“If you have no objection.”
“Well, she’s resting at the moment—”
“No, I’m not.” Mrs. Wilder’s voice, slightly thick, came from behind and to one side of him. “Don’t just stand there, Neal. Invite the lieutenant in.”
Her words made Wilder frown, a look quickly erased. He stepped aside, saying, “Yes, come in, Lieutenant,” and cast a brief look at his wife, who was standing at the end of a hallway that led to the rear. After I was inside, Mrs. Wilder said, “Let’s talk in the family room, shall we?” and turned immediately and a little unsteadily. A half-full glass in one hand explained the unsteadiness and the thickness in her voice. And her husband’s reluctance.
I followed Wilder into a sunken room, the entire rear wall of which was floor-to-ceiling glass—windows and sliding doors. Beyond was a balcony that overlooked the higher hills to the east. Mrs. Wilder, a petite, ash blonde two years younger than her husband, had gone straight to a leather-and-chrome wet bar and was refilling her glass. The external wounds from the beating she’d received were no longer visible. I did not know if she’d been a heavy drinker before the assault or if her ordeal had led her to seek comfort in alcohol.
“We were having cocktails,” she said. “I’d ask you to join us, Lieutenant, but I don’t suppose you’re allowed to drink on duty.”
“No.”
Neal Wilder invited me to sit down. I declined, saying, “I have only a few questions.”
“About the Torrey homicide,” he said. “Routine, I trust?”
“Yes.”
“He wants to know where you were last night, darling,” Mrs. Wilder said. “Shall I tell him?”
Wilder’s frown reappeared. Without looking at her he said to me, “I was working late at my office on an important new design.”
“For what period of time?”
“From late afternoon until after ten.”
“The entire time? You had no dinner?”
“No. A late lunch, so I wasn’t hungry.”
“Was anyone with you?”
“No.”
Mrs. Wilder made a sound that might have been a chuckle and drank deeply from her glass.
“Did you make or receive any phone calls?”
“No. No interruptions of any kind. Just steady work on the design.” Then, after a short pause: “I suppose you’re talking with everyone who might have had a reason to shoot Martin Torrey.”
“Yes.”
“Well, you can cross me off the list. I’m many things, Lord knows, but vengeful and crazy aren’t among them.”
“That’s right,” Mrs. Wilder said. “My dear husband is many things. Lord knows.”
“Do you own a handgun?” I asked him.
“Absolutely not. I don’t like guns, won’t have one in the house. In fact I’m an active supporter of gun control. Sherry can tell you that.”
“Oh, yes. Neal abhors all forms of violence. He’s a lover, not a fighter.”
“Were you home last evening, Mrs. Wilder?” I asked.
“Me? Don’t tell me I’m under suspicion, too?”
“Please answer the question. Were you home the entire evening?”
“Yes, I was. But I can’t prove it. No visitors, no calls. Just me all alone in this big empty house, waiting faithfully for Neal to come back from his … designs.”
Wilder said through tightened lips, “Are we about through here now, Lieutenant?”
“One more question. Do either of you know of threats made by anyone against Martin Torrey’s life?”
“I don’t,” he said. “People I know believed him guilty, but threats … no.”
Mrs. Wilder shook her head. “Do you think he was guilty?” she asked me.
“There was insufficient evidence to charge him with the crimes.”
“Which means you did and still do. If I knew it for sure, I’d dance on his grave.”
“But you wouldn’t have killed him.”
“I don’t know, maybe I would. But I didn’t.” She laughed suddenly, the kind of hiccuping laugh fueled by liquor. “Wienie-wagger in Ohio, rapist in California. Wienie-wagger. That’s what you call men who expose themselves in public, isn’t it?”
“It is a term for it, yes.”
“What do you call a man who grabs a woman in a public park and does a hell of a lot more than just wag his wienie at her? Wienie-stuffer? Wienie-stabber? Wienie-buggerer?”
