Murder in Hell's Kitchen (2 page)

It wasn't entirely a hopeless pursuit, but nearly so. The cases were cold. Besides the routine annual check—the Detective Division 5 reports, always called DD5s—to update the file and keep the squad commander happy, many of the cases had lain dormant for many years. A few of them were famous, and the best detectives on the job hadn't cleared them when they were fresh. Most of the cases never had a chance. The victims were old men and women who lived alone, whose bodies were found when the smell of decomposition awoke their neighbors. They were people whose histories were permanently buried in the past, people too poor to have heirs waiting to benefit from their deaths. They had long since ceased to be thought of as human beings and were now a collection of various colored forms, facts, and reports, or at best a memory in the mind of some retired detective. Science could learn a lot from dead bodies but it couldn't tell you what language was first on the tongue, whether it had been married, if it had living children, if it had a smile for everyone it met or found fault even with people who tried to help. Science couldn't tell you whether the body had nearly starved itself to death out of penury or hopelessness or just plain laziness. And the chances of finding answers five or ten years after death were slim.

The park murder had been, in its morbid way, a thing of beauty. The photograph alone was hypnotic. The eye traced the beams of sunlight, the shadows threatened, the metal side of the wheelchair flashed light. The little woman, almost invisible in the photo, had died of a stab wound, a knife in the stomach, inserted under the blanket that covered the lower half of her body. The killer must have stood in front of her, leaned over her, stuck the knife into her gut, forced it up toward the heart, and left. She must have seen him. Had she known him? Had she spoken to him? Joe, what are you doing here? Nice day for a concert in the park, don't you think? And then sudden death.

Or had it been random? Had some crazy acted on impulse or challenge, proving to himself or his gang that he could kill someone and get away with it?

No purse had been found at or near the crime scene. Either the killer took it with him or she left it home. But what home? She was without identification, but she had a few dollars in bills and coins in her jacket pocket. The team was unable to determine her identity. Her prints were not on file. No one fitting her description had been reported missing since the homicide. The wheelchair, they learned, had been stolen from a hospital. Someone's hard work failed to obliterate the number etched into one of the vertical steel supports, and it was traced. The hospital's property-marking system yielded one small bit of information: it had been missing from Bellevue for almost five years, not the only one, the clerk admitted. They were pretty pricey, and chances were it wasn't stolen by a person who needed it but by someone who could turn it into cash. The victim might have been the one who bought it from the thief, might even have commissioned him to steal it for her, meaning that the Bellevue connection was a dead end.

Jane started to get up from the chair, annoyed that she had let herself become involved in the case that was no longer hers. Forgetting that today's mail lay in her lap, she saw it spill to the floor as she rose. She gathered it up swiftly, noticing that a small envelope had freed itself from behind another.

It was handwritten on thin, crinkly pale blue paper in blue ink. The sealed flap provided an address halfway across the country, but no name. Something made her shiver, the flicker of a remote possibility. The address meant nothing to her, but that didn't calm her. What was remote was not always impossible. This was the wrong moment for the long arm of the past to reach into the present. I can't deal with this, she thought, at least, not now. Too much was happening, too much going on. There was Dad and the move and the new assignment. She knew those were just excuses, but she needed something to allay the panic. She carried the mail to the kitchen and put the small letter at the bottom of the pile on the counter. Along with the City Hall Park Murder, it could wait.

2

THE NEW SQUAD was meeting at nine o'clock Tuesday in lower Manhattan, where the island tapers off and the East River and the Hudson River merge as they empty into the ocean. It is the home of courts, federal, state, and local, a short walk from Chinatown and Little Italy, a stone's throw from the Brooklyn Bridge.

A large area on the third floor of 137 Centre Street had been set up for them. The building was diagonally across the street from 100 Centre Street, the home of criminal courts and Central Booking. There wasn't a cop in Manhattan who hadn't spent far too many hours of his life there, mostly waiting and drinking bad coffee.

A few detectives were already milling around when Jane arrived at a quarter to nine. She had seen them all yesterday at the all-day briefing, but she recognized one from her tour in Manhattan South Burglary back in the eighties. Approaching him to say hello, she wondered what indiscretion had landed him here among the misfits on the job. He likely didn't know himself, and had been stewing over it ever since he got the word.

They walked over to the coffee machine together and then he excused himself and left the area. Sipping her coffee, Jane glanced at her new temporary home. Along one long outer wall were the team offices, each with a window. Two large offices obviously intended for the brass formed one of the short back walls. The second long side of the room had doors that opened out to the hallway, where the elevator and stairs were, and a good-sized kitchen complete with stove, refrigerator, and a couple of tables, one already stained with fresh coffee.

The center of the large suite functioned as a briefing area, with about twenty chairs facing the two large offices, in front of which a lectern stood. When Jane finished her coffee, she took an end seat in the second row.

A small, diverse group had assembled, men and women, black and white, old and less old. The only other person in the group, a trim black woman wearing a skirt suit and high-heeled shoes—a desk job for her, out of the bag and the weather—took a seat at the other end of the third row. There wasn't much chance they would serve on the same team; the overriding goal of diversity would distribute them in separate groups.

