by David Ellis
The waitress brings a bagel with cream cheese for me and a salad for Shelly. I missed dinner altogether and I have to eat something, however turbulent my stomach. We play with our food awhile in silence.
“He confessed, Shelly. I watched Burgos confess.”
She considers her salad, rearranging the cucumbers and tomatoes with her fork. She thinks twice before she asks, “You’re sure it was Burgos who killed these girls?”
“A hundred percent” I rip off a piece of the bagel and stare at it.
A group of college kids walk into the diner, smelling of liquor and cigarettes and talking too loudly. Those were the days. They are blissfully ignorant. They haven’t blazed their trails yet. They haven’t made irrevocable decisions. They have no idea about regret. They think life is one gigantic music video.
I watch them move to a corner booth, their animated conversation fading, then I turn to Shelly, who is watching me.
“Ninety-five percent,” I say. “No. A hundred percent.” I put a fist down on the table. “Goddammit—a hundred percent. He knew all of the victims by name. He knew the order they’d been placed in the basement. He’d been stalking Ellie, for God’s sake. He killed them in his own damn house. People saw the prostitutes get into his truck.”
She takes a moment with that, letting me cool. Her expression shows concern, which for some reason pisses me off.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I say. “This—y‘know what? This isn’t my problem. If there was some side issue, some secret that someone doesn’t want to come out, that’s not my problem. I haven’t been a prosecutor for fifteen years. I solved my crime. They can solve theirs.”
Shelly tucks her lips into her mouth, her eyes dancing.
“Say something, for Christ’s sake, Shelly.”
She sets down her fork, places her hands in her lap. “If it’s not your problem, then let it go.”
“Let it go.” I throw up a hand. “That’s your advice.”
“You said your—”
“I know what I said. Forget what I said.” I turn in the booth toward the window, taking a couple of deep breaths and staring at my reflection, at a lawyer who, at the moment, is acting like a supreme asshole. In my peripheral vision, I see Shelly gesture to the waitress. I’d do the same, if I were her. Check, please, and step on it.
“You don’t need my advice,” she says. “You know what to do.”
The check slaps down on the table. Shelly slips some money out of her wallet.
“It’s gonna hurt,” I say.
“Of course it will. If you go against Harland, attorneys at your firm will suffer. Maybe your firm will fold. If you discover that you missed something in the case, it will be embarrassing to you, personally. And maybe professionally. And yes, for that five percent chance that you convicted the wrong man—you’ll have to live with that.”
I rub my face. She’s right. There’s no doubt about this. I just needed to hear it.
“You could walk away from this,” she adds. “You’re right about that. You’re not a prosecutor anymore. Anyone would understand that.”
I don’t let her see my smile. She understands me better than I care to admit. She’s giving me an out so I can feel good about not taking it.
She hooks her arm into mine as I walk her to her car. The gesture is innocuous but meaningful to me. I want more of it. I want to hold her in my arms tonight, smell her hair, run a finger along her smooth stomach.
Instead, she kisses me softly and her hand flickers away from mine. I close the car door behind her. She waves good-bye, while I appreciate the fact that, this time, it’s not Good-bye but See you soon.
DON REGIS, from the County Attorney Technical Unit, rushes into the squad room. McDermott and Stoletti are eagerly awaiting him, after his call ten minutes ago.
A latent on the door of Brandon Mitchum’s apartment found a hit in the database.
“The prints belong to one Leonid Koslenko. A Russian immigrant.” Don Regis drops the file on McDermott’s desk. “Prior arrests for battery and suspicion of murder. Charges nollied both times.”
McDermott opens the arrest reports, first going right to the mug shots from Koslenko’s booking, the black and white of the square-faced man with the half-moon scar under his eye. His hand curls into a fist. A wave of both relief and adrenaline floods his chest. This is the same person from the photograph found in Fred Ciancio’s apartment. The same person who was in Brandon Mitchum’s apartment tonight.
