Little Dead Riding Hood

by Blake Banner

  “Yeah, least of all me. Listen, we just received new information on the Reynolds case. You remember, two years back…?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, sure! I knew them personally.” He leaned back against the wall and pointed at the machine. “You want a coffee?”

  “No, thanks. I just wanted to ask you a couple of things..”

  “’Cause they got you and Carmen on the cold cases, right?”

  “Yeah. That was your case…”

  “Yeah, me and Pete were called to the scene, and you can imagine how I felt when I saw Celeste. Holy shit! Now I have to tell her dad, like he hasn’t had enough heartache in his life. One crazy daughter…”

  “Helen?”

  “Yeah, she’s diagnosed as schizophrenic. She’s OK while she’s taking her meds, but if she comes off them, she is off with the fairies, I’m telling you. Then his wife dies in childbirth. Can you believe that? Family is everything to this guy. And the one consolation he has for his wife’s death, he dotes on his daughter Celeste—she’s smart, she’s pretty—hey! At least he got something in return for losing his wife, right? Well then, capoom! That very daughter goes and gets herself murdered. You know? Where is the fuckin’ justice in that? And I have to go and tell him. ‘Hey, your daughter Celeste just got murdered.’ It was hard, I don’t mind telling you.”

  I nodded. “That’s a tough break.”

  “For him. I get to go home to my lovely wife and my kids. He gets to go home to the Addams Family!”

  I smiled. “You know them well?”

  “Nah, not really. We grew up on the same street. We didn’t hang out, he was a bit older than me, but we used to say hi. We attended the same Catholic church, Blessed Sacrament, it’s right there on his doorstep. His wife was real devout, and his son, Samuel, he’s devout too. A bit too much for my taste. And me, well, I don’t go any more. My wife does, but I’m lapsed, you know? Too many unanswered questions.” He laughed. “I’m a detective, right? I need proof.”

  “Right. Listen, Lenny, what I wanted to ask you about…”

  “Oh, you ain’t asked me yet?” He laughed out loud.

  I laughed with him and carried on. “About the phone records.”

  He kept smiling, but his face became serious. “Yeah, what about them?”

  “Did you request them?”

  “Celeste’s phone records? Yeah, of course. She talked to somebody that night and I wanted to know who.”

  “Right. That’s what I thought. But the records aren’t in the file.”

  He frowned at me like I had suddenly started talking in a foreign language. “Her phone records ain’t in the file?”

  I shook my head. “Uh-uh. Would you have taken the file home with you? Might they be back at your place?”

  He made a face that was skeptical. “I’m pretty sure they’re not. I’ll have a look for you, pal, but if they’ve gone missing, they haven’t gone missing at my house.” He sighed. “The company was Verizon, and if I ain’t mistaken, they keep records for just one year.”

  “Can you remember who she called?”

  “Sure!” He shrugged. “It was a burner. If I remember, she called the burner, the burner called her once and then it called her again. That was…” He closed his eyes and screwed up his face. “Uh…eight, eight thirty and ten minutes before nine.”

  I grunted. “Any other calls around that time?”

  “It’s two years ago, but… yeah. Shortly before the last call, she received a call from the landline at home. That was Samuel telling her to come home and stop acting like a diva. And at, I don’t remember exactly, about eight forty five, a short call from Chad, her boyfriend.”

  “That’s really helpful, thanks, Lenny. Try to find the records for me anyway, would you?”

  “Sure, no problem.”

  I left him standing at the coffee machine and went slowly back to our desks. Dehan was chewing on a celery stick and reading from the screen of her laptop. I dropped into my chair and put my feet on the corner of my desk. I stared at Dehan for a while, but she seemed not to notice. I thought about Chad and wondered why he would lie about having called Celeste that night. Had she arranged to go and spend the night with him? Had she then spoken to Rod and decided to spend the night with him, instead? Was it Chad that Remedios had seen from her window, chasing Celeste behind the chestnut tree?

