by Blake Banner
She wielded the spatula with dazzling skill and slipped two eggs onto each plate as though it was easy. “I’m not going to tell you because then we’ll get all mushy and we’ll have to go upstairs and shower again. Put these on the table.”
I carried the plates to the table with a self-satisfied saunter and a slightly foolish grin on my face. I sat and as I reached out to pour the coffee I felt her breath and her lips on my ear as she whispered in a husky growl, “Why d’you think I did it, dumbass?”
We were rescued from having to rush back to the shower by the jangling of my cell phone.
“Stone,” I croaked. She grinned and sat.
“Good morning John, it’s John here.”
I frowned, then my head cleared. “Oh, Inspector, good morning.”
“Good morning. I’m sorry to call so early. I’m probably interrupting your breakfast. Look, I have a letter here, maybe nothing but you never know, do you…?”
I waited. He waited. I said, “No, Inspector, I guess you don’t. What is the letter about?”
“The Westchester Angel.”
I groped my way through the fog of coffee, bacon and Dehan toward a dim glimmer of recollection. “Jane Doe, spring 2016, they found her body by the Westchester Creek. Raped and strangled.”
Dehan was chewing, watching me with narrowed eyes, nodding slowly. Inspector Newman continued. “Probably raped, that’s the one. Indeed. The writer claims to have information relevant to the case, and as the case has gone cold I thought perhaps you would like to talk to him.”
“Sure, of course. Give me his number. We’ll give him a call and drop by…”
“Well here’s the thing. I’ve made an appointment for you to go and see him, this morning at nine, hence the early call.”
“An appointment…”
I frowned. Dehan frowned in sympathy, sipping black coffee from her white cup.
“Yes, he’s at Rikers, serving five years for possession of cocaine. His name is Wayne Harris. You can collect the file on your way. It’s waiting on your desk.”
“Thank you, sir…”
“See me when you get back. Let me know what he says.”
“Yes, sir, we’ll do that, as soon as we get back.”
“Good. Nice talking to you. Enjoy your breakfast, John. And, uh, catch you later!”
I could hear the smile in his voice. I said, “Yes, sir, catch you later too…” But he’d already hung up.
* * *
It is a pretty roundabout route to Rikers Island from Morris Park, involving Randalls Island, the Robert F Kennedy bridge twice over water, and the Francis R Buono Memorial bridge just once. On the way we collected the file on the Westchester Angel case and Dehan read out loud while I drove. She had the window down and the late May sun bathed her face as she raised her voice above the battering air and the growl of the Jaguar.
“Exactly a year ago, almost to the day. Monday 16th May, 2016 a body was found on an area of wasteland that runs for about half a mile along the west bank of the Westchester Creek. It was spotted by an employee at the quarry opposite the Fedex depot, who called 911.”
I frowned. “Where was the body?”
She studied the file a minute, holding the pages between her fingers like a cigarette, to stop them flapping. After a moment she said, “Yeah. Zerega Avenue?” She glanced at me and I nodded. “You got the Fedex depot, the Golden Mango warehouse and the quarry. There’s a big patch of trees and rocks right on the river. She was down there.” She carried on reading aloud. “Time of death was impossible to establish, as always. She’d been lying out in the open by the side of the river and lividity was advanced, though decay was still only in the initial stages. It was estimated that death occurred at some time between Saturday afternoon when the guys from the quarry would likely have spotted her if she had been there, and the small hours of Sunday night to Monday morning.”
We were crossing the first portion of the Robert F Kennedy Bridge onto Randalls Island. I asked, “Cause of death was strangulation, right?”
She nodded, chewing her lip. “Mm-hm. She had some bruising to the face, especially the mouth, consistent with having been slapped hard or punched. ME suggested whoever hit her was big, or at least had large hands. Her wrists had been bound very tight with a silk handkerchief…” She looked at the photos and made a face. “But not like you’d expect. It was more like the old-fashioned cuffs. Like,” she held out her wrists to demonstrate. “…he tied one wrist tight, then left some slack and tied the other wrist, so there was some play. Like he wanted her hands to have a certain amount of freedom.” She shrugged. “Cause of death was strangulation. There was extensive bruising to the neck, the windpipe had been severely crushed and the pattern of the bruises suggested that was done with the thumbs. No prints were recovered, so the killer probably used gloves.”
