Crime School

by Carol O'Connell

  “But you told Coffey this woman was good with a knife.”

  “None better.” She crumpled the photograph in one hand, and Charles could see the bright work going on behind her intelligent eyes.

  Because he was handicapped with a face that could not run a bluff in a poker game, most people wrongly assumed that he could not tell when he was being lied to. Mallory never made that mistake. He guessed that she was simply wondering what half-truth might be most misleading.

  “It wasn’t a fight,” she said. “Sparrow never saw the knife coming.”

  “So she had a blind side?”

  “No!” She wadded the photograph into a ball, then rolled it between her palms, making it smaller and smaller. “Yes.” And now her voice was smaller too. “You could say she was blindsided by a joke.” The little ball of paper disappeared into her closed fist. “Sparrow was laughing when he did it to her.” And while Charles was watching this little magic show, her other hand flashed toward him, and he was lightly stabbed in the chest by one red fingernail.

  “And now you can forget the scar,” she said to him, ordered him. “We’re clear on that?”

  Oh, yes, the threat was very clear. Mallory crossed the room with long strides. She could not leave him fast enough. Charles wished she had slammed the door on her way out; that would have told him that she was merely angry, that he had simply annoyed her. But that was not the case; he had damaged her somehow. There would be no more mention of Sparrow’s scar, not ever, for he sensed that it was also Mallory’s scar. However, the photograph was locked in his memory. He could not let go of it, and now it began to grow, attracting other bits of paper, a fifteen-year-old receipt from Warwick’s Used Books, an inscription to a child on the title page of a western. When had Mallory witnessed that piece of violence?

  If one truly wanted to maim a human being for life, it was best to start when the victim was very young—ten years old?

  Now that the field was clear of explosives, Riker was strolling back to him, folding a cell phone and saying, “Okay, Charles, you got your wish. I gave Duck Boy a real job. He’s taking the old man on a field trip—an interview with the cop who found Natalie Homer’s body. Are you happy now?”

  Hardly.

  At the top of the page, Ronald Deluthe had identified the interview subject as the first police officer to enter Natalie Homer’s crime scene. During a testy silence, he wrote down a careful description of Alan Parris’s apartment, noting worn upholstery, cracked plaster and all the dust and grime of a man who had hit bottom before the age of forty-two.

  Parris’s personnel file had listed only the dry statistics of a short career with NYPD, but the garbage pail overflowing with beer cans indicated a serious drinking problem. The sink in the galley kitchen was piled high with dirty dishes and one cracked teacup with a delicate design, perhaps something the man’s ex-wife had left behind when the marriage ended twenty years ago—only a few months before Natalie Homer’s death.

  Alan Parris’s T-shirt was stained; his boxer shorts were torn; and dirty toenails showed through the holes in his black socks. The man was so underwhelmed by the interview style of Lars Geldorf that he appeared to be nodding off.

  No, Alan Parris was drunk.

  “You’re lying!” Geldorf paced the floor and raised his voice to rouse the man from lethargy. “I know one of you bastards leaked the details. It was you or your partner. Now give it up!” The old man leaned down, bringing his face within inches of Parris’s. “Don’t piss me off, son. You won’t like me when I get mad.”

  All the incredulity that Parris could muster was a small puff of air escaping from pursed lips, a lame guffaw. He kept his silence, showing remarkable patience with the retired detective and his ludicrous threats.

  Lars Geldorf’s promised anger was unleashed, and Deluthe took faithful shorthand, recording every obscenity. The old man finally succeeded in triggering Parris’s temper. And now the four-letter words were flying both ways as Deluthe’s pencil sped across the page of his notebook, not resting until Geldorf stomped out of the apartment.

  This was Deluthe’s cue to pull out his list of prepared questions. The script Geldorf had outlined for him was reminiscent of days in uniform and visits to elementary schools in the role of Officer Friendly. “Just a few more questions, sir.” He gave Parris a lame smile, and the man rolled his eyes just as the schoolchildren had done. Another tough audience.

  Screw Geldorf.

