The Night Caller (2 page)

The mourners who’d accompanied them to Maureen’s home after the funeral had all gone. Only the flowers were left. Coop sat and looked at them. There were bouquets of roses and carnations in many colors, as well as big, exotic blooms whose names he didn’t know, arranged into elaborate horseshoes and wreaths. People had gone to a lot of trouble and expense, he thought dully. Thank-you notes would have to be written.

Maureen prowled the room, hands on her hips. She kept glaring at the flowers.

“I don’t get it,” she said. “Why do people send flowers?”

“They’re our friends. They’re trying to console us.”

“Watching something beautiful wither and die is supposed to make me feel better?”

Coop sighed. “I’ll take them if you like.”

“I don’t see why people ever thought of cutting flowers in the first place. Why bring them indoors and watch them die? Go to a garden if you want to see them.”

Coop repeated, “I’ll take them if you like.”

“It’s the waste I can’t stand. If only people had given money to her favorite charity instead of sending flowers. You should have put that in the newspaper.”

He didn’t reply. He felt drained of all energy and emotion.

The funeral had been a horror. All through it Coop had held his pain at a distance. An odd sense of guilt had crept into his grief, as if he were somehow to blame for Bette’s death. He was her father, a cop, and had protected her all her life.

But not this time. Not against this killer.

Now he and Maureen were alone together with their new burden, the mutual loss they would take with them to their own graves.

They hadn’t gotten along after the divorce, which itself had been less than amicable. Along with the recent direction Maureen’s life had taken, this could only make things much worse.

She had become an activist, dedicated to environmentalism, animal rights, and natural everything. Not that anyone would call Maureen touchy-feely. She upheld her gentle, holistic principles with a ferocious rigor. Coop’s efforts to comfort her had met with polite but sullen withdrawal. Her daughter’s murder had stunned her. And made her even more angry.

They were in the living room of her small co-op on a quiet street in New Rochelle. He was sitting in an uncomfortable beige upholstered chair with cold wooden arms. She came to sit directly across from him. He raised his eyes to find her staring at him with her lips pursed, as if waiting for something. She hadn’t aged well. Her once lithe figure had become somewhat stocky, her brown eyes dim and haunted. And she’d dyed her hair dark and cut it short so that it added weight to her face. Yet she might still be attractive if she made a minimum of effort. But she didn’t.

Voices sounded outside, someone giving directions. Then a car door slammed, and the last of the departed mourners drove away. From across the ensuing silence Maureen stared at Coop bleary-eyed, as if through water.

“How could you have let her stay in that house alone?” she demanded to know. “How could you keep it a secret from me that she was in town?”

Coop sighed and dragged his hand down his face, as if trying to rearrange his features so he could be someone else. He’d known the question was coming, had plenty of time to think about it. But there was only one honest answer, and it wasn’t going to satisfy Maureen.

He said, “She would have called you if she wanted to see you. What she wanted was peace and quiet.”

“Why? Was she having problems?”

“I felt I shouldn’t question her,” Coop said miserably. “I was wrong.”

“Were you ever!” Maureen sat back, crossing her legs. He found himself staring at her shoes. They were heavy-looking pumps with a dull black finish. Maureen was against using animal products, including leather. Coop was never sure what her shoes were made of. He remembered how good her legs used to look when she wore high heels.

“Everything I heard about her life in New Jersey was positive,” she went on.

“Same here.”

“You sure? She was always more willing to confide in you than me. The two of you were always so close. You even told her about the cancer before you told me.”

He didn’t reply to that. After a while he said, “You were always a good mother to her.”

“I was. That’s why we weren’t close. There were old grudges. I was the one who had to say no, enforce curfews, dole out allowances. You’d arrive on Saturday afternoon and take her to a soccer game. Easy for you to be her pal. So what’s she been telling you the last few months?”

“Everything was going well. She was busy at work. Feeling tired. That’s all she said.” Coop paused, then added, “Believe me, I’ve thought about this.”

Maureen let it drop. There was silence. He kept his head down, watching as the squared-off toe of her shoe turned in a slow circle. She asked, “Do you know a Detective Mackey?”

“Mackey? No.”

