Crime School

by Carol O’Connell

  William could not have spoken had he wanted to.

  Mr Butler continued, ‘It’s a reasonable assumption. Your landlord tells me you’ve lived here all your life. I understand you inherited the lease from your mother. And this building is only a block from where Natalie died. Must’ve been difficult to photograph the body of someone you knew.’

  ‘I didn’t – know her.’ William wrapped himself in his own arms to quell the panic. He could see that, once again, he was not believed. In that tone of voice reserved for the confessional, he said, ‘She only lived in this neighborhood for a little while. I never spoke to her.’ Losing control of his nerves and his mouth, he continued in a chattering stammer, ‘But I used to see her on the street sometimes. She was so pretty. She didn’t belong here. Anybody could see that. God, she was beautiful.’

  He had never lusted after her as the other watchers did, for her smile had reminded him of the painted madonnas and statuettes that had adorned this apartment while his mother was alive. Pretty Natalie in her long summer dresses.

  William studied Charles Butler’s tell-all face, checking for signs that he had given away too much. ‘It wasn’t just me that watched her, you know. She turned heads everywhere she went. All those men, they just had to look.’

  ‘And after she died, you took her photograph,’ said the visiting mind reader. ‘Nausea doesn’t come on in an instant. I’m guessing you had time to get off one shot before you vomited. You’re such a fine photographer. It would’ve been a natural reflex action – taking that picture.’

  So he knew about the vomiting too.

  ‘All right. I’ll give it to you.’ William was actually relieved, though this certainly meant that Butler was a ghoul, the kind of customer who paid the rent, but a twisted type he had never wanted to confront outside of an art gallery. So this was really all the freak wanted, a grisly crime-scene souvenir.

  Upon entering the bedroom, William locked and bolted the door behind him. When he emerged again, a print of the old photograph was in his hand.

  After the man had departed with his purchase, William noticed that the amount entered on the check was more generous than the quoted price. He looked around at the evidence of his poverty, and he was frightened anew, for he suspected Charles Butler of being a compassionate man and not a freak after all.

  William Heart returned to his bedroom. Again, he carefully locked the door and drew the bolt, though his landlord had no keys to this apartment. He lay down on the bed and stared at the opposite wall. Every night, before switching off the lamp, this was what he saw, a wall of a hundred pictures, all the same – the same face, the rope, the massing insects. This photograph was the best work he had ever done. The flies had been so thick and fast that the camera could only capture them as a black cloud surrounding the Madonna of the Maggots and Roaches.

  CHAPTER 12

  Erik Homer’s second wife, now his widow, lived in a large apartment on East Ninety-first Street. ‘It’s rent control,’ she said. ‘Two-eighty a month. Can you beat that? This used to be such a crummy area. But look at it now.’

  Detective Riker guessed that this woman’s view of her neighborhood was limited to what she could see from the nearby window. He nursed a cup of strong coffee and longed for a cigarette, a little smoke to kill the stench of a sickroom.

  Jane Homer was a mountain of sallow flesh, and he could roughly guess when she had become housebound, unable to fit her girth through a standard doorway. Her hair was a long tangle of mouse brown. Only the ends had the brassy highlights of a bleach blonde. Vanity had died years ago.

  On the bureau, there were dozens of photographs of her younger self posed with her late husband. Jane had once been as slender as the first Mrs Homer. There were no portraits of her stepson.

  A visiting nurse bustled about in the next room, chattering at Mallory while cleaning up the debris of a meal.

  Mrs Homer’s handicap worked in Riker’s favor. Like most shut-ins, she was eager to gossip, and now she was saying, ‘I saw the TV coverage the other night. Natalie’s hanging was never on TV.’

  Riker smiled. ‘Yeah, the murders are a lot alike, aren’t they?’

  The woman nodded absently, and this gave him hope. He waited until he heard the door close behind the departing healthcare worker. ‘Did your husband ever talk about the murder?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Erik and Natalie’s sister – what was her name? Susan something. No matter. They talked on the telephone for hours. Erik made the funeral arrangements – paid for it, too. He didn’t have to do that, you know.’

