The Ashes of an Oak (15 page)

She left at eight, confident that he would be out for the night.

For the first time in what seemed like a hundred years, she felt at ease when she left.

On the way home, Mary stopped off at the all-nighter and picked up a bottle of wine. Tonight she would celebrate and watch a good movie – no, a really bad movie. A really bad movie was just what was needed to complement the cheap wine and the tingle of excitement, the joy, which ran through her at the thought that her Frank was doing okay.

She pulled up outside the apartment and looked up at the row of black windows that were sandwiched between the pale yellow comfort of those who were already home.

She locked up the car and went to the main door of the apartment block. Night was crawling in. Shadows haunted the corners and dissected the street, growing as they gorged upon the remnants of daylight, as the sun dipped below the concrete canvas.

Where the fading day was able to squeeze a last few seconds out of its short life, orange light streaked the sides of buildings and glinted ferociously from any small object willing to suspend the execution of the day.

Mary turned the key and stepped inside. She turned to close the door and, as she did, she felt a sting at the back of her neck.

Her hand went up automatically, but it was blocked as another hand snaked around her and covered her mouth.

After that, there was nothing.

Wednesday

Chapter 17

On his way to work, Steve called into King’s Memorial. He had been in only once since Frank’s operation and he felt bad about that. Val was due back from her mother’s today, so she would be expecting him home, expecting them to spend the few hours of time together that the job allowed.

When he got there at eight, he was surprised to find Frank sitting at the side of his bed with a bowl of water on a table in front of him, a towel on the bed next to him and beads of water rolling from his closely cropped hair down his face.

‘Well, look at you,’ he said. ‘Risen from the dead. Damn, you look good.’

Frank ran the towel over his clipped head. ‘I feel good, if slightly short-changed in the hair department.’ The two men shook hands. ‘How are you, Steve?’

‘I’m fine. Missing you being next to me at work.’

‘So what will you do when I retire?’

Steve sat down. ‘You’re still going through with that?’

‘Sure. Especially now. I’m doing okay, but I don’t know if I’m going to be fit for cop work ever again. I may have worked my last shift.’

Steve laughed uneasily. ‘You’re kidding me, right?’

Frank rinsed off his washcloth then pushed the table aside and put his feet up on the bed. Even something as simple as washing his face was a killer.

‘No. Why would I kid about that? You know Emmet was going to put the paperwork through. This has just delayed it a little is all.’

Steve sat broodily taking it in. ‘I just thought you might change your mind.’

‘I feel the same way now as I did before the operation. Maybe more so. I’ve done my time, earned my pay and now want to go fishing. I miss my wife. She deserves more of me and more from life.’ He picked up a glass of water and took a sip. His hands shook from the effort of getting dressed.

‘I see,’ said Steve. He tried to hide his disappointment. After all Frank had been through, who could blame him? ‘You’re really going for the house by the lake?’ he asked with forced joviality. ‘All those fish and all that fresh air? Your lungs’ll jump out and run back to the smog. Us city folk can’t take all that clean air and see-through water.’

‘I’ll give it a go,’ said Frank. At this moment, he couldn’t think of anything better. ‘So what’s the news?  You caught any bad guys?’

‘Not yet. Do you mind if I smoke?’

‘Go ahead. Just open the window for me. It gets so you can’t breathe in these cages.’

Steve went over to the window and opened it wide. The room was still in shadow, but outside it looked like the city had been layered in gold overnight.

‘You know about the black girl?’ he asked.

Frank’s eyes narrowed, his mouth straight, his head wrinkled by creases that, with less hair above them, now seemed to stand out more than ever. ‘No. What happened?’

‘She was found at the community church. Head caved in.’

‘That it?’

‘Pretty much. Pinkie on her left hand gone.’

‘Was she killed there?’

‘Well, we have Kelly Peters on this one.’ Steve curled his lip in disapproval. ‘You know, Milt’s assistant?’

Frank remembered her. He remembered those striking green predatory eyes and that hair that seemed to wrap her up in a perfect bundle. If she put a bow in it, she’d be one hell of a present for someone. ‘Sure I know her. She’s feisty, but she’s good.’

Steve remained deliberately non-committal. He didn’t like her and didn’t see himself changing his mind. She seemed too adversarial, too ready for an argument, too stuck up, with that chip on her shoulder that all those damned feminists seemed to carry around like a golden fleece, their own sweet burden.

