by J. A. Kerley
“Cool. Anything showing up on Ridgecliff?”
“We may be working our way up court on that one, too. Perlstein dug up a waiter at Chez Pierre, a la-di-da place on 64th. The waiter said the guy’s face resembled the pic of our new Ridgecliff, with the dark hair and eyes. The waiter said the customer barely spoke English. He ordered by poking his finger at the menu, asking, ‘Is this a food?’”
That fit Jeremy’s sense of humor. “What did the customer order?” I asked.
Waltz leaned out his door and barked, “Perlstein!”
The heavy junior detective arrived a minute later, out of breath from his sixty-foot waddle. “Yeah, Shelly?”
“The customer at Chez Pierre. You ask what he ate?”
Perlstein puckered liverish lips, pulled a notepad from his pocket, flipping through pages. “Uh, lessee, he drank some kind of white wine, Chateau pauf de dawdle or something. I ain’t good at French. He had the house salad, and dinner was tornadoes Rossalini.”
Perlstein flapped over another page. “For dessert the guy wanted something special …chocolate mousse with chocolate syrup, chocolate shavings over that, and them shiny candy cherries over everything.”
I said, “It’s Ridgecliff.”
Waltz gave me perplexed.
“Ridgecliff loves chocolate with cherries. He’d have me bring him chocolate-covered cherries on my visits.”
“Visits?” Waltz frowned. “Candy? You make it sound like a Valentine’s Day date.”
“I did what it took to keep him talking, Shelly.”
On my way out I wondered if I’d sounded as defensive to Shelly Waltz as I had to myself.
TWENTY-THREE
I booked from the station to a small park six blocks away. There was an attached dog park, a half acre of fenced-in gravel where folks exercised their pets. I was amazed at the variety of canines: poodles, Great Danes, coonhounds, Jack Russells, beagles, and several trendy types I couldn’t name, shnitzidoodles or whatever.
I sat on a bench and phoned Harry. He’d left several messages in the morning but I hadn’t wanted to call from the station, afraid of being overhead.
Harry filled me in on his findings. He’d been busy.
“ …message on the Doc’s phone, Agent John Wyatt at the Bureau’s behavioral unit inquiring about files he sent. I called back and …What’s all that barking? Are you calling from the city pound?”
“I’m near a dog park. It’s like a playground for dogs.”
“I don’t want to know. Anyway, it appears that three months ago, the Doc turned a hard eye toward the DC sniper cases. You know the story.”
“For sure, bro. Pathetic, discarded kid with no father figure, in steps a willing male adult, a father. Kid idolizes the father figure – a psychopath, unfortunately. Kid wants to show Daddy he’s a man too, and all hell breaks loose.”
“You remember Muhammad’s plans for an endgame, Carson?”
“Turning a group of lost boys into his own personal army of hate. Did Agent Wyatt say why Vangie wanted the information?”
“Only that she wanted it fast, like overnight. And it fits into the time Prowse told Traynor about a confidentiality problem with a private patient. It’s also when the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign showed up. Her invisible patient.”
“I don’t see it as part of anything up here, Harry. But I’ll mull it over.”
Harry and I talked a few more minutes. He was delighted I’d doped out the Silviera and businessman angle. I returned to the precinct at five, found three more possible sightings: at an upscale Italian restaurant on Mulberry, lunch at a place on Mott, and a clerk at a high-end Park Avenue shoe shop who had sold a pair of black loafers to a thickly accented man who mentioned his birthplace as Lisbon.
Showing photos to rental agents proved more problematic. Unlike restaurants and shops, agents moved around and did things like take vacations. But someone had helped my brother get his digs.
When we found the agent, it would be over.
Everyone on the case was charged. Double shifts were run as detectives hit establishments that might attract a wealthy man vacationing in Manhattan. Folger orchestrated the commotion, sending teams hither and yon, keeping files current. I figured her late father would have been proud to see the cop gene in action.
I was coming from a bathroom break when I saw her alone in the Ridgecliff room, the first time in hours.
