“Not yet,” Matt said. “But then, I haven’t been here very long.”
I wonder why Quaire didn’t grab the car?
He watched as all the detectives who would be going to the scene went to filing cabinets, unlocked them, and then took from them their personal equipment, which included their weapons, surgical rubber gloves, and leather- or vinyl-covered folders holding legal tablets.
He followed D’Amata out of Homicide, at the last moment picking up his briefcase, with his laptop inside, from atop a filing cabinet near the door.
[TWO]
When Matt got out of the unmarked Ford, he saw that yellow-and-black tape reading POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS had been strung along both sides of the path into the apartment complex to prohibit access to one of the buildings.
Two uniformed white shirts, a captain and a lieutenant, were standing talking to two detectives, one of them a woman, on the concrete path in front of what was obviously the crime scene.
“Captain Alex Smith, the district commander,” Joe D’Amata said. “Good guy. I don’t make the lieutenant.”
“Lew Sawyer,” Slayberg furnished. “He’s a prick. The broad is from Special Victims, and she’s a real bitch.”
“What the fuck is she doing here?” Slayberg asked. “Special Victims Unit doesn’t have anything to do with homicide investigations, even when the victim has been raped.”
“Smile nicely at her, Matt,” D’Amata said.
Captain Smith saw the three of them coming and smiled.
“Hello, Joe,” he said, putting out his hand.
“Good morning, sir. I know you know Harry, but . . . Sergeant Payne?”
“Yeah, sure, how are you, Harry?” He shook Slayberg’s hand. “I know who you are, Sergeant, but I don’t think we’ve ever actually met.”
“I don’t think so, sir,” Matt said, reaching for Smith’s outstretched hand.
“This is Lieutenant Sawyer,” Smith said. “And Detectives Domenico and Ellis, of Special Victims.”
“I think I used to see you around the Arsenal, didn’t I?” Detective Domenico asked.
There was something about her smile Matt didn’t like, and he remembered what Slayberg had said.
“I used to be out there with Special Operations,” Matt said.
Everybody nodded at each other, but no hands were shaken.
“What have we got, Captain?” Joe asked.
“A dead girl, the doer is probably a sicko, and maybe a problem.”
“What kind of a problem?”
“There was a ‘Disturbance, House’ call here last night. Two cars responded. The lady next door said her mirror fell off the wall. She said the trouble came from the Williamson apartment, and wanted them to check it out. There was no response when the officers rang the bell, no lights, no sounds, and no signs of a break-in. So they couldn’t take the door.”
“Uh-oh,” D’Amata said. “I think I know what’s coming.”
Captain Smith nodded.
“So they left,” he said. “And then the brother let himself in this morning, found his sister, and the lady next door told him what had happened last night. Actually, early this morning. And the brother is pretty upset with the police department for not taking the door the first time we were here.”
“Ouch,” D’Amata said.
Slayberg’s cellular buzzed.
He said his name, listened, then said, “Thanks. We just got here. Wait.” He turned to Matt.
“Sergeant, the search warrant is on the way. Grose will bring it. Reeves said there’s nothing but a couple of driving violations on either the victim or her brother, and wants to know what you want him to do.”
“Tell Grose to tell Reeves to come out with him and the warrant,” Matt said, forgetting that he had promised himself to keep his eyes open and his mouth shut.
He stole a quick glance at D’Amata, and saw nothing on his face to suggest he thought Matt had ordered the wrong thing. And he remembered what Quaire had said about his being expected to act like a sergeant.
“Why don’t we go have a quick look?” Matt said to D’Amata and Slayberg. “The search warrant’s on the way.”
He started to walk toward the stairs, and became aware that everybody started to follow him.
I’m not about to tell the district captain he can’t have a look at the scene, but that doesn’t apply to the lieutenant and certainly not to the smiling lady from Special Victims.
“It’s your job, Sergeant, but I would like a look.”
“After you, sir,” he said, waving Captain Smith ahead of him.
