Reardon turned to Wallace Chesterton. “The next one’s for you.”
“All right,” Chesterton said.
Wallace Chesterton was a large, ponderously built man with a fiery temper, a bully who had been formally disciplined several times. He believed that the best way to approach either a witness or a suspect was to assault him, sometimes verbally, sometimes physically. So Reardon gave Chesterton the closest thing he had to a routine gangland killing, because he knew it would probably never be solved. Chesterton would know that too and be less inclined to rough up somebody for nothing.
“This one is strictly by the book, ” Reardon told him. “A routine gangland rubout. Clean. The victim is a guy named Martin Scali. He was found in a parked car near the East River with one bullet through the back of his head. He had two hundred and thirty-eight dollars in his wallet. He has all kinds of gangland connections. As usual, no witnesses. Nobody heard or saw anything. You’ve got a guy with a bullet in his head and that’s it.”
Chesterton frowned. “Shit.”
“Do the best you can.” Reardon handed Chesterton the folder. “There’s not much in it.”
Chesterton shrugged. “Yeah,” he said and stalked out toward the file room.
Reardon gave his last case of the morning to Ben Whitlock, who was neither young nor exceptionally competent but in whom Reardon continued to sense the old, special calling of the law. Whitlock was incorruptible. He had lived through one Police Department scandal after another and had always emerged untouched.
“I guess the last one’s for you, Ben,” Reardon said with a slight smile.
“Why are they pulling you off all these cases, John?” Whitlock asked.
“They’re pulling me off more than these cases,” Reardon said. “They’re pulling me off all my cases.”
“Why are they doing that?”
“Because they want me to handle that deer killing in the zoo. Over in Central Park.”
“That’s not a homicide.” Whitlock looked at Reardon suspiciously. “What the fuck is all this about?”
“You mean why are those deer so important?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, it’s not the deer. It’s who they belonged to.”
“They were just in the zoo, right?”
“They were given to the zoo by Wallace Van Allen.”
Whitlock nodded. “I get it,” he said. “Yeah, that explains it. Some fat cat gets his deer killed, so everyone downtown goes into a panic.”
“That’s about it.” Reardon admitted. He felt a stir of respect for Whitlock, his old colleague, who had triumphed for so long against internal politics and external corruption, like an old mastiff, guardian of the gate, who eats from no man’s hand. “I’m sorry we didn’t work together more all these years.”
“Yeah, me too,” Whitlock said, “but that’s the way it is.”
“Maybe we’ll get a case together someday yet.”
“Maybe. But not likely. They keep assigning me new partners every year or so. It’s always been like that. Ever since I got my gold shield they’ve been jerking me off. Jerking me around from partner to partner.”
“Yeah, I’ve noticed that.”
“They’ve been trying to get rid of me for twenty years,” Whitlock said wearily.
“Well, you’re still here.”
“Not for long,” Whitlock said. “I think I’m gonna grab the option. Early retirement, you know? I think I’m ready to let go the line, you know what I mean?”
“You mean it?”
“Yeah, I’m tired. Whipped.” Whitlock winked. “Who knows, maybe the wife and me can get to Florida. Somewhere south, out of this. Get some sun, you know, before the last sunset.”
Reardon nodded. He did not know what to say. He knew only that he did not want to see Whitlock go. He had never gone to Whitlock for anything, but he had liked knowing Whitlock was there in case he came across something he could not handle alone.
“Well, what do you have for me?” Whitlock asked.
Reardon glanced down at his desk. “The victim’s name is William Sebastian Falkner. He was murdered in the back of his dry cleaning shop last Thursday. Shot three times in the head and once in the chest with a. 22-caliber pistol. The motive is presumed to be robbery, since all the money in the house and shop was taken.”
Whitlock chuckled. “Yeah, that kind of forces you to presume robbery.”
Reardon smiled. “A local teenager named Culverson was seen hanging around the shop not long before the murder. Culverson is a rough case. He’s got a juvenile record that’s pretty impressive, and he’s been under suspicion for armed robbery in the past. His last address was three blocks from the shop. We’re watching his apartment, but he hasn’t turned up. The details are in the file.” Reardon closed the folder and handed it to Whitlock. “That’s about it.”
“Okay,” Whitlock said. “I’ll check it.”
“Good luck. If you need anything, let me know. I’ll be around.”
Whitlock started to walk away; he stopped at the door and turned back to Reardon. “Sorry to hear about Millie,” he said.
Reardon had not thought about Millie for the past few moments, and suddenly hearing her name again thrust him back into a vague, aching gloom. “Thanks” was all he said.
“It happens to everybody,” Whitlock said. “A vale of tears, you know?”
“Yeah,” Reardon said. He watched Whitlock disappear up the stairs. So that was it, he thought – a bludgeoned prostitute, a strangled child, a dead gangland punk and a murdered shopkeeper.
And two slaughtered deer in the Children’s Zoo.
The whole area around the cage of the fallow deer had been cordoned off by police roadblocks. But even in the chill, late autumn air a crowd had gathered, pressing against the roadblocks and craning their necks over the shoulders of the uniformed patrolmen assigned to keep them back. Another group of police was milling around outside the deer cage, and Reardon could not see inside the cage until they parted to let him pass.
In the cage each of the bodies had been covered by a black tarpaulin. Several rivulets of blood trickled out from beneath one of the tarpaulins and ran in jagged lines to the bars. When blood flowed like that, Reardon knew, it usually meant that many wounds had been inflicted. But the blood ran in one broad swath from beneath the other tarpaulin. That would mean that only one wound had been inflicted, and that it was deep and had brought death almost immediately.
Detective Mathesson was standing calmly between the two bodies of the fallow deer. He was a very large man, but the heavy black overcoat and gray hat made him appear even more massively built. His legs were spread wide apart like a gunslinger’s and he was rubbing his gloved hands together vigorously for warmth. “Hello, John,” he said as Reardon approached.
Reardon nodded.
“Only in New York,” Mathesson said.
“What?”
“Look at it. Only in New York.”
“Oh,” Reardon said, “yeah.”
“At least they’re not people,” Mathesson said, “that’s one good thing.”
Reardon looked down at the body to the left. Covered as it was, it did not look that different from the human bodies he had seen. It was small, crumpled, motionless and, above all, utterly silent.
“In a way I wish they were,” Mathesson said.
Reardon squinted at him. “Why?”
“Because it would mean the killer’s indent, in a way.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, if this had been done, say, to a couple of people, children or old people or women, then it wouldn’t be that uncommon,” Mathesson said. “We’ve dealt with that sort of thing before. We’re used to it. It’s not that weird. And we’d get the guy that did it. Probably pretty soon, too.”
“Maybe,” Reardon said. It was his favorite response to statements he found either ridiculous or inane.
“But this is real strange,” Mathesson said, his eyes moving back and forth between the two covered bodies, “and it’ll spread to people.”
“You think so?”
“Sure it will,” Mathesson said. “Doesn’t it always?”
“Sometimes.”
“Most of the time.” Mathesson looked at Reardon. “Don’t you remember that guy with the cats? That complaint we got about a guy giving cats baths in hydrochloric acid?”