“Sherry, for God’s sake …”
“Never mind.” She emptied her glass in a long convulsive swallow. “It doesn’t matter as long as he was the one and now he’s dead. Him and his goddamn wienie.”
Wilder went with me to the front door. “I’m sorry for my wife’s behavior,” he said in an undertone. “She hasn’t been the same since it happened. The trauma … you understand.”
“I understand.”
Before driving away, I sat for a few seconds looking up at the house, going over the interrogations in my mind. I did not think Neal Wilder was the person we were after. But I was not so sure about his wife.
SHERRY WILDER
I was about to pour myself another scotch when Neal came back into the living room and said, “Did you have to be so nasty while Ortiz was here? God knows what he thinks of us.”
“I don’t care what he thinks of us.”
“Or what I think either, apparently.”
“Very perceptive of you, darling.”
He sighed as I filled my glass. “Do you really need another drink?”
“Yes, I really need it.”
“It’s not even four o’clock. The way you’re going, you’ll pass out before dinner.”
“All the better for you if I do. Then you won’t have to make an excuse to slip out and go see your girlfriend.”
“Oh, God, please don’t start that again—”
“Afraid I was going to tell Ortiz that’s where you really were last night, weren’t you?”
“I was working on a design, just as I told him and you—”
“Working on Gloria Ryder is more like it. Is she a good fuck?”
He sighed again and gave me one of his weary, long-suffering looks. “How many times do I have to say it? I am not having an affair with Gloria or any other woman.”
“That’s what you swore five years ago. What was her name? Let’s see … Donna? No, Donelle.”
“All right. I made a mistake—a one-weekend mistake, that’s all. It’s the only time I’ve been unfaithful to you.”
“Until after the rape anyhow.”
“The only time, period.”
“Even though I haven’t let you come near me since?”
“Yes.”
“Bullshit. You’re too virile, Neal—you couldn’t go without sex for four weeks, let alone four months.”
“Well, I have. And I’ll continue to until you’re ready.”
“Ready. My God, ready! To be your sperm receptacle again.”
He actually winced. “That’s unfair, Sherry.”
“Ah, but accurate.”
“No, it’s not. Have I asked you even once to start making love again?”
“No need, when you’ve got Gloria.”
“Damn it, I don’t have or want any woman but you! Why can’t you believe that?” Then, when I drank instead of answering him: “You’re so different, so … changed. If only you hadn’t gone jogging that night—”
“Oh, so now I’m to blame? Stupid Sherry, jogging in the park after dark like she did a hundred times before, just begging to be raped.”
“I didn’t mean it that way. I’m not the enemy, for Christ’s sake. I understand how you feel, how much you’ve suffered—”
“Do you really?” The scar on my neck throbbed; I reached up under the hair I’d let grow long to cover it, not that rubbing helped any. The shrink I’d seen for a time said that scar tissue was dead tissue and what I was feeling was phantom pain. So what? The goddamn thing hurt. Was I supposed to feel better knowing the pain wasn’t real? “Have you ever
been beaten up, sliced by a knife, had some stranger’s wienie slammed into your ass? You don’t understand a thing.”
“I try. I’ve been there for you the past four months, in every way that matters. I give you as much support as I know how. But all you do is reject me, accuse me of things that aren’t true when you talk to me at all. It’s as if—”
“As if what?”
“You’ve started hating me. And not just me—all men because of what one sick bastard did to you.”
Man-hater? No, I didn’t think so. Well, maybe, to a certain extent. My new friend the Pink Lady indicated a tendency in that direction, didn’t she? I’d have to think about it some more. Neal watched me drain my glass in that pained way of his. “And I drink too much now, too,” I said, “don’t forget that.”
“Yes, you do.”
“You never used to think I drank too much. You used to like me to drink because it made me horny.”
“I never encouraged you to drink nonstop, all day, every day, until you pass out.”
“Did it ever occur to you that that’s the only way I can sleep?”
