A Blind Eye (12 page)

H
andcuffed, a person pretty much has to either lean forward or lie down on the seat, which was exactly what Corso had been doing for the better part of three hours when the cop jerked open the door and instructed him to sit up and turn, so his handcuffs could be removed.

“It’s about fucking time,” Corso groused.

The cop admonished Corso for both his language and his attitude as he removed the steel bracelets and stowed them in his pocket.

Corso was still barking at the cop and rubbing his wrists when the other door opened and Dougherty slid into the backseat beside him. She started to speak, but Corso darted his eyes around the car’s interior and shook his head.

She got the message. “Ah…”she said. “How about a little fresh air?”

They got out on opposite sides of the car. “All right if I stretch my legs?” Corso asked the nearest Bergen County deputy.

The deputy looked to his partner, who shrugged. “Hollister said to let ’em loose,” the second guy said. “Why not?”

“Just don’t get lost,” the first guy said. “The brass is gonna want to talk to you guys again.”

Corso and Dougherty walked side by side. Slowly. Silently. Working out the kinks all the way to the far end of Fredrikstown. Other than the town’s trio of streetlights, the place was completely dark. The town had closed its eyes and turned its face aside, as if to say these weren’t their people and therefore it wasn’t their problem. Mindin’ their own business appeared to be what the locals did best.

Dougherty turned her back to the assortment of county and state police cruisers that littered the parking area. “I think we’re gonna ride,” she said in a low voice.

“What makes you think so?” Corso asked.

“They checked us out every which way but up,” she whispered. “They called people I supposedly listed as references on a bank loan I never even took out.” She paused for effect. “We checked out, Corso. Top to bottom. It was un-fucking-believable. Every damn person they called gave us a clean bill of health.” She reached out and bopped him playfully on the shoulder. “I don’t know where you got that ID from, man, but it was killer…absolutely killer.”

Corso grunted and rubbed at his wrists.

“You see the ambulance come by?” she asked.

He nodded. It had taken Bergen County Rescue nearly three hours to bring Randy Rosen’s body down from the mountain. Corso’s guess was that the forensics team wouldn’t let the medics touch anything until they’d finished their business.

About an hour ago, the orange and white lights bouncing off the cruiser’s headliner had brought Corso upright in the seat long enough to watch the aid car lead a grim procession down to the world below.

The way Dougherty’s eyes turned down at the corners told him where this conversation was heading. “I was thinking,” she began in a small voice.

“Don’t beat yourself up,” he interrupted. “No way we could’ve—”

“Shut up, Corso,” she snapped. “I need to talk this out. So just listen to me and shut the fuck up.” Corso stopped rubbing his wrists and stuffed his hands in his pockets. She took a deep breath. “I can’t help feeling that man is dead because of us,” she said. She waved a hand in the air. “I know what you’re gonna say. How we’re all responsible for ourselves. How he was old enough…” She looked over at Corso. Her eyes were beginning to fill. “What is it you always say? After a certain age a man becomes responsible for his face.” Corso turned away. She was starting to lose it. “He didn’t have a face, Corso. It was all gone. It was…” The image left her momentarily speechless. He reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. She walked out from under it. “You’re gonna have to explain to me”—she began to sob—“how it is we’re not responsible for that poor man’s death…how that’s possible…how he wouldn’t be alive right now if we hadn’t come into his life this morning.” Her voice filled with anger. “Come on, man, tell me. Make it all better for me. That’s what you do, isn’t it. You make it all better?” She caught herself yelling. Looked back over her shoulder at the cops, who’d stopped bullshitting and were now staring in her direction. She shuddered in the night air. Hugged herself. “Sorry,” she said.

He waved her off. “No, you’re right. If it weren’t for us, Dr. Rosen would be sitting in his living room, eating take-out Chinese or something.” He ran both hands over his face. “I don’t know if we were responsible, at least not in the way I use the word, but we sure as hell were players. That much is for damn sure.”

“That’s not what you were supposed to say,” she whined.

“I thought you hated it when I try to fix things.”

“I do,” she said. “Except now. Now I wish—”

“I should have picked up on it,” Corso said.

“What was that?”

“Rodney de Groot was scared. I thought maybe he was worried about Tommie…like maybe in a paternal way or something like that. But he wasn’t. He was scared of what Tommie might do if he knew we were looking into the death of his family. That’s why he got so uncomfortable so quickly and wanted us out of there. He was scared for all of us, himself included.”

The front door to the post office opened, spilling a jumble of voices out into the night. A pair of New York State policemen stepped onto the porch.

