Kiss Them Goodbye

by Joseph Eastburn

  “I’m sure it was,” he said flatly.

  She reached over and slapped him. “Don’t you patronize me, you bastard.”

  Fowler was taken completely off guard. He felt the burn on his cheek as Muriel Ballard stood up, burst into tears, and hurried across the visitors room. A few prisoners stared at her blankly, then resumed speaking in low tones. Fowler saw her list to one side as she scuttled on her high heels to a table by the window.

  She hunched at the table, sniffling. He walked up behind her.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Ballard.”

  “He was very tall,” she said, turning around suddenly. “You know, dark and handsome, the whole bit.” She dried her eyes on a handkerchief.

  “What was his name?”

  She thought back for an instant. “I can’t remember now.”

  “Where did you meet him?”

  “I don’t know. At some mixer.” She paused. “Wait, it was ladies’ night. That’s right. A dance or something.”

  “A dance?”

  “At the country club. Well, anyway, the man was to die for. I was head over heels, of course. So when we made love, I persuaded him not to use anything. Can you imagine?” She paused again. “I wanted to get pregnant, I don’t know why.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “He had beautiful, fiery, intense eyes. He looked like F. Scott Fitzgerald with jet-black hair.”

  “This was fifteen years ago?”

  “Yes. And he was so suave, so gallant. But a temper, let me tell you.”

  “What kind of temper?”

  “He’d just get very upset over little things, over nothing.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, for instance . . . we made love for months but I never got pregnant. So silly me, I asked him to go to a doctor. Well, it turned out he was infertile.” A tear started to work its way down her cheek, leaving a trail of mascara.

  “I see.”

  “We were both crushed. Something happened. I really wanted a baby, God knows why. Look what good it’s done for me.” She started to tear up again, the memory pulling at her composure.

  “Can you remember his name?”

  “Elton Avery. Yes, that’s it.”

  “Where did this man go?”

  “I don’t know. We lost touch.” She cried some more.

  “This man . . . was he a good dancer?”

  “Oh. Just . . . sublime.”

  “And you went dancing often?”

  “On ladies’ nights, mostly.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, it was just a tick of his. He said something about how, on those nights, I could lead.”

  “I thought so.” Nick Fowler had been piecing together the information, his thoughts hunting one another. Now he made the connection. “Mrs. Ballard, the man in the revolving door today, could it have been him?”

  She looked at him, horror-struck. She froze as if years were peeling away from her. She looked despondent. “Yes . . . it could have been him.”

  He stood up. “All right, I’d like you to go downstairs immediately and see a sketch artist.”

  “Why?”

  “Why did the man spend years haunting your son? I think he’s the killer.”

  She was now giving him a numbing stare. “I have to think about this.”

  “Don’t think about it. Do it.”

  The metal door at the end of the room scraped open. The guard stood quietly in the doorway. “Fowler? You’re wanted in interrogation.”

  Nick looked over uneasily. “Do you still have that lawyer?”

  “Yes.”

  The guard’s voice boomed. “Fowler? Now.”

  Signaling to the guard. “Just a minute.” He leaned down to Mrs. Ballard. “Does he remember where Cary lives?”

  “I think so.”

  “If he does what I tell you now, it may nullify the evidence a prosecutor will use against your son.”

  She leaned toward him.

  57

  WITH HIS HANDKERCHIEF, Michael Lichtman lifted a pair of blood-soaked high heels off the floor of Cary Ballard’s closet. He studied them for a moment and wondered if Fowler was right about whose shoes they were. When he turned them over, he noticed there was blood smeared on the bottom of the soles. He didn’t understand.

  Lichtman called Mr. Bendleby, the Brookside housemaster, with an anonymous tip that Ms. Coates’s shoes were in young Ballard’s closet, then hung up. Inside of a half hour, the police arrived.

  Fowler had advised Muriel to tell Lichtman that Mr. Bendleby, the Brookside housemaster, should be the person to get his teeth into this. He knew Bendleby would whip the clue into a frenzy around the police’s ears.

