Blonde Ice

by R. G. Belsky

“Why would I tell you anything?”

  “Angela Bowers,” I said.

  It had been about a year ago that the body of a little six-month-old girl was found dumped in a garbage can. No one had any idea who she was. Karen Greene took a personal interest in the case and asked me if I’d write an article about the unidentified little girl lying on a slab there. I did, and eventually someone came forward to the police with information. It turned out the child’s mother had died of an overdose, and her boyfriend had killed the child and thrown her in the trash can. The Daily News then contributed money to pay for a gravestone and a proper funeral for little Angela Bowers. Small solace, but—as Greene put it—at least the little girl had an identity when she was buried. Afterward, she said she owed me a favor for helping. I said I’d collect it sometime in the future. I figured this was as good a time as any.

  But Greene shook her head no when I laid that out for her.

  “If you write a story before the cops release the information, they’ll know it came from me. I could lose my job. I’d like to help you, Malloy, but not enough to put my job at risk.”

  “I won’t publish anything until the police release the information to everyone,” I told her. “I’ll get the story ready but won’t use it before then.”

  “How can I be sure of that?”

  “I promise, Karen.”

  I can be very convincing when I try to prove to someone how trustworthy I am. Even when I’m not really trustworthy. But this time I was telling the truth.

  She nodded and led me into another room with big drawers along the wall. She pulled open one of the big drawers and I looked down at the remains of Tim Hammacher. It took all of my willpower not to run out of the room. Instead, I just averted my gaze as best I could. Looking at Karen Greene as she talked, not at the body lying in front of us. That helped a little.

  “There were rope burns around his wrists and ankles, from being restrained before he died,” she said. “Ligature marks around his neck too. Not enough to strangle him completely, but consistent with a pattern of cutting off his air for periods of time. Long enough to make him pass out, then regain consciousness a short time later. She probably began the strangulation process all over again then.”

  “Jesus.”

  “It gets worse. There were black-and-blue marks and other bruises over nearly every portion of his body. He was apparently beaten repeatedly with a blunt instrument of some kind. We’re not sure exactly what that was. Probably something like a baseball bat though. Did a lot of damage to him. He was really torn up inside and out.”

  “Is that what killed him?”

  “No, although it probably would have eventually.”

  She pointed down to a puncture wound near the heart. I summoned up all my resolve and looked down at where she was pointing.

  “That stab wound there was what finally killed him,” Greene said. “There were several other stab wounds too. I count more than six of them. Might have been even more. But this one here was done at the very end and was the cause of Tim Hammacher’s death.”

  I thought about what Tim Hammacher had been forced to endure during those nightmarish final hours of his life.

  “So these results are similar to what we found out about the first two victims then, I guess,” I said to Greene.

  “Not exactly.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The first two autopsies were done by other people. Good people. They carried out the autopsies by the book. Did everything they were supposed to do. But me . . . well, sometimes I like to do a little more. That’s what I did this time. I played a hunch. And it paid off.”

  She reached over to a table and picked up a plastic vial.

  “This is male sperm—traces of it anyway—that was found on Hammacher’s genitals and on some bedsheets in the trunk of his car where we found his body.”

  “Sure, Ross had sex with her first two victims before she killed them. So she had sex with Hammacher too. We already knew that the sex came before the killings.”

  “Did you know this isn’t Tim Hammacher’s sperm?”

  I stared at her in amazement.

  “How did you find that out?”

  “Because I’m g-o-o-o-d,” she laughed.

  “Whose sperm is it?”

  “Walter Issacs’s.”

  “The first victim.”

  “Right. After sperm was found on the scene of the first murder, we determined that it was indeed Issacs’s sperm. Indicating that he had sex with his killer before he died. When sperm was found at the scenes of Rick Faris and Tim Hammacher, the assumption was it was the same pattern. But it wasn’t. Not with either Faris or Hammacher. I ran a DNA check on the Issacs sperm. The killer must have saved some of it, then brought it to the other crime scenes and put it on the bodies before she left. Because it was Issacs’s DNA we found in the sperm with Faris and Hammacher.”

  I tried to make sense out of everything she was telling me here.

  “So what you’re saying is that Tim Hammacher and Rick Faris didn’t have sex with the killer before they died?”

  “Yep,” Karen Greene said. “Hammacher and Faris got offed without getting off.”

  CHAPTER 26

  EVERYONE has their favorite romantic spots. A candlelit restaurant. A secluded beach hideaway. Maybe even the top of the Empire State Building. My favorite romantic spot is Citi Field. It used to be Shea Stadium. Actually, wherever the New York Mets are playing. I took Susan to a Mets game for our first date. I proposed to her six months later at Shea when Mike Piazza hit a grand-slam home run to win the game for the Mets and the sky lit up with fireworks. I’d taken her to Mets games since then too. But the fireworks hadn’t been as spectacular in a while. For the Mets or for Susan and me.

