Crime School

by Carol O’Connell

  He had been working close to the wall for hours, and now he stepped back to see it from Mallory’s vantage point. A frozen whirlwind of papers and pictures spiraled out from the center pastiche of crime-scene images. It was the jumble of a brain turned inside out, exposing a unique thinking process, trains of thought splashed over the wall in a starburst pattern as Louis Markowitz’s mind of paper debris reached out, stretching – awakening.

  Without a word, and unnoticed by Geldorf, she left the room. Riker put up one hand in the manner of a traffic cop, warning Charles not to follow her, then disappeared down the hall. A few moments later, the door in the reception area slammed shut.

  Lars Geldorf called his attention to the square crime-scene photographs. ‘These are the originals. The blow-ups might be easier to read.’

  ‘I thought the size was unusual.’ The Polaroids were much smaller than the eight-by-ten pictures once pinned to the cork wall of Louis’s office. Charles pointed to a photograph of the corpse hanging from a light fixture. ‘What’s this dark area on her apron?’

  ‘Grease. And those spots are cockroaches.’ Geldorf leaned down to the cardboard carton at his feet and picked up an envelope. ‘I had enlargements made.’ He pulled out a group of pictures. ‘Now these are grainy, but you can see the bugs better.’

  ‘Indeed.’ They were gigantic.

  ‘Oh, you like bugs? I got shots of flies and maggots too.’ Geldorf opened another envelope, and this one contained twice as many insects, all in very sharp focus. ‘A medical examiner took these shots. That old bastard loved bugs. A drunk and a freak.’

  Charles leafed through the images. ‘I gather he was an amateur entomologist.’ None of the medical examiner’s photographs included cockroaches. ‘It seems he preferred flies and larvae.’

  The fax machine rang, bringing Riker back to Mallory’s office in an uncharacteristic hurry. The detective watched a sheet scroll out of the machine, then ripped it off and left the room.

  ‘I’ll be right back.’ Charles walked down the hall, following the sound of a one-way conversation. He found the detective in the reception area, slumped in a chair behind the antique desk and speaking into a telephone that was circa 1900.

  ‘Oh, the warrant was easy,’ said Riker to the caller. ‘But the super didn’t have keys to Harper’s apartment.’ One leg was on the rise, then settled back to the floor; Mallory had trained him not to put his feet up on office furniture. ‘I’ll make the calls for Heller and Slope… Yeah, the locksmith just opened the place… Right. Mallory’s already on the way.’

  Riker set the ornate receiver back on its cradle, then looked past Charles to the young man who had just emerged from the office kitchen with a sandwich in hand. ‘Kid? You’re driving. Go get your car and pull it up front. I’ll be down in a minute.’

  The recent fax wafted from Riker’s hand to the desk. Charles read the words, Guys, come home. All is forgiven. Love, Special Crimes Unit. ‘Did Jack Coffey send that?’

  ‘Naw, too affectionate for the boss. And he’s still pretending Mallory doesn’t work here anymore.’ Riker looked down at the fax. ‘No, I’d say this is Janos’s style.’

  ‘There’s been another hanging?’

  The detective shrugged into the sleeves of his suit jacket. ‘Good guess, and keep it to yourself. Yeah, Mallory was right. We got a serial killer.’ He paused with one hand on the doorknob. Without turning round, he said, ‘Tell me something, Charles. Would you want to live in a world where all of Mallory’s lies came true?’

  CHAPTER 6

  They were exiles now, locked out of the room. This was Heller’s punishment for breaking a commandment of Forensics: Thou shalt not disturb my freaking crime scene.

  The detectives’ walk-through had turned into a run-through, battling fat black insects on the wing and biting back vomit all the way to a rear window that had not been dusted for prints. Now Mallory sat outside on the steps of the fire escape, keeping her partner company. The air was sweeter here, but muggy and almost too thick to breathe. The sun was hot, the day was dead calm, and cigarette smoke hung about Riker in a stale cloud.

  On the other side of the locked window, most of the insects were still trapped in the apartment. Their buzzing penetrated the glass, loud and incessant. A ripe corpse had emptied its bowels postmortem, attracting every blowfly in the neighborhood and adding to the odor of putrid flesh.