I said, “Doing anything tonight, Weather Lady?”
She shot a sideways glance at the detectives’ room, dicks on phones, circling desks, yelling at one another. She gave me a sad smile and a sigh.
“I’m probably here half the night, dead on my feet when I get home. Think we can sneak in a meal and …whatever …tomorrow evening?”
I licked my finger, held it in the air.
“Conditions are perfect for warmth and conviviality.”
We puckered our lips at one another and I headed out, switching to detective mode when I hit the street, hoping Jeremy was somewhere studying a plate of food, and not on the street, studying the faces of women.
Eat up, brother, I thought. Your menu’s running out.
I showed up fresh and ready in the morning, juiced by success. Waltz was on the phone, and I waited for the crew to assemble.
Before falling asleep I’d tumbled my conclusions through my mind. A Portuguese businessman was a potent disguise in Manhattan. I admired my brother’s ingenuity for thinking it up, mine for figuring it out.
Waltz hung up. I wandered over, cup of coffee in hand. Waltz looked up from reading the night’s reports. “Another possible sighting at a luggage shop on Lex, a place where a suitcase costs more than I make in a week. The clerk thinks he sold Ridgecliff a messenger bag. He thought the customer spoke Spanish, but that’s easily confused with …”
We heard a grunt at the door and looked up to see Bullard’s mug. He looked angry, tie pulled aside, sleeves rolled up, jacket jammed beneath his arm.
“Where the hell’s Folger?” he said.
“Why?” Waltz asked.
“She and me were supposed to meet with the dicks up at the 25th about that drive-by last January. The case is going to court.”
“Folger never showed?” I said.
“Why the hell would I be asking why she didn’t show if she did show? And why are you talking to me when I’m talking to Waltz?”
“You call her cell?” Waltz asked.
“About eighty fuckin’ times. I got nada, voicemail. There were half a dozen dicks and a captain waiting at the 25th. They were pissed. I told them Folger was probably having one of those women’s moments when nothing’s real clear. Think you might ask if she could pretty-please be there tomorrow at ten if she’s not too busy having her period?”
Bullard thundered away.
“The Lieutenant missing an appointment?” I asked Waltz. “That unusual?”
“Not for Alice Folger,” Waltz said, frowning. “It’s unheard of.”
I closed the door. “Folger and I were talking a couple nights ago, Shelly. There’d been scratching at her door and she thought she saw a face at the window. She’d also felt like she was being watched the past couple weeks, but never saw anyone watching.”
“You and Folger were talking?”
“She’s easier on me these days.”
“Cluff’s in Tribeca showing Ridgecliff’s picture. I’ll get him to run over to Folger’s digs. Maybe she overslept.”
Waltz punched the speaker volume on his phone so I could hear. Cluff answered.
“Shelly Waltz here. You know where the Lieutenant lives?”
“Sure,” Cluff said. “I was at her Christmas party. She lives five minutes away. Why?”
“She missed a meeting this morning. How about you check it –”
“On my way,” Cluff said. The phone clicked dead.
I had the creepy-crawlies but didn’t know why. Waltz looked even less happy than usual. I tried small talk.
“How are things with th
e Pelham project?”
He raised three fingers. It took a second for the message to sink in.
“Three dolls?” I asked.
“Another arrived yesterday. No mouth, no prints, no nothing.”
“How many are in a grouping or whatever?”
He shrugged, not really caring at the moment. “Five or six.”
I wiped my damp palms on my jeans, checked my watch. When I looked up I saw Shelly was doing the same. Six minutes crept by, then seven. Waltz said, “Cluff’s got to be there by now. I’ll call and see what’s –”
The phone sounded. Waltz’s hand hit the button mid-ring, cobra speed. The line crackled as the connection wavered. Followed by Cluff’s voice in full gasping wheeze.
“Jesus, Shelly …it’s a bloodbath over here. She’s …on the floor. I called for the medics, but …Folger’s dead, Shelly. She’s been torn apart.”