“He was the one who interviewed me. Asked me one totally insensitive question after the other for an hour and a half. Then you know what he did? Fingerprinted me.” She was examining the tips of her fingers as if to make sure she’d gotten all the ink off. “Wouldn’t give a reason why he was doing it, of course. You cops hate giving reasons. All he’d say was it was for purposes of elimination.”

“That was the reason. They dust the house for fingerprints. Next they eliminate the people whose prints they’d expect to find—you, me, Bette. If they find anybody else’s prints—”

“They could be the killer’s?”

“Could be.”

“Well, did they find anybody else’s prints?”

“I don’t know.”

“What—they didn’t talk to you, either?”

“I don’t call them. When they have something to tell us, they will.”

“Oh? Are you sure about that?”

“I don’t understand you.”

“Suppose they’re covering up. Suppose it was a cop who killed her.”

Coop looked up at her face. She stared fiercely back at him, her lips drawn taut. He said, “That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it? Practically everybody in Breezy Point is NYPD.”

“That’s not true anymore.”

“Our neighbors on both sides are NYPD.”

“You think Judy and Kent Mallon are murderers? Or Edna and Ron O’Brien? We’ve known them for years.”

“Why didn’t they hear anything, then? Why didn’t anybody hear anything? The houses at Breezy are about six feet apart. Thin wooden walls. Open windows. How could someone get into our house and—and do what they did and leave, and nobody heard anything?”

Coop sighed heavily. The question had occurred to him, too. He’d tried to dismiss it, but it kept coming back. He said, “I don’t know.”

“You don’t? Then how do you know witnesses aren’t keeping quiet? Protecting somebody. Cops protect each other no matter what. The blue line that never breaks. You’re not going to deny that.”

“It happens. But not in this case.”

“You don’t know about this case. You’ve already admitted that. Why don’t you ask a few questions? Shake things up a little? For God’s sake! You’re a lieutenant, NYPD, and this is your daughter!”

She was leaning forward now, shouting at him. Coop said, “Easy, Maureen. Try to calm down.”

“Don’t give me that condescending male crap! If you think I’m wrong, argue with me.” She bit hard into her lower lip to keep from crying.

“Maureen…”

“Leave me the hell alone!”

“I don’t think you’re wrong.” He stood up from his chair. “I’ll make some calls and let you know.”

Maureen remained seated. As he let himself out she said something that might have been “Thanks, Coop.”

Might have been.

When he got back to his efficiency apartment on New York’s Upper West Side, Coop peeled off his suit coat, loosened his tie, then opened a cold bottle of Beck’s dark. The apartment was two rooms and a small bathroom. What passed for a kitchen was behind a tall folding screen in a corner. The walls were a mottled cream color, as were the drapes over vertical plastic blinds in the single window. Framed museum prints hung on the walls, modern ones that were like dreams with sharp angles. Coop didn’t understand them. The furniture had been in the apartment when he moved in and was the best thing about it.

He sat down on his sofa that at night unfolded and became his bed.

Why shouldn’t he look into his daughter’s death on his own? Some in the department might not like it, but what could they do to him at this point in his dwindling life? And what kind of life was it? He’d become a disconsolate recluse in his tiny apartment, roaming the neighborhood on late night walks, a man without employment, social life, or purpose. Now he had his grief to keep him company and turn him in on himself even more, along with his self-pity. Better to do something—to use what time he had left to learn who had killed his daughter, and why.

He took a sip of beer, slouched down, and leaned back against the sofa cushion, thinking on what he did know about Bette’s murder.

He’d been the first cop on the scene, had seen things fresh. That was always an advantage. He steeled himself and tried to picture it in his mind.

The cottage door had been unlocked, but it didn’t seem to have been tampered with. No scratches on the lock or scrapes on the door. The killer had either used a key or been let in, and Coop could account for all the keys to the cottage except the one he’d given to Bette.

Nothing in the house seemed to have been disturbed. Nothing that Coop could recall might be missing. There had been no sign anyone had smoked in the house, no drinking glasses or anything else indicating a visitor. Had Bette talked to anyone on the phone shortly before her death? Coop wished now he’d pressed the redial button before calling for help. But he’d been in shock, disoriented by the sight of his murdered daughter. If only he’d had the presence of mind to treat the situation like any other homicide, to examine the crime scene without touching anything and determine some basic facts. The first building blocks for constructing a case must have been there, but he’d ignored them.