  Mallory looked down through the metal grate. More civilians had joined the gathering below. There was nothing to see, but New York was a theater town, and the yellow crime-scene tape was the cue to form a sidewalk gallery. Last week, the killer had probably stood on that same patch of pavement. After calling the reporters to his crime scene, he would have stayed to watch them enter this building, then leave, unimpressed with his work. ‘I wonder how long the perp waited for the cops to show. Hours? Days?’

  ‘Must’ve driven him nuts.’ Riker took a drag on his cigarette. ‘I’ve got uniforms canvassing the block. We might get lucky.’

  No, Mallory doubted that they would turn up any witnesses who recalled a man loitering on the sidewalk. Too much time had passed between the death and the discovery of the corpse.

  Riker flicked his cigarette over the rail of the fire escape. ‘I wonder if we’ll find any more bodies, maybe a few in worse shape.’

  ‘Not likely. Janos said there were only two calls on the Cashtip line.’ And despite the killer’s telephoned confession and a reporter’s visit to the local police station, Kennedy Harper’s body had been left to rot for six days in the heat of August. ‘He must’ve figured the cops just weren’t paying attention.’

  ‘Well, he got that part right,’ said Riker. ‘And now we know why he burned Sparrow’s window shade. Hard to miss a woman hanging in full view of the street. He wanted a guaranteed audience for his second show.’

  Heller stood on the other side of the glass, raising the sash. ‘Okay, all the windows are open, and the worst of the stink is gone. You two delicate little pansies can come back inside.’

  Without being asked, the tenants kept their distance from the stench of the crime scene. They were gathered at the other end of a long hallway, where Ronald Deluthe questioned a man with greasy coveralls. A large cluster of keys dangled from his utility belt.

  ‘You’re the building handyman, the super?’

  ‘Good guess, kid.’

  Deluthe could translate that to mean Who else would I be, you moron? Not a promising beginning for his first interview of the day, but he pressed on. ‘So a body is rotting away for maybe a week, but you never smelled anything? He paused a moment to flick a fly off his face. ‘Nobody complained?’ An army of insects walked up the walls, and some were strolling across the ceiling.

  The high-pitched whine of a woman chimed in behind the detective’s back. ‘Oh, we complained all right! You think this lazy slob would take six minutes to check it out?’

  The far door opened and Mallory stepped into the hall in time to catch the handyman demonstrating a New York gesture for love and friendship, his middle finger extended from a closed fist.

  ‘Harper got new locks!’ The man edged closer to the whining tenant so he could yell in her face, ‘And I got no keys for ‘em! You want I should break down her damn door?’

  At the other end of the hall, Mallory called out to Deluthe, ‘Chase down the locksmith. Find out when he was here.’

  ‘Oh, I can tell you that.’ The handyman’s keys jangled as he turned to flash a lewd grin at the pretty detective. ‘It was two weeks ago. I watched him do the work.’ His eyes undressed Mallory layer by layer, removing her blazer, her T-shirt, her bra.

  And now he was the focus of her attention. ‘Was Kennedy Harper home that day?’

  ‘Yeah.’ His eyes traveled all over her body. ‘So?’

  The detective’s long legs were encased in blue jeans, but in the handyman’s eyes, they were naked. He looked up, suddenly startled. She was moving toward him with long strides and swinging a camera fro
m its strap like a weapon.

  Ronald Deluthe wondered if she was only pissed off, or had he missed something – again.

  Mallory stood toe-to-toe with the man in coveralls. ‘You had keys to the other locks.’ This was an accusation.

  ‘Sure. I got keys for the whole building.’

  That was so obvious. The buckle on the man’s utility belt sagged from the weight of his keys, each one tagged with an apartment number. And now Deluthe waited for some caustic comment from the witness, but the handyman kept a respectful silence, for Mallory stood with one hand on her hip, exposing the shoulder holster and a very large gun. Her eyes were even more intimidating. Did she ever blink? She took two quick steps toward the handyman, who had nowhere to go but flat up against the wall.

  ‘Why don’t you have the new keys? You were here with the locksmith. Harper was home that day.’

