Chapter 6
     
     
     
After dropping Barrone off at a side entrance to city hall, McKenna called Brunette to seek his approval on the press deal he had made. Brunette wasn't in--he was at city hall with the mayor--so McKenna wound up talking to Camilia Wright instead. Brunette's trusted secretary was loaded with common sense and was possibly the most efficient woman in the department. Camilia saw no problem with the Barrone arrangement, which made McKenna feel a little surer of himself. She would tell Brunette about it when he returned.
     Next stop was the 13th Precinct on East 21st Street, where McKenna officially vouchered the bullet as evidence, but he kept it with him. Then he walked through the building to the Police Academy on East 20th Street and took the elevator to the Ballistics Section lab on the eighth floor. After filling out the required forms requesting the ballistics examination, he was admitted to the inner sanctum, Detective Brady Wilson's workshop. Wilson had been in the Ballistics Section as long as McKenna could remember and was considered one of the nation's experts in the science of guns and bullets.
     Since the bullet from the 1981 homicides should have been kept someplace in the Property Clerk's Office in the bowels of headquarters, McKenna had expected to spend just a few minutes in Ballistics, finding out at most what kind of gun had been used in the present murders. But he hit it lucky, thanks to Tommy and his persistence in that old case. Eighteen years before, Tommy had given the bullet to Wilson and insisted that he make a comparison to every .380 round that came to Ballistics. Consequently, Wilson kept the bullet in his top desk drawer and had been doing just that over the years. He had taken that bullet out of his desk at least once during every working day for the past eighteen years and knew its characteristics by heart. There hadn't been a single match.
     After half an hour with Wilson, McKenna knew that Tommy had been right in all things so far. The bullet came from a .380 Colt Commander and it was the same gun used in the old homicides, eighteen years before. And, as Tommy had predicted, burnt paper residue was still imbedded in the slug; the killer had held the gun in a paper bag when he had shot Arthur McMahon so that he wouldn't leave the ejected cartridge at the scene as evidence.
     By three o'clock McKenna was in Joe Walsh's office in the 20th Precinct. Tommy and Walsh were both there waiting for him. Tommy had the crime scene photos and the sketches made with all the dimensions and distances indicated. McKenna took a moment to look them over while Walsh waited to report and show off a bit.
     Although, officially, fingerprints are classified and compared at the Identification Section in headquarters, Walsh considered himself the department's fingerprint expert and nobody in the Identification Section cared to argue that point with him. When it came to fingerprints, for twenty years Walsh had been free to roam through any case he liked. He had finished comparing the sixty-one latent fingerprints he had taken from Cindy's car against hers, her father's, her husband's, and her boyfriend's.
     "Got five prints that don't belong to the known players," Walsh proclaimed. "I think I might have the killer in one of those five, but Tommy said I'm nuts."
     "Bad news for you, Joe," McKenna said. "Tommy's been right in everything about this case so far, so I'd have to agree with him. You're nuts."
     "Maybe I am," Walsh conceded.
     "But let's forget everything we know about you and assume for the moment you aren't," McKenna said. "Where in the car did these unidentified latents come from?"
     "Good idea and good question," Walsh said. "Got one on the back of the rearview mirror, so that has to belong to someone else who drove the car. Probably adjusted the mirror as soon as he got in. No indication that the killer drove the car, so I'm discounting that one. Got two on the inside of the glove-box door and two on the inside door frame of the driver's door. Any one of those and maybe all of them could belong to the killer. He was in the car to steal McMahon's wallet. Probably opened the driver's door to get at it, and he might've gone through the glove box as well."
     "Good points, Joe," McKenna conceded.
     "All he's done is given us more meaningless labor," Tommy countered. "I'm telling you, this killer didn't leave a print for us to find. But now, thanks to Joe, we have to waste time fingerprinting any friend of Cindy's who might've been in the car, we have to find out if she had any other lovers and then fingerprint them, and we have to find out where she had her car serviced and fingerprint every mechanic in the place. A lot of time and trouble for nothing."
     McKenna accepted Tommy's opinion at face value; all those people would have to be found and their fingerprints would have to be compared to the latents. There was no way around it. Since Joe Walsh, in his quest for ink, spent more time talking to reporters than he did talking to his wife, McKenna didn't want to tell Tommy everything he had learned that day from Barrone and Brady Wilson. He indicated with a head movement that it was time to go and Tommy caught on.
     "Thanks a lot, Joe," Tommy said. "Go home and read your scrapbooks."