My frown deepened as we passed over the sports fields and began to cross the water toward Astoria Park. “How was she lying?”
“Face down, half in the water. Post mortem found that she’d had sex, so she may have been raped, premortem, perimortem or postmortem. The semen was too decayed to provide a DNA profile.”
I grunted. “Odd.”
“What is?” Before I could answer, she said, “If she was raped Saturday night, say eight or nine o’clock, she could have been lying there about forty-eight hours, half in the water. The semen could well have decayed in that time.”
I nodded, but I didn’t say anything.
We crossed the long bridge over almost a mile of water, and she read me the last part of the file, about why Detective Ibanez had not been able to close the case. The victim had had no purse, no driver’s license, no ID on her. There were no witnesses and her DNA and prints had got no hits on CODIS or IAFIS. All they had was the fact that she was Hispanic, in her early to mid twenties and had a rather beautiful, expensive crucifix around her neck, inscribed with the name Angela on the back. Her clothes—a white blouse and a gray skirt—were good quality but modest and demure. The two latter facts had earned her the name the Angel of Westchester Creek in the more sensationalist press.
Three quarters of an hour later we were sitting in an interview room looking at the photos of the crime scene while we waited for Wayne Harris to be brought in. “I need to see it,” I said.
Dehan nodded. “There are a couple of things I don’t get…”
I agreed, but before I could say so there was a loud clang and the steel door rolled back. Two uniformed guards led in a tall man in an orange jumpsuit. He had the look and build of a quarterback: about six foot five, and I estimated his weight at about two hundred and thirty or forty pounds of solid muscle. He had a face that looked hard and solid too, with short hair, a square, raw concrete jaw and a small, thin, cruel mouth that seemed permanently fixed in a thin, cruel smile. He had small, pale blue eyes which he used now to observe Dehan as though he was calculating her size, weight and intelligence.
The guards sat him in the chair opposite us and cuffed him to a metal ring on the table. One of them, a beefy black guy with humorous eyes said, “If he gives you any trouble, you jess shout. We’re right outside.”
I thanked him, they strolled out and clanged the door shut behind them. Wayne didn’t look at me. He kept his eyes on Dehan. When he spoke it was like sandpaper being dragged over twenty years’ accumulated deposits of hardened nicotine in his throat.
“It’s sure nice to talk to somebody who ain’t a con. You ain’t a con, are you, Detective?”
I said, “I’m Detective Stone, this is Detective Dehan. We’re from the cold cases unit at the 43rd Precinct. I was told you had some information for us.”
He kept staring at Dehan, smiling, then slowly shifted his gaze to look at me. “Well that all depends, Detective Stone of the 43rd Precinct. See, we are in the age of the Information Revolution. That may be something you don’t fully appreciate, on account of your age. But Detective Dehan here, I figure she is closer to my age. Am I right, Detective Deha
n? I figure maybe you will have a better understanding of what I am talking about. Information is where it’s at. It’s the name of the game.”
Dehan raised an eyebrow at him that could have sliced the balls off a brass monkey.
I smiled and said, “If you’re looking to sell information, Wayne, however old I may be, you need to talk to me. I run the cold cases Unit.”
He still didn’t look at me. He frowned and smiled simultaneously at Dehan and said, “Ouch! Male chauvinism strikes again. The white male still running the show, huh?”
I stood. “When you’re ready to talk to me, Wayne, call the precinct. Right now you’ve got time to waste, we haven’t.”
Dehan stood.
Wayne sighed. “Take it easy man! Take some time out from being you, we’d all be grateful.” He grinned. “You feel me? Know what I’m sayin’?”
I waited, watching him. “Have you got something for me?”
“Yeah, man! Siddown, I got something for you.”
