Kill Again

by Neal Baer

  “You’ve been through pain too. Dad told me what happened to you when you were a kid—how your best friend was kidnapped.”

  This surprised Claire, but she wasn’t going to stop. “Yes, I’ve had some tough times, but I’m more than twice your age so I can handle it better,” she said. “I want you to let me help you too.”

  “You mean, like a shrink?” Jill asked.

  Claire laughed. “No, like a friend,” she said. “Before I leave tonight, I’m giving you my cell phone number. Whenever you feel like you’re about to explode, or if you just want to talk, or laugh, or cry, call me.”

  “Okay,” Jill agreed.

  Claire wasn’t satisfied she’d convinced her of her sincerity. “I want to make sure you know this isn’t an order or anything. If I’m stepping over the line you can tell me. In fact, you can tell me anything and I won’t tell a soul.”

  “Not even my father?” asked Jill.

  “Definitely not him,” Claire assured her.

  “No wonder my ears were burning,” came Nick’s voice from the kitchen door. Claire and Jill were so engaged in their conversation that they hadn’t heard him come into the apartment and walk down the hallway. “Quite a feast you’re cooking up here,” he said, eyeing the chicken breasts, potatoes, and vegetables spread out on the table.

  “Hi, Dad,” Jill said as she went over to hug him.

  He saw her red eyes. “Everything okay, sweetie?” he asked, kissing her on the head.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” said Jill, enjoying her father’s embrace. It made Claire think of her own father, and how safe his new presence in her life made her feel.

  “You didn’t reveal any family secrets, did you?” Nick asked his daughter, joking, but wondering what they had talked about.

  Claire smiled. “Just a little girl talk,” she said, exchanging a knowing look with Jill as Katie rushed in. “Homework done,” she exclaimed, embracing her father.

  Nick laughed. “What’s all the excitement?” he asked.

  “Claire made me a deal,” Katie told her father. “I finish my homework and I can help her.”

  Nick’s eyebrows went up. “You mean ‘Doctor Waters,’ don’t you?”

  “I told her it’s okay,” Claire assured him, bailing Katie out. “C’mon,” she said to the tween, “let’s get this dinner cooked and on the table.”

  Ninety minutes later, after Claire had made good on her promise to help Katie with her homework, the girls were in their rooms getting ready for bed. The low hum of an air conditioner and the snores of Cisco, lying at Nick’s feet, created a homey background in the den, where Nick and Claire pored over the files from the two 1977 murder cases. Though the sun’s final rays were fighting through a layer of city grime on the windows, you’d never know it was getting dark outside, as Nick had turned on enough lights in the room to perform surgery.

  “I should put on my sunglasses,” said Claire, half joking.

  “Sorry,” answered Nick. “Cisco helps me with a lot at night but reading isn’t one of his stronger skills.”

  “You weren’t kidding when you said there’s not much here,” Claire said, frustrated. “It doesn’t look like the detectives back then even tried to find out who these two Jane Does were. I checked the Internet last night and I couldn’t find a newspaper article on either case.”

  “I know,” said Nick as he lowered Rosa’s medical file, which Claire had copied and smuggled out of the hospital. “And you don’t get it ’cause you weren’t even born yet. But it was all about Son of Sam back then. I was eight and I’ll never forget it. David Berkowitz had the whole Tristate scared shitless. Nobody knew where or when the lunatic was gonna hit next. He terrorized the city for a whole year. The bones were found in Brooklyn the day after his last murder. Those cases were put on the back burner. End of story.”

  “I can see why,” Claire said, reading from a medical examiner’s report on the bones recovered from Canarsie. “‘No witnesses, no women reported missing. No evidence found except for bones.’ Not a lot for the detectives to go on back then.” She placed the two old case files on the floor beside her chair. “About the only useful piece of information in the ME’s reports is that whoever chopped these women up did it with the skill of someone who knew anatomy.”

  “You mean, like a butcher or a surgeon.”

  “Yeah. And he didn’t bother to remove all the muscle or cartilage back then.”

  “Probably because he didn’t have to worry they’d be identified through DNA,” Nick said.

