Shadows Still Remain

by Peter de Jonge

  “Fuckall.”

  In the midafternoon, Narin spots a tuft of black hair, the same length and color as Pena’s, snagged on a nail in one of the scaffolding’s two-by-fours, and an hour later, as the sun begins its precipitous descent, finds three drops of blood on the curb just north of the corner of Rivington and Chrystie. Based on the thickness of the drops and the tightness of the splatter, Narin speculates that Pena was crouching near the curb when she was struck, presumably from behind. Soon after, an assistant removes a nearby sewer grate and using a net at the end of a long telescoping pole, fishes an orange T-Mobile cell phone out of the muck along with an uneaten chocolate malt ball. As soon as they’re found, hair, blood, phone and chocolate are driven uptown to the lab, and although the damage has already been done, O’Hara apprises Lowry in real time about each discovery.

  When the sun drops completely, O’Hara notices the lights from the squad cars parked up and down Forysth on the far side of the park, and when she steps out of the construction site sees that cops are going door to door on Chrystie as well.

  “They must be looking for security cameras,” says Krekorian. “Trying to find a vehicle parked near here that night. Pena didn’t get to East River Park by walking.”

  No wonder Lowry was so happy to turn the crime scene over to her and Krekorian, thinks O’Hara. Once the crime scene had been found, it instantly became old news, and he was on to the next step. An hour later, when Grimes chauffeurs Lowry back to the Atelier one more time and Lowry again extricates himself from the front seat, he’s not pissed off. He’s triumphant.

  “Just to show there’s no hard feelings,” says Lowry. “I got something to share…At this point, Red, you’re supposed to ask, ‘What’s that, Detective?’”

  “What’s that, Detective?”

  “We just found video of a green piece-of-shit van double-parked twenty feet north of here on Chrystie from 5:20 to 6:05 a.m. Thanksgiving morning. At this point you’re supposed to say, ‘Congratulations, Detective.’”

  “Congratulations,” says O’Hara.

  “Unfortunately, we only got the front of the van, and the camera angle is so fucked up, we can’t read the plate.”

  “That’s unfortunate,” says O’Hara.

  “Very good,” says Lowry, “but the problem wasn’t insurmountable, because we got just enough of a plate to see it was out of state. That makes me think of your pal David McLain, you know, the one you have such a good feeling about. So I run his name through the DMV in Westfield, Mass., and guess who’s the proud owner of a green 1986 Ford Aerostar, if there’s such a thing? That’s right. We’re heading over to pick him up now. Is there anything we need to know?”

  “He’s not armed, if that’s what you mean. Can we follow you?”

  “Why not? You can hear the little bastard confess.”

  15

  The door to apartment 5B is still unlocked and partly open, and as far as O’Hara can tell, McLain hasn’t moved in three days. He occupies the same spot on the couch in the same clothes, and based on the city of empties that has sprung up at his feet and the redolent cloud that hugs the ceiling, he hasn’t given up Jack or reefer. When Lowry, beet red and sweating heavily from the five flights, approaches the couch, McLain tries to look around him to where O’Hara stands awkwardly in the doorway, but Lowry, who seems to fill the tiny room, moves to block his view. “Forget about her, David. Look at me. I’m Patrick Lowry, Homicide. You have to deal with me now. When did you get to New York, David?” McLain blinks at him through the smoke, and it’s not clear to O’Hara that he understands the question. “When did you arrive in the city, David?”

  “November fourth.”

  “How’d you get here?”

  “Drove.”

  “What?”

  “My van.”

  “What kind is it? What color? What year?”

  “Aerostar, 1986. Doesn’t really have a color. My guess is it used to be green. Why, you want to buy it?”

  “Any reason you didn’t mention the van to Detective O’Hara?”

  “She didn’t ask.”

  “Where is it now?”

  “Tompkins Square. I scored a great space. I’m good till Tuesday.”

  “It’s Thursday.”

  “Seriously?”

  “We need you to show us where it’s parked.”

  “I can tell you exactly where it is—Avenue B just above Ninth on the park side. The keys are on the table.”

  “No,” says Lowry, lifting him off the couch by one arm. “You’re coming.”

