Exceptional Clearance

by William Caunitz

  “You guys got anything on a cave-in on East Fifty-seventh?”

  “News to me, pal.”

  Pollack pressed down the plastic button and dialed the operations desk at Detective Borough Command Manhattan South, and said to the sergeant who answered, “How ya doin’, Sarge? This is David Pollack from the Post. It’s quiet tonight and I’m scratching around for a story. You guys in the South got any newsworthy capers going down?”

  “It’s as quiet as a whore saying her rosary. Only thing we got is a felonious assault in the Two-four. Some guy slipped into his Jekyll-Hyde mode and sent his wife to the hospital with multiple skull fractures. Word is she might be going out of the picture.”

  “What’s the time of occurrence?”

  “About oh-two-hundred. You interested in the gory details?”

  “Naw,” Pollack said, playing with the typewriter’s platen knob, “I’m looking for something more glitzy. Thanks anyway, Sarge.” He disconnected and dialed the Crime Scene Unit’s dispatcher. “This is Pellegrino in the Two-four Squad,” he lied in his best thoroughly annoyed tone. “I called over two hours ago, and I’m still on the scene waiting for one of your units to respond. I got a fe-lo-ney baloney where the victim’s going to buy the farm, and I need your lab boys to go over the scene.”

  “Lemme check the run sheet. What time did you phone in the job?”

  “About oh-two-ten.”

  “That job was logged out to unit six. They shudda been there hours ago.”

  “Well, they ain’t. What’s going on with you guys tonight, you got a party going?”

  “We’re behind on our jobs because of that Sutton Place homicide. Sam Staypress is on the scene, and he’s got his tight pants on. He’s flying in detectives from all over the North and South.”

  “I know. We sent two of our night watch. Who got killed, anyway?”

  The serology detective wore a down coat and had a long, multicolored scarf coiled around her neck. Her jeans were tucked into fur-lined boots. She and Vinda were kneeling, examining bloodstains. “What can you tell me?”

  “I can tell you that you’re lucky they shoveled the park, because if they hadn’t, you would have no bloodstains.” She shivered and pulled the knitted cap down over her ears. “Blood has different appearances depending on the height from which it falls. A short distance, round drops. The greater the height, the more jagged the edges, and when you get beyond six feet, the drops break up and sprinkle into many small drops.”

  They stood. “But what I just got done telling you only holds true if the bleeder is stationary. When he’s in motion and the first part of the drop hits the ground, the remaining portion is still moving in a horizontal direction and splatters over the first part, forming a drop that resembles an exclamation point with the tail and dot pointing in the direction the bleeder was moving. The faster he’s moving, the longer and narrower the exclamation point.”

  They followed the blood trail. It led to a crimson pool surrounding the body. Vinda looked at the detective, noticed her wispy curls sticking out from under her cap, and asked, “What does it all add up to?”

  “As I read the signs, Lou, the victim comes into the park and stops about here.” She pointed. “The perp is hiding there. He snatches her here, and sweeps her up off her feet, whirling her toward the bushes. While they’re in motion, he punctures her throat with something. Notice these exclamation drops.” She pointed. “The dots are pointing at the bushes, and that long, thick blood trail leading up to the body is from an artery.”

  “Let’s try an experiment,” he said. Using both his hands, he swooped her up off her feet. “He grabbed her, and is hustling her into the bushes when he does his number on her throat.” He thrust the detective into the bushes and stopped. “You’re not struggling, but we have to assume she did. The doer had to use both his hands to carry and control her. So, with his arms full, how did he employ the murder weapon?”

  “Maybe he held it in his mouth,” she said.

  “Maybe.” He noticed the imposing hulk of Dr. Marcal standing on the steps watching him. He set the detective down and called to the doctor, “A little experiment.”

  “So I see,” the ME said, moving down the steps, surprisingly light on her feet.

  The detective picked up her kit and left.

  Vinda watched the ME examining the wound. “Could a man do that with his teeth?”