  Claire glanced over at the thin file in Nick’s lap, containing the precious little they had on Rosa’s murder. “Give me whatever you’re not looking at,” she said.

  Nick passed it to her. “I’ve already been through it,” he said.

  “Good, than I can get up to speed.”

  She opened the red file, which contained photographs, vouchers for the evidence gathered out in the Staten Island woods, and one police report that Claire was about to read when Nick waved her off.

  “Don’t waste your time,” Nick said. “All it says is that two garbage men found the bones when they dumped a trash receptacle into their truck.”

  But Claire’s eyes grew wide with realization. “Oh my God,” she gasped.

  “What is it?” asked Nick, wondering what he could have missed.

  Claire pointed to the report. “Did you talk to this man?” she asked, standing as she handed the report back to him and indicating a name on the paper. “Or say anything to him about whom the bones might belong to?”

  “I didn’t talk to either of the sanitation guys. The patrol cops got their statements,” he answered. “Why’s this guy so interesting?”

  “Because,” said Claire, “Franco Sanchez is Rosa’s ex-husband.”

  Nick was stunned. “That couldn’t be a coincidence.”

  “What did he look like?” Claire asked.

  Nick gave her a brief description.

  “That’s him for sure,” Claire confirmed.

  Nick put the report on the battered mahogany coffee table in front of him and looked at her in amazement. “In any other case my first thought would be he’s our best suspect.”

  “But you know he can’t be,” Claire said, on the same page with Nick, “because Franco would have either had to plant Rosa’s bones in the trash can before he went to work, or carry them with him in the truck and throw them into the hopper right before his partner found them.”

  “And if Franco killed Rosa, he’d have to be a schmuck to set himself up to find his dead wife’s bones, after going to all the trouble to make sure there was no evidence.”

  They looked at each other, both already having arrived at the only scenario that did make sense.

  “Whoever this whacko is, he wanted her ex to find those bones,” Nick said.

  Claire barely could believe it herself. “That means he stalked Franco so he’d know exactly which trash can to dump the bones in.”

  She sank back into the sofa as she reached into Rosa’s file, took out a large stack of photos, and flipped through them.

  “It would explain why the bastard went all the way to the Bronx from Staten Island to dump her remains,” continued Nick, picking up Claire’s last thought as she gazed at the photos, a gallery of detritus from the garbage can. “What I don’t understand is, why that particular can? There must be dozens of ’em in more secluded spots on Franco’s route. Instead, this whackadoo chooses one in a ’hood with a ton of foot traffic and NYPD surveillance cameras all over the place.”

  “What is this?” Claire interrupted, showing him a photo of a discarded banana peel.

  Nick laughed for the first time. “CSU got a little overzealous with the contents of the garbage can. Vouchered and photographed everything in the hopper of the sanitation truck they thought might’ve come out of it. Did you hear a word I said?”

  “Every one,” Claire answered, again going through the photos. “Can we get the video from those cameras?”<
br />
  “Tony Savarese is working on it,” Nick assured her, “and he’ll make us copies. But unfortunately none of the cameras nearby were pointed in the direction of the trash can.” Nick watched Claire thumb through the photos. “Why are you bothering to look through those pictures again?”

  “Because they’re here,” Claire said, “and we don’t have anything else to do.”

  “Then pass me a bunch,” Nick said, “and let’s get this over with so it doesn’t take all night.”

  Claire gave him the bottom half of the stack and kept going. “CSU must have spent all night taking pictures of this shit,” she said.

  Her profanity made him look up from the photos at her. “Now, Doctor, you’ve been hanging around us foul-mouthed cops too long.”

  “I’m tired,” Claire said. “Give me a break.”

  The hint of a grin appeared on Nick’s face as he glanced up from a photo of an empty pack of cigarettes. “I used to sift through peoples’ garbage all the time looking for evidence. Next to guarding dead bodies I think it’s the most disgusting job a cop has to do.”

  “But you must find interesting stuff,” Claire said.

