Good Day to Die (28 page)

“I’m only here to give you the facts of life,” I said. “That’s why you asked for me in the first place. For me, specifically. I won’t be insulted if you don’t take my advice. In fact, if you tell me you don’t wanna hear it, I’ll keep my big mouth shut altogether.”

She waved me off impatiently “You already gave the propaganda speech, Means. Don’t repeat yourself. The question, I believe, is what comes next. Assuming VICAP pays off.”

“Tell me something, Captain,” I said; trying to lead her away from her quite justifiable anxiety. “Do serial killers really keep trophies? Trophies that can be used as evidence against them?”

“Many do. Not all of them, but enough. Part of the fun comes from reliving the murders. It goes back to the obsession with fantasy. The trophies make the fantasies more … rewarding.”

“If I remember, pieces of Thong’s victims were missing, the eyelids and nipples, along with the clothing and personal effects. What’s the chance that he kept some of that? Maybe has little pieces of his triumphs mounted on a mirror over his bed?”

“Get to the point, Means.”

Bouton’s expression had passed from annoyed to pissed off. Her lips were pressed together, her nostrils slightly flared.

“You remember that van? The one parked near the house?” I waited until she favored me with a cautious nod. “It’d be real nice to let the lab boys have a go at it. See if Kennedy overlooked something when he cleaned it up.”

“Means, if you don’t tell me something I don’t already know, I’m gonna tape your mouth closed.”

“A couple of hours ago you told me this was fun, now you’re getting upset. I need to know which Captain Bouton I’m talking to.”

“How is it fun if you can’t trust your partner?” She gave me a minute to think about it, then continued. “You want to go in there, don’t you? You want to break into Kennedy’s house.”

“It wouldn’t be a problem, Captain.” It was my turn to be annoyed. Annoyed at my own predictability.

“No? You’re ready to
guarantee
that you can break into a house sitting at the end of a half-mile-long private drive with no possibility that you’ll be caught? Because if you do get caught, you’ll blow the case forever.”

“What do you think I’m gonna do, drive the Buick up to the front door? Leave my police parking permit in the window?”

I couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of my voice, and I expected a sharp response. Instead, I got a hard stare and a muttered, “Keep going, Means?”

“You know what topographical maps are?”

“No.”

“Topo maps, which you can buy at any decent sporting goods store, show elevation as well as geography. Now, we’ve all been raised to believe that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, but if the straight line happens to run over a mountain, you’re gonna be awful late getting to the party. So, if you’re operating in a forest, you’ve got to know the terrain, and that’s part of what topo maps show you. They also show things like old logging roads, hiking trails, streams, lakes, swamps, rivers, abandoned railroad grades. This in addition to ordinary paved roads and highways.

“The point, Captain, is that the Adirondacks are honeycombed with hiking trails. I can use one or another of those trails to get within a mile or two of Kennedy’s house, then bushwhack to a point where I can put the house under surveillance without any possibility of being spotted. Once the place is empty, the rest is easy. When I’m finished, I’ll go back the way I came.”

Bouton leaned back in her chair, opened her purse and took out a roll of Turns. She stuffed one into her mouth, then returned the roll to her purse.

“What about the dogs?” she asked. “Are you going to Mace the dogs?”

“Mace doesn’t work well on dogs, Captain, because they don’t have tear glands. There’s a spray called Punch II, made from hot chili peppers, that’ll stop the best-trained attack dog. It wears off in forty-five minutes with no permanent effects.”

“And if the house is locked?”

“Locked with the Yale lock on Kennedy’s front door? No problem, Captain. It won’t even slow me down.”

Bouton stood up and turned her back; she strolled over to a window and stared at the street for a moment, then spun around to face me.

“What you’ve been doing all along,” she announced, “is trying to stay one step ahead of me. As if I was some nasty aunt who had to be tricked into giving you a cookie. What I think you do is blame it on authority. Never trust a ranking officer, right? But the truth is that you don’t trust
anybody
and you never have. Well, you’re going to have to make an exception here, because if you don’t fill me in on steps three, four, and five, I’m not going to let you out of my sight. You can start by telling me what you plan to do if you find evidence in that house.”

