by Blake Banner
“Once, you told me I ought to think with my gut sometimes.”
I glanced at her. “I must have been hungry.”
“So here is what my gut is telling me right now. You want to hear?”
I nodded and kept watching the autumn.
“My gut tells me she was telling the truth about the insurance. You know why?”
“No.”
“It was a rhetorical question, Stone. Just keep driving and let me talk.”
“Okay.”
“Because Sylvie Martin is the kind of woman who is always going to look for a domineering, controlling man to fix her problems. She married Simon and gravitated to Paul Truelove…”
I pulled the corners of my mouth down and danced my head around in a ‘you could be onto something’ way.
“But!” She raised her index finger. “My gut also tells me that she remembers exactly what happened that night eighteen years ago.”
I nodded in a more conventional fashion. “My gut agrees with your gut.”
I turned onto Tremont, headed east.
“So,” she said, “let’s take baby steps. Let’s state the obvious, one small step at a time: If she remembers what happened, that means she knows who the killer is.”
“Almost certainly.”
She turned in her seat to face me. “Okay, you’re right. But then we have two options: either she knows, or she doesn’t know because she didn’t get a good look for one reason or another. Maybe he was wearing a balaclava, or it happened too fast and he had his back to her. But, if that is the case, then why the hell won’t she talk? The only reason she would deliberately pretend to have amnesia is to conceal the identity of the killer.”
I looked at her. “Yes, that is very solid reasoning.”
She shrugged and spread her hands. “I can’t think of another reason. Can you?”
“No. And I agree with you in your choice of words. You said ‘conceal’, not ‘protect.’” Then I sighed and shook my head. “But we are talking about intuition here, Dehan, which has practically no value. My gut tells me, as yours tells you, she is concealing the identity of the killer. It also tells me that she is not protecting him. How does that make sense? It doesn’t. And unless we get some compelling evidence, all we have is verbose guts.”
“Verbose guts?”
“You heard me right.”
I turned into Silver Street and headed up Eastchester under the railway bridge and finally turned left at Morris Park and right onto Seminole Avenue. All the way we were silent. Maybe we were both listening to our verbose guts.
We found Frank in the small office annexed to his lab. He rose as we walked in.
“I don’t know what you are hoping for, John. It is in the nature of these cold cases that the original investigating officer hadn’t much to go on.” He shrugged and smiled without much conviction. “That is why they went cold.”
“I know. But sometimes things get overlooked. I am interested in the wound on his body.”
“Why?”
I drew breath but Dehan smirked and said, “He’s going to say, ‘what is it about the wound that interests me?’” She grinned at me. “You were going to say that, weren’t you?” She turned back to Frank. “He has this theory about how ‘why’ is a bad question. It works, too. So here’s the thing. There are two stab wounds right through the sternum. That in itself is odd, right? Who stabs through the sternum? So is there anything else you can tell us about the wounds that are interesting or unusual? Because the nature of the wounds is about all we have got right now to tell us anything about the killer.”
We both stared at her. Frank blinked and said, “Okay. Come.”
He picked up the Martin file and led us toward a projector on a bench. He switched it on and slid a photograph of Simon Martin’s punctured chest into it. It magnified the image and he pointed at the edges of the wound with the tip of his pen.
“I have read Mioko’s notes and I agree with her conclusions. See how the lower edges of the puncture are smooth and taper into a kind of narrow ‘V’ shape? Well, look now at the upper edge. There the skin is irregular and torn in a jagged pattern. Also note how the sides of the wound, about half way up, are quite broad, giving it an elongated oval shape. All of this suggests that what we are looking at here is a broad-bladed bowie knife, serrated on the back side.” He frowned at Dehan a moment. “You know the sort of thing, a survival knife, probably has a compass in the hilt.”
“I know the sort of thing.”
“Both stab wounds are very deep and quite close together, and both seem to kind of hook down, if you know what I mean. They enter the chest at the height of the second intercostals, and then penetrate downward at a slight angle into the heart.”
