by Lutz, John
Then, if she found herself alone, she would relax in front of the TV and have some wine.
And eventually she’d fall asleep.
Chapter Twenty-one
The days passed while Coop and Deni went over and over what they knew. Coop talked to some of Bette’s friends again and had dinner with the still disconsolate Lloyd Watkins. He found himself liking the young man, wishing again that Bette had lived and might have enjoyed a long marriage and motherhood. A father’s dream for the dead.
Maureen had been stepping up the pressure, calling Coop at odd hours to harangue him and goad him to dig deeper into Bette’s murder, to listen to Deni Green, who in Maureen’s mind had taken on a sagacity and importance far beyond reality. Maureen had begun reading Deni’s novels. Maybe that accounted for her heightened faith in the author’s own detection skills.
When the jangle of the phone by his bed shattered the early morning hours, Coop emerged from sleep assuming Maureen was calling him again.
Then he realized the bedroom was still dark. This was too early even for Maureen to be on the phone.
He dragged the receiver over to him and said hello in a sleep-thickened voice.
“Better get on your horse, Coop.” Deni’s voice. “We got another victim that looks like the work of our killer.”
He blinked and rubbed his eyes, thinking she sounded like a character out of one of her mystery novels. “You found this out on your computer?”
“No. One of my police contacts called to let me know about it.”
Coop came all the way awake and switched on the bedside reading lamp. “You mean this murder was in New York?”
“Yep. Queens. On the campus of a community college out near Nassau County. Security guard came across the dead body of a woman laid out on her back beneath a tree. Her head was resting on one of the larger roots near the trunk as if it were a pillow, and her hair was carefully fanned out like with the other victims.”
“So there’s a police report on this?”
“Not yet. That’s the best part, Coop! Why you and I need to get out there soon as possible and examine the crime scene before the police make their usual dumb assumptions or overlook something like a nearby footprint that doesn’t seem to be connected to the murder.”
“How long ago was this murder?”
“Only hours. That’s what’s great about it. Ann Callahan isn’t even cold yet!”
Coop was surprised Deni already had the victim’s name. Probably Ann Callahan’s family didn’t even know yet that she was dead. Deni’s police contact must be a good one, to pass out that kind of sensitive information. Maybe one who had little choice. There were a lot of questions he wanted to ask Deni, but he knew this wasn’t the time. “You know the exact location?”
“You bet I do.”
“I’ll get dressed,” Coop said, “then swing by and pick you up outside your apartment.”
“Don’t loaf on me, Coop. This murder’s a lucky break for us. We should make the most of it.”
“I won’t be long. Keep in mind I was sound asleep only a few minutes ago.” He scooted sideways, then stood up from the bed as he spoke.
“Hurry!” Deni pleaded. “I’ve never been to a homicide scene and I want to get there before they move the body. Maybe I can even see the fatal wounds. You think that’s possible?”
“It’s possible,” Coop said, and hung up on her, disgusted.
The sun had been up only minutes when Coop and Deni reached the community college. Ann Callahan’s murder had taken place near the edge of the campus. Coop peered through the windshield and saw yellow police scene tape near some trees, and a knot of figures standing motionless around something on the ground. In the diffused, early morning light, the scene was hazy and unreal. He wished he were dreaming, but he knew he wasn’t. The figures in the scene were real, all right, and were mostly cops. And the object on the ground was a dead woman.
“Park there, near that bus stop,” Deni said, pointing through the windshield.
Coop braked and pulled to the curb beyond the bus stop sign, parking behind an ambulance. The emergency vehicle’s parking lights were on, but not its flashing roof-bar lights. The emergency here was over. A white cloud of exhaust from a car engine drifted to the side up ahead on the cold breeze. Coop glimpsed a police cruiser parked in front of the ambulance. He was glad the bus stop was there to prevent solid parking along the curb. An unbroken line of parked cars might have prevented him from noticing the somber scene beneath the trees.
Coop and Deni climbed out of the Honda and walked toward the knot of people gathered like early mourners around the body. The wind was blowing in off the campus, seeming to carry the scent of death and causing Coop to turn up the collar of his black topcoat. His throat was raw. He wasn’t feeling terrific this morning and didn’t like being up so early. Especially to visit a homicide scene.
A few of the people around the body had noticed their approach and were watching them.
Coop looked over at Deni, who was staring straight ahead intently, her chin thrust forward.
“We’re going to play this low-key,” he told her. “It doesn’t take much for two civilians nosing around a murder case to be cut out of the loop by the police. We need to keep our lines of communication open.”
Deni snorted, her fogged breath streaming from her nostrils in a way that reminded Coop of cartoon bulls about to charge. “I’m the one with the line of communication here. It was my informant who called me on a cell phone less than an hour after the body was discovered.”
“Don’t mention that to anyone here other than me,” Coop said.
“You think I’m stupid?” Deni asked.
“No. I think you’re too clever.”
When they got to within about twenty feet of the body, one of the figures standing over it detached itself from the group and advanced to head them off while the others resumed talking among themselves. They would allow anyone only so close to the frozen zone, cop talk for a crime scene that needed to be preserved.
