(1995) Chain of Evidence

by Ridley Pearson

  “It depends if we believe Lewellan Page or not,” he said.

  “She wouldn’t survive on the witness stand, if that’s what you’re asking. No. She’d be torn apart by the psychologists, who would discover her abuse and create all sorts of reasons she would want to invent someone killing Gerry Law. That’s my professional opinion. Personally, I believe her, and I think that you do too, or we wouldn’t be sitting here, and you wouldn’t look so tired and bothered.”

  “If we apply through Internal Affairs for Lawrence’s Narco file, it will take a ream of paperwork and six weeks. Plus countless interviews and reports, and at some point we’ll have to put everything out on the table.”

  “In the meantime, we aren’t sleeping well,” she said, sampling the ice cream again. She drew it into her mouth on the end of a white plastic spoon and skimmed the surface softly with her lips stealing a little bit of the prize at a time, until what was on the spoon disappeared and she went after more. He sensed no intention on her part in making this overly sensual—it seemed more her way of eating her ice cream, but Dart had a difficult time with it. What would it feel like to be kissed by her?

  “I’d like to get inside the Narco file room,” he confessed.

  The spoon stopped inside her mouth. She returned it to the paper cup and put a napkin to her lips. “You what?”

  “We need to know, one way or the other, if either Stapleton or Lawrence was ever investigated by Narcotics. It’s our only hope of connecting Kowalski to Lawrence.”

  She set the spoon down, noticeably more pale. She looked around, as if he might have been overheard. “You must really trust me,” she said, staring at him. “Does the word suspension mean anything to you? Or how about the words, suspension without pay? How about an IA investigation with you as its target?” She pushed the ice cream away. “If you’re using me as a sounding board, Joe, then take this advice: Forget it. They’ll suspend you, maybe toss you. They’ll make an example of you—that’s how it works.” She cocked her head at him. “What is that look?”

  “Narco is empty by one in the morning. They’re all out working the streets or eating doughnuts or killing time at strip joints. By three, they go home. CAPers is up and running, but it’s down the hall. Thursday through Sunday the cleaners start at midnight. The rest of the week, they go eight to eleven.”

  “What they say about you and your research is true, isn’t it?”

  “I can’t watch the hallway and go for the files at the same time.”

  “No way.” She didn’t hesitate a nanosecond.

  “It can’t be done?”

  “No, it can’t,” she confirmed.

  “Not without help,” he pressed.

  “Message received. Now hear this: No way!”

  “Your office has a clean view of the hallway. With the door left open, you could see down that hall, could warn me. Sometimes there’s a late bust. Predicting traffic flow in and out of that division is never a sure bet.”

  “It would make me an accomplice.”

  “We carry pagers. They can be set to vibrate instead of beep, did you know that? If you were to program your phone to dial my pager number, then it would take only seconds to warn me. It takes exactly nine seconds to walk down the hallway and reach Narcotics once you’ve rounded that corner.”

  She shook her head, looking amazed that he had already timed it. “And whoever it was would recognize you.”

  “I’m dressed as a housecleaner. I wear a ball cap, glasses, and a press-on ’stache. I keep my head down. No one ever looks at the wombats. Not at one in the morning. I push my cart out the door, and I’m gone. Besides,” he offered, “that’s my risk, not yours. If I’m caught, I acted alone. You’ve done nothing more than pull an all-nighter. How unusual is that?” He spoke sotto voce. His heart was beating fast, and he was sweating. The vanilla was melting in front of him, untouched.

  She reached out, snagged the spoon, and guided it back between her lips. “I suppose you already know the order that housecleaning cleans in. Which offices are done first?”

  “I can do this alone,” he reminded, “but I thought I’d ask you first. I’m pressuring you, Abby, and I’m sorry. Let’s drop it.”

  She removed the spoon and pursed her lips. She looked at him quizzically, skeptically, squinting in a way that felt as if she were measuring him. Testing him. “You’re right about IA. Putting the request through them would probably take several weeks. But break into Narco’s files based on the testimony of a victimized twelve-year-old girl? Does that strike you as odd?”

