“Detective Green,” he forced out in a breathless voice. “I’m sorry, I must’ve dozed off.”
“No need to apologize for that,” I said, my voice sounding stiff and unnatural to me. “I appreciate your help today.”
“Anything I can do.” His crooked smile showed briefly. “Short of hypnosis, that is.”
I watched as he left the car and walked with an awkward gait to his building, all the while keeping his eyes shielded so he wouldn’t accidentally look at anyone walking by. Once he was inside and out of sight, I headed to Toscone’s to pick up a sausage, pepper, and onion hero. I still had time to visit Rich before meeting Bambi back at the apartment at seven as promised. Traffic was light to Toscone’s, and then afterward to St. Vincent’s. Mary was keeping Rich company, and when she saw me she announced that she was going to stretch her legs for a bit so that the two of us could talk shop in private. Rich looked as shriveled as he had this morning—at least the parts of him that weren’t encased in plaster—and had that same off look in his eyes, but he was more alert and, as he spotted the paper sack in my hand, started sniffing in the air.
“Toscone’s,” he said with a thin smile.
I handed him the sausage sandwich. He started on it but it seemed a joyless activity, and after only a few bites he put it down.
“My stomach must’ve shrunk since coming here,” he said, a dejected frown creasing his face.
“Hospital food will do that to you.”
“Yeah, that must be it,” he said. As he lay on his hospital bed, he seemed to shrink into it, looking so much smaller than anyone his size had any right to look. Maybe it was an optical illusion caused by the white plaster cast blending in with the hospital sheets, but whatever it was, I couldn’t shake this sense of him being diminished. His eyes slid toward me, a glimmer showing in them. “You know the key to solving these murders?” he said. “Figure out why your perp chose that address on the Upper West Side to dump that body. Let’s say he killed this guy somewhere between Wall Street and the Village, why’d he cart that body all the way up to the Upper West Side?”
“Yeah, well, I agree with you, but Hennison doesn’t think it’s all that important. He’s assuming our perp spent time scouting for locations.”
“Fuck that,” Rich said, more light flickering in his eyes as he showed a tight bare-fanged smile, and for the first time looking more like his old self. “There are a lot of places you can dump a body that’d be safer than some high-end luxury building uptown, and I don’t care if it was four in the morning. Your perp was putting himself at risk doing that. There has to be a connection to that building, some type of message your perp was trying to send.”
Rich stopped himself. His head tilted slightly to the side as he gave me a slow look, his eyes narrowing. “What the fuck difference does it make what Hennison thinks?” he asked.
“Phillips made him lead for these murders.”
“You’re kidding me!”
“Nope.”
Rich sunk deeper into his bed as he digested that. Finally he shrugged and told me it was just as well. “You don’t need the headache,” he said. “This is going to get a lot worse. Fucking Phillips, though.”
I nodded. It was getting late, and if I wanted to keep my promise to Bambi I had to get going. I lied to Rich and told him he was looking better, and I think I was able to do it with mostly a straight face. He gave me a look as though I was full of shit and told me that I wasn’t looking so hot myself.
“Get out of here,” he said. “Go home and get some sleep. Christ, no wonder I lost my appetite looking at you and your bloodshot eyes. I’ve seen bullet wounds more appealing. And don’t worry, if I come up with any more ideas how to crack this case, you’ll be the first guy I call, not Hennison.”
I had to smile at seeing more of my old partner breaking through. I told him if I saw Mary, I’d send her back up. He told me not to bother, that he could use a break from her also. I gave him a short wave so long and headed out.
With Yankee fans hunkering down for what should be the last game of a four-game sweep, traffic back to Brooklyn was lighter than usual for a Sunday evening. I got back to the apartment ten minutes earlier than promised. Bambi had her suitcases put away and the boxes that had been stacked up earlier were gone. She also had the dining room table set with my parents’ old lace tablecloth and silver candleholders with long white candles burning in both. When Bambi heard me, she came out of the kitchen wearing an apron over her clothes and a tenuous smile across her face. In the year or so that we’d been living together this was the first time she’d gone to this kind of effort to make us dinner. It made me reconsider her earlier claim that she had spent the two days with her friend Angela and not shacked up with some guy where it ended fast and disastrously, but again I decided if that was case it didn’t matter.