  Riker thought otherwise. Taking possession of his ex-wife’s body fit the pathology of a control freak. Even in death, Natalie never escaped Erik Homer. ‘What about the little boy? How did you get along with your stepson? I mean – after his mother died.’

  There was a touch of surprise in her eyes, or maybe guilt. ‘Junior was no trouble.’

  ‘No trouble? I’ll bet.’ Mallory had quietly entered the room. She held a silver picture frame in her hands as she glared at the woman on the bed, saying, accusing, ‘You palmed him off on a relative after your husband died.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Riker. ‘That was in your last statement to the police. You said you gave the boy away.’

  ‘Well, Erik’s life insurance wasn’t exactly a fortune.’ Jane Homer’s eyes were fixed on the picture frame in Mallory’s hand. It was something she prized or something she feared. ‘And I had all these medical problems that year. My thyroid gland and all. Junior loved his grandparents.’ The woman stared at Riker, then Mallory, perhaps realizing that she had made some mistake. She filled their silence with a rush of words. ‘I couldn’t take care of him. You can see that, can’t you?’

  Mallory stepped closer to the bed. ‘You told a detective the boy went to Natalie’s sister in Brooklyn.’

  ‘That’s right’ said Mrs Homer, trying to appease Mallory with a feeble smile. ‘I remember now. My father-in-law had Alzheimer’s. Well, his wife probably couldn’t cope with that and a little boy too. So, after a while, Junior went to live with Natalie’s sister. That’s what I meant.’

  Mallory reached out across the body of Jane Homer to hand the silver frame to Riker. He turned it over to see a picture with the familiar backdrop of the Bronx Zoo. There were light creases through the image of a man and a woman, as if someone had crumpled it into a ball before it was framed. Had Jane Homer rescued this picture from a wastebasket? Yes, that was exactly what had happened. This one flattered her more than the others. The girl in the photograph was not yet wearing a wedding band, and she had been happy that day. A third person had been cut from the photograph. All that remained of the unwanted figure were the fingers of a small child caught up in the much larger hand of his smiling father.

  ‘Was the boy having problems?’ asked Riker.

  Mallory leaned down very close to the other woman’s face. ‘How did Junior adjust to his mother’s death?’

  ‘Natalie died in August,’ said Riker. ‘And we know your husband didn’t send Junior to school in September.’

  ‘Tell me what you did with that little boy,’ said Mallory.

  Jane Homer’s eyes widened with the realization that she was caught in the middle of a police crossfire. ‘His grandparents – ’

  ‘No!’ Riker scraped the legs of his chair across the floor, edging closer to the bed. ‘No, Jane, I don’t think so.’

  Mallory leaned close to the woman’s ear. ‘I know how Erik Homer treated his first wife. He never gave her any money – never let her out of the house. Is that – ’

  ‘Erik did the shopping. I didn’t need to go out. I didn’t – ’

  ‘Your first police interview was right after your marriage,’ said Riker. ‘The cops thought you were afraid of your husband.’

  ‘When did the beatings start?’ Mallory raised her voice. ‘On your honeymoon? Was that the first time he knocked you around?’

  ‘You have lots of photographs.’ Riker nodded toward the cluster
of frames on her bureau. ‘I see you and your husband, but not the little boy. You never lived with Junior, did you?’ He caught the sudden fear in the woman’s eyes. ‘What did you do to Natalie’s son? Is he alive?

  Jane Homer shook her head from side to side.

  ‘Is that a no?’ Mallory asked. ‘The boy’s dead?’

  The woman trembled, and her bosom heaved with sobs. Speech was impossible. Her mouth formed the words I don’t know.

  Mallory moved closer. ‘How could you not know?’

  Riker leaned toward her. ‘Did you think your husband went off on the kid, maybe killed his own son?’

  The woman’s head moved from side to side, splitting her halting words between the two detectives, anxious to please them both. ‘The night they found Natalie – Erik got back – very late. I asked him where the boy was. Erik – hit me – hard.’ One hand drifted to her mouth. ‘He broke my tooth – then he – got rid of Junior’s things – toys, clothes. And the pictures – he tore them to pieces.’