  ‘I asked for ‘em. She wouldn’t give ‘em to me.’

  Mallory looked down at the cluster of tags and metal hanging in front of the man’s crotch. He squirmed when she reached for it.

  ‘You’ve still got the old ones.’ Mallory stared at the key tag for apartment 4B. ‘You had access before she changed the locks.’

  ‘And she had no problem with that.’ He was a model citizen now, eager to help and talking fast. ‘Five years and no complaints. Then one day, out of the blue, I’m a suspicious character. She can’t trust me with her damn keys. Go figure.’ He turned to Deluthe. ‘Don’t write that down, kid.’

  Deluthe folded his notebook into a pocket, then took out his Miranda card to read the prime suspect his rights. ‘You have the right to remain – ’

  ‘What are you doing?’ Mallory took his card away, then handed him the camera. ‘We’re done with this man. Go outside and take pictures.’

  Deluthe nodded. He was growing accustomed to humiliation and busywork. The killer had no way to know that the body had been discovered, not this time. He would not be among the onlookers. This was Mallory’s way of telling him, once again, to get lost.

  *

  Riker stood near the kitchenette, where the odor was strongest. He stared at the jar of dead flies on the floor, then counted exactly two dozen saucers, each one containing the melted remnants of a red candle. They formed a perfect circle, and at the center lay Kennedy Harper’s remains. She had a noose around her neck, and the double knot was the same as Sparrow’s, but this woman had not been found hanging. The light fixture had come loose, and the body had crashed to the floor long before the police arrived. A broken bulb and a shattered white globe lay close to a nest of wires pulled down from the hole in the ceiling. The corpse at his feet was bloated with gas, and the face was partially concealed by shards of broken plaster. Only one eye, clotted with white dust, was visible. It had retracted into its socket.

  Or the maggots had eaten it.

  Riker turned away, wondering if this woman had been as pretty as Sparrow. He hunkered down on the floor in front of the kitchenette sink and picked up her wallet with his gloved hand. Opening it, he stared at the photograph on her driver’s license. Yes, she had been very pretty, but Kennedy Harper had borne no resemblance to Sparrow beyond the hacked-off hair of another scalping. He set the wallet on the floor, positioned as he had found it among the spilled contents of a purse. He moved to one side to allow a crime-scene technician room to dust the jar of dead, dry flies. Even before the man shook his head, Riker knew there would be no fingerprints.

  The detective looked up to see Heller standing by the door with a uniformed officer and signing a receipt for an armload of garments in clear plastic bags. After ripping the plastic away from one hanger, the criminalist held up a pale green blouse and motioned to Riker. ‘You might wanna look at this.’ Heller turned the blouse around to display a large faded X on the back. Affixed to this stain was the dry cleaner’s We’re-so-sorry sticker.

  ‘I’ve seen this mark before,’ said Heller, ‘on a shirt I found wadded up under Sparrow’s sink. She used hers for a cleaning rag.’

  ‘So it’s not a random killing.’ Mallory joined them over the body. ‘We’ve got a stalker.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Riker. The Xon the blouse worked nicely with her theory on the new locks installed a week before the murder. ‘He sees the women on the street. Then he marks their shirts to make it easier to follow them home in a crowd – like tagging animals in the wild.’ Unlike Kennedy Harper, Sparrow had not complained about the stalking, the terror. Prostitutes were not given the same service as human beings.

  Sparrow, why didn’t you come to me?

  The East Side lieutenant had put in a personal appearance instead of sending one of his minions to the crime scene, and Mallory saw this as an admission of guilt for the mistakes made on his watch.

  ‘I brought her package.’ Lieutenant Loman spoke only to Riker, pretending that Mallory was not in the room. ‘The complaints started a few weeks ago. Some pervert was following the girl.’

  After accepting the envelope, Riker pulled out four papers encased in plastic, each bearing the same brief message. Loman was tense, almost standing at attention, and Mallory wondered if this was a habit from the days when Riker had held the rank of captain.

  ‘Kennedy found those notes in her pockets.’ Loman mopped his bald head and brow with a handkerchief. ‘Pretty harmless stuff.’