They wanted it both ways; the door held open, but not out of good manners, oh no, but so that they could witness the man as subservient to her.

None of those bra-burners wanted equality, they just wanted superiority. It was the Berlei Revolution.

‘She seems to think,’ he said scathingly, ‘that the girl was killed at the scene.’

Frank grimaced. ‘She wasn’t moved?’

Steve shook his head. ‘She says not.’

‘Well, that’s a little odd. I mean, if it’s the same guy, why would he suddenly change his MO?’

‘Maybe he was disturbed,’ suggested Steve.

‘That’s never bothered him before. And his diabetes nearly caught him out once already. I don’t think he’d let that happen again. Any ID on the girl?’

Steve blew out some smoke and laughed. ‘I’m not sure you should be hearing this in your state. You’re on the way to the gold watch, remember?’

‘Not yet, I’m not. It ain’t official until the stamp’s on the paper. Give it up.’

Steve’s mouth turned down like a shark’s. ‘We found her purse down a drain, beneath the lid. He must have hidden it, intending to come back for it later.’

‘Oh, no.’ Frank shook his head. ‘Whatever this fella is, he’s not a thief. What was the name of that guy we found on Pitkin?’ He put palm of his hand to his forehead as if he was trying to extract thoughts by sleight of hand. ‘I can’t remember my own bloody name since I woke up from the anaesthetic. Damn near screamed like a girl when I saw the stranger in the mirror this morning, ‘til I realised it was me. What was his name?’

‘Taylor,’ said Steve.

Frank clicked his fingers. ‘That’s it! Robinson Taylor. His wallet was still on him. Everything there – money, driver’s licence. No, Steve, our guy’s not a thief. So why did whoever it was shove her purse down the drain?’

‘Maybe he did it to throw us off. Maybe someone showed up and he panicked.’

‘Yeah, maybe,’ said Frank. ‘Maybe.’

‘Anyway, it still gets you out of the frame,’ said Steve, his attitude lightened by the thought. ‘You can’t be the killer if you’re locked up in here. All that crazy talk. You were sick, that all, just sick.’

There was no need to mention Jennifer Hamblett’s blood specs on Frank’s shirt or the fact that Milt had found her blood under his nails. If they couldn’t argue against those pieces of evidence, then they had to go the other way and shout out to the world why he couldn’t have done it and a brain tumour was about as good an excuse as you were going to get.

As for the man in the suit. What man in what suit? I don’t remember anybody saying anything about any man in any suit. So there!

‘That’s up to Internal Affairs,’ said Frank. ‘If they want me, they know where I am.’

Steve poked a finger at him. ‘That’s the right attitude, Frank.’

‘So, how’s Val?’

‘She gets back from her mother’s today.’

Frank gave him a fatherly look. ‘Everything okay for you two?’

‘Sure. She just needed some company, what with the hours we’re putting in lately. I don’t blame her.’

‘Spoil her. Take her out to dinner.’

‘I might well do that.’

‘There’s that place on 60
th
, the
Veau D’Or
,’ suggested Frank. ‘I took Mary there some time back. Not too expensive. Great fish.’

‘Yeah,’ said Steve. ‘Maybe I will. This is why I miss you, Frank. One word from you and I’m on the straight and narrow.’

‘Don’t be a numbskull, Steve. You’ll make Captain one day, sitting on your haemorrhoids, drinking stale coffee and wondering how the hell you got where you did in such a short time.’

Steve looked at his watch. ‘I’d better go. Keep up the good work, Frank. At least come and help us clear up this mess before you disappear upstate with your old lady and a bag of fishing tackle.’

‘We’ll see,’ said Frank.

He felt tired. Just that one small task had made the idea of half an hour’s unconsciousness very appealing.

Steve got up and hovered. He had his hands in his pants. Frank knew that, in Steve, that was a sign of procrastination.

‘What’s up?’ said Frank.

Steve kept his eyes down like the beaten kid in the school yard. ‘I was just wondering, have you seen him anymore?’

‘Who?’

‘The guy. The one in the suit.’

‘No,’ said Frank. ‘That son of a bitch got put in the waste with half my brain. He’s done with.’

‘That’s good,’ said Steve. ‘You didn’t mind me asking?’

‘No,’ smiled Frank. ‘I didn’t mind you asking.’

Steve shook his friend’s hand and left.