  “No way. The human mouth isn’t constructed for predation. The human grip isn’t powerful enough, and the incisors and canines aren’t long enough or strong enough to make a wound like this.” She removed a penlight from her medical bag and directed the beam into the wound. “It’s similar to the others, and appears to have been made by some sort of cleaving device. See how the skin has been shredded.” She moved her fingers to the right and a little below the wound, felt the two indentations looked up at him, and said, “Same marks, in the same place.”

  “I know. Any sign of rape?”

  She opened the victim’s mouth and directed the beam inside. “No sign of semen or pubic hair.” She felt the breasts. “Her bra is intact.” She lifted the dead woman’s skirt and passed the beam over her. “Underclothes are intact. A superficial exam doesn’t indicate sexual molestation. But I’ll have to wait until I get her on the table and do some lab tests to be sure.”

  Vinda sighed. “At least it doesn’t appear that our doer is into sex—or if he is, it’s one of the perverted kinds. I’ve encountered plenty of that over the years.”

  The doctor got up and walked out into the pathway. She moved over to the railing and looked out over the river. A Blue Circle cement barge was being pushed upriver by a tug. Across the river in Queens, the sun’s first rays glowed on the distant horizon, giving the blue-green pyramid of Citicorp Center a golden aureole. Vinda came over and stood beside her, his eyes fixed on the collapsed roof and crumbling façade of the abandoned Civil War–era hospital on Welfare Island. “Hell of a way to make a living,” he said.

  “I guess it could be sexual,” she said, almost to herself. “Some sick minds associate blood with sexual arousal. The object of some sexual murders is shedding blood, not to cause death. Cases like that almost always produce wounds to the neck.”

  Vinda stared down into the water. A frightening question formed in his mind. “How many more before we stop this guy?”

  SIX

  The squall blew across the colombian basin, churning up whitecaps and then disappearing into the west, leaving in its wake a boundless vista of cobalt-blue water.

  The Adelaide, a 150-foot yacht powered by twin GM .16 V-140 diesels, sliced through the sea, its tethered Bell Jet Ranger helicopter casting a shimmering outline upon the water.

  Belowdecks in the fantail area, Malcolm Webster stretched his big frame over a brown calfskin-covered lounging chair and talked into the telephone: “There is to be no Thirteen-D filed with the SEC. If I wanted to show my hand, I would have told you.” He placed his hand over the mouthpiece and said to a crewman standing nearby, “Bring me a bottle of Badoit.”

  The young sailor went to the bar and returned with a bottle of mineral water, which he put on the low mahogany table next to Webster. Then he filled a glass with ice. Webster nodded his thanks.

  “Never mind telling me that, I know the rules too,” he said, sipping at the glass. “And just in case you’ve forgotten, it was me who dreamed this one up, not your corporate finance department.”

  Webster twirled his glass as he listened in exasperation to the voice from Wall Street. “Harry. Don’t try to con me about legitimizing the deal by raising your corporate finance fee. You know the people to call. Tell them if they don’t play on this one, I won’t be there when it’s my turn to make their deals go.” He sipped his drink. Tinkling ice, he looked across the saloon at the crewman and said into the phone, “We should earn ourselves sixty million, less interest, on this one.”

  He stretched his neck to get a better look at the woman who was walking up the grand
staircase that led up to the sundeck lounge above. Great ass, he thought, suddenly irritated by the voice from New York. “Screw the unfunded pension liability in the unprofitable subs. Once we’ve taken it private and gotten rid of management, we’ll shove them into receivership. Let the unions collect from the trustee. Call me when you have the list together.” He hung up, and took another sip from his glass. He picked up a pair of binoculars from the table, adjusted the focus, and scanned the rolling, verdant hills of Barranquilla, off in the distance. Then he put down the glasses and left the saloon for the deck above.