“If we find evidence,” I said, stalling while I formulated a plan I hadn’t had a moment before, “we’ll
know
Kennedy and his wife are guilty. The way it is now, we could spend weeks getting search warrants and subpoenas. …”

“Don’t bullshit me. What do you plan to do?”

I stared into her round, dark eyes for a moment, then it came to me. “One thing I might do, Captain,” I said, letting my eyes drop, “assuming I find those trophies, is take one or two and hide them somewhere in the house. Like in a suitcase at the back of a closet. That way they’ll still be there on the day we arrive with the paperwork.”

“You’re not going to remove anything?”

“Anything I remove can’t be used at trial. There’s no point to it. The next step, assuming I find that incriminating evidence, is to contact Sheriff Pousson in his own home and get his cooperation. Kennedy’s duty sheets might give him an airtight alibi; if they don’t, they’ll give
us
enough circumstantial evidence to get the warrants we’ll need to search the house and impound the van.”

Bouton walked back to the desk, frowned, and shook her head. “I can’t say as I trust you, Means. How do you trust a man who’s been a lone wolf all his life? But I’ll be damned if I’ll go into that forest with you. The deep, dark forest scares the crap out of me.” She sat down heavily and closed her eyes for a moment. When she reopened them, they were sharp and committed. “We’re jumping the gun here. There’s no reason to make a decision now.”

“That’s true, Captain. We haven’t heard from VICAP, yet. Or the Albany cops. Why don’t we let nature take its course and make our final decisions when we have to?” As luck would have it, both VICAP and the Albany Police Department gave us tantalizing glimpses, but nothing conclusive. DiMateo came through first, calling back, as promised, just after four-thirty. Kennedy, DiMateo reported, had resigned from the APD, just as he’d claimed. He’d never been charged with any violation of the rules and regs, but his service record did show that several women had accused him of what DiMateo labeled “coerced sexual activity.” Unfortunately, as all of the women were active prostitutes with extensive rap sheets, and no desire to sign a complaint, the charges had remained allegations, and Kennedy had never suffered anything more severe than an unofficial reprimand from his commanding officer.

Both DiMateo and I, even as we discussed the matter, knew full well that many a vice cop has traded a free pass on a bust for a sexual favor. It wasn’t that either department, the APD or the NYPD, condoned the activity, but it was too common to make Kennedy a serial killer.

“If you wanna take this further, Detective,” DiMateo said toward the end of our conversation, “I’d suggest you go to Kennedy’s former commanding officer, Captain Forey. He’s retired now, but his phone number’s on record. You can have it, as long as you don’t tell him who gave it to you.”

Promise delivered, I hung up and dialed Captain Forey’s number. He picked up on the second ring, listened suspiciously for a moment, then perked up on hearing the phrase “multiple homicides.”

“Robert Kennedy,” he said, the whiskey evident in his slurred vowels, “was a miserable son-of-a-bitch. One of those cops who handles every problem by punching it in the mouth. I knew he’d get himself in deep shit, sooner or later.”

“I don’t want to disappoint you, Captain,” I said, “but we’re only in the initial stages of our investigation. Right now, I’d say it’s more like we’re trying to eliminate Kennedy, not convict him.”

That got him going. He took a deep breath and practically screamed, “Eliminate! Try,
exterminate!
Make the goddamned world a better place for the rest of us.”

“That bad?”

“Worse. The boys used to call him Boffing Bob Kennedy. He was quicker on the draw than them liberals from Massachusetts he’s named after.”

“You know, Captain, it sounds like he was having a ball with the APD. What made him decide to leave?”

“What happened was old Boffing Bob went a little too far one night and beat one of his concubines into the hospital. She was all set to press charges, but he managed to wriggle out of that, too.”

“How?”

“He married the bitch. Married her and took off for the boonies. That’s how.”

“You remember her name, Captain? The one he took off with? I’d like to know if he’s still married to her.”

“Sure do, Detective. I spent hours tryin’ to persuade the miserable whore to sign a goddamned complaint. Had to kiss her repulsive butt every five minutes. I couldn’t forget her if I tried. Bitch’s name was Rebecca Knott.”

“Did she have a record?”