He scans the officer’s summaries of each arrest. Five years ago, Leonid Koslenko was arrested for battery of a woman on the west side. Two years ago, he was picked up on suspicion of murder of a woman, three blocks away from the first charge.
In each case, the charges were dropped—nolle prosequi, a term for declining to prosecute.
In each case, the victims were prostitutes.
The first arrest report is thick. He looks under the initial summaries. “A psych workup,” he says. Koslenko was ordered by the court to undergo psychiatric evaluation for competency.
“They never got to the competency hearing,” says Regis, who has already read the reports. “The Vicky dropped the charges.”
Okay, fine, but McDermott is more concerned with what the shrinks said:
Patient displays inappropriate affect, inattention and disordered thoughts. Delusional persecutions and auditory hallucinations are manifest.
“Auditory hallucinations,” McDermott mumbles. He hears voices?
Patient suffers from DSM-IV paranoid schizophrenia.
McDermott checks his watch. It’s only a few minutes before midnight. He picks up the phone for the overnight desk sergeant. “I need the RAID squad, Dennis. Right now.”
He hangs up and looks at Stoletti. “Whoever’s on call,” says McDermott, “call them. We’re moving on his house tonight.”
LEO SITS IN THE rental car. The neighborhood is peaceful, as it approaches midnight. He’s been here before, looked over the brownstone, three condos stacked on top of each other, a security door in front that won’t be a problem.
The lights on the third floor are out.
He needs this tonight. It has to be tonight.
They know who I am now, my mistake, doesn’t matter, I’m too smart for them, even if they know who I am, they won’t know where I am, and they won’t know why, that’s the difference between Terry and me, Terry was brave, but he wasn’t smart.
From his angle, he can see the brownstone, and, behind it, the small parking lot. He can wait. He doesn’t mind waiting. That’s not the problem.
It’s been over an hour now. Almost midnight. He’ll need to improvise again.
He jumps at the headlights in the parking lot, coming from down the alley. He can’t see who gets out, not in the dark.
But it’s only one person.
He looks up at the third floor, as his hands drum the steering wheel. Yes. It happens. The lights go on. The third-floor apartment.
He waits. Five minutes. Ten. Fifteen.
Twenty minutes later, the lights go out.
Shelly Trotter has come home and gone to bed.
People v. Terrance Demetrius Burgos
Case No. 89-CR-31003
September 1989
It was only Riley’s third trip ever to a morgue. He didn’t spend much time with dead bodies as a federal prosecutor, and, when he did, cause of death was rarely an issue. The bodies had usually been riddled with machine-gun fire from rival drug dealers.
He wasn’t sure why he was here. He wasn’t even sure why he was still reading about Cassie Bentley, when her murder had been dropped from the case.
He found Mitra Agarwal, an assistant county medical examiner. Mitra was a slight woman with a playful side who spoke with a soft Indian accent. She’d been one of the coroners on duty when the bodies came in. She’d been the one who showed Natalia Lake Bentley her daughter’s corpse.
Doctor Agarwal showed Riley into a large, sanitized room. On the beds rested
the bodies of four women murdered by Terry Burgos.
Riley opened the autopsy report for Cassie Bentley.
“So,” he said to her, reading from the report. “ ‘A postmortem incision at the base of the fourth and fifth tarsal phalange.’ That means her toes?”
“Basically.”
“Why don’t you just say toes?”
“Why don’t you just say ‘the charges are dropped’ instead of nolle prosequi?”
Riley smiled. “Touché, Doctor.”
“None of the prostitutes have been claimed,” she said, opening herself to the bodies. “You’re lucky anyone’s still here.”
Families had one hundred twenty days to claim the bodies of their loved ones, so technically there was still time. But these girls had probably become prostitutes, in large part, because they didn’t have much for families to begin with. These women, he knew, were destined for unmarked graves in the county cemetery.