He felt better for seeing him. He felt complete. A few minutes with Frank had made him feel positive again, as if he could go on, as if he had the energy to sort out anything the world threw at him.

The precinct was buzzing.

Outside there were press, pens poised and cameras held aloft, men shuffling to stay upright, cursing, threatening, women using their sharp elbows and acid tongues to force their way through and, between them and the doors, a line of uniforms trying to keep them at bay.

As soon as the uniforms saw Steve, they parted the crowd, uncaring of whose toes they trod on or who screamed for the liberty of the press.

The desk sergeant called him over.

‘What the hell is going on, Coleman?’ asked Steve.

Coleman looked down from his desk, his barricade, his place of safe authority. ‘Where have you been?’

‘Seeing, Frank. Why?’

‘We’ve been trying to call you,’ said Coleman. He turned sharply as the doors to the precinct flew open. A man, camera high, was grabbed by the scruff of the neck by a uniform and dragged back outside. As he went, his flash went off and doused the room in lightning. ‘What’s the matter with these animals?’

‘Sarge,’ snapped Steve. ‘What’s up?’

‘There’s been another one.’

‘Another murder?’

Coleman rolled his eyes. ‘No, another doughnut store opened two blocks away. We’re so thrilled we thought we ought to tell the press.’ He hooked a thumb at the old wooden stairs that led to the familiar pile of desks and nicotine-stained walls. ‘You need to get upstairs to the Captain’s office. Yesterday.’

Steve almost ran up the stairs.

As he passed through the gate, the room fell silent, as if someone had turned down the sound. All eyes locked upon him as the gate swung noisily back into place.

He walked towards the office, his pulse palpable in his chest, in his wrists and in his neck. He could hear the blood swim through him with each stroke of his heart.

People took a step back as he walked towards the office and opened Emmet’s door.

Emmet looked away from Mike Patton and Bob Simmons. ‘Where’ve you been?’ he asked sharply.

‘To the hospital. To see Frank,’ said Steve.

He looked at Patton and Simmons. Their faces showed nothing and, in doing so, gave it all way. Something had happened. Their sickle mouths and dead set eyes said it all.

‘What?’ demanded Steve. ‘What?’

Chapter 18

It hadn’t been difficult for the press to sniff out the story. A reporter, Loretta Foster, a journalist on the Bulletin, had received a tip off about a murder and rushed to the scene with her Afghan hound, Moodle.

She hadn’t recognised the voice on the phone; it wasn’t one of her usual sources, but they had spoken with sincerity and she was inclined to believe what they said. She asked them if they had called the police yet. They hung up.

Once she had got to the scene and confirmed the truth of it, she found a payphone and asked the office to send down a photographer. After she hung up, she phoned the police, but had given the photographer a five minute head start. By the time the police got there and cordoned off the area, she was at her typewriter and the photographer was in the darkroom and the story ready to go as an exclusive by lunchtime.

For the first time since 1841, an evening edition of the Bulletin was published. It contained pictures from the scene which, if not crossing the line, certainly pissed on the boundary.

Details of all the murders so far appeared on pages one through eight, with a remarkable, ghoulish montage of feet, hands and bloodied clothing on the centre pages. The fact that they were clearly hurriedly taken pictures in grainy black and white just seemed to add to the voyeuristic pleasure.

It was nearly pulled by the owner for the sake of decency, that is until he was told of the expected profits for this extra run and, with Decency being a poor mistress to Profit, he agreed to publish.

The stories had, as always, come from an ‘unknown source’ within the precinct. The press would pay for anything and certain cops would pretty much take anything the press had to offer. It wouldn’t be difficult to find out who; just go to the local cop bar that night and see who was buying the rounds – that was your man.

By the time the police got to the scene, the place had been trampled flatter than a worm on a wheel. Any evidence was crushed underfoot, lost, broken or carried away on the sole of someone’s shoe. By the time the crowd were dispersed and the cordon up, a clumsy clown could have committed the murder and not a trace of makeup, nor a big red nose nor a size fourteen floppy shoeprint could have been found.

Patton and Simmons took the lead and Steve tagged along. Emmet wasn’t going to exclude him, but neither would he let him take charge. He was too close to it all.

Whoever had done it had taken Mary Matto’s head. They had used a saw to remove it, so the ragged tears of flesh upon the stump of neck told them. She was dead before she was dumped and her purse lay next to her on the dew damp grass.