“What’ve they been doing in there all this time?” Corso asked.

“Checking us out and arguing over jurisdiction,” she said. “This place is in New Jersey. Rosen was…”She brought a hand to her throat. “The shooting happened in New York.”

“Who won?”

“Jersey,” she said. “They got the college president out of bed. Rosen’s got a mother in a nursing home down in south Jersey. The state cops are sending somebody from the college down there to tell her in person.”

“Hey…you two,” someone shouted. Back at the cop car jamboree, the Bergen County deputies had been joined by a phalanx of multicolored state and county policemen who’d emerged en masse from the post office, where they’d been holed up for the past hour and a half. Corso and Dougherty began to wander that way.

“The one in the tuxedo and the long coat is a New Jersey State Police lieutenant namea Hollister. Everybody kisses his ass like it was candy,” Dougherty whispered. “He’s the one threw his weight around and made sure Jersey got the case.”

Lieutenant Hollister’s sartorial splendor suggested that he’d been socially engaged when he’d received the call. The pained expression suggested that there was a Mrs. Hollister somewhere, that she hadn’t been amused by the interruption, and that her husband had a pretty good idea who was going to pay for the indignity.

The Rockland County Police and the New York staties said their good-byes and started for their cars. When Hollister began to walk toward Corso and Dougherty, the New Jersey contingent followed along in his wake.

He introduced himself to Corso. He offered a hand, which Corso ignored. Half a dozen engines sprang to life. The misty air was crisscrossed with streaks of halogen. They stood and watched as the New York cops rolled out of the parking lot and back down the hill.

“Sorry things took so long,” Hollister said. “You get something like this, something right along state lines, and all of a sudden a situation that ought to be simple turns out to be ticklish.” When he looked at the red-faced sergeant on his right, the entire New Jersey delegation began to study their shoes. “You combine the jurisdictional mix-up and the fact that the locals aren’t exactly forthcoming, and you end up with first-class cluster fuck.” He nodded deferentially at Dougherty. “Excuse my French, Miss Dolan,” he said. “I’m a little off my feed tonight. I was at the theater when the emergency call came through.”

His eyes again lingered on the sergeant and then moved to Corso and Dougherty. “Okay, here’s how it’s going to be,” he said. “Preliminary reports from the lab say the scene played out pretty much the way you two say it did.” He stepped closer to Corso, put a hand on his elbow. “Only thing I’m still a little unclear on, Mr. Falco, is you moving the body from one place to another. You want to clear that up for me?”

“He went down in the road,” Corso said.

The bullet had taken Randy Rosen just under the right eye, busting out the socket and removing most of the back of the skull on its way out. Corso had carried the corpse in his arms like a sleeping child. His hands shook as he set the body among the damp weeds along the side of the road before getting back behind the wheel.

Hollister twisted his head and eyed the Ford, which was parked in front of the store with the pair of bullet holes in the windshield. “That baby’s got a hell of a lot of clearance,” Hollister said. “You coulda—”

“I wasn’t driving over him,” Corso interrupted. “Clearance or no clearance, the man deserved better than being driven over.”

Hollister set his jaw and reluctantly nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “I know what you mean.” He sighed and began again. “From preliminary reports, seems Mr. de Groot has a history of psychiatric problems dating back to childhood. We’ve got an armed-and-dangerous out for Mr. de Groot and an APB on his truck. Something as exotic as a Studebaker truck we ought to be able to turn in a hurry. In the meantime, I’m going to send you two down to the barracks in Ramsey to make your formal statements. I’ve got a very unhappy stenographer on her way in right now.” He looked to his left. “I’m going to send Trooper Paris here with you, to make sure you don’t get lost on the way. You make your statements, you leave us information so we can find you when we need you, and you can go on your way. That sound okay to you?”

They said it was. Dougherty was still shaking Hollister’s hand when they first heard the sound and everybody started doing the Chicken Little thing up at the sky. First the roar of the engine and then the
whopwhop
of the rotor blades slapping the air. Then the bright lights from above and the downdraft as the chopper began its descent. By that time, everybody had turned away from the hail of airborne debris and covered their faces with whatever was handy. The black bird landed among the remaining cars, the whine of its turbo deepening as it came to rest, the blades turning slower and slower until finally they came to a stop and the door swung open.

Three suits emerged at a lope. By the time they hit the ground, lights had begun to show all over Fredriks-town. Curtains parted, people stepped out front of their houses as reticence was overcome by curiosity.