Someone cleared his throat into a microphone, and Jane looked up to see a man in plainclothes and shaped like a block of ice at the lectern. What appeared to be a lieutenant's shield was pinned to his jacket. “You wanna find seats, detectives? It's nine o'clock and we wanna get the show on the road.”

There was some last-minute scurrying at the coffee machine and then silence.

“I want to welcome you to the task force. I'm Lt. Ellis McElroy, and I'll be your second-in-command. That's my office”—he pointed behind him to the office on the right— “and I'm always available. I want you to know I'm happy to be here, we're here for a good reason, we're a great group of detectives, and I look forward to meeting and working with every one of you. Now it's my pleasure to introduce Capt. Frank Graves, who will tell us all what's going on.”

There was a smattering of applause as Francis X. Graves rose from the chair he had been sitting in, mostly hidden behind the huge McElroy. Graves, who was known to most detectives on the job, was also a familiar face on the evening news. He had been blessed with the kind of looks Hollywood admired, a muscular body and a head of perfect silver hair that saw the stylist's brush and scissors more frequently than most women's. He was in uniform today, probably for the last time, and when he smiled, his teeth were enviably even and unstained.

Frank Graves, with his long and upwardly mobile career with the NYPD, was maneuvering toward his ultimate goal, chief of detectives. Having worked in and directed a number of special units, he had gotten his ticket punched in all the right boroughs. From here on up it was all about exposure and politics. Raise the rate of cases cleared—with results—publicize a couple of dead cases brought to life and followed with successful prosecutions, and the prize might be his.

He spoke for about ten minutes, amazingly an engaging speaker. Although Jane anticipated everything he would cover, she found herself listening, a tingle of excitement arising at the prospect of success. His voice was cultured, his words motivating, his phrases well-turned. He understood politics as well as a senator, seduction as well as a suitor. When he finished, he removed his glasses and turned the floor back to the second whip, who held a printout in front of his face.

“OK, we are twelve detectives, and I will read the names of each team and the office you will occupy. You can go back there and get your file from Annie. Annie, you want to give us a wave?”

A thirtyish woman smiled and waved her right hand.

“Team one, Salazar, Jones, MacDougal. That's your room down there.” He pointed to the most distant office on the long wall. The black woman rose and joined two men, and all of them ambled down to the appointed office. “Team two, Bauer, Defino, MacHovec. Room two.”

Jane got up and joined her new partners as McElroy called out the names of the third team. When she got to the door of the second office, the police administrative aide, known universally as the PAA, was just arriving with a thick file.

“There you go,” Annie said. “That's your baby,” and she dropped the file in Jane's hands and walked toward the next door.

Jane put the file on one of the three desks in the office. “I'm Jane Bauer,” she said to the thin, dark-haired man already in the room.

“Gordon Defino,” he said, grasping her extended hand.

“And Sean MacHovec makes three.”

At the door was the last third of the team, a man of medium height, fading sandy-colored hair, and a blond brush mustache. He looked a mess, mismatched clothes, worn cuffs, tie loosened. “What'd you guys do to end up on the fuckup team?”

Defino shook his head. “Take a desk. We can talk about fuckups later.”

It seemed good advice. Jane sat at the desk she had put the file on. She opened the top drawer and took out the key, then opened the large file drawer on the bottom right and put her bag in it. The bag was lighter today than usual. Instead of the heavy Glock that she normally carried, she had substituted her off-duty five-shot .38-caliber Smith & Wesson Chief. Then she took off her raincoat and hung it behind the door on the coat tree, noting that it looked like an antique.

“I'll take this one,” MacHovec said, leaving Defino with the desk near the window.

“Fine with me.”

She could feel the tension between the two men. Defino was a sharp-looking detective, MacHovec a slob with a polyester shirt pulling out of polyester pants, a tie that had seen too many dinners with splashy food, a jacket from the Dark Ages.

“How do you want to begin?” Defino said.

“With coffee.” MacHovec grinned. “I'll get it. Regular?”

“Black,” Jane said.

MacHovec left the room and Jane looked at Defino and smiled. “He'll be OK. First thing, let's go through the file from the bottom. I can read the beginning aloud so we all get the picture. Then we can take pieces and rotate.”

“Suits me.”

“And then we'll divide up the work. Maybe start by finding the detective who originally caught the case.”

“We'll have to recanvass.”

“No problem.”

MacHovec came back with three Styrofoam cups of coffee and set them down on Jane's desk. “First thing, we oughta get supplies,” he said. “There's a cabinet over near the coffee machine.”

“Yeah, why don't we do it before the rest of them make a dash for it,” Defino said with irritation.

Jane knew what was coming next. MacHovec was a recognizable type. He would stock up on pads and pencils beyond anything he could reasonably use, and when he left this evening, half of it would accompany him home.