“Yes, but it’s not a healthy sleep. And not the kind of crutch you can lean on for very long—”
“So you think I’ve become an alcoholic.”
“You’ll end up one if you don’t exercise some control.”
“Maybe I should join AA. ‘Hello, my name is Sherry, and my husband says I’m a drunk.’”
“If you’d just try therapy again, individually or group—”
“Therapy! Two miserable months of strangers poking and prodding at me like an animal in a cage, making me relive that night over and over until I was ready to scream. No. No more of that. Johnnie Walker here is all the therapy I need.”
Neal made a noise and threw up his hands like an exasperated little boy. “There’s no use trying to talk to you when you’re like this. I’m going to take a shower.”
“Good idea. Get all nice and clean and put on some of that Versace cologne of yours. Gloria loves it, I’ll bet.”
He started across the room. When he was almost to the steps leading up to the bedrooms, I stopped him by saying, “Neal.” And then: “Do you want a divorce?”
“What? No, of course not.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. As difficult as things are right now, no, I do not want a divorce.”
He went away and I went back to the wet bar. “I think,” I said to Johnnie Walker, “I think maybe I do.”
GRIFFIN KELLS
Frank Judkins and I were just winding up a not-very-productive conference when the report came in that Martin Torrey’s five-year-old Camry had been located. Judkins was a year shy of sixty now, with thirty-five years on the force—a heavyset, plodding man, his bald, ovoid head covered with liver spots like a speckled egg. None too bright, in my estimation, his rise to the captaincy based more on politics than merit. We were civil with each other, but there was no love lost between us. Like Mayor Delahunt, he thought he should have been promoted to chief instead of the city council’s hiring an outsider with twenty years’ less experience.
Patrol officers Chang and Gonsolves had spotted the Camry on South Street, a side street in the industrial area between the river and the railroad yards. The doors were all locked; they’d opened the driver’s door with a widow bar to get a closer look at the interior and to trip the trunk release. Their cursory examination revealed nothing of importance. Seats and floorboards empty, the trunk bare except for a spare tire, a blanket, a first-aid kit. No visible bloodstains or other signs of violence.
While Judkins went to send Joe Bloom down there for a complete evidence check, I contacted Robert Ortiz. He had nothing to report so far, other than Jack Spivey’s apparent alibi for the time of the shooting. He said he’d join Bloom for the inspection of Torrey’s vehicle.
South Street. The location deepened the mystery surrounding last night’s events. Had Torrey gone there to meet someone? Had he then been forced to leave the Camry in that location? Or had the perp later abandoned it there for some reason? If that last was the answer, a spare key had to have been used since Torrey’s key had been on the ring in his coat pocket. All three possibilities indicated abduction, though it was conceivable that Torrey had willingly accompanied his killer. In which case the perp had to have been known to him and an acceptable pretext given for the crosstown ride to Echo Park.
But why the park, miles away from South Street? The industrial area was even more deserted on Friday nights after dark. Why not just shoot Torrey and let his body be discovered right there?
Too damn many questions. And with the motive still in question, and assuming Spivey’s alibi held up, too many potential suspects.
Another possibility had to be considered, too—that Torrey had been killed for a reason unrelated to the criminal assaults, and that the perp had fired those groin shots, then arranged the body as he had, to make it look like a revenge or vigilante killing. Robert and I had discussed that, and he was inclined to dismiss it—given his stubborn certainty that Torrey had committed the rapes—but I was keeping an open mind.
So little to go on at this early stage. The contents of Torrey’s pockets had yielded nothing but the usual items men carry: key ring, inexpensive pocketknife, quarter and two dimes, a wallet containing fourteen dollars, a fairly old photograph of Liane Torrey, and not much else. No cell phone; Torrey had had one, so if it wasn’t in the Camry, then the perp must have taken it away with him. I didn’t expect the autopsy report, when it finally came in, to tell us anything; cause of death was all too obvious. There was a slim chance a forensic examination of the deceased’s clothing would turn up some trace evidence—strands of hair, traceable fibers or powders or soil particles—but I wouldn’t have wanted to bet on it.