I frowned, trying to visualize how the blow would be delivered. He saw my face and elaborated.
“It means one of two things, John. Either the blows were delivered overhand, in an arching motion, like so…” He demonstrated, holding his pen as though it were a lance, stabbing down at my chest. “Which presents certain problems. First of all, it is a very incompetent way to stab anybody, and practically nobody uses that method outside of black and white movies. But secondly, and more to the point, the angle it gives us is too acute. It penetrates the chest at a hundred and thirty-five degrees, and what we are looking for is more like a hundred degrees. Just past the dead-straight ninety degree angle.”
Dehan scratched her head. “So what is the other thing it might mean?”
He spread his hands. “Unless we say that it was delivered by a very tall man, lunging with the knife as though he were fencing…” He paused to demonstrate. “In which case he would have to be a very strong, heavy man indeed to penetrate the sternum, I think our only other realistic scenario is that our victim is lying on his back, our killer straddles him, and using all the force of his weight, plunges the knife into his chest, in a kind of frenzy. Then we get the angle and the penetration that occured.”
I scratched my chin. “A frenzy. But it’s odd, isn’t it? Hate frenzies usually result in ten, twenty, thirty, even more stab wounds. This is just two. Bam, bam and we’re done.”
He nodded. “This is not that kind of frenzy. We had an abusive husband last month. He tormented his wife for years. Then one day, she snapped and stabbed him fifty times, over every inch of his body. No, this is not hatred. I would say this was more like fear. He was in a hurry to kill him and get out of there.”
He switched the photograph and adjusted the focus and resolution. It showed the left side of Martin’s ribcage. There was a large discoloration over his floating ribs. Then, he slid the lens up to his jaw, where there was another, and it had similar discoloration.
“These are the only bruises on his body. He has been hit twice in rapid succession with the right fist. He has fallen to the ground and immediately his assailant jumped on him, in a panic, plunged the knife twice into his chest, and fled.”
Dehan asked the question that was on my mind. “Could a woman have done this?”
His face said he didn’t like the idea. “A strong woman, using something other than her fist to strike the blows to his chest and jaw.”
“So what you are suggesting here is a burglary gone wrong.”
He wagged a finger at her. “I am suggesting nothing of the sort, young Dehan. It would certainly be consistent with a burglary gone wrong. But suggesting is for you and your partner, not me.”
She looked at me, narrowing her eyes in frustration. “Why the hell would she want to conceal the identity of a burglar?” She held up her hands. “I know! Maybe it wasn’t a burglar, maybe it was a lover. Maybe Simon walked in on her while she was shagging the reverend, but why the hell would she be shagging the reverend at the time she knew her husband was about to come home? And, who the hell takes a bowie knife along to a lovers’ rendezvous?”
I nodded.
Frank shrugged. “Those are all good questions. What struck me as particularly interesting, though…” He res
ted his ass against the bench and wagged his pen at us. “Was both the similarities and the contrasts with the son’s murder.”
We stared at him and he looked at us in turn. I said, “What?”
“The son. Jacob Martin. I assumed you knew. I thought you wanted me to look at both. You didn’t know?”
Dehan was shaking her head. “She had a son? Who was stabbed to death? What the fuck?”
He frowned. “Sylvie Martin’s son, Jacob. She was pregnant at the time her husband was killed. He was murdered fifteen years later, in surprisingly similar circumstances. Only the weapon was a little different. I assumed you knew.”
ELEVEN
We went back to his office and as I sat he handed me the file. Dehan sat next to me. Frank spoke as we leafed through the pages together.
“It was two years ago. Like the dad’s murder, it was never solved. It must be filed in your own cold cases. What I can tell you is that he was found pretty much where his father was found, at the bottom of the stairs, lying on his back, and he had been stabbed in the heart, not twice, but six times. However, the stab wounds were perimortem. There was very little bleeding. Other injuries, such as bruising and a broken neck, suggested that he might have fallen—or been pushed—down the stairs. The broken neck almost certainly killed him and he was stabbed during death or immediately after.”
