07-Past Imperfect

by Margaret Maron

  Even the transit cops. They periodically swept a station’s toilets and tracks for drunks and skells, but he always pitched his nests high above the center of the station, near the main turnstiles, and they never noticed him.

  Sleepily, he watched the man position himself at the very edge of the platform. The woman stood close to him, yet they didn’t touch like lovers. Occasionally, the man leaned out over the tracks to stare down the tunnel, his eyes passing over the Canary without registering the recumbent human form.

  The Canary yawned again. Soon, a soft vibration along the length of the iron beam announced the train’s approach. The vibration grew to a rumble.

  He felt the rush of colder air that was pushed through the tunnel ahead of the incoming train.

  Saw the woman turn to watch its arrival.

  Heard the shrill scream of metal against metal as the train began to brake.

  Saw the man give a mighty shove.

  Heard her scream rise above the train’s.

  CHAPTER 10

  The trainman was taking refuge in anger. “That’s it,” he told any cop who would listen. “I swear to God that’s it! They can take this cruddy job and shove it. I’ll clean sewers for a living before I’ll drive one of these Gee-dee trains another Gee-dee foot.”

  He was a skinny little white man and the more he talked, the angrier he became and the more his voice twanged with the accents of Appalachia. “Shoot fire, I’ll haul my whole family back to Pocahontas County, West Virginia and dig coal with my bare hands afore I let ’em do me like this again!”

  The conductor was a plump young black woman, dressed like him in a navy blue uniform and black leather jacket, and she watched him uneasily. “Come on, Hank. Nobody’s trying to get you.”

  “You shut up!” he snarled, drawing himself into a defensive rigidity, his back pressed tightly against the white tiled wall.

  The conductor turned back to the two detectives. “He doesn’t mean it,” she apologized for her coworker. “Not really. It’s just— Well, this is the second time in two years for him and it’s kinda hard on a person.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Pyle,” said Detective Elaine Albee. “But if you’ve been through this before, then you know we have to keep asking you questions till we get it all down.”

  Privately she thought that anger was probably healthier than some reactions she’d seen from people who’d unwittingly precipitated another’s death. Better to get mad than go mad. Twice this had happened to him? God!

  It was the second time for her, too, that she’d been called out to this kind of homicide and she hated to think it was becoming an everyday part of city life.

  At least the body wasn’t cut to ribbons or decapitated like that last one. The victim here had been slammed into the channel between the rails so the wheels hadn’t actually cut her. Small consolation. Albee tried not to picture that other teenage youth in light summer slacks and white shirt, but images kept coming. There was still plenty of this woman’s blood, on the rails, on the ties, soon to be tracked across the platform when the M.E.’s people carried her up to the ambulance that waited amid the cop cars and blue lights clustered around the entrance at street level.

  Transit’s detectives had wound up handling that other one. A quick in-and-outer it’d been. Two guys in a shoving match over a girl. The shover, when they caught up with him, had professed horror at what he’d done, had pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter, and had drawn a two-year suspended sentence.

  This one sounded different.

  The call for help had come at 2:35. Their official shift was long over and sensible officers would have already gone home to bed, but the paperwork had run over and supper had turned into such an animated discussion of basketball that they’d decided they might as well bunk down at the station since they were on turnaround. They were still in the squad room when the call came and because the subway stop was so close to the office, they’d arrived within minutes, even before the transit cops who were now trying to claim jurisdiction.

  The crime scene techs had just finished a job in the garment district, so they’d hopped right up on it, too.

  The station had been cordoned off immediately. (Sometimes it seemed to Albee that half of New York was tied up in yellow ribbons or set off-limits by blue police barriers.) Portable floodlights had been rushed in and the orderly examination and documentation begun. Strobe lights were still going off, though with lessening frequency. The print and television reporters and gotten their pictures and quotes and had now moved on to a messy three-car wreck on the Brooklyn Bridge.

  Elaine Albee loosened the blue wool scarf wound around her neck and glanced at her watch. 3:05 A.M.

  The eight passengers on the train had been questioned by Transit Authority cops, their names and addresses recorded, then those who wished had been vanned to the next stop. At the moment, other trains were being rerouted past this stop, but T.A. expected everything to be back to business as usual before the morning rush hour.

  While Jim Lowry went down on the tracks with the Medical Examiner, Albee took the trainman, Hank Pyle, into one of the empty train cars where it was warmer, for more detailed questioning. A T.A. cop who insisted on his right to sit in on the interview had brought him coffee; and Pyle sat with his thin legs apart, the foam cup cradled in his hands between his legs as he went over the ghastly experience once more.

  According to Pyle, there’d been no warning of anything out of the ordinary while entering the station.

  “Weekends you might have more riders; but during the week, this is usually the deadest part of the night.” He heard what he’d said and gave a sour laugh. “Deadest. Yeah.”

  The coffee steamed up as he unsnapped the lid. “Some stops nobody’ll get on or off so it wasn’t unusual to see just two people. Yeah, I saw ’em good. They were standing a lot closer to the edge than you’d want ’em to, but people do that all the time. Gee-dee jerks,” he added resentfully.

