Lullaby, page 4
'My son left for Maine early this morning,' she said.
'Went back to school, did he?' Meyer asked.
'Yes,' Mrs Handler said, and smiled that slightly psychotic, hair-raising smile, although Meyer did not have any hair.
'The Prentiss Academy,' Carella said.
'Yes.'
'In Caribou, Maine.'
'Yes. Why do you want to see him? Does this have something to do with the little Irish girl?'
'Who do you mean?' Meyer asked innocently.
'The one who got killed on New Year's Eve. He broke off with her months ago, you know.'
'Yes, we know,' Carella said.
'If their relationship is why you came here.'
'We just wanted to ask him some questions.'
'About where he was on New Year's Eve, I'd imagine.'
The chilling smile again.
'Do you know where he was?' Carella asked.
'Here. We had a big party. Scott was here.'
'All night?'
'All night.'
'What time did the party start?'
'Nine.'
'And ended?'
She hesitated. Merely an instant's pause, but both detectives caught it. They guessed she was trying to remember if she'd read anything about the time of Annie Flynn's death. She hadn't because that was one of the little secrets the detectives were keeping to themselves. But the hesitation told them that her son had not been at the party all night long. If he'd been there at all. Finally, she chose what they figured she thought was a safe time to be saying goodbye to the old year.
'Four in the morning,' she said.
'A late one,' Meyer said, and smiled.
'Not very,' she said, and shrugged, and returned the smile.
'Well, thank you very much,' Carella said.
'Yes,' she said, and looked at her watch.
* * * *
On Wednesday morning, the fourth day of January, both murder victims were buried.
The detectives did not attend either of the funerals.
The detectives were on extension phones to the Prentiss Academy in Caribou, Maine, talking to an English professor named Tucker Lowery, who was Scott Handler's advisor. They would have preferred talking to Scott himself; that, after all, was why they had placed the long distance call. Both men were wearing sweaters under their jackets. It was very cold here in the city, but even colder in Caribou, Maine. Professor Lowery informed them at once that it was thirty degrees below zero up there. Fahrenheit. And still snowing hard. Carella imagined he could hear the wind blowing. He decided that if his son ever wanted to go to the Prentiss Academy, he would advise him to choose a school on the dark side of the moon. His daughter, too. If Prentiss ever began admitting females. Who, being the more sensible sex, probably would not want to go anyplace where it got to be thirty degrees below zero.
'I don't know where he is,' Lowery said. 'He's not due back until the ninth. Next Monday.'
'Let me understand this,' Carella said.
'Yes?' Lowery said.
Carella imagined a tweedy-looking man with a pleasant, bearded face and merry brown eyes. A man who was finding this somewhat amusing, two big-city detectives on extension telephones calling all the way up there to Maine.
'Are you saying that classes won't resume until next Monday?' Carella said.
'That's right,' Lowery said.
'His mother told us he'd gone back to school,' Meyer said.
'Scott's mother?'
'Yes. We saw her yesterday morning, she told us her son had already gone back to school.'
'She was mistaken,' Lowery said.
Or lying, Carella thought.
* * * *
The Puerto Rican's name was José Herrera.
There were tubes sticking out of his nose and mouth and bandages covering most of his face. One of his arms was in a cast. Kling was there at the hospital to try to learn when Herrera would be released. He had come here upon the advice of Arthur Brown, one of the black detectives on the squad.
Brown had said, 'Bert, you have shot two men, both of them black. Now every time a cop in this city shoots a black man, you got deep shit. A cop can shoot seventeen honest Chinese merchants sitting in the park minding their own business, no one will even raise an eyebrow. That same cop sees a black man coming out of a bank with a .357 Magnum in his fist, he just stole fifty thousand dollars in cash and he shot the teller and four other people besides, your cop better not shoot that man or there's going to be an outcry. All kinds of accusations, racial discrimination, police brutality, you name it. Now, Bert, I would love to see what would happen if one day I myself shot a black man, I would love to see how that particular dilemma would be resolved in this city. In the meantime, my friend, you had best get over to that hospital and talk to the man whose brains were getting beat out on that street corner. Get him to back up your word that you were following departmental guidelines for drawing and firing your pistol. That is my advice.'
'Go fuck yourself,' Herrera told Kling.
The words came out from under the bandages, somewhat muffled, but nonetheless distinct.
Kling blinked.
'I saved your life,' he said.
'Who asked you to save it?' Herrera said.
'Those men were . . .'
'Those men are gonna kill me anyways,' Herrera said. 'All you done . . .'
'I almost got killed myself!' Kling said, beginning to get angry. 'I lost a goddamn tooth?
'So next time don't butt in.'
Kling blinked again.
'That's what I get, huh?' he said. 'That's the thanks I get. I save a man's goddamn life . . .'