     "You think that's all I do at home?"
     "That's exactly right."
     "How'd you know?"
     
     *      *      *

Moonlighting is a restaurant and club on Broadway and West 75th Street that features good food served in an upscale atmosphere at reasonable prices. Since it was on the way to Tommy's office uptown, he suggested that they stop there for dinner. McKenna wasn't surprised. The place ranked high on Tommy's extensive list of hangouts in Manhattan and McKenna had met him there before socially. Tommy was greeted as visiting royalty, and they were given his usual table in the rear.
     While enjoying their late lunch, McKenna told Tommy about Arthur McMahon and everything else he had learned from Barrone. Tommy understood Barrone's desire to avoid a press conference, but surprised McKenna by agreeing with his inclination to comply with Barrone's wishes. "Helps the prick keep his job, but it's the decent thing to do under the circumstances."
     "You getting mellow in your old age?" McKenna asked.
     "Not at all. He won the last battle, but in every war there should be a truce to bury the dead. He's got his."
     McKenna next told him what he had learned from Brady Wilson. It didn't surprise Tommy, but it seemed to make him happy. "After eighteen years, he's still using the same gun. Good!" he said.
     "How does that help us if we have no other known cases in those eighteen years?"
     "I don't know if it does, but I've had a lot of time to think about it. One of the questions I ask myself is: Why does he go to the trouble of firing through the paper bag if he's going to leave the slug in his victim anyway? The slug is enough to tie him to the killing if we ever get him and the gun together in the same place, so why does he do it?"
     McKenna thought that over and could come up with only one possible explanation. "He's got more barrels for that gun."
     "That's what I've been thinking for years. If you know what you're doing, you can break an automatic down, change the barrel, and reassemble it in under a minute. New barrel, new ballistic markings on the slug. But changing the barrel doesn't change the ballistic markings on the ejected cartridge. He knows that the chamber, the firing pin, and the ejector all leave identifiable marks on the ejected shell, so he uses the bag to recover it."
     "Meaning he could be using the same gun with different barrels to kill other people, and we'd have no way of knowing."
     "Right. No way of knowing, as long as he varied his technique a bit. Any whippings we'd catch, but he must have other ways of torture that get him off. Maybe there's something about that Fort Tryon location that makes him think that the whip is the way to go. Whip her to death while admiring the scenery. He can see a thousand people from there and nobody can see him and the horrible things he's doing. Might be a real power trip for him."
     "Solve one problem and create many more," McKenna said. "As it stands right now with this theory, things are probably a lot worse than we know."
     
     *      *      *

     Unlike most detective units spread throughout the city, the office of the Manhattan North Homicide Squad is not located in a station house. Home for them is a nondescript city-owned office building at Broadway and West 133rd Street in Harlem that also houses Manhattan North's detective borough headquarters, its Sex Crimes Unit, and the Internal Affairs Bureau unit for the borough.
     The office was empty when the McKennas arrived. Everyone was still in the Fort Tryon Park area doing the mundane things always done after a homicide--searches and canvasses. The fact that this was a double homicide and a newsworthy case bound to generate pressure meant that those mundane procedures were being diligently performed with a sense of urgency. All the t 's were being crossed and all the i 's dotted. Detectives had been called in from home, manpower had been requisitioned from other commands, and Emergency Service people were out getting dirty. Evidence and witnesses were the focus of activity.
     Evidence in this case consisted of the gun, McMahon's wallet, Cindy's purse, the whip, the chains, the handcuffs, and the bloody tarp--all things at the crime scene during the murders that weren't there when the cops arrived. On the chance that the killer had discarded any of these items soon after the crime, the park and the surrounding area was being combed foot by foot, garbage in every receptacle was being sifted, manholes were being opened, and sewers were being searched. There was also the possibility that the killer had driven into the park and had left his car in another secluded area while he waited, tortured, and killed. If so, that spot had to be found.
     Anyone in the vicinity of the park during the night and early morning could be a witness, not necessarily to the crime, but to something connected to it. The killer had entered the park the night before, stayed all night, and left after 6:00 A.M. He had gear with him and was probably carrying a suitcase containing the tarp, his whip and chains, and possibly coveralls. Somebody had seen something and that somebody had to be found and questioned. That meant questioning every parks department employee in Fort Tryon Park, every cop who had worked the late tour in the 34th Precinct, and going door-to-door in every apartment building near the park.
