Hellhound (12 page)

“And the bloody shoeprint?”

“Mrs. Fowler was fucked-up on PCP.”

“Even though her apartment was clean?”

“Repeat after me: Mrs. Fowler was fucked-up on drugs.”

“What about the dog bowl and blankets in the Lester apartment?” Leonhardt retorted. “Bones alerted to them.”

“Do me a favor and think like a detective…hell, a
rational human being
for a single second. Rather than believe it was drugs, you’re going to go down the garden path of this being some killer dog. I went along with it when I thought there might be some dangerous animal in there, because something bad happened and searching those buildings was better than working any day. But, we didn’t find anything. It’s over. And you really need to come back to earth and see that.”

•  •  •

Ocean City was so far removed from Becca’s day-to-day existence that, at first, she wasn’t sure what to do with herself. She’d been out to Coney Island a couple of times, which had a boardwalk and games, too, but Ocean City was so small in comparison. There were rows and rows of two-story wood frame and aluminum siding houses on narrow streets beyond the beach, but many seemed empty. Though Ken had advised her to stick close to the boardwalk when she left the hotel on her own, Becca had grown tired of it after only a day.

No, the neighborhoods were of more interest. Though the houses were very much the same in their construction, each had touches of personality. Becca liked to imagine who might live there, even part time. Was the faded windsock something with such sentimental value that even though it looked awful, it just couldn’t be thrown out? Same for a coconut and bamboo set of wind chimes that looked brought back from an island vacation? What of all the little metal cats and roosters and pigs and every other animal under the sun propped up on porches and windowsills?

Becca would see how many streets she could go without seeing a living person. There would always be some car in the distance to ruin her fun, but occasionally, she’d go four or five blocks with nothing. No airplane overhead, no laughter echoing up from the beach, only the wind.

It was like being the last person on earth.

She hadn’t wanted to bother Ken too much. He stayed in his room on the phone almost nonstop except when heading out for food or when checking on Becca.

“Trey met with the court-appointed lawyer this morning,” he told her over breakfast on the third day. “There’s some concern that the primary witness in his defense is his own sister, but enough people saw and heard you on the roof to put you there at the time of the shooting. The other good news is that the preliminary ballistics tests and crime scene reports all back up to a letter your and Trey’s recollection of events.”

“When will he get out?”

“They have to set bail, and that’ll happen this week. They’re going to try and get it set pretty low. I already talked to a bond company. I had to lie and say I hadn’t quit my job. I just hope I get another one before they check up.”

“Do you think you can find one?”

“You remember meeting Gus, the guy who came and fixed our plumbing that one day? He does maintenance in the building. I called him because he’d mentioned they were always looking for people. He said he’d put me in touch with Mr. Uribe, who runs all those guys. Said it’s the easiest job in the world.”

“What about school?”

“I talked to Mrs. Drucker. She understood. Said they could email you your assignments to print out if we got to a computer down here.”

Becca scowled. Ken shook his head.

“None of that. You still need to be focused on your schooling. You know that. This isn’t an excuse to let that slip. You fall behind even a little bit and that can cost you in the long run.”

Becca understood, but the thought of being cooped up in her motel room with the sun and sand within reach sounded like torture. Ken seemed to recognize this and softened a little.

“Maybe we’ll go find that computer tomorrow.”

It had been a massive undertaking, but the New York Police Department had eventually digitized just about all of its records. The only problem with that was any time anyone sought out an older file, an electronic footprint linking the officer doing the search to said file was left behind.

What Leonhardt desired was the opposite. He wanted to peer into a file with complete anonymity. The file he sought was one of the most notorious in the history of the department, right next to John Gotti, Bernie Goetz, and the Mad Bomber. The Criminal Records Section offices four blocks west of the former World Trade Center had become a real graveyard since the digitizers left. If you were assigned there, the question wasn’t if you fucked up, but how much higher up the food chain was the person who got fucked because of your fuck-up. There was shit detail with little chance for advancement. Then there was the prison cell of records.

