Blood Innocents (2 page)

“Any witnesses?” Merchant asked glumly.

“Not so far,” Reardon said, “but this happened only a couple of days ago. The area is still being canvassed. Somebody might turn up who saw something. The main thing at this point is to find out everybody she knows and check them out. She may have known the person who did it, because he probably came through the front door, and there's no evidence of forcible entry.”

“What'd she look like?” Merchant asked with a grin.

“What difference does it make?” Reardon said coldly.

Merchant shifted his body nervously to the left. “Just curious, that's all.”

“There are pictures of her in the file,” Reardon said.

“Right,” Merchant said. “I'll get on it.” He ducked out of the group and quickly marched upstairs to the file room.

Reardon did not know why he disliked Larry Merchant. He thought the reason might be the easy way Merchant took up his cases, as if they were just so many used cars he had to clear off the lot before the Saturday shipment of new ones, or the fact that he took his pay and ran off to the suburbs to spend it, leaving the city to wallow in its squalor like an old whore — used, abused, forgotten.

Reardon picked Charlie Darrow for the David Lowery case because David Lowery had been six years old when he was murdered, and Reardon knew that the killing of a child was a crime that shot Darrow up to a high adrenaline range. Darrow would be relentless in his pursuit, tireless, utterly oblivious to the distinction between being on duty and off duty.

“David Lowery was last seen alive by a few of his playmates in an alley off East 83rd Street,” Reardon began. He handed Darrow the folder. “Three hours later his body was found stuffed in the trunk of an abandoned car on 122nd Street. He had been strangled with a jump rope and his body had been sexually abused.”

Darrow's face hardened. “How old did you say he was?”

“Six years old. He was a small child for his age. Not quite three feet tall.”

“Jesus Christ,” Darrow said.

“The car had been sitting on 122nd Street for a few days,” Reardon said. “The owner is a grocery store manager up in Yonkers. He reported the car stolen quite some time ago. He's being checked out. He seems to be clean.”

Darrow nodded. “Nothing funny in his background?”

“Not that we've been able to uncover yet. Everything that we know about him is in the file. A few people in the neighborhood of 122nd Street saw a man and a boy around the car, but nobody saw the child's body put into it. There's also this: two days before the boy was killed the desk sergeant received an anonymous complaint about noisy kids playing in that same car in the afternoon. For now, that's it.”

“Not much then,” Darrow said disappointedly.

“Not much,” Reardon agreed, “but there's never very much in the beginning.”

“Sure,” Darrow said, and walked away from Reardon's desk.

Reardon turned to Wallace Chesterton. “The next one's for you.”

“All right,” Chesterton said.

Wallace Chesterton was a large, ponderously built man with a fiery temper, a bully who had been formally disciplined several times. He believed that the best way to approach either a witness or a suspect was to assault him, sometimes verbally, sometimes physically. So Reardon gave Chesterton the closest thing he had to a routine gangland killing, because he knew it would probably never be solved. Chesterton would know that too and be less inclined to rough up somebody for nothing.

“This one is strictly by the book, ” Reardon told him. “A routine gangland rubout. Clean. The victim is a guy named Martin Scali. He was found in a parked car near the East River with one bullet through the back of his head. He had two hundred and thirty-eight dollars in his wallet. He has all kinds of gangland connections. As usual, no witnesses. Nobody heard or saw anything. You've got a guy with a bullet in his head and that's it.”

Chesterton frowned. “Shit.”

“Do the best you can.” Reardon handed Chesterton the folder. “There's not much in it.”

Chesterton shrugged. “Yeah,” he said and stalked out toward the file room.

Reardon gave his last case of the morning to Ben Whitlock, who was neither young nor exceptionally competent but in whom Reardon continued to sense the old, special calling of the law. Whitlock was incorruptible. He had lived through one Police Department scandal after another and had always emerged untouched.

“I guess the last one's for you, Ben,” Reardon said with a slight smile.

“Why are they pulling you off all these cases, John?” Whitlock asked.

