by Tim Stevens
“What does it mean?”
Teller said, “We don’t know, yet. It may be gang related. We suspect not, but further than that, it’s impossible to say.” He eyed the judge. “Do you have any idea of its significance, Judge Fincher? Might it have any personal connotation for your son?”
She shook her head.
Her manner had, if anything, become more resolute, more detached, during the conversation. Venn had thought she’d break down, slowly, and show the normal human reaction of a mother who’s son has just been butchered. Eventually, when it became clear to her that the two cops had no further questions, she straightened in her armchair, put her hands together.
“If that’s all, gentlemen, then may I excuse myself? As you might imagine, I have a lot to arrange.”
They stood, shook hands once more. Judge Fincher gazed at each of them in turn.
“Agent Teller. Lieutenant Venn. I know I’ve come across to you as cold and aloof. And I know the picture I’ve given you of my relationship with my son suggests a dysfunctional, distant relationship. No, we weren’t close. No, I wasn’t a perfect mother. Not even a very good one. But I did love my son. More than I could ever express to you. More, God help me, than I was ever able to express to him. And now it’s too late.”
She held on to Venn’s hand longer than necessary, and although she looked from one man to the other, Venn got the impression she was mainly addressing him.
“Promise me you’ll find whoever did this,” she murmured, her voice low and intense. “Promise me you’ll do whatever you need to to get them. And don’t let them get away. Follow procedure to the letter, so they don’t walk on a technicality. But if that’s too difficult... just make sure you get them, however you can.”
“We will, Judge Fincher,” said Teller.
*
On the way back, neither of them spoke for a while, as they processed the encounter. Not just what Judge Fincher had said, but what she didn’t say.
Teller broke the silence. “A Supreme Court Justice just encouraged us to use illegal methods if necessary to catch a criminal.”
“Fair enough.” Teller drove for a while longer, musing. Then: “So what was it you noticed earlier? You said before we got there that there was something you’d been considering, but you preferred to talk to the Judge first. What was it?”
Venn said, “Did you notice anything else about the body? Other than the obvious, of course.”
“Such as?”
“Any other injuries?”
Teller seemed to be conjuring up the image of the man on the slab. At last he said, “No. You got me.”
“There were old, healed scars on the inside of the left wrist, and higher up the forearm. Only on the left. They were stitched up pretty expertly, so there were only faint lines. But they were there, all right. Several of them. Parallel, transverse scars.”
“Huh.” Teller frowned.
“My guess is Dale Fincher was a self-harmer,” said Venn. “He was right-handed, so he did it to his left wrist. Maybe with a razor blade. Those are the cuts you see on somebody who isn’t trying to kill themselves, but is cutting for one or more of a variety of reasons. To punish himself. To inflict pain in order to feel more alive, rather than numb.”
He’d seen the phenomenon among young people when he’d been a cop in Chicago, and had never been able to understand it. Later he’d discussed it with Beth, who said it was a generational thing, and had started to be seen more and more in hospital practice since around the 1980s. Often the person doing it was a troubled, alienated teenager, usually a girl, and sometimes with a history of sexual abuse. Other times, the patient’s problems were more pervasive. They might have a so-called borderline personality disorder.
“Could’ve happened lots of ways,” said Teller. “He was a soldier. Soldiers get hurt.”
“Not like that,” said Venn. “That’s a classic pattern. Fincher was cutting himself. Not recently, maybe, but in the past. It fits with the picture his mom painted, of a tormented, lonely man who always felt like a misfit.”
Teller thought about it some more. “You think there might be some fetishistic angle to the killing?” he asked. “Maybe Fincher was into weird, kinky stuff. S&M. Maybe that’s why there was no sign of a struggle. He allowed himself to be tied to the bed. He just wasn’t banking on getting killed.”
“It’s possible,” said Venn. “But it would be good to talk to the people who were closer to him than his mother. His Army buddies, his commanding officer.”
“We’re on our way there right now,” said Teller. “Fort Irvington.”
