Blind Sight

by Carol O'Connell

  Well, good. The I-told-you-so moment was upon her. “I told you the boy wouldn’t be on a transplant list. The kind of surgery he needed—”

  “There’s too many surgeons who do valve replacements,” she said. “And you wouldn’t give me a time frame for the damn operation.”

  Dr. Slope sucked in his breath for a ten count. Something about her voice made it clear that he had been derelict in his duty, incompetent in her eyes—as if he should be able to look at a bloody hole in a defective disembodied heart, a hole that might have been the location of an artificial valve, and tell her exactly when that theoretical operation had been done.

  Was his blood pressure rising? Undoubtedly. On that account, he must compliment her, though not just yet, perhaps on his deathbed. And he was not going to respond to that ludicrous—

  “Got another kid!” Grinning ME investigator Bill Farley shot up one hand like an old lady on bingo night, and then he bent down to the work of circling another name on his printouts of registered graves in the tri-state area. “Best one yet. I got a seven-year-old who died in New Jersey. Jewish Orthodox—no embalming. He was buried yesterday morning.” Farley turned an expectant face to Kathy Mallory.

  Expecting what? A smile? A reward? Was he delusional?

  She only nodded, not yet prepared to toss her new dog a treat. “And the follow-up?”

  “I talked to the doctor who signed the death certificate,” said Farley. “No valve replacement surgery, but the kid did have a heart defect. The parents had an appointment with a cardiologist right before their son died.”

  Edward Slope wondered if he might have scored a point here for prescience—a surgery that would have been performed if only—

  “Here’s the bad news,” said Farley. “We can’t use the parents for a DNA match. The boy was adopted.”

  “That shouldn’t be a problem,” said Dr. Slope. “The child’s personal items—”

  “No such luck.” Farley turned away from Kathy to face his boss, belatedly recalling which of them was his boss. “The mother was a wreck. So the family decided to—”

  “They took away the dead boy’s things,” said Kathy. Her foster father had endured the attempted kindness of such thieves upon the death of his wife, Helen. “They didn’t want the mother to see reminders of her son when she came home from the cemetery.”

  “Right,” said Farley. “Even the mattress. Toothbrush, hairbrush, dirty laundry, everything with DNA—they bagged it all and trashed it. But here’s the good news. With a little cooperation from the locals, we can get a crew to the city dump.”

  “Dumpster diving could kill a few hours. But a whole dump? No, this is all about time. I haven’t got any.” She turned her attention to the computer on the credenza. “Quicker to dig up the body.”

  “No way.” Farley spoke to her back. “You’ll never get consent. Mallory, these people are very religious. I got that from the funeral director. He says a family member came in with the body and stayed with it the rest of the night. So the hit man had no chance to cut out the heart while the body was in the funeral home. But if this is the right kid—”

  “He died at night? The night before the burial?” Her chair spun around to catch the investigator’s nod. “Good. No time for an obit in the local newspaper. If we’ve got the right kid, the perp didn’t read about that death. He saw the funeral, the child-size casket. Then he came back and robbed the grave.” The detective was smiling when she turned to the medical examiner. “A heart with no body. That’s a suspicious death. You wouldn’t need consent for an exhumation.”

  “If you had the dead boy’s DNA match to the heart . . . which you don’t.”

  “If I could make that connection, I wouldn’t need the kid’s body! I’d know I had the right funeral service, the right cemetery—the right section of the damn planet!” She turned back to the computer and opened a file to show him a daunting list of dead and missing boys spread out over three states. “I don’t have time to rule out the rest of them with DNA matches. . . . It’s all about time.”

  And pure conjecture.

  Edward Slope rallied with a point of law, an actual fact. “You can’t exhume a likely corpse on just the theory that—”

  “Care to place a bet? . . . I’ll take your money.”

  —

  THERE WERE NO MORE Crown Victorias double-parked outside Brox’s apartment building. The search of detectives was done, but a change had been made since Iggy’s last visit. He pulled down the brim of a ball cap as he walked past the doorman, a brand-new face.

