Murder in Hell's Kitchen (9 page)

“So now that you know everything,” Defino said, “think about it. Think about Hutchins. Either we find him dead like the others and we got a killer on the loose or we find him alive and he's our best suspect. What do you think? Do we find him dead or alive?”

Otis smiled. “This a quiz show or something? I don't know how the hell you'll find him. Maybe you won't find him at all. Let me just tell you what I remember. He was maybe thirty-five, could be a little younger. Not real tall, kinda thin light straight hair but not blond, and losing it on the top of his head. Built stocky, not fat, just on the big side. Nervous is what I remember, but they were all nervous, every one of them. You don't go downstairs and see the body of your next-door neighbor and not feel nervous. Plus it took a while before they got the bloodstain off the floor. But he was nice, polite, knew who Quill was, hadn't ever been inside his apartment, but that's New York. Knew him to say hello to, that's about all. Didn't know he'd been married or anything else about him. Didn't know where he worked.”

“You remember where Hutchins worked? I must have seen it in the file but I don't recall.” Jane had her notebook open.

“He worked . . . lemme think . . . he worked for some TV company I never heard of, some desk job, didn't have to dress up to go to work. Dress down, he said. Worked a computer and the telephone. Seemed like a, you know, happy kind of guy, except that he was scared”—he glanced at his wife and changed what he was about to say—“out of his mind about what happened to Quill. If he killed Quill, if he killed all those other people, I tell you, that's news to me.”

“Were you on the case the whole way with Bracken?” she asked.

“Oh, yeah. Charlie and me, we did the whole case together. I only been on sick report a year.”

“A year and a half,” his wife said from her chair at the other end of the room.

“A year and a half. Yeah. Can't believe it's that long.” He adjusted himself in his chair, pulled the oxygen line so it wasn't in front of his feet.

“What did you think about the super?” Jane asked. “Derek.”

“Derek. Jeez. A little light on gray matter, I'd say.”

“Think he's holding back on something?”

“I don't know if he's smart enough to hold back. I think he's just a guy does what he's capable of, which isn't much.” He took a few breaths. “So where do you go from here?”

“I'm asking you,” Defino said.

“I wish I was on that case myself.” His face had taken on a glow since they had all sat down together. The boredom of sitting in one spot and not overworking himself had melted away. The old tug of the job was still there. Once a cop, always a cop; more so with detectives. Jane wondered fleetingly if she would feel this herself after she started working for the insurance company, after she was earning more and sitting in a plush office without having to run around in cold weather with a gun in her bag.

“I guess you go with Omaha,” Otis said. “Guy must drive a car, don't you think? Out there, how else do you get around? If he isn't dead and buried somewhere, you'd think he'd turn up.” He looked at Jane. “How'd you trace him to Omaha?”

She explained the conversation with the man at the place where Hutchins had gone after Soderberg died. “If we don't get anything from Omaha, I'll have to go over there and find out which of those guys is the one who knew where Hutchins had gone to.”

“That's a possibility,” Otis said. “Doesn't seem too much to go on.”

“Well.” Jane looked at her watch. They had been there an hour, and it would take about that long to get back to Centre Street.

“Hey, don't go,” Otis said. “Stay awhile. Betty, you got lunch for these folks? You don't want to go so soon.” He reached for the breathing piece and stuck it in his nostrils again.

“We can stay a little while, but not for lunch. Thanks for the invitation.”

They made small talk, and Jane caught Mrs. Wright smiling quietly. It was just job-related gossip, but Otis ate it up. Tell him about the squad. Who was the whip? No kidding, I remember Graves. Who's getting promoted? What other cases? They solved one? How about that. Nice collar.

Jane had allotted fifteen minutes, but they stayed closer to half an hour. It was worth it. It was Otis Wright's best day in weeks, she figured. Finally they got up and went for their coats.

“Otis get along OK with Charlie?” Jane asked Mrs. Wright as they stood near the front door.

“Charlie's a good man, the best. They love each other. He comes out here and visits when he can. There was no trouble between Otis and Charlie.”

“Shit,” Defino said when they were out on the street. “What a way to end up.” He reached into a pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes, took one out, and went searching for matches as they walked.

