The Night Caller

by Lutz, John

  Coop made his way through the crowded restaurant and out onto the sunny sidewalk. His car was parked half a block down. He headed for it. There was a time, a few months ago, when he wouldn’t have been able to walk half a block. When he wouldn’t have been able to keep down a bowl of clam chowder. Now he was feeling fine.

  But decades?

  Possibly.

  But he didn’t believe it.

  The guard on duty at the entrance to Breezy Point recognized his old Honda Accord and raised the barrier, waving him through. Coop rolled the window down so he could smell the salt air as he drove through the narrow streets. They were lined with one-story wooden bungalows set close together. As he got closer to the beach, he passed larger, newer houses. There were some rich people in Breezy Point now. Times had changed since the days when everybody was either a fireman or a policeman. It had been a long time since the community was jokingly called the Irish Riviera.

  The Honda hummed smoothly along the road, its tires singing steadily and ticking at regular intervals when they rolled across seams in the pavement. As usual on a weekday in autumn, Breezy Point was quiet. That was what Coop’s daughter Bette had told him she needed. Normally the beach house Coop and his former wife Maureen had bought and rehabbed in happier times was vacant and secured for the coming winter, but it was little trouble to ready it for Bette.

  She’d been there almost a week now, but Coop hadn’t seen her since dinner the night she’d driven into town.

  Bette lived and worked in New Jersey, holding down a high-pressure job with a real estate company. Last week she’d called Coop and said she was taking a few weeks off from work and wanted to spend them at the beach house. That was fine with Coop. He missed her increasingly infrequent visits, and she sounded anxious and worn down.

  He knew better than to question Bette about her troubles. When she was younger he was an overprotective parent, as cops tend to be. Her mother, strong willed and with her own set of demands on her daughter, hadn’t helped matters. So Coop didn’t blame Bette for guarding her privacy. He was just grateful she’d invited him down today.

  He parked in the drive of the small clapboard bungalow and climbed out of the car. There was raw wood showing where some of the white paint had worn off on the structure’s windward side, and the green shutters were starting to peel. The entire place would need painting soon. Usually Coop did that sort of job, but with his illness he found himself wondering if he should take the time. Painting a summer cottage was a productive project only for a man who had enough life to carry him into the next summer. He wasn’t sure if he qualified.

  He pressed the doorbell button and waited, but got no answer, heard no sound from inside. He pressed the button again and listened closely, sure that he heard the faint doorbell chimes from the cottage’s interior.

  Nothing else broke the silence.

  After a few minutes, Coop tried the door and found it unlocked.

  He stepped inside and called his daughter’s name.

  There was no answer. The only sound was the refrigerator’s low hum, along with a faint shrill vibration of something glass dancing inside it on a wire shelf.

  Then he saw Bette lying on her back on the couch, her dark hair spread on a pillow.

  Most people would have assumed she was asleep, but not Coop. He’d visited too many homicide scenes and knew death when he saw it. When he smelled it and felt the solemn eternal hush of its presence.

  He stepped numbly to the side and saw Bette’s face, and he knew she’d been strangled.

  Death had come for the daughter of the man who so feared death. And with it a future for Coop that he couldn’t have imagined.

  Chapter Three

  The mourners who’d accompanied them to Maureen’s home after the funeral had all gone. Only the flowers were left. Coop sat and looked at them. There were bouquets of roses and carnations in many colors, as well as big, exotic blooms whose names he didn’t know, arranged into elaborate horseshoes and wreaths. People had gone to a lot of trouble and expense, he thought dully. Thank-you notes would have to be written.

  Maureen prowled the room, hands on her hips. She kept glaring at the flowers.

  “I don’t get it,” she said. “Why do people send flowers?”

  “They’re our friends. They’re trying to console us.”

  “Watching something beautiful wither and die is supposed to make me feel better?”

  Coop sighed. “I’ll take them if you like.”

