VC03 - Mortal Grace (31 page)

“Sometimes I wish…” Cardozo gave the milk another try. This time it was his tongue that got stung. “I don’t know what I wish. That’s the trouble.”

“I know what I wish. I wish you had someone in your life.”

“I have enough in my life. I have you.”

“Then how come you’re lonely?”

“Who says?”

“That’s why you’re always working too hard.”

“I’m not working too hard. I’m just getting done what has to get done and it isn’t my fault this city has gone murder-crazy.”

“You’re always mixed up in other people’s problems. You need some problems of your own.”

“Problems like I see on the job, I don’t need of my own, thank you.”

“You need
something
of your own.”

“I’ve got lots of my own—including a daughter who’s a real pain in the ass when she starts with that amateur psychiatry.”

Terri sighed a quiet, accepting sigh. She leaned across the table to give him a kiss. “I love you, too, Dad. Feel better. G’night.”

He couldn’t sleep.

He brought his briefcase from the hallway and began reviewing crime-scene inventories of the three runaway murders.

He cleared a space on the table and drew up a grid—the found items running down the left and the runaways’ case numbers across the top. When he had filled the grid in, he took out the medical examiner’s reports.

FORTY

S
OMETHING LOOKED DIFFERENT, BRIGHTER
. At first Cardozo thought it was just the sun shining on the precinct facade, and then he realized someone had finally replaced the busted green globe beside the doorway. They’d even hung a brand-new flag from the pole over the steps: for a change, the New York City seal and the number 22 looked crisp and focused.

On the other hand, a worse-than-usual pandemonium was whirlpooling through the lobby. The eight-to-four tour was starting, and it took Cardozo almost two minutes to get through the gauntlet of backslaps and greetings, and reach the stairs. He found a message from Harvey Thoms on his desk:
Phone immediately.

There was an area code, 516, and he realized it had to be Thoms’s home number in the Long Island suburbs. It took him three tries to get through a busy signal.

“I spent all of yesterday afternoon searching records.” Some kind of pressure had forced Thoms’s voice into a higher register. “I couldn’t locate any deposition by Martin Barth at all. Nothing in the Richie Vegas case; nothing in the Wally Wills case; nothing in Ms. Basket Case.”

“I could see one file getting lost,” Cardozo said, “but three?”

“About two hundred documents in unprosecuted cases have been misplaced. Justice is transferring records to a computerized data base. There are a few glitches in the program. At least that’s the explanation I’m running into.”

“Funny this glitch snagged all of Martin Barth’s confessions.”

“It doesn’t mean Barth’s records may not turn up.”

“I’m not holding my breath.”

“I’m still looking,” Thoms said. “I’ll keep you posted.”

Cardozo stepped into the squad room. He poured two cups of coffee and set the pot back into its perch in the coffeemaker. He stopped at Ellie’s desk and handed her a cup.

“Either the department is very screwed up,” he said, “or something very peculiar is going on.”

She was wearing a blouse the color of smoked salmon and as he gave her the update from the D.A.’s office, she nodded as if it were an old, old story. “Maybe the D.A. should invest in a really high-tech storage medium—like paper.” Her eyes had a look of thoughtful skepticism. “Did Captain O’Reilly get hold of you?”

“Not yet.”

“He says it’s important. He’s in the muster room.”

Cardozo chugalugged his coffee. “What now?”

Officers beginning the day tour had bottlenecked in the corridor. Lieutenant Carl Ross, the captain’s right-hand man, was handing out tubes of black self-shining shoe polish. “Use it on your cap visor, too, and turn those radios off. Hey you, Fanelli, get your jacket!”

A weird light spilled through the doorway, as if a UFO had landed inside. Cardozo knew it couldn’t be sun: all the windows on that side of the precinct had been painted over in pea-soup-green—grilles and panes and all—and the only thing that could get through that glass was a hurled brick.

“What’s the fiesta?” Cardozo said.

Ross beamed. “NBC-TV.”

Inside the muster room, a crew was trying to aim klieg lights so they missed the worst cracks in the walls and ceiling. For ten administrations mayors had been promising a new precinct. So far they’d only come through with Holiday Inn-style dropped ceilings, but after two years the leaks in the old ceilings were beginning to drip through the new ones.

