Cover-up (3 page)

“What about the stun gun?” Dan asked.

“That might be easier to bring back to an individual purchaser than a knife. A lotta guys hunt, but not too many electric-shock people,” Butch said wryly.

Somebody called to Butch from above.

“Oh, the footprint casts are set. I gotta go pull ’em up. But you two relax. Stay as long as you want,” Butch said, like he was inviting them to sit by the fire.

Dan turned to Melanie, who stood solemn and silent, her eyes glued to Suzanne Shepard’s blood-drenched legs protruding from the leaves. They reminded her of the Wicked Witch’s legs sticking out from under the house in
The Wizard of Oz,
a sight that had never failed to make her tremble with fear as a child.

“I’m sorry,” Dan said. “This one was worse than I expected. You must hate me for bringing you here.”

It took her a second to pull her eyes away and meet his gaze. “I hate the killer, not you. Anybody who could do this to another person isn’t fit to be called human. I bet it’s some jerk who’s done this to other women, too.”

“That’s why I like what I do for a living,” he said meaningfully. “We make a difference. We can get him off the streets. You can.”

“You’re right,” Melanie said, sighing deeply. “I’m in.”

3

M
elanie had a special talent
for investigating the ugliest crimes—homicides, home invasions, narcotics, gunrunning—that stood in marked contrast to her good diction and fancy education. Indeed, people who met her often thought she seemed too nice or too polite or too feminine to succeed at such a brutal job. But growing up on the block had left her with special insight into how the criminal mind worked and a high tolerance for an environment that sometimes felt like the Wild, Wild West. For months now, she’d been coasting, handling a series of stultifyingly dull bank-fraud cases. The cases rarely went to trial, so she could count on a predictable schedule. They required her to wade through piles of sleep-inducing documents, but she could do that at night in the comfort of her apartment, wearing old sweatpants, after Maya went down to sleep. Doing those cases, Melanie hadn’t been within spitting distance of anything violent or gruesome in a long time, and being out here tonight was making her realize that she’d missed the rough stuff more than she’d imagined. She’d been bored out of her mind and hadn’t even known it.

When Dan went off in search of his NYPD counterpart, Detec
tive Julian Hay, Melanie stayed behind in the ravine. She wasn’t alone. A junior crime-scene detective was stationed nearby, guarding the site so there could be no allegations later that unauthorized personnel had gotten access to the body. His reassuring presence gave Melanie the freedom she needed to stand and look, to think and analyze, to try to figure out what the forensic evidence said about this murder. It took her less than five minutes to come to some important conclusions. A couple of questions leaped out at her regarding the position of Suzanne Shepard’s corpse, questions she needed to pursue further by speaking to the deputy ME who’d examined the body.

Melanie found Grace Deng and an orderly on the paved path above the ravine, readying a stretcher and body bag to transport the corpse to their refrigerated van, and introduced herself. Grace had sharp features and a dramatic, angular haircut. They traded pleasantries about cases they’d worked with each other’s office and took a moment to exclaim over the brutal and disgusting nature of the crime. Then Melanie cut to the chase.

“I understand you conducted a thorough examination of the body,” she said. “A couple of things are bothering me about how and where she was found, but to figure out if I’m right, I need a time-of-death estimate.”

“I can give you one, but you understand it’s just an estimate, right? I base TOD on average rates of rigor mortis and decomposition applied to this corpse. It’s an educated guess at best.”

“Understood,” Melanie said.

“Okay, I got here shortly after nine-thirty, which put me at the scene about twenty minutes after the police arrived. At that point, the body was still warm and rigor was not established. The neck and jaw had slightly reduced range of motion, which suggested rigor was beginning to progress. But her limbs as well as her fingers and toes were still mobile.”

“Mobile, meaning…?”

“I could wiggle them. She hadn’t been dead for long. One to two hours, max.”

“And this was at nine-thirty?”

“Yes.”

“So that would put the time of death no earlier than seven-thirty.”

“Don’t hold me to it, but yes, that’s my hypothesis.”

“Thanks, you’ve been really helpful.” They exchanged business cards, and Grace promised to notify Melanie when the autopsy was completed.

Melanie sat down on a nearby bench to make notes about time of death and the weather.

