Killing Critics

by Carol O'Connell

  The sudden appearance of Gregor Gilette had been the last heartbreak of the night. The artist, Peter Ariel, had been bagged and placed in the meatwagon. They had put the parts of the dancer into another bag and were loading her onto the gurney. Turning away from the ambulance, Riker had seen the damndest thing, a man running toward him, stumble-running, strewing red roses everywhere. They were lifting the gurney into the ambulance. The doors were closing as Gregor Gilette reached the vehicle, and he was pounding on the doors even as they closed, pounding to be let in, yelling, “Aubry, Aubry!” Markowitz had pulled the man away from the ambulance doors, pinning his arms and holding him close. And then Edward Slope had tried his hand on a living patient with a merciful hypodermic to kill the father’s pain.

  Mallory was only a little older than the rookie officer who had cried for Aubry Gilette. What would Markowitz think if he knew his kid was going into this black hole to finish what he had begun?

  “I still want to talk to Andrew Bliss,” said Mallory. “What about fire code violations? He botched the roof staircase—that’s a legal fire exit.”

  “I already thought of that. Somebody with influence got the commissioner of the fire department to look the other way. A lawyer from the Public Works Committee has a restraining order to prevent any interference with his free speech, so we can’t bring him down. And we can’t go up to the roof with a copter either. Blakely would find out you’re working the old case.”

  “Well, there’s ways and ways.” She looked at her watch. “I’ve got that damn press conference in an hour. Did you make any progress on Sabra? Any idea where she might be?”

  The woman was lying under a blanket of newspapers in an abandoned building on Essex Street. She had crawled through a basement window the night before and now lay dreaming late into the morning. It might as well have been night, for no daylight penetrated the window after she had replaced the boards, fitting nails to holes. A candle sat dark in a dish, burned to the end of its wick.

  In dreams, her child stood on point in satin toe shoes, reaching up to a soft golden glow just above her straining fingertips. Suddenly, her soft red mouth formed the oval of a scream as the ghouls came dancing by her. Greedy mouths with yellow teeth sucked the wind from her throat. Clutching at the poisoned air, hand to her mouth, the child went reeling and running. And as she ran, she heard the sounds behind her of feet slapping floor, and sickly mucus noises. Phlegmy voices sang to her in a hellish choir. To her side the ghouls came dancing, eyes sewn shut, hands locked in prayer and grown together, skin merging into skin. Their mouths moved as one, making foul wind and words, weaving chains of obscenities. Then the child had lost her shoes, and through her tears, she could see her legs were gone.

  The child’s mother opened her eyes in that dark and airless place, believing she was blind. Her hands were clenched together on her breast and she screamed out curses, damning God and all His minions, until the dead child’s brains said, “Hush, now. It’s only a dream is all.”

  She slowly made out the dim contours of the tea tin on the top of the cart. The dead child’s brains crooned on, “It isn’t real, only dreaming.”

  Sabra rose to a weary stand in sleep smells of used linen and dried urine.

  Chief of Detectives Harry Blakely lit up a cigar in the close space of the hallway. His pasty white jowls jiggled as he rolled the cigar from one side of his mouth to the other. Draping flesh closed his eyes to gun slits, and the rolls of his chin obscured the knot of his tie. “The commissioner’s in a really pissy mood today, Jack.”

  Lieutenant Jack Coffey could well understand that. He was looking through the glass window of the pressroom door. “I still can’t believe that FBI agent is here. Beale hates those bastards.”

  “You know the routine, Jack,” said Blakely. “They need a little good press after that last hostage situation blew up in their faces. So we’re gonna let them put on a little dog-and-pony show for the reporters. The press just loves all that psychiatric bullshit on the killer profile.”

  “The profile of a psycho, right? Christ, I can see the headlines now. ‘Crazed killer loose in Manhattan.’ They’re gonna blow the case all out of proportion, and you know it. I thought you wanted a quiet investigation.”

  “Doesn’t matter now.”

