Clever Fox

by Jeanine Pirro

  I knew I liked Agent Wheeler.

  “But for now,” Wheeler continued, “if asked, I spent my afternoon at the Poe house.”

  “I understand,” I said.

  “There’s one more critical piece of advice that you need to hear.”

  Without waiting for me to ask, Wheeler said, “You need to be very careful. I have a feeling your killer may either be a member of law enforcement or have a direct link to it. He could be a prosecutor, like yourself, a judge, or even a reporter who specializes in true crime. Based on what you’ve showed me, his behavior reveals that he knows a lot about the mob and even more about how we do our jobs.”

  46

  O’Brien and I met at the greasy spoon diner that he loves so much. I’d spent the drive from Philadelphia pondering Agent Wheeler’s final warning.

  “You look like hell,” O’Brien said.

  “Thanks for the ego boost.”

  “Honestly, I’ve never seen you look so rattled.”

  “You would be, too, if you’d just spent the afternoon with an FBI profiler,” I said. “I’m not sure you’re going to believe what he told me.” I took a deep breath and said, “The FBI profiler is convinced there is only one killer and he is toying with us.”

  “We got someone in Yonkers collecting body parts?” O’Brien asked.

  “He thinks so and so do I. He’s killing for the thrill of it and using the link with the mob to fool us. And now, here’s the really frightening part. The profiler thinks it could be a cop or someone who knows our business—a newspaper reporter.”

  “Christ almighty!” O’Brien exclaimed. “Do you think it’s someone we know?”

  I hesitated, not because I was trying to be dramatic, but because I wasn’t sure how O’Brien would react to my next statement.

  “I think it might be Agent Coyle or Will Harris,” I said.

  “You’re shitting me!”

  I nodded, affirming that I wasn’t.

  O’Brien shook his head in disbelief. “You think your boyfriend is a murderer?” he asked incredulously. “You think the FBI agent who saved your kidnapped ass is a homicidal psychopath? If you tell this to Whitaker, he’ll send out the men in white coats and have you hauled off to the funny farm. Hell, I’m not sure I believe you and I’m your partner.”

  “I know it sounds far-fetched.”

  “How about fucking unbelievable? Do you have any facts to back up your suspicions? You got to walk me through this. Start with Will.”

  “Will is fascinated by the mob.”

  “And so are a zillion other people. Remember that little movie called The Godfather? Sold-out crowds. Magazine covers?”

  “Will knew Isabella Ricci. He’d been following her, trying to get an exclusive interview. He’d been to her house.”

  “So what? He’s a reporter chasing a story.”

  “Will fits Agent Wheeler’s overall profile. He’s a white male, falls into the right age group, and comes from a broken home.”

  “You just described half the young men in Westchester County. Where’s the smoking gun? Remember, a little thing we call evidence? Fingerprints, an eyewitness, blood on his shoes?”

  “It’s all circumstantial.”

  “No, it’s worse than that. It’s bullshit. Conjecture. Are you telling me you’ve been sleeping with a guy who cuts off a man’s penis for a trophy?”

  “Will hid things from me about his past.”

  “What’s the motive?”

  “The profiler said we’re dealing with a thrill killer who’s manipulating us. In Will’s case, he got front-page exclusive stories and a job offer from the New York Times.”

  “Dani, listen to yourself. You think Will butchered five people to get a job at a newspaper? This is Will Harris. Not Norman Bates.”

  “Will is the same good, decent guy who once burned the American flag while shacking up with Moonbeams, getting high on brownies, and sleeping soundly while his infant daughter was smothered. The profiler said serial murderers blend in with the rest of us.”

  “I’m not buying it,” O’Brien said. “And Agent Coyle is even a nuttier choice.”

  “Why, because he’s an FBI agent?” I asked. “We know Coyle was at the Midland Apartments on the afternoon of the murder. Angelica Persico claims he lied about when her father actually left Isabella’s apartment.”

