Crime School

by Carol O'Connell

  At their last meeting, Sparrow had been in her early thirties. The street life of drugs and whoring had aged her by another twenty years, but now she seemed brand-new again—so young. “She had a facelift, right?”

  “Rhinoplasty too,” said Slope, “and dermabrasion. Her last surgery was a brow lift. There’s still some post-op swelling. Nice work—expensive. I gather she was a pricy call girl.”

  “No, nothin’ that grand.” Sparrow had never been more than a cheap hustler with an accidental gift for making him laugh. When she was a skinny teenager, Riker had turned her into an informant.

  You were soaking wet that night, too stoned to come in from the rain.

  She had strutted up and down the sidewalk, shaking her fists at skyscrapers and hollering, praying, “God! Give me a lousy break!” All of Sparrow’s deities lived in penthouses, and she had truly believed that manna would fall from heaven on the high floors—if she could only get the gods’ attention.

  But you never did.

  Over the years, she had peddled her body to pay for heroin, always vowing to kick the habit tomorrow—and tomorrow. Lies. Yet Riker remained her most ardent sucker. He gently touched a short strand of her butchered hair. “What did the perp use on her? Scissors or a razor?”

  The pathologist shrugged. “Haircuts are not my area.”

  “It was a razor,” said Mallory, who paid hundreds of dollars for her own salon expertise.

  Riker imagined the weapon slashing Sparrow’s hair, her eyes getting wider, awaiting worse mutilation as the razor moved close to her face—her brand-new face—stringing out the tension until she lost her mind.

  Mallory moved closer to the bed. “What about that mark on her arm? That looks like a razor, too.”

  “It might be,” Slope corrected her. “So be careful with your notes, young lady. I will read every word before I sign them.” He bent low for a better look at the long thin scab on Sparrow’s arm. “This is days old—not a defensive wound.” He consulted the patient chart. “Her doctor did a rape kit. No semen present. No sign of trauma to the genital area.” He glanced at Mallory. “I can’t rule out sex with a condom and a compliant hooker. So don’t get creative.” After rolling the nude woman onto her stomach, he examined the back of each knee, then checked her soles and the skin between her toes. There were no fresh punctures.

  Sparrow had beaten her addiction. She was clean again.

  And young again—starting over.

  Where were you going with your new face?

  After reviewing the notes, Edward Slope signed them, thus completing his own hostage negotiation, and Mallory opened the door to set him free. He backed up quickly, making way for a man in the short white coat of a hospital intern. The young doctor crashed into the room with a jangling, rolling cart full of metal and glass equipment and a running nurse at his heels.

  Dr. Slope stayed to watch the intern and nurse as they outfitted their patient with tubes and wires. “What’s the point of this if she—”

  “She’s got brain activity.” The intern tracked Sparrow’s rolling blue eyes with the beam of his penlight. “I never should’ve listened to the damn cops. They told me this woman was revived twenty minutes after death. That can’t be true.” He turned on a startled Riker. “And you had no right to keep me out of here. Suppose she’d gone sour before I got her on life support?”

  “That’s enough.” Edward Slope looked down at the smaller doctor, then held up a wallet with his formidable credentials. Satisfied that the younger man’s testicles had been neatly severed, he continued. “Your patient was never in any danger while I was here.” He reached down to pick up the clipboard that dangled from a chain on the bed rail, then pointed to the bottom of the page. “I see a clear order not to resuscitate.” He glanced at the intern’s name tag. “I assume this is your signature?”

  “Yes, sir, but that was before I saw the EKG results.”

  “Screwed up, didn’t you.” This was not a question, but Slope’s opinion of inexcusable error.

  The intern had the look and the whine of a petulant boy. “I told the cop my patient needed life support.”

  “Nobody told me anything,” said Riker. “I didn’t know.”

  “She knew!” The young doctor whirled around to point an accusing finger, but Mallory was gone, and the door was slowly closing.

  Riker settled into a chair beside the bed. He was fifty-five years old but feeling older, shaken and suddenly cold. Yet he managed to convince himself that no cop would leave herself so exposed to a charge of manslaughter by depraved indifference to human life—and that Mallory had not just tried to kill Sparrow.