  I wondered about other lies people had told too, and wondered what they had to gain from them. I wondered about Samuel, calling Celeste after she had left the house. And I wondered about the Watson Gleason Playground on a cold, wet November night.

  I took a small, blue Post-it, screwed it into a small pellet and threw it at Dehan. She batted it away without averting her eyes from the screen. “What?”

  “Let’s go back to the playground.”

  Now she turned and frowned at me. “What for?”

  “Because we are going to find witnesses.”

  “The area was already canvassed two years ago.”

  “Well… yes and no. We’ll canvass it again. Come on, Little Grasshopper. The answer to our mystery, if I am not very much mistaken—and I am not—lies in that playground.”

  She sighed. “See, you’re a wiseass, and a pompous wiseass.”

  “But you like me nonetheless.”

  I stood and we went back out into the rain.

  FIVE

  It was a short drive from Storey Avenue up Rosedale to the Watson Gleason Playground. I parked near the corner of Gleason and Croes and we walked back toward the playground. As we walked, I smiled amiably at the light rain that speckled the blacktop while Dehan spoke.

  “If ever proof was needed, Stone,” she said, with her hands in her pockets, squinting at the odd mix of ugly buildings around us, “that functional is not necessarily beautiful, this stretch of Gleason Avenue is it.” I drew breath to answer, but she pulled a hand from her jeans pocket and gestured at the soulless structures. “Look at them! They fulfill every criterion for what is required for functional beauty: they perform their function, they are honest about the materials that are used, they don’t pretend to be anything they are not. And what they are is ugly cages for people who have been robbed of their dreams, and whose greatest artistic aspiration in life is to write graffiti…” She jerked her head at some fat letters on the wall across the road, “…that looks exactly like everybody else’s graffiti!”

  “Yup.”

  “Beauty is not a necessary consequence of functionality and honesty.”

  “No…”

  “Excrement is functional, and honest about the materials used. But it is not beautiful.”

  “True.”

  “Why are we here, Stone?”

  “Dehan, can we save this discussion for tonight, in front of the fire with a glass of Bushmills?”

  She frowned at me like I was crazy. “No, I mean why are we here, on Gleason Avenue, when I could be studying riverside premises? What do you hope to achieve with this?”

  We had reached the playground and I stopped, looking up at the windows. “Remedios told us she was mad when she thought she’d seen a hooker standing on the corner, because this was not that kind of neighborhood, remember?”

  She nodded. “So?”

  “She said it was a nice neighborhood, in spite of your views on their soulless, functional architecture. So, at a little before nine on a Sunday night, we have a man assaulting a woman, on the street corner, in a nice neighborhood, and nobody sees or hears anything. That seems a little odd to me. Remedios told us she couldn’t hear them because she had triple glazing in her windows, but she said the woman was shouting. So there must have been plenty of other people around here who did not have triple or even double glazing, who must have heard Celeste screaming at her attacker. Logical?”

  Dehan was staring at me with narrowed eyes. I smiled at her and crossed the road to go and stand under the giant chestnut trees that skirted the playground. She followed me as far as the tree where Remedios had said Celeste had disap
peared. There, I stood staring up at the buildings facing me across Gleason and Rosedale.

  On the other side of Gleason was Remedios’ block, and it was a fair bet her neighbors had not seen anything. She had told me nobody had discussed it with her, but I was pretty sure she had discussed it with just about everybody she’d met on the stairs and in the store at the time it had happened. I could always double-check later, but right now what I was interested in was the two red brick blocks on the other side of Rosedale.

  “Look,” I said. “Those two uninspiring, functional buildings over there, on the corners, have a perfect, uninterrupted view of this corner. I make it four kitchen windows and a big living room bow window on that building.” I pointed. “And a living room window and two bedrooms on that building. How old would you say those buildings are?”

  She shrugged, still looking bemused. “I don’t know. Seventy-five, eighty years old? Nineteen forties?”

  I nodded. “Accurate.” I pointed at the building with the bow window. “That one might be older. In any case, those windows look like the original sash windows to me. They are not shiny, plastic casement windows.”

