Crime School

by Carol O’Connell

  ‘At least.’ Heller switched off the blow-dryer, then turned his head with the slow swivel of a cannon. ‘And the perp brought the flies with him. He carried them in that jar.’

  ‘What?’ Riker leaned down for a closer look at the evidence bag that held a large glass jar coated with black dust. ‘You didn’t find any prints.’

  ‘That’s how I know it belonged to the perp. He wore gloves.’ Heller sorted through a stack of elimination cards marked with the fingerprints of firemen and police. ‘All I got here is the victim’s prints and that idiot Zappata’s.’ He nodded toward the plastic bags. ‘The jar’s got a crack in it. Either the perp dropped it, or the fire hose knocked it off the table. I skimmed those flies off the water, but I know they were all dead before they hit the floor. I can even tell you how they died.’

  Riker raised one eyebrow to say, Oh, yeah? ‘Did they drown? Or did you find smoke in their little lungs?’

  Heller’s glare of quiet disdain was an unmistakable message: Don’t fool with the master. ‘The inside of the jar smells like insecticide. So do the flies.’ He pulled four specimen bottles from his pockets and lined them up on the table. Four dead flies floated in clear liquid. ‘They’re in different stages of decomposition. I’d say he’s been collecting them for a week. And I got twenty bucks that says an entomologist will back me up.’

  ‘Naw.’ Riker waved him off, for he knew this was a sucker bet. In or out of court, the man from Forensics was rarely challenged.

  ‘So he’s been planning this for a while.’ Mallory turned to the makeshift curtain. Was the freak just passing by when he looked down, saw Sparrow for the first time – and decided to murder her? Was that the day he started collecting his flies and hoarding them? Or maybe the whore had bumped into him on the street, a New York kind of accident, a chance collision with violent insanity.

  Heller crouched beside his toolbox and began the work of putting away unused razor blades and cotton swabs, brushes and bottles of dust. ‘Lieutenant Coffey called. He’s on his way over.’

  Mallory wore her I-told-you-so smile. Riker ignored her and hovered over Heller, prompting him. ‘So? Was Coffey pissed off?’

  ‘You bet. The lieutenant heard a scary rumor that you guys accepted this case for Special Crimes. How do you plan to sell him on this one? Given it any thought?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Riker glanced at his partner. ‘She’s gonna handle it.’

  Heller nodded. ‘Excellent choice.’

  Mallory studied the scorch marks at the base of the brick wall, then turned to the evidence bag of ashes and paper fragments. ‘Did the perp use anything fancy to start his fire?’

  ‘Just a match,’ said Heller. ‘I’ll test for accelerants, but I don’t think I’ll find any.’

  A rocking chair and a small magazine rack blocked the bathroom door. The scorched wall was the only logical place for them. ‘And you’re positive none of the firemen moved any furniture?’

  He nodded absently as he placed each aerosol can in its proper compartment in the toolbox. ‘One of Loman’s detectives got statements from everybody on the fire truck.’

  She pointed to a couch cushion leaning against another wall. A large square of material had been cut away. ‘What’s that about?’

  ‘I cut out a scorch mark and bagged it. That was the perp’s first try at arson. It should’ve gone up like a torch. The couch must’ve come from out of state. New York law doesn’t require fire-retardant upholstery. Lucky for you it didn’t burn. Inside of four minutes, the whole place would’ve gone up in flames.’

  ‘And destroyed all the evidence,’ said Riker. ‘You’re sure that’s not what he wanted?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m damn sure. This guy was looking for a fast controlled burn. Lots of smoke, but no major damage. He was real careful to clear the area around his bonfire.’

  Mallory agreed. The hangman had wanted to call attention to his work, not destroy it. A wet mound of bright cloth and sequins lay at her feet. ‘Some of these clothes have scorch marks.’

  ‘Another experiment,’ said Heller. ‘He picked them because the material’s so flimsy. More bad luck. The law does call for fire-retardant costumes. Eventually, they’ll burn – everything does. But the guy’s in a hurry. So next, he collects all the paper – junk mail, magazines. He even burned the window shade.’