“Don’t keep me in suspense, Mitra.”
She led him to Angie Mornakowski’s cold, white corpse. She separated the fourth and pinkie toes on her left foot. Riley saw a bloodless incision, a precise cut slicing the small webbing of skin.
“They all have them,” she said. “All four that we have here. And Cassie.”
“Wow.” Riley sighed. “And nothing in the autopsies.”
She shook her head. “Other than Cassie’s. Frankly, I’m surprised they caught it with her. That’s something that could easily slip through the cracks. When you’re dealing with traumatic injuries to the head and body, it’s not at all surprising you wouldn’t notice an obscure slice between the pinkie toe and fourth toe. It’s not like this was a drug or poison case. You’re not looking for injection—”
“No, I know. I’m not criticizing.” He took a deep breath. “This is postmortem,” he said. “This is an afterthought”
“This is a signature,” she said.
Riley agreed with that assessment. “He’s leaving his mark.”
“Well, look at it this way,” the doctor said. “If you had any doubt that the same person killed all of these girls, you don’t anymore.”
Riley smiled at her. “I didn’t have any doubt.”
“Okay,” she said. “Well, what do you want me to do? Want me to exhume the other bodies? Amend the autopsies?”
It was hard to see how this mattered. Burgos had admitted to the killings, both to Joel Lightner and to the psychiatrists. This wasn’t exculpatory evidence—evidence that favored the defense, which Riley would be required to turn over. If anything, it hurt Burgos. It proved even more clearly that the same person killed all of these women.
And it could backfire. The defense could play it up, make the medical examiner’s office look incompetent. Make the coroners the issue, a distraction. Jeremy Larrabee would be more than happy to talk about anything that took the focus off his client.
To say nothing of the fact that Riley would have to ask Ellie Danzinger’s family for permission to exhume their daughter’s body, only a few months after they buried her. And for what? To prove something they already knew?
Cassie Bentley’s autopsy wasn’t public record. It wasn’t part of the case, and it was no longer anyone’s business.
“Let’s drop it,” Riley said to her. “Thanks for satisfying my curiosity.”
“Oohh.” Mitra Agarwal nudged him with her elbow. “How exciting. A secret. You and I are the only living, breathing people who know about the tarsal phalange incisions.”
“You, me, and Terry Burgos.” Riley thanked her and headed back to his office.
Thursday
June 23, 2005
38
LEONID KOSLENKO lives in a small bungalow on the northwest side of the city, fourth home in from the south. Detective Michael McDermott takes one last look through his binoculars at the home from his position across the street. He checks his watch. It is precisely two-thirty in the morning, Thursday.
McDermott raises the radio to his mouth and says, “The code is Yellow, Team Leaders. That’s Yellow.”
From the north and south of the two-story house, members of the Rapid and Immediate Deployment Unit creep forward, keeping low and close to the neighboring homes, concealing themselves from any sight line from Koslenko’s house and avoiding the illumination of the streetlights. Two eight-man teams, dressed in dark blue flame-resistant uniforms, Kevlar ballistic helmets, Tac vests, and night-vision goggles, armed with bolt-action rifles or shotguns, slowly converge on the house.
Half of each team breaks to the rear of the house. The other half gets within feet of the front door on each side, staying below the view from the windows.
McDermott hears the voice cackle through his radio, from the built-in mikes in their Tac vests.
“Team A in position.”
“Team B in position.”
McDermott takes a breath, then says into the radio, “The code is Green. That’s Green.”
The teams meet at the front door, where they use a battering ram to enter the house. Tactical vans race down the street from each side, squealing to a halt in front of Koslenko‘s, turning toward the house and shining bright lights over the entire property. Police officers pour out of the vans and circle the perimeter of the property.
McDermott hops out of the brush and draws his weapon. The interior lights in the house pop on one after the other. McDermott stops at the sidewalk, his handgun in one hand, the radio in the other. He puts out a hand to block Stoletti, who stands next to him, weapon drawn as well.