TWENTY-FOUR
We were outside Folger’s house in minutes, running to the door. The ME’s van was rolling up, the bus – ambulance – already there. Cluff was at the door, shaking his head, his voice labored, squeezing past pain.
“I got here …the front door was open about an inch, I called inside. Nothing. Then I stepped in, found …”
I stuck my head through the door. Blood. On the floor. On the walls. The air was thick with its reek. I saw Folger’s body on the floor, clothes awry, legs splayed, red with blood. The head was still attached, but the rage had been cut deep into the flesh. What remained of the face was turned toward the door, the teeth pink with blood and clenched in the rictus of misery.
There was nothing to be done.
“Get back,” a voice said. “Coming through.”
Two technicians from the Medical Examiner’s office pushed into the room, one stripping the wrapping from a new thermometer. I grimaced as he plunged it beneath Folger’s ribs, deep into her liver, the temperature helping to determine time of death.
Shelly was beside me, wanting to run to Folger, his cop instinct holding him back, letting the techs work before the dicks took over. I heard him sucking air, hard, as if hyperventilating.
“Steady, Shelly.”
“I can’t take much more,” he whispered. I turned to him, saw faraway eyes in a ghost-white face.
“Shelly? Are you all right?”
His eyes rolled up and his knees collapsed. I managed to grab around his chest and slow his fall to the floor. “Need help over here!”
A paramedic appeared beside me, fingers against Waltz’s neck, ear tight against Shelly’s chest. “Pulse is reedy but steady. No arrhythmia. I think it’s syncope, fainting. Probably stress and anxiety.”
Waltz’s hand whipped by my face, trying to push away my shape. He was disoriented, but returning. Tears poured into his eyes and he smeared his sleeve across his face, leaving tears and spit and mucus across his cheeks.
“It’s a nightmare,” he moaned. “A fucking nightmare.”
“Just rest, Shelly. Stay calm.”
He covered his face with his hands, muttered, “ …all a nightmare,” and lay still, gathering himself.
I sat back and watched the tech pull the thermometer from the liver. A breast slipped from beneath a torn strip of what had been a blouse. I stared at it, heavy, the aureole large and brown. I rose, stepped around the red pools. My foot slipped in a patch of excrement and I slid sideways, grabbing the shoulder of the tech, nearly tumbling across the corpse.
“Easy,” the tech said.
I lowered myself to a crouch and gently lifted a clot of blood-soaked hair, the head following like a puppet. I slipped my gloved fingers under the chin and spun the face to mine.
I turned to Waltz. It would later haunt me that a person’s death could give so much relief.
“It’s not Folger, Shelly. It’s someone else.”
Within twenty minutes a dozen detectives and evidence techs filled Folger’s house. The usual banter was gone, replaced by brutal efficiency, as if a fuse was burning. Or a clock ticking on a bomb.
The front door opened and Bullard entered. “I just heard. What’s the word?”
Waltz put his hands in his pockets, walked to Bullard. Something in Waltz’s eyes set off an alarm in my head and I followed.
“It’s just a woman’s moment,” Waltz said to Bullard.
Bullard was confused. “What you talking about, Waltz?”
“It’s what you said when she didn’t show up at your meeting this morning. She was having a ‘woman’s moment’. You know, Bullard, one of those times when things aren’t real clear.”
I stepped closer. Re-thought things. Stepped back and put my hands in my pockets.
“You’re babbling,” Bullard said.
“Folger was having her period, you said. That’s why she was late.”
“Hey, I didn’t mean anything. I was just havin’ fun.”
“Me too,” Waltz said, driving his fist into Bullard’s sternum.
Bullard dropped to the floor, gasping. Every eye turned to the action. No one moved. After a few seconds everyone went back to work as if nothing had happened. Two dicks grabbed Bullard under the arms and ushered him from the house, not gently.
Shelly returned to worrying and watching the investigation progress. Records and photographs found in the upstairs apartment showed the corpse was that of Julie Chase, a forty-two-year-old accountant for Morgan Stanley. A stairway connected the up- and downstairs. The connecting door was open.