  2

  The high-pitched laughter of crime-scene tourists drifted in from the street, unhampered by a bedsheet draped over the broken window. The basement floor was no longer covered by water, but the air was hot and dank. Mallory removed her blazer and folded it over one arm as she moved about the room, taking in each detail.

  Beads of moisture trickled down the cheap metal cabinets of the kitchenette to make wet tracks through black fingerprint dust. A fold-out sofa made do for a bed, and wrought-iron lawn furniture passed for a dining room set. The wooden crucifix was the only wall decoration. Crime Scene Unit’s airtight metal canisters and plastic bags were stacked by the door, awaiting the van’s return.

  Though the work of collecting evidence was done, Riker kept his hands in his pockets to pacify Heller, a great bear of a man with slow brown eyes and rolled-up shirtsleeves. The forensic expert ran a blow-dryer over a small paper box and muttered, “Freaking clowns.” This was his least colorful name for the firemen who had broken the window and hosed down his crime scene. “My crew didn’t find a camera to go with this film box. Maybe your perp took a snapshot for a souvenir.”

  A soggy cockroach was also drying out, perched on the edge of the sink and basking in the warmth of Heller’s floodlights, a bug’s idea of the Riviera. New York City roaches were not afraid of bright light. Nor did they fear fire, flood, or cops with guns, and it would take more than all of that to kill them.

  “Well, this is all wrong.” Riker stood beside the table, examining a plastic bag filled with dead insects. “Hey, Mallory. Ever see so many flies turn out for a body that wasn’t dead yet? There must be a thousand bugs here.”

  “At least.” Heller switched off the blow-dryer, then turned his head with the slow swivel of a cannon. “And the perp brought the flies with him. He carried them in that jar.”

  “What?” Riker leaned down for a closer look at the evidence bag that held a large glass jar coated with black dust. “You didn’t find any prints.”

  “That’s how I know it belonged to the perp. He wore gloves.” Heller sorted through a stack of elimination cards marked with the fingerprints of firemen and police. “All I got here is the victim’s prints and that idiot Zappata’s.” He nodded toward the plastic bags. “The jar’s got a crack in it. Either the perp dropped it, or the fire hose knocked it off the table. I skimmed those flies off the water, but I know they were all dead before they hit the floor. I can even tell you how they died.”

  Riker raised one eyebrow to say, Oh, yeah? “Did they drown? Or did you find smoke in their little lungs?”

  Heller’s glare of quiet disdain was an unmistakable message: Don’t fool with the master. “The inside of the jar smells like insecticide. So do the flies.” He pulled four specimen bottles from his pockets and lined them up on the table. Four dead flies floated in clear liquid. “They’re in different stages of decomposition. I’d say he’s been collecting them for a week. And I got twenty bucks that says an entomologist will back me up.”

  “Naw.” Riker waved him off, for he knew this was a sucker bet. In or out of court, the man from Forensics was rarely challenged.

  “So he’s been planning this for a while.” Mallory turned to the makeshift curtain. Was the freak just passing by when he looked down, saw Sparrow for the first time—and decided to murder her? Was that the day he sta
rted collecting his flies and hoarding them? Or maybe the whore had bumped into him on the street, a New York kind of accident, a chance collision with violent insanity.

  Heller crouched beside his toolbox and began the work of putting away unused razor blades and cotton swabs, brushes and bottles of dust. “Lieutenant Coffey called. He’s on his way over.”

  Mallory wore her I-told-you-so smile. Riker ignored her and hovered over Heller, prompting him. “So? Was Coffey pissed off?”

  “You bet. The lieutenant heard a scary rumor that you guys accepted this case for Special Crimes. How do you plan to sell him on this one? Given it any thought?”

  “Yeah.” Riker glanced at his partner. “She’s gonna handle it.”

  Heller nodded. “Excellent choice.”

  Mallory studied the scorch marks at the base of the brick wall, then turned to the evidence bag of ashes and paper fragments. “Did the perp use anything fancy to start his fire?”

