Blood Innocents

by Thomas H. Cook

Mathesson started buttoning his overcoat. “Well,” he said, “have a jolly time of it. I got to be in court this morning. I got to testify against this nigger whore.” He smiled. “She wasted her pimp — stuck a blade in his guts and pulled up on it.” He thrust an imaginary blade in his abdomen and jerked upward. “Hari kari pickaninny style.” He shook his head in disgust. “Hell, I don’t know why they bother to charge her. Son of a bitch got what he deserved. He was a white dude, too — honky, ofay, you know what I mean? Probably a lot of goddamn feeling went into that blade, you know what I mean? Getting even in spades you might say.” Mathesson shook with laughter and slapped his leg. “Goddamn, I’m in a good mood,” he said.

  Reardon could not imagine why.

  Mathesson told him. “I believe we busted this case. I believe we got that Petrakis cold.”

  “Yeah,” Reardon said weakly.

  Mathesson straightened his tie and stood erect. “Well,” he said, “do I look — what do the lawyers call it? — credible?”

  Reardon nodded.

  “Well, take it easy.” Mathesson started toward the door. “I’ll see you this afternoon.”

  “Right,” Reardon said. Or wrong, he thought, dead wrong.

  15

  When Reardon returned to his desk, he stared down at the night update for the day the fallow deer were killed. It was full of names that ended in “a” and “o” and “ski,” along with a number of names that were familiar enough; in most cases, Reardon knew, these were black names, old slave names like Johnson or Phillips. Beside these, the clean contours of the name Winthrop Lewis Daniels stood out like a silver spoon in a dung heap. Winthrop Lewis Daniels was the kind of name that had a stiff upper lip, knew its whereabouts at all times, and moved about with its own predetermined and resolute self-confidence. It was the kind of name that had an opinion on every issue and expected to be heard whenever it wished. It was not the kind of name that waited bleeding in the chaotic emergency receiving room of Bellevue Hospital or held close affection for a mongrel dog.

  When Winthrop Lewis Daniels finally arrived at the precinct house, he was not alone. Reardon recognized him instantly even though he had never seen him before. Daniels was flanked on either side by two well dressed men, each holding tightly to a briefcase. Not many teenage offenders came through the precinct house doors like that. From his desk Reardon watched as the three men approached the desk sergeant, who responded to one of their questions by pointing to Reardon.

  “Detective Reardon?” one of the men asked as they approached his desk.

  “That’s right.”

  “My name is Colin Tower.” He was a very tall, very thin man with coal black hair slicked down flat across his head. He did not offer his hand.

  The bald, stocky man on his left Mr. Tower introduced as Mr. Arington. “We are here to represent Mr. Daniels in this matter,” Mr. Tower said. He nodded toward the tall, thin young man to his right.

  “Have a seat,” Reardon said. He did not expect this to be easy. He had dealt with lawyers of the Tower-Arington variety before. It would be part of their strategy to frustrate him as much as possible. Once they had taken seats across from his desk, however, they looked somewhat less formidable.

  Before Reardon could ask his first question, Mr. Tower spoke again. “Let me begin by saying that Mr. Daniels is quite willing to cooperate with the police. He has come of his own free will and any statement which he wishes to make will be regarded as completely voluntary.”

  Reardon nodded indifferently. He had heard it all before.

  “If at any time Mr. Daniels wishes to conclude this interview,” Mr. Tower went on, “we will have to insist that it be immediately terminated. We also reserve the right to advise Mr. Daniels of those questions upon which we feel he would be better served to remain wholly silent.”

  “I understand that you represent Mr. Daniels,” Reardon said brusquely. “As far as I’m concerned Mr. Daniels is here voluntarily. But this is a serious investigation, and I think he would be well advised to cooperate with us.”

  “Pardon me,” Mr. Arington said, “but we will decide the extent of Mr. Daniels’ cooperation.”

  “That’s fine,” Reardon replied dryly.

  Reardon looked at Mr. Tower. “According to an arrest sheet for last Monday in this precinct, Mr. Daniels was arrested for possession of cocaine.”

