VC03 - Mortal Grace (68 page)

Cardozo pointed. “You can make yourself comfortable in that little room over there. How do you like your coffee?”

“I dunno. Sugar and cream.”

“Optimist.” Cardozo threaded his way between old metal desks. An antique coffeemaker sat gurgling on the padlocked cabinet where detectives stored their revolvers. He poured two plastic cups of tarlike liquid, then added to each a plastic spoonful of nondairy creamer and an envelope of sweetener.

It was late in the shift and the squad room was deserted except for Detective Greg Monteleone.

“What’s happening?” Cardozo asked.

Monteleone shrugged. “A ten-thirty came in five minutes ago.” Ten-thirty was cop-code for reported stickup, and they’d been on the rise throughout the Upper East Side. “A male Caucasian with a box cutter held up a Mr. Softee ice-cream truck on Madison.”

“What kind of moron is this town breeding?” Cardozo shook his head. “Criminals used to have brains.”

“Hey.” Monteleone lowered his voice. “Is that Mickey Williams in your office?”

“Yeah, but keep it under your hat.”

“What kind of trouble is he in?”

“The worst.” Cardozo crossed to his cubicle and nudged the door shut behind him.

Mickey Williams stood by the window, watching a pigeon pinwheel in the amber light of the alley. “Pigeons are funny creatures. I could watch them all day.”

“Parrots are better comedians.” Cardozo set the two cups down on the desk. He opened the middle drawer of his file cabinet, found the camcorder, and checked to make sure it was loaded and working. “You’re not camera-shy, are you, Mickey?”

“Hell no, nothing bothers me.”

“Unless you’ve got guts of steel, that coffee might.”

Mickey sipped. “I’ve been served worse in the White House.”

Cardozo angled the desk lamp. “Why don’t you sit right there in that chair.” He placed the camcorder on the desk and sighted Williams through the viewfinder. “Is it Mickey or Michael?”

“It’s always been Mickey.”

Cardozo pressed
record
and enunciated into the microphone. “Mickey Williams, interviewed by Lieutenant Vincent Cardozo, four forty-five
P.M.
, September eighth.” He clicked on the power in his desktop computer, a Model-T Macintosh that you couldn’t have sold for scrap. “Mickey, before we review the events that happened this weekend, do you want to have a lawyer present?”

“Is that required?”

“No, but you’re entitled to one.”

Mickey shrugged. “Why bother?”

Cardozo had an itching sense that this was all falling into his lap a little too easily: the killer waits at the crime scene to give himself up; comes voluntarily to the precinct; gives up the right to a lawyer as though he were saying “no thanks” to a second helping of french fries.

“Would you do me a favor? Speak slowly and clearly.”

Mickey obliged. It was almost a verbatim repeat of the statement he’d given at the crime scene, only this time every monotone syllable was on tape. He described murdering two defenseless senior citizens with all the emotion of a weatherman reading the forecast off a TelePrompTer.

When he’d finished, he shifted back in his seat, sighing as though it had been a long, tiring day. The chair beneath him creaked ominously but held. “How’d I do?”

“Just fine.”

There was a knock at the door.

“Come in,” Cardozo shouted.

Detective Ellie Siegel, dark-haired and brown-eyed, stepped into the cubicle. A cool, fresh breeze seemed to pass through the room.

“Would either of you guys like some apricot juice?” She held a thermos and two paper cups. Over the past several years she had insinuated herself into the position of chief nudge in Cardozo’s life. Since he was a widower, she made it a point to worry about his nutrition, and she was always offering to share homemade yogurts and juices. Cardozo found her mothering sort of sweet—so long as there were no witnesses.

“It’ll zing your blood sugar,” she said.

“Sure.” Mickey Williams stretched out a hand.

“I’ll pass,” Cardozo said. “Ellie, Mickey Williams. Mickey, Detective Siegel.”

Mickey Williams raised his eyes shyly. Liquid, dark brown eyes floated in a suddenly sheepish face.

Ellie leaned over the computer keyboard, cleared Cardozo’s file, and entered the code for the FBI’s national crime stats. She angled the monitor away from Mickey, but he was sipping juice and watching his pigeon and he didn’t seem to notice.

The computer bubbled and hiccuped, and in a moment the twenty-year criminal record of Williams, Michael Armitage, Jr., glowed from the screen.

