by Blake Banner
I knew they’d get squat, but you have to try. One of them went downstairs to get the tape and the other made his way up to the next floor, taking his pad from his pocket. Dehan was in the kitchen doorway. She seemed to be mad, and also a bit upset. She spoke without looking at me. “So there was somebody here and they had a drink.”
“It looks that way.”
“But whoever was here took whatever they were drinking away with them.”
I nodded. “That’s what it looks like.”
“And that is significant, why?”
I shrugged. “Maybe it isn’t.”
She sighed noisily, put on her latex gloves and went into the bedroom. I heard her open the wardrobe and went to watch. There was nothing in there save a few old clothes. She closed it and got on all fours to peer under the bed. Again there was nothing of interest there, only a pair of shoes and a lot of dust. Finally she came to the chest of drawers beside the bed. She went through it methodically, and found what I had guessed she was looking for in the bottom drawer, under a spare set of sheets. It was a shoe box. She took a photograph of it in the drawer, then removed it, set it on the bed and opened it. Then she photographed it again.
The first thing she took out was a pair of torn, pink panties that appeared to be stained. She put them in an evidence bag and set it to one side. I stepped over beside her and looked down. The box contained a small hairbrush with a few dark hairs in it, several silk handkerchiefs and several photographs. One was of Angela, one of Cherry Pie, the others were of similar girls whom I did not recognize. Most of them, but not all, were dressed like Cherry; all were smiling for the camera, and Jimmy was in a couple of them.
I hunkered down beside her as Dehan went through them one by one. They seemed to be in a bar, and Jimmy was raising his glass to the camera, with his left arm around one girl or another. Dehan said, “Are these the ones that got away? Or are they lying in the morgue, waiting for somebody to give them a name?”
She bagged everything, including the box, and left it back in the drawer.
We heard the heavy tramping of feet and after a moment a voice called my name from the next room. I went out and saw Frank and Pete Henson at the door with their assistants. They ducked under the tape and I pointed at Jimmy on the sofa.
“He’s all yours, Frank. Cause of death seems pretty self evident, but I’d be curious to know what his last meal consisted of.”
He paused on his way to the body and frowned at me. “Really?”
I nodded. “Really.”
“I wouldn’t normally do an autopsy on somebody who had shot himself in the head. It’s what we call in the profession a damn waste of time.”
“Will you make an exception in this case, please, Frank?”
He shrugged. “Fine.”
I showed Pete the glasses and asked him to go over the whole kitchen. Then Dehan took him to the bedroom and showed him the box. After that, he and Frank asked us to go away and let them do their jobs.
We walked down the stairs in silence and carried that same silence through the gathering dusk back to the station. There we climbed the stairs in silence and didn’t break it until we knocked on the inspector’s door.
“Come!”
Dehan opened the door and we went in.
“Ah! The dynamic duo!” He gestured with both hands at the two seats opposite him. “Please, sit. What progress?”
I turned to Dehan. “You want to explain, Dehan? I think this is more your success than mine.”
She raised an eyebrow at me and the inspector beamed. “Success? So you have Jimmy Fillmore?”
Dehan took a deep breath. “It looks that way, sir. It also looked as though he decided to spare the city the cost of a trial. Frank will have to confirm it, but it looks as though he shot himself in the head while sitting on the sofa. In his bedroom we found a box full of what appear to be trophies from his kills, though obviously, again, the lab will have to confirm that. It contained panties that probably belonged to Noelia Gomez, his last victim, and to Angela Fernandez. There was also a lady’s hairbrush, containing long, dark hairs, that should give us enough material to identify the owner, and photographs of Noelia, Angela and several other girls. Jimmy is with them in a couple of the pictures.”
The inspector listened carefully throughout and when she had finished he smiled broadly. “Excellent work, then we can consider, pending the lab results, that this case is closed.”
“It would certainly look that way, sir.”