Another long shot: a witness or witnesses to whatever had gone down at South Street who would voluntarily come forward. Still, long shots do come in once in a while. I put in a call to the Clarion office, told Ted Lowenstein of the discovery of the Camry, asked him to include that information in his Internet postings. He didn’t have anything for me—no notably inflammatory correspondence from any reader that was worth following up on.
I swiveled around to my computer, pulled up the new file on the homicide. Joe Bloom had uploaded the photos he’d taken at the crime scene; I slow-scanned through them. The close-ups of the victim and the immediate area around him were clear and sharp. The position of the body had raised questions in my mind at the scene and did so again now.
A revenge or vigilante killing inferred a combination of rage and hate, coldly controlled because of the apparent premeditation. The point-blank round to the head was consistent with that, as were the two bullets in the groin. What wasn’t consistent was the crucified position. Why lay Torrey out like that after killing him? It must have been done that way on purpose. Patrolman Malatesta’s theory that Torrey had been shot in the groin first to make him suffer didn’t fit the facts; a man mutilated in such a fashion would have thrashed around in agony, dug the heels of his shoes into the grass, clawed up clumps of it. Bloom’s photos, and the emptiness of the victim’s hands and lack of grass residue under his fingernails, proved none of that had taken place. Execution first, mutilation second.
So why the postmortem arrangement of the body? Robert and I had discussed that at the scene, too, and the only theory that seemed to make any sense was twisted religious symbolism. Kill an allegedly evil man, then stretch him out like the good man who had died for our sins two millennia ago. If that was the answer, then it followed that the perp had strong religious leanings. Which if true made the job of identifying him that much more difficult. It’s only the flagrant zealots who advertise their beliefs.
I clicked through the other crime-scene photos. The only one that showed anything definite was a round indentation in the grass near the corpse’s head, where the perp had knelt to fire the head shot. It seemed fairly large and deep, man-size, but it could have be
en made by a woman. Inconclusive. And useless as evidence unless whatever garment had been worn over the knee could be found unwashed and any soil and grass stains examined—a highly improbable prospect.
COURTNEY REEVES
The first thing Jason did after Lieutenant Ortiz left was to go get a couple of joints from his stash. He offered me one, but I shook my head. I used to like smoking dope with him, but ever since the night I was raped, it doesn’t get me high or mellow anymore, just kind of paranoid.
He lit one and took a long hit off it. “Man, that’s good shit. Pure gold. Sure you don’t want some?”
“I’m sure,” I said. “It’s a good thing you weren’t smoking before Ortiz showed up.”
“Yeah. That Mexican cop’s got it in for me. He’s just looking for an excuse to bust my ass.”
“We shouldn’t have lied to him, Jason.”
“The hell we shouldn’t. What was I supposed to do, tell him I was out buying half a key of Jamaican weed last night?”
“You were gone a long time …”
“So? I told you, Russ was late for our meet and then afterwards we smoked a couple and had a few beers together.” Jason frowned at me through the smoke. “You’re not getting ideas in your head, are you?”
Well, I was. A few. I couldn’t help it. He said he’d been out with Russ, but what if it was Pooch? Pooch was a bad dude. He cooked and sold meth and he’d gotten Jason started on it right after me and him hooked up, not just using but selling, too. Jason had been kind of screwed up when he was on meth, but he’d quit after he got busted for possession and promised me he’d never have anything more to do with the stuff or with Pooch. But I couldn’t help being afraid he was hanging out with that fat weirdo again. I wanted to ask him about it but I was scared to. So I didn’t.
“No,” I said. “It’s just … What if the cop finds out? That we weren’t home together all evening, I mean.”
“How’s he gonna find out if we stick to the story?”
“I don’t know. I’m just worried, that’s all.”
“Well, don’t be. He won’t find out about the dope and he won’t pin what happened to that Torrey dude on me, either. No way.”
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