  We were sitting in the upper deck behind home plate now, munching on steak sandwiches, clam chowder, and something billed as Belgian-style frites. The food at the ballpark is much better now than in the old days at Shea, when the choices were pretty much a hot dog, a bag of peanuts, or a box of Cracker Jack. But on the field, the Mets starter had been shelled for four runs in the first inning, and the relief pitcher had given up three more. Right now, I would have happily traded the new menu for a better Met bullpen.

  I’d promised Susan a romantic evening—and so here we were.

  “Why did she only have sex with the first guy?” I asked her.

  “What?”

  “Why just with Walter Issacs?”

  “We’re talking about Melissa Ross again.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that’s not very romantic.”

  “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Maybe she tried it and decided she didn’t like it.”

  “Sex?”

  “Whatever.”

  “She’d had sex before. Plenty of sex. Her husband said she was like a tiger in bed sometimes—when she was in the mood. Other times she didn’t want to do it. But we know she got turned on by men.”

  “So maybe she wasn’t in the mood the last two times.”

  “There’s gotta be a better reason than that.”

  The story about the autopsy results had broken that day. I managed to be in front of everyone else because I knew it was coming—got another Page One exclusive while at the same time keeping my promise to Karen Greene. Win-win.

  The news that Melissa Ross had sex with the first victim—and left his semen at the other two crime scenes—had set off shock waves of more fear, paranoia, and speculation about Ross, now known as Blonde Ice.

  “Okay, I wonder about the sex angle too,” Susan said.

  “You know what also bothers me? Hammacher. He willingly went with this woman, willingly let her into his car or whatever. Think about it. This was a public official. A smart, savvy guy. He knew who she was, knew what she looked like, knew what she was capable of. So why did Hammacher let her do that to him? I don’t care how sexually aroused he was. He’s still not going to make himself vulnerable to a killer. He’s g
oing to try to apprehend her. Or try to call for help. He’s not just going to let himself become her next victim.”

  “Maybe she was wearing some kind of disguise,” Susan suggested.

  “You mean something like a brunette wig to cover up her blonde hair?”

  “Could be.”

  “Or maybe she dyed her blonde hair another color.”

  “That way it’s possible he didn’t make the connection to who she was until too late.”

  “So she could be a brunette or a redhead or even have some kind of crazy punk rocker hair like green for all we know. Christ, the cops couldn’t even find her when we thought she was just a blonde.”

  The Mets had just clawed back into the game with a three-run double.

  “They’ll find her,” Susan said.

  “How can you be so sure of that?”

  “They always do.”

  “Always?”

  “Well, usually . . .”

  “So what if they don’t ever find Melissa Ross?”

  “Then she gets away with it.”

  “Always good to get penetrating insights from a law enforcement expert,” I said.

  Now the Mets scored another run to cut the deficit to three.

  “To be honest, I figured you brought me here to talk about something else besides the Melissa Ross case. You and me.”

  “Oh, that’s coming.”

  “So bring it on.”

  “Now?”

  “Unless you’d rather just go and get another steak sandwich?”

  I pondered that for a second.

  “Can I do both?” I asked.

  A bases-loaded walk forced in another Mets run. Only two down now.

  “Look, here’s my proposal,” I said. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes. You’ve made some mistakes too. Like marrying Dale or Dan or Dave or whatever his name was. So we go back to square one. We were happy when we were first married. Let’s do that again. You get your divorce, we get remarried, and this time we try to do the marriage thing right. Buy a house. Maybe even start a family . . .”

  “And then we live happily ever after?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Wow, you’ve actually got both of our lives figured out all nice and neat, don’t you, Gil?”

  “I’m a man with a plan,” I admitted.

  She picked up one of the Belgian-style frites—which I think were really just french fries masquerading under a different name—and nibbled on it thoughtfully.

  “Here’s my counterproposal,” she said. “We keep things the way they’ve been for the time being. We spend time together. We get to know each other all over again. We become friends. We find out whether you and I can really be together for the long haul—or if this is just some quixotic romantic fantasy on your part. Mine too.”

  “Friends?” I said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Would this friendship at any point involve . . . well, sex?”

  “It might.”

  “When would that be?”

  “When I feel I’m ready for it.”

  “I don’t want to pressure you or anything, but do you have any timetable on exactly how long that might be? A day? A week? Five minutes from now somewhere underneath these stands?”

  “I’m not ready for sex with you yet,” she said.

  “Weren’t we on opposite sides of this discussion that night at the bar when you wanted to come home and spend the night with me?”

  “You said no.”

  “I’ve reconsidered.”

  “Like I said, I was drunk that night.”

  “Want another beer now?”

  She smiled.

  “It’s just gonna take time before I’m going to be comfortable going to bed with you again, Gil.”

  “And you’ll tell me when you are?”

  “You’ll be the first to know, I promise,” she said.

  Then she kissed me.

  It was a nice kiss.

  While it was happening, a two-run homer tied the game for the Mets.

  Things were looking up.

  For the Mets.

  And for me.

  “So where the hell is Melissa Ross?” I said to Susan.

  CHAPTER 27

  IF watching the video files of Melissa Ross’s investigative cases had been uncomfortable, meeting the subjects of the videos face-to-face was even more awkward.