“You have to end up some way.”

“Yeah, but not at that age. He can't be more than in his fifties.”

They got back to Jamaica Avenue and headed for the stairs to the elevated line. “Want to have lunch here or wait till we get back?”

“That cake filled me up. Let's get back. Maybe Mac-Hovec's got something for us.”

As they got to the stairs leading to the elevated station, he looked at the cigarette in his hand as though he didn't know where it had come from. He said, “Shit,” softly and dropped it, grinding it under his heel.

The train was just coming into the station as they came up the stairs. They were back at Centre Street by twelve-thirty.

9

THEY WERE GREETED—or accosted—by an angry PAA as they walked into the briefing area.

“Where is MacHovec?” she demanded.

“I don't know. It's not my day to baby-sit him,” Defino said irritably.

“Well, he's not here, and I'm not his private secretary.” She practically flung a pile of message slips at Jane. “He didn't make his rings every two hours; he didn't log in. Who does he think he is, Detective Diva?”

“She's gonna get herself fired,” Defino said as they watched Annie stalk away to her office.

“So is MacHovec,” Jane said.

“He was going somewhere this morning, wasn't he?”

She tried to remember. “One PP. I forget what for.”

“The file on Worthman,” Defino said. “That doesn't take four hours.”

It was one-thirty. Even if it had taken a long time, MacHovec knew better than to be away from the team or the squad office without making his rings. And if he were home sick, his wife would have made the call.

“What are the messages?” Defino asked.

“Omaha, Omaha, someone named Nuñez at One PP.”

“So he got there.”

“Let me call back Omaha and see if they've got anything.”

Jane sat at MacHovec's desk and found a file folder with a record of his calls. Det. John Grant was the contact in Omaha, and he answered quickly.

“This is Det. Jane Bauer in New York. Sorry Sean MacHovec hasn't gotten back to you. He's doing some digging over at headquarters today.”

“No problem. Just wanted to keep you folks up-to-date. Jerry Hutchins has no Iowa license either, and just to cover all bases, I tried Kansas and South Dakota. No luck in either place.”

“So either he's not driving or he's not back in Nebraska.”

“Looks that way. Now I've been calling all the Hutchinses I can find in the phone book and I haven't run into one yet who admits to knowing our Jerry. You'd think there'd be something after he grew up here.”

“So maybe he's back and he's keeping quiet about it and asking all his cousins to do the same.”

“Sounds like that could be it. Can I get you or MacHovec over the weekend if something comes in?”

“I'm moving tomorrow, so it's a little complicated. I'll give you my old number, where I'll be in the morning, and I can check the voice mail here every couple of hours; how's that?” She gave him her number, thinking that maybe these complicated new phones had a reason for existing after all.

“Well, that sounds real good, Jane. Maybe we'll talk in the next day or two.”

“Anything?” Defino asked as she hung up.

“No license in Iowa, South Dakota, or Kansas. I can't help thinking—”

“So the traveling twosome are back.”

It was MacHovec, standing unsteadily in the doorway, a silly smile on his face. Defino opened his mouth to speak, but Jane said quickly, “Get in here, Sean, and close the door.”

He teetered a little, then obeyed her, pushing the door so it slammed shut.

“You're drunk, you son of a bitch,” Defino said in a low voice. “You've got the whole fucking squad looking for you.”

“Had a beer with lunch is all. Looks like I got some messages while I was out solving your crime for you.” He looked at the slips on his desk, still smiling.

“The PAA is ticked,” Jane said quietly. “You didn't call in or sign in.”

“I made all my rings. She just doesn't remember.” He dropped a file on Jane's desk. “Worthman. Still open.” Then he stuck his hand in his pants pocket and pulled out some scraps of paper, looked through them, and let one flutter onto Jane's desk. “I found Hutchins for you. Stopped at the DMV and ran a search. Here's where his license was mailed.”

Jane picked up the crumpled piece of paper. It had Hutchins's name on it, followed by the address of the place she had called Wednesday night. “Nobody there knew him when I called,” she said.

“Or admitted to it.” Defino had picked up the paper.

