(1995) Chain of Evidence

by Ridley Pearson

  He forced himself to inhale, a drowning man attempting to recover.

  “A suicide, Joe—and a suspected sex offender. As far as I can tell, the two have never been connected,” she said excitedly, “which I can explain. We do not reveal the identities of suspected offenders because of the libel suit lost in New Haven. Only arrests and convictions. This guy was never arrested—we didn’t have enough evidence.” She paused and said, “Do you recognize the name, Joe? Remember that case? Think what the papers would have done if we’d showed them this,” she said, tapping the Sex Crimes folder. “Can you believe it?” She waited, knowing he would recognize the name. And although he did, he said nothing. He wasn’t sure what to say, in part because he felt in a state of physical shock. She misunderstood his hesitation. “It’s the Ice Man, Joe! Come on! The Ice Man! And he flew out of a window just like Stapleton did. What’s that, coincidence? Stapleton was not the first.” A critical part of the job working a string of crimes was to identify the first in the series. Abby, believing as Dart did that they were on to a string, was ebullient with her discovery. “Get it?”

  “I was second on the Ice Man,” he informed her. A lump filled his throat, painfully choking him. He understood at that moment that there was no running away, only avoidance. Things believed dead and buried inevitably returned, either symbolically or literally, stepping out of the grave. He saw no way to tell her, no way to ask her to return the files and forget about it. The Ice Man had crawled back out of his grave. A part of Dart actually felt relief; the remainder of him was in a state of total panic.

  “Kowalski was the lead,” he explained. “I was the second.”

  “Talk about coincidence,” she said, lowering her voice. “Teddy is going to pull the evidence for us.”

  “What?” Dart asked, astonished.

  “Yeah, isn’t that great?” she said, mistaking his reaction for enthusiasm. “He agreed to review it with Rankin and Haite after lunch—to see if we can make any physical comparisons to Stapleton and the others.”

  The 3-D animated software had already made just such a connection—no wonder that Bragg felt prompted to delve into possible connections.

  Dart felt short of breath. He could feel his skin go alternately hot and cold. His head swam. Damage control, he warned himself.

  “What’s wrong, Joe?” she asked cautiously. “I thought you’d be thrilled. It’s an obvious connection.”

  Dart felt paralyzed by the numbness sweeping through him—he was in the midst of an anxiety attack. He heard her footsteps coming down the stairs and the whoosh of her dress. He looked up, only to see Abby.

  He weighed the options available to him.

  She placed her hand tenderly on his arm, and that did it. He snapped his head toward her, startling her, and said, “How would you like to take a walk?”

  Concern stealing the excitement from her face, she pushed her chair back and stood.

  A bitter cold had descended on the city in anticipation of winter, still more than a month away. They walked from headquarters toward a path that led down to the river. They passed a few smokers and then found themselves alone in the woods.

  He wasn’t sure how or where to start.

  “I was the second on the Ice Man,” he repeated. “Kowalski was the primary, but he was worthless and everyone knew it. They wouldn’t assign Zeller because he had lost Lucky only a few months before and there wasn’t much left of him. But I consulted him nonetheless, because then, as now, there’s none better.”

  “Yes, I remember a lot of it,” she said sadly. “I was directly involved because it was the Asian Strangler, because of the Sex Crimes connection, although I was still with CAPers then.”

  “So,” he explained, “even though I was technically the second, it actually ended up my case in many ways.”

  “Nothing new for a Kowalski investigation.”

  They stopped; she leaned against a tree stump and Dart sat onto a rock embedded in the earth. But he didn’t feel connected to the earth; he felt almost as if he were floating. He continued. “The guy was found naked and frozen—as you’ll recall—his head bashed in from the jump, no identification. The pressure to clear it got pretty intense. Media slump. City Hall going ballistic. They came down on Kowalski like a ton of bricks. I was left pretty much unscathed. I continued to consult Zeller. He was drinking pretty heavily at the time and was starting to lose it. I loved him like a father,” Dart confessed, his throat tight. “It was hard for me to see him like that.”

