“Would you take a look at that, please, and see if I’ve got it right?”
Williamson read the several pages Matt had typed and then nodded his head, “okay.”
Matt turned the laptop off, closed the cover, and put it back in his briefcase.
“When I get that printed, Mr. Williamson, I’ll have a detective—most likely Detective Lassiter—bring it to you for your signature.”
“When?” Williamson asked.
“It’ll wait until tomorrow,” Matt said. “I know that you’re going to be busy today. I’ll call you tomorrow to see when it will be convenient.”
“I have to tell you this,” Williamson said. “When my mother hears about what happened last night, this morning, with the cops . . . God!”
“I’m not trying to talk you out of filing a formal complaint,” Matt said, “honestly, I’m not. But for what it’s worth, from what I’ve heard, the officers who responded to the ‘Disturbance, House’ call were just going by the book. If they had any indication that something—anything—was going wrong, had gone wrong, in the apartment, they would have taken action.”
Williamson looked at him but didn’t respond directly.
“What am I supposed to do if my mother wants to come here?”
“Well, right now she can’t have access to the apartment. Not today, and probably not tomorrow, either. Tell her that.”
“Jesus Christ!” Williamson said.
“I’d be happy to go with you, Mr. Williamson,” Detective Lassiter said. “If you think it would make things any easier. And I’d like to talk to her, too. That doesn’t have to be right now. Your call.”
“It couldn’t do any harm,” Williamson said. “And maybe, if you were there . . .”
“If you’ll give me your cellular number, Sergeant, I’ll call and let you know how things went,” Detective Lassiter said.
Matt wrote the number on a small sheet of notepaper and handed it to her. She tore it in half and wrote two numbers on it.
“I guess you have the Northwest number, right?” she asked. Matt nodded. “My cellular and apartment,” she said.
“Thank you,” Matt said.
Under other circumstances, Olivia, my lovely, I would be overjoyed that you shared your telephone numbers with me.
Come to think of it, Olivia, despite the circumstances, I am overjoyed that you have shared your telephone numbers with me.
Mrs. McGrory was not in her living room as they passed through, but Matt could hear her voice in the next room. Only her voice, which suggested she was on the telephone.
He decided he had already thanked her and it would be better not to disturb her when she was on the phone.
When they went downstairs and through the front door, he saw that the press was gathered behind the POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS tape, and that the moment they saw them— two detectives, with badges showing, escorting a so-far-unidentified white male—video cameras rose with their red RECORDING lights glowing, and still camera flashbulbs went off.
“Where’s your car?” Matt asked.
“Halfway down the street,” she said, and pointed.
Matt touched the arm of one of the uniforms.
“I want to get Detective Lassiter and this gentleman to her car, down the street, and I don’t want the press to get in the way.”
“No problem,” the uniform said, raised his voice, and called, “Dick!”
Dick was a very large police officer of African-American heritage.
He and the other uniform led the way through the assembled journalists, one on each side of Detective Lassiter and Mr. Williamson.
Sergeant Payne brought up the rear, which gave him a chance to decide that Detective Lassiter had a very nice muscular structure of the lower half of the rear of her body.
As he walked back to 600 Independence, ignoring questions from the press about the identity of Mr. Williamson, he realized he didn’t really have much of an idea of what he was supposed to do now.
He remembered something he had been taught at the Marine Base, Quantico, while in the platoon leaders program: reconnoiter the terrain.
He spent perhaps ten minutes walking around the outside of the big old house, even going up the rear stairs, and then into the basement. He saw nothing of particular interest.
[THREE]
When Matt returned to the front of the house, two uniforms were carrying a stretcher with Cheryl Williamson’s body on it down the pathway to a Thirty-fifth District wagon.
Well, I won’t have to look at the sightless eyes again—not that I’m liable to forget them.
When they had moved past him, Matt went up the stairs and into the Williamson apartment.