He turned to me. “John, I know you had your doubts but I trust this has satisfied even your relentlessly incisive mind. And I have to say, all credit to you, John, you never let your own, personal feelings interfere with the investigation. You are a true example to us all, and I might say a superb role model for Carmen. Commendable work, both of you. I think you have earned a couple of days off, don’t you?”
I smiled. “Thank you, sir.”
We left and made our way down the stairs again. We collected our things and stepped out into the gathering evening. When we got to the car Dehan stopped and put her hand on my chest. There was a wash of amber light on her face from the street lamp above her.
“OK, John, let’s stop this before it gets out of hand. Tell me what the hell is going on in your mind. Don’t bullshit me and don’t fob me off. What the hell do you know that you are not telling me?”
I raised my eyebrows high. “John?”
“I warn you that I am getting mad. Don’t push me any further. Tell me or I am going to lose it.”
I nodded. “OK, let’s go and grab a meal somewhere and I will tell you what is on my mind. No need to get mad.”
“Emilio’s Pizza and we walk home. And quit bullshitting me!”
“Deal.”
SIXTEEN
We ordered steak and fries and a bottle of wine, and while he cooked them, we drank a couple of beers. We took a while, sipping and looking at each other, to find our way back across the bridges we were building in silence while we drank. Eventually I smiled at her and she smiled back. It was a nice smile, which she followed up with, “You know you are one obstinate son of a bitch, don’t you?”
I nodded. “My mother, God rest her soul, used to tell me the same thing, in those very same words.”
She lifted her thumb, not as a ‘thumbs up’ but as a ‘number one’, and said, “One: how did you know, quote ‘that something bad was going to happen’?” She lifted her index finger. “Two: how did you know there would be fingerprints on Angela’s bag and not on Noelia’s body, and that there would be semen?” She lifted her middle finger. “How did you know, or suspect, that something had happened to Jimmy Fillmore? And why is it significant that somebody took away the bottle after they had had a drink together?”
I pulled off half my beer and wiped my mouth on the back of my hand. “Those ‘why’ questions will get you into trouble, Dehan. They are too vague. They don’t focus your mind.”
“Keep doing that. Keep bullshitting me. I swear you will sleep on the couch.”
“I’m not. And you’ll have to wrestle me for the bed and you know how that always ends up.”
“Quit stalling.”
“I had a hunch something bad was going to happen because, if Wayne wasn’t our killer, then our killer had to be out on the street, and still active. So it stood to reason that he might kill again at any time…”
She cut across me, shaking her head. “But at that time you believed that Wayne was the killer.”
I raised a finger. “It works that way too, if you think about it. And in any case, I believed he might be the killer because I was not happy with some of the details of his story.”
She frowned like she was getting a headache.
“What…?”
I ignored her and went on. “The fingerprints on the purse, Dehan, you really should be able to answer for yourself…”
She groaned softly, then raised a hand and said, “OK, OK, give me a second.” She thought and I waite
d. Finally she said, “He met her in a social environment, like a bar or something. They had arranged to meet to have a drink or whatever. In that kind of setting he could not be wearing gloves, so there was a good chance he handled her purse when he subdued her, bound her and gagged her. He wouldn’t have had time to put on gloves, but anyway he wouldn’t care because he planned to remove the purse anyway. But with Noelia, by the time he strangled and murdered her, he had already put on his gloves.”
I smiled and made a noncommittal face. “Sounds reasonable.”
“But how could you have known there would be semen?”
I stared at her for a long moment. “You really don’t see it?”
“No!”
“He always dumps them in the river.”
“And the river washes away the traces of semen and DNA.”
I half shrugged. “In the cold weather the bodies sink. By late April or May the water warms up. There are a lot of bacteria in the water and they very quickly corrupt any DNA such as semen that might be in the body.”
“But…”
I raised my eyebrows and began to nod slowly as she narrowed her eyes. Before she could say anything, a reporter on the TV spoke a name that made us turn toward the bar.
