She’d take a book off the shelf and put back the last one she borrowed.” He smiled now, but not with happiness—more like defiance. “You see? I don’t forget anything.”
“How long did this stakeout last?”
“Off and on? Two months—and they couldn’t catch her.”
Charles recalled a different series of events: Louis had been en route to his wife’s birthday party when he had just happened upon a strange child robbing a car. Rather than spend the night filling out paperwork, he had taken Kathy home to the party, and his wife had mistaken the baby felon for a present. What a lovely story—told so many times. Riker was not even mentioned in that version. And nothing had ever been said about stalking, hunting down a little girl over a period of months.
“And what was your part in this, Mr. Warwick? You just loaned her the books?”
“No, no.” The man was exasperated, perhaps still believing that this was a psychiatric interview, a test of trick questions. “The girl took the books, like she had a right to them. She’d take one, then bring it back. That’s how Markowitz figured out that she came from a small town.”
“Pardon?”
“Markowitz said, in her part of the world, my little store was probably the size of a public library. He said to me, ‘The kid brings the books back because her mother raised her right.’ Then that bastard confiscated her westerns, all but the last one.”
“The book you traced for him?”
Warwick nodded. “I had to track down all the buyers at the estate sale where I got the others. He paid me, then put the book on the shelf—so she would find it. But she never did. I never saw her again. The last time Markowitz came in, he told me the little girl was dead. He scribbled a few words in the book, then left it behind.”
“So you know what he wrote on the—”
“It was a love letter to a dead child. The words weren’t meant for you.” Warwick sighed, then looked down at his hands. “He wanted me to believe she was dead, but it was just a trick. He was crying that day. I—almost believed him.”
“Interesting pattern,” said Charles. “The little girl and her books. She must have come in here quite a few times before you reported her to the police.”
“I never did that. I never betrayed her.” The bookseller said this with great pride, as if he had defeated yet another trap of the inquisition.
No, that was wrong.
Charles decided that the man’s pride stemmed from honoring some unspoken pact with a child, for he was certain there had been no conversation between the bookseller and young Kathy Mallory. “I bet you couldn’t get within three feet of her.” He was working with Louis Markowitz’s description of the feral child raised as his own. “Edgy as a cat, wasn’t she?”
Every detail dropped into its proper slot as Charles arrived at an uncomfortable conclusion: Warwick had not wanted the little girl to be caught and locked away in some institution—like the one that had imprisoned him and probably drugged him every day so he would not pose problems for the staff. Warwick had not seen the comforts of adoption or foster care in Kathy Mallory’s future. No, this ex-mental patient had seen a kindred malady in a small child, something abnormal and dark. One sick mind had reached out to a—
Charles shook his head in a futile attempt to empty out this idea. Seeking some better reason that he could believe in, he leaned toward the bookseller. “Her clothes, her hair—you had to know she was homeless. But you never reported her. Why not?”
He saw the question in Warwick’s eyes, Would you buy a lie? And it was all Charles could do to keep from shouting, Hell, yes!
John Warwick reacted as if mere thoughts were screams. He ducked his head under some imagined blow. His bony shoulders were rising, and his chin disappeared into his shirt collar, a frightened turtle in retreat.
With deep apology in his voice, Charles leaned forward to lure the man back out with an easier question. “What sort of books did she like?”
The man’s neck slowly attenuated, eyes still wary, searching the room for hidden enemies. “Only westerns.” Warwick almost smiled. “And only one writer.” The agitation had abated, and he seemed merely tired as he leaned back in his chair. “All of Jake Swain’s work went out of print long ago—and for good reason. It was terrible writing. But she read those westerns over and over, the same eleven novels.”
“Any idea why?”
“Who knows?” The bookseller shook his head. “The child was so small and skinny, so vulnerable—always alone. I suppose she read them for comfort. She always knew what would happen in her books.” Warwick turned his face to the window on the street. “She never knew what might happen out there.”