“Vincent! Hey, Vincent!”

Leonhardt banged on the cage leading into the closed-access archive. Vincent Harrell was back there somewhere as he was every day, either watching television or reading the paper. He’d actually petitioned the department for a larger television complete with DVR and gotten it a few years before. He was a nut for the Mets, having grown up on Long Island. During the season, he’d record the game from the night before (and whatever other game was being televised unless it involved a certain Bronx-Area rival that favored pinstripes) and watch it through once or twice during the following day. This meant his mornings had become downright ritualistic in his avoidance of learning the previous day’s score. At first, it was a joke. Officers would look for ever more inventive ways to spoil his game.

Then he punched out a guy and got written up, called on the carpet, and almost kicked out. The attitude since then had become,
well, if he’s THAT serious about it.
And he was left alone to enjoy his games.

“Vincent!! Come on, man! It’s Leonhardt!”

After a couple more minutes, a mountain of a man appeared at the end of the hallway, so wide that he just about touched both walls at the same time.

“Phil! How the hell are you?”

“Good, man. On a bit of a mission.”

“That doesn’t sound good at all,” the officer said as he unlocked the gate. “This about all that up in Harlem?”

“This isn’t about anything, Vince. I was never here.”

“Oh, shit! You’re putting yourself in my debt here. That’s something. What are you looking for?”

“Berkowitz.”

“Jesus. You’re not looking to sell something on eBay, are you? Getting bribed by someone writing a new book?”

“No. You were right the first time.”

Vincent’s face went blank, but then he furrowed his brow.

“That thing in Harlem?” he asked.

“That thing in Harlem.”

F
ifteen minutes later, Leonhardt found himself pinching his sinuses, wondering if he’d finally lost his fucking mind.

The Berkowitz files, concerning the so-called .44 Caliber Killer while the manhunt was on, the Son of Sam after he was caught based on a moniker he gave himself, were massive. The main reason for this was that they contained every false lead and miscue compiled by the department during the year between David Berkowitz’s first murder in July of 1976 and his arrest in August of the following year.

The Berkowitz case had been notoriously difficult to solve even after a massive task force had been assembled to locate the man using a .44 caliber Charter Arms Bulldog revolver to shoot young women. Even more notoriously, the case was solved because of a parking ticket left on the windshield of Berkowitz’s car during the night of the final shooting, though he was initially sought as a potential witness.

There was no question of Berkowitz’s madness. In several letters, he had described himself as “Mr. Monster” and raved about rising from the sewer to “please Sam,” who he described as his father, by committing violent murder. After his arrest, he claimed that the “Sam” was his next-door neighbor in Yonkers, Sam Carr, but that really the one telling him to kill was Sam Carr’s dog, Harvey, a black lab.

Though he stuck with the whole Satanic cult thing for as many years as the newspapers would print it, Berkowitz had long since recanted. In fact, he’d become a born-again Christian behind bars and even tried to pay restitution to his victims. The Harvey story was just that, a small piece of a massive fiction invented by a delusional lunatic and lapped up by a public unwilling to believe that such a horrific series of murders, six in all with a greater number wounded, could have a rational explanation. It had to be supernatural, or they couldn’t sleep at night. It had to be the Devil, or what was preventing it from happening again tomorrow?

But as Leonhardt stared down at the facts of the case, everything from horrific crime scene and autopsy photos to photostats of the letters sent to police and
Daily News
columnist Jimmy Breslin, he realized that this had nothing to do with the deaths in Jefferson Park. He was just as desperate as Breslin’s readers over a quarter of a century ago for that supernatural explanation.

The dog, Harvey, looked nothing like the black mastiff from Neville Houses. In two photographs, both showing the black lab with his owner, Sam Carr, the animal looked like what it was: the family dog.