Chapter 7
Fort Irvington was one of a handful of military bases in New York State. Located on the outer fringes of Queens, it sprawled over one thousand acres of land, providing housing for the families of servicemen as well as barracks, outdoor training facilities and a massive administrative complex.
Teller’s Lexus was waved through assorted gates and checkpoints and into a visitors’ parking lot. The two men were greeted by a quartet of uniformed soldiers who escorted them toward the admin block. Venn noted the crispness of everything: the lawns, the uniforms, the salutes. He felt a sudden longing for this kind of life, one he’d left behind him more than a decade earlier when he’d been discharged from the Marines. At the time he’d found it a little stifling, but compared with the chaos and noise and messiness of life as an urban cop, it now seemed idyllic.
Colonel Henry Masterson greeted them in the lobby. He too was in full uniform, a bear of a man with a trimmed mustache and a curt but not unfriendly manner. They shook hands in turn.
“This way, please,” he said, and marched them down a corridor and into his office. It was a little more cluttered than Venn had been expecting, but it was spacious and comfortable. The three men sat, Masterson behind his desk. He leaned forward with his hands placed flat on the desk top.
“We’re very sorry for your loss, Colonel,” said teller. Venn thought it sounded a little odd, addressed to the commanding officer of a man whose mother they had just offered similar condolences to. Masterson nodded once.
“We’re sorry, too,” he said. “Corporal Fincher was a fine man, and an asset to the Army.”
Teller launched straight in. “We know you’re a busy man, Colonel, so we’ll make this as succinct as possible. You’ll be aware of the facts. Dale Fincher was killed between approximately nine p.m and six a.m. The night before last, in a hotel in Chelsea. An object, possibly an icepick, was pushed through his brain as he lay secured to a bed, naked.”
Masterson said nothing. Venn thought Teller was being deliberately graphic in order to provoke the Colonel. He wondered how wise that approach was.
“The last time we know anyone saw Corporal Fincher was at seven p.m., when he left the bar he’d been visiting with some of his Army peers. He left with a woman. I hope we’ll get an opportunity to speak with the soldiers who were present, in order to get some idea of what this woman looked like.”
Masterson looked faintly irritated, as if Teller had said something obvious. “Of course. They’re all here, waiting for you.”
Venn spoke up. “We’re interested to know from you, Colonel, what Dale Fincher was like. As a soldier, and as a private individual.”
Masterson began to recite, as if rattling off a pre-prepared list: “Corporal Fincher was a bright, enthusiastic soldier who might one day have been a great one. But he was held back by a certain degree of self-doubt, an unwillingness to assert himself fully. It wasn’t courage he lacked. He demonstrated that again and again. He followed orders unquestioningly. Rather, he had difficulty trusting his own judgment. As such, he wasn’t really leadership material, not above a certain level. He’d been in the Army almost ten years. Most other soldiers of his intelligence and physical aptitude would have attained officer status by now. But, as I say, his diffidence held him back.”
Venn thought he detected a ruefulness in Masterson’s voice, a regret at wasted opportunities. He s
aid: “Were there any disciplinary issues?”
“No. His record was exemplary.” Masterson sighed. “I probably shouldn’t say this, and it’s strictly off the record. But sometimes I think it would have been better if Corporal Fincher had been a troublemaker. At least occasionally. It would have revealed a spark of independence in him, and that’s something we could have nurtured. As it was...” He turned his palms upward.
“Was he a drinker?” asked Teller.
“Not remarkably. He’d hold his own with the boys, by all accounts. Then be sick as a dog the next day, so he couldn’t hold it. And before you ask, there was never any record of illicit substance use. I doubt he ever tried anything like that, even in private.”
Venn thought about his next question. “Did he talk about his parents at all?”
“His father, yes.” Masterson steepled his fingers. “Major Lawrence Fincher was a bright star in our firmament. Not quite a legend, though he was to his son. You’d think the boy had grown up with him, rather than having no personal recollection of him, given he was only four when the major died.”
“And his mother?”