  ‘So our boy’s an amateur at arson.’ Riker leaned down to examine the pile of wet cloth deemed unworthy of evidence bags. ‘I spent four years in Vice. Never heard of a streetwalker with a costume collection like this.’ He drew out a scanty garment with sequins and sewn-on wings. ‘I’ve seen this one before. June, I think. Yeah, Shakespeare in the Park. The play was Midsummer Night’s Dream. I loved the fairies.’

  With a rare show of surprise, Heller turned to stare at the man voted least likely to have an up-close encounter with culture.

  Riker shook his head, saying, ‘Naw, must’ve been October – the Halloween Parade.’

  The forensic expert sighed, then returned to the task of putting his toolbox in order.

  Mallory looked down at the carefully labeled insect collection on the table. Heller was deluded if he thought Lieutenant Coffey would pay for an entomologist. It would be a fight just to keep this case in Special Crimes Unit. Among the evidence containers stashed near the door was a bag of votive candles. There were at least two dozen in various stages of meltdown. All were covered with fingerprint dust. ‘The candles belonged to the killer?’

  ‘Yeah. Part of his little ritual.’ Heller pointed to the area beneath the ceiling fixture. ‘Check out the wax.’ Melted droppings had survived the fire hose, and they formed a circle on the cement. ‘There were spots of red wax on the victim’s skirt. So I know she was lying on the floor while the candles were burning. I used the wicks for a time frame. The last one was lit fifteen minutes before the place was hosed down. That’s how much time he had to hang the woman and start his bonfire.’

  ‘That can’t be right,’ said Mallory, risking heresy. ‘We have to add on another ten or twelve minutes before Sparrow was cut down and revived. But she isn’t even brain-dead.’

  ‘She was starved for oxygen, but her air supply wasn’t completely cut off.’ Heller reached into the evidence pile and selected a canister. After breaking the seal, he pulled out a section of rope. ‘With a hangman’s noose, he could’ve killed her in a few minutes. But this is a fixed double knot. The noose didn’t tighten with the weight of the body. Satisfied?’

  Yes, she was. Mallory could see it now – Sparrow hanging quietly, sipping air and playing dead, waiting for the freak to leave. Cagey whore. She must have had great hopes. The window had been bare and all the lights left on. Help would surely come any moment. Then her lungs had filled with smoke, and Sparrow had blacked out. Or perhaps she had been dimly aware of her rescuers, the conversation of firemen all around her, and not one hand lifted to help a lady down from the ceiling.

  ‘The jar of dead flies doesn’t fit,’ she said.

  ‘You’re right.’ Heller interrupted his work to stare at the perfect circle of wax droppings. ‘A very tidy job, meticulous. Even the scalping. You can’t trim a moustache without making a mess, but there wasn’t one stray hair on that woman’s clothes. And the candles – each one an equal distance from the next. Your perp is compulsively neat. I can’t see this guy catching bugs.’

  Mallory could. She pictured a man ripping garbage bags open, then waiting patiently with his can of insecticide. He would have worn gloves to harvest the dead and dying flies, and still it would have made him queasy to touch them.

  The basement door opened, then slammed with a bang. The commander of Special Crimes Unit had arrived. Before his last promotion, Jack Coffey had been a middling man with a forgettable face, hair and eyes of lukewarm brown. Now, at age thirty-seven, the stress of a command position had widened the bald spot at the back of his head and added a premature decade of worry lines and character. Riker noticed the lieutenant’s hands were balled into fist
s, and he counted down the seconds, waiting for the man to explode.

  Coffey’s gaze passed over the two men and settled on his only female detective. His tone was too calm, too reasonable when he spoke to her. ‘Imagine my surprise when Lieutenant Loman dropped off the paperwork for a hooker.’ His voice jumped ten decibel levels when he shouted, ‘And she’s not even a dead hooker!’

  Mallory never flinched. She had the slow blink of a drowsing cat, and her serenity would cost the lieutenant one game point.

  ‘We’re tossing this case back to the East Side squad,’ said Coffey. ‘Tonight! What the hell were you guys thinking? This is assault, not murder. Loman says it’s a damn sex game gone wrong.’

  ‘Autoerotic asphyxiation?’ Heller kept his eyes on his toolbox as he shook his head. ‘I’ve seen a few teenage boys strung up, and even some old guys, but no women. Her hands were tied with – ’

  ‘She was a damn hooker; said Coffey. ‘She did whatever she was paid to do. And bondage is part of the trade.’

