“And just to be clear, I’m not sure about the ‘you giving up your apartment’ part.”
“I think we’re moving too fast,” I say. “It’s like a whirlwind.”
She laughs. “We’re going to be married, Doug … eventually. Living together seems somehow appropriate. Besides, you’re not the old Doug. You’re more mature, and centered.”
“You make that sound depressing.”
She shakes her head. “Not at all; it’s why we’ve moved into the second thought stage.”
We leave the restaurant and head for Jessie’s house in Englewood. There’s construction on Route 20, so instead we work our way through the east side of Paterson toward Route 4.
We stop at a streetlight at the corner of 18th and Vreeland, and I hear some kind of commotion to the left of us. I look over there, and it’s hard to make out, but it seems like a man and a woman, standing next to a parked car, having a loud argument.
I turn back to see if the light has changed, and Jessie says, “He’s pushing her against the car.”
“Park it,” I say, and I jump out of our car, still standing at the light.
I run across the street, and sure enough, the guy is pushing the woman, and she is withdrawing in fear.
“Police officer!” I yell. “Get your hands off of her!”
He looks at me and says, “Bullshit. You ain’t no cop.”
“I said leave her alone and step away. You’ve been warned.”
“This is my wife,” he snarls. “And you better get your ass away from me, or you’ll get worse than she’s getting.”
Suddenly, our car comes screeching to a halt behind me. Jessie has made a U-turn and pulled right up to us, and she has the brights on, shining into the guy’s eyes.
“Shit!” he yells, and turns to the woman. “Get in the damn car.”
He opens the door and tries to push her in roughly. She’s resisting, and hits her head against the door and falls to the ground. She screams in pain and fear.
I’ve seen and heard more than enough. I move forward and grab the guy, swinging him around and throwing him facedown onto the hood of the car. I throw him harder than I need to, but not as hard as I want to.
The sound that his face and nose make as they hit the hood, and the blood that starts to spread, makes me satisfied that it was hard enough. He yells in pain, but it’s garbled, so maybe I’ve dislodged some teeth in the process. I’m okay with that.
I can hear Jessie calling 911 for the Paterson police, and then moments later she comes over and hands me a pair of handcuffs, which I use on the guy.
The Paterson cops appear moments later, three black-and-whites worth. I identify myself to one of them, but he says that he recognizes me. Fame has its privileges.
Jessie and I both describe what happened, versions that are contradicted in the moment by the woman screaming that her husband didn’t do anything wrong. It’s depressing and might well mean that the guy won’t get charged for this, but Jessie and I both say that we’ll testify. At the very least the asshole won’t be anxious to look in the mirror for a while.
We get back in the car, and I can feel the adrenaline starting to wear off. Jessie asks, “That felt good, didn’t it? I mean your part in it.”
I think for a moment, and then nod. “It did. I wasn’t thinking about what I was doing; I was just doing it. It felt natural. What does that say about me?”
She smiles. “That maybe you’re the old Doug after all. Which isn’t all that bad.”
“You slammed a guy’s face into a car?” Nate asks when he walks in.
“I moved the gentleman out of possible ongoing traffic into a position where the car happened to be standing. It was for his own safety. When he turned to thank me, he slipped and fell into the car.”
“That was quite a slip. He broke his nose and lost four teeth.”
“Boy, that really puts things into perspective. How do you know about this?”
“You mean other than the fact that it’s on the news? The Paterson cops have already called here, looking for your written statement.”
“I’ll call them later. Let me have the files.”
“I’m not sure if I can find the key to my desk,” he lies. “Maybe if you told me what was going on, it would jog my memory. You know about memory jogging, don’t you?”
I shake my head. “Confidential.”
“We’re partners. Do you know what that means? Or did you forget that, too?”
Nate has a point, so I decide to tell him about Sean’s story and his scrapbook. As when I told Jessie, I leave out Sean’s name, since that’s the only actual promise of confidentiality that I made to him.
When I’m done, he says, “That’s it? I came in at seven o’clock for that? You’re wasting your time.”
I nod. “I know. The guy must have been spooked that he was in the bar with a woman who got snatched and probably killed a few minutes later. So he followed the case carefully; he felt connected to it.”
“Exactly. You’re not as dumb as you look.”
I spend the next couple of hours looking through the files. It’s weird to read my own notes, knowing it’s my handwriting but having no recollection of writing any of it.
I was the arresting officer but not the lead detective on the case. That was Hector Davila, the ranking detective in the department. He’s a terrific cop who has been around forever; that much I remember.
Not surprisingly, nothing I see causes me to have any question that the arrest was legitimate and John Nicholson is the likely perpetrator. The evidence is circumstantial, but compelling, and at the very least I can say to Sean that I did my due diligence, and that I’ve found nothing to make me think he was involved.
“You satisfied?” Nate asks when I’m done.
“Satisfied.”
He puts the file back where it was, and I head to administration to do the paperwork necessary to get back on the job. It seems like a lot, but I plow through it a page at a time, and I’m done in forty-five minutes.