'You know how much pain I got here?' Herrera asked. 'If you'da let them kill me, I wouldn't have no pain now. It's all your fault.'
'My fault?'
'You, you, who you think? I get outta this hospital, they'll kill me the next minute. Only this time I hope you ain't there. This time I hope they finish the job.'
'Nobody's gonna kill you,' Kling said. 'Only one of them's out on bail . . .'
'How many does it take? You don't know these people,' Herrera said. 'You got no idea how they operate.'
'Tell me all about it.'
'Sure. Big fuckin' brave cop, knows everything there is to know. You don't know shit. These people are gonna kill me, you understand that?'
'Why?'
'Go ask them. You're the big hero, go talk to who you busted. They'll tell you.'
'Since I'm here, why don't you just save me the time?' Kling said.
'Go fuck yourself,' Herrera said again.
* * * *
3
The Latent Print Unit reported back on Thursday morning. That very same morning, Meyer and Carella received reports from both the police lab and the Medical Examiner's Office. This had to be some kind of record. The Hat Trick, for sure. Every other detective on the squad was astonished and envious. Cotton Hawes, who was himself working a burglary, asked if he could use the Hodding-Flynn murders as an excuse to get the lab to do some work for him. Hawes looked furiously angry when he asked this question, perhaps because he was a huge man with fiery red hair except for a white streak over his left temple where once he'd been knifed. The streak made him look even more furious, like a vengeful bride of Frankenstein. Unintimidated, Willis told him to go find his own double murder.
The lab reported that the tool marks found on the fire-escape window and sill in the sixth-floor Unger apartment did not match the tool marks found on the fire-escape window and sill in the fourth-floor Hodding apartment.
The lab reported that the cord attached to the mobile discovered on the floor in the baby's bedroom matched a cord fastened to a hook in the ceiling over the baby's crib. This suggested that the mobile had been torn loose from the ceiling. The mobile was made of tubular metal painted red and blue. It emitted a chime-like sound when one section of it struck any other section. There were no fingerprints on any section of the mobile.
The lab reported that the hairs vacuumed from Annie Flynn's body and clothes were foreign pubic hairs.
The Medical Examiner's Office reported finding fresh seminal fluid in Annie Flynn's vaginal contents.
Had she been resisting rape?
They had not, until this moment and despite the girl's torn blouse, considered the possibility that this might be a rape-murder.
But ...
The ME's report went on to note that within a few minutes after female orgasm, spermatozoa normally was spread throughout the somewhat alkaline cavities in the uterus and fallopian tubes. The spermatozoic spread at the time of the Flynn autopsy - begun half an hour after the body reached the morgue - had been well-advanced, indicated not only penetration but orgasm as well. Absent orgasm, as was normal in most rape cases, the spread often took as long as six hours. The ME was not conclusively ruling out rape. He was merely pointing out that the girl had apparently achieved orgasm. The report further noted that semen samples had been sent to the laboratory for identification and group-typing in the event of later comparison with isoagglutination groups in the blood of the accused - God willing, Meyer thought.
The Latent Print Unit reported that Annie Flynn's fingerprints were the only good ones found on the handle of the knife that had killed her. There were foreign prints as well, but these were too smudged to be useful in a search. Regarding the burglary in the Unger apartment, the unit had done what was called a cold search. No suspect's prints against which to compare. No names to check. Nothing but the latents lifted from the Unger window and sill. Find out who had left them there. A cold search on the local level could sometimes take weeks. On the state level, it often took months. Carella had once asked the FBI to do a cold search for him, and they had not come back to him until a year later, after the case had already gone to trial. But on this fifth day of January, the LPU reported that the latents on the Unger window and sill had been left there by a man named Martin Proctor - alias Snake Proctor, alias Mr Sniff, alias Doctor Proctor - who had a record going back to when he was twelve years old and first arrested for breaking into a candy store in Calm's Point. His B-sheet, as supplied by the Identification Section, filled in the rest.
At the time of his first arrest, Proctor belonged to a street gang called The Red Onions, comprised of daring young bandits between the ages of eleven and fourteen, all of them with an apparent craving for chocolate. Snake (as Proctor was then known) had been elected to break into the candy store and steal a carton containing a full gross of Hershey bars - with almonds, the president of The Red Onions SAC had specified. The SAC stood for Social and Athletic Club, a euphemism most street gangs affected.
The cop on the beat had caught him coming out of the back of the store. Snake had grinned and said, 'Hi, want a Hershey bar?' The arresting officer had not found this comical. The judge, however, thought Snake's casual remark indicated a good sense of humor, which he felt was the prime requisite for making a worthwhile contribution to society. He let Snake off with a warning.
First mistake.
Six months later, Snake . . .