  Jane Homer stared at the photograph that Riker held, the image of her husband and her smiling self in better days. In a small act of defiance, she grabbed the silver frame from Riker and held it to her breast, covering it with both hands, protecting the happy times. Huge tears rolled down her face, and they could do no more with her – or to her.

  Outside the SoHo police station, young actresses were ganging on the sidewalk, posing for the cameras of reporters and tourists.

  Uniformed officers grinned with their good luck – they had gone to cop heaven. They worked the crowd, tipping hats to brunettes and sending them on their way, then filling out forms for all the blondes, taking down names and telephone numbers, as women filed past them and through the front door to interviews with Special Crimes detectives.

  Mallory’s car pulled to the curb. She left the motor running after Riker opened the passenger door. He had one foot on the pavement. ‘You’re not coming in?’

  ‘No, I’m going over to Natalie’s apartment building.’ Then she added, with no enthusiasm at all, ‘Come if you like.’

  ‘Naw, I did a drive-by. Too much renovation. The new owner probably rearranged half the walls.’ He kept her a while longer with one foot on the floor mat of her car, acting as if a sidewalk choked with pretty women was an everyday thing with him. ‘I’m sticking a couple of uniforms on Susan Qualen. You’re gonna miss all the fun when they drag her in.’ After a few seconds of dead silence, Riker realized that she was not even tempted. He stepped out on to the sidewalk, closed the door and waved her off, then disappeared into a blond sea of actresses.

  Mallory drove across town and through the East Village, heading for the twenty-year-old crime scene and blaming Jack Coffey for another fatal mistake. He had pulled men off their independent lines of investigation to work on the actress interviews, as if they could find the next victim that way. Another woman was going to die.

  She turned the wheel on First Avenue and rolled along the side street toward Avenue A. Once, this area had provided cheap housing for the poorest of the poor. Now, none of the former residents could afford to live here.

  Mallory parked her car in front of the building where Natalie Homer had lived and died. Only the architectural bones would match Lars Geldorf s old photograph. Peeling gray paint had been sandblasted to expose the red brick. The windows were modern, and the wrought-iron rails of Juliet balconies had been restored. According to Geldorf s personal notes, the previous owner had died, and all the old tenants had departed before the renovation.

  Riker was right. This was a waste of precious time.

  And a woman was going to die.

  Yet she left her car and walked up the stairs to ring the bell for the landlord’s apartment. The front door was opened by a softly rounded woman with a warm smile for a stranger. The new owner was obviously not a native New Yorker, but a transplant from some smaller, less paranoid town.

  ‘Mrs White?’ The detective held up her badge and ID.

  The woman’s smile collapsed. ‘It’s about Natalie, isn’t it? I wondered when you’d come.’

  The civilian police aide for the midtown precinct was a short thin woman with brown hair and a dim view of blondes. Eve Forelli held up her favorite tabloid with the headline: actress stabbed in broad daylight. She glared at the tall, pretty woman seated on the other side of her desk. ‘You look better in person.’

  And this, of course, was sarcasm, for the grainy newsprint photograph only showed the back of the actress’s head; the face was pressed to the bosom of another actor, a man holding the unconscious, bleeding victim in his arms while he postured and smiled for the camera.

  The blonde’s blue eyes opened wide. ‘How could it be in the paper? It just happened this morning.’

  Forelli pointed to the line below the newspaper’s banner. ‘It’s the late edition.’ She could see that the younger woman was not following this. ‘It’s a second edition.’ And it had been free, a promotional gimmick for a failing newspaper. ‘Now I need the correct spelling for your last name. The hospital only used one L. It doesn’t look right.’ She handed the newspaper to the blonde. ‘And this story didn’t even mention your name.’

  The startled actress tore her eyes away from the clock on the wall to scan the article. ‘Oh, damn, you’re right.’

  ‘The spelling, Miss Small?’