“What happened to that very pretty detective from Northwest?” Joe D’Amata greeted him.
“She went with the brother to tell the mother.”
“This is our job, Matt,” D’Amata said. There was a slight tone of reproof in his voice.
“She calmed the brother down. He liked her . . .”
“I can’t imagine why,” D’Amata said.
“. . . and (a) I thought that would make things easier with the mother. The brother suggested his mother was going to blow her cork when she found out that there was a ‘Disturbance, House’ call here and the uniforms didn’t take the door. And (b) somebody had to talk to the mother, and I think she can do that as well as we could, which means that we can be here.”
“Your call,” D’Amata said. “Two things, Matt: You want a look at the rear door?”
“I saw the outside from the stairs,” Matt said, as he followed D’Amata into the kitchen and to the door. “I didn’t see any signs of forced entry. Did you?”
“Those scratches might be an indication that somebody pried it open,” Joe said, pointing. “Operative word ‘might.’ The door was latched, locked, like that, but if you leave the lever in the up position like that, it locks automatically.”
“What do the crime lab guys say?”
“What I just told you. No signs at all on the front door. So we don’t know if the doer broke in, or whether she let him in. Could be either way. If she knew the doer, let him in . . .”
Matt grunted. Most murders are committed by people known to the victim.
“You said two things,” Matt said.
“This is interesting,” D’Amata said, taking a plastic evidence bag from his pocket. It held a digital camera.
“It may be, of course—and probably is—hers. But it was under the bed, which is a strange place to store an expensive camera like this. Even stranger, there are no fingerprints on it. Not even a smudge.”
“Why don’t we see what pictures are in it?”
“It doesn’t work,” D’Amata said, his tone suggesting that Matt should have known he could come up with a brilliant idea like seeing what pictures were in the camera all by himself. “Which might be because it got knocked off the bedside table when the doer jerked the telephone out of the wall and threw it at the mirror.”
“No prints on the phone, either?” Matt asked.
D’Amata held up his rubber-surgical-gloved hands.
“I’m getting the idea the doer is a very careful guy,” he said. “Which also suggests he knows how to get through a door without making a mess, and which suggests that although they are lifting a lot of prints in here—so far, they’ve done both doors, the bedroom and her bathroom—I would be pleasantly surprised if they came up with something useful.”
"Yeah,” Matt agreed.
“So, I was just about to call you to ask if I should take the camera to the crime lab and see if there are any pictures in it.”
“As opposed to having a District car run it down there, which would put a uniform in the evidence chain?”
“That, too,” D’Amata said. “I was thinking that if there are pictures in there, I could get a look at them a lot quicker if I was there when the lab took them out of the camera, then wait for the lab to print them.”
“The camera’s been fingerprinted
?”
“I told you, there’s nothing on it. Not even a smudge.”
Matt set his briefcase on the kitchen table, opened it, rummaged around, and closed it again.
“We’re in luck,” he said. “I’ve got the gizmo.”
“What gizmo?”
Matt walked to the door leading from the kitchen to the living room and motioned to one of the uniforms in the living room.
“Don’t let anybody come in here until I tell you, okay?”
The uniform nodded and stood in the center of the doorjamb. Matt closed the door.
“Who’s in the bedroom?” he asked.
“Harry, making the sketch,” D’Amata said. “A uniform’s keeping people out of there, too. What are you doing?”
Matt went back to the kitchen table and took out his laptop, then a small plastic object with a connecting cord. He plugged it into the laptop, then turned it on.
“You can look at them here?” Joe asked.
“And store them in the laptop,” Matt said.
D’Amata handed him the evidence bag. Matt took the flash memory cartridge from it and saw that D’Amata had initialed it. If there were evidentiary photos in the camera, a defense attorney could not raise doubts in the jurors’ minds that the pictures they were being shown had actually come from this camera.
He put the memory card into the transfer device, then copied the JPG images from it to the laptop’s hard disk.