I sat. Dehan went and stood in the corner, behind me, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed. I smiled to myself. She knew he wanted to play games with her, so she’d gone where she could observe him without distracting him. Now he was looking for her with his eyes.
I said, “You know something about the Westchester Creek murder in May, 2016?”
He looked pained and gestured toward Dehan. “C’mon man. She don’t have to go away.”
I leaned forward. “OK, Wayne, this is your second warning. There won’t be another. I think you’re bored and you want to play games, and you know exactly squat about the Westchester Angel. Now you had better start talking as soon as I draw breath or we are out of here and you will not see us again. Start talking now.”
“OK! OK! OK… Man! Heavy or what?”
I stood.
“I’m talking already! I was there! I saw the whole damn thing go down. I watched it! All right?”
I sat. “No. You’re lying.”
“I ain’t lying! I was there, man.”
“Prove it. I’m out of patience, Wayne. You need to keep me here and I am walking…”
“I was near the bushes, lyin’ there just minding my own business, watchin’ the stars, smokin’ some weed, you know? And I hear this noise, like people strugglin’, and I look over and I see this dude comin’ down from the road, where there is a gate in the fence, and he has a chick with him and he is pushing her in front of him.”
“Why didn’t she scream?”
He started to laugh. “Well, I didn’t ask her, Detective Stone Cold. I didn’t think I was invited to that particular party. You feel me? But I think—and you know it was kind of hard to see in that light, at that time of night—I think she had a gag in her mouth.”
“What time was this?”
“Now, let me see, you’re gettin’ very particular and maybe my memory needs refreshing…”
I stood. “You’re full of shit, Wayne.”
“Ten or ten thirty Saturday night! Man! Don’t you ever let up? All I’m askin’ for is a little two way reciprocity, dude.”
“Give me something I don’t know, then we’ll talk about reciprocity.”
“I’m settin’ the scene. Chill. So he takes her down, where it’s kind’a like a beach. You been there?”
I nodded.
“It kind’a levels off toward the water, and there’s grass and it’s a bit soft there, so you can lay down. And he throws her down on her back, he pushes up her skirt and he rides that baby. Man! And he’s tellin’ her to hold him. Weirdest fuckin’ thing I ever saw. ’Cause she’s got her hands tied, right? And he’s kissin’ her like crazy, and when he comes up for air he’s sayin’, like, ‘Hold me, bitch! Hold me!’ And she can’t say nothin’ back because he’s in this kind of frenzy, kissin’ her and stranglin’ her at the same time. When he’s done, he pulls up his pants, and he starts to drag her toward the water. I guess he’s figurin’ on dumpin’ her in the river. But just at that very moment…” He leaned back in his chair and started to wheeze with laughter. “You would not believe it, man! I mean, what are the chances, right? That is the very moment a Harbor Patrol boat chooses to just cruise on by. You should have seen that guy hightail it out of there. Man… he was like a dog with a jalapeno pepper up his ass!”
I thought about it for a moment. “Did you get a good look at him?”
He made an exaggerated grimace, sucked his teeth and drew a deep breath. “Well now, Detective Stone Cold, here’s how I figure it. I have given you enough that you know I was there. And you know I saw what I saw. Now, I have smoked a lot of dope in my time, and I have snorted a lot of coke, and you know how it goes. That shit can affect a man’s memory. Not so much that he forgets things for ever! You feel me? But just so much that he needs a bit of stimulation for his memory. Am I wrong?”
I sighed. “What do you want?”
He wheezed his unpleasant laugh again. “Man… man! I have spent my whole life askin’ myself that, and I still don’t know. What do you want, Wayne? The sweet lips of a beautiful woman, the taste of a fine cigar that has been rolled on the thigh of a Cubana…” He leaned forward across the table. “A cup of real coffee, man, so many things. Where do I begin to tell you, man, what I want when I have lost my freedom?”
I sighed, like I was really bored, put my hands on the table and went to stand. “Well, Wayne, what can I tell you? If you won’t tell me what you want, then we can’t make a deal.”