“I’m making leg of lamb,” Bambi announced. Her smile had turned more tentative as she watched for my reaction. “Dinner should be ready in twenty minutes.”
“It smells great,” I said. “But I was planning on taking you to Lucia’s so we could celebrate properly us being back together.”
She hesitated as she thought about that. Lucia’s was her favorite restaurant. Somewhat reluctantly she told me it would be a waste to throw dinner away. I didn’t argue with her. The exhaustion from the last three days finally caught up to me, and it hit me hard.
“We’ll do it later this week,” I said.
Her eyes lowered as she nodded, but she mostly did a good job of hiding her disappointment. She came over to me, and we embraced and kissed, and again I didn’t argue with her when she suggested that I sit in my recliner and that she would bring me a drink. While I waited I must’ve dozed off because next thing I knew she was shaking me awake. I felt drugged as I forced my eyes open. She handed me a glass filled with ice and a brownish-orange liquid.
“I thought I’d make the tequila sunrises that I was going to make last night,” she said.
She went back to the kitchen, and I sipped my drink while trying to keep my eyes from closing. Somehow I managed to, and a few minutes later I heard the clatter of dishes as Bambi set the table and brought food out. Bless her, she had carved the leg of lamb. I don’t think I would’ve had the strength to. Along with the lamb, she made roasted potatoes and string beans, and had bought some red wine. Normally I’m not a wine drinker and would grab a beer instead, but this time I didn’t make a fuss. The food was pretty good, which surprised me. When I didn’t cook we usually either ate out, had takeout, or microwaved. I had no idea Bambi had it in her.
We didn’t talk much during dinner. I guess neither of us wanted to risk what felt like a fragile peace. I was going to have to tell her about the three thousand dollars I was in debt for, but now was not the time. After we were done, Bambi made coffee and brought out a plate of tiramisu she had prepared herself. I was surprised at how good the dessert was—she had never let on before that she could cook anything much more than hamburgers and hot dogs. While we were slowly eating it and drinking the coffee, Bambi commented how I was probably going to want to watch the game. I shook my head, and suggested instead that when we were done we clean up the dishes and go straight to bed. When I said that the tentativeness in her smile disappeared, and for the first time that night the real thing showed through.
Bambi had one more surprise for me. She insisted that I relax while she took care of the dishes. I didn’t fight her on that either, and while it was a struggle, I managed to keep my eyes from closing while I waited for her. Later, when we went to bed, I stayed awake until we were done, and then I was out like a light.
I woke up in the dark feeling an uneasiness inside. Squinting at the alarm clock I saw it was one twenty-two in the morning. Bambi was on her stomach sound asleep. I pulled myself out of bed and made my way to the living room. I turned on the TV to see that David Ortiz for the Red Sox had just hit a two-run homerun in the twelfth inning to win the game for Boston. I sat down and watched
them recap more of the game. Mariano Rivera had given up the tying run in the ninth thanks to a walk, a stolen base, and a single. After a while I turned the set off and joined Bambi back in bed.
Chapter 14
Monday, October 18, 2004
I got up early to make Bambi and me a breakfast of French toast and sausage and still made it to the station by seven thirty. Hennison was already there. He looked disheveled with several days of stubble on his face and his suit rumpled as if it had been slept in, which it probably had. His attitude toward me had cooled. I knew he wasn’t happy that I hadn’t taken him up on his offer of more overtime after the funeral. He barely acknowledged my presence as he tossed a paper onto my desk. As I looked it over he told me it was a list of tenants at the Upper West Side apartment building that he wanted me to interview.
