Charles wondered if Kathy Mallory regretted that now. He thought she might.
Lieutenant Coffey and Detective Janos looked up when Duck Boy appeared in the doorway and hovered there in respectful silence, waiting to be noticed.
Coffey motioned him into the room. “Yeah, kid, what is it?”
“Sir, I finished all my paperwork.” He held a thick sheaf of papers in his hand.
“If that’s the report on the warehouse—”
“No, sir. It’s something Sergeant Riker requested, but I can’t find him. Do you want it? Does anybody want it?”
The lieutenant accepted the report, briefly noted Duck Boy’s other name on the first page, then dumped it into his out-basket at the edge of the desk. “Deluthe, you did good work today. But the paperwork goes to Riker and Mallory from now on.” He turned to Janos. “Did they give you an address?” What his tone implied was clear: I don’t want to know where they are.
And now his detective was writing in his notebook, saying to Deluthe, “This is where you can find them.”
The younger man nodded and stared at the basket with his discarded report. “So you’d rather have them not read it?”
Jack Coffey leaned back in his chair and smiled. There was a brain at work here. At least, the boy had the makings of a smart mouth. And the rookie detective had earned a fair hearing. “Okay, sit down.”
Ronald Deluthe settled into a chair next to Janos.
“You can report to me,” said Coffey. “But I only want the gist of it, okay?”
“Yes, sir. I spoke to the mobile news crew. The other night, they were in the area following up on a lead. That’s why they got to the crime scene ahead of the fire engines. They were just cruising up and down—”
Damn, a speechmaker. “What was their lead?”
“Well, this guy phoned in a tip an hour before the prostitute was hung. The news show has a public line called Cashtip. But that wasn’t the first call they taped. The—”
Janos leaned forward. “The station taped these calls? The news director only gave Mallory video. Bastards. So they were holding out on us.” He slapped the trainee on the back. “That was real nice work, kid.”
“Thank you, sir.” Deluthe continued his dry recital of facts. “They had another tip for a homicide a few blocks from the crime scene, but that one was last week, and it didn’t pan out.”
“So let’s get past that,” said Coffey.
“Yes, sir. So the same guy calls back to tip them on Sparrow’s murder. This time, he didn’t give a name or address. He just told them to look for the smoke. Well, they didn’t plan to send out their mobile unit. This guy burned them once before. But then, it turned out to be a slow news day, and they decided—” And now Deluthe must have sensed that interest was waning. His voice trailed off as he said, “Well, I guess that’s the gist.”
Janos put one meaty hand on Deluthe’s arm. “Back up, kid. What about the first tip—the murder that didn’t pan out?”
“That was five or six days ago. The tipster gave them a name and specific location. But when the news van got to Ms. Harper’s building, the neighbors told them she was in Bermuda. Then the reporters went to the local police station, and a desk sergeant told them the same thing. He said Ms. Harper had gone to—”
“Hold it.” Coffey retrieved the report from his basket. “How did a cop know where she was? Did this woman ever file a complaint?”
“I don’t know, sir. I only spoke to the television people.”
Detective Janos was shaking his head. “You never mentioned this to Mallory or Riker?”
“It was in my report, but I—”
“Yeah, yeah.” Janos moved around behind the desk and scanned the pages, reading over the lieutenant’s shoulder. “The address is there. I’ll get a warrant on Harper’s apartment. It’s worth a look. Maybe Mallory was right about the perp going serial.”
Jack Coffey pretended not to hear that. He smiled at Deluthe. “Good work. Damn good work. So you got the perp’s voice on tape?”
“No, sir. I asked the news director for a copy, but he said that would compromise the integrity of his—”
“Janos!”
“Yeah, boss.”
“Go get that tape!”
Charles stared at the old photographs taken after the body was cut down. Among Natalie Homer’s few shabby possessions, all that was hopeful were the potholders, each one decked with a red bud, the promise of a rose. He had come to think of this woman, twenty years dead, in a possessive way, for Riker and Mallory showed so little interest in her. And he had developed a bond with Lars Geldorf, the lady’s only champion.
