The Snow Angel (4 page)

She dried her hands, then walked down the corridor to her office, passing photographs of the city's police chiefs, portraits dating all the way back to the Civil War. All, of course, were men. She entered her office, closed the door, sat down at her desk and put her head in her hands. She needed to slow down and think.

Easterly began mentally cataloguing each of the righteous kidnapping cases during the seven years she had been in this job. She couldn't recall any with this M.O.

A memory like hers was a mixed blessing. It certainly made the job easier—at least it did back in the old days, before computers. But it didn't help her insomnia on those lonely nights when her husband slept peacefully next to her.

She thought about those female officers she knew who had married other cops. In some ways it would have been easier to have a police spouse, someone who had personally experienced the “Horror Show,” her private name for the parade of atrocious memories.

On the other hand, marriage to a good-natured adoption lawyer like David Goldman helped in other ways. David provided a different perspective, reminding her regularly that life also included happy things.

She smiled as she thought of him. Nearly twenty years now, and she still loved the old bugger—more than ever, in fact. David had had it rough as a kid, to be sure, growing up with asthma and poverty. But somehow he had turned adversity to his advantage. There must be something genetic about an optimistic disposition; both of David's sisters were the same way.

She decided to call him. He'd still been asleep when the Control Center summoned her into work this morning. So he hadn't a clue about what she was going through today.

Now, as their home phone rang, she examined their framed wedding picture. He had put on a lot of weight since then, and his hair was thinner. He was just an average-looking guy, but he had a great heart. That was the most important organ in the human body, she had long ago decided, the heart. She had known lots of people with great minds and no heart, and she had no use for them.

She was still working Patrol when they married. David had just finished law school. Adoption law was still new to him, and he loved it. Helping discarded kids find happy homes became his life's passion. He had never regretted the choice.

On the other hand, she and David had never regretted the decision not to have children of their own. Easterly realized long ago that she did not have good “mother genes,” as she put it. And David was so involved with his work that any paternal instincts were buried deep inside.

The answering machine kicked in, David's pleasant voice. She remembered that he was going into his office today, too, to prepare for a hearing tomorrow. “Hi, babe,” Easterly told the machine. “I just wanted to tell you I love you. This is a nasty caper we're dealing with. I could be here all night. Page me if you need me.”

She hung up and the intercom buzzed. “Inspector, the family's in the interview room,” Jablonski reported.

Easterly was startled. “Here? Who's minding the phone at their house?”

“The boy's aunt, the mother's sister. I'm sorry, skipper. They both wanted to talk to the officer in charge.”

“I'll be right down.” Easterly took a deep breath, bracing herself. Then she walked back out of the office.

K
ane drove out to Vito Vitale's mansion on the West End. He muted the police radio. He didn't want to hear the endless reports of human depravity. Sunday afternoons in the winter were noted for domestic violence.

For the time being, he had decided to put suicide out of his head. That would come later, once this job was done.
If there is a God, he's a sadistic prick with a bizarre sense of timing.

Now, as he drove through the sloppy snow, Kane reviewed Vitale's history. Vito was seventy-four now. He had moved here as an orphaned teenager from upstate New York, nearly sixty years ago. He had earned his La Cosa Nostra pedigree the hard way: petty theft, strong-arm enforcement and collection, a little arson, a lot of narcotics. Vito made his first bones at eighteen when he killed an eastside shylock for welshing on a debt to old Santo Angelini.

But that murder wasn't just a routine Mob clip. What had caught the attention of Angelini and his
consigliore
—and the police—was the method Vito employed: he had bound and gagged the little guy, so the legend went, then put a hole in his brain with an electric drill.

To do such a thing, you had to have balls of iron. You also had to be more than a little nuts. So that was Vito Vitale—brilliant, ruthless and very close to psychotic.

Kane considered the irony that there were those on both sides of the law who used identical adjectives about him. Maybe that was why he and old Vito got along with each other, in their way.

There's one big difference: the only killing I ever did was approved by my government.

Kane pulled up to Vitale's gate. The mansion, he noted with amusement, was decorated with Christmas lights. He took another swig from the bottle, then pushed the button on the intercom.

Bell thought about Jefferson Mosely as he drove slowly through the city's sprawling ghetto, checking Willis Henry's haunts. The Central
Division frequency murmured in the background but Bell barely heard it.

So far, Bell was unimpressed with the new chief. He sized him up as one of those mediocrities who make careers out of being black. A friend in the Dallas gang squad, a black man, had put it bluntly: “Jeff Mosely wouldn't make a pimple on a policeman's ass. What he is, he's a professional spade.”

That assessment soured Bell's stomach even more. There were plenty of qualified officers, of both races, at the command level of this department. Any of them might have made a decent chief. Bobbie Easterly, for one, would have been a brilliant appointment.

But the city council, wary about where the latest grand jury investigation might lead, and unnerved by endless racial tensions, had decided they had to “go outside.” They also had to hire a black face. The Reverend Cecil Washington and the NAACP had all but threatened civil disobedience if they didn't get “one of our own.”

