When we got to the front steps, I saw vomit on the foundation plantings and that the door knob and lock assembly had been shotgunned out of the door.
Charlie Clapper met us on the doorstep. Even on the weekend, he dressed impeccably; his hair was freshly combed, the creases in his pants were crisp, and his jacket looked like it had just come from the cleaner’s.
But Charlie looked stunned.
“This is as bad as it gets,” he said.
Clapper is director of the forensics unit at Hunters Point, but before he took over the CSU, he was a homicide cop. A very good one. Top dog at a crime scene, he does a first-class job without grandstanding or getting in our way.
I was about to ask him to run the scene for us when Ted Swanson came out of the kitchen, shaking his head and looking pale and as shocked as if one of his arms had been ripped off.
He moaned, “This is fucked up.”
Conklin and I gloved up, slipped booties over our shoes, and entered the kitchen, where we saw the formerly animated robbery cop, Tom Calhoun.
Calhoun was naked, duct-taped to a kitchen chair. He’d been beaten up so badly, I wouldn’t have recognized him but for his bald spot. There was no doubt in my mind. He’d been tortured for a good long time by professionals.
All of his fingers had been broken; his soft white underparts had been burned with cigarettes; his eyelids had been sliced off; and finally, probably mercifully, he’d been shot through his temple.
“He didn’t go fast,” said Swanson, who was standing behind us. “Those fucks cut up Marie, too, before they shot her.”
Clapper said, “Marie was found lying over there by the stove. She’s on her way to the morgue.”
Conklin asked about the kids and Swanson said, “Butch and Davey were asleep when they were shot, looks like. I don’t think they knew anything, right, Charlie?”
Clapper said, “I’d have to agree with you there. They didn’t wake up.”
“I knew these people,” Swanson said. “I had dinner here last week. What the hell was the point of this?”
He began to cry, and I put a hand on his arm and told him how sorry I was. Swanson’s partner, Vasquez, came into the kitchen, saying, “Sergeant, the second floor is off limits. CSI is dusting everything. We should all get out of here and let these people work.”
CHAPTER 52
I TOLD VASQUEZ and Swanson we’d catch up to them later, but first I wanted to chat with Clapper.
The front door opened and closed, and Conklin and I were alone in a brightly lit living room with CSIs taking pictures, dusting for prints, and swabbing for trace.
Conklin and I had to piece all this into a narrative that made sense, something that would explain what now seemed inexplicable.
Conklin said, “What do you think happened here, Charlie?”
“My opinion? A couple of guys wanted something, and they were willing to torture and murder four people in order to get it,” he said. “What did they want? Don’t know. Did they get it? Don’t know that, either. It wasn’t a robbery. Nothing was tossed. There’s small cash and jewelry on the dresser in the bedroom.”
He didn’t have to tell us to be careful. We followed in his footsteps as he showed us that the lock had been shot off the back door as well as the front. That told us that at least two shooters were involved.
Dr. Germaniuk, the medical examiner on call, came back into the house and said he was taking Tom Calhoun to the ME’s office now if that was OK. Clapper said, “Go ahead. We got what we need.”
Then Clapper said to my partner and me, “The wife had duct tape residue on her wrists and ankles and across her mouth, so she’d also been taped to a chair. I’m guessing she was cut loose and beaten while her husband was still alive and watching.”
I said, “Oh, my God” a few times, and Conklin looked like he wanted to punch the wall. I asked Clapper to go on.
“Here’s how it probably went down,” Clapper said. “The family was upstairs, probably asleep. The doers shot out the locks and entered. Calhoun probably came downstairs.”
“He had to be armed,” I said.
“His nine was found in the living room. Fully loaded. The gun is bagged and ready to go to the lab.”
“So Calhoun comes down the stairs with his gun,” I said. “He didn’t shoot?”
“He was outgunned. Outmanned. I think he tried to negotiate. I imagine he told the perps, ‘Get out. Nothing’s happened yet,’ something like that. The doers maybe turned it around on him.”
Conklin said, “Like, ‘Come into the kitchen and let’s talk. We’ll leave your family alone.’”
“Yeah,” Clapper said. “Something like that. Then maybe the wife comes down the stairs.”
Conklin said, “Right. They take the gun from Calhoun. Move him and his wife into the kitchen.”
“Oh, man,” I said visualizing the scene, the terror. I saw the shooters telling the Calhouns to get undressed. She has to duct-tape her husband to the chair, then one of the shooters does the same to her.
Putting the next part of it together in my mind, I figured Mrs. Calhoun was tortured to motivate Calhoun to give them what they wanted. What did they want? Did Calhoun have it?
We followed Clapper upstairs to the bedrooms and saw the blood-drenched sheets in the bunk beds where the two boys had been shot in their sleep. They were now in body bags on the way to the morgue with their parents.
My partner and I stood in the open front doorway with lights flashing red and blue behind us and thanked Charlie for the tour.
He didn’t have to say, “Get these bastards,” and I didn’t say, “Call us if you learn anything.” We all knew what we had to do. Calhoun’s death was job one. Every cop in the Hall of Justice would be on this until the Calhouns’ killers were found. The work would go on all night and it would continue until it was over.
But there was nothing for my partner and me to do in this house. Not tonight.
CHAPTER 53
WHEN I WALKED into our apartment and kicked off my shoes, Jimmy Fallon was on the tube and I no longer felt like the same woman who’d spent the day with windblown dog ears in my face, who had walked and talked with my sister and nieces, who had cuddled with my husband and baby, laughed over nouvelle cuisine, and slugged down beer with two of my best friends.
I briefed my husband on the aftermath of the torture and murder of a cop I knew, and his family, and gratefully accepted a glass of wine and a neck rub.
Then I got on the phone. My first call was to Dr. G., followed by a conference call with Brady and Conklin. After that, I called Ted Swanson, who was not only emotionally involved, but had also been part of the Robbery Division team working the Windbreaker cop case with Vasquez and Calhoun.
When I had all the available information, I called Jacobi, our chief, my dear friend and former partner, and brought him up to the minute. He already knew parts of the Calhoun tragedy, but I gave him a few details he didn’t know.
“A roll of garbage bags had been left on the kitchen counter,” I told Jacobi. “I think the perps changed their clothes and took their bloody ones with them, along with their cigarette butts, shell casings, and sharp instruments.”
Jacobi said, “So let me guess. No prints. No DNA.”
“Nothing yet,” I said.
Jacobi used strings of expletives in combinations I’d never heard before. The gist of the F-bombs was that all the freaking over-the-top TV crime shows had taught the freaking criminals what not to freaking do.
“They knew a few things from experience,” I said. “It was a very buttoned-up operation.”
I let Jacobi rant for a while, then told him good night, and when I finally hit the sheets, I couldn’t sleep.