“He could be there under another name. I'll go over there tonight and see what I can dig up.”

“Let's go now. It's early.”

“That's the problem. It's too early. They're probably all away during the day.”

“You're moving tomorrow. You can't get over there tonight.”

“I'll get there.” She turned to MacHovec. “Sean, you have to play by the rules.” She was angrier than she let on. If he went off on a bender, he could destroy the case and get all three of them flopped back into uniform. Drunks made very bad partners.

“Always,” he said. “I always play by the rules.”

She turned to Defino, who was seething. “This stays in this room. That's it. I have to tell you, this was good thinking, checking the DMV in New York. We're gonna find this guy.”

“If he's alive.”

“He's alive,” MacHovec said. “That license was issued this year. June of this year.” He looked at his messages. “You call Omaha?”

“Yeah. John Grant said no license was issued to Hutchins in Iowa, Kansas, or South Dakota.”

MacHovec grinned. “The Empire State took care of all his troubles.”

Defino sat at the typewriter and banged out the interview with Otis Wright. Jane picked up the Worthman file and started through it. Worthman had been stopped on a dark street not far from the apartment he shared with his mother. He had been stabbed and left to bleed to death on the sidewalk. He was barely alive when a passerby found him, and he did not survive the trip to Harlem Hospital. Jane looked at some of the crime scene glossies. He was handsome, slim with graying hair. She looked through the Fives at the bottom of the file. His body had been found about ten o'clock at night. His mother said he had gone out for a walk to pick up a few things at a nearby grocery store. He did that often, she said. He liked walking.

If he did it often, there was a possibility that someone who had watched him was waiting in the street for him to come out and take his walk, then followed him down the block. So it could have been a hit instead of a mugging, but the investigating officers would never connect it to the deaths of former tenants in another precinct at a West Fifty-sixth Street tenement over a period of a year or two.

There were no witnesses to the murder of Hollis Worthman, or at least none that came forward, and no apparent motive. It was just one of those things that happened, and people felt bad about it, both his friends and the people who lived in the area. It was the sort of crime they unfortunately got used to, so if there was no apparent reason for its happening . . . well, that was the way things were, another big-city stranger-to-stranger crime.

MacHovec drank two cups of coffee and took a mint from the roll he kept on his desk, then went to soften up Annie. He must have been successful because he came back happy. Jane told him about the Omaha detective's wanting a phone number for the weekend, but MacHovec said if Jane checked her voice mail, that would be enough. He had a busy weekend planned. And they weren't going to find anything in Omaha anyway.

Jane tried the number of the apartment where Hutchins had had the license sent. After several rings, a half-asleep man answered, said he was the only one there and he'd never heard of Jerry Hutchins. She would go tonight.

Nothing in the Worthman file indicated anything more or less than a mugging. It was one of those crimes that would remain open forever unless a mugger was picked up with the same MO or some of Worthman's property and a sharp detective made a connection or some friend of the perp ratted him out trying to get a pass on one of his own cases. She was about to ask MacHovec for the autopsy on Soderberg when the second whip came in.

“Well, folks, we're rounding out our first week. Any hot stuff for me before we go home for the weekend?”

“We've got a lead on Jerry Hutchins,” Jane said, nodding to MacHovec.

MacHovec told it straight, his professionalism winning out over his ego.

“So maybe he's still here in the city,” McElroy said.

“I'll look for him tonight,” Jane said. “There's only one guy in the place now, and I woke him up.”

“OK. You know how to get hold of me if anything turns up. Don't hesitate. We closed one yesterday. We'd love to close another one on Monday.” He held it out like a golden carrot.

“Doin' our best, Lieutenant,” MacHovec said.

That must have been good enough for McElroy, because he went on to the next office.

There were no more calls from Omaha, and Jane went back to the Soderberg autopsy. She called Midtown North Precinct and left a message for the officer who had responded to the 911 call. He got back to her a little while later, and she refreshed his memory on the case.

“He was lying there on the landing,” Officer Richardson said. “With this little step stool on top of him and pieces of a broken lightbulb around. Looked like what the super told us, that he'd been screwing in a lightbulb one flight up and lost his balance. He shoulda left it for the super.”