  “Don’t look at me like that.” He toyed with the ice cream, but wasn’t hungry.

  “You’re really pissing me off here, damn it.”

  “Good.”

  A tension had settled between them, uncomfortable and gnawing. “I think I’ve lost my appetite,” she declared.

  At 12:30 A.M., Dart, wearing a fake mustache, blue jeans, and a dark blue ball cap, entered the department’s basement housecleaning closet, where he located both a cart and a navy blue smock that the service people wore. There were four workers assigned to clean the two-story building. Dart, heading upstairs, estimated that he had a little over an hour for a job he thought would only take a few minutes.

  He had rarely found use for the speed key given him by Walter Zeller some four years earlier. Zeller had claimed that no investigating officer could get by without one, despite their illegality. The speed key was shaped something like a small flat pistol. It magically picked most locks with the squeeze of a trigger and was the preferred tool of car thieves because of its simplicity—insert the tongue into the lock, squeeze and hold the trigger, rotate, and the lock was open. Dart hid it under a stack of green cotton rags on the cleaner’s cart.

  The mustache itched. The glue had dried, shrinking his upper lip in the process. If he sneezed he might send the thing across the room.

  He used his cellular phone to call Narcotics’ second-floor office. He allowed it to ring eight times, thrilled that no one answered.

  He pushed the cart out into the hall, headed quickly to the building’s sole elevator, and rode up, his heart rate increasing with every yard. This exploit reminded him of trying to rob money from his mother’s wallet atop her dresser bureau—he would steal the money, not for himself but so that when she checked the wallet to send him out for a bottle, she would lack money.

  The elevator doors slid open, and at a distance of thirty feet, down the long ugly tile corridor, he caught eyes with Abby Lang. He felt stunned. Elated. She sat behind a desk inside her Sex Crimes office, looking both tired and concerned. Instinctively, Dart felt down for his pager and switched the beeper off so that if it were called it would vibrate, not sound. She was clearly there to help him. Nothing else could explain her presence at this hour.

  As he rolled the cart toward Narco, Abby picked up her phone and touched a single button. Less than five seconds later, the pager clipped to Dart’s belt began vibrating. He reached down and cleared it—like silencing an alarm clock. She did not look up at him but kept her head aimed down at her desk and the paperwork that seemed to absorb her.

  Dart had a lookout—an accomplice. An angel on his shoulder.

  The listing cart’s front right wheel chirped. Dart awkwardly navigated it to a position in front of Narco. He knocked, waited, and then knocked again. With no reply, he slipped his hand beneath the stack of green rags and removed the speed key. The fact that he was violating regulations distrubed him. If caught, he would have some tough explaining to do. He was the cop turned criminal, and for a moment he couldn’t bring himself to do this. But the hope that Kowalski, not Zeller, was responsible for the murder/suicide of Lawrence, and the possibility of connecting Lawrence to Stapleton drove him on—anything to quiet his guilt.

  With the speed key the door opened effortlessly. It was illegal in all fifty states to own such a device, and Dart suddenly understood why.

  As in hotels, the housecleaners at Jennings Road blocked
open office doors as they worked. Dart did just that, though only partially screening the room inside so that the closet used as a vault to contain files remained obscured from the hallway.

  He switched on the interior light, emptied a trash can into the hopper on his cart, and placed a beat-up feather duster on the desk top closest. His watch face read 1:03. The cleaners would be arriving any minute and would start on the first floor. He had plenty of time.

  The file room closet was locked, but the speed key made quick work of it. The light switch was mounted on the wall outside. Dart studied his situation, planning, predicting every movement required should his pager alert him to a visitor. He had to keep all actions to a minimum, and so rather than venture inside the room, he stood there figuring how to avoid being caught. He relocked the file room door, so that once shut it would be locked and not require him to fiddle with it. He used a green rag to block it open, and tested that by kicking the rag free, the door would close on its own. Then, with the light on, he stepped inside and looked to judge the line of sight: If someone showed up unexpectedly, this person would quickly have a clear sight of the open file room.