“There’s eight images,” Matt said. “Let’s see what they are.”
The first picture was obviously evidentiary. It showed Cheryl tied to the bed, staring with horror at the camera.
D’Amata went to the door and called Harry Slayberg.
Matt waited until Slayberg came, then displayed the other seven pictures.
“This critter is a real psychopath,” Slayberg said, softly.
“You can see, in the first one,” D’Amata said, “that the phone’s still on the bedside table.”
“And both of her wrists—run the last couple back again, please, Matt, so I’m sure—are still tied to the headboard,” Slayberg said.
Matt displayed the entire series of pictures again.
“So what might have happened was that she got one wrist free . . . ” Slayberg said.
“And he struggled with her . . . ” D’Amata picked up. “And that’s when the camera got knocked under the bed.”
“Or,” Matt offered, “he went into the bathroom to take a leak, or clean himself up, and while he was in there, she got the hand loose, and tried to call 911 . . .”
“And Dudley Do-Right came out and caught her,” Slayberg picked up, “hit her—probably harder than he intended—and jerked the phone out of the wall and threw it at the mirror.”
“He was probably scared or in a rage or both,” D’Amata said, “and didn’t think that throwing the phone at the mirror was going to make a lot of noise.”
Matt picked up the camera.
“It’s an expensive camera,” he said. “Kodak. I gave one almost like it to my sister for her birthday. Which triggers a couple of thoughts.”
“Dudley Do-Right is either well-heeled or he stole the camera,” Slayberg said.
“They are serially numbered,” Matt said. “And come with a program that if it won’t work, or you break it, you call them and they FedEx you a new one overnight. I think we should be able to find out who bought this. With a lot of luck, it will be the doer. But even if he stole it, he might have stolen it while doing another rape. That might tell us something.”
“I don’t think so, Matt,” D’Amata said. “Dudley’s a very careful guy, and, I suspect, smart. Smart enough not to take anything that could tie him to one of his escapades.”
“And the second thought is that I’d like to show these pictures to my sister.”
“Did you just say what I thought I heard you say?” Slayberg asked. “The sister at Dave Pekach’s party?”
D’Amata laughed.
“One and the same,” he said. “She’s a shrink, Harry, a very good one.”
“I didn’t know,” Slayberg said. “That’s a thought, but the book says a department shrink and/or Special Victims, not a civilian.”
“Maybe that rule could be bent,” D’Amata said, smiling. “I heard Dr. Payne call Commissioner Coughlin ‘Uncle Denny,’ and Inspector Wohl ‘Honey.’ ”
“That was at the party,” Matt said, chuckling. “And subject to change. But she’s worked with us before, Harry. I don’t think there would be a problem.”
“What I think we should do now,” D’Amata said, “is seek the wise guidance of the Black Buddha. He’s a white shirt— they get paid to make decisions.”
Matt caused the screen of his laptop to go blank, then took out his cell phone and held down the number that caused the phone to automatically dial the cell phone of Lieutenant Jason Washington.
“Washington.”
“Payne, sir.”
“I was just about to call you, Sergeant Payne.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Where are you, Matthew?”
“At the scene, sir.”
“Stay there, and make sure D’Amata and Slayberg stay there. Commissioner Coughlin, Chief Lowenstein, Captain Quaire, and I will be there shortly, to exhort you vis-à-vis the rapid solution of that case.”
“Yes, sir.”
Washington turned off his cell phone.
NINE
[ONE]
Matt pushed the End button on his cellular. "Washington’s on his way here,” he announced. "And so are Coughlin, Lowenstein, and Quaire.”
"What’s that all about?” D’Amata asked.
Matt shrugged. “He wants the three of us here.”
“Was he in the office?” D’Amata asked.
“He didn’t say.”
“Then we have to go on the premise that he—they—may be two minutes away,” D’Amata said. “ ‘Jesus is coming, look busy.’ How can we best do that?”