At seven-thirty, the earliest moment at which Suzanne Shepard could have been attacked, Melanie had been doing her makeup and laying out her clothes for her date when rain suddenly spattered against her bedroom window. Melanie knew Dan would be coming up the FDR, which flooded in heavy rain, and she wondered whether he’d hit traffic. It was unusually dark outside for that hour in June, dark enough that she couldn’t see out because of the reflected light, so she walked over and leaned against the glass in order to see the street. It was pouring.

What did that tell her? Suzanne Shepard had ventured into the wilds of the Ramble on a dark, rainy night. The Ramble might be situated smack in the middle of Manhattan Island with its two million inhabitants, but it felt like wilderness. Any sane woman would have required a damn good reason to be there. Figuring out what had called Suzanne to that location was a top investigative priority.

But Melanie had spotted an even bigger red flag: the body wasn’t visible from the path above. Suzanne Shepard had been thrown into the ravine and covered by the underbrush. At seven-thirty and later, given how dark and rainy it was outside Melanie’s eighth-floor window, it had to’ve been pitch-black down in the ravine. Butch Brennan
ad told her that the body was discovered by a male citizen who’d called 911. The caller had refused to give his name or stick around till the police arrived. How did he know the body was down there, lying under the dark leaves?

Melanie spotted Dan O’Reilly over near the police barricades where they’d first come in. He was deep in conversation with a tall, handsome African-American guy who wore his hair in long braids.

“Hey, Melanie, meet Detective Julian Hay, my counterpart from Manhattan North Homicide,” Dan said as she approached.

Melanie and Julian shook hands.

“My boy Dan here was just telling me about you,” Julian said with a sparkly smile. He wore fake gold teeth of the type that street drug dealers called “fronts.”

“You guys know each other?” Melanie asked.

“Yeah, we worked cases together before, but I didn’t realize it was him till I saw his face because I never knew his real name,” Dan said. “This guy is one of the great all-time narcotics undercovers.”

“You embarrass me, brother.”

“It’s the gospel truth. They used to call him Suave Pierre. He does a dead-on West Indian accent. UC’d all the big Jamaican posse investigations in the nineties and cheated the Grim Reaper like a mother-fuck.”

“That’s in the past for me now,” Julian said. “I’ve retired from the front lines. Working normal cases like the resta you mutts.”

“Don’t knock it, it’s a living,” Dan said, grinning. “But why’d you retire, man? You were a legend.”

Julian held up his left hand and waved it at them. His ring finger sported a thick gold band. “The ball and chain insisted. My odds of walking back through the door at the end of each tour have now improved slightly.”

“Only slightly, I hope,” Dan said.

“Hell, yeah! I ain’t no desk jockey. I’m dying with my boots on.”

“Amen to that,” Dan said. “You miss it?”

“Like crazy. I still do an occasional hand-to-hand just to keep my wits sharp. Plus that way, they let me keep the hair.”

“Look, I hate to break up old-home night,” Melanie said, smiling, “but I had a thought.”

“What’d I tell ya?” Dan said to Julian.

“Always thinking,” Julian said, tapping his temple. “We like that in a prosecutor.”

“So here’s my brilliant insight,” she said. “We need to pull the 911 tape right away. Based on what the deputy ME told me about TOD, and what the weather and light conditions were at that time, I’m guessing our 911 caller witnessed the crime. Either that or he’s actually the killer. No other way could he have known there was a body down there in the ditch.”

Dan and Julian both stopped smiling. Julian shook his head until his braids swayed, making a soft clicking sound. Then he withdrew a slim silver tape recorder from the pocket of his black leather coat.

“I definitely see what you was saying about this girl, brother. From the get-go, she’s on the money.”

4

D
etective Julian Hay held up
the recording device and pushed a button. An ugly crackle of sound emerged, and he adjusted the volume. The call had obviously been placed using a cell phone. All three of them leaned in toward the tape recorder to make out the words through the cacophony of bad sound quality.

“Nine-one-one Dispatch. What is your emergency?” a woman barked.

More static, and what sounded like ragged breathing.

“What is your emergency, please?”

“I’m in Central Park. Something terrible happened.” The man spoke through panting breaths. He sounded as if he’d been running like hell and was now about to burst into tears.

“Sir?” the dispatcher prompted after a moment.