  Had to be a cop.

  This was going to be dicey.

  Turning a corner, he approached the side entrance for deliveries and moving men. There, the building handyman—the same one, not a cop—was hauling a piece of broken furniture out to the curb for trash collection. Iggy slowed his steps for a glance at the propped-open door. Inside that storage area, a uniformed officer sat on a shipping carton, reading a newspaper.

  If the police had two entries covered, he could count on at least one cop positioned inside the rooftop door. This could only mean that the police were planning to release Dwayne Brox from custody. That might be good news if they had no evidence to hold him. But police never got this fancy when they were only keeping an eye on a suspect. Had Brox become the NYPD’s star witness—or was he just a cop’s idea of bait?

  —

  THE WARMTH OF THE DEN was in the colored spines of books that lined the walls and also in the presence of the man seated at the desk. The rabbi’s build was lean, his beard neatly trimmed, and his eyes were a bit too wide at the moment, but horror had that effect on this charter member of the Louis Markowitz Floating Poker Game. Obviously, he thought she was asking too much of him. However, by Mallory’s lights, since David Kaplan had been her foster parents’ rabbi and their oldest friend—she owned him.

  Yet he said, “No. . . . These people are grieving for their little boy. They’re sitting shiva. I’m not going to tell them his grave may have been violated . . . that maybe his heart was cut out. You can’t know if this is the—”

  “You’re right,” she said. “Call it a leap of faith. I’m all in on this one grave.”

  Not exactly the truth. While she pursued this lead, the ME’s investigators were still working through her list of dead and missing boys in the tri-state area, asking local police to call on distraught families and beg for personal effects that might yield DNA.

  “Jonah Quill doesn’t have much time left,” she said. “Tell the parents about that kid. A hit man went to a lot of trouble to pass off a bogus heart. He hasn’t killed Jonah, not yet, but that could change any minute. This is my chance to find him alive . . . if I can pin down this grave site. The hit man’s getting sloppy. He might’ve left me some tracks, witnesses. I need that body dug up today. Talk to the mother. She’ll understand.”

  No, it was clear that she could not even make the rabbi understand this need. The whole prospect mortified him. Such a tender soul. So . . . what else might she bludgeon him with?

  “Rabbi, I don’t want to waste time on a forced exhumation.” And she could never make a legal case for one. “But if that’s the only way to . . .” Mallory let the words trail off, as if she might be unwilling to even speak of this act of last resort. She left it to him to imagine the state brutalizing a grief-stricken mother and father, leaving them powerless, crying at the graveside. “It’s better if this is the parents’ decision. Tell them it could save the other boy.”

  Now she had him. His eyes turned sad, as if he already stood with the parents beside the open grave of their mutilated son. He nodded. “I’ll speak to them.”

  “I’ll drive you over there.” She was not inclined to lose time waiting for this very gentle man to brace himself for the ordeal ahead. He could do that in the car.

  —

  SAD PEOPLE WALKED DOWN this q
uiet New Jersey street of shade trees, green lawns and single-family houses. They carried covered dishes of kosher food for the parents of the dead boy and those who came to call on them. By custom coupled with heartbreak, Mr. and Mrs. Phelps could not fend for themselves while sitting shiva for their only child.

  Mallory waited outside in her personal car, adhering to Rabbi Kaplan’s orders. Every word spoken in that house of grief must be softly said and kind. Apparently, he found her incapable of that.

  The screen door flew open with such force its frame bounced off the wall of the front porch. A woman came flying out of the house, her feet only lighting on every other step before she hit the walkway on the run. Barefoot. Her hair in wild tangles. This could only be Mrs. Phelps—wearing a mother’s raw anguish. Every cop knew it on sight.

