Chapter 7



As it turned out, events mandated a late night. The top hands had to stay after all, traveling up to Washington Heights and out to Nassau County before calling it a day. By the time McKenna got home to his Greenwich Village apartment at nine-thirty, Angelita had been dressed and ready for hours, the kids were finally asleep, and the baby-sitter was doing her homework, grateful for a night of easy money watching Mommy play with her charges before putting them to bed. Dinner with Brunette had been delayed, but they were still on.
     Brunette, of course, took it in stride. The delay meant that progress was being made in an important case and work always came before food with him. He was content to wait for them in the restaurant while McKenna finished whatever he was doing.
     Angelita understood as well, but was unable to accept this particular delay as part of any routine. Although she had been a rookie cop when she had first met McKenna and Brunette, one of the reasons the Job had not been for her was that she always expected to have what she really wanted when she wanted it, and what she really wanted by nine o'clock that night was to be having dinner in a nice restaurant with her husband and their friend while looking great in her favorite red dress.
     It wasn't that Angelita was a spoiled, something-for-nothing type of person; she worked hard at cooking, keeping the apartment immaculate, and raising the kids. She kept herself in great shape and gave McKenna every chance he liked to show her off. She was a good trooper, accompanying him with a smile and without complaint to all those boring promotion and retirement galas he seemed to enjoy so much. Aside from the sometimes-irrational jealous streak she found hard to control, she was almost the perfect wife as far as McKenna was concerned.
     Almost perfect, but long before he finally walked in the door, McKenna knew he had a problem. He loved Angelita deeply and appreciated her, but he also understood her. He knew that Angelita liked Brunette, enjoyed his company and the fuss he always made over her, and considered his boss to be her friend as much as his. She looked forward to their informal once-a-week-or-so dinners with Brunette so much that she was always ready on time, a rare event in all other circumstances. Being late meant cutting one of her favorite evenings short, and McKenna knew that Angelita didn't like that. Two hours late made even the best excuses inoperable; she would have to be pampered and he was ready to do just that as he made his entrance.
     Angelita was sitting in the living room helping the baby-sitter with her Spanish homework. Open on the coffee table were a Victoria's Secret catalog and a Macy's catalog, giving McKenna his first indication of how bad things really were. Repentance was going to be an expensive affair, but he felt it was worth an attempt to minimize the damage. "Sorry I'm late, baby, but I have to tell you something before I say another word. That dress looks just great, especially on you."
     "You still like this old thing?" she asked, giving her dress the once over-before shooting him the barest deprecating glance.
     "Old? Only seen it once or twice at the most. How old is it?"
     Angelita made a small show of looking at her watch. "About two hours older than it should be. I've been sitting here waiting so long that it went out of fashion."
     Uh-oh! McKenna thought. What approach do I take now? Contrite and humble or indignant and stupid? "A lady with looks like yours doesn't have to worry about fashion. The older it gets, the better it looks on you."
     "If you say so, but I feel a little shopping spree coming on."
     "Whatever makes you happy, baby. Lord knows you deserve it."
     "It would be nice if you came with me," Angelita said, blatantly pushing the envelope.
     Whether it was for herself or him, Angelita loved a slow, thoughtful day of shopping that allowed her plenty of time to ponder each selection. But not McKenna. He hated shopping so much that he could buy himself two suits, five shirts, and ten ties in fifteen minutes while Angelita would still be searching for a new belt for him, but he kept the contrite smile on his face. "Shopping? Love to. Why don't we make a day of it?"
     She knew she had him. "Really?" she asked, excited and suddenly all smiles.
     "Of course, on one condition. Nothing for me. I've already got enough clothes, but I'm sure you could use a few things."
     "I do keep you extraordinarily well dressed, don't I?" she said as she got up and walked toward him, looking him up and down with a hint of pride and satisfaction.
     "Sure do. I should be on the cover of GQ every other month, thanks to you."