“Any chance he was pushed?” Jane asked.

“There's a chance, sure. Wasn't anybody else home when we got there except the lady who made the nine-one-one call, and she was a wreck. You want my opinion, I don't think she did it.”

Jane didn't either. She thanked Richardson for returning her call and let him go, picking up where she had left off in the autopsy. There were a lot of broken bones, but if Soderberg had been standing high enough up to reach the ceiling fixture, he had gone down a long way. His weight at death was 184 pounds, and the step stool had landed on top of him, possibly breaking a few more bones than the fall itself had.

“See you guys Monday,” MacHovec said, and Defino looked up from his work without saying anything.

“Night, Sean,” Jane said.

Defino waited till MacHovec was gone. “That son of a bitch is big trouble.”

“Let it be, Gordon. He's good at what he does.”

“Using the phone?”

“Someone's gotta do it. We'll watch him. If he makes any mistakes in the case, we'll talk about it. What he did today was just to himself. And checking out Hutchins for a license in New York State was good thinking.”

Defino didn't say anything, and she was pretty sure he agreed but didn't want to give MacHovec credit.

“Looks like everyone's on their way,” he said, looking at his watch. “I'll see you Monday.” He pulled the sheet of paper he was working on out of the typewriter. “Hey, if something comes up, give me a call. I don't want McElroy knowing something I don't know.” The little smile showed he accepted her truce.

“Don't hold your breath. Hutchins is dead, remember?”

He waved. “How could I forget?”

The phone rang as she was getting back into the Soderberg autopsy. It was so quiet in the other offices, the ring almost echoed. Jane picked it up and said, “Hello?” thinking it must be her father.

“Is this Detective Bauer?” a woman's voice asked sweetly.

“It is, yes. How can I help you?”

“This is Otis Wright's wife, Detective Bauer. He asked me to call you. He doesn't do well on the phone, you know.”

“Yes, Mrs. Wright.”

“Well, Otis has been stewing about that case since you left this morning. And he has an idea. He said maybe that man Hutchins, the one you're trying to find in Omaha, got his license here in New York State and had someone send it to him.”

“Otis hit the nail on the head,” Jane said, thinking he was one damn good detective. “A member of our team checked it out this morning, and Hutchins had a license mailed to him at a New York address a few months ago.”

“Well, I always said Otis was a good detective.”

“He is, and you can tell him I said so. We don't know yet if Hutchins is living here or had the license sent somewhere else. I'm going to try to find that out tonight.”

“I hope you'll keep him posted. He's really into this.”

“I promise I will.”

She smiled as she hung up. Then she went back to the autopsy. She looked for minor details: moles; deformed digits; scars or wounds, new or old, that bodies acquire; tattoos. There was a tattoo mentioned, described as snaky.

She pulled out the photos. One was a full-face picture of Soderberg. She looked at it, holding it away from her at eye level. There was something familiar about the face, although she had never seen it before, never seen a picture of Soderberg till she opened the jacket of this file. It was almost as if she knew him from somewhere, but she couldn't put a name on him.

She moved the glossy around in front of her, as though looking at it from another angle might help. Then something occurred to her. She got out the Quill file and opened it, leafing through it till she found the photos. She took a front-face glossy and laid it on the desk next to the one of Soderberg.

“Holy shit,” she whispered. “Sweet little Jesus.” They could almost have been brothers. Quill was younger by a good ten years, but they shared the same long, oval face, the high forehead with the hair receding, the prominent nose, the large eyes. On a dark night you could easily mistake one for the other.

She grabbed the autopsy for Quill and looked at his vital statistics. He weighed about ten pounds less than Soderberg, but they were almost the same height. Quill wore glasses and so did Soderberg. She walked out into the briefing area and looked around. No one was there. She walked over to the offices of the whip and second whip. Both were gone. She went back to her own office and cleared her desk.

It was just possible someone had killed Arlen Quill in error. If the real target was Soderberg, the killer had to wait till the active investigation was over and the police presence in the building was gone so that Soderberg's “accident” would go unnoticed. Maybe it was Soderberg he wanted. Maybe they were trying to solve the wrong case.