Up on the dais, Captain Tom O’Reilly was barking out assignments like a seasoned TV actor: “Keep those street peddlers moving. Confiscate all goods except books or incense—books are freedom of the press, incense is freedom of religion.”

As the cameras panned, the day-tour officers stood at attention, shoulders back and guts pulled in. Waists bulged with service revolvers, belt-loads of ammo, hand cuffs and billy clubs.

At the watercooler a very fat man in a designer camouflage outfit tossed down handfuls of pills with cupfuls of water. “Can we get a shot of a line of shined shoes?” he shouted.

A cameraman crouched.

“Any questions?” O’Reilly rasped.

A rookie patrolman raised his hand. “What about noisy radios?”

“Do not confiscate loud radios. The city council has directed that noise is environmental control, not a police issue. Ticket the radios and issue summonses, but do not seize.”

O’Reilly turned off the mike and stepped down from the dais. He walked just a little off the vertical.

“You wanted to see me?” Cardozo said.

O’Reilly nodded. “Channel Four’s getting some footage for their evening show.” He looked oddly red-faced for this early in the day. “How about showing them around the neighborhood? Talk to some shopkeepers, show how we reassure the local businesses.”

Cardozo realized he had been paid a compliment. “After my work’s done, I’d be happy to. Unless you’re reassigning me.”

It wasn’t what O’Reilly wanted to hear. “You’ve assigned an awful lot of men to the rectory thing.”

“I sent six cops out to scour runaway camps and see if anyone recognizes some photos.”

“What photos?”

“Wills, Gilmartin, Vegas.”

O’Reilly tugged at his left ear. “Dead runaways from other precincts.”

“Can we talk about this privately?”

They went to the captain’s office. O’Reilly picked up a pile of vouchers from his desk. “You don’t seem to realize we’re living in a period of acute person-power shortage.”

“And during this period of acute person-power shortage,” Cardozo said, “the mayor has plainclothes cops picking up his laundry and escorting his daughters to discos.”

“Let him. He’s mayor. He can have plainclothes cops mow his lawn. You, on the other hand, are not mayor. Your job is the Cespedes case, which isn’t even a homicide.” O’Reilly nipped through the vouchers. “It certainly doesn’t merit the man-hours and money you’re running up. Are you skimming, Vince? Are you padding the account and keeping a dame on the side?”

“First of all, I’m not. Second of all, Ellie would never let me.”

“Ellie thinks you’re God. Not that she thinks that highly of God.”

“And third of all, Cespedes
is
a homicide and it’s connected to a series of homicides.” Cardozo showed the captain his grid of the similarities among the four victims.

O’Reilly studied the grid, silent, absorbed. Cardozo could feel him lightening up. The captain was due to retire in sixteen months. Like any retiring brass, he wanted a fairy-tale ending. Breaking a front-page, top-of-the-evening-news multiple homicide case would not be a bad way to go.

“So far,” Cardozo said, “these cases have been handled as separate killings by separate killers. Let me have those men and I can prove one person killed them all.”

“Have you got a prime suspect?”

“Absolutely.” A lie.

“Hard evidence?”

“Why take my word for it? Ask the lab.” A bluff.

O’Reilly drew in a deep breath. “Okay, you can have the men for five days.”

Cheapskate.
“Thank you, sir.”

Cardozo’s heart was anything but grateful as he walked down the green fluorescent-lit corridor to the squad room. A message on his desk said to call Lou at the lab.

“What’ve you got, Lou?”

“Some interesting results. The anonymous note was written on letterhead from Reverend Bonnie Ruskay’s supply. There’s a slight packing crease running down the five blank sheets of her letterhead. The same crease shows up faintly on the anonymous note. The culprit was clever—used paper from the middle of the pile, not the top.”

“Any prints?”

“Sorry. No clear prints.”

“How are you coming on the handwriting?”

“I’m waiting to hear. But I’ve got one other result to pass on—Lifeways Labs ran DNA tests on the hairs you gave me.”

Lifeways was a commercial state-of-the-art outfit up in Westchester. The NYPD used them for work beyond its technological capacity.

“And?”

“They don’t match the hairs from Pablo Cespedes’s head.”

Cardozo felt a cold ball of shock inside his ribs. “Come on, Lou. Lifeways must have found a match.”