     She hugged him and pecked his cheek, but then wrinkled her nose in distaste as she sniffed his suit. "You been to the morgue today?" she asked, pushing herself back.
     "Unfortunately, yes. You can still smell that antiseptic?" McKenna asked, amazed.
     "It's overpowering. We're late enough as it is, so another few minutes won't matter. You have to change or they won't let us in."
     Angelita took her seat on the couch, leaving McKenna sniffing his sleeve. He couldn't smell a thing, but he took her word on it. As he passed her on his way to the bedroom, she gave him a compassionate smile. "Was it bad?" she asked.
     "A horror," he answered. "Really sad."
     She deliberately closed both catalogs as she continued smiling at him. "You know, I'm trying, but I can't think of a single thing I need. This old dress will do just fine for a while."
     
     *      *      *

With his job and his personality, Brunette never found himself alone for long. When McKenna and Angelita finally entered the restaurant, he was munching a zucchini stick while happily engaged in conversation at the bar with Mike Brennan, an old friend and the New York Post' s premier columnist. While Brennan wasn't a reporter, with an inquiring paragraph or two he could put his colleagues in a feeding frenzy, mandating a P.M. press conference the next day.
     As usual, Brunette knew what McKenna was thinking. "Mike and I were just having a little off-the-record discussion about how this tragedy you're working on could affect local politics here," he said.
     McKenna felt a tinge of relief. "Off the record" with Brennan meant just that. But it would be nice to know Brennan's take on the matter. McKenna didn't say anything, but he gave Brunette an inquiring look.
     "I told him everything I know, which isn't too much at this point," Brunette said in response.
     "And?" McKenna said to Brennan. "What do you think of the deal with Barrone?"
     "Understandable. It's politics, but it doesn't hurt anybody. As long as there's no cover-up of anything the public has a right to know, there's nothing wrong with helping Barrone along through his time of grief." Brennan took an emergency sip from his martini before he continued. "Besides, Barrone's done some good things for the city. He's a fiscal realist."
     "So you like him?"
     "Can't stand him personally, but he's good for the city," Brennan said, then turned to Brunette. "Matter of fact, it's a smart deal. Can't hurt you when it's time to present your budget to the city council."
     "That never crossed my mind," Brunette said with a smile. "See you later." He nodded to a waiter and they were led to their usual table in the rear, leaving Brennan at his usual spot at the bar.
     Angelita gave no indication that she wanted to talk about anything but the food, so Brunette and McKenna made small talk with her until they finished ordering. Angelita knew nothing about the case, but she had been through it before and knew that both men wanted to talk about the reason they were eating so late. "You've both been so gracious to me," she said. "I realize my allotted time must be up by now, so why don't you boys talk cops and robbers and pretend I'm not here?"
     "Angelita, you're impossible to ignore," Brunette said. "However, I do have some questions for Brian."
     "Fire away," McKenna said. "What do you know so far?"
     "The press has been bothering me, but I've made no inquiries," Brunette said. "I'm in the dark."
     McKenna felt a pang of guilt. When he had called Brunette to tell him he would be late for dinner, Brunette hadn't asked a single question. At the time, McKenna had figured that Greve was keeping him informed of the progress they were making. Apparently, that wasn't the case. "Sorry, I thought someone else was talking to you."
     "You mean Greve?"
     McKenna didn't want to give up the man for whom he might be working, so he said nothing.
     Brunette knew. "Don't worry about it. After Camilia told me about the deal, I made a point of not asking for information. Figured the less I know, the fewer lies I have to tell them. Greve was sharp enough to keep his mouth shut and not send anything to DCPI. Besides, you know how things sometimes slow down when the PC starts asking questions. I didn't want that."