  Lowry stuffs him in the back of his car, and O’Hara and Krekorian follow them to Tompkins Square, where McLain walks Lowry to a sign reading NO PARKING TUESDAY AND FRIDAY, 9:30 A.M. TO 1:30 P.M.

  “I parked it right next to this sign.”

  “Then where the fuck is it?”

  “Someone stole it.”

  “No one steals a van worth forty-five dollars.”

  “Someone did.”

  Lowry shoves McLain back in his car, and O’Hara and Krekorian follow them to 19½ Pitt Street, where Lowry brings McLain up to the detective room and deposits him in the closet-sized box used for interrogations. To watch, O’Hara has to stand unpleasantly close to Grimes as they take turns staring through the portal-sized window in the door.

  “We know you killed her, David,” says Lowry.

  “That’s not true.”

  “You show up at her apartment, and three weeks later she’s dead. You’re the one who reports her missing, and best of all, we’ve got video of your van at six a.m. Thanksgiving morning, pulling away from the building in which she had just been tortured and killed. That’s three too many coincidences.”

  “Why would I kill her? I loved her. She was my friend.”

  “But she didn’t love you, David.”

  “That’s probably true.”

  “Probably? We spoke to her friends. None of them had heard of you. You had been here three weeks, and they didn’t know you exist. Francesca was embarrassed by you.”

  “Maybe a little.”

  “We know that she thought you were a loser. I bet she was afraid of you too. The last night of her life, she stayed at a bar on Rivington drinking alone till last call, anything not to go back to her apartment and you. When she left that night, she wanted you gone by the time she got back, didn’t she? Is that why you killed her? Because she wanted you out of her life?”

  Lowry is so tall and wide that most of the time, O’Hara can only hear McLain. Over the next three hours, he never asks for a lawyer or stops pleading his innocence. He doesn’t even ask to be allowed to sleep. His only request is coffee.

  At one point, however, he lifts himself a couple of inches in his chair and tries to look over Lowry’s shoulder at the door. “I need to talk to O’Hara,” he says, on the verge of tears.

  “You can’t,” says Lowry. “And by the way, O’Hara thinks you’re as guilty as I do. She has from the beginning. She’s just been playing you.”

  “I need to talk to O’Hara,” he repeats. On the far side of the door, Grimes stares disdainfully at O’Hara and puts two fingers together. “Your boyfriend’s about this close to giving it up.”

  “Bullshit,” says O’Hara.

  “What was that?”

  “Bullfuckingshit.”

  But when O’Hara peers back into the box and catches a glimpse of McLain’s scared face, his features blur. For a second O’Hara isn’t sure if she’s looking at McLain or Axl.

  16

  At two in the morning, unable to watch any longer, O’Hara slips out of the precinct house and walks north up Pitt Street. She passes the shopping carts belonging to the skells who reside beneath the Williamsburg Bridge and Samuel Gompers House, the project that Dolores calls home, and doesn’t stop until she reaches the corner of First Avenue and Fifth Street. That’s the address McLain gave her for a bar he said he’d been working at called Three of Cups. Even though she’s standing directly in front of it, it ta
kes her a while to spot the steel stairs dipping beneath the curb to the basement.

  Chris Rock used to do a bit about women needing only fifteen seconds to decide whether or not they want to fuck some guy. The first time O’Hara heard it, she laughed out loud because she knew he was right. O’Hara is the same way about bars and, to her surprise, hits it off with this one right away. She likes the purple felt cap, circa Sly and the Family Stone, 1974, jauntily perched on the head of the bartender, and she likes the band stickers plastered three deep on the ceiling, but mostly she likes what she hears: Aerosmith.

  O’Hara grabs a stool at the bar and flags the barkeep, but doesn’t tell her she’s a cop. “I’m trying to get in touch with a family friend. His name is David McLain. I was told he’s been working here.”

  “David’s a sweetheart. A couple nights a week he picks up empties and helps me out. Actually, I’m a little worried about him. He missed his last two nights, doesn’t answer his phone. He didn’t seem like the type to disappear without telling anyone.”