The lead guy was about Hollister’s age, shorter and thicker, with a thick black helmet of hair that had to be dyed. He pulled a small leather case from his inside jacket pocket and let it flop open right in front of Hollister’s nose. “Special Agent in Charge Angelo Molina,” the guy said. “Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

Hollister gave the ID a quick perusal and then pushed the hand out of his face. “What the hell is this?” he demanded. “I just got the goddamn jurisdiction settled with the New York boys. What interest could the Bureau possibly have in this?”

“You called in for an ID on the weapon?” Molina asked.

Hollister looked over at the sergeant, who nodded vigorously.

“So?” Hollister said.

Molina looked to one of his minions, who produced a piece of paper and handed it to Hollister, who turned his body so he could read it in the streetlight. As his eyes traveled down the page, his scowl deepened. When he looked up again, his jaw was set like a bass. He dropped his hand to his side and then pinned Corso with a look that would have burned a hole in a brick. “Damn good thing you boys got here when you did,” he said to Agent Molina. “I was just about to let this cop-killing son of a bitch go.”

I
already told you.”

“Tell me again.”

Corso stared straight ahead. He winked at the indistinct shadows huddled behind the black glass. “I bought the documents from a street peddler in Karachi,” Corso said. “Guy named Abdul.”

“Abdul, huh?”

“Garcia.” Corso spelled it. “Abdul Garcia.”

“And you figured that was his real name?”

“Guy looked honest to me.”

Special Agent Fullmer was about thirty. Despite elocution lessons, his southern drawl kept leaking into his sentences. Despite careful combing, the back of his head was beginning to show the telltale signs of baldness. So was his patience. He flung a handful of documents at Corso. They floated to the floor like plastic leaves. “And you’ve never heard of an organization named Melissa-D. That’s what you’re telling me?”

“I didn’t say that,” Corso said. “Everybody in the news business has heard the stories. But that’s all they are…stories. There’s no such thing. I know a woman in Sandpoint, Idaho, named—”

“Shut up!” Fullmer screamed. He walked over and stood behind Corso. “I’d like to wipe that smirk off your face, Mr. Corso. I truly would,” he growled.

“I’m right here, Special Agent Fullmer,” Corso said. He rattled his manacles. “What say you get me out of this belly chain and give it a try?”

His partner, Special Agent Dean, was pushing retirement. The bags beneath his eyes said that allnighters like this were getting too hard for him. Probably why he got to play the good-cop role. Lot less energy expenditure that way.

“Don’t worry about it, Gene,” he said. “Wisconsin gets him up to that supermax at Boscobe, somebody’ll wipe that smirk off his mouth with a shitty dick.” The older man levered himself to his feet. “Besides which, his girlfriend’s already given us everything we need. We can’t hardly get her to stop talking.”

Corso laughed out loud. Fullmer leaned into his face. “You think that’s funny, do you?” he screamed. “Funny, huh, do you?”

“She wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire,” Corso said. “So why don’t you just hold the bullshit and do whatever you’re gonna do. Far as I’m concerned, the party’s over. You guys are getting to be a pain in the ass. My attorney’s meeting me in Wisconsin. Until that time, I don’t have anything more to say to anybody.”

Fullmer’s face was so close Corso heard the ear-piece squawk. He watched as the agent straightened up and listened to the voice in his ear. Fullmer looked toward the black rectangle, frowned, and then listened again. “Let’s go,” he said to his partner. Dean headed straight for the door. Fullmer detoured over to Corso. He reached over and jiggled the chain that ran from Corso’s manacles down through a steel eyebolt in the floor. “Stick around, Mr. Corso,” he said with a grin. “We’ll be right back.”

Right back took twenty minutes. And even then it wasn’t Fullmer and Dean. It was Special Agent in Charge Angelo Molina.

“You two are quite a piece of work. You and your friend Dougherty there.” He paced along the other side of the table with his hands thrust deep in his pockets. “I’ve gotten more information out of suicide bombers than I’ve gotten out of you two.” His face spoke of grudging admiration. Corso wasn’t buying it.

“You must have missed the last part of my chat with Fullmer and Dean,” Corso said. “I no longer wish to talk without my attorney present. As Mr. Fine also represents Miss Dougherty, she likewise no longer has anything to say.”

“You know, Mr. Corso, keeping one’s mouth shut until one’s lawyer arrives is generally a good idea. In this case however…”

Something in Molina’s tone caught Corso’s attention. “I was straight with you,” Corso said. “I didn’t clam up. I told you the truth. I didn’t kill the cop. Only thing he was gonna have from his encounter with me was a hell of a headache. That’s how it went down. Just like I told you. You don’t believe me, there’s nothing left to say.”