  “Just a match,” said Heller. “I’ll test for accelerants, but I don’t think I’ll find any.”

  A rocking chair and a small magazine rack blocked the bathroom door. The scorched wall was the only logical place for them. “And you’re positive none of the firemen moved any furniture?”

  He nodded absently as he placed each aerosol can in its proper compartment in the toolbox. “One of Loman’s detectives got statements from everybody on the fire truck.”

  She pointed to a couch cushion leaning against another wall. A large square of material had been cut away. “What’s that about?”

  “I cut out a scorch mark and bagged it. That was the perp’s first try at arson. It should’ve gone up like a torch. The couch must’ve come from out of state. New York law doesn’t require fire-retardant upholstery. Lucky for you it didn’t burn. Inside of four minutes, the whole place would’ve gone up in flames.”

  “And destroyed all the evidence,” said Riker. “You’re sure that’s not what he wanted?”

  “Yeah, I’m damn sure. This guy was looking for a fast, controlled burn. Lots of smoke, but no major damage. He was real careful to clear the area around his bonfire.”

  Mallory agreed. The hangman had wanted to call attention to his work, not destroy it. A wet mound of bright cloth and sequins lay at her feet. “Some of these clothes have scorch marks.”

  “Another experiment,” said Heller. “He picked them because the material’s so flimsy. More bad luck. The law does call for fire-retardant costumes. Eventually, they’ll burn—everything does. But the guy’s in a hurry. So next, he collects all the paper—junk mail, magazines. He even burned the window shade.”

  “So our boy’s an amateur at arson.” Riker leaned down to examine the pile of wet cloth deemed unworthy of evidence bags. “I spent four years in Vice. Never heard of a streetwalker with a costume collection like this.” He drew out a scanty garment with sequins and sewn-on wings. “I’ve seen this one before. June, I think. Yeah, Shakespeare in the Park. The play was Midsummer Night’s Dream. I loved the fairies.”

  With a rare show of surprise, Heller turned to stare at the man voted least likely to have an up-close encounter with culture.

  Riker shook his head, saying, “Naw, must’ve been October—the Halloween Parade.”

  The forensic expert sighed, then returned to the task of putting his toolbox in order.

  Mallory looked down at the carefully labeled insect collection on the table. Heller was deluded if he thought Lieutenant Coffey would pay for an entomologist. It would be a fight just to keep this case in Special Crimes Unit. Among the evidence containers stashed near the door was a bag of votive candles. There were at least two dozen in various stages of meltdown. All were covered with fingerprint dust. “The candles belonged to the killer?”

  “Yeah. Part of his little ritual.” Heller pointed to the area beneath the ceiling fixture. “Check out the wax.” Melted droppings had survived the fire hose, and they formed a circle on the cement. “There were spots of red wax on the victim’s skirt. So I know she was lying on the floor while the candles were burning. I used the wicks for a time frame. The last one was lit fifteen minutes before the place was hosed down. That’s how much time he had to hang the woman and start his bonfire.”

  “That can’t be right,” said Mallory, risking heresy. “We have to add on another ten or twelve minutes before Sparrow was cut down and revived. But she isn’t even brain dead.”

  “She was starved for oxygen, but her air supply wasn’t completely cut off.” Heller reached into the evidence pile and selected a canister. After breaking the seal, he pulled out a section of rope. “With a hangman’s noose, he could’ve killed her in a few minutes. But this is a fixed double knot. The noose didn’t tighten with the weight of the body. Satisfied?”

  Yes, she was. Mallory could see it now—Sparrow hanging quietly, sipping air and playing dead, waiting for the freak to leave. Cagey whore. She must have had great hopes. The window had been bare and all the lights left on. Help would surely come any moment. Then her lungs had filled with smoke, and Sparrow had blacked out. Or perhaps she had been dimly aware of her rescuers, the conversation of firemen all around her, and not one hand lifted to help a lady down from the ceiling.

  “The jar of dead flies doesn’t fit,” she said.