Cardozo scanned eight charges of sexual misconduct, mostly with young girls; two confinements to prison, and one to a mental hospital. The rape and attempted mutilation of a twelve-year-old Korean orphan had resulted in a judge’s paroling Mickey to a “fellowship community” directed by a man named Corey Lyle. There were several drunk-driving charges.

Cardozo frowned. “Mickey, would you excuse us just a moment?”

“Sure thing.”

Cardozo cleared the screen and motioned Ellie into the squad room. He closed the door. “Corey Lyle—that’s the cult leader who supposedly ordered the White Plains bombing because Internal Revenue was harassing him?”

She nodded. “And the government’s been trying to indict him for seven years.”

He took a small morocco-leather address book from an evidence bag in his jacket. “I found this in Amalia Briar’s bedroom.” He turned to the page where the name
Corey L.
and a phone number had been block-printed and underlined.

“Be careful, Vince. This case could turn out to be a carton of firecrackers.”

Cardozo’s phone rang. “Cardozo.”

“Vince? Dan.”

He recognized the easygoing baritone of Manhattan’s deputy assistant chief medical examiner.

“I’ve completed the preliminary examination on the Briars. Something surprising turned up and I’d rather not discuss it over the phone.”

“John and Amalia Briar both suffocated.” Standing at the sink in his office two stories below East 30th Street, Dan Hippolito quartered four apples with a pair of autopsy scissors and fed them down the screaming chute of a Juicematic machine. “Luckily for us, their two pillows had begun to leak goose down.” He tipped the juice into two coffee mugs. His jogging shoes padded across the concrete floor and he set a mug on the table beside Cardozo’s elbow.

Cardozo scowled. “What’s this?”

“It’s good for you.”

“When did you join the health fascists? Ellie’s on my case all the time.”

“Ellie’s a smart girl. Drink it while it’s potent. Exposed to light, Vitamin C has a half-life of eight minutes.”

Cardozo lifted his cup of juice and took a testing swallow. It was unbelievably sweet, unbelievably good.

Dan strolled back to his desk. He turned a page of a laser-printed draft report. “There were feather particles on John Briar’s face and lips. There were feather particles inside his mouth and esophagus. But there were no feather particles in Amalia Briar’s mouth or esophagus. None on her lips or even on her face.”

Cardozo studied Dan’s brown eyes, large and luminous beneath his receding hairline. “And what does that suggest to you?”

Dan moved his mug in a circular motion, stirring up waves in the apple juice. “Small veins at the back of John Briar’s eyes had hemorrhaged—we call them ‘petechiae’—they’re a pretty reliable sign of forcible asphyxiation.”

“What about Amalia’s eyes?”

“That’s the odd thing. The veins were unruptured.”

Cardozo sat forward in his chair. Something had shifted and he wanted to understand it.

“In my opinion,” Dan said, “John Briar was murdered and Amalia suffocated on her own phlegm. She died a natural death.”

Ellie Siegel turned the final page of the preliminary autopsy report. She exhaled a long, sighing breath.

“Explain it to me,” Cardozo said. “Mickey admits committing two murders and one of them’s not a murder.”

“This is only a preliminary report.” Ellie’s finger tapped her coffee cup. The clear polished nails caught glints of light from the fluorescent desk lamp. “Dan could have overlooked something.”

“No.” Cardozo shook his head vehemently. “Not Dan.”

Ellie didn’t answer. She pushed up from her desk and walked to the squad room window and stared out. Above the western skyline, pink welts stretched across the darkening heavens.

“There are a lot of unanswered questions,” Cardozo said. “Why was Mickey waiting in the apartment? Why didn’t he get the hell out of there and save his ass?”

“Maybe he wants to be punished.”

“Then why doesn’t he show remorse?”

“Some men don’t like to show their feelings. You don’t.”

Cardozo had trained himself to ignore Ellie’s jibes. Her aim was laudable: the improvement and sensitizing of Vince Cardozo. But her tactics could be a pain. “How did Mickey get into the apartment? He didn’t have a key; the building staff were on strike; the Briars were bedridden. So who let him in? And why the hell did he even
want
to kill John Briar?”

Down on 63rd Street, two ambulances raced by, sirens screeching a fierce duet.

Ellie turned. “It’s only been six hours, Vince. Give yourself a break. You may not have all the answers yet, but at least you have the killer.”

“Then why’s he lying about killing Amalia Briar?”

“Maybe he doesn’t know he’s lying. Maybe Amalia was already dead when he suffocated her.”

