Blood Innocents Part 12

Then Reardon had fired. And for every day of the rest of his life he had recalled the thunderousness of his gun's report, which had seemed to deafen everything, plunging the world into a heavy, mourning silence. Wilson's chest had seemed to explode from below his skin, a bloom of crimson opening across his chest like the petals of a rose. He staggered backward, his face frozen in a look of childlike amazement, and it was the look on that face that had haunted Reardon forever afterward; he had never been able to describe it to anyone, not even to Millie, but he knew it would stay in his mind, like an unanswerable riddle, until the day he died.

It was the chill of the handle on his fingers that brought Reardon's mind back now. He looked at the nameplate on the door. Patricia Lee McDonald. He released the handle and slid his hand deep into the pocket of his overcoat. Patricia Lee McDonald had been violated enough for one life, he thought, and the fallow deer too, and all the others. He turned and left the morgue.

12.

WEEKEND.

On Sat.u.r.day morning Mathesson telephoned Reardon to tell him he had not been able to dig anything up on Lee McDonald. Mathesson said that on Friday he had gone to the law firm where she had worked for the last five years, but that no one knew very much about her. She had no friends at the firm and did not seem to have confided anything about her private life to anyone.

"I talked to just about everybody in the office," Mathesson said, "except for some high rollers off on a junket to Las Vegas."

"And you got nothing at all?"

"Nothing."

"All right," Reardon said. "See you Monday."

There was still another possibility and late in the weekend Reardon tried it.

On Sunday afternoon funeral services for Patricia Lee McDonald were held at Saint Jude's Catholic Church in Brooklyn. Reardon went. He sat in the back of the church, his hat resting on his lap, his overcoat neatly folded beside him, and listened to the drone of the Ma.s.s, the old beseechments for the forgiveness of Lee McDonald's sins and the salvation of her soul. At the front of the church he could see the coffin, closed, unadorned by flowers, resting before the altar. For a moment he imagined the body inside, chill, pallid, bloodless, the pathologist's incisions sewed up with thick black thread.

Besides Reardon and the priest, there were only three other people in the church. Reardon remembered his father's funeral. It had been a crowded affair, cops and their families squeezing together in the pews, and the people from the neighborhood decked out in their Sunday best. His mother had told him at the time it was the kind of funeral that happened only "when a good man dies."

This funeral was different. When the services were over, Reardon made his way to the front of the church. An older couple he a.s.sumed to be Lee McDonald's parents were getting into a car behind the hea.r.s.e. A younger man stood silently beside a red Volkswagen, waiting for the hea.r.s.e to leave for the cemetery.

Reardon stood on the church steps beside the priest until the funeral procession had pulled away. Then he took out his gold s.h.i.+eld and wordlessly displayed it to the priest.

The priest looked at him. "I see," he said quietly.

"I wonder if I might have a moment of your time, Father?"

"I have to be on my way to the cemetery shortly," the priest said.

"I know," Reardon said. "It won't take long."

"Go ahead then." The priest put out his hand. "I'm Father Perry." He was an old man, but the skin of his face was still tightly drawn across high cheekbones. He had once been a handsome man, Reardon surmised, which, in itself, must have been an almost irresistible occasion for sin. His hair was close-cropped and very white, which gave him the appearance of a retired military officer. He stood erect, but Reardon could detect a certain weakness in his legs, as if they were aging more rapidly than the body they supported.

"Did you know Miss McDonald very well?" Reardon asked. It felt incongruous, this litany of investigation on the steps of a church. On the sunny Brooklyn street cars went past. A boy walked past bouncing a rubber ball.

"I knew Patty all her life," Father Perry said. "I baptized her."

"You called her Patty?"

"Everyone did. I understand from her father that later on she started going by her other name. Lee."

"Why was that?" Reardon asked.

Father Perry cleared his throat. He seemed to be trying to calculate what was proper for him to say and what to hold back. "Well, you see," he said finally, "Patty had a lot of trouble in her life."

"What kind of trouble?"

"Family trouble," Father Perry admitted gently. He looked about hesitantly, as if a.s.suring himself that he and Reardon were not being overheard. "Mostly what I see is the sin of gossip," he said. "You hear so much sometimes that you come to think the walls must be giving up their secrets."

"What kind of trouble was she having with her parents?" Reardon asked.

"Well, she wanted to go one way. They wanted her to go another way. That sort of thing."

"What way?"

"Well, to tell you the truth, they wanted her to be just like them. It's very common." He spoke gently, kindly, like a man who had seen a great deal of distress in his life, none of it very original.

Reardon adopted Father Perry's language. "What way did they want her to go?"

"They wanted her to be a family person." Father Perry smiled faintly. "Blooming with child every ten months, inviting them over for the Saint Patrick's Day feast or Christmas dinner, living like they lived, wanting what they wanted."

Reardon nodded. "And what way did she want for herself?"