  “You’re right.” Heller interrupted his work to stare at the perfect circle of wax droppings. “A very tidy job, meticulous. Even the scalping. You can’t trim a moustache without making a mess, but there wasn’t one stray hair on that woman’s clothes. And the candles—each one an equal distance from the next. Your perp is compulsively neat. I can’t see this guy catching bugs.”

  Mallory could. She pictured a man ripping garbage bags open, then waiting patiently with his can of insecticide. He would have worn gloves to harvest the dead and dying flies, and still it would have made him queasy to touch them.

  The basement door opened, then slammed with a bang. The commander of Special Crimes Unit had arrived. Before his last promotion, Jack Coffey had been a middling man with a forgettable face, hair and eyes of lukewarm brown. Now, at age thirty-seven, the stress of a command position had widened the bald spot at the back of his head and added a premature decade of worry lines and character. Riker noticed the lieutenant’s hands were balled into fists, and he counted down the seconds, waiting for the man to explode.

  Coffey’s gaze passed over the two men and settled on his only female detective. His tone was too calm, too reasonable when he spoke to her. “Imagine my surprise when Lieutenant Loman dropped off the paperwork for a hooker.” His voice jumped ten decibel levels when he shouted, “And she’s not even a dead hooker!”

  Mallory never flinched. She had the slow blink of a drowsing cat, and her serenity would cost the lieutenant one game point.

  “We’re tossing this case back to the East Side squad,” said Coffey. “Tonight! What the hell were you guys thinking? This is assault, not murder. Loman says it’s a damn sex game gone wrong.”

  “Autoerotic asphyxiation?” Heller kept his eyes on his toolbox as he shook his head. “I’ve seen a few teenage boys strung up, and even some old guys, but no women. Her hands were tied with—”

  “She was a damn hooker,” said Coffey. “She did whatever she was paid to do. And bondage is part of the trade.”

  “Sparrow was never into freaks and their games.” Riker said this so casually, an offhand line dropped into the conversation.

  The lieutenant’s reaction was predictable. “We’re not tying up a squad so you can keep faith with one of your snitches.”

  Riker shrugged, then lit a cigarette as he leaned against the wall, leaving the fight to his partner. Coffey could make no personal connection between her and Sparrow. Mallory had been ten years old the last time she had spoken to the whore.

  “The perp is a serial killer,” she said. “Loman’s squad would’ve botched it.”

  Riker sucked in his breath. Awe, Mallory, what are you doing? Was she trying to lose this case? No
cop on the force had ever heard of a serial hangman. It would have been better to run with Heller’s portrait of a tidy psycho with a penchant for dead flies.

  “A serial killer?” Coffey wet his lips, tasting the words. “So, tell me.” His cursory glance swept the entire room. “Where are the rest of the bodies?”

  “In a Cold Case file,” she said. “It’s the same MO. The rope, the hair—everything.”

  And now the fun begins. Or this was Riker’s impression of Jack Coffey’s smile. Hands on his hips, the lieutenant squared off with Mallory. “And where is that file?”

  “They haven’t located it yet.”

  Riker relaxed a little, for his partner was on safer ground now. The Cold Case files dated back to 1906, and the squad had recently moved this staggering inventory to new headquarters. What were the odds that they would rush to unpack a hundred cartons just to appease Special Crimes Unit?

  Jack Coffey’s tight smile never wavered. “Then you pulled this information from the computer. Where’s the printout?”

  “The case isn’t in the system,” she said. “Most of the older files aren’t. Just basic inventory—names and numbers.”

  With budget problems and lack of manpower, it would take Cold Case Squad years to make complete computer entries for every unsolved murder of the last century. Mallory might get away with this.

  Not so, said the look in Coffey’s eyes. “If you’ve never seen this file—”

  “Markowitz told me about it,” she said.

  The lieutenant’s mouth dipped on one side. “Well, how neat. Your corroboration is a dead man. How damn convenient .”

  Riker was also skeptical. He knew she had the talent to tell a better lie than that one.

  Heller slammed the lid of his toolbox. And now that he had everyone’s attention, he rose to his feet, saying, “I was there when she heard about the other hanging.”

  Jack Coffey’s smile evaporated as he faced the man from Forensics, and so he missed the stunned surprise in Riker’s eyes.