  The light switch on the wall was on the far side of the hinges, meaning that Dart would have to kick the rag out of the way, get himself around the door, helping it close as he went, and then hit the light switch. But this light going off would be picked up even sooner by someone entering because the office door to Narcotics had an institutional smoked-glass panel, and a change in background light would be noticeable. He reviewed the situation; deciding he had things in the right order, rehearsed them once while counting in his head. Four to five seconds, he guessed. When combined with the five or so seconds that Abby needed to alert him, it would be too long.

  He grabbed the mop and headed directly to the hallway’s broom closet, filled the rolling bucket from the soapstone sink, wetted the mop and, carrying a yellow plastic sandwich board warning of a WET FLOOR, hurried to the end of the hall near the stairs and the elevator. He mopped the floor furiously, making it as wet as possible, then placed the sandwich board in the center of the hall. With all this water he hopefully had bought himself some extra time while also slowing down any approach.

  Back inside Narco, Dart unlocked the file room for the second time, blocked the door open with the rag, and switched on the light.

  The room was crowded with gray metal utility shelving along all walls and a pair of opposing stacks in the center. All the shelves were crammed with folders.

  Dart checked his watch. This could take a while.

  A rolling stepstool allowed him access to the top shelves, which was where he found the L’s. Dart was surprised by the number of files, each representing a Narco investigation, an arrest, or a snitch. The city’s drug problem was huge. He fingered the spines: L … A … W … and came up with five files carrying the last name LAWRENCE. Splitting his attention between the files and the open door, Dart nervously inspected the spines of each of these five files. Charles “Buster” Lawrence, Eldridge Lawrence, Philip Lawrence, Maynard Franklin Lawrence, Lawrence Taylor Lawrence. No Gerald. Dart hadn’t thought to memorize the dead man’s social security number, or driver’s license number for comparison, and people like Lawrence used enough aliases that it seemed plausible that any one of these five could be his. Dart took the time to go through the folders again opening each to a mug shot or crime scene photo. One by one he eliminated them; no Gerald Lawrence to be found. If Lawrence had been investigated by Narcotics, it hadn’t been in the recent past.

  Disappointment depressed him.

  He didn’t need the stool for Stapleton. The S’s were in the center aisle with S … T … A at eye height. Again, he thumbed through the spines, all marked with color-coded stickers.

  A phone rang, not ten feet from him. Dart’s heart skipped and his chest froze, and for a second his head swam. The phone in the outer room rang again, seemingly louder, and a third time. Hurrying, he overcame his anxiety and started pulling files stickered S … T … A.

  Stacker; Stadler; Stafford … He had to pull each file out a ways in order to read the name on the spine. He looked down the line of similarly colored stickers, realizing there were dozens of S-T-As to go. He jumped forward by a group of ten: Stands … Standzleff … Staples … Stapleton. Three of them: Clifford, David R., Edgar. He tugged David R. from the shelf, but felt distracted by the possibility of someone walking in on him.

  He pulled open the file. There, looking back at him, was the mug shot of a younger version of the jumper. He pulled the paper clip and flipped through the pages to the write-up. Possession and distribution of a controlled substance. David Stapleton had been busted fourteen months earlier for dealing speed. Dart’s finger raced down the sheet to the name of the lead detective: Roman Kowalski.

  His pager vibrated at his side. “Careful, it’s wet!” he heard a slightly hysterical Abby called out loudly.

  Dart flicked off the pager, shoved the Stapleton folder back into the stack, and turned for the file room door.

  It took four strides to reach the green cotton rag bracing the door. Dart kicked the rag out of the way and rounded the edge of the closing door in a smooth motion, his right hand seeking out and locating the light switch. As the file room door thumped shut, the light went off simultaneously. Dart picked up the feather duster and beat the desktop violently, the result of too much adrenaline.