  Malcolm Webster was a lean, bony man with a still-youthful though somewhat acne-scarred face and abundant energy that belied his sixty-two years. Dressed only in white shorts and Topsiders, he had that rich, glowing tan that only a lot of money could buy. As a dirt-poor kid working in the Texas oilfields in the forties, he’d sworn he would be rich one day. He’d made his first million when he was thirty-five and never stopped to count the rest. He owned vast amounts of real estate, shopping centers, and oilfields, and had one of the world’s largest collections of primitive art. During his lifetime, Webster had collected three ex-wives, a dozen or so mistresses, including two movie stars, and several champion horses, but the only thing that really mattered to him was his only child, Adelaide.

  Webster reached the sundeck in time to see the woman peeling out of her bikini bottom. “Having a good time?” he asked, gliding his hand over her soft skin.

  “I love it when you touch me, Malcolm.” He slid his hand over her voluptuous body and between her legs. She moaned softly.

  “Let’s go below.”

  The master suite was done in rosewood and marble. Webster threw himself across the bed. The woman fell over him, pulling down his shorts and kissing him, screwing her tongue deep into his mouth. The bedside phone rang. “Damn,” he said, reaching out and bringing the instrument down to his ear. “Yes,” he snapped. Seconds later he shoved the woman off him and shot upright.

  “What?” he screamed into the mouthpiece. His lips went tight as his jaw muscles began to twitch. The color drained from his face, leaving behind a twisted mask of grief and rage. He tore the receiver away from the phone on the wall and threw it across the stateroom. His companion, who had been pushed off the bed, was on all fours on the thickly carpeted deck of the huge cabin. In terror, she crawled away from the man on the bed; her lover had suddenly been transformed into a wounded and dangerous animal.

  SEVEN

  The sun rose, slowly casting pockets of fleeting warmth over the Sutton Place crime scene.

  Residents had begun leaving their apartments for work around 6:00 A.M., only to be questioned inside their lobbies by teams of waiting detectives; other teams were still busy making their way down from top floors, knocking on doors, rousting some people from sleep, asking the same question over and over: Had they seen or heard anything?

  Outside, an Emergency Service Division loudspeaker van drove through the area, blaring out an appeal for witnesses to come forward.

  Inside the blue police department temporary headquarters van, courier detectives brought hastily filled-out Fives from the teams working the apartments, tossed them into baskets, and left. Clerical cops would type up the Supplementary Complaint Reports from the handwritten ones. Later in the tour the issuing detectives would come into the van to read and sign their canvass reports.

  On East Fifty-third Street, outside the entrance of the Mid-town Garage, a flag with the word POLICE emblazoned across a field of green fluttered in the wind. The flagpole was secured inside a cement-filled Civil Defense water can.

  It had been a little after 4:00 A.M. when the first television crew rolled onto the scene. More media quickly followed.

  John Vinda, though secretly dismayed that the press had caught on so soon, immediately ordered a restricted zone established around the Sutton Place area from Fifty-third Street to Fifty-fifth Street, blocking all access to Sutton Place from First Avenue. To placate the media, he directed that the garage be commandeered and used as a press center. The parking garage’s sloping driveway led under a twenty-story co-op; expensive automobiles were crammed together over a vast field of battleship-gray paint. Sergeant Bill Brady, Public Information Section, stood on the down ramp, briefing about forty men and women from the television stations and the newspapers. “Hold it! Hold it! One at a time!” he shouted, brushing aside the sea of black-sheathed microphones thrust in his face, acutely aware of the gasoline fumes that tinged the air.

  “Who found her?”

  “What was the cause of death?”

  Brady gritted his teeth and once again went over the few facts about the murder. He tried to avoid giving away the grimmest details.

  “What was her name, Sarge?” a woman demanded.

  “C’mon, you know no names until next of kin is notified,” Brady replied.

  David Pollack had been leaning against the brick wall, listening to the sergeant trying to cope with too few answers for too many questions. He stepped out into the street and walked west, hurrying to First Avenue, where he turned north and walked to Fifty-sixth Street. Turning east, he saw the line of barriers strung across the southern terminus of the street, effectively blocking pedestrian and vehicular traffic from Sutton Place. Keeping close to the building to avoid the full force of the wind, he made his way to the corner, heard the police plea for witnesses coming from the sound truck, and thought about how rarely he had seen such a police turnout in all his years on the beat.