     Lieutenant Greve knew what had to be done and Tommy didn't give it a second thought. All the bases would be covered. Any evidence still there would be recovered and brought in and anyone who had seen anything even remotely connected to the crime would be found and interviewed.
     As detectives started arriving to work for the evening tour, the McKennas got busy on their paperwork. Knowing that Greve would be getting a steady stream of questions from the chiefs, everything they had done during the day had to be documented on a COMPLAINT FOLLOW-UP form, the DD-5, so that he would have the information at his fingertips. McKenna used separate reports to document his assignment to the case and presence at the crime scene, his visit to Barrone and Valenti, the identification of Cindy's and McMahon's bodies at the morgue, and his visit to the Ballistics Section and what he had learned there. Absent from his reports was the relationship between Cindy and McMahon, but he did note that McMahon had been employed by Barrone and that Barrone would make the death notification to McMahon's family.
     McKenna was still typing when Tommy handed him his completed reports, three short ones. He had documented his presence at the crime scene, his visit to the Photo Unit in headquarters, and the results of his meeting with Walsh. Tommy had also filled out a form that McKenna had never seen before. It was an FBI form titled "VICAP," and it listed the particulars of the 1981 homicides as well as the present ones. In the Details section Tommy had also requested information on any unsolved homicide nationwide in which a .380 Colt Commander had been identified as the murder weapon.
     "What does VICAP stand for?" McKenna asked.
     "Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, something the feds have come up with. Makes things easier now that they're involved. Think you got a serial killer case, fill it out and fax it in. Feds run it through their computer looking for similar cases that have been submitted to VICAP. If they come up with one, they send you the particulars and it's up to you to contact the detective in whatever department submitted it."
     "That's the limit of their involvement?"
     "Not necessarily. They'll help with the coordinating, if requested, and they just about insist on helping if there's more than one case around the country that's connected to yours."
     The VICAP form had not been around when McKenna was last in Homicide, but he liked it. In the past, he'd had to go to the thick directory of police agencies in the U.S. and fax the information and request to each one of them, a very time-consuming and expensive process. "How long has this form been around?"
     "About five years, give or take. Ever since serial killers became the public rage."
     "Did you ever submit the old case to them before?"
     "Tried, but they wouldn't take it. Too old and I only had one double murder. It didn't fit their guidelines for a serial killer case, but that's all changed now."
     "We're going to be getting a lot of calls on the .380 cases," McKenna said.
     "And we'll look at each one of them. Who's to say that, besides being a low-life, murdering pervert, our guy isn't doing robberies as well. After all, he did take Cindy's purse and McMahon's wallet."
     "Which brings us to another point," McKenna said.
     "The credit cards?"
     "Yeah. We've got to know."
     "Of course we do. Who do you want to use?" Tommy asked.
     "Bob Hurley. You know him?"
     "Hurley? Who doesn't? We go back a long ways and he owes me for all the jams I got him out of over the years. Thank God he finally retired. Always had a problem, but he always had a great story with his version of events to entertain the chiefs."
     "Good. Could you call him, then?" McKenna asked. "In my case, it's me who owes him."
     Tommy called Hurley, gave him Cindy Barrone's and Arthur McMahon's names and dates of birth, and requested the numbers of all their credit cards and whether they had been used that day. Then they gossiped for five minutes about who had retired, who was doing what, who was up and still rising in the detective bureau and who was down and on their way out. "He'll fax it to me in fifteen minutes," Tommy told McKenna after hanging up.
     It wasn't the only way to get the information, but the McKennas knew it was the best and certainly the fastest. They had to know if the killer was using the victims' credit cards and, if so, where. But due to the many laws passed and court decisions rendered over the past years regarding privacy and confidentiality of financial information, that information would be legally denied to them unless they went to extraordinary lengths to get it. The only persons who could authorize the disclosure of the information was a judge, an ADA willing to use his subpoena power, or the executors of Cindy's and McMahon's estates, and only after their wills were probated. A long wait, and if they had died without a will, even that option was out.
     Asking an ADA in the homicide bureau for the subpoenas directing the credit reporting agencies and banks to provide the information needed would be faster than going to a judge, but it was an option neither McKenna nor Tommy would ever seriously entertain. Involving the DA's office that early in the investigation would mean that the DA assigned would have a hand in supervising it from then on, a prospect any detective would find unappealing.