  “I don’t see why people ever thought of cutting flowers in the first place. Why bring them indoors and watch them die? Go to a garden if you want to see them.”

  Coop repeated, “I’ll take them if you like.”

  “It’s the waste I can’t stand. If only people had given money to her favorite charity instead of sending flowers. You should have put that in the newspaper.”

  He didn’t reply. He felt drained of all energy and emotion.

  The funeral had been a horror. All through it Coop had held his pain at a distance. An odd sense of guilt had crept into his grief, as if he were somehow to blame for Bette’s death. He was her father, a cop, and had protected her all her life.

  But not this time. Not against this killer.

  Now he and Maureen were alone together with their new burden, the mutual loss they would take with them to their own graves.

  They hadn’t gotten along after the divorce, which itself had been less than amicable. Along with the recent direction Maureen’s life had taken, this could only make things much worse.

  She had become an activist, dedicated to environmentalism, animal rights, and natural everything. Not that anyone would call Maureen touchy-feely. She upheld her gentle, holistic principles with a ferocious rigor. Coop’s efforts to comfort her had met with polite but sullen withdrawal. Her daughter’s murder had stunned her. And made her even more angry.

  They were in the living room of her small co-op on a quiet street in New Rochelle. He was sitting in an uncomfortable beige upholstered chair with cold wooden arms. She came to sit directly across from him. He raised his eyes to find her staring at him with her lips pursed, as if waiting for something. She hadn’t aged well. Her once lithe figure had become somewhat stocky, her brown eyes dim and haunted. And she’d dyed her hair dark and cut it short so that it added weight to her face. Yet she might still be attractive if she made a minimum of effort. But she didn’t.

  Voices sounded outside, someone giving directions. Then a car door slammed, and the last of the departed mourners drove away. From across the ensuing silence Maureen stared at Coop bleary-eyed, as if through water.

  “How could you have let her stay in that house alone?” she demanded to know. “How could you keep it a secret from me that she was in town?”

  Coop sighed and dragged his hand down his face, as if trying to rearrange his features so he could be someone else. He’d known the question was coming, had plenty of time to think about it. But there was only one honest answer, and it wasn’t going to satisfy Maureen.

  He said, “She would have called you if she wanted to see you. What she wanted was peace and quiet.”

  “Why? Was she having problems?”

  “I felt I shouldn’t question her,” Coop said miserably. “I was wrong.”

  “Were you ever!” Maureen sat back, crossing her legs. He found himself staring at her shoes. They were heavy-looking pumps with a dull black finish. Maureen was against using animal products, including leather. Coop was never sure what her shoes were made of. He remembered how good her legs used to look when she wore high heels.

  “Everything I heard about her life in New Jersey was positive,” she went on.

  “Same here.”

  “You sure? She was always more willing to confide in you than me. The two of you were always so close. You even told her about the cancer before you told me.”

  He didn’t reply to that. After a while he said, “You were always a good mother to her.”

  �
��I was. That’s why we weren’t close. There were old grudges. I was the one who had to say no, enforce curfews, dole out allowances. You’d arrive on Saturday afternoon and take her to a soccer game. Easy for you to be her pal. So what’s she been telling you the last few months?”

  “Everything was going well. She was busy at work. Feeling tired. That’s all she said.” Coop paused, then added, “Believe me, I’ve thought about this.”

  Maureen let it drop. There was silence. He kept his head down, watching as the squared-off toe of her shoe turned in a slow circle. She asked, “Do you know a Detective Mackey?”

  “Mackey? No.”

  “He was the one who interviewed me. Asked me one totally insensitive question after the other for an hour and a half. Then you know what he did? Fingerprinted me.” She was examining the tips of her fingers as if to make sure she’d gotten all the ink off. “Wouldn’t give a reason why he was doing it, of course. You cops hate giving reasons. All he’d say was it was for purposes of elimination.”