The man who approached was stocky, with thinning, rust-colored hair and a broad, weathered face. Though he was wearing a tan raincoat buttoned to the neck, his brown pants and black cop’s shoes splattered with mud told Coop he was police and had been a while on the scene.
“Sorry,” he said with a reluctant smile, “no media allowed.”
“We’re not media,” Coop said, before Deni could answer and seize control of the conversation. “I’m Ezekiel Cooper, used to be with the NYPD.”
The man sniffed several times as if he had a cold. “Used to be?”
Coop noticed that his eyes were red and swollen, either from the cold or lack of sleep. “I’m retired,” Coop told him, “working independently on my daughter’s murder.”
The stocky cop’s expression softened. “You’re Lieutenant Cooper. I remember you from a long time ago at the Two-Four Precinct. You and Art Billard partnered in a patrol car.”
“You know Billard?” Coop asked.
“Sure.” Sniff, sniff. “Haven’t seen him in a while though. I’m Don Quinones, got the squeal on this one.” He shook hands with Coop, then looked at Deni.
“Deni Green,” Coop said. “Partner of mine.”
Quinones nodded at Deni, who smiled at him.
“I read about what happened to your daughter,” Quinones said to Coop. “Heard you were working the case as a civilian. Can’t blame you for that. You think there’s some connection between this murder and your daughter’s?”
“It’s possible. Mind if we get closer?”
“C’mon, Lou,” Quinones said. He sniffed and led the way toward Ann Callahan’s body.
They ducked beneath the crime scene tape, but Quinones stopped them about ten feet away from the corpse. “The lab guys are still looking at the area immediately around her,” he explained. “We don’t wanna stomp around there.”
“You guys were all standing around her,” Deni noted.
“We figured out
where to step.”
“Are there any footprints?” Deni asked.
Quinones looked at her. “Not that we can see so far. The grass was dry, and we haven’t had rain or snow for a while so the ground is hard.”
Coop stared at Ann Callahan’s corpse, the way it was laid out on the ground, the head resting on the tree root as if it were on a pillow, her red hair fanned out in a perfect, unbroken crescent. She was fully clothed, still wearing a gray coat with a white leather collar. There was a small dark stain near the pelvic area the coat covered. The coat wasn’t twisted or bunched. Coop guessed she’d been moved, arranged carefully after her murder. Her hands were folded just beneath her breasts. Her eyes were closed. She’d obviously been attractive when alive, but didn’t seem to bear any resemblance to Bette or to Marlee Clark. Yet something about her in a subtle way reminded Coop of when he’d found Bette dead in the cottage, and of the crime scene photos of Marlee Clark’s body. There was an odd peacefulness about the dead woman, Coop thought. Someone had cared. The same someone who had killed.
“How did she die?” he asked Quinones.
“ME suspects she was knocked unconscious first, then stabbed in the back with a long, thin blade that pierced her heart. Gotta wait for the autopsy to confirm, though.”
“Sure,” Coop said, glancing again at the bloodstain on the victim’s coat, wondering if it signified what he couldn’t mention because he wasn’t supposed to know it. “What do you know about her?”
“Only what we found in her wallet, which was still in her purse and still contained thirty dollars. Robbery didn’t seem to be the motive here.”
“That doesn’t surprise me.”
“We learned from her wallet ID that her name’s Ann Callahan, twenty-nine years old, address in Flushing. And at this point that’s about all we know about her. The ME’s guess is she was killed sometime before midnight last night. Security guard found her about four this morning and called us. Oh, one other thing we know about her is she wasn’t registered as a student here. The admissions office has already checked for us on their computer databases.” Quinones looked at Deni, then Coop. “Any of this help you?”
“It might,” Deni said.
That wasn’t what Quinones wanted to hear. Coop knew it was time to be honest with the man, especially if they wanted more information on the Ann Callahan case.
“Here’s how it might,” he said. He told Quinones what they’d learned since Bette’s murder.
Quinones listened quietly, then excused himself and blew his nose four times into a handkerchief. He shook his head and frowned to express his discomfort and the misery of the world in general, then folded the handkerchief and stuffed it into a side pocket of his raincoat. “You sure got a lotta maybes.”
“I know,” Coop said. “That’s why we’re here. It’d help if you found anything tying this in with the other homicides.”
“Especially a matching footprint,” Deni said.
“Gimme your number,” Quinones told Coop. “I’ll share with you what I can. It’s gotta run both ways though.”
“You’ll get what we have. And you can always check with Billard. He’ll be up to date.”
Quinones tore a sheet of paper from a small leather-bound notebook and handed it and a pen to Coop, who wrote down his name and phone number, then gave them to Quinones. He didn’t give Deni a chance to write her name and number, knowing it might be an affront to Quinones. This wasn’t your usual arrangement between cop and civilian. Deni wasn’t and never had been a cop. Coop knew it and didn’t want to have to say it. Quinones could probably guess it anyway.
“I’ll give you a call sometime after the autopsy report,” he told Coop. He shook hands with both Coop and Deni, then turned back toward the body beneath the leafless tree.