“I don’t know about you two, but I’m going back to doing the scene,” Slayberg said, and walked out of the kitchen.
“Emperors and people like that like to be welcomed when they go someplace,” D’Amata said. “Matt, why don’t you and I go outside and wait?”
They left the apartment by the rear door. There was a uniform standing at the foot of the stairway, and other uniforms were standing just inside the POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS tape. On the other side of the tape there were not only more spectators than Matt expected—Cheryl Williamson’s body had been taken away; the show was over—but more than a dozen representatives of the print, radio, and television press.
He didn’t see Mickey O’Hara, and wondered where he was. Mickey was usually the first press guy at the scene of a murder.
The answer to that came when—ignoring questions several of the journalists called out—they walked around the end of the building to the front. There, behind the yellow-and -black POLICE LINE tape were even more spectators and representatives of the press, and Mickey O’Hara was among them. To make sure they didn’t cross the tape, two uniforms stood directly in front of the press, one male, one female, both looking as if they had left the Academy as long as two weeks ago.
On the inside of the tape, there were a number of police officers, in uniform, and others with badges visible on their civilian clothing. Captain Alex Smith, the Thirty-fifth District commander, and Lieutenant Lew Sawyer were talking to a woman with a badge on her dress, whom Matt remembered after a moment to be Captain Helene Durwinsky, the commanding officer of the Special Victims Unit, and a man with a lieutenant’s badge hanging on his suit jacket. He saw Detectives Domenico and Ellis, of Special Victims, standing a few feet from the white shirts, with several other detectives Matt didn’t recognize.
“You got the word?” Captain Smith said.
There was no question what “the word” was, but Matt didn’t know if Smith was speaking to him or Joe D’Amata.
“With no explanation, sir,” D’A
mata replied.
“It may have something to do with Phil’s Philly,” Captain Smith said dryly. “On which—according to my wife, one of Phil’s most devoted listeners—about forty-five minutes ago, Mrs. McGrory spoke at some length about Miss Williamson being raped and tortured while the police stood not caring outside her door.”
“Oh, shit!” D’Amata said.
“I just talked to her,” Matt said. “I used her kitchen to talk to the brother. She didn’t say anything about talking to that ass . . . Phil’s Philly.”
Phil’s Philly was a very popular radio talk show. Philadelphians dissatisfied with something in the City of Brotherly Love could call the number, and be reasonably sure both of a sympathetic ear on the part of Phil Donaldson, and that Mr. Donaldson would then call—on the air—whoever had wronged the caller, to indignantly demand an explanation, an apology, and immediate corrective action.
“Well, she did,” Captain Smith went on. “My wife said that Phil’s first call was to Commissioner Mariani, and when Commissioner Mariani ‘was not available’ to take the call, Phil called the mayor. Who made the mistake of taking the call.”
Three unmarked cars pulled up shortly thereafter, within moments of each other. Television and still cameras recorded Deputy Commissioner Dennis V. Coughlin and Captain F. X. Hollaran as they walked into the apartment complex, ducked under the POLICE LINE tape, and walked up to Captain Smith’s group. Smith and Sawyer, who were in uniform, saluted.
The press then recorded the same out-of-the-car-and-under -the-tape movement of Captain Henry C. Quaire and Lieutenant Jason Washington, and then turned their attention to Chief Inspector of Detectives Matthew Lowenstein.
Lowenstein ducked under the tape and then spoke, while the cameras rolled, to the two young uniformed officers standing in front of the assembled press.
“Do you know who I am?” Lowenstein demanded, firmly, as flashbulbs went off and television cameras followed his movements.
“Yes, sir,” both young officers replied, in unison.
“Most of the ladies and gentlemen of the press will respect this crime scene tape,” Lowenstein said, pointing to it. “That one”—he pointed to Mickey O’Hara—"will more than likely try to sneak under it. If he does, use whatever force you feel is appropriate. Like breaking his arms and legs.”
Final Justice Page 21