With almost ceremonial deliberation, Molina pulled out the green metal chair and sat down opposite Corso, his back to the one-way window. “Just for the sake of argument…” He waved a well-manicured hand. “Let’s assume for a moment that I believe you.”

“Just for the sake of argument,” Corso said.

“Hypothetically.”

“Okay, so you believe me. Can I go now?”

Molina smiled. “Perhaps,” he said. “But there’s a minor hitch.”

“Why am I sooo not surprised?”

“Because I
did
hear you say you didn’t wish to answer any further questions without your attorney present…which is, of course, your constitutional right…the very sort of right which the Bureau is charged with defending.”

Corso winced. “Gimme a break,” he said.

Molina held up a finger. “If, however, you would consent to answering a few straightforward questions from me…”He shrugged. “Who knows?”

Corso thought it over. “Such as?”

“You say in your statement that you fired Officer Richardson’s weapon at Mr. de Groot…who then fled.”

“Yes.”

“How many times did you fire?”

“Nice try. I told you. Once.”

“And you thought you hit something.”

“The truck, not him. Sounded like I broke a window or something.”

“But you’re not sure?”

“Man had a high-powered rifle with a scope. I just stuck my arm out there and cranked one off. I wasn’t looking.”

“Probably a wise move,” Molina conceded.

Corso tried to lean out over the table but was stopped by the chain. “What’s any of this got to do with a dead cop in Wisconsin?” he asked.

Molina reached into his pants pocket and brought out a fist. He held his balled hand above the table, thumb up, and slowly relaxed his grip. Six bullets dropped onto the scarred surface with a clatter. Five live rounds and one empty shell casing. “These,” he said, “have everything to do with a dead officer in Wisconsin.”

“How’s that?”

“They’re hand loads,” he said. “All of them. Got an extra fifteen grains of powder packed in them.” He looked down contemptuously at the cartridges. “Officer Richardson was lucky he didn’t blow his hand off with these stupid things. I’d fire one of my men in a heartbeat for pulling a cowboy stunt like that.”

“Where are we headed here?” Corso demanded.

“Newark Airport, I believe.”

“What’s at Newark Airport?”

“Mr. de Groot’s pickup truck. In the long-term lot.”

“Ah.”

“With one of its headlights broken out.” He gave Corso a moment to process the information. “Newark forensics says it took a round. My own people found broken glass where you said Mr. de Groot had the truck blocking the road. The glass matches samples from a company that specializes in after-market truck restoration.” He spread his hands and then dropped them on the table. “On the surface, that would seem to account for the expended round we found in Officer Richardson’s piece.”

“That’s what I’ve been telling you. No way I offed a cop over a material-witness beef. That’s insane. I don’t even know anybody that stupid.”

“So then somebody drops your sheet in front of me, and right away I can see you’re a dangerous man who has trouble controlling his temper. But”—he gently tapped the table—“but I’ve accounted for the only spent shell in the gun you’re supposed to have used in the crime.” He took a deep breath. “Of course…I’m a cynical man, in a cynical job,” he said. “So right away I start to stew about how you might have gotten hold of some more of those hand loads. I’m thinking maybe you left town with a whole handful of ammo we don’t know about. I’m thinking maybe, at one time, you had the officer’s whole equipment package in your possession. Maybe you threw it out the window somewhere along the line. Who knows?”

“So you called Wisconsin.”

Molina nodded.

“And?”

“And the rest of Officer Richardson’s equipment was found intact. Two speed loaders…full of the same hand loads. Nothing missing.” He laced his fingers behind his head and leaned back in the chair. “Except for his tie. I believe you mentioned his tie in your statement, didn’t you?”

“I used it to truss him up. Around his ankles and then up through the cuffs so he couldn’t get to his feet. He wasn’t the kind of guy I wanted in my rearview mirror.”

“Of course, you could have taken the tie yourself in hopes of being able to use it later to muddy the water.” He wrinkled his forehead, then waggled a hand. “But now we’re getting into TV territory.” Molina looked to Corso for agreement but got nothing in return. “So…I get back on the phone. I’m thinking maybe Officer Richardson wasn’t wearing a tie that day. Maybe he was off duty. Who knows?”

“What did they say?” Corso asked.

“Actually, the jury was split on the matter. His boss, the sheriff, couldn’t remember whether he’d been wearing a tie or not. His fellow officers seemed pretty sure he had been.”

“So?”

“So I recalled that you said in your statement that Deputy Sheriff Richardson had a flair for the media. That he liked to be in the news.”

