“Then you think my husband tried to kill me?”
“I think he injected you with the insulin that put you in coma. I call that trying pretty hard.”
He looked at Babe Devens and he sensed she wasn’t there anymore. She had gone somewhere else, into a room in her memory, and she had left a Babe Devens doll in the hospital bed. A doll trying hard not to let droplets spill down its cheeks.
“You see, I don’t know any of this.” Her voice was low and unsteady. “No one’s told me about insulin or injections or attempted killing or reckless anything.”
“There was a witness.”
She sat not moving, leaning back against the headboard. Her eyes were fixed on her folded hands and then they lifted to meet his.
“May I ask who?”
“Your housekeeper found a tan bag in your husband’s dressing room. The syringe and the insulin were inside.”
She squared her shoulders and stared straight ahead. “I remember the ride home. I remember unlocking the front door and dropping the key. We were laughing and stumbling. I don’t know what happened next. I suppose I undressed.”
“You undressed and went to bed.”
“And then you say my husband …” A furrow deepened between her eyes. “I don’t believe my husband—my ex-husband—tried to kill me.”
“Scott Devens confessed. The charge was bargained way down, but he admitted it.”
She was staring at the wall. Cardozo knew she wasn’t seeing the wall. He knew she was looking past it at something else.
“But you’re not sure,” she said. “That’s why you’re here.”
“Until you remember something that contradicts his confession, I’m sure. My feeling is you’ll remember something that supports it. And when you do remember, phone me.” He gave her a card with his work number.
“Is it really going to help if I remember?”
“Frankly, it could be a pain in the ass. But I like the bad guys to get what they deserve.”
“And the good guys?”
“They should end up happily ever after.”
Their eyes connected.
“Are you a good guy, Mr. Cardozo?”
“Pretty good, all things considered.”
“Maybe you haven’t considered all things about my husband.”
“Maybe.”
“What if I remember that it was the butler?”
“That would interest me.”
She was looking at him, smiling now. “You’re funny. I’m glad I met you.”
“I’m glad I met you.” He stopped at the door. “Oh—Mrs. Devens.”
“Yes?”
“Welcome back.”
7
CARDOZO WAS AT THE PRECINCT A little before 8:00 A.M., in good spirits from his talk with the heiress.
Three detectives were standing around the Mr. Coffees, yakking about Saturday’s game, stretching the moment before they faced the day.
Cardozo walked over to the lieutenant’s desk and glanced down at the sixty sheet—the complaints from the preceding tour.
He went into his cubicle. The two black plastic fragments he had found in apartment six had been placed on his desk in separate evidence bags, each bearing its own tag from the property clerk’s office.
He opened the case folder, moved the property vouchers aside, and skimmed through the pages of the report. They all bore the heading CASE UF61 #8139 OF THE 22D PRECINCT, DETECTIVE VINCENT R. CARDOZO, SHIELD #1864, ASSIGNED. The 8139 represented the total number of cases reported as of this date to the precinct: homicides, stray dogs, stolen cars, anything and everything, solved and unsolved.
Then the facts: John Doe, male, white, homicide by strangulation, May 24. A photograph of the dead man’s face was stapled to the page. There followed the time and place of the homicide; description of the scene of the crime; blanks for the victim’s name and relevant details of life, association, and employment; blanks awaiting names and addresses of persons interviewed; names and shield numbers of members of the force at the scene of the homicide; notifications made, still blank.
Sam Richards, wearing a dapper green blazer, knocked on the open door. “All set, Vince.”
Cardozo gathered his task force in the dingy but large room that served the detective squad as a spare office.
Greg Monteleone used a box top as a tray to carry five coffees, and Ellie Siegel, almost elegant in a pale blue dress, came in with a large box of assorted doughnuts.
Cardozo stood at the blackboard. He took a piece of chalk and wrote the words JOHN DOE HOMICIDE. Then came John Doe’s identifying numbers: UF61 #8139; UF60 #6480. UF stood for uniformed force, which meant police, plainclothes or otherwise; the 60 and 61 were the departmental forms on which all reports relating to the crime would be filed.
Beneath he wrote the Forensic number, 3746-10, and the five property voucher numbers. Next he wrote the day of the murder, the coroner’s estimated time of death, and the place of occurrence. He sketched a diagram of apartment six, putting a stick-figure man in the bedroom where the body had been found.
On the left of the board he listed the two small pieces of plastic, the electric saw, the cigarette butt, and the black leather mask that so far constituted the sole physical evidence in the case. He followed these by their tag numbers. On the right he wrote the word witnesses and put a question mark below it.
He stood back and turned to face his squad.
“What have we got? No ID on the victim. Our crime scene crew came up with eight partial prints. We’re in the process of matching these against the prints of every MOF and every civilian at the crime scene. If we fail to match them, they may or may not prove to be the prints of our killer. Negative for any fingerprints on the mask. The saw we don’t yet know about. The blood on it is human, too small an amount to be typed yet. Beyond that we have two shreds of black plastic, so far not a particle of fiber or hair. In short we have nothing. Okay—clockwise around the room.”
Sam Richards set down his coffee. “Princess Lobkowitz, you should excuse the expression, drinks a little, so it’s not surprising she didn’t hear anything. However, she has a peeve with Hector the doorman. On the day of the killing, around two P.M., she had to let herself into the building with her own key. Hector should have been on duty, but he wasn’t.”
“Benson mentioned the same thing,” Monteleone said.
Cardozo went to the blackboard and made a notation: HECTOR, NOT AT DOOR 2 PM?
“I also spoke with Ms. Debbi Hightower,” Richards continued, “no e on the Debbi. She heard nothing, saw nothing, says she was at work at the Toyota show at the World Trade Center for the last three nights, and this kept her out till noon Saturday and nine A.M. Sunday.”
“Only one kind of Friday night show goes till noon Saturday,” Monteleone smirked.
Cardozo ignored him. “What about the accountant?”
“Fred Lawrence is a very angry man,” Richards said. “IRS decided to surprise-audit a client, he had to cut short his holiday weekend and come back to New York to prepare. He arrived in the building noon Saturday, says he saw nothing, heard nothing. However, I think he did hear something or see something.”
“What makes you think that?”
“A remark about the garage. He said he was very annoyed about conditions down there, he was going to complain to the co-op board at the next meeting.”
“What conditions?”
“All he would say was, ‘Nothing criminal, but goddamned annoying considering the money we pay—we could at least get a little respect.’ We’ve all heard the attitude.”
Cardozo smiled. It was the standard civilian complaint against cops.
“After which,” Richards continued, “I spoke with one of the doormen, Jerzy Bronski, at his SRO in Chelsea. He says both Saturday and yesterday he worked the midnight shift, then drove his cab from 8 A.M. to 8 P.M.—he moonlights—then he slept.”
“Yezhi,” Monteleone said.
Richards looked up. “Beg your pardon?”
“Yezhi, not Jerzy. The Poles pronounce J-E-R-Z-Y Yezhi.”
“Sounds like Yiddish for Jesus,” Richards said.
“Yezl,” Siegel said. “The Yiddish word for Jesus is Yezl.”