“They found a match all right, it just doesn’t happen to be Cespedes. The hairs are northern European and they match another homicide—a John Doe from the Seventy-seventh.”

Cardozo picked up a ballpoint. “Would you give me that case number and the name of the detective in charge?”

“His name’s Bob Reach and he’s on his way over to you right now.”

“Okay, Lou. I’ll be here.”

Cardozo replaced the receiver. His eyes came up to see a stranger standing in the doorway. He pushed back his chair and stood. “Detective Reach?”

FORTY-ONE

T
HE STRANGER HELD OUT
a hand. He was a tall redheaded man with tight, intense eyes in a narrow face. “We have to talk.”

Cardozo gestured toward the straight-backed chair. “Have a seat.” He closed the door.

Detective Reach handed Cardozo a folder labeled
JOHN DOE
. “A teenager turned up two weeks ago in Marine Park.”

Cardozo flipped through the case file. He skipped the yellow sheets detailing Lifeways’ electron microscopy results. He slowed at the medical examiner’s report.

The autopsy photos showed that Mr. Doe had been dismembered. Death had occurred in early to mid-April of this year.
Probable cause: Asphyxiation due to central nervous system shutdown following massive ingestion of narcotizing agent, possibly azidofluoramine, an experimental antipanic medication.

Blood analysis showed alcohol and cocaine. Liver analysis showed toxic levels of azidofluoramine.

Phrases leapt up:
Hands and feet may have been secured with leather belts…. Signs of beating or kicking…burning of skin such as might be caused by contact with dripped candle wax.

Lab analysis of T-shirt, jeans, tube socks, and sneakers found in the basket showed
incense residue
and
bits of acrylic gray shag carpet adhering to the fabric.

The body had been found in a Styrobasket.

At the end of the file Cardozo found a sketch of a dead-eyed male. It could have been drawn by a robot of a robot. He held the drawing up. “I take it this is meant to be him?”

“Our artist sketched him like he would have looked in life. We searched the city. Couldn’t find anyone who recognized him.”

Cardozo opened his desk drawer. He took out the five photos from Father Joe’s file that had been found without curricula vitae. He handed Reach the photo of Tod Lomax. “Maybe your artist should have tried for something a little more like that.”

Bob Reach stiffened. His eyes went back and forth from the photo to the drawing. “Same jaw, same cheekbones, same eyebrow ridges—”

“Same guy. Seems to be something that’s going around.” Cardozo handed Reach the photos of Wills and Vegas. “These were the identical M.O. Plus one unidentified female.”

Reach sat shaking his head. “I didn’t hear about these.”

“I didn’t hear about yours.”

“The D.A. wanted to hold information back. Not much got published. And what did, they screwed up.”

Cardozo nodded. He turned a page of the John Doe file. “Your crime-scene inventory lists some flowers found near the grave. I take it these were stalks and dried leaves?”

Bob Reach’s pale eyebrows arched. “I don’t exactly recall.”

“Could you do me a favor? Check the number of flowers—and were they tied with a red string—and was there a rose?”

After Detective Reach left, something incomplete nagged at Cardozo. He went to the filing cabinet and pulled out the folder on Ms. Basket Case. He didn’t sit. He reread the file walking around his desk in tight circles. He reread Vegas and Wills and John Doe.

Four identical homicides spaced over three years. Four identical homicides investigated by four different detectives in four different precincts. Three of the four stamped
closed
when Martin Barth confessed. Even if Barth’s confessions had somehow vanished from the data base, they were still recorded here in the original paperwork on Ms. Basket Case, Vegas, and Wills.

Which left John Doe—the odd man out.

Cardozo phoned Dan Hippolito at the medical examiner’s office. “Dan, could you review three autopsies for me? Two are yours and one is Sileson’s.” He gave Dan the autopsy numbers.

“What are we looking for?”

“Any indication that these killings were the work of one person. Check out any similarities like this matzo stuff in their mouths. Give me your educated opinion.”

“It may take a while. Spring is killing time in New York—we have corpses in holding patterns here.”

“I appreciate it, Dan. And while you’re at it, would you check if the records have been tampered with? Information lost or altered?”

“We’re shifting everything to computer—a lot gets accidentally lost or altered.”