“I heard a woman screaming. She was being attacked. I think she’s dead. Jesus, she must be dead.”

“A woman was attacked?”

“Yes, I saw the whole thing. Just before.” His breath caught in a suppressed sob.

“Did you witness this attack, sir?”

“Yes, but it was dark. I saw…I saw figures. He had a knife. He was stabbing her. Oh my God, oh my God!”

“Where in Central Park, sir?”

“It happened in the Ramble, near the lake. About five minutes ago.”

“And what is your name, sir?”

“What?”

“I’m going to dispatch a cruiser immediately. What is your name?”

A loud click sounded.

“Sir? Hello?…Shit, he hung up. Male Caucasian, I think.”

Julian clicked off the recorder. “That’s it,” he said. “Dispatch informs that the call came in at eight forty-six
P.M.
tonight.”

“Placing the murder at approximately eight forty-one, if you believe what the caller said about timing,” Dan said.

“The caller sounds like an eyewitness, not the killer,” Melanie said.

“I agree. He’s scared shitless,” Dan agreed.

“Any leads on him?” she asked.

“We got the cell number from the 911 dispatcher. It’s a Verizon prefix, but their subpoena compliance department is officially closed till nine
A.M.
tomorrow,” Julian said.

“We can’t wait that long. They must have people on staff overnight. Maybe you should send somebody there in person,” Melanie said. She was starting to get caught up in the urgency of the situation, forgetting herself and her personal concerns, thinking instead of Suzanne Shepard’s stomach, its chilling hieroglyphs, their maker lurking out there somewhere in the bottomless night.

Dan nodded. “I already called my squad. We’re sending a guy over to Verizon right now with a subpoena and orders to beat the fucking door down if he has to. The second we have a subscriber name, we’re all over the guy.”

“Okay, good. Any progress on identifying additional eyewitnesses?” Melanie asked.

“My lieutenant had uniforms fanned out in every direction from the Ramble within twenty minutes of receiving the 911 call,” Julian said. “But it’s not like when somebody gets whacked in an apartment building and you just go push the neighbors’ doorbells. People don’t stay put in Central Park. So far, nobody we talked to saw or heard a thing.”

“Are we putting out a call for tips?” Melanie asked. “You know, like on television and radio?”

“Yeah, we’re doing Crimestoppers. And the family’s offering a reward. Fifty large. That should get people’s attention,” Julian said.

“Great,” Melanie said.

Julian snapped his fingers. “Wait a minute. Television. You just reminded me of something. My lieutenant wants to hold a press conference, the sooner the better. And he wants the U.S. Attorney’s Office doing the talking, so that means you. Hold on a second.”

Julian cupped his hands and shouted, “Yo, boss!”

A heavyset man wearing a rumpled raincoat and a brown corduroy cap turned and waved brusquely.

“Prosecutor,” Julian called, pointing at Melanie.

Lieutenant Jack Deaver immediately marched over and introduced himself. “Somebody needs to give a statement to get the reporters off my back,” he insisted. “We set up a perimeter as best we could, but you saw them out there. There hasn’t been a murder in the park in three years. They heard about the hunting knife, so now they’re calling this guy the Central Park Butcher. Once your perp gets nicknamed, forget about it, the reporters are like dogs smelling meat. They’re starting to bypass the barricades, just walkin’ right over the fuckin’ things.”

“Freedom of the press,” Melanie said. “You can’t keep them out forever.”

“They’re undermining the crime-scene investigation,” Deaver said. “You want these bozos trampling evidence? Or worse yet, finding it before Brennan’s boys do, so there’s no chain of custody for trial?”

“Park’s officially closed, right? Frickin’ arrest ’em for trespassing,” Dan suggested.

“We can’t arrest reporters. Not a good idea,” Melanie said with a nervous laugh. This case was potentially explosive, she was possibly stepping on the toes of the D.A.’s office, and her boss didn’t even know she was out here.

“Nope, I’m making an executive decision,” Deaver proclaimed, “just like they taught me in leadership training. We’re holding a press conference. Throw the dogs a bone. It’s the only way to corral ’em in one place while we finish up here. Pierre, come with me. We’ll tell ’em to set up their cameras, and that Vargas here’ll be at the park gate in half an hour to give an update.” Deaver strode away, with Julian following.