  “I’m sure.” She studied him. “Hard on anybody, Joe.”

  “Kowalski ended up in the hot seat, but because of his connections he was pretty well protected. Spent most of his time defending an investigation that had basically gone nowhere.”

  “If it’s any consolation, Joe,” she said, still misunderstanding him, “I’m sure you did as good a job as could be done, given the circumstances.”

  “Me? No. It was Zeller who broke the case.”

  “Meaning?” She had that Abby look of concern that he had come to know—knitted brow, pursed lips, lowered chin. If she had read those files, then she knew that the case had never been “broken,” but simply cleared as a jumper.

  “It was Zeller who ID’d him. He had jumped from a window on the night of that terrible blizzard. Hit hard, and either landed or rolled into the street. Covered by the falling snow, he was struck by a city plow and pushed three blocks down the street, where he was deposited under a snowbank for three weeks. When it finally thawed, we had the Ice Man on our hands.” He stood and she followed, and they walked deeper into the woods. Gray and brown tree trunks; leaves mushy underfoot. He wasn’t sure how much to tell her, but he began to realize that it was all going to come out, that secrets were a thing of the past. If nothing else, he thought, this is a dress rehearsal for my discharge. “Zeller found the apartment first.” It should have sent up a red flag, he thought. “He didn’t want it to appear that he was working Kowalski’s turf, so he funneled the information through me—pointing me without actually telling me anything.” He’s doing the same thing again, he realized.

  “He was the best,” she said admiringly.

  “Maybe too good,” Dart replied, confusing her, judging by her expression. “He taught me—drummed into me, is more like it—to always return to the crime scene, not just once, but several times, that you always see it differently. And so that’s what I did.” He stopped. This was the dangerous territory, and despite his resolve to tell her everything he felt himself holding back, and he hated himself for it. This was the voice of the devil, he realized—still looking for a way out, still believing that the secret could be reburied.

  “Are you going to explain that?” she asked. She pulled at her jacket, fending off the cold. She sat down on a log and Dart joined her.

  He nodded and swallowed, his mouth and throat bone dry, and said, “It wasn’t from my repeat visits, but Teddy Bragg’s report and the accompanying inventory of the Ice Man’s apartment. It listed a spool of hemp rope. It was put down as a fifty-foot spool of three-eighths-inch hemp. Your mind does funny things. Who knows where my mind was, or what it was up to, but that hemp rope leapt out at me and wrapped itself around my neck like a noose.” Again he tried to swallow. Again his throat constricted. “Lucky Zeller had been found tied up with three-eighths-inch hemp.”

  Abby, squinting, rocked forward nervously, her hands clamped in a viselike grip between her thighs.

  Dart said, “I had access to the other Asian Strangler reports—Lucky wasn’t the only one. All three of the victims had been tied and bound with hemp rope. I was very proud of myself, and not thinking it through. I wrote it up and put it into the file. I requested that Teddy Bragg collect the spool from the apartment.”

  “Oh, God,” she said, seeing clearly where Dart was headed.

  “Not long after that, I started thinking what you’re thinking now, and it terrified me too.” He hesitated and said, “I stole two pieces of the rope from the
property room—one used on Lucky Zeller, the other from the spool found in the apartment. I circumvented Teddy and submitted the samples to the lab and intercepted the return report so that no one saw it but me. It came back that the two were from the same manufacturer—more than likely the same lot run.”

  “Oh, Christ.”

  “Zeller had somehow tracked down his wife’s killer—the Asian Strangler—and, as far as I was concerned, had probably caved in his hat and then tossed him out a window to cover it up.” He looked up at the bare limbs and the gray sky—it all seemed so dead. “I had to cover myself, because the State Police lab would itemize the work done for us in their monthly bill, and Teddy Bragg, meticulous as he is, would see it. So I properly filed the lab report in with the Ice Man file, in case he checked—put it right where it belonged.”