  Mr. Tower chuckled. “Absurd charge.”

  “I’m not trying the case,” Reardon said.

  “Of course not,” said Mr. Tower. “It’s just that the charge is so ludicrous.”

  “Absolutely no evidence,” Mr. Arington said.

  “I don’t care about that,” Reardon said. “But the fact is that he was arrested.”

  “He was arrested,” Mr. Tower muttered reluctantly. He glanced knowingly at Mr. Arington, then back to Reardon.

  Reardon pulled a map of Central Park from his desk drawer and unfolded it on top of his desk.

  “What is this all about?” Mr. Tower asked. “We’re perfectly aware of where Mr. Daniels was arrested. We don’t require a map.”

  “I’m not investigating a cocaine bust,” Reardon said. “That’s not what I’m doing here.”

  “Then what are you doing?” Mr. Tower said. “Have you lost your mind? Do you have any idea of the kind of lawsuit you’re going to be facing if you persist in your harassment of this young man?”

  “I haven’t harassed anybody,” Reardon declared. “I’m trying to investigate two murders.”

  Mr. Tower popped to his feet. “Murders?”

  Reardon looked at Mr. Tower wearily. “I told you that this is an investigation. Nobody is accusing Mr. Daniels of anything.”

  “What kind of murders?” Daniels asked quietly.

  Mr. Tower leveled a cold stare at Daniels. “Don’t bother yourself about it. We’ll handle this.” He looked at Reardon. “This is outrageous. We understood from Mr. Piccolini that some police matter would be discussed this morning. We assumed that it would pertain to the utterly false charge already made against Mr. Daniels. But we had no idea that any attempt would be made to associate him with homicides.”

  “Are they homicides?” Daniels asked quietly.

  “Winthrop, please,” Mr. Arington pleaded. “You must let us handle this.”

  Reardon spoke directly, and quietly, to Daniels. “There’s more than the homicides. We’re not sure if they are connected with the rest.”

  “That’s quite enough,” Mr. Tower exclaimed.

  Daniels looked thoughtfully at Reardon but said nothing.

  “What do you think, Mr. Daniels?” Reardon asked, trying to strike through the wall of lawyers that separated them. Daniels did not appear at all like the spoiled child Langhof had described. He looked confused and a little worried. But more importantly, Reardon sensed that Daniels did know something and wanted to tell him about it.

  Daniels stared quietly at Reardon.

  “You saw something, didn’t you?” Reardon asked.

  “That’s enough!” Mr. Tower exclaimed.

  Daniels did not seem to hear Mr. Tower. He continued to stare at Reardon’s face, and for a moment Reardon saw him not as a pampered delinquent, but as a pained young man, barely out of childhood, confronting something dreadful, confronting it fully, for perhaps the first time.

  “What was it you saw?” Reardon asked firmly.

  Mr. Tower grasped Daniels’ arm. “I think we’d better go, Winthrop.”

  Daniels jerked his arm from Mr. Tower’s grasp. “Sit down,” he told him.

  “Winthrop, stop it!” Tower said. He remained standing but did not resume his grasp of Daniels’ arm.

  Daniels looked at Reardon as if trying to determine something about his character, whether he could be trusted. “Was it in the park?”

  “Yes,” Reardon replied. “Two deer were killed.”

  “Deer?” Daniels asked with surprise. “Am I a suspect?”

  Reardon nodded cautiously. “You might be.”
/>   “You see?” Mr. Tower warned. “You’re a possible suspect.”

  Reardon continued. “The deer were killed in the Children’s Zoo. You were near the deer cage only a few minutes after they were killed.”

  Mr. Tower looked at Reardon, then at Daniels. “Winthrop, please don’t get yourself any deeper in this. You don’t know how the police operate.”

  Daniels continued to look straight into Reardon’s eyes. “I didn’t have anything to do with killing those deer,” he said calmly. “But I may know who did.”

  Mr. Tower slumped down in his chair. “That’s it,” he said. “At this point, Winthrop, I would advise you to tell Mr. Reardon everything you know about this case.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Tower,” Reardon said politely. He looked at Daniels. “What do you mean, you may know who did?”