  Blakely exhaled a cloud of smoke, and Coffey stepped back to the wall, his usual position in all his dealings with this man. He could feel Blakely’s smoke all around him, stealing into his hair, his clothes, his skin. He knew the smell of Blakely would hang on him for the rest of the day.

  “I think we might give this case to the feds,” said Blakely. “They really want it, and we have enough bodies to go around. They’re so pumped up on this profile, they tell me they can wrap the case in two weeks.”

  “Why not give your own people two weeks? The Bureau has no jurisdiction.”

  “Oh, officially the case will stay with NYPD. I thought I’d assign it to Harriman and let him work with the feds.”

  “Harriman’s a worthless idiot. He’s just treading water waiting for his pension to kick in.” It was a fight for Coffey to keep the frustration out of his voice.

  “Who cares?” Blakely’s smile was unsettling. “He only needs to show up for the collar and the closing press conference. The feds promised to kill the Oren Watt connection. So I did a little deal with ‘em. I’m gonna put Mallory on something else.”

  “I’ll bet this isn’t Beale’s idea,” said Jack Coffey. “He hates feds with a passion.”

  “Commissioner Beale has all the political savvy of a twelve-year-old girl. I hope you’re not suggesting that we actually let him run the police department.”

  “He specifically asked for Mallory at this press conference. He wants her on this case. What’s he gonna say when he finds out you climbed into bed with the FBI?”

  “How would he find out, Jack? All he knows about his own police department is what he reads in the papers and what I tell him. Beale promised to play nice with the feds today ‘cause I told him it might save the city a few million in lawsuits if they took the heat off Oren Watt.”

  “How are you gonna tell Beale we’re giving the whole case to the feds?”

  “I know how to handle him. I’m not worried about it. Now we’ve got another case we need Mallory on—computer fraud. We’re sending her out to Boston to follow up on a similar case. Boston’s cooperating. So tell her to pack her bags and drop off her case notes on my desk tomorrow morning.”

  “I want Mallory to stay on this case.”

  “That’s tough, Jack. I don’t think I owe you any favors this week. Here she comes now. Don’t tell her she’s being reassigned until after the press conference.”

  Mallory walked up to Coffey as Blakely turned and headed down the hall at a faster pace than his usual rolling mosey. She stared after his retreating dark bulk. “I guess he’s pissed off about the article in yesterday’s paper.”

  “No, Mallory, that’s been smoothed over. Blakely understands how it happened. He’s been misquoted often enough.” He motioned her to look through the glass of the pressroom door. “You see that guy at the end of the platform? He’s FBI. It’s going to be a joint press conference.”

  “Why would the feds want in?”

  “The art world makes sexy press. Blakely only wants them to support the idea that Oren Watt is not a suspect. The feds agreed, so Blakely did a deal.”

  She turned away from the window. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

  “Commissioner Beale wouldn’t like it either if he had any idea what was going on.” He stared through the window, eyes on the far door beyond the dais. “If the feds get a piece of this case, they’ll go for a quick and dirty wrap. They’ll pick up all the neighborhood freaks, and nail the one with no alibi.” The back door of the pressroom was opening to admit Commissioner Beale and his entourage. “It’s time, Mallory.”

  They pushed through the door and into a loud room, filled to capacity with television crews, pho
tographers and reporters. Bright, white-hot camera lights were trained on the long table which spanned the dais. Clusters of microphones in nests of wires were set before each of the three chairs. The short gray police commissioner was climbing the two steps of the platform. As he moved toward the center chair, flashbulbs went off, and thirty mouths closed simultaneously.

  Coffey took her arm and pulled her back into the reach of intimate conversation. “Mallory, I don’t care how you do it. Just go up there and dazzle the shit out of them. Do whatever it takes to make Beale and the department shine. NYPD is in control of this case. You got that?”

  “Right.”

  “You smoke over the old case and concentrate on the new one. The feds’ interference is driving Beale nuts. He’s the one you need on your side, so do all the damage you can.”