  ‘Sparrow was never into freaks and their games.’ Riker said this so casually, an offhand line dropped into the conversation.

  The lieutenant’s reaction was predictable. ‘We’re not tying up a squad so you can keep faith with one of your snitches.’

  Riker shrugged, then lit a cigarette as he leaned against the wall, leaving the fight to his partner. Coffey could make no personal connection between her and Sparrow. Mallory had been ten years old the last time she had spoken to the whore.

  ‘The perp is a serial killer,’ she said. ‘Loman’s squad would’ve botched it.’

  Riker sucked in his breath. Awe, Mallory, what are you doing? Was she trying to lose this case? No cop on the force had ever heard of a serial hangman. It would have been better to run with Heller’s portrait of a tidy psycho with a penchant for dead flies.

  ‘A serial killer?’ Coffey wet his lips, tasting the words. ‘So, tell me.’ His cursory glance swept the entire room. ‘Where are the rest of the bodies?’

  ‘In a Cold Case file,’ she said. ‘It’s the same MO. The rope, the hair – everything.’

  And now the fun begins. Or this was Riker’s impression of Jack Coffey’s smile. Hands on his hips, the lieutenant squared off with Mallory. ‘And where is that file?’

  ‘They haven’t located it yet.’

  Riker relaxed a little, for his partner was on safer ground now. The Cold Case files dated back to 1906, and the squad had recently moved this staggering inventory to new headquarters. What were the odds that they would rush to unpack a hundred cartons just to appease Special Crimes Unit?

  Jack Coffey’s tight smile never wavered. ‘Then you pulled this information from the computer. Where’s the printout?’

  ‘The case isn’t in the system,’ she said. ‘Most of the older files aren’t. Just basic inventory – names and numbers.’

  With budget problems and lack of manpower, it would take Cold Case Squad years to make complete computer entries for every unsolved murder of the last century. Mallory might get away with this.

  Not so, said the look in Coffey’s eyes. ‘If you’ve never seen this file – ’

  ‘Markowitz told me about it,’ she said.

  The lieutenant’s mouth dipped on one side. ‘Well, how neat. Your corroboration is a dead man. How damn convenient;

  Riker was also skeptical. He knew she had the talent to tell a better lie than that one.

  Heller slammed the lid of his toolbox. And now that he had everyone’s attention, he rose to his feet, saying, ‘I was there when she heard about the other hanging.’

  Jack Coffey’s smile evaporated as he faced the man from Forensics, and so he missed the stunned surprise in Riker’s eyes.

  ‘I don’t know all the details,’ said Heller. ‘But neither did Markowitz. It wasn’t his crime scene. He only got a quick look at the room and the body, but he couldn’t get it out of his mind. Damn strange way to kill somebody.’

  Heller would never back anyone in a lie. No one on the force had stronger credibility. And so Lieutenant Coffey’s eyes rolled up, as if his concession speech might be written on the ceiling. ‘Mallory, I wanna see that Cold Case file. Until I do, your hooker isn’t draining resources from Special Crimes. You got that?’ He was walking toward the door as he said, ‘You can use that man Lieutenant Loman gave you, but that’s all – ’

  ‘Two men,’ said Mallory. ‘Loman promised two.’

  Jack Coffey was close to joy when he turned on her. ‘Oh, did he? Well, I guess the bastard scammed you. He only came across with one detective – half a detective. The guy’s a whiteshield, no experience. And here’s the best part, Mallory – it’s the same idiot who resuscitated the corpse. So Loman’s squad gets rid of a half-dead hooker and a screw-up cop. What a deal, huh?’

  Score one for the boss.

  Riker was almost happy for the man. Jack Coffey needed these small victories to keep him going. Over time, the lieutenant had learned the value of a hit-and-run game. And now that he had scored, he slammed the door on his way out.

  Heller knelt on the floor to close the snaps of his toolbox, then glanced up at Riker. ‘Markowitz never told you about that hanging, did he? Naw, he’d never give up details from another cop’s crime scene. That’s a religion in my job, too. I was the only one he could talk to.’ Heller aimed his thumb at Mallory. ‘And Markowitz never told her a damn thing. She was only thirteen years old. The way I remember it, we caught her listening at the door.’

