rivera, Garriga, and Koreski were just returning, so he waved them into the crime scene as he picked up. Jeffrey O’Dell was on the other end, his voice excited.

  “Sorry to bother you, Cap, but I may have something here on the Galipoli thing,” he said.

  This got Morrison’s attention. “No problem; just give me some good news,” he said.

  “Well, I’m not sure if this is good or bad news—it’s probably a little of both. I made a connection through applicant processing, thanks to Sergeant Rivera’s girl Helen Rosario. Helen was great—she probably saved us twenty steps and a boatload of time digging on our own. She was able to pull Galipoli’s applicant file for us.”

  “Okay, and—?”

  “The file says he was in Operation Iraqi Freedom, and according to what she had in the file, he did get a Silver Star.”

  “Hmm,” Morrison said, a bit disappointed. “Well, I guess I was wrong about this guy, huh? Maybe he’s suffering from PTSD after all.”

  “No, no, Cap, that’s the thing,” O’Dell said. “I think you might be right about him after all.”