  “I doubt he lied,” O’Brien said. “But he might have doctored those logbooks after the murder to guarantee Persico got convicted. Trust me, that wouldn’t be the first time a cop tampered with evidence. Besides, what’s Coyle’s motive?”

  “Maybe he wants to start a Mafia war. Or maybe he saw an opportunity to slip in after Persico and jump on a Mafia train.”

  “Mafia train?”

  “It’s what the profiler called it,” I said. “I guess you had to be there.”

  “You’re not making sense. There has never been an FBI agent indicted for murder. Never. They put those stiffs through all kinds of tests by shrinks.”

  “How’d Longhorn slip through?” I said.

  O’Brien laughed. “Good one.”

  “The missing body parts are the key. No one is going to believe a word of this unless I find the fingers, toe, and penis.”

  “How you gonna find them?” he asked. “You gonna just ask Will or Coyle if they have an extra penis lying around? ’Cause no judge is gonna give you a search warrant based on what you just said.”

  “Our killer has killed before. He’ll have other trophies from previous murders. I need to dig into both men’s pasts, beginning with Agent Coyle’s. The killer’s past will unmask him.”

  47

  One of the advantages of living close to Manhattan is easy access to all sorts of information. After my morning jog, I called in sick to avoid meeting with D.A. Whitaker and headed into the city, where I found copies of the Detroit Tribune on microfilm at one of New York City’s public libraries.

  During one of our first encounters, Agent Coyle had mentioned that his first FBI assignment had been in Detroit. If Coyle was a serial murderer, there was a good chance that I’d find a clue there. Based on that assumption, I intended to first search the Detroit Tribune for articles about mutilated victims.

  Unfortunately, the newspaper’s records didn’t come with an index, which meant I was handed four softball-sized spools of microfilm and deposited in front of a gunmetal gray reading machine. Each spool held exactly one year’s worth of newspapers—one spool for each year that Coyle had worked in Detroit.

  After a librarian showed me how to thread the microfilm through the cumbersome reader, I settled onto a hard metal chair and began turning a hand crank that slid images of individual pages across a dimly lit screen.

  It was tedious work. Front pages appeared and disappeared, each with alarming headlines. The summer of 1976 had proven to be especially violent. Looting was common in the black business community. White city residents were fleeing to the suburbs, unemployment hit 25 percent (among young black males it was double that) and Detroit was given a new nickname by the media: going from “Motor City” to “murder capital” of the nation. There were more than 850 homicides that year alone.

  In August 1976, some eight thousand people of all races gathered for a rock concert at the Cobo Hall convention center on a Sunday night. Midway through the performance, 150 young men began attacking other concertgoers. Dozens of people were robbed, one woman was gang-raped by twenty men, and more than a thousand fans were beaten. The rampage lasted a full hour before police managed to get the mayhem under control. The attacks were carried out, according to the newspaper, by two rival gangs, known as the Errol Flynns and the Black Killers. Incredibly, none of the gang members was prosecuted.

  It was after that riot that the Detroit police and FBI formed a joint task force specifically to target the Errol Flynns, the city’s toughest gang. Founded on Detroit’s east side, the gang had appropriated its name from Hollywood film legend Errol Flynn. It was one of the first gangs
to use semiotic hand gestures to show gang membership and to incorporate “hip-hop” dance moves into its gang identity. Agent Walter Coyle, fresh from the academy, was assigned to that task force. The newspaper published dozens of articles about gang-related murders, but most were drive-by shootings. There was no mention of mutilated bodies until the September 5, 1977, edition of the paper appeared on my screen.

  YOUTH CRUCIFIED, MUTILATED

  A nineteen-year-old man was found “crucified” on a makeshift cross erected in an alley in East Detroit early yesterday morning, police said. The suspect, whose name has not been made public, was “nailed just like Jesus” to two boards attached to a chain link fence.

  A member of the city’s joint gang task force said the victim was a known member of the Errol Flynns and his murder appeared to be gang related. The initials BK were carved in his chest and his body had been further mutilated. The “Black Killers” are the Errol Flynns’ rivals and a task force spokesman, who asked not to be identified, said the ritualistic killing was meant to taunt the BK gangsters.