  “Oh, shit!” she said.

  Good little Boy Scout, he was chiding himself as he held up a finger to stop her briefly. “I had some thinking to do. The Asian Strangler was dead. A man who tortured and mutilated women. No cost to society. No more concerns about the threat he posed. And I had to think: What’s so wrong here? If I was right, Zeller had evened the scales, had done us all a favor, and maybe had found a way to live with the loss of his wife. He was no longer drinking. He was looking better, even talking about teaching down at the university.” He continued, “But I had left quite a trail of evidence. I had to bring it to Kowalski’s attention—to Haite and Rankin—or let it slide. Leave it where it was—divided between the property room and the file room.”

  She paled noticeably.

  He said strongly, “It was entirely circumstantial. I knew damn well that this was no grounder. We wouldn’t get a conviction—not if Walter Zeller was in fact the killer; he wouldn’t leave that kind of trail—”

  “Oh, shit,” she said, realizing what she had done by alerting Haite to the Ice Man files.

  Dart felt resolved now to tell it all. In a way it felt good to him. “But I did bring Zeller the evidence that I had. I told him what I knew, and what I thought he had done. He must have gone ten minutes without saying anything. Then he looked over at me and told me that it was time to retire. He showed no remorse, no guilt. But he had hate in his eyes—he had wanted to stay on in the department, and he knew that I had ended that.”

  She scooted over to him and held him, and he felt the warmth of her through his jacket. “I’ve opened it up again.”

  “It’s better, I think. This thing has damned near killed me. And now Stapleton and Lawrence and Payne—all far too close to the Ice Man.”

  “Oh, shit,” she gasped.

  “It’s him, Abby. I may never prove it—I don’t know how he’s doing it—but I know it in my heart, and that means that I’m responsible for those deaths. You want to talk about motivation to solve a case?”

  She leaned back and caught eyes with him. “They’re slime, Joe. Every one of them is pure slime. Trust me on this. There’s no great loss here.”

  “Look the other way?” he said, disgusted. “You don’t think I’ve considered that? A jury of one? Uniform justice? Shoot the guy in the alley and it’s easier on everyone? You try that out. It’s not something you can live with and keep coming to work.”

  “Bullshit,” she said. “You don’t know that you’re right. You can’t prove it—you said so yourself. You need to find Zeller, to collect more evidence.”

  To take control, Dart felt like adding.

  “Haite will tear you apart. You’ll be suspended, investigated—and you never will find out the truth.” She added, “Do you think Kowalski will?” She checked her watch. “There’s still time.”

  “For what? Me to get out of the country?” he mocked.

  “To get the Ice Man files and the evidence and make them disappear.”

  “You’re not serious,” Dart said.

  “I got you into this.”

  “Abby—”

  “I am serious,” she said. “And damn it, I’m going to need your help.”

  CHAPTER 21

  The meeting took take place at a dirt cul-de-sac called “the swing,” a dirt track that led to an old tree overhanging the river, used in the summer to swing and splash. In November the place was certain to be deserted.

  Dart remembered the location from his rookie year when the swing had been one of his patrol responsibilities. He had come upon a coed group of skinny-dipping teens and had scared them half to death.

  To reach the swing, he drove to the East Hartford side, crossing Charter Oak Bridge, and headed north until the treacherous dirt track that led steeply down toward the river, and executed a hairpin turn before descending into the bulb-shaped parking area littered with beer cans. He locked the Volvo and took Mac for a short walk, going slowly so that the old dog didn’t push his arthritic bones. When Dart stopped, drinking in the view of the peaceful river and a gaggle of Canada geese skimming its surface, Mac came alongside and leaned his weight into Dart, catching his chin on Dart’s knee—for Mac, the ultimate sign of affection. He reached down and petted his head. Mac was old, having lived two more years than the vet had given him, and yet it was true: He was Dart’s best friend. The idea of losing him was too much to bear, and for this shared moment of quietude, Dart felt grateful.