I also have to sit through two re-entry interviews, which are uneventful until they start asking me things about my life that I can’t answer. Fortunately the interviewers are aware of my issues, so they gloss over the gaps.
I’m wrapping up the last of the interviews when Nate sticks his head in the door. “You almost finished?”
I look at the interviewer, who nods.
“Almost,” I say.
“Then you’re finished. We’ve got to move; a jogger found a murder victim in Eastside Park.”
“Was the body buried?” I ask.
“No. And it’s not exactly a body.”
During the ten-minute drive to the park, Nate updates me on the little we know so far. “It’s a severed head. No trace of the torso, at least not yet.”
“And a jogger found it?” I ask.
“Yeah. How come joggers always seem to be the ones to find bodies? Makes me glad I don’t exercise.”
As soon as we get to the park, the location we’re looking for is obvious. There are a bunch of cop cars, a coroner’s van, and two police forensic teams.
The action is about a hundred yards from the tennis courts, not far from a runner’s path. It’s not the kind of place you’d want to leave a severed head if you didn’t want it discovered. It’s definitely a place you’d leave it if you wanted to send a message.
We are the ranking detectives on the scene; it will be our case. As soon as we get there, the cops who were here first update us on what they know, which isn’t much. The unlucky jogger is in a nearby car, waiting to be interviewed, and the coroner is here and is awaiting our okay to remove the head.
Forensics people are also here, doing their jobs and searching for evidence, trace and otherwise. No identification has been made yet, which makes sense, since the deceased probably wouldn’t be carrying a wallet with ID in his mouth. Fingerprints are obviously going to be a bit difficult to get as well.
Once we’ve consulted w
ith everyone, I say, “Okay, let’s get a look at our victim.”
One of the officers leads us over, and everyone parts to let us through. Because of Nate’s size, they have to make a wide path.
Within moments we’re in the front, looking down at the severed head, which almost seems contorted in a smile.
What I’m looking at stuns me. “I can make the identification,” I say.
Nate turns to me in surprise. “Who is it?”
“Sean Connor.”
I call Nate to the side, where no one else can hear us.
“Who is Sean Connor?” he asks, once we’re out of earshot.
“He’s the guy who had the scrapbook on the Rita Carlisle kidnapping. The guy I told I would look into it.”
“This ain’t no coincidence.”
“That’s for sure.”
We go over to talk to the jogger, who can’t be more than eighteen years old. Her name is Donna Wagner, and it’s no surprise that she is very shaken by the experience. While we are talking to her, she waves shakily to her parents, who have just arrived on the scene.
Ms. Wagner has very little to offer, other than the circumstance by which she happened on the severed head. The track was muddy from a recent rain, so she veered off a bit to find more solid ground. That led her right to the head. It is a moment that she will remember with fear and revulsion for the rest of her life.
“What did you do when you saw it?” Nate asks.
“I screamed and then I threw up,” she says, a little sheepishly.
“Exactly what I would have done,” I say.
We take down all her information and say that we will be contacting her, but the truth is she probably won’t hear from anyone again unless the case goes to trial and the prosecutor needs her to set the scene. It’s clear that she has no involvement in the crime, nor any special insight into it.
By the time we leave there are six media trucks on the scene, having made their way from Manhattan. Dead bodies attract attention; heads without the dead bodies attached create a media firestorm. Therefore, it is no surprise that Captain Bradley has left word that he wants to see us the moment we get back into the office.
“Well, welcome back to the job,” he says when we walk in. “You still want to work on cold cases? Or maybe spend your time reopening the Carlisle kidnapping?”
“Actually, yes.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“I knew the park victim; he approached me and we had breakfast the other day. His name is Sean Connor; he was part of my amnesia group.”
“What’s an amnesia group?” he asks.
“People with amnesia get together to talk about their amnesia.”
“Sounds like a blast. Go on.”
“He told me he was afraid that he was responsible for the Carlisle kidnapping, but had no recollection of it.”
“Then why did he think he was responsible?” Bradley asked.
“Because he found a scrapbook filled with newspaper articles about the crime hidden in his attic, and he uncovered a credit card receipt that showed he was in the bar that night.”
“You have the scrapbook?”
“No, he wanted to keep it.”
“And this is why you came in the other day with that bullshit story about wanting to work on cold cases?”
“It is.”
“Good to know you’re not totally nuts, but you might want to share things like that in the future. In case you’ve forgotten, we’re a team here.”
“Got it, Captain,” I lie.
He nods. “Okay. The media shit has already hit the fan. I want to be kept in the loop on your progress.”
“You got it,” Nate says.
“And keep in mind that this is a murder case, the victim being Sean Connor. This is not the Rita Carlisle kidnapping case, part two.”
I understand where Bradley is coming from; his department, with yours truly in one of the main roles, put John Nicholson in prison for the kidnapping of Rita Carlisle. It would not be a positive if Nicholson was innocent. But Bradley knows we’ll follow the facts wherever they go; he’s just telling us not to push it too hard toward Carlisle until and unless we are forced to.