  “That was the reason. They dust the house for fingerprints. Next they eliminate the people whose prints they’d expect to find—you, me, Bette. If they find anybody else’s prints—”

  “They could be the killer’s?”

  “Could be.”

  “Well, did they find anybody else’s prints?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What—they didn’t talk to you, either?”

  “I don’t call them. When they have something to tell us, they will.”

  “Oh? Are you sure about that?”

  “I don’t understand you.”

  “Suppose they’re covering up. Suppose it was a cop who killed her.”

  Coop looked up at her face. She stared fiercely back at him, her lips drawn taut. He said, “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Is it? Practically everybody in Breezy Point is NYPD.”

  “That’s not true anymore.”

  “Our neighbors on both sides are NYPD.”

  “You think Judy and Kent Mallon are murderers? Or Edna and Ron O’Brien? We’ve known them for years.”

  “Why didn’t they hear anything, then? Why didn’t anybody hear anything? The houses at Breezy are about six feet apart. Thin wooden walls. Open windows. How could someone get into our house and—and do what they did and leave, and nobody heard anything?”

  Coop sighed heavily. The question had occurred to him, too. He’d tried to dismiss it, but it kept coming back. He said, “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t? Then how do you know witnesses aren’t keeping quiet? Protecting somebody. Cops protect each other no matter what. The blue line that never breaks. You’re not going to deny that.”

  “It happens. But not in this case.”

  “You don’t know about this case. You’ve already admitted that. Why don’t you ask a few questions? Shake things up a little? For God’s sake! You’re a lieutenant, NYPD, and this is your daughter!”

  She was leaning forward now, shouting at him. Coop said, “Easy, Maureen. Try to calm down.”

  “Don’t give me that condescending male crap! If you think I’m wrong, argue with me.” She bit hard into her lower lip to keep from crying.

  “Maureen…”

  “Leave me the hell alone!”

  “I don’t think you’re wrong.” He stood up from his chair. “I’ll make some calls and let you know.”

  Maureen remained seated. As he let himself out she said something that might have been “Thanks, Coop.”

  Might have been.

  When he got back to his efficiency apartment on New York’s Upper West Side, Coop peeled off his suit coat, loosened his tie, then opened a cold bottle of Beck’s dark. The apartment was two rooms and a small bathroom. What passed for a kitchen was behind a tall folding screen in a corner. The walls were a mottled cream color, as were the drapes over vertical plastic blinds in the single window. Framed museum prints hung on the walls, modern ones that were like dreams with sharp angles. Coop didn’t understand them. The furniture had been in the apartment when he moved in and was the best thing about it.

  He sat down on his sofa that at night unfolded and became his bed.

  Why shouldn’t he look into his daughter’s death on his own? Some in the department might not like it, but what could they do to him at this point in his dwindling life? And what kind of life was it? He’d become a disconsolate recluse in his tiny apartment, roaming the neighborhood on late night walks, a man without employment, social life, or purpose. Now he had his grief to keep him company and turn him in on himself even more, along with his self-pity. Better to do something—to use what time he had left to learn who had killed his daughter, and why.

  He took a sip of beer, slouched down, and leaned back against the sofa cushion, thinking on what he did know about Bette’s murder.

  He’d been the first cop on the scene, had seen things fresh. That was always an advantage. He steeled himself and tried to picture it in his mind.

  The cottage door had been unlocked, but it didn’t seem to have been tampered with. No scratches on the lock or scrapes on the door. The killer had either used a key or been let in, and Coop could account for all the keys to the cottage except the one he’d given to Bette.

  Nothing in the house seemed to have been disturbed. Nothing that Coop could recall might be missing. There had been no sign anyone had smoked in the house, no drinking glasses or anything else indicating a visitor. Had Bette talked to anyone on the phone shortly before her death? Coop wished now he’d pressed the redial button before calling for help. But he’d been in shock, disoriented by the sight of his murdered daughter. If only he’d had the presence of mind to treat the situation like any other homicide, to examine the crime scene without touching anything and determine some basic facts. The first building blocks for constructing a case must have been there, but he’d ignored them.