So that was how Jefferson Mosely had come to town. The council had awarded him a five-year contract. No one, of course, even questioned the appointment; no one wanted to be accused of racism. And now, if Mosely fucked up in the job, it would reflect badly on all black cops.
Around and around it goes.

Bell lit a cigarette. He caught sight of a black Salvation Army Santa ringing his bell outside a cut-rate store. He forced himself to concentrate on Christmas. He thought about the black dolls Vera had bought for Cassie, and about the bicycle he had picked out for Ikey. He wondered if his children still believed in Santa Claus.

What would it be like, Bell now wondered, to have your only child snatched off the street by a complete stranger? How could you not go mad behind such a thing? His fingers tightened on the steering wheel as he felt the pain of people he had never met. He remembered why he was a policeman.

Bell turned down Martin Luther King Drive. A dozen 79 Trey Bloods stood around the liquor store at the corner of Lincoln, dealing rock cocaine. Bell felt his anger rise.
These shitheads are the reason we're over our heads with a new mortgage, the reason my children lost their playmates. What would Doctor King think about punks like these?

As he passed, one of the Treys glared at Bell. He jammed on the brakes. He climbed out of the Ford and stood behind the open door.
”LeRoy, you and your homies get your black asses off this corner!” he commanded in a booming voice.

Half the Bloods turned to walk away. The rest stood their ground. If they were afraid of the giant policeman, they weren't about to show it. “Who be talkin', mothah-
fuckah?
” demanded one of them, knowing exactly who he was.

Bell jerked the Beretta from his shoulder holster and held it loosely at his side. “Jonas, you have five seconds before I blow your balls off!”

The Bloods sauntered off, glowering back at him over their shoulders. Bell spat. “Fucking pussies.”

Then, with a grimace, he remembered his renewed spiritual commitment—and his badge. He holstered the gun and climbed back into the car, angry at himself for losing control. What if someone important had seen that, someone from the ACLU or NAACP?

Fuck it, he finally decided.
Someone has to stand up to the world's bullies.

Roberta Easterly was also having a rough time keeping her emotions in check. Usually she was more in command of her feelings than this. But the parents of Darryl Childress were getting to her. Darryl's father could not stop talking about the little boy, as if recounting every detail of his son's life could somehow keep him from harm. He spoke about him in the present tense, and for the third time he mentioned the boy's love of that Christmas song “The Little Drummer Boy.”

“Every time it comes on the radio, he stops everything and listens,” the young redheaded man said. “He's such a sweet little boy, it's like he wishes he could play a drum for the Baby Jesus.”

Easterly listened patiently. Normally her patience was calculated, waiting for some compulsive-talking suspect to slip up and incriminate himself. But now the patience came from an agonizing sense of powerlessness. She felt this man's pain to the depths of her soul, yet she had no answers to give him. All she could do was listen.

Darryl's mother, Louise, was a thin woman with a medium-brown complexion. She normally would be neatly groomed, Easterly calculated, but now she was a haggard mess. She sat next to her husband, staring into space like a zombie. These had been the worst five-and-a-half hours of her life.

”I feel so helpless,” Stephen Childress implored. “What can we be doing?”

“Only what I said,” Easterly replied. “Think. Think of everyone you know. Try to remember anyone who might have a motive, a grudge, anyone who might have asked for money, any of Darryl's fan mail that seemed strange. Think of any black and white males who hang out with each other, someone around the neighborhood, or at work…”

Childress looked over at his wife. “It's funny,” he said. “We're the only white and black people we know who hang out together. It's a sad commentary on this city. I don't even see much of it in the schools any more…”

Childress shook his head, lost in a terrible dream. He was running out of things to say. Then an idea came to him. “I'd like to talk to your officers, let them know what kind of boy Darryl is.”

“I don't think that's necessary, Mr. Childress.”

“Just to motivate them.”

“Sir, my officers don't need to be motivated. They're professionals. And most of them are parents themselves.”

“Please, Inspector. I just want them to know how we feel.”

Easterly softened. “I'll tell you what. We can videotape a message. I'll play it at the next briefing.”

Childress considered that for a long minute. “All right,” he said finally. “We'll tape it.”

Louise began to cry softly. Utterly helpless, Easterly sat down and took her in her arms. As the woman sobbed, Easterly gently stroked her hair and fought to keep her own composure.

K
ane waited in the high-ceilinged living room of the Victorian mansion, looking over at a life-sized statue of the Virgin Mary. Pallid and otherworldly, “Our Lady” stood open-armed over a gurgling marble fountain. Even after all these years, it still amused Kane the way these goombahs put on the pretense of religiosity.

Two of Vito Vitale's torpedoes stood silently across the room next to a Christmas tree, watching Kane. Unlike the old days, when aspiring
mobsters dressed the part, these two looked more like punk rockers, with shaved heads, earrings and plenty of tattoos.
Fucking idiots. Don't they know what good descriptions those tats make?
Kane memorized their faces and tried to picture them in twenty years…