  Deluthe dropped his smile, then folded the paper and slipped it back into his pocket. “What about neighbors? Do you remember anyone in the hall near the crime scene? Maybe there was a—”

  “It was a long time ago, kid.” Parris leaned down and moved a newspaper to one side, exposing a beer can crushed and discarded after some previous binge. He upended it over his open mouth to catch the last drops of flat, warm liquid.

  Though the ex-cop showed no sign of anxiety, soon he would be eager to get to a liquor store and replenish his supply of booze.

  “Take your time,” said Deluthe. “I’ve got all damn day for this.” Now he had the man’s attention. “I saw the photographs of the crime scene. If it was me, I couldn’t have forgotten anything about that night.”

  “You got that right, kid. But I never talked about the murder. The leak didn’t come from me.” Parris stared at the front door left ajar, then raised his voice, correctly sensing that Geldorf hovered on the other side. “And you can tell that old bastard—it wasn’t me he posted outside in the hall. It was my partner! Maybe somebody got by him.” His voice dropped to a mumble. “But I couldn’t say for sure.

  Harvey never talked about that night, either—not even with me. We worked together for years, and we never talked about it.”

  “If your partner was posted at the door, then you were inside the apartment the whole time.”

  “No—only a few seconds. I’m the one who found the body. God, the smell. It was enough to knock a man down. When I went home that night, it was still in my clothes, my hair. I can smell it now. I can still feel the cockroaches crawling up my legs. And the flies—a million of ’em. Jesus. ”

  “So you closed the door and waited for the detectives and Crime Scene Unit?”

  “Naw. The way that woman was hanging, I couldn’t see the tape on her wrists. Me and Harvey figured it for a suicide. Like I said, I was only in there a few seconds. Suicides don’t rate a visit from CSU. The dispatcher only sent detectives.”

  Deluthe flipped back to notes of yesterday. “Wasn’t there someone else on that scene?”

  “The photographer? Yeah, he came with the dicks—just a kid. Younger than me, and I was only twenty-two. He got sick and dropped his camera—broke the damn thing. So I borrowed another one from a neighbor. Then the dicks sent me out to buy more film. I think I made two runs to the store that night.”

  “Did your partner mention any civilians around the crime scene while you were gone? Harvey—” Deluthe checked his notes, as if his own lieutenant’s name might be easy to forget. On Riker’s orders, no one would be apprised of the case connection to a command officer. He put his finger to a blank page. “Loman, right? Harvey Loman? Was he outside the door the whole time?”

  “Yeah. Well, no. When I got back from the store, he was down the hall settling a beef with some old lady.” Parris paused for a moment, then covered his eyes with one hand. “Awe, what the hell.”

  Deluthe’s pencil hovered over his notebook. “What?”

  “There were two kids right outside the door—real young, a boy and a girl. Harvey—he never saw them. Well, the door was open ’cause of the smell, and those kids got an eyeful before I chased them away. That always bothered me. Probably gave them nightmares. I felt bad about it, sure, but I had no—”

  “So your partner lost control of the crime scene. He screwed up. And you didn’t want him to get in trouble, right?”

  Parris’s head lolled on his chest, as if he could no longer support the weight. “Geldorf, bad as he is
now—he was worse in those days. He would’ve nailed Harvey’s hide to the wall for letting those kids get past him. That old prick still thinks he’s God. I hate detectives. No offense, kid.”

  “Did the kids see the hair in the victim’s mouth?”

  “Yeah, they saw everything. The body hadn’t been cut down yet. The dicks were still shooting pictures.”

  Neither of them had heard the door open, but now Lars Geldorf was standing on the threshold. The old man was smiling, and Deluthe could guess why. The retired detective was relieved that another cop had lost control of the crime-scene details. And now no one could ever say that this major screwup was his fault.

  Pssst.

  Charles Butler studied the stalker’s notes to Kennedy Harper. By comparison, the old ones left for Natalie Homer were almost poetry. He turned to Riker. “Did you tell Deluthe to ask if Natalie’s door was locked when the police arrived?”