There were so many questions, and no way for him to know the essential answers, or to learn them without help. He couldn’t take seriously Maureen’s suspicions of a police cover-up. That was paranoia talking. But that didn’t mean the detectives investigating the case would speak frankly to the victim’s father, even if he was a retired cop.

He decided to go see Billard. His old friend in the department ought to be able to fill him in. Tomorrow, though. Right now he was exhausted from the funeral, from Maureen. He wanted to take off his shoes, lie back on the sofa, and rest.

No, he told himself, not tomorrow.

He made himself stand up and shrugged back into his suit coat.

Not tomorrow. Today.

He couldn’t rely on tomorrows.

Billard’s office was at the other end of Queens from his restaurant at Howard Beach. To Coop it felt like another world. This was Long Island City, a crowded, noisy district of old warehouses and factories and row houses that had been occupied by working people until yuppies moved in during the eighties. The skyscrapers of midtown Manhattan loomed just across the East River.

The dense, mixed population of the area kept the precinct house busy.

As he walked down the hall toward his former patrol car partner’s office he could hear the background chatter of a police radio, the earnest pleadings of a man and woman at the booking desk, bursts of muffled, outraged shouting from the holdover cells on the second floor. Two plainclothes detectives he didn’t recognize passed him, grinning and chattering about something other than police work, but the suit coat of one was unbuttoned and with each step flapping to afford a glimpse of the checked butt of his belt-holstered 9mm handgun. Coop had loved it all and still did, the sounds and sights, and the scent of desperation on the not so fresh air.

The desk sergeant was a grizzled old warrior named McCreary. Coop remembered seeing him in Seconds. McCreary remembered Coop, addressing him as “Lou,” department slang for “Lieutenant.” Making him feel at home. McCreary called Lieutenant Billard to notify him that Coop was in the building.

Billard’s office door was the only one in the hall that was slightly ajar, as if be wanted to make sure Coop could find it.

Coop knocked as he pushed the door open farther and stepped inside.

It was a small office with plaster walls painted a dull green. A lot of greasy cobwebs were stuck to and moving around the rectangular heating vent up near the ceiling. The room’s one window had a wire grill over its dirty glass and looked out on the precinct house parking lot. A row of gray file cabinets lined one wall, a table with a computer on it sat against another. About a dozen yellow Post-its were stuck haphazardly to the frame of the computer monitor. Coop wondered why people never arranged them symmetrically, the way they did postage stamps.

Billard was seated behind a cluttered gray steel desk. He stood up, came around the desk, and the two men hugged.

When they stepped apart, Billard gave Coop’s arm a pat.

“I feel like crap not making it over to Maureen’s after the funeral,” he said. “I was on my way, but all hell broke loose here this morning and…well, you know how it is. The Job never lets up.”

Coop nodded, feeling awkward, thinking maybe Billard should have come no matter how much hell had broken loose. But he knew he was being unreasonable. “It’s all right, you were at the cemetery.” He waited while the bulky Billard, his girth testing the seams of his blue uniform shirt, moved back behind the desk and sat down with a sigh. Billard motioned for Coop to sit in the uncomfortable oak chair set at an angle in front of the desk. Coop sat, thought
the hell with it,
and stood back up. “I’m here because of Bette,” he said.

“I kinda figured you would be.”

“How close are they to making an arrest?”

Billard hesitated long enough to give him the answer. “Don’t guess it’d do much good to tell you we’re doing all we can, and we’ll keep you apprised of developments.”

“No,” Coop said. He drifted over to the window and looked out at the rows of patrol cars and assortment of officers’ personal cars in the graveled parking lot. Sunlight glanced dully off dusty windshields. “What’ve you got so far, Art?”

“You know Queen’s South Homicide has the case.”

Coop watched two young uniformed officers climb into a patrol car, the way he and Billard had done years and years ago. Young knights of the law. “I know, Art, but word gets around.”

“I made sure it found its way here,” Billard said. He shrugged and ran a hand over his bald pate. “So what do you want to know?”

Coop sat down in the hard chair. He’d expected a little more resistance. Maybe even wanted it. Because the first question was going to be hard to ask. He swallowed and said, “They find any sign of sexual assault?”