Cardozo studied the crime scene photo of Amalia: a dear old grandma who seemed to have dozed off contentedly in bed, smiling as if in recognition of an amusing irony. Mounds of pillows, percale cases. The way to go.

He compared it to the photo of John Briar, sprawled on a green-bordered oriental rug—his silk robe open, exposing malnourished nakedness and an adult diaper. The eyes, gaping in terror and shock, were the horrible detail.

“Even if Amalia
was
dead,” he said, “there’d be pressure marks on the face; postmortem bruises; feathers;
something
.”

“At this point, I frankly don’t see that you’ve got a beef.” Ellie’s gaze rested on Cardozo, thoughtful and quietly concerned. “Maybe Mickey’s mistaken about Amalia. Or maybe he’s lying. But he’s not lying about John Briar.”

“I want him to take a lie detector test.”

Ellie’s eyes were suddenly shrewd and alert. “Be careful, Vince. You don’t know who’s going to be watching over your shoulder.”

Cardozo nodded. “First thing tomorrow, before the polygraph, we’ll get Mickey a lawyer from Legal Aid.”

THREE

Wednesday after Labor Day

10:30
A.M.

T
ODAY WAS SUPPOSED TO
be Cardozo’s RDO, his regular day off, and he’d already wasted an hour of it waiting in a windowless room beneath Criminal Court. It was almost ten-thirty when the Legal Aid lawyer finally showed up. Keys rattled and two figures stood silhouetted in the doorway.

“Vince Cardozo?” The woman held out a hand. “Tess diAngeli.” She was short and slender with lively dark eyes. “I’m the assistant D.A. assigned to the case, and I’ve been hunting all over for you.”

“I’m sorry. Didn’t they tell you we were here?”

“They said you were in Mr. Williams’s cell. We’ve had a tour of the whole damned jail.” She turned to Mickey Williams, hand extended. “Hi. Tess diAngeli.”

Mickey Williams, seated at the conference table, looked up from the
New York Post
horoscope. He smiled bashfully. “Are you going to be prosecuting me?”

“At this point it’s too early to say. But the court’s appointed David Moriarty here to represent you.”

Moriarty stepped into the conference room and thunked an overstuffed briefcase onto the table. “Hi there, Mickey.” He was a young man with thick eyeglasses and a grating voice. “You’re a Texas man, aren’t you?”

“Texarkana-born.”

“I thought so.”

“Vince,” Tess diAngeli said. “You don’t mind if I call you Vince, do you?”

“Ask Ellie,” Cardozo said. “She handles my social life. Detective Siegel, Counselor diAngeli.”

Ellie rose from the table. “Good to meet you.”

Perplexity clouded diAngeli’s face. “I don’t recall seeing you on the list of detectives assigned to the case.”

“Vince assigned me.”

DiAngeli glanced over at Cardozo. She opened a notepad and made a quick notation. “David and I have both read Mr. Williams’s statement. I’m satisfied and so’s David.”

“Is that true, Dave?” Cardozo said. “Are you satisfied?”

David Moriarty flashed a grin that ought to have been taken to the orthodontist twenty years ago. “Absolutely.” He pulled a skimpy manila folder from his briefcase. “And if Mickey will just initial each page at the bottom and sign the last one, we’re in business.”

The lawyer turned the sheets of the transcribed confession, and Mickey bent over the table and signed without bothering to read. Moriarty and diAngeli witnessed his signature.

“Then I have one request,” Cardozo said.

Moriarty’s eyes shot up. “Which is?”

“I’d like your client to take a lie detector test.” It was Tess diAngeli who broke the silence. “Vince, let’s talk.” She rapped for the guard to open the door and motioned Cardozo into the dimly lit corridor. “A skillful defense could use a polygraph to get the case thrown out.”

“Are you calling your man Moriarty skillful?”

“He crosses his
t’s
, and that’s why he was chosen.”

“Then why doesn’t it trouble him or you that Amalia Briar’s autopsy contradicts Mickey’s confession? Or am I the only one in this city who’d like to know what really happened in that apartment?”

Anger flashed through diAngeli’s eyes. “Look—that autopsy was only a preliminary. And the clock’s ticking. If we don’t hurry up and get Mickey arraigned, we’ll have to release him, and this whole discussion—pleasant as it is—will be water under the bridge.”

Cardozo settled himself next to Ellie on a bench in State Criminal Court part 312. A harried-looking judge slapped one manila file shut and opened the next. “Mickey Armitage Williams, Jr.?”