The third Deadly Sin exd-3

by Lawrence Sanders

  "Yes," Delaney said. "There was an article on page three of the Metropolitan Report this morning. About two hotel murders."

  "And?"

  "No byline. I just wondered who wrote it."

  "Uh-huh. In this case three guys provided information for the story, including me. Three bylines would have been too much of a good thing for a short piece like that. So they just left it off. That's all you wanted to know?"

  "Not exactly."

  "I didn't think so. What else?"

  "Who made the connection? Between the two killings? They were a month apart, and there are four or five homicides every day in New York."

  "Chief, you're not the only detective. Give us credit for a little intelligence. We studied the crimes and noted the similarities in the MOs."

  "Bullshit," Delaney said. "You got a tip."

  Handry laughed. "Remember," he said, "you told me, I didn't tell you."

  "Phone or mail?" Delaney asked.

  "Hey, wait a minute," the reporter said. "This is more than idle curiosity. What's your interest in this?"

  Delaney hesitated. Then: "A friend of mine is on the case. He needs all the help he can get."

  "So why isn't he calling?"

  "Fuck it," Delaney said angrily. "If you won't-"

  "Hey, hold it," Handry said. "I didn't say I wouldn't. But what do I get out of it?"

  "An inside track," Delaney said, "that you didn't have before. It may be something and it may add up to zilch."

  Silence a moment.

  "All right," the reporter said, "I'll gamble. Harvey Gardner took the call. About a week ago. We've been checking it out ever since."

  "Did you talk to Gardner about it?"

  "Of course. The call came in about five-thirty in the evening. Very short. The caller wouldn't give any name or address."

  "Man or woman?"

  "Hard to tell. Gardner said it sounded like someone trying to disguise their voice, speaking in a low growl."

  "So it could be a man or a woman?"

  "Could be. Another thing… Gardner says the caller said, 'The same person did both of them.' Not, 'It's the same killer' or 'The same guy did both of them,' but 'The same person did both of them.' What do you think?"

  "I think maybe you wouldn't make a bad cop after all. Thanks, Handry."

  "I expect a little quid pro quo on this, Chief."

  "You'll get it," Delaney promised. "Oh, one more thing…"

  "There had to be," Handry said, sighing.

  "I may need some research done. I'll pay, of course. Do you know a good researcher?"

  "Sure," Thomas Handry said. "Me."

  "You? Nah. This is dull, statistical stuff."

  "I'll bet," the reporter said. "Listen, I've got the best sources in the world right here. Just give me a chance. You won't have to pay."

  "I'll think about it," Delaney said. "Nice talking to you."

  "Keep in touch," Handry said.

  The Chief hung up and sat a moment, staring at the phone. "The same person did both of them." The reporter was right; there was a false note there in the use of the word "person."

  It would have to be the killer who called in the tip, or a close confederate of the killer. It seemed odd that either would say, "The same person…" That was a prissy way of putting it. Why didn't they say "guy" or "man" or "killer"?

  He sighed, wondering why he had called Handry, why he was becoming so involved in this thing. He was a private citizen now; it wasn't his responsibility. Still…

  There were a lot of motives involved, he decided. He wanted to help Abner Boone. His retirement was increasingly boring; he needed a little excitement in his life. There was the challenge of a killer on the loose. And even a private citizen owed an obligation to society, and especially to his community.

  There was one other factor, Delaney acknowledged. He was getting long in the tooth. Why deny it? When he died, thirty years of professional experience would die with him. Albert Braun would leave his books and lectures to instruct detectives in the future. Edward X. Delaney would leave nothing.

  So it seemed logical and sensible to put that experience to good use while he was still around. A sort of legacy while he was alive. A living will.

  Detective Sergeant Abner Boone called on the morning of March 26th. He asked if he could stop by for a few moments, and Delaney said sure, come ahead; Monica was at a feminist meeting where she was serving as chairperson for a general discussion of government-financed day-care centers.

  The two men had talked almost every day on the phone. Boone had nothing new to report on the killer who was now being called the "Hotel Ripper" in newspapers and on TV.

  Boone did say that Lieutenant Martin Slavin was convinced that the murderer was not a prostitute, since nothing had been stolen. Most of the efforts of the cops under his command were directed to rousting homosexuals, the S amp;M joints in the Village, and known transvestites.

  "Well," Delaney said, sighing, "he's going by the percentages. I can't fault him for that. Almost every random killer of strangers has been male."

  "Sure," Boone said, "I know that. But now the Mayor's office has the gays yelling, plus the hotel associations, plus the tourist people. It's heating up."

  But when Sergeant Abner Boone appeared on the morning of March 26th, he was the one who was heated up.

  "Look at this," he said furiously scaling a flyer onto Delaney's desk. "Slavin insisted on sending one of these to the head of security in every midtown hotel."

  Delaney donned his glasses, read the notice slowly. Then he looked up at Boone.

  "The stupid son of a bitch," he said softly.

  "Right!" the sergeant said, stalking back and forth. "I pleaded with him. Leave out that business about the black nylon wig, I said. There's no way, no way, we'll be able to keep that out of the papers if every hotel in midtown Manhattan knows about it. So it gets in the papers, and the killer changes his wig-am I right? Blond or red or whatever. Meanwhile, all our guys are looking for someone in a black wig. It just makes me sick!"

  "Take it easy, sergeant," Delaney said. "The damage has been done; nothing you can do about it. Did you make your objections to Slavin in the presence of witnesses?"

  "I sure did," Boone said wrathfully. "I made certain of that."

  "Good," Delaney said. "Then it's his ass, not yours. Getting many false confessions?"

  "Plenty," the sergeant said. "Every whacko in the city. Another reason I wanted to keep that black nylon wig a secret. It made it easy to knock down the fake confessions. Now we've got nothing up our sleeve. What an asshole thing for Slavin to do!"

  "Forget it," Delaney advised. "Let him hang himself. You're clean."

  "I guess so," Boone said, sighing. "I don't know what to tell our decoys now. Look for anyone in any color wig, five-five to five-seven. That's not much to go on."

  "No," Delaney said, "it's not."

  "We checked out that suggestion you gave me. You know-both victims employing the same disgruntled guy and firing him. We're still working on it, but it doesn't look good."

  "It's got to be done," Delaney said stubbornly.

  "Sure. I know. And I appreciate the lead. We're grabbing at anything. Anything. Also, I remembered what you said about the time between killings becoming shorter and shorter. So I-"

  "Usually," Delaney reminded him. "I said usually."

  "Right. Well, it was about a month between the Puller and Wolheim murders. If there's a third, God forbid, I figure that going by what you say-what you suggest, it may be around April third. That would be three weeks after the Wolheim kill. So I'm alerting-everyone for that week."

  "Won't do any harm," Edward X. Delaney said.

  "If there is another one," Boone said, "I'll give you a call. You promised to come over-remember?"

  "I remember."

  But April 3rd came and went, with no report of another hotel homicide. Delaney was troubled. Not because events had proved him wrong; that had happened before. But he w
as nagged that this case wasn't following any known pattern. There was no handle on it. It was totally different.

  But wasn't that exactly what Albert Braun had said in his last lecture? "Cases of mass homicide are too uncommon to reveal a sure pattern. Each massacre different, each slaughter unique."

  Early on the morning of April 10th, about 7:30, Delaney was awake but still abed, loath to crawl out of his warm cocoon of blankets. The phone shrilled. Monica awoke, turned suddenly in bed to stare at him.

  "Edward X. Delaney here," he said.

  "Chief, it's Boone. There's been another. Hotel Coolidge. Can you come over?"

  "Yes," Delaney said.

  He got out of bed, began to strip off his pajamas.

  "Who was that?" Monica asked.

  "Boone. There's been another one."

  "Oh God," she said.

  Delaney came off the elevator on the 14th floor and looked to the left. Nothing. He looked to the right. A uniformed black cop was planted in the middle of the corridor. He was swinging a nightstick from its leather thong. Beyond him, far down the long hallway, Abner Boone and a few other men were clustered about a doorway.

  "I'd like to see Sergeant Boone," Delaney told the cop. "He's expecting me."

  "Yeah?" the officer said, giving Delaney the once-over. He turned and yelled down the corridor, "Hey, sarge!" When Boone turned to look, the cop hooked a thumb at Delaney. The sergeant nodded and made a beckoning motion. The cop moved aside. "Be my guest," he said.

  Delaney looked at him. The man had a modified Afro, a neat black mustache. His uniform fit like it had been custom-made by an Italian tailor.

  "Do you know Jason T. Jason?" he asked.

  "Jason Two?" the officer said, with a splay of white teeth. "Sure, I know that big mother. He a friend of yours?"

  Delaney nodded. "If you happen to see him, I'd appreciate it if you'd give him my best. The name is Delaney. Edward X. Delaney."

  "I'll remember," the cop said, staring at him curiously.

  The Chief walked down the hallway. Boone came forward to meet him.

  "Sorry I'm late," Delaney said. "I couldn't get a cab."

  "I'm glad you're late," the sergeant said. "You missed a mob scene. Reporters, TV crews, a guy from the Mayor's office, the DA's sergeant, Deputy Commissioner Thorsen, Chief Bradley, Inspector Jack Turrell-you know him?-Lieutenant Slavin, and so on and so on. We had everyone here but the Secretary of State."

  "You didn't let them inside?"

  "You kidding? Of course not. Besides, none of them wanted to look at a stiff so early in the morning. Spoil their breakfast. They just wanted to get their pictures taken at the scene of the crime and make a statement that might get on the evening news."

  "Did you tell Slavin I was coming over?"

  "No, sir, but I mentioned it to Thorsen. He said, 'Good.' So if Slavin comes back and gives us any flak, I'll tell him to take it up with Thorsen. We'll pull rank on him."

  "Fine," Delaney said, smiling.

  He looked around the corridor. There were two ambulance men with a folding, wheeled stretcher and body bag, waiting to take the corpse away. There were two newspaper photographers, laden with equipment. The four men were sitting on the hallway floor, playing cards.

  The Chief looked inside the opened door. The usual hotel room. There were two men in there. One was vacuuming the rug. The other was dusting the bedside radio for prints.

  "The Crime Scene Unit," Boone explained. "They'll be finished soon. The guy with the vacuum cleaner is Lou Gorki. The tall guy with glasses is Tommy Callahan. The same team that worked the Puller and Wolheim kills. They're sore."

  "Sore?"

  "Their professional pride is hurt because they haven't come up with anything solid. They want this guy so bad they can taste it. This time they rigged up that little canister vacuum cleaner with clear plastic bags. They vacuumed the bathroom, took the bag out and labeled it. Did the same thing to the bed. Then the furniture. Now Lou's doing the rug."

  "Good idea," Delaney said. "What have you got on the victim?"

  Sergeant Abner Boone took out his notebook, began to flip pages…

  "Like Puller and Wolheim," he said. "With some differences. The clunk is Jerome Ashley, male Caucasian, thirty-nine, and-"

  "Wait a minute," Delaney said. "He's thirty-nine? You're sure?"

  Boone nodded. "Got it off his driver's license. Why?"

  "I was hoping there might be a pattern-overweight men in their late fifties."

  "Not this guy. He's thirty-nine, skinny as a rail, and tops six-one, at least. He's from Little Rock, Arkansas, and works for a fast-food chain. He came to town for a national sales meeting."

  "Held where?"

  "Right here at the Coolidge. He had an early breakfast date with a couple of pals. When he didn't show up and they got no answer on the phone, they came looking. They had a porter open the door and found him."

  "No sign of forced entry?" "None. Look for yourself."

  "Sergeant, if you say there's no sign, then there's no sign. A struggle?"

  "Doesn't look like it. But some things are different from Puller and Wolheim. He wasn't naked in bed. He had taken off his suit jacket, but that's all. He's on the floor, alongside the bed. His glasses fell off. His drink spilled. The way I figure it, he was sitting on the edge of the bed, relaxed, having a drink. The killer comes up behind him, maybe pulls his head back, slices his throat. He falls forward onto the floor. That's what it looks like. There's blood on the wall near the bed."

  "Stab wounds in the genitals?"

  "Plenty of those. Right through his pants. The guy's a mess."

  The Crime Scene Unit men moved toward the door carrying their kit bags, cameras, the vacuum cleaner.

  "He's all yours," Callahan said to Boone. "Lots of luck."

  "Lou Gorki, Tommy Callahan," the sergeant said, introducing them. "This is Edward X. Delaney."

  "Chief!" Gorki said, thrusting out his hand. "This is great! I was with you on Operation Lombard, with Lieutenant Jeri Fernandez."

  Delaney looked at him closely, shaking his hand.

  "Sure you were," he said. "You were in that Con Ed van, digging the street hole."

  "Oh, that fucking hole!" Gorki said, laughing, happy that Delaney remembered him. "I thought we'd be down to China before that perp broke."

  "See anything of Fernandez lately?" Delaney asked.

  "He fell into something sweet," Gorki said. "He's up in Spanish Harlem, doing community relations."

  "Who did he pay?" Delaney said, and they all laughed. The Chief turned to Callahan. "What have we got here?" he asked.

  The two CSU men knew better than to question why he was present. He was Boone's responsibility.

  "Bupkes is what we've got," Callahan said. "Nothing really hot. The usual collections of latents and smears. We even dusted the stiff for prints. It's a new, very iffy technique. Might work on a strangulation. We came up with nit."

  "Any black nylon hairs?" Boone said. "Or any other color?"

  "Didn't see any," Callahan said. "But they may turn up in the vacuum bags."

  "One interesting thing," Gorki said. "Not earth-shaking, but interesting. Want to take a look?"

  The two technicians led the way to the corpse alongside the bed. It was uncovered, lying on its side. But the upper torso was twisted, face turned upward. The throat slash gaped like a giant mouth, toothed with dangling veins, arteries, ganglia, muscle, stuff. Unbroken spectacles and water tumbler lay nearby.

  To the Chief, the tableau had the frozen, murky look of a 19th century still life in an ornate frame. One of those dark, heavily varnished paintings that showed dead ducks and hares, bloody and limp, fruit on the table, and a bottle and half-filled glass of wine. A brass title plate affixed to the frame: after the hunt.

  He surveyed the scene. It appeared to him that the murder had happened the way Boone had described it: the killer had come up behind the victim and slashed. A dead man had then fallen from the edge of the
bed.

  He bent to examine darkened stains in the rug.

  "You don't have to be careful," Callahan said. "We got samples of blood from the stiff, the rug, the wall."

  "Chances are it's all his," Gorki said disgustedly.

  "What's this stain?" Delaney asked. He got down on his hands and knees, sniffed at a brownish crust on the shag rug.

  "Whiskey," he said. "Smells like bourbon."

  "Right," Gorki said admiringly. "That's what we thought. Where his drink spilled…"

  Delaney looked up at Boone.

  "I've got thirty men going through the hotel right now," the sergeant said. "It's brutal. People are checking in and out. Mostly out. Nobody knows a thing. The bartenders and waitresses in the cocktail lounges don't come on till five tonight. Then we'll ask them about bourbon drinkers."

  "Here's what we wanted to show you," Gorki said. "You'll have to get down close to see it. This lousy shag rug fucked us up, but we got shots of everything that shows."

  The other three men got down on their hands and knees. The four of them clustered around a spot on the rug where Gorki was pointing.

  "See that?" he said. "A footprint. Not distinct, but good enough. The shag breaks it up. Tommy and I figure the perp stood over the stiff to shove the knife in his balls. He stepped in the guy's blood and didn't realize it. Then he went toward the bathroom. The footprints get fainter as he moved, more blood coming off his feet onto the rug."

  On their hands and knees, the four of them moved awkwardly toward the bathroom, bending far over, faces close to the rug. They followed the spoor.

  "See how the prints are getting fainter?" Callahan said. "But still, enough to get a rough measurement. The foot is about eight-and-a-half to nine inches long."

  "Shit," Delaney said. "That could be a man or a woman."

  They looked at him in surprise.

  "Well… yeah," Gorki said. "But we're looking for a guy- right?"

  Delaney didn't answer. He bent low again over the stained rug. He could just barely make out the imprint of a heel, the outside of the foot, a cluster of toes. A bare foot.

  "The size of the footprint isn't so important," Callahan said. "It's the distance between prints. The stride. Get it? We measured the distance between footprints. That gives us the length of the killer's step. The Lab Services guys have a chart that shows average height based on length of stride. So we'll be able to double-check that professor up at the museum to see if the perp really is five-five to five-seven."