Alone with the Dead

by Robert J. Randisi

  "Roses, right?"

  "Huh?"

  "She complains about somebody picking her roses?"

  "Yeah, roses. So?"

  "Phil, if you don't remember her name, do you remember where she lives?"

  "How the hell should I know where she lives. I never sent a car there."

  "I saw her at the station house twice. Did she usually come in?"

  "No, she usually calls for a car, but we never send one."

  If they never sent a car, then there wouldn't be any sort of a log entry for the call.

  "Phil, I need some way to find this woman. Got any ideas?"

  "Geez, I'm gonna kill Sal for even makin' this call. Look, ask the TS operators. They've talked to her a lot more than I have. Maybe they know."

  "Okay, thanks, Phil."

  "Hey, no offense, Joe, but fuck off, huh?"

  Keough handed Adamano back the phone.

  "Is he mad?"

  "Naw, he's not mad. Thanks, Sal."

  "Sure. Take it easy, Joe. Talk to the PBA, huh? What they done to you sucks."

  "Yeah, right."

  ***

  Keough went over to where the civilian telephone-switchboard operator sat. They weren't really switchboards anymore, just push-button phones to relay calls, but they still call them TS operators.

  This particular operator, he knew by sight but not by name. She was a skinny black girl with a nose that had sort of a bulbous tip. He had heard rumors that she had something going with one of the cops in the precinct.

  He stood by while she finished a call, and then she turned to look at him.

  "Help ya?"

  "Yeah. I'm Joe Keough."

  "I know who you are."

  "I need to ask you something."

  "Go ahead."

  "Have you ever gotten a call from a woman about somebody picking her roses?"

  "Oh sure, the rose lady."

  "You remember her?"

  "Who could forget her. I was working one day-I think it was a couple of weeks ago-when she actually came in here to complain. I sent her over to Sergeant Greco. He loved me for that."

  "Okay, this is important. Do you remember where she lives?"

  "I don't know the address, but I know the corner."

  He couldn't believe his luck.

  "Where is it?"

  "Corner of New York Avenue and Snyder Avenue. I passed that way once to take a look. You can't miss it. She's got roses all over her yard."

  "Look, thanks a lot. I really appreciate it."

  "Forget it. Bring me a coffee and a doughnut one morning. A little milk, no sugar, and anything gooey."

  "You got it."

  Keough's heart was racing as he hurried out the front door to his car.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  On the way out, Keough caught two cops he knew and asked them to drive him to within two blocks of New York Avenue and Snyder Avenue. He could have walked it, since the precinct itself was on Snyder Avenue, or driven himself, but since they were there, he hitched a ride.

  "What the hell are you doin' in this neighborhood, Keough?" one of them asked.

  "I just have to meet somebody."

  "Heard you got canned," the other one said. "What are you doin', workin' private?"

  "Something like that."

  "If you ever need some help, you know, with any of your cases, we could always use some extra cash."

  "I'll keep that in mind, guys. Thanks for the ride."

  Keough didn't want the sector car to drop him too close to his destination. If the killer lived around there, he didn't want to spook him.

  He walked the rest of the two blocks, and before he even reached the house, he could see the garden. When he came within view of the house, he saw what the TS operator meant. The entire yard was filled with flowers, and not only roses. The woman probably had the greenest thumb in creation.

  As he started up the front walk, there was a little sign in the dirt that said THE HALL'S. He assumed that was the name of the residents.

  The house was a large wood-frame structure with white shingles that had long since turned gray. It was not nearly as well kept up as the garden. It also didn't seem to belong in this neighborhood, because to the right and left of it stretched brick two-family homes, and within easy walking distance, more than one set of projects. The neighborhoodand, in fact, the entire precinctwas more than 80 percent black, Haitian and Jamaican, and if Keough remembered correctly, the woman complaining about her plants was white.

  He mounted the front porch and pressed the doorbell. After a few moments, he pressed it again, but there was no answer. Rather than accept that she wasn't home, he decided to walk around the house and see if she was outside, possibly tending her flowers.

  He walked around the side, which was also lined with plants and flowers. There was a lot of land around the house, making this one of the biggest lots Keough had seen during his stay in Brooklyn. The house and land, in a different neighborhood, would have commanded a lot of money.

  When he came to the back of the house, he found the roses. Almost the entire backyard was filled with them, and the scent was thick in the air, almost sickly sweet. Keough enjoyed the fragrance of a rose under normal circumstances, but he supposed too much of anything was too much.

  He almost didn't see the woman who was working the garden. She was wearing an outfit that pretty much had all of the colors of the spectrum in it, with mostly greens, yellows, and red, so that she almost blended in with the landscape.

  "Mrs. Hall?"

  She turned quickly, and he inspected what he could see of her face beneath the straw hat she was wearing.

  "What do you want? What are you doing on my property?" she demanded peevishly. Why was it, he wondered, that people who spent most of their time with plants had little or no patience for other people?

  "Mrs. Hall, are you the woman who has complained to the precinct about your roses being picked?"

  "Not picked, young man," the woman said, "Cut! Snipped! Hacked! It's a sin, I tell you."

  "I'm sure it is."