     McKenna realized that both Brunette and Greve had been right on the money. Brunette knew that official high-ranking interest in a case frequently slowed it down because the detectives and bosses became too careful, sometimes making them unwilling to climb out onto that important limb. Official pressure on Greve might have worried him to the point that he wouldn't have let his men profit from the information illegally obtained from Hurley. According to the Supreme Court, detectives were not allowed to enjoy fruit that fell from the poisonous tree.
     Greve had been sharp enough to realize that the apparent lack of official interest in what he knew was a very important case meant that he was being told, indirectly, to pull out the stops. And, since nobody was asking, he wasn't answering by sending routine progress reports to the office where the press gets most of their information from the NYPD, the deputy commissioner of public information. Sharp.
     Greve was a man to be trusted, McKenna concluded, and he tucked that information away in the back of his mind. "How are we gonna handle the press until the funeral?" he asked.
     "I'll direct all inquiries to you and you handle the reporters on an individual basis. Be nice to them, give them a little, but generally stonewall them."
     "Got it," McKenna said. "Down to business?"
     "I'm listening."
     McKenna told him about the bullet match with the .380 Colt Commander used in the old homicides and his and Tommy's theory that the killer had been using the same gun with different barrels over the years to commit other crimes, either robberies or murders. He expected a comment on it, but Brunette remained noncommittal.
     Walsh's unidentified latent prints were another story. "Where in the car were these prints found?"
     McKenna told him, then added, "Tommy thinks it's a waste of time. He's sure the killer left no prints."
     Brunette smiled. "I've found over the years that I'm usually right whenever I agree with Tommy. However, I've got some bad news for you. When you catch this guy, even if you do it tomorrow and get him good, you still have to find out who those prints belong to."
     "Why? Accomplice?" McKenna asked.
     "Sure. If you get him good enough, he'll say he was there with somebody else and the other guy did all the mean stuff while he just watched."
     McKenna knew Brunette was right, but he still got some simple satisfaction from Brunette's reasoning. He had said "When you catch this guy," not "If you catch this guy."
     Angelita had been making a show of not listening, but she had also noticed. "Is it going to take you long to catch him, Brian?" she asked.
     It was a question McKenna hadn't wanted to hear, and it forced a commitment from him. "Maybe not. If we stay lucky, it could be soon."
     That was what Angelita had expected to hear, but not Brunette. "I take it you and Tommy have forced some breaks in this case," he said.
     "Forced is the right word. We went to Bob Hurley."
     "Hurley?" Brunette asked, concern etched on his face. "Who else knows about that?"
     "We kept it a secret on a need-to-know basis. Right now, it's just the Homicide people."
     "Whew! I should know better, but you had me worried for a minute. There had to be a lot of people assigned to this case today from other squads, and I'd hate to have to vouch for all of them."
     "Anybody in the Homicide Squad that worries you?"
     "Not a one. I'd go to the wall with any of them, and that's why they're there doing God's work. I'm very careful when I select his disciples."
     Brunette didn't have to explain his feelings any further to McKenna since they shared the same creed, but Angelita didn't get it. "You're choosing God's disciples? Sounds a little sacrilegious, don't you think?" she asked.
     Brunette just shrugged, so it was McKenna who decided to answer. "Killers have to be caught, and it isn't just a matter of vengeance or soothing the feelings of the victim's family. A killer who gets away with it is likely to kill again for whatever reason. We usually can't stop him from killing the first time, but any victims after that are our fault--a failure of government to protect its citizens. You agree?"
     "Sure, but what's the point?" Angelita asked.
     "Sometimes the Constitution and the Supreme Court discourage the mission, but that doesn't bother a good homicide detective. Their motto is `We work for God,' so they're not overly concerned with the risks they take to save lives and get their man behind bars."
     "And you're taking those risks?" Angelita asked.
     "Yes, and everyone in the Homicide Squad who knows that Bob Hurley is feeding us information is taking the same risk. We could all lose our jobs over this if it got out, Ray included. In all likelihood, we'd be treated as criminals and we'd lose our pensions as well."