  “Stone?”

  “Yes?”

  “I see where you’re going. You think old, non-double-glazed windows, nice neighborhood, somebody washing up at nine PM or settling down to watch TV might have heard Celeste screaming.”

  “Yes.”

  “But Lenny already canvassed the area.”

  “Did he?”

  I set off across the road. She watched me get halfway before she hurried to catch up.

  “What are you suggesting Stone?”

  “Where does it say in the report that he canvassed the area for witnesses?”

  I paused at the gate to the tall, late ’30s box that overlooked the corner of the street. From here, I could see that the windows were indeed the original, wooden sash windows.

  “It doesn’t,” she said, flatly. “But he spoke to Remedios, and it says there were no other witnesses. It would have been nothing short of a dereliction of duty to have the case go cold without canvassing the neighbors. Why would Lenny do that?”

  “I don’t know, Dehan. I don’t even know if he did. It doesn’t say anything about interviewing neighbors in the report.” I pointed across the road toward Remedios’s block. “Remedios Borja came forward on her own. Nobody knocked on her door.”

  I shrugged and pushed through the gate.

  There were two blocks with six apartments per block. We struck gold after half an hour, when I knocked on the door of the apartment on the top floor, overlooking the corner of Gleason and Rosedale. Dehan was ringing on the bell across the landing, where she was getting no answer. The door I was knocking on was opened by a slim man in his mid thirties wearing a v-necked, dark blue cashmere sweater with his white shirt collar on the outside. His jeans were carefully ironed and his hair was carefully brushed. His eyes observed me, and Dehan over my shoulder, in turn, carefully.

  “Yes?” He asked it as though there might be consequences.

  I showed him my badge. “I’m Detective John Stone. That’s my partner, Detective Carmen Dehan.”

  “Does she have a badge?”

  I turned. Dehan showed him her badge.

  He nodded once. “How can I help you, Detectives?”

  A man’s voice called from inside, “Who is it, Richard?”

  “It’s the police!”

  “What do they want?”

  He smiled at us without humor and shook his head. “If you’ll give us a chance, I’ll find out!”

  “Forgive me for breathing, I’m sure!”

  Dehan came and joined us. I said, “Two years ago, there was an incident down by the playground. We were wondering if you might have witnessed anything.”

  “My goodness, two years ago. I suppose we might have, but who remembers?”

  I gave him a moment. When he didn’t say any more, I asked, “Do you think we could come in and ask you a few questions? It might jog your memory.”

  His body and his face said it was inconvenient, but he said, “Well, of course. You’ll have to forgive us, Jack is cooking and we have friends coming for lunch…”

  I nodded like I understood and reassured him, “It won’t take more than a couple of minutes.”

  The door opened directly onto an open-plan living and dining area, with a large, modern kitchen separated by a wood-paneled bar. Jack, wearing a blue and white striped butcher’s apron and holding a pot and a wooden spoon, turned to look at us in astonishment as we came in. He was older than Richard by about ten years, and heavier by thirty pounds.

  “Hello!” he said, as though that was a reprimand.

  Richard gestured to us with both hands. “These are Detectives Stone and Dehan, and they are going to quickly ask us a few questions about an incident two years back. And we are going to help them.” He turned to us and pointed to a suede sofa. “Please sit down.”

  He sat in a black leather armchair and Jack approached from the kitchen, saying that he hoped the good karma he earned from helping us would prevent his sauce from burning.

  When he had sat in the other chair, Dehan said, “Two years ago, ’round about this date, in November, there was an altercation outside, on the corner, opposite the grocery store. It would have been somewhere between eight thirty and ten o’clock, between…”

  Jack was giving his head little shakes. He leaned back in his chair and crossed his right leg over his left, wagging his finger in a negative. “No, darling,” he said. “It was later than eight thirty, and it was well before ten. I’ll tell you, it was November sixth, at about nine o’clock on the button. Perhaps the whole thing lasted from five to nine until five past, if that.”

  Richard turned to him and voiced my own question: “How can you possibly be so sure and precise, Jack? You’re showing off!”