  Pyle lifted the coffee cup to his lips, then lowered it again between his thin legs without drinking.

  “I was braking like always and just before I pulled even with ’em, she just flew off the platform right in front of me. No time to stop. No time to yell— No time to— Never again though! Hear me, Lord! I swear on the body of Christ Jesus who died for our sins I’ve driven my last train. It can sit here and rust to dust for all I care.”

  “The man who pushed her,” Elaine said softly. “Close your eyes and try to see him again for us.”

  Pyle took a deep breath and shut his eyes.

  “How tall is he?” she asked.

  Pyle’s brow furrowed, then he shrugged.

  “Taller than the woman?” Elaine persisted. “Shorter?”

  “Taller. I could see part of his face above her head.”

  “How much of his face?”

  Eyes still closed, Pyle placed his open hand flatly between his mouth and nose. “From about here up.”

  “And he was standing directly behind her?”

  Pyle nodded.

  Elaine wrote it on her notepad: Perp approx. 6” taller than victim.

  “What about his build, Pyle?” asked the transit cop. “Fat? Thin?”

  “’Bout average, I’d say.”

  “And his clothes?” Elaine asked.

  Pyle’s pale blue eyes flew open. “Shoot fire, lady! You think I was noticing his Gee-dee clothes when I was getting ready to smash a woman to applesauce?”

  “You’re the only person who got a good look at the guy,” Elaine said. “You want us to get him, don’t you?”

  “After what he did to me? Doggone right I do!”

  “Then concentrate!” she snapped. “Quit feeling sorry for yourself, and give a thought about what he did to her.”

  Abashed, Pyle screwed his eyes tightly shut in his narrow face and Elaine could see the effort of his struggle to recall. The transit cop started to speak but she chopped him off with a quick hand gesture.

  “Relax,”
she coaxed. “Just take it slow and easy. Look at his head. Is he wearing anything on it? A hat or cap?”

  “Hey, yeah! It’s black. One of those stocking caps like my mama used to knit for me. No tassel though.”

  “Look at his coat,” said Elaine. “Long? Short?”

  “In between,” said Pyle. “Dark. Not black though. Blue maybe? And sort of puffy. Like one of them down jackets. And baggy black pants.”

  “Shoes? Boots?”

  Eyes still closed, he shook his head apologetically. “Sorry, ma’am. I can’t seem to see ’em. But them pants—”

  “Yes?”

  “They musta been warm-up pants, ’cause I seem to see ’em nip in at the ankles.” He hesitated. “Maybe he was wearing black sneakers.”

  A few feet over, on the inner set of tracks, an express train thundered through the station, drowning out Elaine’s next words and vibrating their own train.

  “You’re doing fine,” she repeated when she could be heard again. “Just a few more questions, okay? One more time, try to remember his face. Can you see his eyes?”

  “Sort of,” the trainman said hesitantly. “They’re just eyes and nose and mouth. Nothing special. The cap was pulled down over his ears so I couldn’t see ’em. Or his hair.”

  “Beard? Mustache?”

  “Nope. I sure b’lieve he was clean-shaven, though,” said Pyle. “I b’lieve I’d remember any hair on his face.”

  When it was her turn to be interviewed, the conductor, Oletta Bass, described her impression of someone—”I’m pretty certain it was a man”—running away from the train as they jolted to a rougher than usual stop, but she hadn’t seen the couple on the platform at all. Nor had she even realized that they’d hit someone till Hank Pyle had erupted from his compartment at the front of the train, praying and yelling and kicking the train, the steel I-beams, the tiled walls, anything that stood still.

  “Hank’s a really good motorman and most of the time he’s okay to work with, but I’ve noticed it before,” she confided to Elaine. “Those little white hillbillies can sure lose it when things screw up.”

  One of the passengers had been standing at the door, waiting to exit, and he’d seen a running figure, too. All that had registered were the same nondescript dark clothes—baggy pants, knitted hat, and bulky three-quarters jacket—that the others had described.

  All agreed that the man was white and that he’d sprinted over the turnstile and up the steps like someone reasonably young and in good physical shape.

  None of the three were sure they’d be able to pick him out of a lineup or that they’d give him a second look if they passed him in the street tomorrow.

  They shouldn’t be too pessimistic, Elaine told them, even though she privately shared those doubts. Maybe they’d get lucky. Maybe their description would turn out to fit the victim’s husband or boyfriend. They might feel differently if they were given someone specific to identify.

  They looked at her dubiously, but didn’t argue as she passed them back over to Transit.

  When Elaine joined Jim Lowry and the others, they’d finally found the dead woman’s purse. There’d been nothing in her pockets except a few loose coins, a couple of subway tokens and some soiled tissues. A purse was indicated, but there was no sign of one and they had begun to theorize that her killer had taken it. Then someone thought to shine a light up under the train and there it was. When they’d backed the train off the body, the strap of the black corduroy shoulder bag had been snagged and pulled away from the immediate vicinity.

  At last the victim had a name: Charlotte C. Fischer, age twenty-two. Height, five three. Eyes, hazel. And she carried a police department ID badge.