“Lieutenant, would you mind waiting until the Crime Lab people do their thing?” Matt asked.
“I just wanted a quick look, but you’re right,” Lieutenant Sawyer said.
“You understand,” Matt said to Detective Domenico.
The ice in your eyes, Detective Domenico, Sergeant Payne thought, would freeze the balls off a brass monkey. What’s your problem? You’re not even supposed to be here. This isn’t a rape, a child molestation, it’s a homicide.
The uniform in front of Cheryl Williamson’s door stepped aside when he saw Captain Smith and the others.
Once they got inside, Captain Smith touched Matt’s arm.
“I know Sex Crimes,” he said, using the old name for the Special Victims Unit, “doesn’t have anything to do with a homicide investigation, even when a sexual assault is involved. They just happened to be in my office talking to me about an unsolved rape when this job came out.”
“Yes, sir,” Matt said. And then he saw in Joe D’Amata’s eyes that he found this interesting. After a moment, so did Matt.
An unsolved rape and they just happened to be here at a homicide rape scene? Is there something else we’re not being told? I think I’ll have to send a team over to the Special Victims Unit to see what their files may have.
Without a word Joe D’Amata opened his leather-bound notepad, turned to the last page of the tablet, and scrawled a note for himself: Sex Crimes, unsolved rape in area, Lt. Sawyer, Det. Domenico, Ellis.
There was another female detective in the apartment, sitting on the couch beside a well-dressed, somewhat distraught-looking man.
She stood up when she saw them.
Sergeant Payne had an unprofessional thought: Now, that’s a very interesting member of the opposite sex.
“Captain, I’d rather not have anybody in there until we get the search warrant and the Crime Lab,” the very interesting member of the opposite sex said.
“The warrant’s on the way,” Matt said. “And we’re just going to stand in the door for a quick look.”
“Take a good long look,” the man on the couch said, as he stood up. “If you cops did what you’re supposed to do, my sister would probably still be alive.”
“I’m very sorry for your loss, sir,” D’Amata said.
“You’re sorry? That does Cheryl a lot of fucking good.”
"Who are you?” Detective Olivia Lassiter asked, almost a challenge.
“Joe D’Amata, Homicide,” D’Amata said. “I’ve got the job. This is Harry Slayberg, and Sergeant Payne.”
D’Amata and Slayberg nodded at Detective Lassiter as they walked around Matt to the bedroom door.
“Who are you?” Matt asked.
“Lassiter, Northwest Detectives,” she said.
D’Amata and Slayberg stood in the doorway of Cheryl Williamson’s bedroom and looked around—without entering—for about sixty seconds. Then they stepped away from the bedroom door and started looking around the living room. Captain Smith went to the bedroom door.
“Jesus,” he said, softly.
Matt saw that D’Amata and Slayberg had rubber gloves on their hands, wondered why he hadn’t seen them put them on, and pulled a pair of his own from his pocket.
He was about to walk to the door when the apartment door opened again and two men entered. Payne knew one of them, a balding, rumpled man in a well-worn suit, Dr. Howard Mitchell of the med
ical examiner’s office. He had with him a photographer, a young man Matt could not remember ever having seen before.
Matt found it interesting that Dr. Mitchell had come to the scene personally. Usually technicians from the M.E.’s office worked a death scene, and the M.E. did not; he either supervised the autopsy or did it himself.
Probably, Matt decided, Mitchell’s appearance had something to do with a Special Operations job he’d heard about, one that had almost been assigned to him, although in the end it had been assigned to Detectives Jesus Martinez and Charles T. McFadden.
It had begun when a highly indignant citizen, the nephew of a woman who’d fallen down her cellar stairs and broken her neck, had gone to his district and told the desk sergeant to report that he’d just gotten Aunt Myrtle’s last Visa bill. Aunt Myrtle didn’t drink, couldn’t drive, and there was no way she could have charged $355 worth of booze at Mickey’s Liquor Store in Camden, New Jersey, on the day of her death.