“This,” I said, tossing the file on the desk, “was a hate frenzy.”
“Indeed.”
Dehan put her fingertips to her forehead and closed her eyes, like she was trying really hard to understand something. “Why…” She held up her hands to me. “Sorry, what, would make Sylvie Martin not tell us about her son? And what the hell would make the reverend not mention it either? This is a conspiracy of silence. There is no two ways about it.”
I nodded. “I agree. It just isn’t conceivable. You do not simply omit to mention something like this.” I frowned. “Why the hell wasn’t it flagged and cross-referenced?”
Frank shrugged. “For us it was. But you’re talking about an eighteen-year-old cold case and from the Bronx, what’s more. Computerizing and cross-referencing requires money and manpower, two commodities I’m guessing the 43rd is short on.”
I made to stand. “You got that right, Frank.” I paused. “The weapon the boy was killed with…”
“My best guess, a large kitchen knife. One down from the cleaver with a very solid blade, and very, very sharp.”
Back at the station, I dug out the Jacob Martin file and set about studying it, while Dehan started plowing through burglaries in the East Bronx area during the last six months of 1999, a task which gave a whole new meaning to the phrase, ‘can’t see the wood for the trees.’
Jacob had been almost fifteen and a half when he was killed. He’d been found by his mother, lying at the bottom of the stairs, in a similar position to that of her husband. On where her husband had been stabbed twice, Jacob’s chest was riddled with deep stab wounds. He’d had several fractured ribs, a broken wrist, multiple bruises, and a broken neck. The number of injuries, and the degree of severity, were consistent with having been propelled down the stairs with some serious force.
The murder weapon was not found, despite a search of the house, the garden, and the gardens and trash cans of the neighborhood. There was no knife missing from the Martins’ block, and lab analysis of the knives in the block revealed no blood residue—other than pork and beef.
As before, the locks had not been forced. Sylvie and Mary had been at a church fête at the time, and Sylvie had found Jacob’s body on returning home. The date of the murder had been the fifth of September, 2015.
It could not be a coincidence.
I threw the file on the desk and went to get coffee. I felt unreasonably angry. Half way there, I turned back and walked up to Dehan, who was engrossed in her laptop and making notes on a pad.
“You want coffee?”
“Thanks.”
I stalked back to the machine and got two cups of the oh so lovely black liquid. I carried them back and put one next to her.
“You’re not going to find anything. It’s a pointless exercise. There is no way these two murders are a coincidence.”
“Mm-hm.”
“You know what date he was killed?”
She glanced at me, said nothing, and carried on making notes.
“Fifth of September.”
“Huh!”
I sighed and rubbed my face. I looked at her and noticed she had tied her hair in a knot behind her head, then wondered why I would notice that. It made her neck look nice. I sighed.
“You seeing your uncle again tonight?”
She narrowed her eyes at me and carried on making notes.
I persisted, trying to talk the irritation I was feeling out of my system. “You want to come over? We’ll throw some steaks on the barbeque and see if we can work this damn thing out.”
“I can’t.”
I nodded. “Oh. What’s stopping you?”
“My uncle. He wants me to go over and visit.”
“Cool. Good. Enjoy. How you getting on?”
She ignored me for three or four minutes, then flopped back in her chair and picked up her notebook.
“Okay, this was like looking for a very particular piece of hay in a haystack. But I managed to sift and filter out the irrelevant and came up with this, which might be significant.”
“Hit me with it.”
“Mention my uncle again and I might.” She glared at me for a second and continued. “Okay, so in the period January to December, 1999, we have a spate of burglaries in the area between Bronxdale Avenue in the west, Lurting Avenue in the east, Van Nest in the north and Sacket in the south…”
“East Bronx.”
“Pretty much.”
I shrugged. “But we get that every year. It’s called living in the Bronx.”
“Shut up, don’t be a smart ass right now.”
“Okay.”