“I’m not sure I follow you.” The retired detective paced the length of the cork wall with the attitude of an inspector general.
“It’s an homage to an old friend,” said Charles Butler. “Did you know the first commander of Special Crimes Unit?”
“Lou Markowitz?” said Geldorf. “Oh, yeah, I met him once. He was on my crime scene—just stopped by to talk to my partner. Great cop. It was a goddamn pleasure to shake his hand.” He turned back to the mess on the wall. “Sorry, you were saying?”
“Well, Louis’s office used to have a cork wall like this one. It took me awhile to figure out his logic. You see, it emerged as he shuffled things around every day.” Charles pointed to one cluster of papers held by a single tack. “The top layers have pertinent information that overrides what’s underneath. You can see the progression of the case at a glance. No time wasted on bad leads and insignificant data. And there’s relevance in the juxtaposition. Oh, and prioritizing. The least relevant items are on the outer edges.”
“Not bad, Dr. Butler. Not bad at all.”
“Call me Charles.” He was entitled to a doctor’s credential, in fact several of them, but his background in abnormal psychology only served as an adjunct to client evaluations. Perhaps a practicing psychologist would have predicted Mallory’s reaction.
He heard no footsteps behind him and only turned around because of Riker’s comment from the doorway, a soft Jesus Christ. The words were outside of Geldorf’s hearing range. The old man kept his eyes on the cork, and Charles kept watch over Mallory. How long had she been standing there in the center of the room? She took no notice of him, and the moment was almost like stealing, for he was free to stare at her, unafraid that his tell-all face would say foolish things.
He had been working close to the wall for hours, and now he stepped back to see it from Mallory’s vantage point. A frozen whirlwind of papers and pictures spiraled out from the center pastiche of crime-scene images. It was the jumble of a brain turned inside out, exposing a unique thinking process, trains of thought splashed over the wall in a starburst pattern as Louis Markowitz’s mind of paper debris reached out, stretching—awakening.
Without a word, and unnoticed by Geldorf, she left the room. Riker put up one hand in the manner of a traffic cop, warning Charles not to follow her, then disappeared down the hall. A few moments later, the door in the reception area slammed shut.
Lars Geldorf called his attention to the square crime-scene photographs. “These are the originals. The blow-ups might be easier to read.”
“I thought the size was unusual.” The Polaroids were much smaller than the eight-by-ten pictures once pinned to the cork wall of Louis’s office. Charles pointed to a photograph of the corpse hanging from a light fixture. “What’s this dark area on her apron?”
“Grease. And those spots are cockroaches.” Geldorf leaned down to the cardboard carton at his feet and picked up an envelope. “I had enlargements made.” He pulled out a group of pictures. “Now these are grainy, but you can see the bugs better.”
“Indeed.” They were gigantic.
“Oh, you like bugs? I got shots of flies and maggots too.” Geldorf opened another envelope, and this one contained twice as many insects, all in very sharp focus. “A medical examiner took these shots. That old bastard loved bugs. A drunk and a freak.”
The fax machine rang, bringing Riker back to Mallory’s office in an uncharacteristic hurry. The detective watched a sheet scroll out of the machine, then ripped it off and left the room.
“I’ll be right back.” Charles walked down the hall, following the sound of a one-way conversation. He found the detective in the reception area, slumped in a chair behind the antique desk and speaking into a telephone that was circa 1900.
“Oh, the warrant was easy,” said Riker to the caller. “But the super didn’t have keys to Harper’s apartment.” One leg was on the rise, then settled back to the floor; Mallory had trained him not to put his feet up on office furniture. “I’ll make the calls for Heller and Slope. . . . Yeah, the locksmith just opened the place. . . . Right. Mallory’s already on the way.”
