"Vintage. Don't you know vintage when you see it?" Suddenly her appetite was gone. She dropped the crust into the pizza box and wiped her hands on a napkin. "I wish 1 had a Handi Wipe," she said wistfully.
"Here." Charlie reached into his pocket and passed one over.
"Gee . . . thanks," she said, for once restraining the urge to make a stinging remark. Who but a complete nut carried foil-wrapped hand cleansers in his jacket pocket?
"Let me get that box out of your way," he said as he grabbed it and hopped out of the car to dump it in a garbage can. He didn't look like a guy who could hop, and once again, she withheld the smart remark. Being a staunch New Yorker, it wasn't easy.
They got back to the precinct with no further incident. Charlie took one of the files that Jo Ellen Anderson had given them, and left Eloise the other. After she'd returned a bunch of calls and talked to all the people who wanted to talk to her, she opened the file. It was Remy's. It contained the Anderson application form, which showed some basic information about her education and previous jobs, as well as a list of her skills. She'd grown up out West, gone to a local high school and state university. Along the way she'd worked in a bunch of chains—baking, frying, grilling, prepping salads, making desserts. She liked kids and could drive, didn't have a passport. There was nothing out of the ordinary about the resume except several dozen notes on three-by-five cards in tiny handwriting, presumably Jo Ellen's.
Talked to Remy Banks. Presentation needs work. In a good house, must wear slacks and sweaters, not jeans and sweatshirts, read one. Talked to Remy. Worried about attitude problem and reminded her that she was to fulfill any command without debate.
Talked to Remy again today about the children. Does not want to be responsible for the children's playdates.
Talked to Remy today about her relationship with Lynn. The girls are too close and break confidentiality rules.
Talked to Remy this morning. She's rebellious: won't keep to dress code, wilfully flirts with her employer. Danger on that score!!!
Talked to Remy about her jealousy. Constantly looks for attention.
Talked to Remy today about her request for a raise—-too soon, not a proven entity yet.
Eloise counted them and found, to her surprise, that the file contained more than forty comments about every aspect of Remy's conduct. Jo Ellen was concerned abut the amount of food Remy consumed at the house, her hours, her demeanor, her personal habits, the amount of money she spent while running errands. Jo Ellen had mounting doubts about Remy's viability as a domestic.
Half an hour after Eloise started, Charlie came into her office. "This is worse than one of our files," he said. "This girl sounds like a nightmare. She was fired from her former job. Jo Ellen was giving her a second chance. At this job she was accused of stealing a diamond bracelet, but nothing could be proved. There were other people in the house at the time. What about yours?" he asked.
"No accusations of theft, but that Anderson woman seems to be something of a nightmare herself."
The phone rang, and Eloise picked up. "Sergeant Gelo."
"Hey, I'm at the lab. What did you find out?"
"Hello, Lieutenant. We paid a visit to the Anderson Agency."
"How did that go?"
"It went well. We got the files. It seems Lynn was fired from her former job. Perkins was her last chance at Anderson. She may have stolen a diamond bracelet from Alison. Remy was too cozy with Wayne Wilson and had an attitude problem. The two girls were closer than Anderson liked. The Anderson woman seems to be unusually intrusive for a placement person."
"Okay, what about the warrant check?"
Eloise smiled at Charlie. "Charlie's working on that now," she said. "Are you coming in?"
"Maybe later, I'll let you know," Woo replied.
"Okay."
"Anything else?" Woo asked.
"Yes, in a few minutes, we're meeting the stripper from Spirit who gave the drugs to Peret."
. "I wish I were there," Woo said.
"How do you want us to handle it?" "You have her number in his cell phone and her message from that night in his voice mail, right? We can put her away for dealing if we need to."
"What if she has no priors?" Eloise asked.
"Hang on to her for a while, and give her a little taste of the law. She'll tattle on her boss and everyone else she knows."
"Will do."
"And keep in touch," were Woo's last words.
forty
April hung up with Eloise and went downstairs to the Crime Scene unit. She found Woody talking to Chad, who looked as if he had all the time in -the world. Although she and Igor went way back, Chad and Mark were pretty new to the unit and she'd never worked with them before. Chad Westerman was a skinny guy with a round shaved head and pale blue eyes—a real white ghost. Mark wasn't around. At the task force headquarters in the Seventeenth Precinct there was an electric atmosphere of urgency. Here, it didn't look as if much was happening.
The lab was where the engineers of crime brought the hundreds of tagged items taken from every crime scene to be analyzed. Here was the nuts-and-bolts world of forensic science. The CSU worked with the specialists and were the ones who stayed on task day and night, making models—of rooms, buildings, sometimes whole areas. They prepared the charts, graphs, and computerized reen-actments of homicides, and tested the tools of death for a match. In a multiple-stabbing case like that of Maddy Wilson, they would find or create something that closely resembled human tissue and bone and use a variety of sharp instruments on it to try to find patterns consistent with Maddy's wounds. Ingenuity was the name of the game. The two detectives idly watched her hurry toward them through the maze of desks.
"What's going on?" she asked.
"I filled him in on Perkins," Woody said.
Chad looked pensive. "Maybe this is some kind of mission killer," he said.
That was someone who had a sick purpose for his crimes, who wanted to punish a particular type of person like nurses, prostitutes—or young mothers. Nobody had used the term before, and April swallowed the feeling of panic that had been building in her all morning. Maddy's murder had looked like a single tragic, but isolated, event. Alison's murder was unexpected and raised the serial-killer specter. The FBI would come on the scene and the case would mushroom in the press. But beyond that, the killing itself was a frightening escalation that didn't fit with any serial killer's profile she'd ever seen. At the onset, the need to kill and kill again usually developed over time. The perpetrator had to become confident that he was smarter than everyone else and could get away with murder before he tried attacking again. It was a head game as well as a craving. Usually, this kind of killer would relish a violent act in his fantasies for months, or even years, before striking again. It took a lot of energy to plan and carry out a face-to-face killing.
Even in those violent crimes that occurred in remote places where a killer took advantage of a passerby's vulnerable moment, it was not so easy to design a murder and carry it off. Every step was stressful and required preparation. New York City was a busy place. Even in quiet neighborhoods, people were on the- streets, walking their dogs and going to work, and somebody always knew something. April imagined an arrogant individual walking down the street, getting into those two town houses in the early morning hours, surprising Maddy and Alison, and killing them. That person had been comfortable enough to spend time there afterward, arranging the bodies and washing them up. In Alison's case the killer had touched her clothes, tidied her bedroom and possibly taken her rings. It was ghoulish and upsetting, and had ritual elements about it. Then the killer had walked out of that house—or stayed to "discover" the bodies. He (or she) would know that an army of experts would be in there, searching for traces he'd left behind. Every step had to be intensely stressful.