     Going to a judge for court orders directing the credit reporting agencies to release the information would be preferable, if worse came to worse. Establishing to the judge's satisfaction why they needed the information would be the easy part and serving a court order on TRW or some other credit reporting agency wouldn't be hard, either. Then they would legally possess a list of the victims' cards, but not what they needed. They would have to return to the judge and get court orders addressed to each of the credit card companies, directing them to reveal when and where the cards were used. Of course, each would comply, but they weren't dopes. Because of the police inquiry, they would figure that something was up and they would do one of two things: either try to call the victims--bad news for the McKennas--or simply cancel their cards, just as bad.
     The reality of the situation was that the McKennas weren't overly concerned with the financial health of the credit card companies; they wanted those cards active as long as possible and fervently hoped that the killer used them or sold them to someone who could lead them back to him after they applied the appropriate amount of pressure.
     Although it violated all the rules, and probably just as many laws, Bob Hurley was the intelligent choice. During his time in the department, Hurley always had some scam going to make money somehow. The chiefs wisely considered him a detective of questionable integrity, but they never really got him good enough to lock him up or fire him--close, but not quite. Hurley was just too sharp for them and they all breathed a sigh of relief when he retired, freeing up the four detectives from Internal Affairs who usually worked on him full-time.
     After retiring, Hurley went into the PI business, a trade loaded with hacks who still managed to make a pretty good living. Hurley had correctly figured that a sharp, experienced, and possibly unscrupulous character like himself, fully armed with money, connections, sources, and friends in places high and low, could quickly obtain more information on anybody or anything than all the PIs in town, and he was right. Reliable information was the lifeblood of the PI business and Hurley's ability to gain it quickly soon made him one of the major players in the city. He had found his place in life, president of the Holmes Detective Bureau, hiring his old cronies from the NYPD as soon as they retired, living the high life, and enjoying himself day in and day out.
     Although Hurley found it laughable that the NYPD had to go to such lengths to get the information he obtained in minutes with a computer terminal, the appropriate passwords, a chat with some old friends in the credit bureaus, and a few favors spread around, Hurley never forgot where he came from. He always assumed that if an old friend still in the Job called him, it must be important and he always got the information requested.
     The nominal price for Hurley's information was a dinner at Kennedy's, his primary hangout, but it went deeper than that. Although the chiefs never wanted to officially know if Hurley was their detectives' source of information on a big case, they were also under as much pressure as their detectives to get those cases solved. But they knew, and one hand always washes the other. Consequently, Hurley always seemed to know when he was hot and under investigation by this regulatory agency or that police agency. An inconvenience, but at those times he would become the model PI, following the rules and laws to the letter for a while.
     True to his word, Hurley faxed Cindy's and McMahon's credit reports. McMahon had four cards and Cindy had five. Each also had a debit card for their checking accounts. Next the machine spewed a note from Hurley:
     Tommy:
     Nothing on McMahon, but you've got a hit on Barrone. Heavy activity. I'm still investigating and on the phone; call you when I get all the details. You and I are square, but tell Brian he owes me big time once again.
     "The killer's got her PIN numbers. Bet it's all gonna be cash advances," McKenna guessed.
     "Of course he's got them," Tommy replied. "Poor girl, I'm sure she told him anything he wanted to know before he was through with her."
     While waiting for Hurley's call, McKenna noticed that, in violation of law and all ethical business practices, the header on the faxes listing the name and phone number of the sender stated that they came from O'Shaughnessy Investigations, Inc. Jerimiah O'Shaughnessy was a recently retired chief who had started his own company and foolishly placed himself in competition with Hurley. He had been hated by most in the NYPD, but none despised him as much as Hurley. If the illegally obtained credit reports were ever shown to the wrong person, Hurley couldn't care less. McKenna was sure that the phone number at the top of the faxes must be the unlisted personal line sitting on O'Shaughnessy's desk.
     By the time Hurley called, all the detectives working the night shift were standing by, waiting to learn where Hurley was sending them. When the phone rang, both McKennas reached for an extension at the same time.
     "Detective Forever-in-my-debt McKenna, please," Hurley said.
     "You got me," Tommy said.
     "Me too," McKenna added.
     "I sure do. Don't worry about the addresses, I'll fax them to you. First use, nine-ten this morning, Mobil gas station on Kissena Boulevard and the Long Island Expressway in Queens. Put twenty-nine dollars on her Chase Manhattan Visa. Does a little traveling and at nine-fifty he's at an ATM in a 7-Eleven in Wantagh in Nassau County. Took two cash advances, three hundred dollars each on her Citibank Visa and her First USA Visa. Ten minutes later, another 7-Eleven in Wantagh. Same thing, three hundred dollars on her Planet MasterCard and five hundred on her American Express. On to a K-Mart in Levittown, another ATM, ten-twenty this morning. Took five hundred from her checking account on her Citibank debit card and three hundred on her Chase Visa. Then he tried the First USA Visa again, no good. He'd already exceeded her daily cash advance limit, got rejected on that one."