“There’s blood spray into the stairway,” one of the dicks said. “Like the vic heard something down here, came to check.”
“Got taken down when she walked in?” another asked.
“Slammed.”
“So where’s Folger?” Waltz asked.
No one said a word. The crew moved to Folger’s bedroom and Forensics began bagging the bedclothes for inspection for hairs, semen and other physical evidence. At the same time the print techs were pulling latents from the headboard.
I winced, cleared my throat, looked at Waltz. “I, uh, suspect y’all might find a few of my fingerprints around the place, Shelly. Probably a little something on the sheets as well.”
Every head turned to me.
I retreated to the stoop. The techs had stopped talking to me, the dicks regarded me with wary eyes. Waltz stepped outside a few minutes later. His eyes were steady, hard.
“Four million women in this city and you hit on Folger?”
“If the past week has told you anything about me, Shelly, you know it didn’t fall like that.”
He rubbed his eyes with his fingertips. “Sorry. It’s a shitty day, it’s been a shitty week. You’re both adults and it’s none of my business.”
“It surprised us more than anyone. There’s about five more sides to her than most people see.”
“She’s one smart girl. Tries to hide it, be one of the guys, but I’ve been around intelligent people. It’s in the eyes, something you can’t describe …” His voice trailed away.
“We’ll find her, Shelly.”
“What’s with the we? You’re officially a suspect. You’re done in the department. Nor can you leave town. You’re in limboland until you’re cleared.”
“A suspect? That’s nuts.”
He looked at the sky and scratched his chin. “Let’s see …a missing woman. Everything in her life was hunky-dory until she got a new boyfriend a day ago. How do you do things down in Mobile, Detective Ryder?”
“I’d be suspect number one,” I said. “Maybe two and three as well.”
“Then you know what to do.”
I left my prints with one tech. Gave another a cheek swab for a DNA sample. I couldn’t do anything on Folger’s disappearance, and couldn’t hang around the cop shop, so I went back to the hotel. Waltz called an hour later, his voice low, verging on bitter.
“Hairs and fibers at the scene. It’s Ridgecliff. Looks like he got interrupted while abducting Folger, killed the tenant. We checked every resident on the block. No one
saw a thing, of course. The guy across the way thought he saw a cab lingering outside the place a few times in the past week. A cab in New York City, there’s a clue.”
TWENTY-FIVE
“What do you want from me, you bastard?” Alice Folger said.
“I need you to take off your panties and hose.”
Alice Folger glared up at her captor. He stood above her with a bright knife as she sat on the floor with her fingers laced behind her head. She appeared to be in the home of someone with money, the floors polished wood, the furniture tasteful. There was art on the walls and in curio cases. The only light was coming from a dozen or so candles arrayed in the three rooms she could see.
“Fuck you,” Folger said.
Her captor nodded as if understanding, then his arm became a blur, the knife slashing an inch from Folger’s eyes.
“TAKE THE GODDAMN THINGS OFF!”
Glaring defiantly through her terror, Folger wriggled from her trousers, slid off hose and panties, leaving a hand over her pubis.
“Stand up.”
She stood, hand in place. Knife tight in his palm, the man circled her, staring at her legs and buttocks. She closed her eyes, tried to still her racing heart. The man stepped behind her.
“Open your legs.”
She put her feet a few inches apart, knees shaking.
“WIDER!”
She stepped out further and heard the floor creak at her back. It sounded as if he was crouching and studying her. After a long minute he walked out in front of her and pulled a folded brown bag from his pocket, bending to grab the garments on the floor. He stopped, frowning. His eyes scanned the room until seeing a broom in the corner. He grabbed it, using the handle to push the clothing into the bag. He rolled the bag shut, flashing a glance at her crotch.
“Get something over that before the smell makes me sick.”
“I can put on my pants?”
“Either that or weld a plate over your …thing.”
Folger almost gasped with relief. She pulled on her trousers with shaking fingers.