  Fowler had suggested that the killer, not knowing that Ballard was in custody, might again plant his latest victim’s clothing in the kid’s room. He was right.

  BILL RODNEY’S WEARY face was staring through the doorway of the interrogation room. He kept looking at his feet as blue shirts bustled by in the hallway behind him. “They’re obsessed with you, Fowler.”

  “They think they have a case against me?”

  “They do.”

  “Give me a break.”

  “They’re gunning for you. You always have to ruffle their feathers, don’t you?”

  “Call Dr. Koenig, see if he’s doing the autopsy.”

  “All right.”

  “And do me a favor? Tell Maureen I’m here, would you?”

  “Sure. There’re a few assholes still down in computers,” he said.

  “Can you get into the NCIC?” Fowler asked quietly.

  Rodney held up an operating manual entitled National Crime Information Center. “What are friends for, huh?” He paged through the manual. “It says . . . ‘the files in the data base are divided into known active and inactive and usually containing, if available, the suspect’s description, MO, and a summary of the criminal record.’”

  “Let me give you the name.”

  “Okay, I’ll put in a few keystrokes, see what I come up with. What is it?”

  Fowler looked down at the book. “Elton Avery.”

  Rodney wrote it down as Sergeant Cole’s voice echoed down the hall.

  CARY BALLARD WAS on the campus of the juvenile detention center, sitting in the Great Hall—a gigantic room with murals from the thirties painted on the walls: faded scenes of men with bulging muscles hoisting girders, erecting buildings; planes flying overhead; trains smoking through a landscape bleached white from the sun.

  Today the sun was bright and lit a large square on the table where the boys were eating. The light cut across Cary’s table setting. The noise was deafening. There were over six hundred boys in the gigantic room. It was lunch. Cary was feeling the old nausea. Several of the boys at the table, particularly Albert, a Spanish kid from the city, didn’t like that Cary kept to himself and always looked troubled. As Albert was serving the food, he anointed Cary with a new nickname. He avoided the pink strips of corn beef, just plopped a boiled potato in a pool of water on his plate.

  “Pass this down to Shitface,” he said casually.

  The plate was passed, each minuscule face wary, a few taken off guard, laughing out loud, all staring down at the plate as it traded hands. The broken boiled potato on Cary’s plate was steaming up at him when he got it.

  “Hey, Shitty, is this a beautiful meal, or what? Talk to me.”

  A bunch of boys at the table tittered, others just ate the corn beef and cabbage with disgusted faces.

  Cary couldn’t even imagine eating the watery potato. He looked out the window, calculating how many more days there would have to be to his life.

  “Oh, Mr. Shitface, yoo-hoo? What—you’re too good for us, too white for us, maybe? You don’t want to associate with us?”

  Cary looked blankly up the long aisle of faces at Albert. “Beg your pardon?”

  Albert put down his fork, his mouth still full of food. “I’ll beg your fucking pardon, Shitbrain. You got a proble
m?”

  “Yeah I do,” Cary said.

  Albert wasn’t expecting an answer. He looked up, finishing his mouthful. “Say what?”

  “Yeah, I got a problem.” The expression on Cary’s face had gotten increasingly embittered. “You didn’t put any meat or cabbage on my plate, numb nuts.”

  A roar went up from the chairs. “Ohhhhhhhhh!” Most of the faces at the table were now suddenly alive, staring from one corner to another. No one said that to Albert.

  The Spaniard calmly put down his napkin. “What did you call me?”

  “I called you ‘sir.’”

  The table exploded with laughter.

  Albert’s face was drawn now, his chin down, his honor maligned. He stood up slowly. “Didn’t get any meat, huh, Shithook?” He took a pair of brass knuckles out of his back pocket, slipped them on his right hand. “Guess we’ll have to serve up some of your face!” He strode down along the table. Cary put his hands up over his head. The brass went up in the air.

  A beefy hand grabbed Albert’s face, wrenched him around backward. The boy’s right arm was twisted up behind his back. Albert cried out in pain. One of the administrative guards had put the boy in a half nelson after he stood watching the exchange. He’d been asked to come get Cary. “Drop the knucks, son, or I’ll have to break your arm.”

