Daddy's Gone a Hunting (17 page)

He read aloud from his file: “Tracey Sloane, age twenty-two, left Tommy’s Bistro in Greenwich Village, where she was employed as a waitress, at eleven
P.M.
She refused the suggestion of having a nightcap with several fellow employees, saying that she was going directly home. She wanted to get plenty of sleep before an audition scheduled for the next morning. Apparently she never got back to her apartment on Twenty-third Street. When she didn’t show up for work the next two days, Tom King, the owner of the restaurant, fearing she had had an accident, went to her apartment. Accompanied by the building superintendent, he went inside. Everything was in order but Tracey was not there. Neither her family nor her friends ever saw or heard from her again.”

Greco looked across the table at Mark. He saw the pain in his eyes, the same kind of pain he had seen so many times over the years in other people who were trying to trace a missing loved one. “Your sister dated, but from all the feedback we received, her career came first and she was not ready for a serious relationship. After acting classes, she would have a hamburger and a glass of wine with some of her fellow students, but that was usually it. We drew a wide circle, questioning her neighbors and friends, people in her acting classes, and coworkers, but without any success. She had simply disappeared.”

The sandwiches arrived. Greco poured the coffee for both of them. When he noticed that Mark was barely touching his food, he said, “Mark, please eat. I guarantee the sandwich is good, and you have a big frame to fill. I know you came here hoping for answers but I don’t have any. Your sister’s case is always in the back of my mind. When I retired I took a copy of her file with me. I never thought this was a random abduction and murder. Unless
the weather was very bad, Tracey always walked home. She told coworkers she wanted the exercise. I don’t think she was dragged off the street. I think she met someone she knew who may have been waiting for her to leave the restaurant.”

“You mean someone intended to kill her!” Mark exclaimed.

“Or picked her up at least—and then something went wrong. It could be someone whom she considered a friend but that person might have developed an obsession for her. She might have accepted a ride if that person pulled up in a car. Maybe she rebuffed his advances and he lost control. I can tell you that even after nearly twenty-eight years the case is never considered closed. Recently the bodies of four women, some of whom had been missing for more than twenty years, were found buried together, the work of a serial killer. DNA was retrieved from the bodies and identified by comparison with DNA that their family members had contributed in recent years to the police database that is maintained just for circumstances like this.”

“Neither my mother nor I have ever been asked to give DNA,” Mark said. “That doesn’t say much to me about her case remaining open.”

Greco nodded. “I fully agree, but it’s really never too late. I’ll call the detective bureau and make sure it is arranged for both of you. Your mother will be contacted to give the sample. Tell her not to worry about it. It’s just a swab inside your mouth with something like a Q-tip.”

“So right now you’re not aware of anyone ever having been a suspect?”

“No, there never has been. Even though I’m retired, the guys at the bureau would have let me know if there had been any developments. The only question we had—and still have—is the significance of this picture that Tracey had on top of her dresser.”

Mark looked. Tracey, beautiful, with her long hair and vivacious smile, was sitting at a table with two women and two men.

“This was apparently taken one of the nights when Tracey joined her friends at Bobbie’s Joint,” Nick said. “We checked all four out and saw no connection. But somehow I always felt that this picture is telling us something and I’m missing it.”

37

I
n one way Clyde Hotchkiss was very careful. He always tried to save enough money from panhandling to have enough subway fare for at least one ride. Where he was going didn’t matter. He would get on a train late at night and get off to go to his van, or wherever he wanted. Sometimes if he fell asleep he rode to the end of the line and then back to Manhattan.

After the fight with Sammy, and then being thrown out of the garage driveway on Sunday morning, he had pulled his cart to Thirty-first Street to join the St. Francis bread line. Then, because he knew Sammy would talk to his homeless friends about what had happened and they might gang up on him, he decided to do the one thing he hated to do: stay at a homeless shelter on Sunday night. But when he got there, being near so many other people nearly drove him crazy. It was as though Joey Kelly’s body were again pressing against his in Vietnam, but even so he stayed. He was coughing a lot and the pain from his old hip injury was getting worse and worse. And the fact that he had forgotten the picture of him and Peggy and Skippy when he had fled the van was now bothering him a lot. At first he hadn’t cared, but now he knew that he needed the comfort the picture gave him, the feeling of being loved. He hadn’t seen Peggy or Skippy in all these years, but their faces were suddenly so clear in his head.

And then Joey’s face and the face of that girl began to follow the faces of Peggy and Skippy, going round and round like in a carousel.

On Monday it began to rain again. Clyde’s cough got deeper as he shivered, crouching against a building on Broadway. Almost no one in the hurrying crowd stopped to drop a coin or a dollar bill in the ragged cap he had placed near his feet. His luck was changing and he knew it. He had become so used to the nightly protection of the van that he couldn’t last much longer in the streets without it.