The report had worked its way through the bureaucracy to the Roundhouse, where it had been discussed by Deputy Commissioner Coughlin and Chief Inspector of Detectives Lowenstein.
They agreed there was something about it that made it seem more than a simple case of credit-card fraud. And since it crossed state lines, it became a federal offense, which meant it was in the province of the FBI. Although both Coughlin and Lowenstein held the FBI in the highest possible respect, they also suspected that a credit card fraud involving only $355 would not get the FBI’s full attention.
“Give it to Peter Wohl,” Lowenstein said. “Not this job. Get him to see if there have been other reports of other things missing from other recently deceased citizens.”
Coughlin had—unnecessarily—told Peter Wohl that if somebody at funeral homes, cops at the scene, or maybe even from the M.E.’s office were taking things they shouldn’t, he would rather learn this from Special Operations than from the FBI.
Charley McFadden and Hay-zus Martinez had been given the job because they had less on their plates when the job came in than Matt did. It hadn’t taken McFadden and Martinez long to discover—Matt couldn’t remember ever before having seen Charley so personally indignant—that a lot of stuff had disappeared over the past six months, and that it was pretty clear it had disappeared into the pockets of some of the M.E.’s technicians. They had apparently decided that since the deceased had no further need for rings, watches, other jewelry and cash, they might as well put the same to good use—their own.
Four of them had been arrested, tried, and convicted.
“Good morning, Doctor,” Captain Smith said from the bedroom door.
“Hey, Smitty,” Dr. Mitchell said, and then spotted Matt. “Hey, Payne. I saw your picture in the paper.”
“Good morning, Doctor,” Matt said. “The search warrant’s en route.”
Dr. Mitchell winked at D’Amata and Slayberg, then walked to the bedroom door, pulling on rubber gloves as he did so. The photographer followed him. Mitchell gestured with his hand for the photographer to stop at the door, then went inside.
The medical examiner needed no one’s permission to enter the crime scene. It belonged to him until he released it to Homicide.
Matt walked to the bedroom door.
Dr. Mitchell bent over Cheryl Williamson’s body, took a quick look, put his fingers on her carotid artery, looked at his watch, and announced, “I pronounce her dead as of ten fifty-five. ”
He looked over his shoulder at Matt.
“Unofficially, it looks like her neck is broken, and to judge from the lividity of the body, I’d guess she’s been dead eight, nine hours or so.”
He signaled to the photographer that it was all right for him to enter the room, and started for the bedroom door.
Matt got his first look at the victim.
She was naked, with her legs spread apart by plastic ties tied to the footboard. Her upper body was twisted to the left. Her left hand was tied to the headboard, and Matt could see another tie hanging loose from her right wrist.
She looked at him out of sightless eyes, and his mind was instantly filled with Susan Reynolds’s sightless eyes looking at him in the parking lot of the Crossroads Diner.
He felt the knot in his stomach and the cold sweat forming on his back, and stepped quickly away from the door.
Jesus, not now! Dear God, don’t let me get sick to my stomach and make an ass of myself on my first Homicide job!
He bumped into something, somebody, and saw that it was Detective Olivia Lassiter, and that he had almost knocked her over.
She looked at him with what he thought was annoyance.
He started to say “Sorry,” but was interrupted by Jack Williamson, bitterly asking, “You got a good look, I hope?”
He turned his back to Williamson and touched Detective Lassiter’s arm.
“You get anything out of him?” and then, before she could reply, asked, “Why didn’t you get him out of here?”
“I was just getting him calmed down enough to talk when you walked in,” she said. “He doesn’t want to leave, and I didn’t want to push him.”
“Come with me,” Matt said.
“That sounds like an order,” she said.
“Okay,” Matt said. “It was a request, a suggestion, but I want you to come with me.”
She met his eyes defiantly for a moment, then shrugged and turned away from the open door.
Matt walked to the couch. Jack Williamson looked up at him with cold contempt.