  ‘Just the way it sounds. Call me Stella.’ The woman flashed a smile. ‘Look – is this going to take much longer? I’ve been waiting for over an hour. I’m already late for another appointment in SoHo.’

  Eve Forelli only glared at the woman. This – blonde had left the hospital before giving a statement to the police. One of the little princes from Special Crimes Unit downtown had reamed out a desk sergeant and demanded the missing paperwork on the reported stabbing. Her supervisor, in turn, had crawled up Forelli’s own scrawny tail. Further down the food chain, the frazzled police aide had screamed at the hospital staff. And, finally, the errant actress had been identified. And now Forelli prepared to marry an illegible attending physician’s report to the crime victim’s account. ‘So you were stabbed by – ’

  ‘Oh, Jesus, no!’ said the actress. ‘I don’t want any trouble with the cops. Look, I’m sorry, Officer, but this – ’

  ‘I’m not a cop.’ Forelli pointed to the name tag pinned to her blouse, clearly identifying her as a civilian aide. ‘You see a badge here? No, you don’t. I just do the damn paperwork.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Stella Small touched her bandaged arm. ‘A camera did this. No big deal.’

  Eve Forelli’s face was deadpan. ‘A guy stabbed you – with his camera.’’ Of course. And this added credence to her pet theory that the roots of blond hair attacked brain cells.

  ‘No.’ The actress waved the newspaper. ‘The reporter got it wrong. I wasn’t stabbed – I was slashed!'

  ‘With a camera.’

  ‘But it was an accident.’ The blonde slumped down in the chair. Her blue eyes rolled back, and then she sighed – a clear sign of guilty defeat. ‘Okay, this is what happened. My agent thought getting slashed with a razor was better than a guy just bumping into me on a crowded sidewalk.’

  ‘Yeah, that would’ve been my choice.’

  ‘I didn’t know the doctor was going to file a police report.’

  ‘Ah, doctors.’ Forelli sighed. ‘They fill out these reports for every shooting, stabbing and slashing. Who knows why? It’s a mystery.’

  ‘You’re not going to get me in trouble, are you?’

  ‘Naw, what the hell.’ Forelli was overworked, very tired and feeling giddy. Inside the appropriate box of her form, she typed the words, Professional bimbo collides with camera. Damn every tall blonde ever born.

  Her supervisor would not like this entry, assuming the lazy bastard ever bothered to read it – fat chance. All her best lines were lost on that illiterate fool. And now she would have to phone in the details to a detective from Special Crimes, another brain trust who had problems with
the written word.

  ‘But no more false police reports, okay? You can go to jail for that.’ Forelli was not certain that this was true, but it did have a frightening effect on the blonde.

  After the actress had departed, the police aide opened a window and leaned outside to smoke a cigarette. She looked down to see Stella Small standing on the sidewalk below, looking left and right, lost in yet another blond conundrum – which way to go?

  Forelli, for lack of any better spectacle, watched as the young woman removed a wadded-up blouse from her purse, then tossed it into a trash basket near the curb.

  Before the clerk had finished her smoke, an older woman came along. This one, with ragged clothes and matted hair, fished the blouse out of the wire basket and briefly inspected it. Though the material was stained with a large X on the back, the homeless woman stripped off her shirt – right in front of a. police station – no bra – and put the trash-can find on her back.

  Mallory listened politely as Mrs Alice White gave her a walking tour of the residence, rambling on about the problems of renovation. ‘The place was a rabbit warren, all broken up in small spaces. Now there’s only a few apartments left at the top of the house.’ The rest of the floors had been restored to the former proportions and appointments of a family home.

  ‘Where did the murder happen?’

  ‘If I recall the old floorplan – ’ Alice White pulled open two massive wooden doors and stepped into a formal dining room. ‘It was probably in here.’

  Another doorway gave Mallory a view of the adjoining sit-down kitchen. Always go to the kitchen. This was a lesson handed down from Louis Markowitz. Interview subjects were less guarded in that more casual room, for only friends and family gathered there.

  Mrs White’s voice was jittery and halting. Police had that nervous effect on civilians, but Mallory suspected another reason.