From what I understand, the old me would have ignored him, and there’s a very good chance that the new me will do the same. There is simply no way a financial consultant from Westchester moves to New Jersey, reveals his belief that he might have something to do with the Rita Carlisle case, and then gets his head chopped off without it having something to do with that case.
Nate and I leave Bradley and head for Jessie’s office. She’s heard about the severed head, and knows it’s our case, but isn’t aware that the victim is Sean Connor. I had told her about the situation, but not Sean’s name.
When we tell her, she says what I’ve been thinking: “It’s got to be tied to Carlisle.”
“Bradley doesn’t think so,” I say. “Or at least he doesn’t want to think so.”
“He’s just protecting the conviction. The last thing he wants is for Nicholson to be innocent.”
“Well, I’m pretty sure Nicholson didn’t chop off Sean’s head.”
“You two almost done chitchatting?” Nate asks.
“Almost,” I say. “You can go get us some coffee while we finish up.”
Nate ignores me and says, “Jess, Memory Boy and I need to know whatever you can find out about Connor.”
She nods. “What do we know so far?”
I shrug. “Not too much, beyond the name and the fact that he went to the amnesia group meetings thanks to a head injury he got in a car accident. You can get his contact information from them. Oh, and he said that he lives in Clifton, near the coffee shop we went to, and that he used to live in Westchester. He also said at one point that he was a financial consultant, or counselor, or something. Apparently he did pretty well.”
“Okay,” she says. “I’m on it.”
We head back to our office. The preliminary forensics report is in and it’s of little value to us. The perpetrator left no apparent trace evidence for us to use. It certainly appears as if the murder did not take place where the head was discovered, since there was very little blood. But there is nothing that would lead us to the actual site of the murder.
Nate calls the coroner’s office to see if they have learned anything that could be helpful to us. They haven’t. They are able to set a time of death as anywhere from six to ten hours before the jogger found the head, but they can’t even accurately determine a cause of death.
All they can say is that there were no new brain or skull injuries. While the severing of the head would obviously be sufficient to cause death, it is possible that it took place postmortem. At this point there is just no way to know.
Based on the time of death, it’s probable that the head was left there under cover of darkness. Officers are canvassing the area to see if anyone saw anything suspicious, but I doubt they’ll come up with anything. Someone probably would have come forward already.
We’re not going to be able to really get into investigating Connor’s murder until we learn more about him, and that process is going to begin with Jessie. In the meantime, despite Bradley’s view, the only lead we have to go on is the fact that he thought he might somehow be involved in the Carlisle kidnapping.
To that end, we requisition the videotapes that were submitted as evidence in the trial. There is a tape from inside the bar that night, though it was not of great value at trial. It shows Rita Carlisle leaving, quickly and in apparent anger, and Nicholson following about twenty seconds later. It does not capture the argument that they were having at the table, and in any event there is no audio.
But that’s not why we’re looking at it; we’re trying to see if Sean Connor was actually there, as he stated he was, and if he took any action that might concern us. For example, if he followed Rita out as well, that would be suspicious and tend to confirm his feeling that he might have been involved.
Despite
the fact that Nate has seen the severed head, I am the only one who knows what the living Sean Connor looked like, and I don’t see him. There is no guarantee that the video recorded everyone in the place; very likely it didn’t. But if Sean Connor was there, he went unphotographed.
So at this point, we don’t know who Sean Connor is, whether he was at the bar, whether he was involved in the Rita Carlisle kidnapping, or whether he was telling me the truth.
The only thing we know for sure is that his head was in Eastside Park this morning.
“I don’t know who he was, but he wasn’t Sean Connor,” Jessie says the next morning.
She didn’t mention anything about this last night at home, just that she was still working on it. I think she waited until she could get more information, but mainly because she thought it was more proper to update Nate and I together.
It also could be that she doesn’t feel that severed heads make for great pillow talk.
“What does that mean?” Nate asks, taking the words out of my mouth.
“It means he was not who he says he was. His identity was faked; there is no Sean Connor that could possibly fit his description. The only ones that might be close are alive, heads fully intact.”
“Did you learn where he lived?”
“I know where he said he lived,” Jessie says. “I got it from your amnesia group. It was an address in Clifton, but unfortunately, he never actually lived there. The residents of that address are an elderly woman and her daughter. They’ve owned the house for thirty-five years, and they never heard of Mr. Connor.”
“What about the credit card receipt that said he was in the bar that night?” Nate asks.
Jessie shrugs. “I can’t speak to that, because I don’t know his real name, so I can’t access his credit card accounts. But based on what I’m seeing, I think you can safely assume that everything he said to you was a load of horseshit.”
Jessie has a delicate way of phrasing things.
“We need to run his DNA,” I say. “And get a sketch out to the media, to see if anyone comes forward and identifies him.”
“What I can’t figure out is why he came to you in the first place,” Nate says.
Fade to Black Page 4