“OK, OK, OK… You get me out of here, man. I can’t be in here. This place is full of dudes who need to be in here. You know what I’m sayin’? Like, they want to be in here. It’s like some weird shit, unconscious drive to be in prison and, like, controlled! But I ain’t like that. I need to be outside. I am a free spirit. You get what I’m sayin’ to you?”
I shook my head. “I can’t get you out of jail, Wayne. You were found guilty of being in possession of cocaine. You have to do your time. It’s the law.”
“You can’t get me out of jail, but you know a man who can. Am I wrong? You can make it happen, Detective Stone Cold. Don’t tell me you can’t, because I know you can.”
I shook my head again and stood. “To do that I would need a lot more than a description of the crime scene, Wayne. You haven’t told me anything I didn’t already know…”
He smiled and interrupted me. “But I told you enough that you know I was there and I saw it go down. Think about it, Detective Stone Cold. Think about it and we are gonna talk again.”
“Goodbye, Wayne.”
“Goodbye, Detective Stone Cold.” He leered at Dehan. “I’ll catch you down the road, Detective Dehan.”
Ten minutes later we climbed into my Jaguar—an original right-hand drive, burgundy, 1964 Mark II, with spoke wheels—and rolled down the windows to let in the sun. Dehan stared at me and I stared out the windshield.
She said, “I think he’s full of crap.”
I nodded several times, then turned the key in the ignition and fired up the big engine. As we pulled out and started the long drive across the dark water, I said, “I want to have a look at the place. I also want to have a look at what the press said about the murder, what details we released to them. We should talk to Ibanez, too.”
She raised her aviators up like a medieval visor and squinted at me, frowning. “He said something that caught your attention. He said something you want to check against what the press reported, because you think only somebody at the scene could have known it.”
I laughed. “You asking or telling?”
“Both. I’m asking but I know I’m right. What was it? What did he say?”
“You remember I said something was curious, and you thought I meant the decay of the semen?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I didn’t. What struck me as curious was the fact that he had crushed her windpipe with his thumbs. But she was lying face down.”
She made a face and nodded. “So he was trying to move her.”
“R
ight. The report you read made no mention of that. So I want to know if the papers or the TV did. Because if they didn’t…”
She was nodding. “He did. He said the killer tried to move the body into the river, then ran when the Harbor Patrol came by.”
“Yup. So we need to pull up the reporting from the time. Because if he was there, either he saw who did it, or…”
I looked at her and she said, “Or he did it.”
TWO
We found a space to park outside the Golden Mango Supermarket on Havermeyer Avenue and walked the short distance to Zerega, which runs along beside the creek. There is a stretch between the quarry and the Fedex Depot, about a hundred and forty yards or so, where the road borders the riverbank, separated only by an ugly fence made of steel tubing and wire mesh, about eight feet high. It serves little purpose, other than to make a place that should have been beautiful even uglier than it had already become: it was both easy to scale and easy to cut through.
Dehan touched my arm and pointed. “There’s a gate over there. It’s open.”
I followed her over and examined the gate. There were scratches that suggested it had once been secured by a chain and a padlock, but both were long gone. Dehan pushed the gate further open and we squeezed through into a miniature jungle of tall grasses, weeds, ferns, bushes, maples, and oak trees. I stood a moment, absorbing the scene. Dehan pushed farther in, following what might have been once a beaten path, taking big, arching steps over weeds and nettles with her long legs. She had the file with her.
I called out, “I think the body was down there.” She turned to look at me and I pointed to the right. “There should be an inlet down there, with a rocky beach, and a grassy lip, like a small mound.”
She nodded and started picking her way to the right a bit. I followed and we came out onto a sloping bank of mixed rocks, sand and moss that descended steeply for about eight or nine feet to a small knoll, roughly oval, about twelve or fifteen feet long and six or seven feet across at its widest point. It was surrounded on three sides by tall grass and shrubs, but on the far side it sloped gradually down to a rocky inlet in the river. Dehan pulled out the pictures of the crime scene. “That’s it, there,” she said, and we scrambled down to the knoll.