     "And you're sure it's worth it to get this one man?"
     "Absolutely certain. If I showed you pictures of what this guy does to people, you'd have to agree."
     "Not necessary, Brian. I like the way you think," Angelita said as she smiled at him and patted his hand. "Besides, it makes me proud to know that you are a good homicide detective and you both know what you're doing. It's one of the reasons I like hanging out with you guys."
     The appetizers arrived at that moment, a case of perfect timing as far as McKenna was concerned. He found himself wondering if he was taking unnecessary chances early in the game. They trusted his judgment, but a point had been made by both Angelita and Brunette and it hadn't been lost on him. He was playing with futures when he took chances--Ray's, his, and even Angelita's and the kids'. He resolved to keep that in mind as he went along.
     "How did the rest of Greve's people do this morning?" Brunette asked.
     "Did all the standard things and spent a lot of time at it, but they didn't get too far this morning. Talked to the cops who worked the late tour in the Three-four last night and checked the parking summonses. Nothing there. Then they got the park workers and did a sweep of the park with them, looking for fresh tire tracks. Nothing."
     "So the killer walked into the park," Brunette surmised.
     "Or took the subway in. There's an A train stop right in the middle of it, the Cloisters station. Figuring that the killer knew the area and since the park neighborhood was mostly white when he first hit in eighty-one, Greve's men went on the assumption that they were looking for a white male in his forties, at least, carrying his killing gear in some kind of bag or suitcase. He left the park sometime after six, when Cindy died, and before seven-thirty, when the bodies were discovered. They started with the token booth clerk, but she doesn't remember seeing such a character. Understandable--it's a pretty busy station in the morning."
     "He didn't stop at the token booth," Brunette said. "He's careful, right?"
     "Very careful. Tommy and I are convinced that he's been at this for a long time, and Tommy hasn't heard so much as a whisper about him and his fun for the past eighteen years."
     "Then if he took the subway, he already had a token or a Metrocard with him. He wouldn't take a chance on buying a token and being remembered by the clerk."
     "As it turns out, that's probably what he did," McKenna said. "Unfortunately, it took a long time and a lot of interviews to find that out. Six hundred and eighty of them by the day crew and more than a hundred by the night crew."
     "All the people living around the park?"
     "Everybody in every apartment facing the park and every store owner and clerk. Nothing, nobody remembered seeing a white man leaving the park with a package this morning. Not a black man either, for that matter."
     "If he left on foot, someone had to see him," Brunette said. "So if he isn't one of the parkies, he had to take the subway out."
     "He's not and he did. Every parkie remotely fitting the profile was checked out. Turned out there were two of them, but they had no criminal records of any consequence and each could account for their whereabouts last night. Family men both, and they were home sleeping next to their wives. It had to be the subway, so Tommy and I kept ourselves on the clock. Figured we'd only be getting a couple of hours overtime, but then we got lucky."
     "You found someone who saw him in the subway?"
     "Two people, in fact, but we didn't think much of it at the time. They don't know each other, but both saw him on the subway platform about six-thirty this morning. He's about fifty and he was carrying a military duffel bag."
     "Any blood on his clothes?"
     "None that they saw. One of our witnesses, the woman, was even in the same subway car with him riding downtown. Says he got off at the Hundred and Eighty-first Street station, three stops."
     "You get a good description?"
     "They really had no reason to take a good look at him, so you know how these things go when you have two witnesses who don't know each other."
     "Two different descriptions," Brunette guessed.
     "You got it. Different heights, different weights, even some small differences in his clothes. Had them down to the Artists Unit for a sketch, drawings look like two different people. Both have him either bald or with a shaved head, one says he has a mustache and the other says he doesn't, but they're both describing the same man--five-eight to five-ten, one sixty to one hundred and eighty pounds, but he's the well-dressed, well-built guy with the duffel bag."
     "Well dressed and well built?"