Leonhardt sighed and closed the brown manila folder, doing up its rubber string tie, which had gone dry and rigid with age. He shelved it alongside the several other volumes of the same case file and made his way to where Vincent was watching television.

“You find what you were looking for?” Vincent asked. “Wait, don’t tell me if you did. Plausible deniability.”

“Came up dry,” Leonhardt said anyway. “It was a shot in the dark.”

“I thought you guys knew what happened up there.”

“Yeah, yeah, I think we do,” Leonhardt admitted. “Always the same with cases like these.”

“But when they’re so weird, you start looking for answers to all the unasked questions. That’s just not a place you want to go.”

The detective nodded. “You got me there.”

•  •  •

Ken got the job as a maintenance man in the building. The pay wasn’t much better than the warehouse, but if he agreed to be on call at night, this could up substantially, as each call was time and a half.

Trey’s bail was set at $100,000, the minimum for a case like this, and he was bailed out that afternoon. The ten percent Ken had to put up meant that he and Becca had to clear out of Ocean City, but then they received help from a surprising source.

“If it had been me standing there, I would’ve done the exact same thing,” Mr. Gaines told Trey through his lawyer. “You did me a favor.”

To that, Mr. Gaines put in $1,000. Half an hour later, Trey was out.

Though there hadn’t been a single incident of violence at Triborough Houses since the shooting of Janice, Becca still shuddered as they approached the building.

“I’m going to park and drop off our stuff on the loading dock so we can use the service elevator,” Ken said. “I’ll have a key now, so we won’t have to tromp up and down the stairs every day.”

Becca nodded and climbed out of the borrowed SUV at the curb. She stared up at Building 7, wondering if anyone would notice if she turned around, caught the next train for Ocean City, and just found one of those empty houses to break into and live in until she was old enough to get a job.

As she entered the lobby, she remembered that the last time she’d been here, she’d had Bones by her side. It was, she imagined, like carrying a loaded gun. Everything seemed a little less daunting with a ferocious German shepherd waiting to go off next to you.

She took the stairs two at a time until the fifth floor and then single-stepped it to the sixth. Like on the Jersey Shore, the place felt oddly depopulated. In this case, everyone was at work, not simply absent until the seasons changed or the weekend arrived. When she got to her door, she located her key, turned the lock, and stepped inside.

The apartment smelled like pizza, and she soon saw why. Trey had beaten them home and had brought a couple of boxes with him from the place over on Lexington. He must’ve just arrived, as he was still in the shower when she walked in.

Okay
, she thought.
Maybe I can do this
.

She dropped her keys on the counter, went to her bedroom, closed the door, and flopped down on the bed.

•  •  •

“He’s looking pretty good,” the police veterinarian told the kennel master as he checked over Bones’s mostly healed wounds. “I’m ready to sign off on him for transport.”

The kennel master rolled his eyes. “I know he’s been working up there in the 22nd Precinct. You got some kind of deal with the detectives?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the vet replied. “You capable of getting his ass back to Pittsburgh? Or do you need a requisition?”

“I’ll have him on the first plane in the morning. And good riddance. He smells.”

“Yeah, that’s his job,” the vet snarked.

“Fine, he
stinks
. Happy, asshole?”

“Always.”

Bones watched this back-and-forth for a moment but then flopped over asleep.

•  •  •

The afternoon passed quietly in the Baldwin household. Trey sat on the floor of the living room watching television. Ken stayed on the phone. Becca came and went from her room. It was an unusual homecoming with everyone giving each other space but still checking on each other every few minutes as if to make certain no one had left.

Ken had to start his shift at six o’clock but was going to go down to the maintenance locker room early to get into his work clothes, a dull gray jumpsuit provided by the building.

“When I tell you to stay in the apartment tonight, I mean it,” Ken told Becca, who was making one of her circuits of the living room. He then turned to Trey. “And I’m going to ask you to stay home, but I don’t expect you to listen. Just, it’s our first night back and I’d love to know both of y’all are safe and sound. Is that asking too much?”