  “I saw a man with an ax.”

  “When?”

  “Around three in the morning. Something like that. Maybe a little later. Maybe a little earlier.”

  “Go on,” Reardon said.

  “I was standing under the Delacorte animal clock. You know, the one where the animal figures turn around when the clock chimes? You go under it to get to the Children’s Zoo.”

  Reardon nodded.

  “Well, I was standing in that little brick portal, and I saw a man pass me. He was wearing a Parks Department uniform. It was green. It said ‘Parks Department’ on the sleeve.”

  Reardon thought of Gilbert Noble. “Was the man you saw black or white?”

  “He was white.”

  Reardon thought of Harry Bryant. “How big was he, the man in the uniform?”

  “Average, I suppose. I’m almost six feet, and he was a lot shorter than me.”

  “Did you get a close look at this man?”

  “Not at that point,” Daniels said. “But later I got a good look.”

  “You saw him again?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you happen to see him again?”

  “Well, he had only passed me a little while before when I started walking into the park in the same direction.”

  “Careful here,” Mr. Tower whispered to Daniels.

  “Yes, watch yourself,” Mr. Arington said.

  Daniels understood. “I mean, I was just strolling around. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular. Like a connection, I mean. I wasn’t looking for anything, any person.” Daniels’ fingers began to fidget nervously with the buttons of his shirt.

  Reardon nodded. “I’m just interested in what you saw.”

  “I mean, the cops say I was going to meet a connection,” blurted Daniels agitatedly. “For the cocaine they say I had.”

  “Just go ahead with the story,” Mr. Tower said exasperatedly.

  “As far as I’m concerned,” Reardon said, “you were just taking a stroll in the park.”

  “Yeah, right,” Daniels said. “A stroll. I strolled up the cement walk that leads from the animal clock to the Children’s Zoo. That’s where I saw the man again. I had a good look at him too. He looked strange. Kind of groggy. He looked so strange that I got a little scared, to tell you the truth. He looked like he was about ready to freak out. He was just leaning there against the deer cage, holding the ax.”

  “How did you know it was the deer cage?”

  “Because I could see one of the deer peeking out of that tin house where they stay. Then this deer walked out toward the bars right up to the guy, poking its nose against his side, there where he was leaning.”

  “What happened then?”

  “I just kept looking. Then he turned around and looked at me. But he didn’t seem to see me. He was in a fog or something. Wacked out.”

  “Then what?” Reardon asked.

  “He took a few steps away from the cage and just seemed to stand there, like he was in another world. Then he took a few more steps. That’s when I got scared. Really scared. I started to walk away. Pretty fast too. I was afraid he was coming after me.”

  “Was he?”

  “I thought so. So as I was walking, I looked back over my shoulder.”

  “And he wasn’t following you?” Reardon asked.

  “No. He had turned around again. He was walking away from me.”

  “Where was he walking to?”

  Daniels smiled. “He was walking back toward the deer cage. He had taken the ax off his shoulder and was dragging it behind him, you know, like a kid would pull a wagon.”

  Reardon opened the top drawer of his desk and pulled out photographs of Gilbert Noble, Harry Bryant and Andros Petrakis. He laid the photos face up on the table and pushed them across the desk to Daniels. “Have you ever seen any of these men before?” he asked.

  Daniels’ face paled. “God, it scares me just looking at him,” he muttered.

  “Which one?”

  He pointed to the photograph of Andros Petrakis, then stared up at Reardon. He grinned. “Bingo,” he said.

  16

  So Harry Bryant had told the truth, Reardon thought, after Daniels and his attorneys had left the precinct house. Petrakis had come to work the night the fallow deer were killed. And Daniels had seen him there, slumped against the deer cage, a peculiar expression on his face, the ax nestled menacingly in his hands.

  But Reardon was still no closer to Petrakis than the photograph he had already placed back in the top drawer of his desk. Petrakis and his whole family had vanished, leaving Reardon with nothing more than two conflicting images of the man. The one drawn by Mathesson was easier to understand. Mathesson had portrayed an enraged man, capable of sudden explosions of strength and violence, animated solely by an overwhelming hatred of Wallace Van Allen, who had come to symbolize for Petrakis the utter devastation of his life.