“…Wayne Harris was released from prison this afternoon having served only six months of a five year sentence for possession of cocaine. That in itself may not be very remarkable, but what is remarkable is the reason for his release. It seems that he has assisted the police in the capture of a serial killer who had been active in the Bronx area for at least two years – possibly much longer than that – while the police were completely oblivious to his murderous activity. It was not until Wayne Harris alerted them to his killings that they became aware. Since then, the police have uncovered a total of four murders committed by the man some are referring to as the Westchester Creek Strangler…”
Emilio brought over our steaks and set them in front of us. Then he poured our wine, nodding while he did it. He set down the bottle and gestured at me with the back of his hand while making his right leg do a little dance. “Eh,” he said, “You’re a cop, right?”
I nodded, “Yeah, so is my partner.”
He turned to Dehan. “Yeah, you’re a cop too. This guy. He killed however many young women. Now, they gonna use my money to keep him in jail. Why’d they get rid of the chair? Answer me that!”
I shook my head. “I don’t know, Emilio. But this guy ain’t going nowhere on your dollar. He’s dead. Listen to the rest of the news item.”
He nodded, watching me. “Oh, he’s dead?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. Death is too good for him, but I’m glad. Enjoy your meal.”
The TV was saying, “…in a bizarre twist to this tale, detectives found Fillmore dead in his apartment this afternoon, having apparently shot himself in the head…”
Emilio called over, “Hey, yeah, you was right! Nice.”
I gave him the thumbs up and turned back to Dehan.
She cut into her steak. Her expression was serious. “How did you know?”
“That he was dead?”
“Yeah.”
I chewed for a while, then sipped the wine. Eventually I said, “I didn’t.” She scowled at me. “I didn’t know, Dehan. He didn’t go into work. He didn’t call. From what I had heard from Teddy, he was reliable, so that was odd. And…” I sighed deep and shrugged. “Don’t get mad, but in my reasoning, one of the possibilities was that Jimmy was being framed, and if he was, the real killer had to eliminate him before we caught him.”
She put her head in her hands. “But, Stone, you said at the beginning that you knew something was going to happen because…”
“It gets confusing for me too, sometimes, Dehan. But the big difference between me and most other investigators is that, instead of making up my mind at the beginning, I keep all the options open, and then make up my mind when I have actual proof.”
“Do you know how smug you sound when you say that?”
“Yes.”
“Well this time, Mister Smug Ass, you were wrong, and I was right. Jimmy Fillmore was guilty.”
“And Wayne Harris is a free man.”
She gave her head a little tilt to the side. “A fair price, I think.”
“Perhaps.”
“Come on, Stone!” She laughed. “Admit this once that you were wrong. Have you ever been wrong? Ever? Just once?”
“No.”
“Never? Seriously?”
“Never. How can you be wrong if you never make up your mind until you have proof? But before we move on from this subject, let me leave you with a thought. What was missing from Angela’s purse?” She frowned, shook her head. I said, “Lipstick.”
She stared at me for a long moment. “That’s it. You are so sleeping on the couch tonight.”
“You’ll have to wrestle me for the bed.”
“It’s on, boy.” She pointed at me. “You are going down!”
I raised an eyebrow at her. “Something to look forward to.”
Her eyes went wide, her jaw dropped and she started to laugh.
We finished our meal, and the wine, laughing. Emilio had some goat’s cheese he claimed he’d had brought in in the Italian ambassador’s diplomatic bag—a statement he accompanied with an elaborate wink. The Italian ambassador, he said, was his cousin Tony, and laughed raucously. The cheese was good, but the wine was gone before the cheese was, so I had a Bushmills and Dehan had a brandy, and somehow it was eleven by the time we stepped out and started strolling home, arm in arm and still laughing.
We’d walked maybe a hundred yards. We were almost at the corner of Haight Avenue when my phone rang. We looked at each other and sighed. I didn’t recognize the number. I answered, “Yeah, Stone, who is this?”
“Good evening, Detective Stone Cold. How are you feeling? Are you feeling triumphant tonight?”