     "Dressed in a casual way, might even call him a yuppie. Blue sports coat, tan slacks, white or beige pullover shirt open at the neck, loafers in some shade of brown, and both say he looks like a weightlifter."
     "So why didn't you think much of it at the time?"
     "Because he didn't fit one big item on our profile. Our man in the subway is black, and the overwhelming majority of identified serial killers are white males."
     "Up until now," Brunette said.
     "Yeah, up until now," McKenna conceded. "Tommy and I put our heads together and the only black, sex-oriented, long-term serial killer we could come up with was Wayne Williams."
     "Wayne Williams? Who's he?" Angelita asked.
     "A black guy who killed a bunch of young boys in Atlanta in the eighties. Except for him, this sick type of carnage has always been one of our sins."
     "If this is the guy, it shoots down Tommy's whole local-resident-knows-the-neighborhood theory," Brunette observed. "The area around the park was mostly white when our killer first hit in New York."
     "I know, and it's killing Tommy. Based on everything commonly known about serial killers, he'd spent eighteen years searching for a white guy. That was the whole focus of his investigation when he was looking for suspects."
     "Will these two witnesses of yours stand up to inspection?"
     "You mean, Did Hurley have anything to do with us finding them?" McKenna asked.
     "That's what I'm asking."
     "They'll do. We found them the hard way--old-fashioned door-to-door police work."
     "I see. They're two that Greve's people missed this morning when they did their canvas of the neighborhood," Brunette surmised. "They missed them because your witnesses weren't home."
     "That's right. They were at work then, but on their way into work was when they saw our man on the subway."
     "What finally made you two so sure that he's the guy?"
     "That's where Hurley comes in," McKenna said, then briefly told Brunette about the information he had gotten from the PI on Cindy's credit cards.
     "Did you ask him for the names of the people who used those ATMs around the same time as the killer?"
     "Hold on, Ray. I'm supposed to be the sharp guy," McKenna said, impressed with how quickly Brunette had come up with the same idea Tommy had thought so brilliant.
     "Okay, you're still the sharp guy. But did you?"
     "Yeah, and that was the clincher. One of the night teams went out to Nassau County. They stopped at the gas station off the expressway where the killer used Cindy's card to buy gas. Got nowhere there."
     "He just swiped her card at the pump and filled up?" Brunette guessed.
     "Exactly, spoke to no one. Next they went to Wantagh and interviewed the clerk at the 7-Eleven. Got lucky there. He remembered a well-dressed black man using the ATM this morning at around nine o'clock. Stood out in his mind because that neighborhood is lily white, but he couldn't give them much in the way of a description because nine is one of their really busy times there."
     "So how about the other places he used the card. Anybody remember him there?"
     "I hope so, but we won't know for a while. Soon as Tommy and I heard about the black man using the card in the first 7-Eleven, we knew the subway guy was the one we should be looking for. We went to Greve and had him bring back that team from Nassau County."
     "Because you're gonna take the time to make the rest of those interviews legal?"
     "Exactly, with one exception. We know who we have to talk to, but we can't legally know that yet without risking getting indicted. So we decided to do it legal, put a rush on those court orders, and hope our potential witnesses out there won't forget seeing our guy, if they saw him at all."
     "Who's the one exception?"
     "His name's Teddy Wozniak, saw our man at that Wantagh 7-Eleven this morning. Gave us a pretty good description, the best so far."
     "What made him the exception?"
     "He's safe because he's one of us, or at least we're hoping he is. He's a cop, works in the Tenth Precinct, lives out there. Today's his day off, but his wife's away and he was running short on funds. So he went to the 7-Eleven to get a cup of coffee, a pack of smokes, a quart of milk, and some cash from the ATM."
     "How did you know he was a cop?"