“The particular burglaries I am talking about were all confessed to by one guy. His thefts were always pretty neat. He was a locksmith. He would pick the locks, leaving practically no trace. He would choose times when there is nobody at home and leaves no trace of his having been there, except a couple of times he left the back door open, probably because he left in a hurry and didn’t want to make a noise.” She raised a finger to stop me talking. “Now, interesting point is, there are no reported cases of violence in any of these burglaries. Except, he was caught because in the last case, the house owner came home early. Our guy attacked him with a knife, but the owner was a huge guy and a martial arts instructor, so he absolutely decked him. Our boy is Julio Beltran, El Chato, who, though never convicted, is suspected of several crimes involving violence and knife attacks. He is a known member of the Sureños.”
She dropped the pad on the desk and studied my face. I shook my head. “What would make Sylvie Martin lie to conceal El Chato’s identity? It doesn’t make any sense. Where is he now?”
“He did time. Now he seems to be going straight. Runs his own business, Key Solutions, a locksmith shop, surprisingly enough.”
“Was he out two years ago?”
She nodded. “Yup.”
I scowled and said, “Great!”
She made a face of reluctance. “I’m sorry.”
I laughed without mirth. “It’s not your fault.”
“No. I mean I’m sorry I can’t come over for the barbeque.”
I waved a hand at her. “Ah, no sweat. I’m glad you’re having fun.”
She sighed noisily through her nose. It may have been a suppressed snarl. “You want to go see him?”
I stood. “Why not?”
El Chato had his premises on the corner of Rhineland Avenue and White Plains Road. It was a narrow, three story building painted an obnoxious bright yellow, with the living accommodation upstairs and the shop on the ground floor.
The front door was mainly glass and plywood, with flaking, desiccated varnish
peeling off like dandruff on a balding scalp. As I pushed it open an electronic notifier mocked us with an ‘ee-oh’ sound, and another as it closed. Behind the counter, a big Mexican in his mid to late thirties stood up from a workbench to look at us. I glanced around. He sold belts and boot polish, fixed shoes and handbags, and also made keys. You could tell by his expression that he knew who we were. He leaned his elbows on the counter and said, “I know you don’t just want duplicates for your keys.”
We showed him our badges. “I’m Detective Stone, this is Detective Dehan. Are you Julio Beltran?”
“Yup.” He had the expression of a man who has stopped wincing because he knows the blow is coming anyway. “What can I do for you, Detectives?”
“We’re just looking for some information. Back in 1999, you did a series of jobs in East Bronx.”
He nodded. “For which I served my time, attended my courses, and have stayed out of trouble ever since.”
Dehan said, “We are not questioning that, Julio. But ’round that time, in September, there was a break-in on Bogart Avenue. You know anything about that?”
He pulled a face and shook his head. “Nothin’ to do with me.” He straightened up. “When they caught me, that guy almost killed me. He broke my jaw, four ribs, an’ my right elbow.” He pointed at Dehan. “Best thing that ever happen to me. That guy’s name is Gunnar Olafsen. An’ he is now my best friend, and my sensei. You know that?”
I sighed. “That is very touching.”
“No, I’m serious, man. He scared the shit out of me. I thought I was gonna die that night, but he knew when to stop. See what I mean? That’s what I learnt. Know when to stop. Then he called the ambulance an’ the cops. An’ after that he used to come and visit me in the jail. He talked to me. He convinced me to make a new start. I owe that guy my life. Two times over at that. So what I’m tellin’ you. I came clean. I told the cops everythin’. Clean slate.”
Dehan raised an eyebrow at him. “What about the knife fights and the woundings?”
He made an ugly face that said she was stupid and waved a hand at her. “Anda por ahí ya, pendeja! That was nothin’ to do with you! That was between us. None of the cops’ fockin’ business. We have our disagreements and we solve them ourselves.” He shook a finger at her. “But it was within the Sureños, eh? It did not involve anybody outside. It was private matters of ours. None of your goddamn business.”