  He heard a male voice in the hallway call out, “Someone done already clean up here?” A moment of silence lapsed. “Hey, lady, someone already done this floor?” Dart could hear the man’s footsteps and the rattle of the man’s cart as he drew closer. Ironically, this was worse than being discovered by a Narcotics detective who would pay little or no attention to the lowest of the low: a janitor. But one cleaner erroneously covering another’s territory was certain to raise some Irish.

  Answer him, Dart mentally encouraged her. He pushed his cart, but only a few inches because the bad wheel cried out, and then ensuing silence engulfed him. There was no way to hide the cart without drawing attention. Dart stood inside the Narco offices feeling completely exposed.

  “Somebody done mopped the hall,” Abby answered. “What do you think—that they did it for fun?”

  The cart stopped rattling, signaling that the man pushing it had come to a halt.

  Dart turned and slipped the speed gun into the file room door, prepared to use this as his hideout. The cleaner wouldn’t have a pass key. The unexplained cart would present a problem, but at this hour would anyone make a fuss?

  The silence dragged out. Had the cleaner spotted the open door to Narcotics, or had Abby’s tone merely humiliated him into thinking this through?

  “You could always clean it a second time,” she offered sarcastically, regaining her composure. “You people never do a very good job the first time anyway.”

  “Ain’t you a peach,” the man replied. “No wonder your sorry ass is working late,” the man replied angrily. “Who the hell would want to be with you?”

  “Fuck off!”

  “Bitch.”

  “What’s your name?”

  The cart began to rattle again, and this time more quickly. The cleaner was beating a hasty retreat. She had pushed this into the realm of a personal argument, and as a police officer—as a client—she carried the stronger hand.

  Dart waited through the agonizing minutes for the elevator to arrive. He then edged his squeaking cart out into the hall and closed the door. When he glanced at Abby, she was shaking her head at him in disappointment. Dart fingered the brim of his hat in thanks and raced to the elevator, stopping only to snag the WET FLOOR sign and stash it on his cart. He had to return the cart to the first-floor storage room as quickly as possible. He didn’t want the cleaning company raising any questions and if he could pull this off, then when the cleaner reported the conflict, Abby would be gone, the floor would be dry, the sign gone, and there would no evidence that any cleaning had taken place. The result would be an impr
ession that the cleaner was trying to shirk some of his duties.

  Dart rode the elevator nervously, his finger resting on the CLOSE DOOR button, ready to push.

  As the elevator doors slid open, he smelled cigarette smoke and heard a man and a woman in conversation. At this hour, he assumed them to be cleaners. He needed to return the cart and then get out, both without being seen.

  The hallway was clear. The voices appeared to be coming from down toward the Property Room, where a door led to the parking lot. Grabbing a smoke, he realized.

  “Johansen! Get over here!” a voice called out from Dart’s left as he was stepping into the hall.

  “Coming,” the male smoker hollered back.

  Johansen, the smoker, would have to pass the elevator to reach that other voice.

  The detective stepped back into the car and punched the CLOSE DOOR button. Nothing! He punched it a second time and the doors finally responded, though to Dart they seemed to close more slowly than any pair of elevator doors he had ever encountered. The footsteps of the two smokers approached quickly, and it sounded to him that they would reach the elevator before the doors shut fully.

  He tugged the cart parallel to the elevator car’s side wall and squeezed himself with his back against the panel.

  But the elevator interior was done in mirror, he realized too late, and as the two smokers passed by, the woman glanced into the car and saw Dart’s reflection in the mirror.

  Had he managed to appear calm, he might have pulled it off, but as it was, with his face screwed up into a knot and his eyes locked in terror, he gave himself, and his false identity, away. This woman worked with only three other people, and Joe Dartelli was not one of them.

  The elevator doors thumped shut, and the car groaned as it lifted.

  Dart had not pushed the second-floor button; someone had called the elevator.

  Had the desk sergeant been alerted? Were they already looking for an imposter?

  Dart tore off the mustache and shed the green work apron, preferring to be discovered as detective Joe Dartelli than a cop inexplicably impersonating a cleaner. As the elevator crawled upward, he prepared himself immediately to voice a complaint about the cleaning cart being left in the elevator.