     "Because Hurley threw in a bonus, sent us the credit reports on all our potential ATM witnesses. Employment listed as NYPD, but I still checked him out a bit before we went out to see him. Called the squad commander in the Tenth and he told us that Wozniak is a pretty active cop. Considers him reliable and, most important, stand-up."
     "Wasn't Wozniak wondering how you found him?"
     "I'm sure he was, but he didn't ask and we didn't tell him. We just asked questions and he gave answers."
     "What was his story?"
     "Went to the 7-Eleven and parked in front. From his car he could see our man at the ATM through the store's window. Since Wozniak didn't have enough money to make his purchases, he decided to sit in his car and wait for the guy to finish getting his money from the machine. Saw him get cash on two of Cindy's cards. After he gets his money, the guy leaves the store and Wozniak starts in. Passes the killer, gets to the door, then he hears a noise and turns around. The killer had been parked next to him and had accidentally banged Wozniak's car door with his own when he got in. The guy sees Wozniak looking and says `Sorry' real politely. Wozniak's driving a shitbox and he's not concerned about any dings, so he yells back, `Don't worry about it.' Then he goes into the store without another thought."
     "Does he remember what kind of car the killer was driving?"
     "Not very well. Big car, not too new, maroon or red, possibly an Olds or a Buick was his impression."
     "How about a paint chip on Wozniak's car? The killer might have left one there when he banged Wozniak's door."
     "Thought about that. Tommy and I checked his car over real good, saw nothing. Just to be sure, we called Walsh at home. He was happy to come out to Wantagh for some easy overtime and he gave the car a good going-over with his magnifying glass. Came up with some paint from a few other cars, but nothing recent and nothing red or maroon."
     "If Walsh couldn't find it, it wasn't there," Brunette said. "Too bad you couldn't bring Wozniak to the Artists Unit and get his version of what this guy looks like."
     McKenna smiled, reached into his pocket, and took out three folded pieces of paper. "Couldn't risk taking him to the Artists Unit yet, but we did just as good," he said as he passed them to Brunette.
     Brunette unfolded the papers and spread them out on the table. Two were standard Artists Unit wanted-for-questioning sketches, but the third was a sketch done in pencil on a plain piece of paper. Brunette studied them all, then pointed to the plain paper sketch. "This one was made with Wozniak's help?" he asked.
     "Yep. Can't show the muscles, but that's his face."
     "Who's the artist?"
     "Believe it or not, Tommy McKenna. Took him about ten minutes and Wozniak says that's the guy. Also pinned his height and weight down a little better. Says he's five-nine, about a hundred and seventy pounds, right in the middle of what our two subway witnesses say."
     "That Tommy never ceases to amaze me and I'm inclined to agree with Wozniak," Brunette said, staring at the sketches. "These other two look like sketches of two different people, but Tommy's looks like a composite of both of them."
     "That's why we can use it tomorrow. We'll put it on the circular form, give it a number, and show it around One Hundred Eighty-first Street. We figure that's where he had his car parked, so somebody must have seen him there."
     "If you stay lucky, somebody might even know him," Angelita said. "Easy job, case closed."
     Brunette and McKenna exchanged a smile. It was never that easy, they knew. Sketches are routinely made and circulated in major cases, but seldom turn out to be any help at all in catching the suspect. Detectives considered them the outside shot, something they could pin their hopes on when they had nothing else and everything was going wrong. But there was a big down side; sketches generate meaningless investigative hours checking out calls from people who say the sketch looks like their old boyfriend, their boss, their neighbor, their mailman, or whoever else strikes them as a little strange.
     Angelita caught the smile and felt miffed. "It could happen," she said defensively.
     Her point had to be addressed. "Probably will. We should have this guy in irons tomorrow," McKenna answered, trying not to sound condescending.
     He didn't pull it off and Angelita pouted a moment before she won her argument with her standard retort. "You never know," she said emphatically, challenging them to dispute that statement.
     Brunette and McKenna just shrugged. They were the losers because, after all, you never did really know.

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