“What do you want, Wayne? It’s eleven l’clock at night.”
“I’m aware of the time, John. I am just here celebrating and I wanted to thank you for your help in securing my freedom.”
“No thanks required. Please don’t call this number again.”
“Well, now, Detective Stone, here’s the thing. I think that you and I need to talk.”
“We’ve done our talking, Wayne. We’re done here.”
“Not so fast, Detective Stone Cold, not so fast. See, there are some details that we have not covered, and you are going to want to cover them, I promise you.”
I glanced at Dehan and puffed my cheeks. “Yeah? Then come into the station tomorrow morning. We’ll talk there.”
He laughed out loud. “Oh man! Like a big shot executive, contact my office! Dude! You cannot treat me like that. I need your respect, man.”
“Goodbye, Wayne.”
“Tonight.”
“What?”
Dehan was watching me through narrowed eyes. I spread my hands at her and shook my head. I said into the phone, “You want to meet tonight? Get real, Wayne!”
His voice changed. “No. It’s time you got real, Detective Stone. You’ve known from the start that there was more to this than met the eye. Well, my friend, you were right. You get yourself down to Randall and Zerega and I’ll be waiting for you. You’re gonna want to hear what I have to tell you. And Stone? Come alone, pal. If I see your cute partner with you, or I smell bacon on the air, I am out of there. Comprende?”
The line went dead. I stared at Dehan for a moment. “Come on, I’m driving you home. I have to go to Zerega Avenue.”
I took her arm and started to walk back toward the car, outside Emilio’s. She said, “I’m coming with you. You are not going alone.”
“A, if he sees you he’ll bolt. B, I am not letting you within a mile of that man.”
“What does he want?”
“He says he wants to tell me what the case was all about.”
She frowned. “What does that mean?”
We had got to the car
and I opened the door. “You and your open questions, Dehan. One day they will get you into trouble. I’m serious. Get in.”
We got in and slammed the doors. I fired up the engine and took off toward Haight Avenue again. I said, “It means that Wayne never knew we had Rosario and Sonia. Tonight he was watching the news and he found out.”
She shook her head as I accelerated toward our house. “So? Stop talking in riddles, Stone!”
I skidded to a halt outside our front door and climbed out. I had my piece in my hand. “I haven’t got time now, Dehan.”
She pulled her weapon and I opened the door. I flipped on the light and we checked every room. There was nobody there. I ran down the stairs to the living room and at the front door I held her by her shoulders. “Listen, expect a call from me in about half an hour. Don’t talk, just listen and record the call. If necessary, call for backup. I’ll be where Angela was murdered.”
“Jesus, Stone…”
“The answer to your questions is lipstick!”
I ran down the steps, climbed back in the Jag, did a ‘U’ and accelerated south, toward Zerega and the Westchester Creek.
Sinatra called New York the city that never sleeps. That may be true of Manhattan, but the vast residential and industrial areas in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and the rest—after sundown, they become empty, dark places, with shadows that are only made deeper by the lifeless street lamps that bathe the blacktop and the sidewalks in dead orange and amber. You don’t see anybody in those desolate streets, except the occasional lost soul: lost not because they don’t know the way home, but because they have no home to find their way to.
I drove fast through these spiritual wastelands, and eventually passed under the multiple bridges of the Bruckner and Cross Bronx expressways, like huge portals into the underworld. There I joined the path of the Westchester Creek that ran black and cold beside me on the left, and soon came to Randall Avenue on my right.
All the parking spaces, packed full during the day, were empty now. But up ahead, on the left, I saw the dark silhouette of a BMW. I slowed and pulled in a couple of spaces away, just past the gate where we had recently gained access to the river. I killed the engine, dialed Dehan’s number, put the phone back in my pocket and climbed out. Ten yards away, in a pool of sickly light from a streetlamp, I saw a figure climb out of the BMW and close the door. He lit up a cigarette and by the flame of his lighter I saw it was Wayne.