Masterson shook his head. “Never mentioned her. Everybody knew who she was, of course, but he didn’t talk about her at all. It was as if she was the one who was dead, not his father. We figured it was because he was afraid of being accused of currying favour, of using his mother’s name and position as status symbols. So he deliberately avoided any mention of her. Whether or not that’s the reason, I don’t know.”
Venn: “Did he have a lot of friends?”
Masterson tilted his head, considering the question. “Yes and no. He hung out with a fairly large group of soldiers. As officers, you quickly pick up who are the popular ones, and who the misfits are. Dale Fincher was superficially popular. He blended well into the family culture here at Fort Irvington. But I always got the impression he never really belonged. Perhaps he felt that way innately, and ended up communicating it to those around him. Or maybe the others genuinely didn’t accept him as one of them, but tolerated him for whatever reason.”
It was a confusing picture, Venn thought. Normally, after talking to a few people who knew somebody, you got a fairly clear image of who they were. But Dale Fincher was elusive, slipping repeatedly out of focus in Venn’s mind.
He and Teller asked a few more routine questions. It was clear that Colonel Masterson was under pressure, and Venn thought he’d caught some flak for the killing. Fincher had been off-duty at the time, and out of uniform, but a dead soldier was a dead soldier, whether on the battlefield or back home. Venn knew there’d be an internal inquiry, and possibly scapegoats would be found.
They thanked Masterson for his time, and were shown by a female private into another room down a different corridor. This one was more like a conference room, with a large oval table in the center. They found themselves alone.
Teller raised his eyebrows. “Guy’s slippery as a catfish.”
“Fincher? Yeah. I know what you mean.” Venn paused, glancing round. It was highly unlikely the room was bugged. Why would it be? His natural suspiciousness was getting the better of him.
He said, “There’s the possibility, of course, that this is all political. That Fincher was killed because of his mother, for some reason.”
“Yes, I thought of that.” Teller turned to gaze out the window, where a group of what looked like very green recruits were being put through their paces on a lawn, under the direction of a snarling terrier of a sergeant. “Maybe revenge for somebody Judge Fincher put in prison. It doesn’t explain the other two killings, though.”
“Unless they’re a smokescreen,” said Venn. “Designed to make us think we’re looking for a serial killer, when in fact Fincher was the important one.”
Teller turned back. “It’s too elaborate. There are easier ways to kill a man. Plus, why dress it up in all this subterfuge? The whole point of killing Fincher in revenge would be to send a clear message to his mother. There’s no clear message here. None that I can see, anyhow.”
The door opened and three men filed in. They were aged between their late twenties and early thirties, and all wore uniforms with corporal’s stripes. Two of them were big and burly, a blond and a redhead. The other was shorter, African American, wiry. The kind of guy who sometimes ended up in Special Forces.
Once more, Teller and Venn shook hands. The men introduced themselves as Corporals Austin, Nilssen and Craddock. Teller indicated for them to sit, which they did in unison, along one side of the table. Venn and Teller took seats opposite them. It felt, Venn thought, like an interview panel.
“We understand that you three men were with Corporal Fincher in the bar, and that you’re the last known people to have seen him,” Teller began.
The redhead, Craddock, answered. “Yes, sir.”
“Perhaps you’d take us through the evening,” said Teller. “An overview’s fine. Set the scene. We’ll fill in the details later.”
As if by unspoken agreement, Craddock took the lead. His voice was calm, confident.
“We’d planned forty-eight hours’ leave together. The four of us, Dale Fincher included. Tommy here –” he indicated the black man, Austin – “has an apartment in Manhattan, so we were going to use that as a base, sleep there at night. We decided to visit a few bars in Lower Manhattan, then take in a football game the next day.”
“You do that often?” asked Venn. “The four of you, I mean? Hang out together?”
Although the three men kept their eyes on Teller and Venn, Venn thought he detected a slight shifting in the atmosphere of the room, as if some wordless communication had passed between them.