  Several police officers stood behind the sawhorses. Approaching the barrier, Pollack saw teams of detectives gathered in the roadway comparing notes.

  “You can’t pass unless you live on the block,” one of the cops shouted to him.

  This guy looks like a junior high school hallway monitor, Pollack thought, putting on his wide-eyed get-’em-off-guard look and asking, “What’s going on, Officer?”

  Mustering as much authority as his baby face allowed, the policeman barked, “A homicide.”

  “Really?” exclaimed Pollack, leaning into the sawhorse. “Anyone famous?” he asked, as his eyes came to rest on a cluster of detectives huddled at the north entrance of Sutton Place Park.

  “Some rich lady got her throat slashed,” said the policeman.

  “How awful,” Pollack said, looking past the cop at the solitary figure of John Vinda.

  “So far we’ve come up with four witnesses who all basically tell the same story,” Marsella said, consulting his steno pad. “They all live in apartments that face the river, they were all looking out their windows at the time of occurrence, they all claim to have seen a white male of medium height, wearing jeans and a hooded mackinaw, with a red knapsack strapped to his back, walk out of the park and hurry north on Sutton. One of the women said she didn’t get a look at his face, but was sure that she saw him stuffing a towel into the knapsack.”

  Looking across the river at the old hospital, Vinda asked, “None of them got a good look at his face?”

  Moose, hitching his trousers up and thoughtfully scratching his crotch, nodded. “Affirmative. His hood was up, concealing his face from the sides.”

  Vinda asked, “Did they all see the towel?”

  “Affirmative,” Moose said dryly.

  Vinda had started to ask another question when Sergeant Bowden rushed up to announce, “We’ve located another witness.”

  Mrs. Gail Phillips, female, white, middle forties, sat in the living room of her tastefully decorated third-floor duplex, nervously playing with the belt of her silk kimono.

  Walking into the room, Vinda was immediately aware of her nervousness and whispered to Bowden, “Ten-eighty-five a female officer.” Going over to the witness, Vinda gestured the two Manhattan South detectives away, and said to her, “You have a lovely apartment.”

  She looked up at the Whip and smiled. “Thank you.”

  “May I sit down?” Vinda asked, aware of Bowden’s soft voice speaking into the walkie-talkie. Smili
ng at the witness, he remembered a cardinal rule taught in detective training courses: Never, if possible, question a female without the presence of a female member of the force. “How long have you lived here?”

  “Twenty years,” she said, looking at the other detectives. Vinda decided to stall for time until the female MOF arrived, so he talked about the last snowstorm and how cold it had been lately. A few minutes went by, and a uniformed female police officer slipped into the apartment. The newcomer smiled at the witness. Obviously relieved at the presence of another woman, the witness smiled back.

  “Do you mind answering a few questions?” Vinda asked her.

  The witness looked across the room at the other woman and said, “I’d be happy to.”

  “Please tell us what you saw,” Vinda asked, pulling out an RN 89 miniature tape recorder and setting it down on his lap.

  “As I told the other detectives,” she began, “my husband is away on business, and whenever he’s gone, I have trouble sleeping.” She went on to tell them how, unable to fall asleep, she had gotten up and gone over to the bedroom window to watch the river’s soothing flow. “I saw this man come out of the park, wiping his face with what looked like a bath towel. Then he reached behind and stuffed it into one of those red nylon knapsacks all the young people seem to be wearing.”

  “Did he appear to be cleaning his face?”

  “Yes, come to think of it, he did.”

  “What color was the towel?”

  “I really can’t be sure. I think it was white, but it looked dirty.”

  “You said he stuffed it into his knapsack. When he did this, were you able to get a look at his face?”

  “No. He turned his face to his right, so I could not see it.”