“Mr. Williamson, I’m Sergeant Payne. I’m the Homicide supervisor, and I need to talk to you, and we can’t do that in here. In just a few minutes, there will be technicians all over the place, and we can’t be in their way. I want you to come with Detective Lassiter and me to someplace where we can talk. Okay?”
“The lady next door offered anything we need,” Olivia said. “What about her kitchen? She had said she would put a pot of coffee on.”
“We’ll just sit around and have a friendly cup of coffee, right? And maybe a Big Mac? With my sister like that in there?”
“We have to talk someplace, Mr. Williamson, and we have to get out of the way of the technicians, and sitting down over a cup of coffee seems a better idea to me than standing on the sidewalk,” Matt said. “What do you say?”
Williamson shrugged, a gesture of surrender, and stood up.
“Mrs. McGrory, this is Sergeant Payne of Homicide. We have to talk, privately, to Mr. Williamson,” Olivia said when Mrs. McGrory answered her knock. “Could we use your kitchen?”
“Certainly.”
“Thank you very much,” Matt said, as she led them in her kitchen.
“Anything I can do to help. There’s a fresh pot in the Mr. Coffee. Just help yourself.”
“That’s very kind of you,” Matt said.
“I feel just terrible about this, especially with the cops being outside while it was happening.”
“We don’t know for sure that’s what happened, Mrs. McGrory,” Matt said.
“Of course, that’s what happened. I was here, wasn’t I?”
“Thank you very much, Mrs. McGrory,” Olivia said, easing her out of the kitchen and then closing the door.
“Why don’t you sit down?” Matt suggested to Williamson. “I’ll get the coffee. How do you take yours, Mr. Williamson?”
“Black,” Williamson said.
“Black,” Olivia said.
Olivia and Williamson sat down at the kitchen table while Matt took the glass decanter and poured coffee into ceramic mugs. He walked to the table and set the mugs on it.
“Okay,” Matt said. “Let’s get a couple of things understood between us, Mr. Williamson. I don’t know what happened last night, when Mrs. McGrory called the police, and I don’t care.”
“You don’t fucking care?” Williamson asked, disgusted and incredulous.
“My job is to find the person, or persons, who killed your sister, and see that when they’re brought to trial they won’t walk out
of the courtroom because some legal ‘t’ wasn’t crossed or some legal ‘i’ didn’t have a dot. I understand that you’re unhappy with what you think happened last night.”
“What happened last night was that the fucking cops didn’t do a goddamn thing to help my sister.”
“If you believe the police did something they shouldn’t have, or didn’t do something they should have, you have every right to make an official complaint—”
“Fucking-A right, I do. And I will.”
“But I think you’ll agree, Mr. Williamson, that right now the priority is to find out who did this thing, and the sooner the better. Would you agree with that?”
“Jesus, of course I ‘agree with that.’ All I’m saying is that if those fucking cops had done what they were supposed to do last night, my sister would still be alive.”
“There’s one more thing, Mr. Williamson,” Matt said. “Your language is beginning to offend me. I hope you’ll watch your mouth. I would really rather not have you transported to Homicide and placed in an interview room until you get your emotions under control.”
Williamson glared at him but didn’t say anything.
Matt opened his briefcase and took out his laptop.
“What’s that for?”
“I’m one of those guys who can’t read his own writing,” Matt said. “I take notes this way. Are you objecting to it?”
“If I did?”
“Then I’ll take out a notebook and ballpoint, and waste a lot of time trying to make sense of my notes when I finally have to type them up. All right?”
Williamson shrugged. Matt turned the laptop on and began to type.
“Is it ‘Jack,’ Mr. Williamson?”
“John J. For Joseph.”
“What’s your first name and badge number, Lassiter?”
“Olivia, 582,” she furnished.
“Okay, Mr. Williamson, let’s start with your personal data,” Matt said. “Residence?”
Twenty minutes later, Matt said, “I think that’ll be enough for the time being, Mr. Williamson.”
“Okay.”
“You know how to work a laptop?”
Williamson nodded.
Matt slid the laptop in front of him.
Final Justice Page 20