  “He isn’t,” says O’Hara, buttoning her coat to leave. “That’s why I’m looking for him. I’m sure he feels bad about not calling.”

  “Can’t I get you a drink?”

  “Next time.”

  McLain told her the truth about where he worked. Hopefully, he told her the truth about his Thanksgiving shopping, too. Key Food, where McLain claims to have done it, is one block east and one block south, on Avenue A. When O’Hara enters the dated all-night supermarket, it’s 2:50 a.m. Behind the Entenmann’s rack is a ladder, leading to a tiny perch of an office where the manager works at a desk looking directly over the cash registers. The ceiling is so low, even the five-foot-three O’Hara can’t stand straight. When the manager tells her he needs a couple of minutes, O’Hara sits on a milk crate and pulls out the menu from Empire Szechuan.

  McLain’s list runs in a thin green column down the right side. The first item is stuffing mix, and an arrow, shooting off it to the left, points to a sublist: chicken broth, mushrooms, celery, bread crumbs, pecans, eggs, sage.

  For the past four hours, Lowry has been calling McLain a loser, and maybe, compared to a potential Rhodes scholar, he is. But how many nineteen-year-olds make their own stuffing?

  After the detour for stuffing ingredients, the list continues: brussels sprouts, cauliflower, Yukon Gold potatoes, olive oil, chives, butter, cream, turkey (eight to twelve pounds), roasting pan.

  The final item, added as if as an afterthought, is cranberry sauce, and, as with the stuffing, there’s an arrow pointing to a sidebar: cranberries (one bag), apples (two), sugar, vinegar, ginger.

  Ginger is the only item in the entire list that doesn’t have a thin blue line running through it.

  What the hell? thinks O’Hara. The dude makes cranberry sauce from scratch too. Either he’s perfect, or he’s gay. Her patience spent, O’Hara pulls out her shield and explains her need to verify a purchase made by a suspect early on the morning of November twenty-four.

  The manager looks at O’Hara like she’s nuts and he’s busy. “How do you expect me to do that?”

  “I got a list here of everything that was bought,” says O’Hara, and holds up her Chinese menu.

  “This is some kind of joke, right? Tell me, I’m being Punk’d.”

  O’Hara remembers that McLain also recalled the exact price of his purchases, and turning the menu over, finds it in her own handwriting beside the heading FRIED RICE: $119.57.

  “How about if I told you the exact amount and approximate time?”

  “That would help.” Two minutes later, the manager points at the total on his screen: 119.57. Below it is every item on McLain’s list that has a line running through it.

  “What kind of supermarket,” asks O’Hara, “doesn’t sell ginger?”

  17

  When O’Hara returns to the Seven, the air in the room has gone flat and homicide detectives she’s never seen before are sprawled at the desks normally used by Krekorian, Navarro, Loomis and herself. The homi guys look like salesmen stranded overnight in a small airport—Grimes’s expression the sourest of all—and one look into the box at Lowry’s massive sagging shoulders confirms that their prime suspect hasn’t budged.

  “Grimes,” says O’Hara, turning away from the window and mimicking the way the detective held his fingers a millimeter apart. “McLain still this close to giving it up? Or were you bragging about your dick again?”

  The homi guys, who don’t seem particularly fond of Grimes either, find this highly amusing. Maybe Lowry hears one of them laugh, because seconds later, he storms out of the box. “O’Hara,” he says, “where do you keep your civilian complaint forms?”

  O’Hara points to the top of a filthy file cabinet. “Why?” Without responding, Lowry takes one and goes back inside, and from the small window, O’Hara watches Lowry slide the paper across the table toward McLain. “I’m tired of your cute bullshit,” says Lowry. “Tell me what happened Wednesday night or fill out one of these.”

  “What is it?” asks McLain.

  “It’s a civilian complaint form. Here, you can use my pen.”

  Confused and scared, McLain looks at the form and then up at Lowry, who has taken his .45 from his holster and stepped to McLain’s side of the steel table, where McLain’s right wrist is handcuffed to one of the legs.