  I’d already jotted down names and as much contact information as I could from the videos I’d seen with Wohlers and managed to track down several of them. None of them wanted to talk to the press, of course, but I used the same kind of ploy I had with Delvecchio. I pointed out that I had their names and where they lived and worked. Some newspapers and websites had been running “john” lists to embarrass the clients of call girls. I said that I could either do that (not that I really would have) or they could talk to me without being specifically named in my piece. Most of them agreed to do it that way. Malloy, you crafty devil. They can run, but they can’t hide.

  Well, except for Melissa Ross, of course.

  Who seemed to be doing a damn good job of running and hiding.

  The first person I saw was Robert Johnson—the guy I’d watched in the hotel on the Melissa Ross video collection. In person, Johnson looked a bit more dignified than the bald, potbellied naked guy I’d seen with the hooker on Ross’s surveillance video.

  We were sitting in the office of the construction company he owned in Queens. He was wearing a loose-fitting shirt that hid some of the girth around his belly. He also had a toupee on. Not a great toupee, but it covered up the baldness pretty well.

  “Yes, she was a hooker,” Johnson snapped at me as soon as I began asking questions about how he wound up in that hotel room video. “I pay prostitutes for sex. Is that against the law?”

  “Actually, it is,” I pointed out.

  “My God, the cops are busting johns now? I guess they don’t have enough to do, huh? Of course, they could go out and catch that crazy homicidal bitch who took these pictures of me. But that might be too hard. Easier to hassle regular citizens—upstanding businessmen—like myself.”

  The office was a nice one. Johnson probably did pretty well in the construction business. Well enough anyway to afford to spend money on prostitutes. I wondered about the toupee though. Why did he wear it for work and not for sex in the hotel room? Did it somehow get knocked off during the sexual foreplay with the hooker, assuming there was some sexual foreplay before the final big act where she got him off? Or did he just figure that since he was paying for the sex, he didn’t have to look good—the way he did for his clients and employees?

  “I’m not here to hassle you, Mr. Johnson,” I said. “I’m just hoping you can give me some information that will help catch Melissa Ross before she kills again.”

  I told him about the collection of other videos—the surveillance of cheating husbands and boyfriends—that had been discovered in Ross’s files.

  “I guess I got a little careless,” Johnson said. “I’ve been seeing prostitutes for years. I used to try to hide it better. But lately . . . well, I just figured what the hell? Probably would have been better off if I’d simply told my wife what I was doing. She thought I had a girlfriend or a mistress or something on the side. That’s why she hired the Ross woman as a PI. All I wanted was the sex. I love my wife. I just don’t want to have sex with her. She doesn’t want to have sex with me either. So what’s the harm?”

  “It sounds like she didn’t like that arrangement as well as you,” I said. “Otherwise, why would she hire Melissa Ross to spy on you?”

  “Like I said, she thought I was cheating on her. But I wasn’t. It was just sex for money, that’s all. We’re fine now, my wife and me. We worked it out after she found out from Ross’s investigation. Oh, she gave me a lot of grief about bringing potential sexually transmitted diseases home to her and stuff like that. But, damn, we don’t have sex anyway. And you know what? I really think she was relieved when she found
out it was just a prostitute I was fooling around with. Nothing more going on in my love life than a damn prostitute on the side once in a while.”

  “How did she find Melissa Ross?” I asked.

  “My wife told me she was reading a lot of stuff about unfaithful husbands. Trying to figure out whether or not I was cheating on her. So she went online and googled some information. At some point, she came across an advertisement for Melissa Ross’s service. She contacted her, asked her to follow me and report back on what I was doing.”

  “Does she know anything more about Melissa Ross?”

  “Just what she’s read in the papers and seen on TV now.”

  “Does she know anyone else who used Melissa Ross’s services?”

  “No.”

  “No idea where Melissa Ross might be.”

  “Of course not.”

  I showed him a picture of Melissa Ross now.

  “So you don’t know her firsthand at all?”

  “No.”

  “Never seen her?”

  “Never seen her.”

  “She never came on to you in a bar, offered to go back to a hotel room with you, promised sex . . .”

  “Nope.”

  “You’re absolutely sure about that?”

  Johnson looked down again at the picture of Melissa Ross. “Believe me, I’d remember a hot chick like that.”

  * * *

  I talked to more of the people the cops found out about through Melissa Ross’s files. Both women who had hired her and men she had caught on those videos. Some of the wives were still angry at their husbands. Some of them were remorseful for what they had done—hiring a woman that might have murdered their husbands, just like she had murdered the other three victims. And a lot of them, both husbands and wives, were worried that Melissa Ross could still be a danger to them.

  By the time I got to Janet Creighton, I’d pretty much given up hope of learning anything from this seemingly endless series of questions for Ross’s clients.

  Janet Creighton was very much in the Karen Faris mode. She’d worried for a long time that her husband was cheating on her, finally done something about it by hiring Melissa Ross, and now wished desperately she could turn everything back to the way it was.