  The woman’s mouth hung open. Her eyes had the dark circles of no sleep. Swiping tears away did her no good. Her face was awash in fresh rivers. And blinded this way, she stumbled, slamming one knee into the silver convertible’s door. She gripped the edge of the ragtop roof, steadying herself, staring at the cop inside the car. Mrs. Phelps’s lips worked in dumb show, only strangled sobs for words, her features contorted in pain. The rabbi came out of the house to walk up behind her and gently place one hand on her shoulder. She shook him off. Her mouth was still opening and closing, as she struggled so hard to find her voice. Fists tightening. Frustration mounting. Now she banged on the side of the car, once, twice, three times. And she said to Mallory, screamed at her, “You find that little boy! You find Jonah! You bring him home to his family!”

  —

  DAVID KAPLAN took his place in the passenger seat and handed over the consent form signed by the parents. He shook his head to warn Kathy, to tell that she should know better than to thank him for his part in this.

  They drove to the cemetery in silence. He noticed that she was abiding by the speed limit, her only sign of contrition.

  The ugly machine for unearthing a child was waiting for them at the grave. Kathy was first to leave the vehicle, and she gave a thumbs-up to the backhoe’s operator. The engine was loud, and birds made their own fearful sounds, rising en masse from branches of every tree.

  The rabbi was slow to approach. He had given certain assurances to the family, and now he had promises to keep. And so he must watch this horror unfold in its noisy mechanical way. At one end of the backhoe’s long neck, an iron bucket with monstrous teeth was lowered to the earth for a first bite.

  —

  DWAYNE BROX had declined the option of going to the NYPD safe house, which was probably some low-rent hotel room with cops and bedbugs for roommates. No, thank you. He had opted for the comforts of his own apartment.

  Detective Janos asked, “Did you hear me?”

  Dwayne felt no need to respond. Could this fool not see that he was busy? He continued to work his remote control, surfing TV channels.

  The detective walked up to the wall-mounted television set and turned it off the old-fashioned way. He ripped the plug from its socket, saying, “Listen up.” The big man’s voice was soft, but his patience was waning. He began again, explaining that the police officers posted in the building were there for Dwayne’s protection. They were not jailing him here. They were guarding him. “You got that? The entrances are covered, and we’ll have a cop sitting outside in the hall.” Janos locked the balcony doors, and then he pulled the cord to close the draperies. “Stay away from all the windows, okay?”

  —

  THE UNEARTHED COFFIN was opened by a local medical examiner. The state of New Jersey required a pathologist to witness every desecration of a grave.

  Mallory had everything she wanted. The dead child’s small body had been cut open. Ribs broken. Heart stolen.

  The small casket was loaded into a waiting van, and Rabbi Kaplan climbed in beside it. He had promised the mother that her son would never be alone, that he would remain with the dead boy until the body was returned to the earth. Before that could happen, the corpse must first undergo the formal gathering of evidence for the crime committed here.

  Mallory raised the hand that held her car keys. “I’ll pick you up at the—”

  “I’ll find my own way back,” said the rabbi.

  Understood. No offense taken.

  This day had cost each of them something. And David Kaplan was still paying for it. He was to be the unwilling observer of an autopsy on Mrs. Phelps’s little boy.

  She knew that scene was going to destroy the rabbi.

  And he was going to forgive her—in time.

  —

  INSIDE THE WORKROOM behind the garage’s false wall, Iggy Conroy stood before an open locker jammed with useful clothes. Most of these outfits had patches with logos to fit the jobs of menials, invisible people. Witnesses would only recall the designations of delivery guys and movers, repairmen and utility workers. He pulled out a hanger holding a gray coverall and packed it in his duffel bag. It would fit with the magnetic sign he had slapped on the side of his van. He planned to drive back to the city as a cable repairman.

  What else? He would also need a police uniform. He searched the hangers on the rack. Where was it? He ripped out every article of clothing and flung it, hanger by hanger, at the wall. What had he done with the damn thing?

  Ah, wait. Months ago, he had wrecked the only one he owned. Yeah. That was why he had taken down a cop on the night he dumped those bodies at Gracie Mansion. And that cop’s stolen uniform had gone into the river.

  How the hell could he have forgotten a thing like that?