“What about the knife?” I asked.
He gave me a cold stare. “What about it?”
“I’d have to think with the FBI involved, we should have a list by now of Internet purchases for that make and model.”
“How’s that your business?”
“Because I’d like to conduct the interviews,” I said.
He kept his cold stare going while he considered some smartass crack back at me, but I guess he decided it would be better to just get the work off his desk and have one less thing to worry about. He nodded to me. “Yeah, we’ve got a list,” he said. “You want it, you can have it, but I still want those tenants interviewed.”
“How about a list of owners licensing .40 caliber pistols?”
“I’ve got that covered,” Hennison said. From the way he looked at me I could pretty much tell that he had spent the day Sunday and a good part of the night calling those gun owners and getting them to agree to provide ballistic samples. I could also tell he was resenting me for him being made lead for these murders. There was no question he was feeling the pressure. The papers still hadn’t connected the two murders—we kept enough out of our news briefings so they wouldn’t be able to connect them—but Hennison had to know he only had a few days before the brass felt compelled to connect the dots for them or, worse, before some enterprising reporter did it himself. Once that happened and the city realized we had a serial killer out there, the heat was going to be scorching.
I collected the list of knife purchases from Hennison and took it back to my desk. Unless our killer was the dumbest fuck alive on the planet, there was little chance that he’d allow a knife to be tracked back to him or, for that matter, that he’d have any registered .40 caliber in his possession. While you’re not expecting a Mensa candidate, these types of killers usually possess an animal caginess that makes this routine tracking of leads mostly pointless. Unless you get lucky with forensics, more often than not these types of cases break because a witness or informant drops in your lap. Still, until you find either hard evidence or a witness more reliable than, say, Zachary Lynch, all you’re left with is tracking down leads and hoping you catch a break.
I felt more clearheaded than I had over the past few days, but I also had that same uneasiness that I had woken up with the other night. I couldn’t shake this feeling that something was more wrong than simply Mariano Rivera blowing a playoff game for the Yankees. As I was scanning the list of knife purchasers the FBI had come up with, I received a call from a detective out in Queens who I grew up with in Flat-bush. It had been a few years since we spoke, and we spent some time catching up. He had been an usher at my wedding, and at one time dated Cheryl’s sister, and he gave his condolences when he heard about my divorce.
“My brother, Andy, is going through it now,” he said. “The whole custody business is killing him.”
“Shit, I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Yeah, I know. Listen, Stan, that woman shot with a .40 caliber in Tribeca. You’re the lead for that right?”
“Not anymore.”
He hesitated. “Should I be talking to you or someone else?”
“I don’t know. What’s up?”
“Some dogs were found shot up. I talked with the patrolman who investigated the area, and he told me heavy firepower was used. Made me think it might be a .40 caliber.”
“Who’s the officer?”
“Juan Fullijo.”
I thanked him for the call and then spent the next twenty minutes on the phone before I was able to reach Fullijo. I asked him about the dogs.
“There were three of them,” he said. “We found them under the Steinway Street overpass in Astoria.”
“What was done to them?”
“They were shot, you know, several times each. Big holes blown out of them. From the way they looked, maybe they were there for several days, maybe a week. Hollow-points might’ve been used.”
I felt my heart skip a beat. “.40 caliber?”
“We didn’t do ballistic testing,” he said, sounding confused. “These were dogs, right? Why the interest?”
“We’ve had a couple shootings here in Manhattan where a .40 caliber was used. Were these dogs shot point-blank in the back of the skull?”
“One of them was, yeah. Blew the little guy’s face right off.”
I couldn’t help smiling bitterly at that. Same goddamn sonofabitch. Maybe this time we’d find a witness—at least one who saw more than hallucinations.
“We’re going to need autopsies on these dogs,” I said. “And we need the area marked off as a crime scene.”