  She was smiling, and that worried him. But Commissioner Beale’s little washed-out gray eyes actually sparkled when Mallory walked up the stairs of the dais and took her seat beside him. She looked out over a sea of faces and bright flashes from every quarter of the room.

  When Beale introduced her, he mentioned that, in the area of computers, Detective Sergeant Kathleen Mallory had no peer. There were other words to the effect that she could turn water into wine. And now the old man gave a terse introduction to the special agent from the FBI, who apparently was not so talented in Beale’s estimation.

  Special Agent Cartland shuffled his papers and looked up, smiling for the cameras with the practiced ease of a fashion model. He was the perfect specimen, a walking argument for eugenics, with youthful good looks, light brown hair and strong white teeth.

  Coffey stood at the back of the room and watched Mallory seated at the left hand of the commissioner. Coffey suddenly understood why Beale had asked for her. Harry Blakely had underestimated the little man in the gray suit. Commissioner Beale understood image and press and public relations. Mallory, tall and wonderfully made, was more than a match for the FBI agent. If she only sat there and said nothing, Beale would have won the argument that God was on the side of the cops and not the feds.

  A reporter was rising, hand in the air. “Agent Cartland, what’s the FBI interest in this case? The terrorist line in Bliss’s column?”

  The FBI agent leaned into his collection of microphones, each bearing a network logo. “If the case did develop along the lines of terrorism, we would certainly take a very active interest. Terrorism is an area best left to experts.”

  Well, this was not part of the deal.

  Coffey could see that Beale was not at all happy with that remark. The commissioner’s little head swiveled right, in the manner of a schoolteacher about to pounce on a student who has gotten out of line.

  Beale spoke into his own group of microphones. “There is no planned FBI participation in this case. The press is making an unfounded and highly sensational connection to the old murders of Peter Ariel and Aubry Gilette. Special Agent Cartland tells me the FBI has a profile on the perpetrator that puts that speculation to rest. You may proceed, young man.” And the implication was that the young man should proceed with extreme caution.

  “The FBI is always willing to help local law enforcement in the art of profiling a suspect,” said the smiling, unflappable Agent Cartland. “Based on the evidence of the crime scene, we can give you a rather detailed portrait of the man.”

  “Why do you think it’s a man?” called out a feminine voice in a sniper shot from the back of the room.

  “The overwhelming majority of psychopaths are male.”

  A reporter stood up in the front row. By the back of his dark-skinned, bullet-shaped head, Coffey knew the man. It was McGrath, a seasoned journalist who had swapped lies with Markowitz for several decades. McGrath was recognized with a nod from Beale.

  “So we’re looking for an insane killer?” McGrath addressed his remark to the FBI agent. “Say—oh, shot in the dark—someone like Oren Watt?”

  Beale’s right hand wormed around the microphone at the center of his cluster, and his knuckles went white, as though he were choking it. He managed to lock eyes with the agent before the younger man responded to McGrath.

  “Well, there are similarities,” said the FBI agent, and Beale covered his face with one hand. The agent continued. “In the old case of the artist and the dancer, the perpetrator used a fire axe he found at the crime scene. The killer of Dean Starr used an ice pick, also a weapon he found at the scene. And the word ‘dead’ was written on the back of one of the gallery’s business cards. Both the old killing and the recent one showed lack of premeditation. Both crimes were the spontaneous acts of disorganized personalities.”

  McGrath remained standing, holding the floor. “Oren Watt arranged the body parts as artwork. The killer of Dean Starr arranged the body as performance art. You don’t think that calls for a little planning?”

  The agent’s smile was benign. Let me lead you out of ignorance, said his tone of voice. “These things were done after the fact. The act itself was not planned in advance. Neither perpetrator brought weapons or materials to their respective crime scenes. As to the arrangement of the bodies, a psychopath will often indulge himself with ritual mutilation of the victims, or some personal theme in writing or acts performed on the corpse. But the killer in this instance is not Oren Watt. The murder was cleaner, quicker, less violent. The brutality always escalates in the second kill. It never lessens.”