  "Are you from the precinct?"

  Keough lied-sort of.

  "Yes, ma'am, I just came from there."

  "Well, it's about time."

  She moved away from the bush she'd been pruning, putting down a pair of pruning shears and removing heavy gloves from her hands.

  "Are you going to stake out my garden?" she asked as she approached him.

  She could have been in her sixties or seventies; he couldn't be sure. Her face was a mass of wrinkles and loose skin hung around her neck. She had deep lines running from her top lip up to her nose.

  "Well, first, ma'am, I'd like you to show me where the roses have been cut from."

  "Come this way, then, young man." She started walking, with him trailing behind. She was still talking, and he was only catching snatches of what she said. "… can't believe it… about time… never happened on Kojak… "

  She led him to a row of rosebushes that sat against a wooden fence. The fence was not high, and the roses were easily accessible to anyone walking by on the sidewalk. He was surprised she didn't complain even more than she did.

  "I would think you'd be losing a lot more roses than you are, Mrs. Hall. Don't people just pick them as they go by?"

  "I don't mind people picking them, Detective. You are a detective, aren't you?"

  "Uh, yes."

  "If a young man walking by wants to pick one of my roses to give to his girlfriend, I don't mind that so much. It is to be expected. But this," she said, pointing, "this is a sin."

  Keough looked at the bush she was pointing to and it was covered with the striped roses, one of which he had seen on Mindy Carradine's body.

  "Rosa mundi," he said.

  She whirled on him in surprise.

  "You know roses?"

  "I know this one."

  He moved closer so he could take a better look. Some of the roses had wider stripes than others, and they were mostl
y a dark pink rather than red. It had been dark that night when he saw it on… in… Mindy Carradine.

  "See there?" she said, moving closer to him. She smelled of some sort of flowered scentunless it was just the smell of all the flowers sticking to her. "Right there."

  She was pointing to a stem from which a rose had obviously been cut, not picked. The cut had left a clean break, while a picked flower would have left behind a ragged end.

  "I see."

  He put his hand out to touch it and promptly jabbed himself with a thorn.

  "Ouch!"

  "Careful," she said. "That's my only consolation, you know."

  "What is?"

  "The animal who cut my roses probably has his fingers all cut up."

  "He's taken others?"

  "Oh my, yes."

  "This is important, Mrs. Hall. How many roses has he taken?"

  "That's easy," she said, "Four-the most recent one being yesterday. In fact, I was going to go to the precinct today as soon as I finished my pruning."

  "Mrs. Hall, when do these roses bloom?"

  "This particular one blooms only once, in the early summer, but they stay in bloom for some time."

  She was answering all his questions perfectly. She had lost one rose for every dead girl, and the Rosa mundi that had been on Mindy Carradine would have bloomed early enough to come from here.

  "Were all the roses from this bush?"

  "No, there were two of these taken-the last one yesterday-and two from my Mr. Lincoln bush down there."

  The Lincoln was just a bit farther down, and the roses were blood-red. While the Rosa mundi were on a compact bush, the Lincoln bush was vigorous with red stems and dark green foliage. Keough wondered why the killer would pick two of one and two of the other rather than taking them from the same bush.

  It didn't seem likely now that the killer would be back for some time to pick another. Keough figured that if he intended to stake out Mrs. Hall's garden, he'd need help to do it.

  "Well, Mrs. Hall, I've seen what I have to see."

  "Are you leaving?"

  "Yes, but I'll be back. Can you tell me approximately when the culprit picks"

  "Cuts!"

  "Cuts your roses?"

  "All hours," she said. "At night, and in broad daylight."

  "I see. Well, I'll have to start staking out the garden…" He was looking around for a likely place to watch from, either from a car or someplace inside the yard.

  "Well, it's about time that Dexter boy got what's coming to him."

  Keough froze.

  "Dexter boy?"

  "Of course."

  "Mrs. Hall… you know who's been picking-uh, cutting-your flowers?"

  "Of course I do, young man. I've seen him."

  Keough's heart began to race.

  "I just couldn't prove it, because it's my word against his. I see that on Law and Order. I figured you were going to have to stake out the garden and catch him in the act."

  "Well, that is one way to do it, ma'am. Um, do you know where he lives?"

  "Well, of course I do. Right over there."

  She pointed right across the street at a run-down one-family house that was set back from the street. Her address was a Snyder Avenue address, while this little house had a New York Avenue address.

  "He can see my garden right from his window. That front one on the right, see?"

  Jesus, she was handing him the killer's name, address, and even pointing out his window.

  "I see it. Ma'am, can you tell me what the boy looks like?"

  "Well, he doesn't look like a boy, I can tell you."

  "Is he black or white?"

  "He's white, about nineteen years old, but he is very big."

  "How big?"

  "A giant, actually. He is probably six and a half feet tall."

  That would explain the damage to the dead girls' necks.

  "He's kind of funny-looking, you know?"

  "Funny-looking how?"

  "Well… I don't like to say things like this, but he sort of looks like his mother and father might have been… you know, related."

  "You mean he looks… Mongoloid?"

  "More like… retarded. I know his mind isn't as old as he is."