  “Sometimes, but mostly it’s crap like this,” Nick replied, holding up a shot of an empty milk carton. He held up the next photo, of an uncrumpled receipt. “And this,” he said.

  Claire leaned forward, as if struggling to see something on the receipt.

  “It’s from some bodega,” Nick said.

  “And somebody wrote something on top.”

  Nick looked at the handwritten words.“Emigrant hasta?” he read.

  “What’s that mean?” Claire asked, squinting.

  “Who cares?” Nick shot back, flipping past more photos. “This is a waste of time,” he grumbled. “Tomorrow I’ll goose Savarese to get us the surveillance video. Maybe we’ll get lucky and spot whoever dumped the bones.”

  “Let me see that photo again,” Claire said.

  Nick looked up from the pictures to see Claire staring at a photo in her hand. “Which one?”

  “The receipt,” she answered.

  “Wait a minute,” said Nick. “What are you looking at?”

  Claire handed him the photo, putting the others down on the table and picking up the Rosa file. Nick eyed the photo, squinting, aiming it at the lamp behind him so he could see more clearly. He was looking at a paper coffee cup with the name El Primero Deli & Restaurant and its address—Jerome Avenue in the Bronx—stamped across the front.

  “What about it?” he asked.

  “Rosa wasn’t a random victim. Whoever killed her stalked her first,” said Claire.

  “And you got that from a coffee cup?” Nick asked, bewildered.

  “She had to inform Probation of any jobs she had. She was working there part time. I think one of her uncles owns it. That receipt is from the same place,” she said.

  She handed both photos to Nick, who stared at them like a winning lottery ticket. “Whoever this guy is, he’s sloppy. First he forgets to turn off Rosa’s phone, so we’re able to track her movements to Staten Island. Then he dumps her bones in one of the busiest neighborhoods in the Bronx where her ex-husband the garbage man will find them. And if that’s not enough, he leaves evidence that could help us identify her.”

  “If we hadn’t ID’d her already,” Claire said. “None of this was a mistake.”

  “How the hell do you know that?” asked Nick.

  “Because someone who boils bones to remove all the meat is too meticulous to make mistakes. Whoever murdered Rosa left all this evidence for a reason.”

  “I’m lost,” Nick admitted. “Why go to all that trouble to make a victim unidentifiable and then leave us a road map to her identity?”

  “That’s exactly what he’s doing,” Claire said. “I don’t know why. But I can feel it.”

  She held up the photo of the deli receipt and pointed to the handwritten words at the top. “And when we find out what emigrant hasta means—if we find out—I’m pretty sure we’ll know what Rosa’s murder is all about.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Deputy Inspector Wilkes paced his office the next morning, straightening up the items the cleaning crew had disturbed the night before. Though he liked things neat, order was the last thing on his mind right now. He was doing it because it beat sitting behind his desk and staring at the phone, waiting for it to ring.

  It was now two days since Rosa Sanchez’s bones had turned up in the Bronx. Nick Lawler’s phone call to him at two a.m. this morning hadn’t helped his perpetual insomnia. Nick had asked him permission to deliver a coffee cup and receipt found in the garbage can with Rosa’s bones to the ME’s office to test for DNA. Wilkes, dead tired at the time, said yes, not bothering to ask why before hanging up and turning over to go back to sleep.

  Until his racing mind got the better of him and kept him up for the next four hours. He’d tried calling Nick back but the phone had gone straight to voice mail three times, frustrating Wilkes to no end. There were plenty of things he despised about being a cop. Not being able to reach a subordinate was near the top of that list.

  At six a.m., Wilkes woke up Tony Savarese, ordering him to drive to the crime lab in Jamaica, Queens, some forty miles from his home out on Long Island, to retrieve the evidence, deliver it to Assistant Medical Examiner Ross, and wait there the few hours it would take the ME’s DNA lab to recover and process the cells on the lip of the coffee cup for DNA. Best case scenario: Tony’d walk out of the chop shop with the identity of whoever used the cup.