  “So you think our guy is a young Oren Watt in training.”

  “He fits the same profile as Watt. He acted spontaneously, with no fear of discovery. The trigger for the act was probably a recent traumatic event in his life. For example, he may have recently lost his job. We’re looking for a white male between twenty-five and thirty-five, no close friends, no stable relationships with women, no social graces. His father died or left the home when he was very young. He lives alone, or with his mother. He doesn’t take proper care of himself, he’s badly dressed. Now, about the shabby clothing—in SoHo that would not be a standout feature. It would even have helped him to blend in with the crowd at the opening.”

  “Hey, Mallory,” sang out a veteran cophouse reporter in the back. “You goin’ along with this line?”

  Commissioner Beale was staring at Mallory, hope in his eyes as she spoke into her own cluster of microphones. “No, but all the FBI errors are understandable.”

  The FBI agent was frozen in his best public-relations smile, and Commissioner Beale was grinning with joy and real malice.

  “The FBI only asked for the crime-scene photographs and the preliminary ME report,” said Mallory. “They specifically asked us not to send our own conclusions. They said it would taint their profile.” Now she picked up a document and scanned it, as though she did not know it by heart. “According to this preliminary report, the wound was consistent with the ice pick found at the scene. Apparently, the FBI was satisfied with this.”

  She crumpled this document into a ball and tossed it back over her shoulder. Then she leaned back in her chair to look at the FBI agent behind Beale’s back, and she gave him that special smile which women reserve for addled children. She was all business again when she turned back to the reporter.

  “But NYPD had a major problem with a four-inch pick penetrating six and a half inches of fat and muscle to rupture the heart from the back. So we asked for a more extensive autopsy. Now we know that the weapon is much longer. No such weapon was found at the scene, so we assume the killer brought it to the gallery and took it away when he left.”

  In his rush to contradict her, Agent Cartland leaned too far into his microphones, brushing his teeth against the soft cover of one. “It might be a mistake—” The microphone squealed with feedback as it was dislodged from the cluster.

  Mallory rose gracefully to pass behind Commissioner Beale’s chair. She adjusted the FBI agent’s microphones. And now a crowd of reporters grinned as Mallory gave Agent Cartland lessons in the proper distance from the mike.

  When she was seated
again, the agent, dignity shot to hell, continued. “It would be a mistake to assume that because the weapon wasn’t found at—”

  “Oh, it’s no mistake.” Mallory smiled at him to say, You lose, sucker. “Further evidence of premeditation is the card found on the body. True, it doesn’t take long to write the word ‘dead,’ but the letters were printed with a straight edge—like a ruler—to avoid handwriting analysis. And there were no fingerprints on the card. The perp either wore gloves or handled the card by the edges. So we assume he brought it to the gallery. The card was used to disguise the act and allow the murderer time to escape unmolested. The killer chose a perfect weapon for a crowded room—no blood splatters. A lot of thought and planning went into this crime.”

  “You think it was a man?” asked McGrath.

  “A woman could have done it,” said Mallory.

  “It does take some force—” the agent began.

  “I could have done it,” said Mallory. “The weapon only had to penetrate one layer of light material, and more fat than muscle. It was a clean thrust between the ribs, and it cleared the vertebrae. The weapon was much thinner than the average pick, and probably needle sharp at the point.” She nodded to a reporter in the back row.

  “Mallory, are you going to ask the FBI for a revised profile?”

  “What for? When we know why it was done, we’ll know who did it.”

  “So you don’t like the crazed-killer line, Mallory?”

  “I suppose it could have been a more organized psychopath, or it could be a money motive. Revenge is good—I’ve always liked that one. We found evidence of habitual drug use in the second autopsy, so it could also be drug-related.”

  If Beale smiled any wider, he would hurt himself.

  “What about Oren Watt?” yelled another reporter.

  “He didn’t do it.”

  “You sure about that, Mallory?” asked McGrath.

  “Dead sure.”