  “What happened Wednesday night?” asks Lowry. “I don’t know, “says McLain. “I’ve been trying to tell you th…,” the last part inaudible as Lowry pulls McLain’s head back by his hair and shoves the gun barrel down his throat. “For the last time,” says Lowry, “what happened?” McLain shakes his head and gags.

  O’Hara waits for Lowry to put his gun away. Then she slaps the door and without waiting for a response, steps inside. “I need to show you something important,” she tells Lowry, but doesn’t let herself look at McLain. Furious, Lowry follows her out of the box into the short corridor, two mismatched bodies wedged into a space the approximate size of a phone booth, and stares incredulously as O’Hara hands him a printed receipt from Key Food.

  “At one-thirty on the morning Pena was killed,” says O’Hara, “McLain went to a grocery store on Avenue A and purchased twenty items for a Thanksgiving dinner for himself and Pena. At 1:55 a.m., when he walked out of Key Food, he was carrying $119 worth of groceries, including a ten-pound turkey, potatoes, mushrooms, pecans, cauliflower and brussels sprouts. There is no way on this Earth a guy buys brussels sprouts for someone at 1:55 in the morning, then tortures, rapes and kills that same person three hours later.”

  Lowry looks bad and smells a lot worse, four hundred pounds of fat-man body odor, spiked with rage. When he talks, O’Hara feels the heat of his foul breath on her skin. “O’Hara, I don’t care if you’re a vegan, an idiot or insane. You interrupt one of my interrogations again, I’ll have your shield.”

  Lowry goes back inside and sits down across from McLain, and O’Hara returns to her post outside the door. But something in Lowry has dissipated, and just before six in the morning, he books McLain on a phony little marijuana charge and sends him to Rikers, figuring the place and its inmates can pick up where he’s left off. O’Hara knows it’s bullshit, but there’s nothing she can do. She tries not to think about a soft teenage kid fending for himself in the city’s biggest jail.

  Nearly as hungry as she is exhausted, O’Hara drives to a diner on Second Avenue. From her crome-and-vinyl stook she watches the Hispanic cook calmly preside over five sputtering orders of eggs, one of which is her mushroom, pepper and onion omelet. The space behind the counter in which the cook has to maneuver is twenty-four inches wide and some fifteen feet long—imagine a cop spending his twenty years walking a beat that size—but O’Hara can tell he’s happy in his work and gives his customers something more than just good food. She gratefully devours her perfect breakfast, then walks back to her car and sits in the sun behind the wheel. For the next forty minutes she slips in and out of sleep.

  At some po
int during the night, O’Hara’s seventy-two-hour tour with homicide came to an unmarked end. What she should do is go home to Bruno, drink a bottle of red and enjoy the most underrated perquisite of her sex, which is the ability to sleep uninterrupted for sixteen hours. Instead she drives west a couple of blocks and parks on Mercer just north of the Angelika Film Center.

  When Pena left her apartment for the last time Wednesday night, she told McLain she was going to meet her friends for dinner. O’Hara already knows that’s not true. The downtown debutantes didn’t meet up with Pena until 10:30. Pena told her girlfriends that she had spent the previous couple of hours at the NYU gym, running laps on the rooftop track, and O’Hara can see a corner of the track from where she’s parked.

  O’Hara doesn’t think that’s likely either. If Pena was working out, she wouldn’t have to lie about it to McLain, unless of course, being in her tiny apartment with her lovesick ex-boyfriend was driving Pena so crazy, she couldn’t breathe. In that case, she might have said anything to get out, figuring she could decide what she was really going to do once she hit the street. O’Hara knows what that’s like.

  As O’Hara approaches the entrance, a student holds his ID up to a scanner and pushes through a turnstile, so it should be straightforward to determine whether or not Pena was at the gym. O’Hara shows her badge, and a guard walks her to a small office, where a student employee pulls a chair up to his desk. “People on the track team are here at all hours,” he says. “What time do you want to check for?”

  “About eight-forty-five p.m., last Wednesday,” says O’Hara. “November twenty-third.”

  “Then I can tell you right now she wasn’t here. That was the night before Thanksgiving. We closed the gym at five.”

  “Did Pena have an assigned locker?” asks O’Hara.