  He was still wagging his finger, but now he stopped and pointed it like a gun at Richard. “I’ll tell you exactly why. That appalling woman, Monica Fraser…”

  “Oh my goodness, you are absolutely right!”

  Jack turned to me. “She wanted us to attend an event to rally support for a demonstration the following day, a Monday if you please, Mothers Against Trump or some such idiotic nonsense. The event was at…”

  Richard said, “Nine thirty! He is absolutely right—”

  “Let me tell it, Richard. And she telephoned to us at a quarter to nine, begging us to go. Well, I told her, I am nobody’s mother! Why would I go? Anyway, I fobbed her off and no sooner had I hung up than we heard this infernal racket outside. We both went to the window and there they were.”

  Dehan glanced at me. I made no effort to hide my ‘I told you so’ face. She asked, “There who were, Mr…?”

  “Kitzler, Jack Kitzler.” He closed his eyes, still leaning back in his chair, and projected his hand forward, as though he was placing somebody on a stage. “The girl, dressed like a miserably unhappy Little Red Riding Hood. She is standing on the sidewalk, just a few paces from the chestnut tree. She has her hands in her pockets – the pockets of her red coat, and she is shouting. She is not shouting across the road, but diagonally…” He moved his outstretched arm to illustrate where she was shouting. “To a truck that was parked directly opposite our window.”

  I stood and went to the window. Dehan joined me. I said, “On Rosedale, to the left of the traffic lights.”

  “Exactly.”

  Richard had risen and was peering out with us. I asked, “Did you see what direction the truck came from?”

  It was Richard who answered this time. “No, but I think we both had the impression it had just pulled over and stopped. It has facing left, south, so it had either come from further up Rosedale, or it had turned in from Gleason.”

  I returned to the sofa. Dehan sat on the windowsill while Richard sat on the arm of Jack’s chair. Dehan asked them, “What happened?”

  Jack said, “At first, I thought she was just a sad crazy, screaming
at people that existed only in her poor, tortured mind. But then I saw there was a man climbing out of the truck, and then it became evident that she was screaming at him. He approached her and at first, it seemed that he was speaking to her in an almost calming, reassuring way. Did you get that impression, Richard?”

  Richard nodded. “Yes, I did. You couldn’t hear him. He was talking quietly. Then I remember he took hold of her shoulders, and that seemed to set her off. She started screaming her head off.”

  He looked at Jack, who continued, “She backed away from him. He went after her. It was a little alarming. Then she turned and ran, and he ran, too. They vanished in the shadows of that big chestnut tree, opposite the grocery store.”

  I said, “Why didn’t you report it at the time?”

  They both sighed simultaneously. Richard said, “Well, we did.”

  Jack closed his eyes and shook his head. “Don’t be dishonest, Richard. We didn’t.”

  “Well, we did!”

  Jack wagged his finger. “No, no… you’re being equivocal, Richard, and that is tantamount to dishonesty.” He continued talking with his eyes closed. “We did not report it that night. We were conflicted that night and we discussed whether to telephone to the police, and we decided not to. The reason being…” Now he opened his eyes and spread his hands. “There had been no crime committed. How many couples, late at night in the Bronx, have rows on street corners at the weekend? Hundreds! Goodness knows the police in the Bronx have their hands full enough with all the violent crime that goes on. Our calling out a patrol car because of a lovers’ tiff could cost somebody else their life. And that was the basis for our decision that night.” He sighed deeply and Richard looked down at the floor. “As it emerged later, our perfectly logical decision turned out to be perfectly wrong.”

  Dehan was frowning. “So, when did you report it?”

  Jack’s expression became curious. “Well, surely it’s in your report. We read in the paper that a girl had been found down river at Soundview Park, wearing a big, red woolen jacket. We decided to call the precinct, but we saw a couple of uniformed officers and a detective talking to one of the neighbors across the way. She was pointing at the playground and the tree and we just knew what they were talking about. So when they had finished, we called over the detective and told him what we’d seen.”