  Riker responded with a noncommittal nod, then scanned the paperwork attached to the evidence bags.

  The lieutenant stared at the stained green blouse draped over the detective’s arm. ‘She brought that into the station house. She said the perp did it on the subway. You should find a T-shirt marked up the same way. And the notes – every time she found one in her pocket, she’d been in a crowd of people – the subway, a store. That’s why Kennedy never got a good look at the guy.’

  Mallory noted the use of the victim’s first name. It was common for homicide detectives to speak of the dead with this familiarity; but Loman’s squad had only known Kennedy Harper as a living woman, one civilian complainant out of thousands. She stared at the man in silent accusation.

  You turned that woman into a pet, didn’t you?

  The lieutenant avoided Mallory’s eyes while he waited for Riker to say something – anything. ‘She never saw the perp’s face. What could we do?’

  ‘Did you put an extra patrol on this street?’

  And now the lieutenant was forced to acknowledge Mallory, for Riker looked up from his reading, and he was also showing interest in her question.

  ‘No,’ said Loman. ‘It was that damn virus. The uniforms were spread too thin for extra patrols.’

  Mallory only shook her head. It would be gross insubordination to call him a liar out loud. Kennedy Harper was dead before the virus had grown to an epidemic in this part of town. And Loman’s men had found lots of time to visit with pretty Kennedy Harper. She had even come to the attention of the squad’s commander.

  Riker selected one piece of paper with dried blood on it and held it up to the lieutenant’s eyes.

  It was a moment before Loman spoke. ‘That was the last note. The perp used a hatpin to nail it into the back of her neck. Kennedy walked into the station house – dripping blood – and the note was still staked to her skin.’

  Mallory knew there was only one reason for a victim to go to that extreme: it was the woman’s plea for them to take her seriously – because they never had before.

  Riker read the bloodied note aloud: ‘ „I can touch you any time I want.“‘

  ‘That was the day she snapped,’ said Loman. ‘Told us she was leaving town. Well, we thought that was a real good idea. One of my men got her some coffee and a first-aid kit. I made her plane reservation for Bermuda.’

  How kind of you, how helpful.

  ‘Did you do anything else for her?’

  ‘Yes!’ Loman turned to Mallory, and he was on the offensive now. ‘The girl was in shock. I got a police escort to take her to the hospital. And then they drove her back home. After that,
all she had to do was take a cab to the airport.’

  You left her alone.

  Mallory edged toward the lieutenant. ‘There was no follow-up?’

  ‘No! What the hell for? As far as we knew, she was on the way to Bermuda.’

  Chief Medical Examiner Edward Slope had arrived to give this case his personal attention. He knelt on the floor and rolled the corpse to expose a ruined face for the police photographer.

  ‘Well, this is different,’ said Heller, and everyone in the room turned to look at the dead woman. Flies crawled among the strands of long blonde hair that trailed from her mouth. The rope’s double knot had snagged on her teeth and pried her mouth open, spreading the lips in a death’s-head grin. ‘Looks like she almost got away.’

  Only Mallory was watching Lieutenant Loman’s reaction. His face was pale, and his mouth was slack. This veteran of a thousand crime scenes was about to be sick. He was most vulnerable now, and she stepped closer, her shoulder touching his. ‘So then, the reporters stopped by with their murder tip… and still no follow-up? Sir?’

  ‘My men didn’t know about that.’ Again, he spoke only to Riker. ‘The desk sergeant never mentioned any reporters. As far as he was concerned, the lady was in Bermuda. He was going off duty, and it wasn’t worth his time to walk up a damn flight of stairs and talk to us. I promise you, his head’s gonna roll.’

  Ah, too late.

  Mallory perused the folder. ‘We need more men to work this case.’

  ‘Well, now you guys got two more. Just tell me – ’

  ‘Three,’ said Riker. ‘Make it three. You came up one short the last time you promised her some help.’

  ‘You got it,’ said the lieutenant. ‘We’re finished?’

  Riker nodded, giving a man who outranked him permission to leave. Loman turned on his heel and started across the room. Mallory wondered if he would make it to the street before he vomited.