“Not a criminal record. Except for prostitution. Mostly she’d been in and out of the crazy house. Made her first visit when she was eight years old.” VICAP came on board, as promised, at five o’clock, when Agent Donovan called to announce that he’d found something interesting and was faxing it even as he spoke. Bouton had me on the way to the printer before she’d hung up the phone. There, along with a hefty bill, I found twelve pages of material and a note suggesting we analyze the top three pages first. I was tempted to read the case files on the spot, but I couldn’t see any point to it beyond self-indulgence, so I took them back to the loft, dropping them in front of Bouton like a puppy dog delivering the newspaper. Bouton accepted the report solemnly, passing individual pages to me as she finished reading them.

The two homicides outlined on the first three pages were of women whose bodies had been found a hundred miles apart in deep forest. Each had died as a result of a severe beating; there were fractured bones all over their bodies. What made them relevant to Bouton’s inquiry were a series of bite marks found on each body, bites on the abdomen, buttocks, and thighs. FBI forensic specialists in Quantico, after careful analysis, had concluded that the bites had been made by a woman, not a very small man.

The rest of Donovan’s report involved twelve associated homicides. All the victims were women between twenty and thirty years of age. All had been found in deep forest within seventy-five miles of Owl Creek and all showed extensive bone fractures. The bodies were too badly decomposed for any soft-tissue analysis, and while the various coroners and medical examiners had declared the beatings severe enough to be the cause of death, stabbing, shooting, or even poisoning couldn’t be ruled out.

Nine of the victims had been identified; of these, only one had a criminal record, and her brush with the law (a minor pot bust that’d resulted in a year’s probation) had occurred six years before she’d met her death. Of these nine, an astonishing six (including both bite-mark victims) had had their disabled cars found, apparently abandoned, shortly after they’d been reported missing.

One individual, the husband of victim number eight, had been charged with murder, brought to trial, and convicted. This in New York State. An appellate court had reversed the conviction on a technicality (an expert witness for the defense hadn’t been allowed to testify), and the prosecution had declined a retrial because the body had been discovered in the interim and linked with the other homicides.

“Try to imagine it, Captain,” I said as soon as we’d digested the case files, “you’re a woman in …”

“I don’t have to imagine that I’m a woman, Means. No matter how difficult it is for you to admit a woman can wear captain’s bars.”

She was in a good mood and I was glad of it. Decision time was coming. I could feel my heart flutter as I thought about it.

“Okay, don’t imagine that you’re a woman. Imagine that you’re yourself and your car has broken down on a small county road in the middle of nowhere. The first thing you hope is that a cop’ll come by, but that doesn’t happen. Then you think about walking to a pay phone, but you know they roll up the sidewalks at ten o’clock in most of the towns, and you’re not at all sure you’ll find anything open. Finally, a van passes, brakes, rolls to a stop. A thousand terrible thoughts flash through your mind, and for the first time, you realize just how alone you are. But then, joy of joys, the passenger door opens and a
woman
gets out. A sweet, butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-mouth, deep-drawling, Southern lady. The last thing you think is that she’s checking you out—making sure you’re alone, that you’re young enough to be acceptable, that you’re not armed. No, that idea never crosses your mind until it’s way too late. Until you’re subdued and the van is speeding you to your death.”

“I take it you still want to go into his house?” Bouton’s voice was neutral.

“More than ever.”

“Then convince me. Prove that you can pull it off without getting caught. We’ll start with those topological maps you mentioned earlier. Where did you say we could buy them?”

“They’re called topographical maps, Captain. We can probably get them at Eastern Outfitters on Third Avenue and Seventy-seventh Street.”

“
Probably?
It wasn’t
probably
a couple of hours ago.”

“Don’t get your back up. We can definitely buy them from Rand-McNally. As far as I know, selling maps is all they do. Only it’s after seven o’clock and Rand-McNally’s sure to be closed. On the other hand, it’s Friday and Eastern Outfitters might be open till nine. Selling tents and sleeping bags to last-minute campers. If you want the topo maps tonight, that’s our only hope.”

Fortunately enough, our only hope came through, producing a bound collection of survey maps for the princely sum of thirty-seven dollars. We paid the salesman, then carried the book to an unused counter near the gun racks and began to work with it. The store manager came over, apparently to protest, but changed his mind when Bouton flashed her tin.