"She wanted to get out of Brooklyn for one thing," Father Perry said. He glanced dully at the long line of row houses on the opposite side of the street and the endless stretch of late-model cars parked in front of them. "She always hated Brooklyn. Even as a child. You should have seen the disgust in her face. I remember telling her once * almost as a joke, you understand * that it's the sin of vanity to hate a place so much."

"She thought she had better things to do?"

"Oh, yes, positively," Father Perry said. "I think she had * what is it they call them these days?" * He smiled ironically, indulgently * "artistic drives."

Reardon nodded.

"She paid a terrible price, Mr. Reardon," Father Perry added.

"Yes, she did."

"But she couldn't have stayed here in Brooklyn. She'd have gone insane. She was like a tiger in a zoo, that one. And she thought Brooklyn was her cage, but she probably thought her family was the worst cage of all." Father Perry looked out in the direction of Manhattan. "It reminds me of a story, you know. I can't remember where I heard it. But it seems there was a woman who complained to her priest that in the place where she lived her father had been eaten by tigers, and her mother, and her husband and all her children. All of them, eaten by tigers. So naturally the priest asked the woman why she kept living in such a terrible place. And she said that at least in that place there was no oppression." Father Perry smiled benignly. "For Patty anything was better than living with her family in Brooklyn." He nodded toward Manhattan. "Even out there, among the tigers."

"When did she leave Brooklyn?" Reardon asked.

"When she was twenty, I think."

"Where did she go?"

"Where else? Manhattan. That's the Lourdes of the artistically driven, I hear."

"And that upset her family? Her moving to Manhattan, I mean?"

"It more than upset them," Father Perry said. "But I think there was more to it than that. I'm just an old priest, not G.o.d. I don't know everything. But I think there was something else. Anyway, they disowned her. Told her she was dead as far as they were concerned." He rubbed his eyes sleepily. "It's been a long day," he said.

"Yeah," Reardon said.

Father Perry glanced at his watch. "I'm sorry," he said, "but I have to be on my way. They'll be at the cemetery soon, and n.o.body appreciates having these things drawn out."

"I understand," Reardon said. "Thank you, Father."

"Anyway," Father Perry said, "there's somebody else who could tell you more about Patty than I could. I just hear things from her parents, and they don't know much, to tell you the truth. Patty pretty much wrote them off. However, you might try her husband, Jamie O'Rourke."

"Her husband?"

"Used to be," Father Perry said. "As far as the Church is concerned they're still married. You didn't know she was married, that she had a husband?"

"No," Reardon said. "Where is he?"

"You just missed him. He was at the funeral. The only one here besides Patty's parents. Tall young man. You must have seen him. He left for the cemetery in that little red car of his."

"Yes, I know who you mean," Reardon said. "Where does he live?"

"Not far from here," Father Perry said. He gave Reardon the address and Reardon carefully wrote it down in his notebook.

"Thank you for your trouble, Father."

"It's like they say," Father Perry replied, "trouble is my business."

He turned away from Reardon and began to descend the worn stone steps. He moved unsteadily, tightly gripping the banister, slowly lowering himself from one step to another, like an old shepherd moving reluctantly, dutifully, toward his leaden-eyed and inconsolable flock.

13.

That night Reardon did not go to bed until almost dawn. Instead he watched television, or at least he stared at the television set. Watching the next program, he could not have described the previous one. The dramas and comedies pa.s.sed one after the other without for a single moment deflecting Reardon's mind from the killing of the fallow deer.

Again he went over the details of the case. Two dead deer. Two dead women. Fifty-seven blows on one body and only one ma.s.sive blow on the other. The word "dos" and Roman numeral "two." A witness who saw the girls with a third party shortly before they were killed but could not identify the third party. Lesbianism. A sound in the zoo at about the time the deer were being killed, a sound simultaneously m.u.f.fled and harsh. No weapon. No, witnesses to the crime itself. And Andros Petrakis.

Reardon went over each of the people a.s.sociated with the case so far. And each time only Andros Petrakis stood out. He had reason to hate Wallace Van Allen, whose a.s.sociates had evicted him from his apartment. He had openly expressed hatred of his landlord. He had been present near the scene of the crime shortly before it was committed. And there was at least a chance that he had already lied through his daughter. In addition to these tangible connections there was added the fact that he had been under an enormous strain in the past few weeks. The death of his wife had stunned him, and her illness had impoverished him. Cases, Reardon knew, had been built on less material than he had on Andros Petrakis. There was, for example, the case of Kevin Martin Dowd.

The body of twelve-year-old Kevin Dowd had been found in an alley off East 101st Street on a rainy Sat.u.r.day morning in 1963, the face mutilated almost beyond recognition, the ears actually severed from the head and evidently taken by the killer. There were no clues, and it had struck Reardon at the time that this kind of crime, if not repeated, might easily go unsolved forever.