5
Sergeant Riker crossed the squad room of Special Crimes Unit, a haphazard arrangement of fifteen desks littered with deli bags, pizza boxes, and men with guns. On the far side of the room, a wide glass panel gave him a look inside Lieutenant Coffey’s private office, where Mallory stood before the desk, her eyes cast down in the manner of a penitent schoolgirl.
What’s wrong with this picture?
The senior detective strolled into the meeting and assumed his usual position, slumped down in the nearest chair with a cigarette dangling at one side of his mouth. After a heavy lunch, Riker was not inclined to waste energy on actual words, and so his eyes merely opened a little wider to say, Okay, I’m here. What?
“I understand you sent that kid—” Lieutenant Coffey paused to glare at his sergeant’s cigarette, as if that ever worked. “The guy from Loman’s squad—what’s his name?”
“Duck Boy.”
“You sent him down to the warehouse to go through eight million boxes of old evidence. I’m guessing you hoped he’d get lost down there.”
Riker shrugged. That had been the general idea, but not his idea, and Mallory was not stepping up to claim the credit. She was busy with her upside-down reading of all the lieutenant’s paperwork.
“Well, the kid got lucky.” Jack Coffey lifted an evidence carton from the floor and settled it on the edge of his desk. “It only took him five minutes to find your hangman’s rope.”
Mallory seemed not to care. Behind the cover of the carton, she teased a red folder from the mess on the lieutenant’s blotter and opened it. Riker caught the glimpse of a full-color autopsy photograph, then turned back to his commanding officer, feigning interest in the adventures of Duck Boy. “So how did he do it?”
“Last month, the warehouse roof sprung a leak and damaged a few cartons.” Coffey opened the box flaps and pulled out a bulky object in brown wrapping. “A clerk remembered repackaging the evidence. The paperwork was wrecked, except for a few of the case numbers. So Duck Boy—let’s find another name for him, okay? So the kid used the numbers to pull a file from the ME’s archive.”
The lieutenant unwrapped a coil of rope, then knocked the carton to the floor and reached out to grab the red folder from Mallory’s hands. “And this is a twenty-year-old autopsy report. It washes out any connection to Sparrow. So we’re kicking the hooker back to the East Side precinct. Now she’s Lieutenant Loman’s headache.” He dropped the rope and the folder on his desk. “I guess we’re done here.”
With an attitude of not so fast, Mallory swept the rope off the desk and into Riker’s lap, then opened the ME’s folder and spread the contents across the blotter. She tapped a photograph in the center of her array. “Take a look at this one.”
Riker and Coffey leaned over for a closer inspection of a corpse bloated with gas and thriving maggots.
“This was another scalping.” With one long red fingernail, Mallory called their attention to the blond hair matted and plastered to the woman’s skull. “It was hacked off with a razor.”
The lieutenant’s smile said, Nice try, but no sale. “I’m looking at a woman with a short haircut, and I don’t see any hair packed in her mouth.”
“She was a blonde,” said Riker. “Like Sparrow.”
“Not good enough.” Coffey rooted thr
ough the companion paperwork, then handed a sheaf of stapled pages to Riker. “Here, read the report. The woman was found hanging, but that wasn’t the cause of death. Dr. Norris was chief medical examiner in those days. He said she was strangled first.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time that hack got something wrong.” Mallory sifted through the other photographs. “Markowitz said he was drunk half the time.”
“No.” Riker slapped the desk. “I remember that old bastard. He was drunk all the time.”
Coffey clasped his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair. “So, you guys think a pathologist, drunk or sober, could overlook a wad of hair packed in a victim’s mouth?”
“Last night, a pathologist pronounced Sparrow dead,” said Mallory.
The lieutenant’s smile widened. “That’s pretty lame.”
The boss was entirely too cheerful, and this made Riker uneasy. Though he had no faith in premonitions, he did have a clear vision of Jack Coffey digging a deep pit for Mallory, then concealing it with twigs and branches.
And there was no way to warn her.