“I think the carcasses are being disposed of,” Fullijo said, distracted. “I’m sorry, detective, but shit, these were dogs. It’s not procedure to do autopsies.”
“You did fine, officer,” I said, and I got off the phone with him so I could track down the carcasses before they were lost. I got lucky. They were minutes away from being cremated when I found them and arranged for them to be sent to Manhattan for examination. I then filled Hennison in. He maintained a good poker face throughout, only a glint of light in his eyes betraying his excitement.
“You don’t know yet if a .40 caliber was used,” he said.
“Not yet.”
“You send forensics there?” he asked.
“I figured I’d let you do it.”
His poker face finally cracked and he shook his head grimacing. “The fucking psycho had to shoot dogs,” he said.
He made a call to send forensics to the scene. After that, the two of us headed over to Queens together.
Chapter 15
The dogs’ bodies were left under the Steinway Street over-pass in an area of overgrown grass and weeds between the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and the Grand Central Parkway. Hennison and I stood off to the side watching while forensics combed the area. Officer Fullijo had shown up to point out where the dogs were found, although that wasn’t needed since all three of those spots were marked by dried blood. Fullijo looked annoyed as he talked to us, probably thinking he was going to be blamed for not securing what turned out to be a crime scene and allowing the dog carcasses to be moved. Of course, it could’ve just been all the noise from traffic making it hard to talk, let alone think. After Fullijo repeated to Hennison everything he told me, he left.
Hennison tried saying something to me, but I didn’t hear because of a driver on the Parkway blasting his horn. The overpass amplified the road noise around us—and there was plenty of it with the north and south sides of Astoria Boulevard flanking both the Expressway and Parkway, as well as Steinway Street running overhead. Hennison looked as annoyed as Fullijo had when he repeated his comment to me about how the dogs must’ve been dumped there.
“Someone would’ve seen the shootings otherwise,” he said. “We would’ve had to’ve gotten a call from a witness if they were shot here. Besides, it doesn’t make sense. You’ve got Saint Michael’s Cemetery a few miles away. Why wouldn’t our perp take them there where he’d have some privacy?”
I shrugged noncommittally, watching as a member of the forensics team picked something out of the weeds and bagged it. Hennison watched him also.
; “You’re not seriously thinking they could’ve been shot here?” Hennison asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe they could’ve been. Late at night it would be dark enough that someone driving by would only see the flashes from the gunfire. Maybe not even that. You’d think someone would’ve heard shots, but with LaGuardia nearby, he could’ve timed his shooting with planes taking off. Maybe the road noise covered it. Or maybe the drivers passing by just didn’t know what they were hearing.”
From Hennison’s blank expression he must’ve only heard part of what I said over the traffic noise, but he didn’t care enough to ask me to repeat it. We stood watching as forensics continued their examination of the area. When they were done, one of the team members—a thin dark-haired woman in her twenties—came over to fill us in. We all walked farther away from the overpass and toward the center of the median area so we’d have a better shot at hearing each other. The forensics team member told us the shootings occurred at the site.
“How do you know they weren’t dumped here?” Hennison demanded.
“From the blood splatter and bone fragments found,” she said. “And we dug four bullets out of the ground.”
“.40 caliber?” I asked.
“Possibly. I’ll be able to tell you definitively later. But they were hollow-points.”
“Shell casings?”
She shook her head. “They must’ve been picked up afterward.”
“Any idea when the shootings happened?” I asked.
“Sorry, no. The ME’s going to have to tell you that. But the fact that we weren’t able to pull any tire tracks makes me think it happened at least a week ago.”
“Anything connecting us to the shooter?”
She smiled anemically at the question. “The whole area is pretty well contaminated by garbage being tossed from the overpass. I counted enough used condoms to make me think that vice should be watching the area. We did find a large amount of dried blood on the edge of the grass on the Expressway side. This wasn’t where we were told the dogs were found, so maybe it came from the shooter. We’ve collected all of it, and we’ll see what we come up with.”
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