  "So then he is retarded?"

  "I believe so, but he does have a job."

  "What does he do?"

  "He delivers groceries for the Met Foods on Nostrand Avenue. The one near Brooklyn Avenue."

  "Where does he deliver to?"

  "Oh, all over, and he does it on a bicycle."

  That would explain why his victims came from different precincts around Brooklyn. He could have seen them while delivering groceries and picked them out.

  "That lad rides that bike all over Brooklyn. I've seen him."

  "Just a few more questions, Mrs. Hall. Does he live alone?"

  "No, he lives with his mother. What a slut! She brings men home from bars." She leaned closer to Keough and said, "Just between you and me, I think she abused the boy when he was young."

  "Have they lived there long?"

  "Long as I can remember."

  While she was talking to him, she was fingering some of the petals, pruning some of the bushes by hand, and suddenly she stopped.

  "That's odd."

  "What is?"

  "Look here. This is a Ferdinand Pichard."

  Keough looked at the rose in question and at first thought it was red, but it was actually a combination of red and pink stripes.

  "What about it?"

  "Look closer."

  He looked where she was pointing and saw that a stem had been cut.

  "He's taken another one."

  Jesus, Keough thought, he's going to hit again so soon.

  "Mrs. Hall, do you know if either Dexter or his mother are home?"

  "Dexter is their last name," she corrected him, "and I haven't seen either of them today."

  "Are you sure this rose was here yesterday?"

  "Young man, I tend to my roses every day. I know that rose was not missing yesterday. In fact, I could swear that it was here earlier this morning." She whirled on him and asked, "He's gone too far, two in as many days, don't you think?"

  "Yes, ma'am, I do. I'm going to go right over there and talk to him about it."

  "Well, it's about time somebody did something."

  "What's the boy's name, ma'am?"

  "Arnold," she said. "Arnold Dexter. His mother's name is Gloriaal-though she calls herself 'Glory.' Imagine a grown woman calling herself that?"

  "Thank you for your time, ma'am."

  "That's all right. It's just nice to know something is going to be done."

  Keough nodded and left her standing by her rosebushes. He was able to go around the other side of the house this time, to the front gate and out. When he was out of sight of Mrs. Hall, he pulled up his pants leg and removed a small automatic from his ankle holster. He'd turned in his .38 with his shield, and this was his off-duty gun. He should have turned it in, as well, but he decided to wait until they came to get it. It was small enough to fit in his jacket pocket, and that's where he put it.

  With the gun comfortably within reach, he started across the street to the Dexter house.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  Aware that Mrs. Hall was watching, Keough approached the house as nonchalantly as he could. He decided to play it straight and go right to the front door. Maybe the mother would be home and he could talk to her. If the boy, Arnold, was home, there was no way he could arrest him. He had no proof, and he wasn't a cop anymore. All he really wanted to do was take a look at him. He didn't know what he would do after that. It certainly would have helped if he'd been able to get the task force on the phone again-not that he'd tried that hard. He probably could have made some calls, found out if the task force was still in existence, and then found out the new number, but at the time he had just figured, Fuck them.

  He could have simply left and tried to talk to someone in the department abou
t this Arnold Dexter, but the fact that the boy had cut another rose so soon had him worried.

  He mounted the rickety porch and looked for a doorbell. There was a hole where the bell button should have been. He opened the screen door then and knocked on the peeling paint of the wooden door. He waited several moments, listening for movement inside. When there was none, he knocked again. Still no answer.

  He figured he'd walk around the house and look in the windows, but before doing that, he decided to turn the doorknob once, just to try it. He turned it, and kept turning it, and the door opened. Considering the bad neighborhood, this surprised him.

  He took the gun out of his pocket, pushed the door open all the way, and entered the house.

  The air inside was musty, as if the windows hadn't been open for years. Stale odors assailed his nose: beer, booze, food, sweat, and sex. He was in a hallway and stopped to listen. He thought he heard a voice.

  He followed the hallway along, past a kitchen and a bedroom, both of which were empty. These rooms were on his left. One look inside the bedroom told him it was a woman's. The sheets on the bed were soiled and wrinkled, there was flowered wallpaperand there was a pair of panties on the floor. On his right was another bedroom, this obviously belonging to a male. The bed was neatly made, the walls were blue, covered with sports and girlie pictures.

  He stopped suddenly as he heard a male voice, talking softly, an almost singsong quality to it. It was coming from just ahead. He moved along the hallway and saw a sofa, a coffee table… and a woman's legs.

  Holding the gun ready, he stepped into the living room.

  "See? This was my first one, Mama. I did this, not him. See? They wrote about me, even if they didn't know it."

  The woman was lying on the floor, naked. She was on her back, her neck at an unnatural angle. Between her legs, protruding from her vagina, was Mrs. Hall's Ferdinand Pichard.

  Sitting on the floor, cross-legged, was a large young man who could only be Arnold Dexter. Keough could see over the boy's shoulder that he had a photo album. It seemed to be filled with newspaper clippings. He was talking to his mother very gently, turning the pages. What was eerie and gave Keough the chills was that the woman's eyes were open and he was actually holding the album, showing it to her as if she could see.