  Albert was silent, staring with fury at Cary, but dropped the brass knuckles. They clanked on the floor. The man pushed Albert into another guard who already had his stick out and, with a mean smile on his face, jabbed the boy along the aisle, out of the lunchroom and down a corridor.

  The administrative guard leaned down beside Cary. “Come with me,” he said, and led the boy away, the faces at the table following them. They left the room, walking fast down a hallway.

  “Where are we going?”

  The big man was stony, walking briskly. Cary had a good view of his nostrils. “Your lucky day, son. Some magistrate upstate rescinded your detention. Paperwork will take about an hour.”

  58

  DR. KOENIG SLIPPED off his lab coat. He methodically brushed the jacket of his best gray suit. He walked out into the lobby of the funeral home to greet the two policemen.

  “Captain Weathers?”

  The thickset man shook hands, introducing Sergeant Robby Cole. They followed the doctor back down the hall into his office. They both stood sullenly as the doctor pulled on his lab coat and surgical gloves. Weathers’s complexion was flushed, his face stern.

  Koenig slowly uncovered the body, drawing the sheet down to the chest. Dr. Clarence looked different without his glasses.

  Weathers shuffled his feet. “Uh, Doctor Koenig, we have an authorization signed by a magistrate . . . the county prosecutor ready to move on this case . . .” There was a lapse in his speech as he gazed at the doctor. “We need you to corroborate the confession given by the suspect in custody.”

  “May I read the statement?”

  Weathers’s tone was conciliatory. “We don’t have it here at present. The suspect has admitted to the killing and did sign the confession—that’s all you need know.”

  “You’re speaking of Lieutenant Fowler?”

  “He’s no longer a lieutenant, Doctor. He was stripped of his rank when I fired him for withholding evidence.”

  “Yes.”

  “There was considerable malice between him and Dr. Clarence, apparently. They had arguments in public. There are witnesses to this.”

  “What time did Mr. Fowler supposedly kill Dr. Clarence?”

  “He was taken into custody at four-thirty A.M.; we estimate the murder took place between three and four.”

  Dr. Koenig shrugged. “Well, the body speaks for itself.”

  “What?” Weathers was glaring.

  “Let me give you my findings . . . then we can talk.”

  The two policeman gave wary nods.

  The doctor cleared his throat, bending over the body. “There are methods for calculating rigor mortis, first of all.” He pulled on the arms to demonstrate. “Weighing also the quantity of potassium in the ocular fluid and the state of the digestion, I would place the time of death somewhere between eleven P.M. and two A.M.”

  Robby Cole was twitching. “That’s impossible.”

  Koenig glanced at him. He lifted the eyelids on the body. “Petechial hemorrhages are present beneath the conjunctivae.” He poked the mouth open. “A trace of blood and mucus present, due to extravasation from membranes of the nasopharynx. Vomitus is present. He was strangled.”

  There was a hush in the room.

  Weathers pointed his finger down at the face and chest. “There’re six gunshot wounds, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Captain, there was little or no blood loss. Wounds of this nature would have resulted in enormous bloodletting, but there wasn’t much loss because the fluids had already begun to congeal over several hours. No, there’s no way I can justify this. I’m sorry.”

  Cole stepped forward, lifted up the corner of the sheet, tossed it back over the face. “Well, Doctor, it’s like this . . .” He strode over very close to him. “Either you find a way to justify it . . . or we’ll do it for you.”

  Koenig’s fastidious voice hardly changed inflection. “You’d better make sure that when you finish with me, Sergeant, that I’m no more alive than the doctor on this table, otherwise I’ll bring this whole conversation down around your ears.”

  Cole took the doctor by the arm. “Not if you’re being fed by a tube.”

  Dr. Koenig went pale. He lifted his chin. “I’ve already released my findings to a third party, who is ready to publish them. You’re too late.”

  Cole shot a look at Weathers, who had already dropped his eyes and was shaking his head.