“They're pulling me off more than these cases,” Reardon said. “They're pulling me off all my cases.”

“Why are they doing that?”

“Because they want me to handle that deer killing in the zoo. Over in Central Park.”

“That's not a homicide.” Whitlock looked at Reardon suspiciously. “What the fuck is all this about?”

“You mean why are those deer so important?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, it's not the deer. It's who they belonged to.”

“They were just in the zoo, right?”

“They were given to the zoo by Wallace Van Allen.”

Whitlock nodded. “I get it,” he said. “Yeah, that explains it. Some fat cat gets his deer killed, so everyone downtown goes into a panic.”

“That's about it.” Reardon admitted. He felt a stir of respect for Whitlock, his old colleague, who had triumphed for so long against internal politics and external corruption, like an old mastiff, guardian of the gate, who eats from no man's hand. “I'm sorry we didn't work together more all these years.”

“Yeah, me too,” Whitlock said, “but that's the way it is.”

“Maybe we'll get a case together someday yet.”

“Maybe. But not likely. They keep assigning me new partners every year or so. It's always been like that. Ever since I got my gold shield they've been jerking me off. Jerking me around from partner to partner.”

“Yeah, I've noticed that.”

“They've been trying to get rid of me for twenty years,” Whitlock said wearily.

“Well, you're still here.”

“Not for long,” Whitlock said. “I think I'm gonna grab the option. Early retirement, you know? I think I'm ready to let go the line, you know what I mean?”

“You mean it?”

“Yeah, I'm tired. Whipped.” Whitlock winked. “Who knows, maybe the wife and me can get to Florida. Somewhere south, out of this. Get some sun, you know, before the last sunset.”

Reardon nodded. He did not know what to say. He knew only that he did not want to see Whitlock go. He had never gone to Whitlock for anything, but he had liked knowing Whitlock was there in case he came across something he could not handle alone.

“Well, what do you have for me?” Whitlock asked.

Reardon glanced down at his desk. “The victim's name is William Sebastian Falkner. He was murdered in the back of his dry cleaning shop last Thursday. Shot three times in the head and once in the chest with a .22-caliber pistol. The motive is presumed to be robbery, since all the money in the house and shop was taken.”

Whitlock chuckled. “Yeah, that kind of forces you to presume robbery.”

Reardon smiled. “A local teenager named Culverson was seen hanging around the shop not long before the murder. Culverson is a rough case. He's got a juvenile record that's pretty impressive, and he's been under suspicion for armed robbery in the past. His last address was three blocks from the shop. We're watching his apartment, but he hasn't turned up. The details are in the file.” Reardon closed the folder and handed it to Whitlock. “That's about it.”

“Okay,” Whitlock said. “I'll check it.”

“Good luck. If you need anything, let me know. I'll be around.”

Whitlock started to walk away; he stopped at the door and turned back to Reardon. “Sorry to hear about Millie,” he said.

Reardon had not thought about Millie for the past few moments, and suddenly hearing her name again thrust him back into a vague, aching gloom. “Thanks” was all he said.

“It happens to everybody,” Whitlock said. “A vale of tears, you know?”

“Yeah,” Reardon said. He watched Whitlock disappear up the stairs. So that was it, he thought — a bludgeoned prostitute, a strangled child, a dead gangland punk and a murdered shopkeeper.

And two slaughtered deer in the Children's Zoo.

The whole area around the cage of the fallow deer had been cordoned off by police roadblocks. But even in the chill, late autumn air a crowd had gathered, pressing against the roadblocks and craning their necks over the shoulders of the uniformed patrolmen assigned to keep them back. Another group of police was milling around outside the deer cage, and Reardon could not see inside the cage until they parted to let him pass.

In the cage each of the bodies had been covered by a black tarpaulin. Several rivulets of blood trickled out from beneath one of the tarpaulins and ran in jagged lines to the bars. When blood flowed like that, Reardon knew, it usually meant that many wounds had been inflicted. But the blood ran in one broad swath from beneath the other tarpaulin. That would mean that only one wound had been inflicted, and that it was deep and had brought death almost immediately.