Riker set the ornate receiver back on its cradle, then looked past Charles to the young man who had just emerged from the office kitchen with a sandwich in hand. “Kid? You’re driving. Go get your car and pull it up front. I’ll be down in a minute.”
The recent fax wafted from Riker’s hand to the desk. Charles read the words Guys, come home. All is forgiven. Love, Special Crimes Unit. “Did Jack Coffey send that?”
“Naw, too affectionate for the boss. And he’s still pretending Mallory doesn’t work here anymore.” Riker looked down at the fax. “No, I’d say this is Janos’s style.”
“There’s been another hanging?”
The detective shrugged into the sleeves of his suit jacket. “Good guess, and keep it to yourself. Yeah, Mallory was right. We got a serial killer.” He paused with one hand on the doorknob. Without turning round, he said, “Tell me something, Charles. Would you want to live in a world where all of Mallory’s lies came true?”
6
They were exiles now, locked out of the room. This was Heller’s punishment for breaking a commandment of Forensics: Thou shalt not disturb my freaking crime scene.
The detectives’ walk-through had turned into a run-through, battling fat black insects on the wing and biting back vomit all the way to a rear window that had not been dusted for prints. Now Mallory sat outside on the steps of the fire escape, keeping her partner company. The air was sweeter here, but muggy and almost too thick to breathe. The sun was hot, the day was dead calm, and cigarette smoke hung about Riker in a stale cloud.
On the other side of the locked window, most of the insects were still trapped in the apartment. Their buzzing penetrated the glass, loud and incessant. A ripe corpse had emptied its bowels postmortem, attracting every blowfly in the neighborhood and adding to the odor of putrid flesh.
Mallory looked down through the metal grate. More civilians had joined the gathering below. There was nothing to see, but New York was a theater town, and the yellow crime-scene tape was the cue to form a sidewalk gallery. Last week, the killer had probably stood on that same patch of pavement. After calling the reporters to his crime scene, he would have stayed to watch them enter this building, then leave, unimpressed with his work. “I wonder how long the perp waited for the cops to show. Hours? Days?”
“Must’ve driven him nuts.” Riker took a drag on his cigarette. “I’ve got uniforms canvassing the block. We might get lucky.”
No, Mallory doubted that they would turn up any witnesses who recalled a man loitering on the sidewalk. Too much time had passed between the death and the discovery of the corpse.
Riker flicked his cigarette over the rail of the fire escape. “I wonder if we’ll find any more bodies, maybe a few in worse shape.”
“Not likely. Janos said there were only two calls on the Cashtip line.” And, despite the killer’s telephoned confession and a reporter’s visit to the local police station, Kennedy Harper’s body had been left to rot for six days in the heat of August. “He must’ve figured the cops just weren’t paying attention.”
“Well, he got that part right,” said Riker. “And now we know why he burned Sparrow’s window shade. Hard to miss a woman hanging in full view of the street. He wanted a guaranteed audience for his second show.”
Heller stood on the other side of the glass, raising the sash. “Okay, all the windows are open, and the worst of the stink is gone. You two delicate little pansies can come back inside.”
Without being asked, the tenants kept their distance from the stench of the crime scene. They were gathered at the other end of a long hallway, where Ronald Deluthe questioned a man with greasy coveralls. A large cluster of keys dangled from his utility belt.
“You’re the building handyman, the super?”
“Good guess, kid.”
Deluthe could translate that to mean, Who else would I be, you moron? Not a promising beginning for his first interview of the day, but he pressed on. “So a body is rotting away for maybe a week, but you never smelled anything?” He paused a moment to flick a fly off his face. “Nobody complained?” An army of insects walked up the walls, and some were strolling across the ceiling.
The high-pitched whine of a woman chimed in behind the detective’s back. “Oh, we complained all right! You think this lazy slob would take six minutes to check it out?”
The far door opened, and Mallory stepped into the hall in time to catch the handyman demonstrating a New York gesture for love and friendship, his middle finger extended from a closed fist.