  “No, Deluthe can’t ask about that, and I’m hoping Alan Parris won’t volunteer anything.” Riker turned off his cassette player. “We have the old statement from Natalie’s landlady, and she says that door was locked.”

  “I’m sure it was when she called the police. But when they arrived—”

  The detective put one hand on Charles’s shoulder. “If the door wasn’t locked when the first cop showed up, then eight million New Yorkers had access to the crime scene. That makes it hard to narrow it down to a boyfriend with his own key. The district attorney won’t like that if the case goes to trial. You see the problem?”

  Charles nodded absently. He was still preoccupied by the difference in the notes. “The man who killed Natalie Homer loved her obsessively. He crushed her windpipe with his bare hands—an act of passion. I rather doubt that he made a habit of it. Emotionally, the scarecrow is his polar opposite.” He tapped the autopsy report on Kennedy Harper. “And the date—an anniversary murder suggests long-term planning. The man who did this was only obsessed with the act itself. A hanged woman, a few dozen candles, a jar of flies—all props. The scarecrow decorates his stage and goes away. It’s that cold. Oh, and he’s quite insane.”

  “Suppose we bypass a jury trial?”

  “Wise decision.”

  “What are the odds of getting the scarecrow to confess?”

  “Nothing easier. All you have to do is catch him. He’ll tell you everything he knows. In fact, he’s doing that right now, but no one is listening.” Charles unpinned the plastic bag containing a bloodstained note. It was disconcerting to see that the scarecrow’s rigid printing so closely resembled Mallory’s.

  “You analyze handwriting?” asked Riker.

  “No, sorry, I don’t do voodoo.” Charles turned the bag over and showed Riker the deep grooves on the back of the paper. “If his pen had pressed down any harder, he would’ve torn the paper. I suppose you could read frustration or anger into that.”

  “He staked that note to a woman’s neck with a hatpin—a live woman. Yeah, I’d say he was angry.”

  “Oh, the rage is limited to his penmanship. It wasn’t directed at Kennedy Harper. I don’t think he expected her to feel any pain from the hatpin. She was an object—a bulletin board. But I think he definitely has issues with your people. He had to know she’d head for the nearest police station. This note was meant for you.” Charles crossed over to Sparrow’s wall and stood before the photographs of the coma victim. “A recent razor slash on Sparrow’s arm—I’m guessing that’s an escalation because the police clearly were not getting his message. Incidentally, why didn’t she report that assault?”

  “Because she had a whore’s rap sheet. Sparrow didn’t think the cops would care. And she was right about that.”

  Riker handed a cup of coffee to Charles, who must be uncomfortable at the small table built for people of normal size. But the man had wanted privacy, and there was not a more secure room than the one that housed the lockup cage. “We can finish this up at your place if you like.”

  “No, I’m fine, really.” The man sipped from his cup and pretended to find the brew passable. “Just one more question.”

  “Shoot.” The detective turned a chair around and straddled it, bracing his arms on the wooden back. “Anything you want.”

  “I gather Louis took an interest in Kathy some time before the night he brought her home. When exactly was that?”

  Riker’s blood pressure soared, but he had to smile. Brilliant Charles. A police station was the perfect location for stressful questions. But this time the truth was harmless. “This is just between us?”

  “Of course.”

  “Late one night, a social worker turns up in the squad room. Now Lou owes the woman a favor, so she begs him to find this kid—a very special kid. I guess Kathy was nine, almost ten. She used subway tunnels to get around town, but she didn’t always ride the trains. Earlier this same night, the kid played a game of chicken with an engineer in the tunnel. She stood on the track till the train was almost on top of her. At the last possible second, she jumped out of the way.” Riker’s own private theory was that the child had wanted to die that night.

  “She almost gave this poor bastard a heart attack. So now the engineer’s afraid she’ll electrocute herself on the third rail. He calls out the Transit cops, and they block off the tunnel. Six of those clowns couldn’t catch one little girl. She laughed at them. So now the social worker arrives. This woman walks into the tunnel and rounds up the kid in two minutes flat. You know how she did that? Kathy walked right up to her, this tall blonde—”

  “Like your friend Sparrow.”