  Next to that front-page account was an especially grisly photo of the crucified youth. Two white police officers using metal shears and hammers were removing the naked body from a makeshift cross. I read the article twice but could find no mention of how the body had been “further mutilated.”

  A follow-up story in the next day’s edition identified the victim as Marcus Smith and quoted Detroit detective Richard Kowalski saying that two of Smith’s brothers had been murdered in gang-related killings in the past three years. “We must end this black-on-black crime,” Kowalski warned. “It’s destroying our inner-city neighborhoods.”

  The next day, the newspaper published another gruesome photograph about a black youth whose disemboweled body had been found naked in an alley in a neighborhood that was part of the BK gang’s turf. He had been fatally shot, but his body had been sliced open and the killers had plunged an arrow into his heart.

  … Detroit Detective Kowalski suspects the murder was carried out by the Errol Flynns gang in retaliation for the crucifixion of Marcus Smith, age 19, whose body was found two days ago. “The killers left an arrow behind—that’s the Errol Flynns’ calling card,” Kowalski said. The victim was allegedly a member of the Black Killers gang. “We’d hoped to forge a truce, but now war between these two gangs is inevitable,” the detective said.

  The front pages that appeared after that on the microfilm reader as I slowly turned the crank revealed that Detroit had been caught up for weeks in a gang war, with sixteen young men killed in a violent clashes. Detroit’s mayor had asked for even more federal help to calm the panicked city.

  A month later, the joint FBI task force arrested twenty-two gang members during late-night police raids. A newspaper photo showed FBI agents herding a parade of handcuffed gang members with bowed heads into a police station. One of those agents was Walter Coyle.

  My eyes were tired from straining to read the poorly lighted microfilm pages. My butt hurt and I needed to make a phone call so I left my microfilm research in place.

  “I’ll be back in just a few minutes,” I told a librarian. She directed me to a wall of pay phones near the library’s main entrance. An operator connected me to the Detroit Police Department’s detective division and, moments later, I was speaking to the same Detective Kowalski whom I’d been reading about in the old newspapers. “Could you answer some questions for me about the gang war you had in Detroit six years ago?” I asked.

  “I guess, but if you’re a prosecutor in Westchester County, why are you asking about two Detroit gangs?” he replied.

  “It’s complicated,” I said.

  “It’s your dime,” he replied. “Glad to help if I can.”

  I said, “The first victim—Marcus Smith—the kid who was crucified and had the initials BK carved into his chest. Do you remember him?”

  “Hell yeah. That homicide started the war and you don’t see too many people on crosses—unless you hang out in a Catholic church.”

  “The newspaper said the body was ‘further mutilated,’ ” I said. “In what way?”

  Kowalski was quiet for a moment and then said, “Why do you want to know this again?”

  “Humor me. It could be important to something we’ve got going on here.”

  “Clipped off a couple toes. You’d think nailing that poor bastard to a cross would’ve been enough but most of those gangbangers were strung out on heroin when they were killing each other.”

  “Were there any other body parts missing?”

  “Nope, just a couple toes.”

  “Now the second victim—the one with an arrow stuck in his heart—how about him? Was his body mutilated?” I asked.

  “Lady, he was disemboweled. Isn’t that enough for you?”

  “But were any toes or fingers amputated?”

  “Let me think about it. Like I said, the guy was disemboweled. One of those gangbangers must’ve paid attention in school ’cause they kept that poor bastard alive while they pulled out his insides.”

  “Sounds horrific.”

  “Not a good way to go. Now, let’s see, yes, I remember his little pinkie finger had been amputated. We thought maybe the gangs were taking toes and fingers as trophies at first, ’cause there were lots of stories going around at the time about how guys in Vietnam had collected ears. But those two homicides were the only ones in which toes and fingers were cut off. After those two gangs started going at it, everyone just shot everyone else.”