“Traces of the sort of powder used to keep latex gloves from sticking together during packaging were found on her body. All over her body.”

“But she was dressed.”

“Maybe undressed; then her clothes were put back on her. Or maybe they were never fully removed, only unbuttoned and rearranged.”

Coop spoke through clenched teeth. “Penetration?”

“Not much.”

“What do you mean, not much?”

“There’s something we’re not telling the public, Coop.”

“But you’ll tell me, Art. You’ll tell
me!”

“I didn’t tell you,” Billard said reluctantly. “But if I had, I’d make sure you knew that this one is a tight, small-circle secret even inside the department. The public’s not to know—just a very few NYPD personnel, and the killer. Understood?”

“Understood,” Coop said.

“A small plastic saint was found wedged in her vaginal tract.”

“A
saint?”

“Augustine,” Billard said. “The sinner who found salvation. It’s the sort of cheap statuette that can be bought almost anywhere that sells religious items. The ME says it was placed in her after her death. There’s that, anyway.”

Coop bowed his head.
That, anyway.
He got on with it, calling on professionalism, hiding behind it. “Death was by strangulation?”

Billard nodded. “Killer used some kind of ligature he took with him.”

“They turn up any witnesses?”

“Not yet.”

Coop felt his fist clench in his lap. “That’s hard to believe, Art. Assuming they did a decent canvass, they should’ve turned up somebody by now who saw or heard something.”

“What can I tell you? They’re doing their best.”

“Suppose they’re not trying hard enough. Or people aren’t talking.”

Billard leaned back and folded his hands over his broad stomach. There was a subtle shift of mood in the room. Coop wasn’t surprised. Billard gave him the shades-down look cops give civilians. “I’m not following you.”

“What if a cop was the killer? And he’s being protected?”

“You don’t really believe that, Coop.”

“It’s Maureen’s idea.”

“Maureen. Well, she’s a piece of work.” Billard had never liked Maureen.

“I can’t prove her wrong. She’s asking how come no one saw or heard anything, and I don’t know what to tell her.”

“This was a weekday in October, Coop. Not many people around down at Breezy.”

“My neighbors—”

“The Mallons were at their apartment in Jackson Heights. The O’Briens were at their jobs in Manhattan. The nearest people were three houses away.”

“They still should have heard something,” Coop said stubbornly.

Billard unfolded his hands and placed them on the desktop. He hesitated a moment, then said, “There probably wasn’t much to hear, Coop.”

“What do you mean?”

“Forensic guys have been over the scene thoroughly. No sign of forced entry. No sign of a struggle.”

Coop dropped his gaze to the worn, clean linoleum floor. Why should he be surprised by what Billard was telling him? His own thoughts had been running this way earlier. He just hadn’t wanted to take the next logical step.

“She let the killer in, then,” he said slowly. “It was somebody she knew.”

“Looks that way.” Billard hesitated again. “It may have been somebody she was very close to.”

Coop looked at him.

“The way she was laid out afterward, her hair spread so carefully around her head. The killer wanted to make her look like she was asleep. When you see that at a crime scene, it usually indicates remorse.”

Coop realized he’d been holding his breath and there was a lump in his throat. He swallowed a bitterness that had collected at the base of his tongue, and made himself breathe evenly.

“You okay, Coop?”

“Sure.”
Except for the fear.
“Go on.”

“Lots of prints in the house, most of them Bette’s. We checked them out through NCIC and VICAP and came up empty. Several were untraceable, which only means our killer might never have been fingerprinted—no military service or arrest record. The only physical clue is the footprint.”

Coop sat up straighter and looked at Billard.

“We found a shoe print in the dust on the floor right inside the front door. If Bette knew him and let him in as we suspect, it might well be the killer’s.” He reached into a desk drawer and laid a photograph on the desk. “This is digital,” he said, “computer enhanced.”

Coop leaned over the desk and examined the photo. The footprint was only a partial, the sole of a large shoe. The design on the sole was a series of crisscrossed indentations reaching to the shoe’s edges.

“Distinctive sole tread pattern,” Coop said.

“We haven’t been able to trace it yet. We’re still trying, contacting foreign and domestic shoe manufacturers. We’ll match it eventually.”

“Can I have a copy of this, Art?”