  Riker stubbed out his cigarette. ‘What else can you tell me?’

  ‘The woman’s hands were bound. Rope or tape – I’m not sure.’ Heller stood up and mopped his brow with a handkerchief. ‘So that knocked out murder dressed up as suicide. And Markowitz said the perp must’ve planned it. He brought his own rope to the party -just like your guy. But why plan a hanging?’ The criminalist grabbed his suit jacket from the back of a chair, and only now did he notice that, despite the sweltering heat of the basement, Riker was the only one not stripped to shirtsleeves.

  Before Riker could check the movement, his hand touched the button that kept his jacket closed. ‘What about money? Lou always loved money motives.’

  ‘No,’ said Heller. ‘On his own time, he looked into that and came up dry. He didn’t see any sex angles either.’

  ‘And the victim didn’t step off a piece of furniture,’ said Mallory.

  ‘The noose was around her neck when the perp raised her from the floor -just like Sparrow.’

  ‘But there was no fire,’ said Heller. ‘No candles, no jar of flies.’ He made this sound like an accusation against her. ‘And there wasn’t any hair in the victim’s mouth. Your old man never mentioned any of that.’

  Riker jammed his hands in his pockets. ‘Mallory, why did you have to elaborate so much? You told Coffey the hair was – ’

  ‘It’s not a problem,’ she said. ‘Without a name or a case number, no one can find the file. We don’t even have a date.’

  ‘She’s right,’ said Heller. ‘That case was years old when Markowitz told me about it. It bothered him for a long time. Too many things didn’t fit.’ He shrugged. ‘That’s all I remember.’

  The door opened, and a technician from Crime Scene Unit entered the room to pick up an armload of canisters. Heller grabbed two evidence bags and followed his man outside to the waiting van.

  Riker took one last look at the departing bag of ashes and unburned fragments. He could see the charred spines of magazines, yet some miracle had preserved the brittle tinder of an old paperback novel. It had not even been scorched when he had retrieved it from the water. He could feel the wetness on his skin under the pressure of his holster’s strap.

  Mallory was attracted to the damp spot spreading across the breast of his suit. Her gaze dropped lower. ‘I bet you never used that button before.’

  True, he never bothered to close his jacket, but on any other night, there would be nothing to conceal.

  You spooky kid. Alw
ays picking up on the oddest things.

  Mallory met his eyes, and her gaze was steady. She was clearly waiting for him to say more.

  To confess?

  Damn her, she knew he had robbed the crime scene. But she could not pose a direct question. A cop could never ask a partner, Did you break the law?

  Riker went out in search of a cold beer, and Mallory stayed behind to double-check Heller’s work. On the subject of forced entry, she deferred to no one. There were no recent scratches on the outside of the lock. Even after dismantling the mechanism, she could find no sign of a metal pick.

  Sparrow, why did you let the hangman in?

  The prostitute had been good at reading men and sorting out the mental cases. It was unlikely that the collector of dead flies had been her customer; he would never have gotten past her radar – unless she had been dope-sick and desperate. Then she would have opened the door to any drug dealer, however squirrely. But Dr Slope had found no signs of recent addiction, and there were no syringes listed on the evidence log.

  The junkie hooker had always been careful to keep a supply of clean ones. In what had passed for a childhood, Kathy Mallory had stolen boxes of needles from a local clinic – presents for Sparrow, a little girl’s idea of payments for shelter from the streets.

  One hand drifted down to a tear in the couch cushion and touched a hard lump. Heller’s crew had missed something. Her fingers dug into the upholstery and pulled out an ivory comb with delicate prongs. Sparrow had always worn it in her hair. The oriental carving was elaborate, unforgettable. This was the only thing of value that the whore had not sold for drug money. The antique comb had been stolen long ago to buy the first story hour. The whore had laid her present down with a sigh, saying, ‘Baby, you don’t have to pay for stories. They’re free.’

  No. Young Kathy had shaken her head to tell the woman that she was wrong. And the child’s logic had been indisputable: All hookers would be beggars if this were true; their lies would be worthless – if this were true. But then, Sparrow had never understood precisely what the little girl was buying.