  “This has been really helpful,” I said, and then, as if it were an afterthought, I asked, “Hey, did you know FBI Agent Walter Coyle?”

  “Wally?” Kowalski replied. “Hell yeah, I knew him. He was a young buck fresh out of the academy. A real eager beaver who took every shit job we gave him. Do you know him?”

  “Yes, he works in Manhattan now,” I said.

  “Why you bothering me, then?” Kowalski asked jokingly. “Wally worked those first two murders. He can tell you all about them missing toes and finger. Do me a favor and remind that young buck that he still owes me ten bucks on a bet we had.”

  As soon as I finished talking to Detective Kowalski, I called O’Brien at the Domestic Violence Unit office.

  “Real smart, calling in sick today,” O’Brien said. “Did you really think that was gonna fool Whitaker? He’s mad as hell. A little birdie told me Longhorn has been busting his balls, calling the office like crazy.”

  “I’ll deal with him tomorrow. Listen, Agent Coyle worked two violent murders in Detroit—murders that sparked a gang war—and both victims were missing body parts—toes and a finger—just like our victims.”

  O’Brien said, “Coyle will claim it’s a coincidence. It’s not enough.”

  “But it’s a start.”

  “Dani, the guy is an FBI agent. You’re gonna need a lot more before anyone will believe you.”

  “I know. That’s why I got to find his trophy stash.”

  “Are you fricking nuts? How the hell are you gonna do that? It’s not like asking a guy to see his stamp collection.”

  “If Coyle is a serial murderer, he’d keep his souvenirs close, probably in his apartment,” I said.

  “Yeah, so. No way you’ll get a warrant based on what you’ve turned up.”

  “I haven’t thought this through yet,” I said.

  O’Brien said, “How about you get him to meet you, someplace public, away from his apartment? I’ll do the rest.”

  “I can’t ask you to break into his apartment illegally,” I said.

  “Then don’t. You just find a way to keep him busy for an hour or two, out of the city.”

  “I could invite him to dinner. I could claim we need to patch things up and work together as professionals. Tell him I’m dropping my investigation and need to make things right with Longhorn. He’d buy that.”

  “When?”

  “I have to do it fast. How about tonight?” I said. “I just need to finish up here.”
>
  We agreed to talk later and finalize a plan.

  Before hanging up, O’Brien said, “Dani, you know if this turns to shit, it’s over for you. Whitaker will fire you. Think about it. You can still back out. Everyone’s happy blaming Tiny Nunzio and the Butcher for these cases. No one will ever know.”

  “I’ll know,” I replied.

  Just as the librarian had promised, no one had disturbed the microfilm that I’d left at the reader. I’d only gotten through 1977 and still had two more spools to go, but I was tired of studying the films and my eyes were burning from staring at the blurry screen. Besides, I felt as if I’d already discovered what I’d come to find. I toyed with the idea of packing up, but my conscience wouldn’t let me. I’m anal about details. It’s part of being a competent prosecutor. I returned to scanning stories, only at a quicker pace.

  Several more headlines about the rival gangs swept across the screen, but the mass arrest had broken the backs of both groups. I was about halfway through 1978 when something caught my eye. It wasn’t a gruesome story about a murder or mutilation. It was a news story about Detroit’s city hall. I didn’t bother to read it because the text didn’t matter. It was the byline that caught me cold. The reporter who’d written the story was Will Harris.

  Could there be two reporters named Will Harris? One Harris working in Detroit and the other in White Plains? Will had never mentioned anything to me about working in Michigan. What were the chances that Walter Coyle and Will Harris would both be working in Detroit when a serial murderer was collecting trophies and sparking a gang war?

  48

  Will Harris was sitting in his car parked outside my house when I returned that afternoon from the city. “I called your office and they said you called in sick today,” he explained as he exited his car and came to me.

  “I’m feeling a bit better now,” I said.

  “Where have you been? Did you spend the night in the city?” he asked, his voice rising.