“Harper got new locks!” The man edged closer to the whining tenant so he could yell in her face, “And I got no keys for ’em! You want I should break down her damn door?”
At the other end of the hall, Mallory called out to Deluthe, “Chase down the locksmith. Find out when he was here.”
“Oh, I can tell you that.” The handyman’s keys jangled as he turned to flash a lewd grin at the pretty detective. “It was two weeks ago. I watched him do the work.” His eyes undressed Mallory layer by layer, removing her blazer, her T-shirt, her bra.
And now he was the focus of her attention. “Was Kennedy Harper home that day?”
“Yeah.” His eyes traveled all over her body. “So?”
The detective’s long legs were encased in blue jeans, but, in the handyman’s eyes, they were naked. He looked up, suddenly startled. She was moving toward him with long strides and swinging a camera from its strap like a weapon.
Ronald Deluthe wondered if she was only pissed off, or had he missed something—again.
Mallory stood toe-to-toe with the man in coveralls. “You had keys to the other locks.” This was an accusation.
“Sure. I got keys for the whole building.”
That was so obvious. The buckle on the man’s utility belt sagged from the weight of his keys, each one tagged with an apartment number. And now Deluthe waited for some caustic comment from the witness, but the handyman kept a respectful silence, for Mallory stood with one hand on her hip, exposing the shoulder holster and a very large gun. Her eyes were even more intimidating. Did she ever blink? She took two quick steps toward the handyman, who had nowhere to go but flat up against the wall.
“Why don’t you have the new keys? You were here with the locksmith. Harper was home that day.”
“I asked for ’em. She wouldn’t give ’em to me.”
Mallory looked down at the cluster of tags and metal hanging in front of the man’s crotch. He squirmed when she reached for it.
“You’ve still got the old ones.” Mallory stared at the key tag for apartment 4B. “You had access before she changed the locks.”
“And she had no problem with that.” He was a model citizen now, eager to help and talking fast. “Five years and no complaints. Then one day, out of the blue, I’m a suspicious character. She can’t trust me with her damn keys. Go figure.” He turned to Deluthe. “Don’t write that down, kid.”
Deluthe folded his notebook into a pocket, then took out his Miranda card to read the prime susp
ect his rights. “You have the right to remain—”
“What are you doing?” Mallory took his card away, then handed him the camera. “We’re done with this man. Go outside and take pictures.”
Deluthe nodded. He was growing accustomed to humiliation and busywork. The killer had no way to know that the body had been discovered, not this time. He would not be among the onlookers. This was Mallory’s way of telling him, once again, to get lost.
Riker stood near the kitchenette, where the odor was strongest. He stared at the jar of dead flies on the floor, then counted exactly two dozen saucers, each one containing the melted remnants of a red candle. They formed a perfect circle, and at the center lay Kennedy Harper’s remains. She had a noose around her neck, and the double knot was the same as Sparrow’s, but this woman had not been found hanging. The light fixture had come loose, and the body had crashed to the floor long before the police arrived. A broken bulb and a shattered white globe lay close to a nest of wires pulled down from the hole in the ceiling. The corpse at his feet was bloated with gas, and the face was partially concealed by shards of broken plaster. Only one eye, clotted with white dust, was visible. It had retracted into its socket.
Or the maggots had eaten it.
Riker turned away, wondering if this woman had been as pretty as Sparrow. He hunkered down on the floor in front of the kitchenette sink and picked up her wallet with his gloved hand. Opening it, he stared at the photograph on her driver’s license. Yes, she had been very pretty, but Kennedy Harper had borne no resemblance to Sparrow beyond the hacked-off hair of another scalping. He set the wallet on the floor, positioned as he had found it among the spilled contents of a purse. He moved to one side to allow a crime-scene technician room to dust the jar of dead, dry flies. Even before the man shook his head, Riker knew there would be no fingerprints.
Crime School Page 10