As Coop and Deni trudged back toward Coop’s Honda, Deni said, “We didn’t learn a hell of a lot by coming here, other than we both better wash our hands when we get home. Quinones has a god-awful cold.”
“Except for the part about the cold, I can’t agree with you,” Coop said. “We learned weapon and cause of death, approximate time of death, and that the victim probably wasn’t sexually molested or mutilated. And there was something about the way she was laid out, the way her body was arranged…. It reminded me of when I found Bette.”
Deni was silent for half a dozen steps, then said, “That is something.”
When Coop dropped her off at her apartment, she climbed out of the car, then turned and leaned down so she could speak to him. “I’ll call and let you know what the police come up with, long before you hear from Quinones.”
“It won’t hurt to hear it twice and compare it,” Coop said. He doubted Deni’s police contact was in tight enough to know about the plastic St. Augustines, or if he did know, he was too smart to pass on the information to her. Coop sure as hell wasn’t going to tell her.
“I’m glad we drove out there this morning,” Deni told him, then straightened up, shut the car door, and strode toward her building entrance.
Coop wasn’t sure he was glad. He kept seeing again the woman lying peacefully on her back beneath the dormant, skeletal tree. The tree would be rejuvenated with spring. The woman would remain dead forever.
Chapter Twenty-two
The Flushing address of Ann Callahan’s parents was a shotgun apartment in a flat-roofed brick building with dead-looking vines clinging to one corner. It stood at weary attention in a block of nearly identical buildings. There was no elevator, and the Callahan unit was on the third floor. The stairwell smelled as if someone in the building was cooking something with every conceivable spice. Coop was annoyed by the fact that he was breathing harder than Deni when they’d finished the climb up the narrow wooden stairs.
They’d rung from downstairs and had been told on the intercom to come up, but the door to 3C, the Callahan unit, was closed. Coop knocked and immediately heard floor-boards creaking on the other side of the door.
It was Mr. Callahan who opened the door and peered out at them tentatively, as if he feared they might be bringing him even more terrible news.
He was a small man, with hunched shoulders and his chin tucked in so that he was staring up at Coop and Deni above the dark rims of his glasses. His straight gray hair was combed to lie flat over a bald pate. He was wearing pinstriped pants, a white shirt, black tie, and blue suspenders. Coop had found out that his first name was Edward and for the last twenty-two years he’d been a clerk for various city agencies and was now with the New York Department of Environmental Protection. With his rounded shoulders, bleary eyes, and pinched look about him, he fit the role of bureaucratic hermit crab.
“Can we make this fast?” he asked in a tired voice. “We’ve already talked to you people for hours. My wife’s exhausted.”
Deni started to say something and Coop nudged her. Better to let Edward Callahan assume they were police.
“I know it strains your patience, Mr. Callahan, and we’re sorry. But we very much want to find whoever killed your daughter.”
Callahan screwed up his thin lips in a way that suggested he might start to cry. Coop felt an unexpected pang of pity. He knew exactly how Edward Callahan felt.
But Callahan didn’t cry. Instead he composed himself, then stepped back and let them inside. The apartment’s interior was comfortably if a bit shabbily furnished, with overstuffed furniture and an ancient TV against the wall opposite the sofa. Imitation oriental rugs lay on the hardwood floor. A glass of water with half-melted ice cubes sat on an AARP magazine on the coffee table. Coop guessed that whatever the Callahans’ ages, they felt a lot older today.
A short, worn-looking woman in dark slacks and a wrinkled green sweater entered from a dim hallway that led to the kitchen and bedrooms. Her eyes were red, her face puffy. She was gripping a rosary tightly in her right hand, and she’d probably been crying moments before coming into the living room.
“My wife Louise,” Callahan said. “I told you she was exhausted. W
e both are. God…”
“I know how you feel,” Coop said.
Callahan shook his head. “Don’t tell me that. I don’t want to hear it.”
“We only want to ask a few questions about Ann,” Deni said. “Then we’ll leave you to your grief.”
Louise Callahan began to sob again but caught her breath in a series of gasps. It seemed to Coop that her frenzied inhalations took all the air out of the room.
“Do you or your wife have any idea who might have been angry or upset in any way with Ann?” he asked.
“Not enough to…do that to her,” Edward Callahan said. “Like we told the other detectives over and over.”
Coop ignored the comment. “Who were her close personal friends?”
“She didn’t have any that we knew. Maybe at work. She was a good girl, a shy girl who minded her own business.”
Coop thought that was a strange answer. “Ann wasn’t a student at the college. Do you have any idea why she would have been on its campus last night?”
“None. She was overdue from work at the bank. She took the bus home every weeknight. She was supposed to show up around six-thirty to help Louise start dinner.”
Louise made another gasping sound, barely under control. Everyone looked at her. She dabbed at her eyes with a wadded tissue, never loosening her grip on the rosary. “I’ll be all right,” she said, mostly to herself. She took a deep breath.
“We don’t know why Ann stayed on the bus all the way to the end of…to where they found her.” Callahan glared at Coop and Deni. “I told you I’m tired! My wife and I both are. Worn out with answering questions!”
“Edward!” Louise Callahan said.
“Shut up, Louise. This can wait until later.”