Gladyss of the Hunt (26 page)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Bernie calmed down as we entered the law firm's reception area on the thirty-seventh floor, where we were greeted by Caty Duffy's supervisor, Yolanda Bellow, an attractive African-American woman. Before Bernie could break the bad news, she said that Frank had already informed everyone of Caty's untimely passing. Bernie must've sensed something was not quite right, because he immediately went to work on her, asking endless questions about the victim: the type of clothes she wore, conversations she'd had that day. Did she take any mysterious breaks? A lot of sick days? How did she look? Did she wear sleeveless shirts? Drink a lot of cranberry juice? Any unusual pills? Any indication of a secret life? I knew he was still hopeful that the poor woman was a weekend junkie, and a closet hooker.

Finally Bernie asked if he could check out Caty's desk.

Yolanda led us to Caty's work station. After she left, a red haired woman seated nearby watched intently as Bernie went through Caty's desk drawers. Ketchup packs, Kleenex, lip gloss, cinnamon-flavored gum, nothing out of the ordinary. When he took out the drawers and inspected their undersides, I walked over to the redhead.

“What's he looking for?”

“Anything that might help us solve her murder.”

“I just can't believe this happened,” she said, sipping a cup of coffee.

“Were you friends with Caty?”

“Not really friends, but friendly.”

“Do you know anyone who was close with Caty?”

She looked around. “Vince Reynolds in accounting,” she said in a low tone, then picked up a sheet of paper and walked away.

By now Bernie had finished searching Caty's work station, so I
reported my conversation to him and we went back to reception and asked for Mr. Reynolds in accounting.

“Accounting is down on fifteen.”

We took the elevator to the fifteenth floor, where the doors opened almost on top of the receptionist's desk. Bernie asked for Vince Reynolds.

“Have a seat,” the receptionist said, indicating a waiting area then picking up the phone.

“Do me a favor and let me talk to him alone,” Bernie said to me.

“Why?”

“'Cause if he was having an affair with Caty, he'd probably be more inclined to open up with another guy.”

About five minutes passed before a dashing type in a nice suit emerged. He was probably forty, but could pass for ten years younger.

“Vince?” Bernie rose and took a couple of steps away from me. I heard them talking quietly back and forth for a while.

I watched Vince closely as he was talking to Bernie. I could see him twisting his lips and contracting his face. as if trying to knot up his tear ducts. Bernie whispered into his ear. He answered most of the questions simply with a nod. Bernie thanked him and, after staring at the carpet for a moment, his hands sunk in his pockets, Vince returned to his cubicle in the back.

“Yep,” he said when we were back in the elevator.

“Yep what?”

“Twice a week after work at the King's Court Hotel.”

“Twice a week!” I realized what he was talking about. “Wow! Who paid?” The place wasn't cheap.

“The room was on a corporate account and they used it when it was available,” Bernie said. “He said the husband didn't know, which leads me to wonder if he didn't find out and O.J. her himself.”

“So I guess she stayed in the hotel after Vinny left that day,” I said.

“Vince said he had to leave to meet his wife, and Caty would routinely take a shower while waiting until it was time to catch the bus to Union City.”

“Maybe Vin's wife did it.”

“Sure, maybe we have an imitator imitating the imitator,” Bernie kidded, apparently mocking his earlier theory that two of the killings were by a different murderer.

As we reached the street and started walking among the crowds, I asked, “So do you think the killer knew either of them?”

“No,” he said. “I think he found an empty room in the hotel he could gain access to, then he waited for the first shapely woman who passed by and that just happened to be Caty.”

“He never did that before.”

“You know, I'm beginning to think it's all the work of one killer after all. But whoever it is, he probably heard the news conference like everyone else and just figured, hey, if no blonde hookers are available I'll just grab anyone,” Bernie hypothesized. “Most of these guys have a victim profile, but they can also be incredible opportunists.”

As we were heading toward Eighth Avenue on Forty-first, we spotted a guy in a bright red day-glo vest who was touching a pencil-like object to each lamppost he passed.

“Excuse me,” Bernie said, flashing his badge, “but what the fuck are you doing?”

“This is an AC locater,” the man said, holding up the small wand. “I work for Con Ed, and we're checking for live lampposts 'cause of that woman who just died downtown.”

A graduate student had recently been electrocuted along with her dog by a live junction box in the East Village. I remembered that her dog had been electrocuted first; she died trying to rescue him.

“Were you around here two days ago?” Bernie asked.

“I've been checking all the lampposts in this whole area the past two days.”

Bernie took out a photo of Caty Duffy's face, taken at the morgue, and showed it to the guy. “You don't remember seeing her?”

“Are you kidding,” the worker replied with a grin.

“She might've been fighting with someone,” I added. “She might've screamed.”

“If I saw that, I would've helped her,” he said.

“How about this guy?” Bernie asked, taking out a mug shot of Nessun O'Flaherty.

“You know what,” said the worker. “I actually do remember this clown. He was pissing against a lamppost on Ninth Avenue as I was trying to get a reading.”

“You're sure it was him?”

“Yeah, and when I told him the post could be live, he said that'd
be the only buzz he could get without paying a hooker.”

“He actually said hooker?”

“Yeah.”

It hardly seemed like much to go on, but Bernie pointed out that O'Flaherty's SRO was only a few blocks from the crime scene and suggested we pay him a surprise visit.

“And charge him with public urination?”

Bernie didn't reply.