  “Charlotte Fischer? Lotty?” Horror quickened Elaine Albee’s words. “There’s a Lotty-somebody that works in Records. Civilian. Remember, Jim? Shorter than me, reddish brown hair?”

  “Yeah, vaguely. Works the night tours, right? Cute figure but big schn—” He caught himself, feeling suddenly loutish to mention the dead woman’s nose.

  Her body had already been removed but the two detectives were remembering her bloody, smashed features and Elaine let out a deep breath. “Lotty,” she said and this time it was a statement, not a question.

  The two detectives from Transit looked at each other and the older man gave a sour grin.

  “Okay,” he said. “We won’t fight you over this one since she’s one of your people. Just keep us posted, okay?”

  CHAPTER 11

  The crime scene people had finished. Their floodlights had been unplugged and hauled upstairs to the van, leaving the subway station to its usual dimness. The yellow ribbons were taken down, most of the uniforms had departed, another motorman had arrived to move the train, and people from the Transit Authority were doing what was necessary to eradicate the remaining traces of Lotty Fischer’s violent end. By the beginning of rush hour, only commuters who paid attention to all the details of the story on the morning newscasts would realize that this was the station where a young computer clerk had met her death.

  Jim Lowry came back from the telephone. “We were right,” he told Elaine Albee. “Lotty Fischer left work around two.”

  “Why so late?” Elaine asked as she pulled on gloves and wound her blue scarf tightly around the collar of her heavy coat. “Overtime?”

  “No. They’ve been shorthanded, so she was working six-to-two tours till they could hire more clerks.” He pulled on his own gloves as they passed through the turnstile and headed up to their car. “She was single. Still lived at home. They say her father’s already called twice, really worried about her. They’re going to send someone around to break it to her parents.”

  “Good,” said Albee. The relief she felt was mirrored in Jim Lowry’s face. Telling a victim’s family was one of the hardest things about the job.

  As the two detectives reached the street, a uniformed transit officer handed Albee a sheet of paper.

  The wind tried to rip it from her grasp. “What’s this?”

  “The names and addresses of those eight passengers that were on the train,” he reminded her.

  “Oh, right.” She gave a quick glance at the nameplate pinned to his heavy jacket. “Thanks, Magnetti.”

  The early morning air felt even colder than before and something between a thin sleet and powdery snow had begun. It stung their cheeks and made their eyes tear.

  “Brr!” said Albee, diving for the car.

  Lowry slid in beside her and immediately started the engine to get the heater and defroster going. The windshield had begun to ice over.

  “Backtrack her now?” he asked.

  “Might as well try,” she agreed.

  Driving slowly, they circled each one-way block, finding nothing open along the route Lotty Fischer probably walked till they came to Lundigren’s Twenty-Four Hour Delicatessen.

  They double-parked in front of the lighted entrance. The door was locked, but after looking them over, the beefy middle-aged man inside buzzed them in, a procedure that was becoming more commonplace these days.

  “Help you?” he asked.

  They showed him their badges, explained why they were there, and described Lotty Fischer.

  The clerk’s eyes widened. “I heard the sirens and saw the blue lights down there at the subway, but it never dawned on me that— Red coat, red scarf? Oh jeez, yeah, sure, she was in here. A coupla minutes past two it was.”

  “Alone?” asked Albee.

  “Yeah. She was waiting for the bus. She was in here two or three times a week. Late. Usually right after midnight when there’s more people in and out; you guys changing shift, you know? Last coupla weeks, it’s been later. Bad time of night for a young kid like that, but she said it was just till they hired another girl and she liked working nights. Her mother was sick or something and this way she could be home while her dad worked.”

  He told them how Lotty had dashed from his store at about ten past two. He’d watched from the window as she missed
her bus by inches. “The scuzzbag musta seen her, but he never stopped. You know the way they are. She chased him down the street and then I couldn’t see no more, but I knew the bastard wasn’t going to stop.”

  He scratched his ample belly through a tan button-up sweater and shook his head regretfully. “Ah jeez, it’s too bad. So she tried to take the train and somebody pushed her under? Christ almighty! It’s getting crazy, just crazy. She was such a nice kid, too. Goddamn nuts! Who’d want to do that?”

  “When she ran for the bus,” said Lowry, “did you notice anybody following her?”

  “Nope. A few cars on the street, of course, but nobody on foot.”

  As Lowry and Albee drove the short distance back to headquarters, the snow and sleet thickened and heavy yellow sanitation trucks were beginning to salt the streets.

  In the cubbyhole of an office behind the front desk, Lotty Fischer’s terminal screen was blank. The space was normally shared by three other Police Administrative Aides working in rotation, so it bore no marked individuality. No personal papers or photographs, nothing to get a handle on how she’d lived or why she’d died.

  Personnel on the midnight-to-eight tour were perturbed by a death so close to home. All agreed that Lotty had seemed like a nice and helpful person, but none appeared to know her well enough to suggest why she’d been killed.

  Temporarily at an impasse, Jim and Elaine returned to their own office on the next floor.

  “You think it was someone who knew her?” asked Jim.

  “Don’t you? The motorman said they were standing close together. You don’t stand that near a stranger on an otherwise empty platform, do you?”