“Take that one. We got more, and it’s on disk anyway.”

Coop slipped the photo into a side pocket of his sport jacket, thinking as he had many times about how much police work had changed since he’d first joined the department. The only disks they’d talked about then were the ones in your spine that got rearranged after years of wearing out patrol cars.

“Not much more to tell, Coop. Whatever Maureen thinks, Queen’s South Homicide has been doing a thorough job on this investigation. They’ve interviewed people all up and down your street, all over Breezy Point. Nobody looks even remotely possible for this crime. They’ll keep trying, of course, but they’re talking now as if it was somebody from the outside—somebody Bette invited down to see her. Who else knew she was staying at the cottage? Apart from you?”

Coop shrugged hopelessly. “She told me she wanted peace and quiet. It sounded like I was the only one she was telling.”

“I know you two were close. Any idea why she wanted to stay out there alone on Breezy Point?”

“Not much of one. She told me she was feeling stressed and wanted to get away for a while and relax.”

“She say why she felt stressed?”

“No. I got the impression it was her job, but I could be wrong. She sounded a little nervous, but not like she was anywhere near some kind of breaking point.”

“What it all probably means, Coop, is nobody but an intimate would have known she was staying at your beach cottage. Someone she knew and trusted killed her.”

“It looks that way.”

“Was there anyone—”

“She wasn’t in the habit of telling us about her boyfriends. Maureen or me.”

Billard started to say something more, then changed his mind and clamped his lips closed. Old cops knew where not to trespass.

“Do you mind if I look the place over later today?” Coop asked.

“The beach house? Sure. Hell, it’s your place. Crime scene people are done with it.”

Coop moved toward the door. “If you learn anything new, will you let me know, Art?”

“Sure.” Billard tilted his head to the side and regarded Coop with his cop’s flat eyes. “You’re planning on getting active in the case, aren’t you?”

Coop looked back at him, knowing that his own eyes were just as flat, just as unreadable. “No. I’m only asking.”

Billard ended the staring contest, shaking his head and looking away. “You know as well as I do we can’t stop you from going around asking questions, as long as you don’t cross certain lines. You sure that’s what you want to do, though?”

Coop didn’t reply.

“How’re you feeling, Coop?” Billard went on after a moment. “I mean, how’s your health?”

“Still like I told you at Seconds. I’m okay.”

“But you also gave the impression you don’t believe…that it’s gonna last. You get into real stress, you might shorten what time you have. Maybe, you stay stress free, you got years. You might even change your mind, go in with me at Seconds.”

“I’m not going to count on years, Art. I’m not going to leave things undone.”

“They’ve got good people down at Queen’s South. They won’t let this drop.”

“The case is getting old. We both know the clearance rates drop with every hour that passes after a homicide. And this one was four days ago.”

“Yeah, we both know.” Billard looked at the floor. “And we both know what we’d say to a homicide victim’s father, if he talked about investigating the murder himself.”

“I won’t fuck up the case, Art.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about. There are emotional dangers when a cop gets involved in an investigation of the murder of someone he loved. You’re bound to find out things you don’t want to know. The truth can be like a bullet to the heart.”

“I’ve never been afraid of the truth,” Coop said, knowing as he spoke the words that they were a lie.

Billard didn’t press him any harder. He gazed out the dirty window at nothing. “Okay, old friend. I’ll keep you apprised of any new developments in the case. But it should work both ways. What you learn, we need to know.”

“That isn’t any problem,” Coop said. “I want to nail Bette’s killer.”

“We all do,” Billard said. “But you’re the one who better be the most careful.”

Billard sat at his desk thinking for a long time after Coop had left. Thinking about what he hadn’t mentioned to Coop. That the tacky plastic saint, about five inches tall, had been inserted in Bette’s vagina to a depth made possible by a strategically placed knife cut.

St. Augustine. Billard the lapsed Catholic was pretty sure St. Augustine was the saint who had a lengthy and illegitimate carnal affair with a woman before seeking the solace and wisdom of the church. What if anything that might mean, Billard didn’t know. Other than that St. Augustine was the department’s ace, an aspect of the crime that, outside a tightly knit group inside the NYPD, only the killer would know.

What Billard knew was that this was one of those times he was glad he didn’t have a daughter.