“Sometimes,” said Craddock. “Not always the four of us. Other combinations, too.”
Venn wanted to ask if Fincher was usually included in those combinations, but he let it go for now.
Teller nodded for Craddock to continue. The corporal said: “We’d been to a couple of bars in Greenwich Village, limbering up, before heading for the Rococo. It’s a place we all knew and liked. We got there around... six thirty?” He glanced at the others.
“Sounds about right,” Austin agreed.
“Pretty early for your third bar,” Venn commented. He saw Teller glance at him out of the corner of his eye.
Craddock shrugged. “We take our leave seriously, sir. We make the most of it.”
Venn understood. He recalled his days as a Marine.
“So we’ve had a couple of beers, and we’re shooting the breeze with the bar staff. All good-natured stuff.” Craddock paused, remembering. “Then I notice Fincher chatting to this girl who’s sitting at the counter next to him. The place was crowded, so he had to lean close to her to hear her.”
“You get a good look at this girl?” asked Teller.
Austin answered this time. “Yes sir. She was a real stunner. Tall, blonde, in this clingy dress. Like she’d been out to carnegie Hall or somewhere. Classy, you know? Like that movie star.”
“Marlene Dietrich,” said Craddock.
“No, no,” said Austin. “Not her. Greta Garbo, that’s the one. Kind of – what’s the word? With a smokey look in her eyes. A little mocking.”
“Sultry,” suggested Nilssen, the blond man.
“Yeah.” Austin nodded. “That’s it. Sultry. We watched her and Dale talking, and none of us could really believe what we were seeing.”
“Why?” said Venn.
Austin said, “Because Dale wasn’t the kind of guy women usually went for like that. Sure, he wasn’t bad looking, I guess. And he was smart. But he didn’t have the gift of the gab. He came across as a little... distant. Like he didn’t really enjoy human contact. Especially when it was with somebody he didn’t know. But this girl just sat right down next to him and started coming on to him.”
“Describe her a little more,” said Teller. “How old was she?”
The men looked at each other. Nilssen said, “Thirties? Older than us. Maybe thirty-five. But she w
ore a lot of makeup, so she might have been older.”
“A lot of makeup,” said Teller. “You mean like, plastered on?”
“Uh uh,” said Austin. “It was classy, like I said. Not obvious. But it was there: lips like blood, dark eyes.”
“Brown eyes?”
“Yeah,” said Austin.
Craddock said, “No. I’m pretty sure they were green.”
Austin tilted his head to one side, unconvinced. “It was dark in the bar. The lights were low. Hard to tell, really. And none of us got all that close to her. Next thing we know, she’s taken Dale by the hand and is leading him away to the exit.”
“Did you go after him?” asked Venn.
“Hell, no,” said Craddock. “I mean, no sir. We just watched him go, elbowing each other in the ribs, you know, marveling at how he’d just got lucky.”
“And that was the last we saw of him,” added Austin.
“You didn’t try to call him later?” said Venn. “Ask him how it had gone? Stuff like that?”
“No. We just figured, let him enjoy himself,” said Nilssen. “We’d get all the juicy details the next day.”
Craddock: “And next day, we’re crashed out at Tommy’s place, nursing hangovers. I start texting and calling Dale, because we’re scheduled to head out to the football game at three that afternoon. He doesn’t answer. I leave voicemail messages, but he doesn’t call back. We got worried. Maybe he got so drunk he fell over or aspirated on his own vomit or something. Who knew? So we call base here.”
“Next thing we hear, he’s been found dead in a hotel.” Austin stared down at his hands, as if hearing it for the first time. “I just can’t believe it, man.”
Teller and Venn glanced at one another. Venn shrugged slightly. No more questions, he was saying.
Teller said, “Did Dale Fincher have a lot of girlfriends, gentlemen?”
This time the shift in the room’s tone was unmistakeable. The three soldiers all but looked at each other. Venn was aware of their legs shifting uncomfortably beneath the table.
“No, sir,” said Craddock and Nilsson, almost simultaneously.