  He continued on and reached the edge of the river, where a thin shelf of bone white ice stretched twenty yards toward the main current. Rocks had been tossed through the ice, puncturing it with small dark holes that had bubbled river water and then scabbed over.

  As darkness settled in, from across the river came the lights of the water treatment facility and the power generating station.

  Dart couldn’t escape the feeling of being watched, paranoia tickling at the edges of his rational mind. And yet the area appeared to be clear.

  As he climbed back up to the parking area, Mac at his side, he heard the sound of Gorman’s arriving car.

  Bud Gorman, Dart’s friend whose job involved tracking a person’s credit history and spending patterns, was dressed for the cold, his big ears protruding from beneath a knit cap. Dart didn’t think of the man as possessing a nervous disposition, but this spying did make him jumpy—his nose twitched like a rabbit’s. “That’s an old dog,” he said.

  “What did you find out?” Dart asked, knowing to keep this business. Gorman was a talker.

  “Walter Zeller drew unemployment for two months, March to early June, three years ago.”

  “After he retired,” Dart said.

  “I suppose so. July through December the same year, he worked for something called Proctor Securities.”

  “Yes, I remember,” Dart said.

  “He pulled in six hundred forty-three a week, after withholdings. We have record of the usual phone and utility bill payments, some credit card activity for this same three-month period. Lived at—”

  “Four-twenty-four Winchester Court.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Come the first of January last year, his credit records move to Seattle, as you indicated. He leaves his account here open to cover some automatic withdrawals. But here’s the strange part about the Seattle side,” he added ominously. “I show virtually no financial activity, except for some electronic fund transfers—automatic deposits—his pension. Each month, a single withdrawal is made against this account—my guess is a certified check or bank payment that is probably then mailed to whatever location Zeller has specified.”

  “The amount?”

  “Twenty-three hundred. The same every month. The only other withdrawals appear tax related and, again, are not drawn on account checks but paid into the bank funds instead and drawn from there.”

  “And that’s all you show?”

  “The man is out of the system, Joe. He’s existing in a strictly cash environment is my guess. If he’s spending cash, then I can’t trace him.”

  No one can, Dart thought, wondering if that was the point.

  To show Dart that he had done a thorough job, Gorman added, “Credit ca
rd activity up to January was retail mostly. Department store records show jeans, boots, shirts, socks, and underwear—strictly basic stuff.”

  “Weapons? Airline tickets? Train tickets? Hotel rooms?”

  “Nothing like that.”

  “Gasoline?”

  “No. Nothing. That’s what I’m saying—he’s strictly cash.”

  “You mentioned taxes?”

  “He filed all taxes as a resident of Washington State, but no financial trail indicating that he spends any time there.”

  “Or anywhere else,” Dart reminded.

  “True. That’s right. It’s almost as if he’s disappeared.”

  He has, Dart thought.

  “And if he had a bank account in some other state?”

  “I’d know. Same with credit cards, department store accounts—I can track anything that requires his social security number.”

  The night swallowed them in an envelope of darkness. The air was wet and accompanied by a bone-chilling cold that cut through Dart’s jacket and sweater. Mac, sitting alongside Dart, leaned his weight warmly against Dart’s right leg. The detective reached down and petted the dog and pulled on his ears, which Mac loved.

  “And if he could get around the social security number? Obtain a false number?” Dart asked.

  “That’s a hell of a lot more difficult than it used to be.”

  “But if he could?” Dart asked, thinking, New social security number, driver’s license, bank accounts, credit cards …

  “We’d never find him,” Gorman replied, his disappointment obvious. “Right?”

  “Yeah,” answered Dart. “I think that’s just the point.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Bragg said, “You’re as nervous as a fox in a chicken coop.”

  “It’s the chickens that should be nervous,” Dart said.