It was a bad start. Jane capped her coffee cup and they walked across the briefing area to the tall green cabinet. She stood back and let MacHovec go first. If there were some prized goodies he was after, let him have them and maybe he'd settle down.

Sure enough, he grabbed enough pads for a year's notes, and a handful of pens and pencils, and started back to the office.

“Where'd they dig this guy up from?” Defino said, standing aside to let Jane in first.

“One of the rag shops in the outer boroughs,” she said, taking a pad, a box of paper clips, a couple of pencils, a couple of pens, and the Detective Division forms they would need to file their reports. She would have to remember to lock her desk every night and take the key or MacHovec would go searching to see if she had something he needed.

By the time she and Defino had collected their supplies, the other teams began to descend on the cabinet. MacHovec was in his shirtsleeves when they got back, sitting on his desk and drinking his coffee.

“The phone works,” he said. “Looks like they got this set up pretty good.”

Each desk had a multiline phone set. Jane wrote her number down. Dad would be home around noon and he needed to know how to reach her. The in baskets on all three desks were half-full, and they all started reading and tossing while they finished their coffee. There was a sheet on fire safety, on parking (practically none), on how to use the voice-mail system. There was a list of every detective in the squad, useful phone and fax numbers, and several pages that explained the squad's mission. It sounded familiar, as though it might be a copy of Graves's speech.

There was one electric typewriter in the room and one computer terminal. That was pretty good. And the desks looked remarkably new. Aside from a couple of loose paper clips and an eraser, Jane's desk was empty and unmarred. No old coffee stains, no carved initials, no decades of history in its drawers.

The men were on the phone giving their new numbers to their wives. Defino spoke in a low voice, MacHovec in a louder one. Jane dropped the cup in her wastebasket and hoped she could avoid partnering with MacHovec when they went out in the field.

They hung up at almost the same moment.

“Want to start?” Defino said. “Looks like a fourpounder.”

Jane pulled the fat file over. “Suppose I read as a start,” she said. “I'll pass the exhibits around when I get to them.”

Defino walked over and closed the door, then returned to his desk. He had a notebook open to the first page and a ballpoint next to it. “Let's get started. This'll take all day.”

It was a reasonable time estimate. The folder, like most homicide files at the end of an investigation, was fat and heavy, laden with interviews, sketches, crime scene pictures, autopsy reports, and forensic reports. What was different here was that this file was fat at the beginning. Usually a homicide investigation began with an empty jacket with only an assigned case number. Little by little, interview by interview, piece by piece of information it would grow. This time it was almost complete, lacking only a viable suspect and the crucial piece of evidence for conviction. All the rocks had been turned. The witnesses had given their opinions, asserted what they knew to be true.

They would work from the bottom up. Each new addition to a file was placed on top. The topmost sheet in this case was a DD5 from the detective who had last checked on the case, some seven months ago, the routine annual check of open cases. Jane turned the file over and opened it as though it were a Chinese or Arabic book, from left to right. Then she flipped over to the first sheet, the report of a body found in the hallway of an old law tenement on West Fifty-sixth Street, and started to read.

The call had come in on a spring morning four and a half years ago from the first person in the building to leave for work that day, Henry Soderberg, who lived on the second floor. The body of Arlen Quill lay sprawled inside the front door of the building, making it impossible for Mr. Soderberg to pass. Rather than go back upstairs, he knocked on the door of Mrs. Elaine Best, whose threshold was inches from Quill's shoes. She had screamed at the sight, let Mr. Soderberg in, and allowed him to use her telephone as she whimpered in her nightdress. The call was logged by 911 operator 173 at 7:27 A.M.

The sector car from the Midtown North Precinct arrived four minutes later. Officer Ned Carr was first on the scene, ascertained that Quill was dead—of a knife wound, it was later determined—and notified the dispatcher at Central that he needed an ambulance, a supervisor, and other assorted units. He also called the station house desk officer and requested a response by the squad detectives.

Because of the position of the body in front of the door to the street, the people living in the building had to be detoured around the crime scene to a back door and a roundabout route back to the street. Mr. Soderberg was the first to leave, followed by Margaret Rawls from apartment 3A. Officer Carr tried to keep her in the building until the detectives came, as the deceased had lived on her floor, but she was adamant that she must not be late for work and she left.

The detectives arrived less than a minute later. The catching detective was Charles Bracken, and his partner was Otis Wright.

“I know Otie,” MacHovec said at that point. “He retired last year.”

“Is he in the area?” Jane asked.

“I don't know. He could've moved south. He's got family in North Carolina. Maybe South Carolina. I can never tell the difference.”

“What about Bracken?”

“Never heard of him.”

Jane returned to the file. “Looks like it took the crime scene unit a long time to get there.”

“It was rush hour,” Defino said. “They were coming down from Fordham Place in the Bronx. Lots of traffic.”

That was true. The crime scene unit was housed in the Forty-ninth Precinct in the Bronx. By the time they arrived, everyone in the building was up and knew what had happened. While the crime scene people did their work, Bracken and Wright began canvassing the people in the building, starting with Mrs. Best.