She picked up the old autopsy report and leaned over the desk to dangle it in front of the lieutenant’s face. “Did you read this?” Her unmistakable implication was that fault had somehow shifted onto Coffey. “No one assisted on this autopsy. And that’s odd, because Markowitz said it took two assistants to cover the old drunk’s mistakes. Norris never worked alone.”
Jack Coffey was unimpressed. “Your point?”
“He wouldn’t want any witnesses if he was suppressing evidence. So he omitted a few things from the—”
“No, I don’t think so.” Coffey ripped the report from her hand.
Fun’s over.
The lieutenant was not smiling anymore. “All right, Mallory. Let’s talk about another fairy tale. The old file in Cold Cases? Nobody on that squad remembers a search request from you. I ordered you to requisition that file. I can guess why you didn’t waste the time.” He looked down at the report to refresh his memory. “Natalie Homer. Her murder was never one of their cases.”
“They’re lying,” said Mallory. “They lost the file.”
Even Coffey had to admire gall on such a grandiose scale. “You’re telling me they were too embarrassed to admit they lost a file? So they lied?”
“That’s right,” said Detective Janos. Three heads turned to the open doorway and a man built like a refrigerator with salt-and-pepper hair. “Natalie Homer is a Cold Case file.” Janos’s soft voice was at odds with a face that resembled mug-book shots of the most violent offenders. “They assigned it to an independent.”
“So they lost the paperwork and Mallory’s request?” Coffey was not yet convinced. “And they lied about it?” His tone of voice implied that a lying cop might be a new concept in this room.
“Take the charitable view.” Janos smiled. “Cold Cases moved to a new office. They’re a little disorganized. If the boys didn’t make a copy before they released the folder, they’d never find it again. The copy holds the transfer sheet. Very minimalist filing system. So, today, a hanged hooker is big news—front pages. And they get a request for a connected file—a lost file. Yeah, I think they’d lie to you, boss.”
“But you found the file?”
“Better than that,” said Janos. “The name of the catching detective was in the ME’s report. So I took a ride over to his last known address. This old guy answers the door—he’s got the damn file in his hand. He says to me, ‘What took you so long?’ And here we are.” Janos nodded toward the stairwell door on the other side of the squad room. “That’s Lars Geldorf.”
Riker swiveled his chair around to face the window on the squad room and a lean, white-haired man. “He’s gotta be seventy-five years old.”
Lars Geldorf had grown tired of waiting for a summons, and now he walked toward the lieutenant’s office, not hobbling but making good time. No one had told this retired detective that he had grown old. He wore a silk suit in the best tradition of all the young Turks of his day. The swagger agreed with an arrogant smile, and anyone could read his mind: Geldorf was thinking, I’m going to save your damn hides.
“He’s gonna be trouble,” said Coffey.
Riker agreed. He was reminded of his own father, another cop who had not had the grace to take up knitting after being pensioned off. Geldorf had the same way of walking, as if he owned all the real estate under his feet. The old man strolled into the private office and shook Coffey’s hand in silence, trusting that his name and his fame had preceded him. Then he opened his suit jacket, so as not to wrinkle the silk when he sat down.
Just like Dad.
Riker noticed more trouble when the suit jacket opened. Geldorf wore a revolver holstered at the hip. The old man was definitely back in the game.
Lieutenant Coffey dropped his polite smile. “I understand you’ve got something for me.”
“It’s all in here.” The retired detective held up a zippered pouch with the smell of new leather. “The Natalie Homer case. I got the details on your perp’s MO from the morning paper.” His eyes narrowed with a foxy smile. “Too bad you couldn’t keep the press away from the crime scene.” This was an unmistakable criticism, for he had done an excellent job of keeping his own case details under wraps. Until today, no one had ever heard of the twenty-year-old hanging of Natalie Homer.
Jack Coffey held up the old autopsy folder. “But your case didn’t have the same MO.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Geldorf. “It did. Every detail matches.”