Me was called Snake, by the way, because there was a python tattooed on his left biceps, beneath which, lettered in blue, were the words LIVE FREE OR DIE, the motto for the state of New Hampshire, though by all indications he had never been there.
Six months later, Snake was arrested for a jewelry store smash-and-grab and this time the judge was a lady who frowned upon such activities even if they netted only a pair of eighteen-karat-gold wedding bands and a digital wristwatch selling for $42.95. Snake, a juvenile offender, was sent to a juvenile detention facility upstate, from which he was released at the age of fourteen. By then, he had learned how to do cocaine, which for a price was readily available at the facility, and had acquired the name 'Mr Sniff,' which was a nickname as opposed to the earlier 'Snake,' which had been a street name. The new name was apparently premised on Mr Sniff's insatiable need for sucking up into his nostrils however much cocaine he could purchase or steal.
Drugs and stealing go together like bagels and lox.
Your white collar drug users may not necessarily be thieves, but down in the streets, baby, your user is a hundred times out of a hundred stealing to support his habit.
Over the years, Proctor managed to avoid imprisonment again until he was nineteen years old and got caught red-handed inside somebody's house in the nighttime. Burglary One, for sure, in that the dwelling was also occupied and Proctor threatened the person with a gun, little knowing the house was wired with a silent alarm, and all of a sudden two cops were on him with guns bigger than his own, so goodbye, Charlie. A Class B felony this time. State penitentiary this time. Big time this time. The DA flatly refused to let Proctor cop a plea - well, why the hell should he? They had the man cold. But the court sentenced him to only half the max, and he'd been paroled from Castleview two years ago, after having served a third of his term.
The name 'Doctor Proctor' had been acquired in prison.
Proctor had a habit as long as the Pacific Coast Highway. Every thief in the world knew that Castleview was as tight as a virgin's asshole. You wanted to cure a dope habit, you got yourself sent to Castleview because, man, there was no way of getting even a shred of grass inside there. Unless you were Doctor Proctor.
No one knew how he did it.
It had to be some kind of miracle.
But if you were hurting, baby, Doctor Proctor could fix you. If you needed what you needed, Doctor Proctor could get it for you. Always ready to help a friend in need, that was Doctor Proctor. A confirmed junkie, and a prison dope dealer. But none of that mattered. He had a title now, which was better than either a nickname or a street name. Doctor Proctor. Who for the past two years had been on the streets again. Apparently doing burglaries again. Or perhaps worse.
His mug shot showed a round clean-shaven face, dark eyes, short blond hair.
The Ungers had described him as thin and blond and growing a mustache.
The date of birth on his records made him twenty-four last October.
The Ungers had said he was eighteen, nineteen.
The last address his parole officer had for him was 1146 Park Street, in Calm's Point. But he had long ago violated parole, probably figuring if he was going to go back to work at his old trade it certainly didn't pay to waste time with parole-officer appointments. If a man was going to break parole by stealing, then why check in with the PO? If he got caught stealing, he'd go back to prison anyway. Besides, he wasn't going to get caught.
No criminal ever thinks he's going to get caught. Only the other guy gets caught. Even criminals who've already been caught and sent to person believe they won't get caught the next time. The reason they got caught the first time was they made a little mistake. The next time, they wouldn't make any mistakes. They would never get caught again. They would never do time again.
It never occurred to a criminal that a sure way to avoid doing time was to find an honest job. But why should a man take a job paying $3.95 an hour when he could go into a grocery store with a gun and steal four thousand dollars from the cash register! Four fucking thousand dollars! forten minutes' work! Unless he got caught. If he got caught, he'd be sent up for thirty years, and when you divided the four grand by thirty, you got two hundred a year. And when you broke that down to a forty-hourweek for every week in the year, you saw that the man had earned a bit more than six cents an hour for his big holdup.
Terrific.
He marches in there with a big macho gun in his big macho fist, and he scares the shit out of Mom and Pop behind the counter, and he never once thinks, not for a minute, that what he's doing is betting thirty years against that money in the cash register - which, by the way, might turn out to be four dollars instead of four thousand.
Smart.
But who says criminals have to be brilliant?
And, anyway, he's not going to get caught.
But even if he does get caught, even if he does make another teeny-weeny little tiny mistake the second time around, and even if the judge throws the book at him because now he's a habitual criminal, he can do the time standing on his head, right? The Castleview Penitentiary SAC. Lots ofold buddies from the street in there. Hey, Jase! How ya doin', Blood? But a lot of weights in there. Shoot the shit in the Yard. Get some fish in the gym to suck your cock, your buddies standing watch and then taking their turns. Send away for correspondence courses can make you a lawyer or a judge. Shit, man, you can do the time with one hand tied behind your back.
The signs tacked up in every police precinct in this city read:
