Death Angel (24 page)

“You mind if I try?” Mike asked.

“If you think you can get it to work, be my guest.”

He twisted and turned his hand, but the lock wouldn’t give. “This won’t open it,” he said. “Don’t you have a master?”

“I don’t think so,” Sorenson said. “Haven’t you seen enough? Or will you let me call one of the custodians tomorrow and see if we can get you in?”

“I’d really like to have a look,” Mike said, turning his side to the door and throwing his weight against it.

Jillian Sorenson let out a yelp when she saw Mike’s movement. “Don’t!”

But he had already launched his assault. The dry wood cracked and split as the two women gasped. The lock didn’t give, but Mike reached in through the hole he’d created in the splintered panel and opened the door.

The room was very much like the first three—a single bed, a nightstand, a bureau, and a window with a glorious view of Central Park.

But there were also signs of life.

There were footsteps—large ones—imprinted on the dusty surface of the floor. There were two cardboard coffee containers, both empty, resting on the windowsill, along with a wax paper wrap that looked like it had once held a sandwich lying open on the floor below the sill. It looked as though someone had nested here for a while, leaving a few pieces of yellowed newspaper and other fragments of a transient life resting on a paper bag in the far corner.

Mike held out his arm so that neither woman could enter the room. “Get a team up here,” he said to Mercer. “Maybe there’s something unique in the shoe prints. And there’s certain to be DNA on the coffee cups.”

Someone had stood in this very window, watching Angel’s body being removed from the Lake, exactly one week ago this morning.

“I’m going to ask you again, Ms. Sorenson,” Mike said. “Who’s got access to this room?”

She held out both hands, dangling the chains. “I’ve got no idea. Someone’s obviously changed the keys.”

Bernice Wicks looked frantic. “I’m so sorry to make trouble, Miss Jillian. Last time this happened it was my fault.”

“Let’s not discuss that, Bernice.”

“It was my Eddie, that time. I gave the key to him—”

“Bernice!” Jillian Sorenson’s single-word reprimand echoed in the gloomy corridor.

“Who’s Eddie?” Mike said.

“My son. Eddie’s my boy.”

The frightened housekeeper had talked about the fact that he used to stay here during his childhood when she had to work late nights or weekends. Perhaps he’d been back here more recently.

“He’s not a boy, Bernice. Eddie’s fifty-nine years old. Stop babbling, will you?”

“Can’t be him who was here anyway,” she said, trying to force a smile. “Poor Eddie’s been away almost a year now.”

“Away?” I asked, trying to calm her. “Where is he?”

“We had him committed, ma’am. Rather, I had him committed,” Bernice Wicks said, looking over to Jillian Sorenson. “Civilly, that is. He didn’t do anything to anybody but himself. He’s in the psychiatric ward at Bellevue Hospital.”

“Eddie Wicks has spent a good deal of his life in mental institutions,” Jillian Sorenson said. “Private ones, mostly. Paid for, most generously, by Lavinia Dalton.”

Mike and I were sitting in the living room of the Dalton apartment with Sorenson and Bernice Wicks, who was wringing a linen handkerchief between her trembling hands. Mercer had remained on the ninth floor, trying to get a Crime Scene crew to go over the small room, looking for evidence.

“The new lawyers are interested in conserving more of Miss Lavinia’s money. This time Eddie’s in Bellevue.”

“Blue-papered?” Mike asked.

“Sorry?”

“An involuntary commitment?”

The form authorizing involuntary hospitalization had long been done on blue paper, and those two words had become synonymous with the process.

“Yes,” Sorenson said.

“For what reason?”

“Must we do this in front of Bernice?” she asked.

“Bernice is more forthcoming than you seem to be. If her son had new keys made a year ago, then they might have been stolen by someone or passed on by him. I’m not looking to add to her woes—or to his.”

Jillian Sorenson nodded. “May I tell them, Bernice?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Eddie Wicks is bipolar, Mr. Chapman. Are you familiar with that condition?”

“Somewhat. Tell me about his case.”

“When Bernice first started working here with Miss Lavinia, Eddie was an adolescent.”

“Fourteen,” the housekeeper said, her small body almost enveloped by the oversized wing chair. “I came here in 1968.”

That was three years before Baby Lucy’s kidnapping.

“His father—Bernice’s husband—had taken his own life a year earlier,” Sorenson said. “She told you yesterday that he had passed away. In fact he was a suicide.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said to Bernice.

“Nobody called it a disease back then. Just said it was depression. But he jumped out the window of our apartment in Queens, right in front of me and Eddie.”

Not even the handkerchief could slow the tears that were falling.

“Miss Lavinia recognized that Bernice and her children needed help. Eddie most especially. She got him a wonderful psychiatrist, who diagnosed bipolarity by his midteens,” Sorenson said. “Although experts still don’t fully know its cause, there is certainly a view that it runs in families. That it’s congenital.”

“Did Eddie go to school?” I asked.

“My son’s very smart, ma’am. He’s very well educated and accomplished.”

“Yes, Ms. Cooper,” Sorenson said. “Eddie’s quite intelligent. He was mainstreamed throughout school, at his psychiatrist’s insistence, and he handled it well. Eddie got a Regents scholarship to one of the SUNY colleges. He’s a mechanical engineer. Smart and accomplished.”

But wounded, I thought. Damaged, like the people our murdered girl liked to collect.

“And why the institutionalizations?” Mike asked. “Did they start when Eddie was a teenager?”

“The behavior did, but nothing that required hospitalization.”

“How did it manifest itself?”

Again, Jillian Sorenson took the lead. “The mood swings were extreme. Eddie’s older sister couldn’t handle him alone at home, of course, which is why he spent more and more time here. Upstairs, in fact, in that little room.

“When he was in a manic phase, he had enormously high energy levels. There were times he was extremely happy. He’d go out into the Park for hours on weekends, and we’d hardly see him. Or he’d roam about the corridors up here late at night, looking for things to do.”

“That was a good thing,” Bernice added. “There was always something for him to amuse himself with in all these little rooms. The other staff were awfully good with him, too. Except for the tantrums.”

“That’s the manic side of it,” I said. “I’ve had a lot of cases with teenagers. The swings from the great highs to the irritability and temper tantrums of the lows.”

“Yes, ma’am. Eddie sure had those.”

“Did he ever act out sexually, Mrs. Wicks?”

“What?”

“A lot of the young men with a bipolar condition—well, they begin to use very sexual language, inappropriate language. Touch their own genitals a lot,” I said, thinking of Baby Lucy and how she loved to play on the ninth floor. “They often come on to others in a sexual way.”

“Not my Eddie.” Bernice Wicks seemed shocked by the very idea. “Not my son.”

“I want to know how Eddie wound up in Bellevue,” Mike said, getting us back on point.

“It was often a problem of his medications, Mr. Chapman. When he was under a doctor’s care and taking his meds, he had constructive periods in his adult life. But as smart as Eddie is, the disease prevented him from holding most jobs for any long period of time,” Sorenson went on. “He’s also struggled with alcohol abuse since his twenties.”

“Living here?” I asked.

“No, no. On his own for most of the time when he was working. A small apartment in Queens, near where he was raised. Never in a significant relationship, so far as we know. I must say he was a real favorite of Miss Lavinia’s—as is Bernice—so he was welcome here whenever he chose.”

Bernice Wicks wiped her cheek with her hand. “Oh, yes. He’d love to sneak in up—”

“He didn’t sneak, Bernice,” Sorenson chided her. “We were happy to have him.”

But it was hard to imagine that Eddie Wicks—or anyone else who could get through the servants’ entrance at the rear of the Dakota—couldn’t hide himself up here for days at a time.

“Was he ever arrested?” I asked.

“Never.” His mother gave a firm response to that one.

“He was hospitalized a number of times against his will when he had episodes of bipolar depression. Usually, those had to do with threats to hurt himself,” Sorenson said. “Once he got back on his meds, he was released within days.”

“Was he able to support himself?”

“With my help,” Wicks said proudly.

“And with Miss Lavinia’s assistance, of course.”

“Of course,” I said. “And this time? Bellevue?”

Jillian Sorenson looked over at Bernice before she began to speak. “It’s coming up on a year. Last summer, in July, Eddie had a major crisis, although I have no idea what provoked it.”

“He was staying upstairs then,” Bernice said. “And I couldn’t have him here, around Miss Lavinia, constantly stinking of alcohol and being so aggressive.”

“He threatened Bernice,” Sorenson said. “She told Eddie that he’d have to leave the Dakota, late one night. And he threatened to kill her. He said it was her fault that his father had killed himself. He was extremely irritable and aggressive. Other people who’d seen him up here in the preceding weeks said he was up all night wandering around.”

“So we called 911,” Bernice said. “To get him out.”

“I called 911.”

“The police came?” Mike said.

“But they didn’t arrest him,” Sorenson continued. “We didn’t want them to. We just wanted him out of here so that he didn’t hurt Bernice any more than his words already had.”

“They took him out?”

“Yes, Mr. Chapman. And I understand that they tried to calm him down. It was my mistake not telling them his history and his diagnosis. In any event, by the time they thought he was ready to be let go, and he convinced them he still had an apartment to go to in Queens, it was about four o’clock in the morning.”

“Eddie left the station house,” Mike said.

“He did. But then he went into Central Park and broke into one of the gate houses—the north one that’s right on the Reservoir.”

The north and south gate houses sat directly on the jogging path, jutting out into the Reservoir. The one that Eddie Wicks breached was closest to the West 94th Street entrance to the Park.

“How did he get into it?” Mike asked.

“This is someone who’d played in that Park since he was a kid, Detective. How did you knock down the door just now? Maybe he broke the glass, maybe he picked the lock,” Sorenson said. “Eddie got inside and up to the roof. He jumped into the Reservoir.”

The suicide fence, I thought, is what the chain-link structure that enclosed the Reservoir had been nicknamed long ago. In earlier days, the Reservoir had been a common place for people to try to kill themselves—the reason for the tall fence around its perimeter today.

“Not a sure way to die,” Mike said. “It’s not all that deep.”

“It works, Mr. Chapman, if you don’t know how to swim and you’re wearing sneakers and long pants. Or at least it almost worked.”

“There were joggers,” Bernice said, “who saw my Eddie flailing his arms around. They called 911, and there were police close by who got him out. Thank the Lord.”

“So the cops took him to Bellevue for a psych evaluation,” Mike said. “Someone signed the papers confirming that Eddie has a mental illness and was in danger of harming himself or somebody else.”

“Yes,” Sorenson said. “After five days, Bernice and I testified at a hearing before a civil judge, a very kindly man, and Eddie was committed. That was the end of last July, and I believe the second time we testified was in September. But the doctors hadn’t yet found the right combination of medicines, and Eddie was still being detoxed.”

“A hospital’s the best place for my son, really and truly.”

“We’ll be notified if there’s a plan for release.”

“Have you seen him lately, Mrs. Wicks?” Mike asked.

She bit her lower lip and shook her head. “The doctors prefer that I don’t visit, Detective. Eddie— Well, I’m— What’s the word, Miss Jillian?”

“Trigger, Bernice. You’re his trigger,” Sorenson said, turning back to me. “Eddie blames all his troubles on his mother at this point. Eddie’s chosen not to see her anymore, and his doctors agree with that decision.”

“Last time we saw him was at his hearing after the summer,” Wicks said. “He’s not the boy I raised, Detective.”

“Not your fault, Mrs. Wicks. But if he’s getting the care he needs, that’s a good thing,” Mike said. “Detective Wallace will stay with you till the Crime Scene guys go through that room and help us try to figure out who was there.”

“Thank you,” Sorenson said.

“In the meantime, I’d suggest you have your security system checked. Whoever got in there is capable of figuring out your other locks, too.”

“There’s been enough tragedy under this roof, Detective. I’ll get on that right away.”

It was two o’clock in the afternoon. I checked my phone when we got to the sidewalk and saw that I had a full mailbox, most of the calls originating from Battaglia’s office.

“Where to?” I asked.

“Want to hit Bellevue?” Mike said.

“Exercise in futility.”

“Why?”

“You didn’t get enough double-talk from Vergil Humphrey?”

“Don’t answer a question with a question,” Mike said, opening the car door for me. “This guy isn’t crazy like Verge.”

“No. He’s smart but self-destructive. He hates his mother.”

“He’s spent more time in the Dakota than Minnie Castevet,” Mike said, referring to the eccentric old neighbor played by Ruth Gordon in
Rosemary’s Baby.
“He’s the maven of the ninth-floor corridor, and he’s responsible for the last change of lock and key.”

“You want to put a name on the shadowy figure in the Panoscan photography. I get it.”

“Maybe Eddie Wicks can help me do it.”

“Let’s go.”

Mike headed south toward First Avenue in the 20s, home of the oldest continually operating hospital in America, founded as a haven for the indigent four years before George Washington’s birth.

“Is Battaglia looking for you?” he asked.

“Seems to be.”

“Ease up on him, Coop. He’s worried about you.”

“He should know that if he can’t find me, it’s unlikely that Raymond Tanner can.” I slumped down in the seat and put my feet up on the dashboard. “Any word from Manny Chirico about the love judge?”

“Nope. If you’re not nicer to me, I might leave you at Bellevue.”

“The place totally creeps me out.” The hospital did great public service work, but the psych facility still remained the most substantial part of its daily business. “I feel badly for old Mrs. Wicks having to kowtow to Jillian Sorenson.”

“She’s got the staff on a short leash, I think,” Mike said. “I wonder if it’s Sorenson or the lawyers who’ve tightened up on the spending. If Eddie Wicks has been in private facilities for all his other hospitalizations, Bellevue might be its own form of shock treatment.”

Mike had cut to the east on 34th Street. I recalled for him, from my English lit lessons, the writers who’d made it through Bellevue’s psych services. Eugene O’Neill was sent there after a suicide attempt, Malcolm Lowry battled his alcoholism as an inpatient, and Norman Mailer had a stay after stabbing the second of his four wives.

We parked and entered the building, where I’d spent many hours doing competency hearings for defendants—like Raymond Tanner—who were in the prison wing of the hospital. I pointed to the sign for the administrative offices, and we walked down a linoleum-lined hallway until we reached the glass-paned door.

The secretary took our names and asked for our identification. When she came back, she told us that Dr. Hoexter, the director of the psychiatric unit, would see us.

Herman Hoexter’s office was a large room, full of metal desks and file cabinets, without character or style but clearly the professional home of a busy man.

“How can I help you?” he asked. “I presume you’re here about a prisoner.”

“Actually, no,” Mike said. “It’s about a guy who was blue-papered last summer. No handcuffs, no penal law violations. We think he can assist us with an investigation that’s stalled.”

“Let me see if I can help,” Hoexter said, turning to his computer. “What’s his name?”

“Edward or Eddie Wicks. Male, Caucasian, about fifty-nine years of age.”

Hoexter typed the name and waited for it to come up on the screen. I watched the doctor’s expression change as he read the information.

“I’m glad all you needed was some help from him, Mr. Chapman. I’m afraid Eddie Wicks is lost.”

“Lost?” I said. “You mean he’s dead?”

“No, we lost him—quite literally—in what our staff call the Bellevue diaspora. The horror that was Hurricane Sandy.”

“What’s does that mean, literally?” Mike asked, tapping his fingers on the edge of Hoexter’s desk.

“You may remember that we were one of the hospitals that flooded in the great storm. We had that massive evacuation, which began the night after Hurricane Sandy hit last October, and we had to move five hundred patients out of this building in several hours’ time because our basement and ground floor were underwater. We were completely without power.”

“So they scattered,” I said, “like a colony of people living away from their homeland. Like a diaspora.”

“Yes.”

“I thought most of your patients were accounted for.”

“Most were, Ms. Cooper. But Eddie Wicks? Eddie Wicks got lost.”