“First bedroom—clear.”
“First bathroom—clear.”
“Kitchen is clear.”
“Living room—clear.”
McDermott holds his breath, steeling himself for the sound of gunfire.
“Second bedroom—clear.”
“Second bathroom—clear.”
“Third bedroom—clear.”
It feels like he holds his breath forever, his pulse pounding.
“Basement is clear.”
“That’s all clear. We are all clear.”
McDermott jogs up the driveway and into the house. A foul smell fills the ground floor, like a combination of body odor and dirty socks. The place is in deteriorating condition. The paint is peeling on the walls. The kitchen looks like it was last upgraded in the seventies. There is little furniture in the living room, unless you count pizza cartons and oil-stained food bags thrown about, plates with crusted ketchup and remnants of food, now being feasted on by flies and other bugs.
“Well, shit,” he says, as Stoletti walks up to him. “He’s gone, and he’s been gone.”
His radio cackles. “Detective McDermott, the basement.”
McDermott takes the stairs down. The space is unfinished and unfurnished, save for a workout bench, some weights, and some taped-up boxes.
The walls are a different story. Corkboard has been attached from floor to ceiling, all the way around three of the four walls. Various documents and photographs are tacked up everywhere.
When Stoletti hits the bottom step, she says, “What the hell is this?”
McDermott walks up and gets a closer look at the items on the wall. A newspaper article from the Watch, a story about the divorce of Harland and Natalia Bentley. A notice from the IRS for under-payment of tax. A newspaper story on Paul Riley leaving the county attorney’s office to start a new law firm. A page downloaded from a Web site called “Russian Serial Killers,” detailing the exploits of Nikolai Kruschenko, who murdered over two dozen prostitutes before being captured in 1988 in Leningrad. A magazine article on Paul Riley’s purchase earlier this year of the home formerly owned by Senator Roche. Page after page, downloaded from Web sites, about Terry Burgos, detailing the murders and his victims. A black-and-white photograph of a young girl standing by a tree.
It goes on and on. There are hundreds of documents.
“This,” McDermott says, “is his office.”
39
TRY THE DOOR.
; A lesson learned from the Brandon Mitchum debacle. But the front security door is locked, as expected, so he pulls out the tension wrench and short hook and picks the lock. He opens the door and closes it delicately behind him. Now inside the main security door, he removes his shoes and walks up the stairs.
One apartment per floor, as he walks up slowly in his stocking feet, gets to the top floor and looks over the door—standard lock, maybe, probably a dead bolt, too—then heads back down the stairwell to the landing, halfway between the second and third floors, so that he’d be out of view if Shelly Trotter were inclined to look through her peephole, Peekaboo, you don’t see me.
He checks his watch, just past four in the morning, she’s sleeping, she’ll be sleeping another two, three hours, probably, so he sits on the landing and waits.
He can wait. He’s good at waiting. He’s been waiting for sixteen years.
I PUSH MYSELF OUT of bed at six, not having slept at all. By seven, I’m in my car. Traffic is already thick. I’m thinking up a creative cussword to describe how I feel about the woman driving in front of me when my cell phone rings. My caller ID says it’s Pete Storino, from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, getting back to me about that favor.
“Pete, you’re up early for a G-man.”
“Don’t say I never did anything for you, Riley.”
“I would never say that, Pete. Never.”
He snickers. “And you didn’t hear this from me.”
“Right. Never heard it.”
“Okay. Gwendolyn Lake, right? You want to know when she left the States?”
“Right.”
“Gwendolyn Lake flew out of the country on Wednesday, June 21, 1989.”
June twenty-first. That was the week of the murders. Wednesday. Three dead by that time. Cassie was killed the following Sunday.
Could have been three months, could have been three days, Gwendolyn had told me, when I asked her how long she’d been gone before Cassie was murdered.