“So you asked Wisconsin for some pictures,” Corso said.

“And guess what?”

“What?”

“With the exception of a shot where the vic and his father are shown ice fishing for Muskie”—his nostrils flared in revulsion—“Officer Richardson was wearing the same regulation brown tie in every picture.”

“Can I go now?”

Molina made an apologetic face. “I’m sure you understand what a dilemma I find myself faced with. On the one hand, I have an obligation to honor the Wisconsin warrant. On the other, I’m fairly sure you aren’t the perp. At least not the way Wisconsin imagines it coming down.” Again he spread his hands in resignation. “I don’t need to be spending resources on something this old. I’ve got my own fish to fry. What to do?”

Molina pushed the chair back and got to his feet. “What I did is what I always do. I backed up. Got simple instead of complicated. You show me crop circles, I think stoned kids, not Martians. It’s just how I am. So anyway…I called Wisconsin. Wanted to talk to the ME who did the workup.” He shook his head in disgust. “Turned out they don’t really have an ME out there. They find a guy with a bullet in his head, they assume he died of a gunshot wound. What can I say? So it turns out the guy I talked to was an undertaker. Anyway…seemed to me if it came down the way you said it did, the deceased should have had some sort of contusion on the back of his head. Assuming, of course, he still had a back of his head.” He waved a hand in the air. “The want just said he’d been shot in the head with his own gun. I mean anything was possible.”

“And?”

“And sure enough, our friend the undertaker found a knot on the back of the vic’s head the size of a tennis ball. A full-blown hematoma. He figured it happened when the vic hit the floor after being shot.” Molina rubbed his hands together. “They faxed us out some pictures. I had a forensic pathologist from Quantico take a look.”

“And?”

“Couple of things. First off, the angle of the bullet was strange. The bullet entered beneath the chin and rattled around inside the skull. Quantico says it’s consistent with the kind of wound somebody gets if they’re struggling for the gun and it goes off. But the hematoma…now that’s something else.” He began to pace. “See…Quantico says there had to be a time lapse between when the victim hit his head and when somebody blew his brains out and stole his tie. Twenty minutes minimum. Probably more like thirty. Because if the heart had stopped pumping blood, the body couldn’t have raised a knot of that size on the back of the man’s head. You follow me here?”

Corso said he did. “So,” Molina went on, “now I’ve really got a problem. I pretty much know you’re not the perp, but I can’t think of a single good reason why I ought to help you out here. I mean sure…you gave us your version of the story in fifty words or less. Then you spent the next six hours toying with my agents, while your girlfriend in the next room won’t even admit that Dougherty’s her real name. With that kind of cooperation, I mean why in hell should I go out of my way to help you out of the soup?”

“You use a lot of food metaphors,” Corso said. “You ever notice that?”

“I’m Italian,” Molina said with a shrug.

“What do you want?” Corso asked.

Molina bent over and picked up his briefcase from the floor. He set it on the table and opened the lid. He made sure he was looking at Corso when the bundle landed. Mary Anne Moody’s drawings. “You want to tell me about these?” he said.

“Now I’m wondering why it is I should help you out,” Corso said.

Molina smiled. “Because, Mr. Corso, you have pissed off a lot of people around here. We find you with a suitcase full of false documentation—documentation that has compromised the integrity of every known database including our own—and you run your silly-ass song and dance about somebody named Abdul Garcia. Our technical people would like to take you down to the basement. Get medieval on you. See maybe what they couldn’t get out of you with your feet in a bucket of cold water and your privates wired up to a field telephone. If you know what I’m saying.”

Molina reached to unfold the pictures. “Don’t,” Corso said. “I’ve seen them.”

“Not the kind of images that fade away, are they?”

“I want quid pro quo,” Corso said.

“You’re in no position to—”

“Quid pro quo and I’ll tell you everything I know.”

“Such as?”

“I want to know what came down in Smithville, New York, in the spring of 1968. It’s going to involve people going to jail, people leaving the area in a hurry. Social workers calling the cops. It’s gonna involve public school records and it’s gonna involve kids, which means a lot of it is going to be sealed, and I want to see it anyway.” He rattled his belly chain. “I want out of these goddamn manacles, and I want my own clothes back. After that, maybe we can talk.”

“And for this you’ll give me what?” Molina asked.

Corso thought it over. “I don’t think it’s got a name.”

“Try me.”

“Serial killers kill people they don’t know, right?”

“Usually they start close to home, but once they get rolling it’s mostly stranger to stranger. Why?”

“’Cause I think maybe we’ve got a whole new category of killer here.”