  There were so many questions, and no way for him to know the essential answers, or to learn them without help. He couldn’t take seriously Maureen’s suspicions of a police cover-up. That was paranoia talking. But that didn’t mean the detectives investigating the case would speak frankly to the victim’s father, even if he was a retired cop.

  He decided to go see Billard. His old friend in the department ought to be able to fill him in. Tomorrow, though. Right now he was exhausted from the funeral, from Maureen. He wanted to take off his shoes, lie back on the sofa, and rest.

  No, he told himself, not tomorrow.

  He made himself stand up and shrugged back into his suit coat.

  Not tomorrow. Today.

  He couldn’t rely on tomorrows.

  Chapter Four

  Billard’s office was at the other end of Queens from his restaurant at Howard Beach. To Coop it felt like another world. This was Long Island City, a crowded, noisy district of old warehouses and factories and row houses that had been occupied by working people until yuppies moved in during the eighties. The skyscrapers of midtown Manhattan loomed just across the East River.

  The dense, mixed population of the area kept the precinct house busy.

  As he walked down the hall toward his former patrol car partner’s office he could hear the background chatter of a police radio, the earnest pleadings of a man and woman at the booking desk, bursts of muffled, outraged shouting from the holdover cells on the second floor. Two plainclothes detectives he didn’t recognize passed him, grinning and chattering about something other than police work, but the suit coat of one was unbuttoned and with each step flapping to afford a glimpse of the checked butt of his belt-holstered 9mm handgun. Coop had loved it all and still did, the sounds and sights, and the scent of desperation on the not so fresh air.

  The desk sergeant was a grizzled old warrior named McCreary. Coop remembered seeing him in Seconds. McCreary remembered Coop, addressing him as “Lou,” department slang for “Lieutenant.” Making him feel at home. McCreary called Lieutenant Billard to notify him that Coop was in the building.

&
nbsp; Billard’s office door was the only one in the hall that was slightly ajar, as if be wanted to make sure Coop could find it.

  Coop knocked as he pushed the door open farther and stepped inside.

  It was a small office with plaster walls painted a dull green. A lot of greasy cobwebs were stuck to and moving around the rectangular heating vent up near the ceiling. The room’s one window had a wire grill over its dirty glass and looked out on the precinct house parking lot. A row of gray file cabinets lined one wall, a table with a computer on it sat against another. About a dozen yellow Post-its were stuck haphazardly to the frame of the computer monitor. Coop wondered why people never arranged them symmetrically, the way they did postage stamps.

  Billard was seated behind a cluttered gray steel desk. He stood up, came around the desk, and the two men hugged.

  When they stepped apart, Billard gave Coop’s arm a pat.

  “I feel like crap not making it over to Maureen’s after the funeral,” he said. “I was on my way, but all hell broke loose here this morning and…well, you know how it is. The Job never lets up.”

  Coop nodded, feeling awkward, thinking maybe Billard should have come no matter how much hell had broken loose. But he knew he was being unreasonable. “It’s all right, you were at the cemetery.” He waited while the bulky Billard, his girth testing the seams of his blue uniform shirt, moved back behind the desk and sat down with a sigh. Billard motioned for Coop to sit in the uncomfortable oak chair set at an angle in front of the desk. Coop sat, thought the hell with it, and stood back up. “I’m here because of Bette,” he said.

  “I kinda figured you would be.”

  “How close are they to making an arrest?”

  Billard hesitated long enough to give him the answer. “Don’t guess it’d do much good to tell you we’re doing all we can, and we’ll keep you apprised of developments.”

  “No,” Coop said. He drifted over to the window and looked out at the rows of patrol cars and assortment of officers’ personal cars in the graveled parking lot. Sunlight glanced dully off dusty windshields. “What’ve you got so far, Art?”