  THE BOOKING SERGEANT slid an envelope down off the shelf. He unclasped it and handed Nick Fowler his possessions, which included a computer search from Bill Rodney. He glanced up at Nick’s face, gave a low whistle. One eye was black-and-blue, the left side of the face was swollen, there were cuts and bruises. He watched Fowler grimace in pain as he strapped on his gun and shoved a wallet into his pocket. Nick looked at the man. “Mrs. Ballard still down with the sketch artist?”

  The man shook his head slowly. “I heard something about she burst into tears and had to go home. They’re going to try again tomorrow.”

  Nick was reading the computer report. “That’ll be too late.”

  It was still light out when Fowler stepped outside the police station. He thought about the poem for Ms. Coates.

  When he had climbed the last flight of stairs to the roof of Ardsley, he found himself running to the west wall. He saw the impression his foot had made weeks ago in the tar.

  He walked the roof, exploring every chasm, every corner. He didn’t know what he was looking for, and but for the fact he was having that feeling again, he would have stopped. The same dark, heavy vibe, the cold wash through his bones.

  With the strap off his gun holster, he climbed up the slate dormers, thinking there might be a way into a hidden room in the abandoned attic. The enormous attic was used as a storage area. He had already explored it.

  He stared up at the giant water tower and remembered he had read how the installation of a new sprinkling system had rendered the tower obsolete. It was just a massive round wooden bowl with a rounded shingled roof pirouetted into the sky.

  He walked around it. It sat on a steel platform. Wire cables that were strung at sharp angles to stone partitions held the structure in place. No ladder, but a set of rungs up the outside. He climbed up slowly. They ended. Strange. The roof must have been new. He noticed the shingles were recent. Very strange. He climbed down.

  Fowler crawled underneath, with his flashlight, and found what he had suspected. A trapdoor had been cut into the floor of the tower. It was locked with a heavy-gauge padlock and bolt.

  Fifteen minutes later, after a trip to maintenance, he climbed up the stairs with a giant pair of snips. He had to hold one arm against his ches
t and with all his might pull the other end toward him. He finally cut the lock.

  He slid the bolt and climbed up inside. The flashlight revealed the killer’s lair. The walls were covered with exotica from all the victims. Fowler saw the name tags ripped out of Crawford’s underwear; they were taped over his picture that had been cut out of the yearbook. His letter jacket, family pictures, clothing, all were displayed.

  Nick saw Finkelstein’s name tags, his picture, blotches of hair ripped from his scalp, a pennant collection, photographs of the boy with his grandparents, articles of clothing—all arranged on another clammy wall.

  Then he saw Gluckner’s yearbook picture, his letter sweater. An autographed five-by-seven in a football uniform, no helmet, a straight-arm to an imaginary tackler, flashing a grin. A stick of deodorant was taped down below a lump of flesh on a hook that Fowler realized was the dead boy’s belly button.

  He moved his flashlight along the wall. There he found the rest of the hunted. On an empty section of wall, he found a small bottle of Shalimar, a yearbook picture of Ms. Coates, a dried rose hanging upside down. Her lipstick. Her brassiere.

  He saw Dr. Clarence’s faculty picture from the yearbook. The light revealed a dog-eared paperback of Freud’s Theory of Psychoanalysis, pictures of the doctor smiling while on staff at Creedmore Hospital, one of his laundry tags, and something Fowler didn’t understand—a dress, a wig of curls, and a pair of high heels.

  He flashed his light on the opposite wall on his way down. His heart started pounding. On the dank wall was a photograph of himself that had been taken years before. He anxiously grabbed for his back pocket, shone the flashlight in his wallet, and saw that the photograph was missing. He looked up and saw all the news articles written about him, his name in newsprint cut out, taped up, a laundry tag he had never missed cut from one of his own shirts. That sent a shiver through him. A headline cut from magazines spelling out “preoccupied with DEATH.”

  Nick backed down out of the tower, closed the trap, slid the bolt into place. He had to decide quick: a full police force stakeout, evidence teams in to fingerprint everything, get hairs to the lab—NOT AFTER WHAT THEY DID. He would wait for the son of a bitch tonight himself. He had a few things to take care of first.