     "Is that it?" Tommy asked. "No purchases?"
     "Why should he take a chance on some sales clerk remembering him? He made twenty-two hundred in less than an hour with very little risk. Faceless machines and I'll bet there's no security cameras at any of those ATMs."
     "I'm not taking that bet," Tommy said. "Another favor?"
     "Already done. If he uses them again tomorrow, I'll let you know two minutes after he punches in her PIN. It cost me, but I've got all her accounts flagged."
     "They're keeping her cards active?"
     "Like I said, it cost me. She's got eleven hundred left in her checking account, so that's still good. She's close to her limit on the Planet card, but all the rest are good for at least another three hundred tomorrow."
     "You got my beeper number?" Tommy asked.
     "You kidding? With all the problems the Job gave me, I used to write it on my hand every morning before going to work. Talk to you later if we get lucky and he stays greedy. Take care, brothers."
     "One more thing, Bobby," McKenna said. "Can you get us a list of anyone who used any of those machines at about the same time?"
     "Tough one and a little risky for me. If there are any and you question them, they might start wondering how you knew who they were."
     "It'll never get back to you. Trust us to bamboozle them and leave them smiling."
     "I do. You going to be there for a while?"
     "Always at your service."
     "Nice thinking, kid," Tommy told McKenna after they had hung up. "We get a witness out of this and you're my hero forever."
     McKenna could hardly believe it, but he felt himself blushing at the compliment from the great Tommy McKenna. "Think he'll try to get some more cash tomorrow?" he asked, looking to change the subject.
     "Don't know, but we've got to be ready to waste the time. One thing I'm sure of is that he won't use the same machines again and he's not from either Levittown or Wantagh. If I had to guess, I'd say he lives in the opposite direction. Upstate, Staten Island, or Jersey."
     "But he sure knows the area. Knew just where to go, three ATMs in twenty-two minutes."
     "Knew Fort Tryon Park, too, but I know he's not living there. If he was, I'd have found him a long time ago," Tommy stated, sounding very sure of himself.
     "So all we know for sure from this is that he's a thief as well as a murderer and he's got a car with a tank that'll hold twenty-nine dollar's worth. That's a big car or an old gas guzzler."
     "That's more than I knew before," Tommy said.
     "What do we do after we hear from Bobby again? On to Nassau County?"
     "Only if somebody was at those machines with him. Then we'll do them ourselves to keep straight with Bobby."
     "If not? Somebody's got to talk to the clerks at those stores and question them hard."
     "Somebody will, but I don't know if it should be us," Tommy said. "Don't forget, pardner, we're the top hands on this spread. We've got nothing but good people here, so let's decide after we find out how Greve did today. I imagine we'll just go out and poke around a bit before we go home."
     "Fine by me. I wouldn't mind an early night. Haven't been home much lately."
     "Been working a lot?" Tommy asked.
     "Yeah, been putting in a few hours."
     "On what?"
     "Nothing you'd find interesting," McKenna answered, reluctant to tell him that he spent most of his time chasing note passers. Most homicide detectives regarded their lesser brethren simply as okay folks who had found a way to get a pension by performing meaningless little make-work projects.
     Tommy was one of them. "You're probably right," he said, giving McKenna a sympathetic smile. "Not everybody gets to do the real stuff."
     Greve came in with his day tour crew. They looked beat and none of them looked like they had enjoyed a particularly successful day.
     "Looks like a big zero shaping up," Tommy said, then followed Greve into his office.
     McKenna felt he needed a boost, so he called home to tell Angelita he would be on time for a change.
     "Good," she said, sounding upbeat. "Ray called. He wants to take us out to dinner tonight. Sotto Cinque at eight, if that's okay with you."
     "Fine, but is it his turn?" McKenna asked.
     "I can never keep track, but he says it is."
     "He's the boss. See you soon."
     McKenna wasn't surprised at the invitation. He figured that the meeting with the mayor today had something to do with the Barrone case and Brunette would be under pressure to get it solved quickly. Dinner was the best way for him to find out how the investigation was going without spreading the pressure around. Fine by McKenna, but he wished he had some good news to give his friend.

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