“The deer?”
“Yes.”
“Shot them?”
Piccolini shook his head. “No,” he said, “hacked them to death.”
“Hacked them to death?” Reardon had never heard of such a thing.
“That’s right,” Piccolini said. “We think maybe some political types did it. You know, Wallace Van Allen is rich and famous and all that. Very visible, if you know what I mean. Prominent. Always on television doing something. Giving money to this organization, supporting that candidate. Big charity types. Social types too. Big Liberals.”
“So you think it’s a political angle? Political enemies of the Van Allens?”
“Nothing personal,” Piccolini said, “nobody who actually knew Van Allen. But it still could have been radical types, some crazy, off-the-wall radical group maybe. You never know what they might do.”
Reardon nodded. “And they killed a guard, I guess.”
“No, just the deer.”
“But I’m in homicide.”
“Now look,” Piccolini said, “this is a big case. One of the biggest. Some real big people are looking in on this one, interested in it, if you know what I mean. I know you’re in homicide, but this is bigger than a homicide right now, and the people downtown want top people on it all the way.” Piccolini smiled. “And that means you, John. You were recommended for this case, and you’ve got it. Solving it could be a big plus.”
Reardon was fifty-six years old and a detective; he did not need any more big pluses and was surprised Piccolini could think he did. “I have some other cases to clear up first,” he said.
“Forget them,” Piccolini snapped. “As of right now this is your only case. It’s the biggest case in this precinct, and it may be the biggest case in New York right now, and you’re the chief investigating officer on it.”
“But what about the other cases?”
“All your cases have been reassigned,” Piccolini said. “You can take some time and brief the new guys, but after that, get on the deer. And get on it fast, will you, John? Believe me, the precinct is on the line in this one.”
“Sure,” Reardon said dully. He had heard that before. Everybody was on the line in every case.
“This one is for real,” Piccolini said emphatically. “We need to break this one fast, real fast. So forget about homicide for a while and concentrate on collaring the guy who hacked those deer to death.”
Reardon did not reply.
“Go out and see those deer,” Piccolini said sentimentally. “You should see what that guy did to them. And they didn’t even have horns to defend themselves with.”
Reardon nodded but said nothing.
“Well, okay,” Piccolini said, “that’s it. Get on it.”
“I’ll keep you informed,” Reardon said dryly.
“Yeah, I want a regular update on this one. I want to know the moment anything breaks.”
“Sure,” Reardon said.
“Good luck.”
As he closed the door of the office behind him, Reardon could hear Piccolini returning ferociously to the papers on his desk. It sounded like a rat scrambling through dry leaves.
A number of detectives had already assembled around Reardon’s desk in the homicide bullpen by the time he came out of Piccolini’s office. As he seated himself behind his desk they mumbled their good mornings, then slouched casually against the desks that surrounded his. With the exception of Ben Whitlock, they were all younger men than he, leaner too and hungrier for advancement: New York’s finest wolves. There was not one who might not someday be Chief of Detectives, and there was not one, except Whitlock, whom Reardon trusted. In their presence Reardon felt spectacularly out of place. Their youth aged him and their ambition tired him.
He pulled out a group of folders from a side drawer and laid them on top of his desk. “I guess Piccolini sent you here,” he said.
“He said you’d fill us in on your cases,” Larry Merchant said, “the ones we’ll be handling while you’re on the other thing.”
“Right.” Reardon pulled one of the folders from the stack and opened it. “I’ll start with you first,” he told Merchant, “but I want all of you to come in sometime and review all these cases, whether they’re assigned to you or not, just in case you run across something that might be helpful.”
He handed Merchant the folder. “This is the Alverez case. You can check the file for the details, but this is basically it. Maria Alverez was found beaten to death in her apartment on East 71st Street. She was a high-class hooker, not the Eighth Avenue variety. Her pimp was a man named Louis Fallachi. He has a few low-level syndicate connections, but nothing big, nothing fancy. Strictly a ham-and-eggs muscle man, a bone breaker for a few shylocks. We’ve checked him out closely, and there’s no evidence as yet that he had anything to do with the killing. We’ve tried to reconstruct Alverez’s movements the night she died. We know that she wasn’t hooking that night. She went to a movie with a girlfriend. The doorman in her building says that she got home around eleven o’clock. So far he’s the last person to have seen her alive. The next morning she was dead. We have the weapon, a plain carpenter’s hammer. No prints.”
“Any witnesses?” Merchant asked glumly.
“Not so far,” Reardon said, “but this happened only a couple of days ago. The area is still being canvassed. Somebody might turn up who saw something. The main thing at this point is to find out everybody she knows and check them out. She may have known the person who did it, because he probably came through the front door, and there’s no evidence of forcible entry.”
“What’d she look like?” Merchant asked with a grin.
“What difference does it make?” Reardon said coldly.
Merchant shifted his body nervously to the left. “Just curious, that’s all.”
“There are pictures of her in the file,” Reardon said.
“Right,” Merchant said. “I’ll get on it.” He ducked out of the group and quickly marched upstairs to the file room.
Reardon did not know why he disliked Larry Merchant. He thought the reason might be the easy way Merchant took up his cases, as if they were just so many used cars he had to clear off the lot before the Saturday shipment of new ones, or the fact that he took his pay and ran off to the suburbs to spend it, leaving the city to wallow in its squalor like an old whore – used, abused, forgotten.
Reardon picked Charlie Darrow for the David Lowery case because David Lowery had been six years old when he was murdered, and Reardon knew that the killing of a child was a crime that shot Darrow up to a high adrenaline range. Darrow would be relentless in his pursuit, tireless, utterly oblivious to the distinction between being on duty and off duty.
“David Lowery was last seen alive by a few of his playmates in an alley off East 83rd Street,” Reardon began. He handed Darrow the folder. “Three hours later his body was found stuffed in the trunk of an abandoned car on 122nd Street. He had been strangled with a jump rope and his body had been sexually abused.”
Darrow’s face hardened. “How old did you say he was?”
“Six years old. He was a small child for his age. Not quite three feet tall.”
“Jesus Christ,” Darrow said.
“The car had been sitting on 122nd Street for a few days,” Reardon said. “The owner is a grocery store manager up in Yonkers. He reported the car stolen quite some time ago. He’s being checked out. He seems to be clean.”
Darrow nodded. “Nothing funny in his background?”
“Not that we’ve been able to uncover yet. Everything that we know about him is in the file. A few people in the neighborhood of 122nd Street saw a man and a boy around the car, but nobody saw the child’s body put into it. There’s also this: two days before the boy was killed the desk sergeant received an anonymous complaint about noisy kids playing in that same car in the afternoon. For now, that’s it.”
“Not much then,” Darrow said disappointedly.
“Not much,” Reardon agreed, “but there’s never very much in the beginning.”
“Sure,” Darrow said, and walked away from Reardon’s desk.