This did not square with a note staked to the neck of a living woman, and she was about to tell him that when he held up one hand to forestall any more arguments.
‘I’m out of my depth,’ he said. ‘This man didn’t care if the women lived or died. He’s a walking paradox – a serial killer who’s not all that interested in killing.’
The murder of Kennedy Harper had taken over an entire wall of the Special Crimes incident room. Mallory posted the autopsy pictures next to Heller’s crime-scene diagrams. Sparrow also had a wall to herself. The throwaway whore had become a priority case.
Rows of metal folding chairs were filling up with detectives. Four men gathered around the audio equipment and listened to the Cashtip recording of the killer’s voice, playing again and again, unwilling to believe that it did not offer more. The volume was turned up each time they heard the ambient sound.
Pssst.
One man timed it by the second hand on his watch. Mallory used a natural clock, a quirk of the brain that told her this sound occurred every twenty seconds. It reminded her of Helen Markowitz’s spray starch on ironing day.
She walked to the hangman’s wall and stared at a photograph of the back of a man’s head. The image, crowned with a baseball cap and encircled with dead flies, was as worthless as the lame description of T-shirt and jeans played out in the clothing pinned to the cork.
Pssst.
Janos stood beside her. ‘So what do you think of our scarecrow?’
‘Is that what we’re calling him now?’
‘Yeah.’ He turned to look around the room. ‘Hey, what happened to your partner?’
‘He’ll be back.’ She had kept track of all the passing minutes since Riker had slipped out of the room. After the ambush in front of Peg Baily’s bar, he would not miss an opportunity for a drink today. Each up-close encounter with his ex-wife was a prelude to a binge. Her internal timepiece had moved well past his three-minute walk to a nearby watering hole.
Pssst.
Riker would down his bourbon in no time. Mallory allowed extra minutes for his return trip. He would not walk back here with the same urgent speed. She factored in another minute so he could trade insults with the desk sergeant before climbing the stairs and ambling down the hall to the incident room.
Mallory turned her face to the door, and her partner appeared.
Pssst.
She saw nothing amiss. Riker prided himself on never stumbling in the daylight hours. There were no new spills on his suit, nothing more recent than his interview with Daisy, and that splash of bourbon had dried long ago. He sat on the chair next to hers and peeled the wrapper from a roll of mints. ‘Did I miss anything?’
‘No. We’re still waiting to hear from Tech Support.’
Pssst.
The detectives around the tape player walked away from the machine, allowing the recording to play out at full volume, and still the suspect’s voice was subdued.
‘ – a woman has been murdered in the East Village – ’
It was an empty monotone, lacking the bravado of a man on a quest for fame, and one more motive died.
‘ – name is Kennedy Harper – ’
The mechanical tone almost qualified as a speech impediment, or that was the excuse offered by technicians at One Police Plaza. They had not yet fixed the suspect’s home state.
‘ – you can find the body at – ’
This man, so adept at theatrical staging, was so bland in his recital of bare facts – a death, a name, an address.
Pssst.
Mallory was fleshing out the portrait of a killer whose emotions were dead, not the type for a thrill kill. He was a tidy man, well organized. A man with a plan? She stared at the scarecrow on the back wall. What the hell do you want?
‘We got it!’ Janos hovered in front of a computer monitor and read the pertinent details as he scrolled down the screen, ‘The scarecrow is from the Midwest. They’re still trying to nail down the state. The techs say he wasn’t calling from a cell phone or a pay-phone. And the ambient sound might be from an early-model humidifier or an automatic plant mister.’
Jack Coffey entered the room and shut off the tape player. ‘Listen up!’ All conversation stopped and every pair of eyes turned his way. ‘Riker’s witness, Miss Emelda, is worth her weight in gold. Our perp was the old lady’s man in the tree – the guy with a Polaroid camera.’
He held up two plastic bags, each containing a small box with a Polaroid logo. ‘These film cartons were left at both crime scenes, and they weren’t left by accident.’ He held one higher than the other. ‘And the box we found today has a twenty-year-old expiration date.’ He tossed the bags on the table. ‘Kennedy Harper died six days ago – that’s official. Six days and twenty years ago, another hanging victim was found.’
The lieutenant turned to face Mallory. ‘It was an anniversary kill. And now we have a solid connection to the Cold Case file.’ He pointed to Janos. ‘You’re the primary on Kennedy’s case. And, Desoto, you got Sparrow.’
Mallory watched Riker’s face go gray. His eyes were all the way open now, and his head was shaking from side to side, silently saying, This can’t be. How could he lose Sparrow’s case to another detective? He was rising from his chair when she caught his sleeve and pulled him down.
‘If we can’t get Sparrow back, we’ll work her case on the side.’
Was he hearing her? Yes, he was nodding.
Jack Coffey had finished handing out assignments to the others, and now he stood before Mallory and Riker. ‘You guys are working the Cold Case file. We got a copycat, and I wanna know where he got his information.’ The lieutenant paused, correctly reading Mallory’s expression of ennui. ‘You’re not baby-sitting Geldorf. Use that old man. Just keep him the hell out of Special Crimes.’
Lars Geldorf was hoarse from explaining and explaining, then shouting in exasperation. His opponent was a small, wiry woman with dark Spanish eyes, a deeply suspicious nature and a mission to clean Manhattan. She pulled a mop from her rolling cart of cleaning supplies and said, once more, ‘I’m gonna do Mallory’s office now.’ Nothing would stop the intrepid Mrs Ortega, certainly not this old man – gun or no gun.
The retired detective informed her that this room could not be cleaned until his case was wrapped. He distrusted all civilians, and she should understand that it was nothing personal. Charles intervened, suggesting that, since it was so late in the day, Mrs Ortega could skip this room. The cleaning woman countered with ‘Mallory’s orders, not yours.’ And eventually, the matter was settled.
Mrs Ortega ruled.
But Geldorf was adamant that Charles remain in the room until ‘that – that woman was done. Then, with great dignity, he left the office with his relief watcher, a young detective with unnatural bright yellow hair.
After the door slammed behind them, Mrs Ortega plugged in her vacuum, then shook her head, saying, ‘Damn, that baby cop’s got one bad bleach job.’
Charles nodded. ‘It’s interesting, though. Perhaps he’s making some kind of statement.’
‘Yeah, like – look at me, my head glows in the dark.’
‘Exactly what I was thinking.’ Charles turned his attention to the cork wall. Where should the giant cockroaches go? Well, the only place for them was underneath the maggots. Where else?
The carpet was spotless when Riker strolled in. He nodded his hello to Charles, then flashed a big smile for the cleaning woman. ‘Hey, how’ve you been?’ He was genuinely happy to see her, though she used him for verbal sniper practice each time they met.
She glared at a spot on Riker’s suit, singling it out from all the other stains, then stopped her work to clean him with a bottle of solvent and a cloth, as if he were any other object in her path. ‘Next time you drink crummy bourbon for lunch, mop it up.’