Then it happened. The odd, unexplainable circ.u.mstance which cried out for explanation. Reardon, while routinely going through the personal effects of Kevin Dowd, discovered a school paper, a short book report not unlike thousands of others that public school teachers a.s.signed their students during a school year. On the back of the paper the teacher had a.s.signed the grade "F." and had written in huge letters across the face of the front page: "STUPID! STUPID! STUPID!" And Reardon had been driven to learn what kind of person would scrawl such an angry and humiliating comment on the insignificant book report of a twelve-year-old boy.

An investigation showed that the teacher, Randolph Devereaux, had repeatedly attacked Kevin Dowd in cla.s.s, often reducing him to tears. On one occasion Devereaux had forced the boy to stand at the front of the room with his arms outstretched, holding two heavy books in each hand. This had lasted for several minutes until the boy's arms had collapsed from the strain.

Two weeks later Reardon went to Devereaux's apartment and introduced himself as a detective from the New York City Police Department. Reardon would always remember how Devereaux's body had suddenly slumped, every feature of his face sinking downward, and how he had sounded almost relieved when he'd said, "You must be looking for the ears."

A one-in-a-million chance, thought Reardon, just like Gustave Lamprey.

Whatever fame Reardon had in the New York City Police Department rested in part on the Lamprey case.

While still a uniformed patrolman Reardon had been called to a disturbance in a movie theater in Chinatown. A young man had made a nuisance of himself by continually shouting obscenities at the characters on the screen. Several people in the theater had unsuccessfully attempted to quiet him. Finally an usher was called and when he told Lamprey that he would either have to keep quiet or leave the theater, Lamprey pulled a machete. "I don't speak Chinese," he said to the usher, even though the usher had addressed him in English.

The usher quickly apologized for disturbing Lamprey, excused himself, and walked briskly back to the lobby of the theater and called the police.

Reardon and another patrolman, Harry Flynn, arrived at the theater lobby ten minutes later. The usher escorted them down the aisle and pointed to the back of Lamprey's head. Reardon told Flynn to cover him from behind and cautiously descended the aisle toward Lamprey. As if warned by some private guardian, Lamprey shot out of his seat just as Reardon reached the row where he was sitting. He turned and faced Reardon, not more than four feet away.

Lamprey was very tall, thin and straight as an icepick, with bright, searching eyes. But the thing that Reardon would remember most was that he wore an unusual metal ring shaped into a dragon's head. The eyes of the dragon were enormous, grotesquely disproportionate with the head, and they were made of deep red gla.s.s, the deepest red that Reardon had ever seen. The hand wearing the ring carried a wicked-looking machete.

"Mister," Reardon said, "there's another policeman behind you and he's pointing a pistol right at your head."

"I don't speak Chinese," Lamprey said.

"I'm talking to you in English," Reardon said. "Now I want you to put your hands behind your head and move very slowly toward me and into this aisle."

Lamprey c.o.c.ked his head as if receiving instructions from some invisible force. Then he smiled at Reardon and complied.

Gustave Lamprey was booked for disorderly conduct and possession of a concealed weapon, and Reardon did not expect to ever hear of him again. But almost twenty years later he did.

It was in the summer and he was examining a corpse found on a tenement roof. The body had been deposited on the roof and left there to bake in the hot July sun. It was bloated, blackened, nude except for a pair of socks. It lay on its back, legs together, arms stretched perpendicular to the trunk like the spread wings of a fallen bird. There was nothing unusual except for tiny bits of red gla.s.s which had been ground almost to a powder and sprinkled ceremoniously over the dead man's chest. It was the color of the gla.s.s which drew Reardon's attention. It was not just red, but deep red, and Reardon could not recall where he had seen that color before, if he ever had. He stared at the body for a while, knowing that something was familiar about it, but he could not tell what.

He walked down the stairs to the street, and as he neared the entrance of the building he glanced at the nameplates on the mailboxes. One of them brought the colored gla.s.s into rigid focus in his mind. It was printed neatly in black type: "Inst.i.tute for Chinese Studies * Gustave Lamprey, Director."

And it was that chance connection * the vague familiarity of the deep red color of gla.s.s, and the sudden memory from twenty years before of the minor arrest of a man with an odd name and an obsession with things Chinese * that had led Reardon to a chain of evidence and an airtight case that had made him famous among his peers.

A one-in-a-million chance, Reardon thought again. He did not believe that any sudden revelations would come forth to solve the case of the fallow deer. It was, he knew, the more mundane details that broke a case, or incriminating evidence left at the scene, or obvious motive, or, better yet, eyewitnesses. In the deer case there was none of these. There was only the crime itself, its brutal details, and a floating cryptogram of numbers: fifty-seven, one, two.

14.

MONDAY.

When he arrived at the precinct house on Monday morning Reardon was informed that the weapon thought to have been used in the killing of the fallow deer had been discovered. It was Piccolini who told him, a delighted smile decorating his face. Even his office seemed to have taken on an airiness Reardon had never noticed.

"Who found it?" Reardon asked.

"Trash detail."

"Where'd they find it?"

"In a sewer under Fifth Avenue."

"Fifth Avenue?" Reardon was surprised. "I expected the killer to head out through the park, not on to Fifth Avenue."