Detective Mathesson was standing calmly between the two bodies of the fallow deer. He was a very large man, but the heavy black overcoat and gray hat made him appear even more massively built. His legs were spread wide apart like a gunslinger's and he was rubbing his gloved hands together vigorously for warmth. “Hello, John,” he said as Reardon approached.

Reardon nodded.

“Only in New York,” Mathesson said.

“What?”

“Look at it. Only in New York.”

“Oh,” Reardon said, “yeah.”

“At least they're not people,” Mathesson said, “that's one good thing.”

Reardon looked down at the body to the left. Covered as it was, it did not look that different from the human bodies he had seen. It was small, crumpled, motionless and, above all, utterly silent.

“In a way I wish they were,” Mathesson said.

Reardon squinted at him. “Why?”

“Because it would mean the killer's indent, in a way.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if this had been done, say, to a couple of people, children or old people or women, then it wouldn't be that uncommon,” Mathesson said. “We've dealt with that sort of thing before. We're used to it. It's not that weird. And we'd get the guy that did it. Probably pretty soon, too.”

“Maybe,” Reardon said. It was his favorite response to statements he found either ridiculous or inane.

“But this is real strange,” Mathesson said, his eyes moving back and forth between the two covered bodies, “and it'll spread to people.”

“You think so?”

“Sure it will,” Mathesson said. “Doesn't it always?”

“Sometimes.”

“Most of the time.” Mathesson looked at Reardon. “Don't you remember that guy with the cats? That complaint we got about a guy giving cats baths in hydrochloric acid?”

“Yes,” Reardon said quickly. He did not need to hear it again.

“Well, we collared him a couple of times for that, but you remember it didn't stop him. Nothing stopped him until he gave the same bath to a ten-year-old girl.”

Reardon said nothing.

“That's the way it'll be with this case,” Mathesson said. “Same thing. He won't stop with animals. He won't stop with these deer. Not if I know this guy. He's really weird, and that means he'll be hard to catch.”

“Well, anyway, let's get on it,” Reardon said wearily. “We have to catch him sometime.”

“Sure.” Mathesson nodded toward the covered bodies. “You want to see them?”

“Yes,” Reardon said.

Mathesson lit a cigarette and walked over to one body. “This is the worst one.” With one quick gesture he jerked the covering from the body of the fallow deer.

Reardon was jolted by what he saw. The head had been reduced to a pulpy mass. The partition between the nostrils had been severed with one clean blow. One eyeball had been gouged from the head and now dangled by its distended muscles between the socket and the upper jaw. The neck and upper torso were such a patchwork of cuts and bruises that it would have been difficult to tell the color of the deer without looking at its hindquarters. Both front legs were broken and one was almost severed at the knee joint.

Suddenly Reardon was seized by an almost uncontrollable sadness. He stepped back from the body and took a deep breath to stop the shuddering sensation in his chest.

“You all right?” Mathesson asked.

Reardon pressed his fingernails into his palm. Quickly he looked away from the deer, focusing his attention on the crowd in the distance. He tried to find a face to hold on to but the distance was too great, the features too blurred.

“Reardon?” Mathesson took Reardon by the arm. “Hey, you okay?”

Reardon turned away, gesturing for Mathesson to cover the body again. Mathesson swiftly obeyed and Reardon could hear the brittle sound of the tarpaulin unfolding out again, stretching over the body of the deer.

“You came back on duty too soon, John,” Mathesson said. “You should have taken a little more time off. When a man loses his wife he needs some time to take it easy, to adjust, you know?”

Reardon nodded. “I'll be all right.”

“Sure you will. But still, maybe you should take some extra time off.”

“No,” Reardon said. “It's okay.”

“But …”

Reardon looked at him intently. “It's just a little gruesome after you've been away from it for a while.” He could feel himself trembling underneath his topcoat. He thrust his hands into his coat, his fingers searching for something to distract him. He grasped a ballpoint pen in one hand and began clicking the point in and out.