  Iggy heard the distant howl of the dog in the basement. This was no warning bark, but a wail trailing off in a moan. The mutt was hungry. He had forgotten to feed the damn dog. And the boy—he had forgotten about him altogether. And what else? WHAT ELSE?

  He sank down to the floor, hands covering his eyes and then tightening into fists. Everything was falling apart. He had screwed up so bad. He was down to playing a brainless game of whack-a-mole with the loose ends. His fists hit the floor, drumming, banging.

  Done.

  No more anger now. No feeling at all.

  —

  ACRES OF GREEN HILLS sloped down to valleys cut by pathways of white gravel. Some of the dead resided in small but grand stone houses, and others had graves adorned with marble statues.

  “People come from all over the state,” said the wiry gray-haired man. “We’re famous. We got two rock stars buried here. But me, I never heard of ’em. Anyway, the place is huge.” The cemetery groundskeeper looked down at the drawing in his gnarly hands. “Well, this could be anybody.” He looked up at the detective. “Between the visitors and the funeral crowds, you know how many people I seen come through here?”

  He opened the door to a small outlying building. Mallory followed him inside to see the promised array of surveillance monitors.

  “This ain’t the first case of vandalism, but nobody ever robbed a casket before. We had the cameras installed a few years back after somebody ripped off the stained-glass window in a mausoleum. You know what those things cost? The cops caught the guy—a building contractor two towns over. You’re flat outta luck if your guy dug up that kid’s body in the dark. Every rotten thing happens at night, but we got no infrared cameras.”

  “And no digital storage.” Mallory was picking through shelves of cassette tapes that belonged to another era, all labeled by date and cemetery section.

  “Well, this stuff’s old. That’s why they got it so cheap. I been here through three generations of Elroys, all penny-pinching bastards.” He watched her hand graze the labels of last night’s tapes. “You won’t see much. No pictures of the grave robber, not even the grave. Cameras don’t cover everything. In the daylight shots, we only got pictures for a few of the mourners.”

  She already knew the hit man would not be there. The locations of the security cameras were t
oo easy to spot.

  “Sorry, Miss. I thought Bobby was in here. Must be slackin’ off somewhere. The kid’s my assistant. He’s the one who works all this crap.”

  “I know how it works.” She pulled out cassettes that had been switched out in the early daylight hours before the funeral. Maybe the killer had been here checking markers, looking for dates of a fresh corpse, and he might have seen the backhoe digging a child-size grave before the funeral.

  The groundskeeper was taking a second hard look at the suspect drawing, holding it to the light of a window as he squinted and rubbed his chin. “Most of it don’t match, but there’s somethin’ about the eyes. We got a regular visitor here. When I see him, I never look him in the eye no more. Makes my skin crawl. You know what I mean?” The old man walked to the shelves and pulled down a tape. Handing it to her, he said, “Try this one. It’s his regular day, and he always passes this building. No way around it if you park in the lot. Always goes by with a big bouquet of roses.”

  “Red roses?”

  “Yeah.”

  She flipped a power switch, then fed the tape into the mouth of the machine and pressed the play button for the center monitor. The camera range was narrow. In the mistaken assumption that the electronic equipment might have some value, only this small building was covered. And now she saw the back of a man with a blue baseball cap and a bouquet of roses.

  “That’s my guy,” said the groundskeeper. “The cap, the walk—that’s him. You won’t never see his face. Sorry ’bout that. No camera ever caught him on the way back to the parking lot.”

  “I don’t suppose you ever followed him.”

  “Never, not that guy.”

  And she took this last remark as a positive ID for a stone killer.

  —

  THE VISITOR with the blue baseball cap had appeared in two other tapes, but only the back of him. One that captured him without his roses gave Mallory a rough idea of where he had been. The grave of the Phelps boy provided a direction, and beyond that, an absence of security cameras gave her a path through an old section, closed now for lack of room to fit one more headstone. Visitors were not so common here. In company with the groundskeeper, she had found six plots with red roses among the floral offerings. Half were ruled out for flowers too fresh or too wilted to fit the timing of the hit man’s last bouquet.