  He should be so lucky, Wilkes thought as he straightened a framed photo on the wall. Savarese hadn’t called in yet. Now he wished he’d grilled Nick about the evidence, hoping his protégé wasn’t going off half cocked. With each passing day more people were being added to the investigation, which always meant more chance of a leak. Make no mistake, he was grateful to Nick and Claire for coming up with their findings so quickly. But Wilkes knew if a word of this wound up in the media, his head was where the blame would land.

  Always the political animal, Wilkes kept Chief of Detectives Dolan in the loop on every move, including this latest one. The chief had already called for an update that morning, asking whether the DNA had come back and what else, if anything, Nick and Claire had uncovered. During that call, Wilkes had grown some balls, “suggesting” to the chief that banning the duo from One Police Plaza had been, in hindsight, a bullshit move. After all, Nick worked in the building, and Doctor Waters could be there for any number of reasons easy enough to explain to a scoop-hungry reporter. The chief agreed, and Wilkes wasted no time summoning Nick and Claire to headquarters this morning.

  As he straightened the coffee table in front of his beat-up nineties-era mint green sofa, he was staring at his phone. Where the hell were they?

  He was just about to call Nick again when movement through the windows separating his office from the squad room caught his eye. The pair entered—with Tony Savarese. They all looked serious.

  “I take it you’re not coming from home,” he said to Claire and Nick as they entered with Savarese, who closed the door.

  “We met Tony at the ME’s office,” Nick informed him.

  “Without my authorization?” said Wilkes, more exhausted than annoyed as he sat behind his desk.

  Nick leaned against the sill of the window, the Brooklyn Bridge behind him. “You authorized me to talk to Ross, so I thought it wouldn’t make a difference.”

  Wilkes realized it didn’t matter and dropped the issue. “Tell me there was DNA on that cup,” he said.

  “There was, Boss,” Savarese replied. “But there’s a problem.”

  Claire, opposite Nick, spoke up before Wilkes could utter a word. “There wasn’t enough of a sample for a hundred-percent match to anyone in the database.”

  “Shit,” Wilkes said, closing his eyes and letting out a breath. “So now what?”

  “We asked the lab to run the sample for a partial match,” Claire continued, �
�so we could sort through whoever comes up in the database and see if they fit the profile.”

  “And how many thousands of people would that be?” Wilkes asked.

  “Three,” answered Nick.

  “Three-thousand?”

  “Three people,” Nick replied, cracking a grin. “One of ’em’s doing life in Dannemora for murder,” Nick continued. “Another was paroled two years ago. He’s wheelchair bound with multiple sclerosis. But we may have hit pay dirt with number three.”

  Savarese handed Wilkes the folder he was carrying, which the inspector opened. “His name’s Jonah Welch,” said Savarese. “Did a bid at Greenhaven for a home invasion in Sheepshead Bay. He raped the resident at gunpoint and beat the holy hell out of her.”

  “When?” demanded Wilkes.

  “September of seventy-seven,” Nick answered. “A little more than a month after the first two sets of bones turned up.”

  Wilkes perused Welch’s mug shot, a photo of a handsome, dark-haired man in his twenties. “When’d this guy get paroled?”

  “Ninety-seven,” said Nick.

  “So he’s been out seventeen years.” He turned to Claire. “Okay, Doc, why’d he wait so long to butcher Rosa Sanchez?”

  “He wouldn’t be the first,” Claire reminded him. “The Grim Sleeper killer in California took his time between murders. If Welch is our guy, maybe he cooled off in prison and something happened recently that stoked his fire.”

  “Once a psychopath always a psychopath,” Wilkes observed.

  Nick leaned over the front of Wilkes’s desk, reached into the folder, and pulled out a freeze-frame photo. “This was taken by security cameras at the deli where Rosa worked part time, two days before she disappeared. We confirmed with her uncle who owns the joint that she was working the register when this guy came in.”

  It was an enhanced, zoomed-in shot of an older guy, his hair streaked with silver. “Welch would be in his late fifties by now,” said Savarese.

  Wilkes put the mug shot beside the surveillance photo. “Yeah, he looks like shit but two decades in prison’ll do that to you. He’s the same guy.”