Cold and wet, he dragged his cart downtown to another shelter that night. As he arrived at its door, he fainted.

38

“M
ommy dancing in her red satin shoes.” The memory was so clear to Kate as, again, pictures began to form in her mind while she lay deep in the induced coma that the doctors hoped would save her life. Mommy was wearing a red gown and the red shoes. Then Daddy had come into the room and said how beautiful Mommy looked, and he picked me up and danced Mommy and me out onto the terrace even though it was beginning to snow. And he sang to me. Then he danced Mommy and me around the bedroom. The next night Daddy and Mommy had gone out on the fishing trip.

Kate remembered that after Mommy died, she had taken those red satin shoes and hugged them over and over because when she did she could feel Mommy’s and Daddy’s arms around her. Then Daddy had taken them away from her. He seemed different. He was crying and said it was too sad to look at them and that it wasn’t good for me to hug them anymore. And then he said that he would never dance with anyone else as long as he lived.

The memory disappeared and Kate slipped back into a deep sleep. After a while she heard the murmur of a familiar voice and felt lips kissing her forehead. She knew it was Hannah but she couldn’t reach her. Why was Hannah crying?

39

B
y noon, the wrecked van had been taken to the crime lab to be examined, inch by inch, to try to learn who had been using it as a shelter. And if that person had been there the night of the explosion, could he or she have had anything to do with it?

“It certainly opens up another possibility,” Frank Ramsey told Nathan Klein. They were on their way to talk to Lottie Schmidt. “We know that whoever stayed there had Wednesday’s newspaper with him. Probably fished it out of a trash barrel. There were pieces of food stuck to it. My guess is that he or she, but I’ll bet it was a he, would get onto the complex at night. No watchman. No security cameras. And probably would leave early in the morning before anybody came to work. And it’s been going on a long time. The earliest newspapers are nearly two years old.”

“And if he didn’t have anything to do with the fire, he may have heard or seen something or someone there.” Klein was thinking aloud. “It will be interesting to see if any DNA or fingerprints match anyone on file.”

“You know that there are two guys who won’t be happy to hear that the explosion might have been set off by a vagrant. Our friends the insurance investigators,” Frank observed. “They’ll have a hell of a time denying payment to the Connellys if this guy is identified as having a criminal history, especially if it includes arson.”

Frank had called ahead to Lottie and asked if they could drop in on her for a few minutes. He had heard the resignation in her voice when she said, “I was expecting that you would want to see me again.”

Thirty-five minutes later they were ringing the bell of her modest home in Little Neck. With a practiced eye, both men observed that the shrubs were neatly cut, the mature Japanese maple tree in the front yard had obviously been recently pruned, and the driveway appeared to have been resurfaced.

“Looks like Gus Schmidt took great care of his house and property,” Nathan observed. “I bet those shutters have all been freshly painted, and you can see where he touched up the shingles on the right side.”

Lottie Schmidt opened the door in time to hear the last comment. “My husband was a meticulous man in every way,” she said. “Come in.” She opened the door wider and stepped aside to admit them. Then she closed it and led them into the living room.

With one glance, Ramsey could see that it was furnished in exactly the same way as his own mother and father had furnished their own living room fifty years ago. A couch, a club chair, a wing chair, and end tables that matched the coffee table. Framed family pictures on the mantel and another grouping of them on the wall. The rug, an imitation Oriental, was threadbare in a number of spots.

Lottie was wearing a black wool skirt, a white high-neck sweater, and a black cardigan. Her thinning white hair was pulled into a neat bun. There was a weary expression in her eyes and both marshals noticed that her hands were trembling.

“Mrs. Schmidt, we’re so sorry to have to see you again. We certainly don’t want to upset you any more than you already are. But we do want you to be aware that the investigation into the cause of the explosion is not over, not by a long shot,” Frank Ramsey said.

Lottie’s expression became wary. “That’s not what I’m reading in the newspapers. Some reporter from the
Post
has been talking to Gus’s friends. One of them from the bowling team, who still works at Connelly’s, told the reporter that only a few weeks ago, Gus told him to throw a match onto the complex and do it for him.”

“Let’s go back a little. When your husband was fired, was it completely unexpected?”

“Yes and no. They had had a wonderful manager for years. His name was Russ Link. He was running the business ever since the boating accident. Douglas Connelly virtually handed the daily operations over to him. Douglas would show up maybe two or three times a week when he wasn’t on some kind of vacation.”

“Was the business doing well under Russ Link?”

“Gus said that the problems were beginning even before he left. Their sales were really falling off. People just weren’t into that kind of furniture the way they used to be. People want comfort and easy upkeep, not baroque-style couches or Florentine credenzas.”