  And so Andros Petrakis had killed. He had come at three in the morning from the deathbed of his wife to the Children’s Zoo, where he began that process of revenge which, he believed, would result in the destruction of Wallace Van Allen. He had butchered a fallow deer with fifty-seven blows of an ax and killed the other with a single thrust. But that was only the beginning. He had then acquainted himself with Wallace Van Allen’s holdings in New York. He had picked out an apartment house which belonged to Van Allen, waited patiently in the early hours of the morning, somehow managed to get into the apartment of Lee McDonald and Karen Ortovsky, and had then butchered them in exactly the same manner as the fallow deer.

  Daniels had painted a different portrait, but Reardon could not get the lines and colors straight. The Petrakis that Daniels had seen leaning silently against the deer cage seemed a different sort of man from the one of Mathesson’s narration. He had been leaning, simply leaning, on the cage with the ax nestled in his hands. That was what Reardon could not get out of his mind. That Petrakis had not been striding about menacingly tapping the ax blade against the bars but had been leaning like a tired workman against a wall, staring out into the dark air. And when one of the deer hesitantly moved toward the bars Petrakis had not jerked back but had continued to lean silently in the darkness while the fallow deer gently sniffed his trousers.

  Reardon had seen murderous revenge. It did not lean silently in the early morning hours.

  Who was Andros Petrakis, anyway? Reardon wondered.

  Reardon had expected a long manhunt for Andros Petrakis, and so when he saw him for the first time only a few hours after Daniels and his lawyers had left the station house, he could not believe it. He looked up from his notes to rest his eyes and saw a small man in a green Parks Department uniform standing in front of the desk sergeant. Even in the distance there seemed to be something insubstantial about Petrakis. He stood before the large desk, staring up at Smith, waiting for some direction. Flooded by the light that flowed through the tall glass inlays of the precinct house doors, he looked more like an apparition than a man. The soiled uniform seemed to fall around him as if it were draped over a skeleton rather than a full-fleshed body. His arms hung loosely and motionlessly at his sides like those of a mario
nette.

  Reardon waited, staring, unable to move. He saw Smith point in his direction and watched as Petrakis walked toward him.

  Petrakis stopped directly in front of Reardon’s desk and pointed to himself. “Petrakis,” he said almost inaudibly.

  Reardon stood up. “You are Andros Petrakis?”

  “Andros Petrakis,” the man repeated.

  Reardon stared at him. He was about five-eight or nine but looked much smaller. He had a slight paunch, but even this characteristic only served to miniaturize him. The tiny, childlike face of Karen Ortovsky flashed through Reardon’s mind. He blinked his eyes and tried to regain his concentration.

  “Please sit down,” Reardon said.

  Nervously, Petrakis took a seat directly in front of Reardon’s desk. He was very dark, with black curly hair and a thin mustache. A thick pungent odor surrounded him.

  “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

  “No,” Petrakis said faintly. He seemed frail, lost, irredeemably abused.

  “I understand that you recently lost your wife,” Reardon said. “I’m sorry.”

  Petrakis nodded.

  “My own wife died only a few weeks ago,” Reardon added.

  Petrakis said nothing, but his face took on a softness that Reardon translated as an expression of understanding.

  “We have been trying to find you,” Reardon began.

  Petrakis stared at Reardon without expression.

  “Did you know that?” Reardon asked. “Did you know that the police wanted to talk to you?”

  “I call Mr. Cohen. Try to get back work. He tell me come here.”

  “When did you talk to him?”

  “Today. Just now.”

  “Do you know why we want to talk to you?”

  Petrakis shrugged his shoulders.

  “The deer,” Reardon said. He looked for some response in Petrakis’ face. He had seen people break down at the first mention of a crime which they alone knew they had committed. But Petrakis’ face registered nothing.

  “Have you spoken to anyone in the Parks Department besides Mr. Cohen?”

  “No.”

  Reardon felt stymied. He had never seen a man so drained of concern or curiosity.