I asked him, “Where'd you get that photo of Caty?” I didn't know he had visited the morgue that day.

“Another great weapon Bert left me, in addition to his collection of bow ties, was the simple Boy Scout slogan: Be prepared.”

“You really miss him, don't you?”

“It was kinda like having your mother for a partner. Nothing was ever good enough. But, in fairness, he would've had this case closed by now.”

It was freezing cold inside O'Flaherty's fleabag hotel. Before he got to the clerk's little office, I stopped Bernie and asked him what we were doing there.

“Call it intuition.” He used that secret word. “I just feel like something's up.”

“Based on what?” I asked. “We have no new evidence. We were up here already with his PO, when we could've tossed his room and you didn't want to. So isn't this just a waste of time? Don't we need to talk to Frank Duffy?”

Bernie stared at me. “Last I checked, I'm in charge.”

He stepped up and asked Hal, the ex-cop clerk, if he had seen the convicted sex offender early last night, around the time of Caty's murder.

“Nope. He's on a binge right now, so he might've been in his room.”

“A drinking binge?”

“Yeah. I saw him with a gallon-size plastic bottle of scotch yesterday morning.”

“When did this binge start?”

“Probably yesterday, but who knows?”

“Is he up there now?”

“No, I saw him leave about ten minutes ago.”

“What's up with the heat?” I asked shivering. It was even colder in the building than outside. “Is the boiler broken?”

“No, it's just a little slow in warming up.” Inside Hal's little booth a small space heater was churning at his feet.

“I want to grab him where he feels the most vulnerable. Let the little roach feel like he has nowhere to crawl,” Bernie explained to me. Turning to Hal, he asked, “Mind if we wait in the hallway in front of his room?”

“Tell you what,” said the clerk, reaching behind him. “This is the key to the room right before his. It's a little warmer in there.”

“Great, thanks,” Bernie said taking it.

We'd just missed the elevator, which was as slow as the geriatrics who used it, so we took the stairs. As we climbed, I suggested that if Caty was killed last night and O'Flaherty was drunk all yesterday, there was no way he would've been physically able to commit the murder, especially if he didn't drug her first.

“Trust me,” Bernie responded, “alcohol affects different people differently. Most get horny and lazy, but there are a few who get angry and energized.”

When we reached the top floor, Bernie listened outside O'Flaherty's door for a minute, then he knocked. No answer. He tried the door and it opened. He looked inside briefly, then closed it again quickly.

“I'm not going to blow this on some technicality,” he said, and we went down the hall to the room Hal had offered us. Inside was a stripped, stained mattress on a heavy metal frame. An old end table held a clunky intercom phone. It didn't feel any warmer in the room than it did in the hallway.

As we sat there, I realized that if some mystical revelation were ever to occur, this had to be the time and place for it. I focused on my breathing and tried to evict my ego from the random thoughts that buzzed through my head. Soon only one image remained: the postcard of the Diana statue on O'Flaherty's wall. I didn't know why I had envisioned the image, but why had he taped the postcard up in the first place? What Nessun had suggested to me at the station—and it struck me as incredibly odd—was the notion that the killer had targeted a certain kind of victim entirely with the hope of luring me out. It made me wonder if he hadn't fashioned this clue just for me. Being a cop, I'm kind of a warrior, I guess, but how could he
have known what else I had in common with Diana?

“Hey!” I suddenly heard, “You sound like a pug with a head cold!”

“Sorry.” I guess my
Pranayama,
my breath of fire, had gotten too loud and intense. I closed my eyes, breathed through my mouth, and stopped wondering about O'Flaherty and the goddess Diana, and myself.

“When they built the Towers,” Bernie broke in, “they also put up all these medium-size buildings around them, so there was some architectural transition between the colossal skyscrapers and the rest of the neighborhood,” Bernie said. “Now that the Towers are gone, those transitional buildings make no damn sense.”

Looking out the window, I saw what had sparked his comment. Looking eastward over the snow-encrusted lots whose buildings had recently been leveled, behind a turn-of-the-century theater that was being retrofitted as a multiplex, above the Disney store and Madame Tussaud's wax museum, there was a clear view of some of the skyscrapers that made up the new Times Square complex.

“Bernie, I wanted to tell you that my assignment's almost over and—”

“What was the address of Caty's office building again?” he interrupted, staring transfixed at the new high-rises.

“Three Times Square.”

“And that was on the northeast corner, right?”

“Yeah, the one with the flyswatter roof,” I recycled his joke.

“What did that security guard say?” he asked urgently. “How were those buildings addressed?”

“Christ! I think Number One is the Times Tower, the old skyscraper with the Zipper. The Reuter's Building on the northwest corner is Number Three. Number Four on the northeast corner is the Condé Nast Building. I think Number Five is southwest. Number Seven is the southeast one.”

“What about Number Two?” he asked with a slight twitch of his right eye.

“I think he said that was a couple of blocks further up.”

Bernie dug into his coat pocket, pulled out his notebook and flipped through the pages, then asked, “What about numbers Eight and Nine?”

“I don't know about those.”

“Fuck!” Bernie said, and started quickly scribbling something into his book. When he was done, he looked at what he had written and gasped: “That's why he cuts their heads off! 'Cause Number One was below the shoulders and Two is a few blocks up.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The bodies are on their backs facing north. On the vic's right shoulder is always the number three. On the left is the number four, on the right leg is five, on the left is six.”