  “Yeah, and the kid was real happy to go anywhere with this woman. Kathy even held the social worker’s hand while they were filling out paperwork at Juvie Hall. So the kid’s in custody. She’s been cleaned up and fed, all settled in for the night. But now the social worker goes home and leaves her alone in that place. Well, no tall blonde—no Kathy. The kid left five minutes later, and the guards never figured out how she got away. She was their only escapee—ever.”

  “Sounds like she picked up bad habits from the Wichita Kid.”

  Riker froze. How long had the door been open? How long?

  Jack Coffey stood on the threshold, saying to him, “You’ve got a visitor.”

  And then, as if Charles Butler knew how dangerous the westerns were, he said, “I’m so sorry.”

  When Riker returned to his desk in the squad room, an old friend was waiting for him. There was nothing in Heller’s expression to say that he had good news or bad, for he was the king of deadpan. He held up a business card. “You know this guy, right?”

  Riker took the card and read the name aloud, “Warwick’s Used Books.” His stomach knotted as he eased into the chair behind the desk, and his mouth was suddenly dry. “Yeah, I interviewed him.”

  Heller slowly swiveled his chair, turning away to look out the window. “John Warwick came in while I was here, and Janos palmed him off on me. So this little guy’s all excited. He waves a newspaper in my face. Then he goes into a ramble about some paperback book. He doesn’t ask—he tells me I found it in Sparrow’s apartment. Says he knows I found it—and he wants it back. Seems the hooker stole it from his store an hour before she was hung.” He turned back to face the desk and the sorry-looking detective. “Warwick says you’ll vouch for that ’cause you took his statement.”

  “Yeah, I did.” Riker tapped the side of his head, a gesture to say that the bookseller was not quite sane. “The paperback probably went into the fire, but I didn’t tell that to Warwick.”

  “I told him,” said Heller. “And you’re right—he is nuts. The little guy broke down and cried. I guess that book was pretty important to him—and Sparrow.”

  “I guess.” Riker was recalling his suit jacket all buttoned up—very fancy for a sweltering crime scene. And Heller, a man who could do a postmortem on a dead fly, would have noticed the damp spot on the breast of that jacket—and every other detail of that night in Sparrow’s apartment.

  He
ller looked down at an open notebook in his hand. “Warwick says the title is Homecoming, by Jake Swain.” He looked up. “But I figure you already knew that.”

  This man had run cops off the force for stealing trinkets from crime scenes. If Heller developed a case for tampering with evidence, he would prosecute in a New York heartbeat, no exceptions for friendships that spanned twenty years. They stared at each other, and the silence went on for too long.

  “After Warwick left,” said Heller, “I went back to the lab and sifted through ashes and fragments. Some of the magazines were intact, but no sign of a paperback. Now that’s strange—even with the age of the book, the brittle paper. You’d think the core would’ve survived, a good chunk of pressed pages. There are tests I could run. You want me to keep on looking?”

  Riker slowly shook his head, and this must have passed for a confession.

  Heller nodded, then ripped the sheet from his notebook and dropped it into a wastebasket. “Well, I guess that’s the end of it.” With no good-bye, he rose from his chair and crossed the squad room to the stairwell door.

  Riker knew he would keep his badge for lack of physical evidence to hang him—but this man was no longer his friend. And that was what Heller had dropped by to tell him.

  Cafe Regio on MacDougal Street was filled with the metropolitan babble of foreign languages. Charles Butler looked around the large single dining area crammed with people, paintings, and eclectic furnishings. He spied an acquaintance at a corner table.

  Anthony Herman was a child’s idea of a pixie, not quite five feet tall with a small bulbous nose and pancake ears sticking out at right angles. His light brown hair was swept back to display a pronounced widow’s peak, a sure sign of witchcraft, though his true profession would seem rather boring to most. The little man nervously adjusted a red bow tie while doing his best to hide behind a menu, though it was long past the dinner hour.

  When Charles sat down at the table, the antiquarian book dealer handed him a package wrapped in brown paper and said, “That’s the whole set. Don’t open it here.”