“Natalie Homer’s autopsy didn’t mention any hair in her mouth.” And the newspapers had made much of that. Coffey opened the red folder and glanced at the first page of the old report. “The chief medical examiner was—”
“Dr. Peter Norris,” said Geldorf. “A drunk and a third-rate hack. I’m glad he’s dead. And you’re wrong, son. I pulled the hair out of her mouth before the meat wagon showed up.” He leaned back and smiled in self-congratulation. “In those days, all the worst press leaks came from the medical examiner’s office.”
Lieutenant Coffey read aloud from the old autopsy report, “‘Manual strangulation.’ According to the ME, your victim was strangled before she was strung up.”
“Oh, yeah. What a psycho.” Geldorf smiled. “Or maybe he only wanted it to look that way.” He glanced up at Mallory. “What’s your theory?”
“I like the psycho,” she said.
The old man turned to Riker. “And what about you? I’ll give you a hint. You wouldn’t expect the victim to have a coil of rope lying around the house.”
Riker only drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair. He recognized all the signs of this ritual—Learning from the Master of Old Farts. Previously, he had believed that this was his father’s invention, a game devised to drive his son insane. He reached over to take the leather pouch from the retired detective. It was a tense moment, for this file was Geldorf’s ticket to ride with Special Crimes Unit, and he would not loosen his grip. Mallory caught the old man’s eyes and silently conveyed a threat, Hey, this is going to happen, old man. And Geldorf’s hand slowly opened. Riker grabbed the pouch and unzipped it, then riffled the contents. “So what happened to the hair you took from her mouth?”
“It’s with the rest of the evidence. After the case went cold, I packed it myself.”
Lieutenant Coffey shook his head. “No hair.”
“So they lost it,” said Geldorf with a casual lift of one shoulder. “Happens all the time.”
Riker handed the lieutenant a photograph from the pouch. Natalie Homer’s mouth was stuffed with a gag of wadded blond hair.
Detective Janos stood behind Geldorf’s chair and leaned down to the old man’s ear to say, “Tell them about the candles.”
What the hell?
Twenty-four candles and a jar of dead flies were the only details not mentioned in the morning papers. Why would Janos confide in the old man? Riker glanced through the rest of the crime-scene photos bu
t found no pictures of votive candles.
“That summer, the East Village had rolling blackouts,” said Geldorf. “The electricity was off for three hours after sundown, and Natalie had three candles in her apartment.”
Mallory pulled a bag of melted red wax from the carton. The long tapers were fused together.
“Now you see?” said Geldorf. “This is how they treat evidence. Those candles were brand-new. Check out the wicks. Never been lit. So I figure the perp showed up while it was still light. Early evening works with Norris’s call for time of death.”
The candles were the right color, red, but the wrong shape. Riker counted only three candles—not the dozens found in Sparrow’s apartment.
Geldorf was awaiting a compliment on his astute reading of three unlit wicks.
“Nice work.” There was no sarcasm in the lieutenant’s voice, though the old man had botched the chain of evidence. Jack Coffey was always respectful to the visiting ghosts. “I need a few minutes alone with my people. Detective Janos will look after you.”
When the office door had closed on Geldorf and his keeper, Coffey shook his head. “There’s still no case connection.” He held up the photograph Riker had given him. “This perp has to be in his forties by now, and stringing up blondes is a young man’s game.” He tossed the picture back to Riker. “You guys don’t have a serial killer. And Sparrow’s still alive. You don’t even have a corpse yet.”
Riker turned to his partner. Mallory had been raised by the best poker player in the universe. She was the source of all his hopes for keeping Sparrow’s case in Special Crimes Unit.
“I say he’s picking out another victim right now.” Mallory took the pouch from Riker’s hand and held it up as her hole card. “I can link these two cases.”
“You think so?” Coffey bent down to the carton at his feet and pulled out a plastic bag with a smaller segment of the rope. It was not a good container for water-damaged evidence. Riker could smell mildew when the lieutenant opened the bag. And now he was staring at a classic hangman’s noose with a neat row of coils below the loop.
Crime School Page 8