It was impossible to tell at the scene how she had died. Kelly Peters had salvaged what she could but, like the other scenes in this macabre saga, the murderer had left nothing.

An onlooker would have been hard-pressed to say, as she stood there stock-still with her chin in her hand and her feet planted firmly six inches apart in the two inch long grass, whether she was hesitating or pondering or simply frozen by what she saw. Only her eyes moved, from the body’s neck to the feet, then up, then down, then up, then down, while all around her people scurried, picked at the ground, made notes on a clipboard, took photos, bagged fragments of evidence, while she remained the calm centre of the storm.

Steve came over. ‘Anything?’

Kelly’s eyes remained fixed upon the body. ‘She died about twelve hours ago. She didn’t die here. That’s it.’ She spoke quickly, monotonously, flatly.

Steve bristled. ‘Fine, I’ll pass that onto Frank. Most helpful.’

Kelly said nothing.

‘Christ,’ said Steve and walked away.

Kelly heard him moaning to Mike Patton and then she heard Patton’s footsteps as he squelched through the grass towards her.

‘He’s upset,’ said Patton.

‘Then send him home,’ said Kelly impassively. ‘There’s already been too many people tramping uselessly over the scene. If all he’s going to do is stand there and cry, get him out of here.’

Patton sighed. ‘Come on,’ he coaxed. ‘It’s his best friend’s wife. Show a little mercy.’

For the first time, Kelly looked up. She appeared tired and there was a thin, sharp hardness to her face.

‘What? You want me to put an arm around him and baby him? Okay. Fine. Bring him over and we can have a group hug and a chat about the old days. You can take out that flask you keep in your jacket pocket and share it around.’ Mike’s hand went automatically to the guilty pocket. ‘In fact, fuck it, why don’t I just take down the barriers, let people run rampant and leave her to the crows? That can be what we did for Mary Matto. That can be our tribute. We didn’t find her murderer, but we had a good chin wag and some great reminiscences and we fed her to some fat, happy crows.’

Her eyes burrowed into Patton like lasers. ‘Or do you want me to do my job and help you with yours so we can catch whoever did this?’ She turned around and started walking back to her car. ‘The choice is yours, Mike. All I know is that before I got here, half the press in New York had jaywalked over the scene and now you expect me to be Mommy to someone who shouldn’t even be here.’ She paused and turned. ‘I found fresh dogshit by the body, Mike. Fresh dogshit! Someone had let their pooch crap on the scene.’ She held her arms out and then dropped them tiredly by her side. ‘I’m the deputy ME, Mike, not a fucking babysitter.’ She turned again and walked on. ‘Tell Emmet I’ll contact him when I’m done.’

She waved a hand and stepped tiredly into her car.

Mike turned to the body.

He found it hard to reconcile the fact that this had been the woman who had invited he and his wife to dinner, who had seen Frank through good and bad, who had been at Frank’s bedside through bullet wounds and tumours and was now laid out like a piece of useless meat in some wet grass on a handkerchief of green land in Brooklyn.

He thanked God it wasn’t him. He thanked God that his wife was at home or with the grandkids or wasting more of his hard-earned money in the shops. He thanked God he wasn’t Frank and he thanked God that he wasn’t the poor bastard who had to go and tell Frank before it hit the TV.

He stuck his hands in his pockets, shuddered and then wandered back to Steve Wayt and Bob Simmons, leaving a green wake between him and the body of Mary Matto.

Emmet Diehl stood outside Frank Matto’s hospital room and smoked a cigarette. Several nurses passed by and asked him if he was okay. He lied and told them he was fine.

What he actually wanted to do was grasp their hand and beg them to guide him through this because he didn’t know what to say, because his eyes were backed up with tears, like some precarious levee about to crumble in the storm. He was afraid that if he tried to speak, the levee would break and, his tears released, all would drown in the sorrow that they unleashed.

He wanted to say that he had, over the years, broken bad news a million times to the families of victims and the wives and husbands of cops, but he’d never had to tell Frank Matto; he’d never had to tell Frank and Frank was special. Frank wasn’t just any old cop, just any old relative.

How did he do this? How did he tell Frank that fifty percent of him was lying dead on a square of grass a few blocks away? How did he tell a friend, an old and trusted friend, that that part of his life was over, forever?

He walked over to an ashtray and crushed the stub of the cigarette into the glass. He pressed it down until it was dead, until the embers had turned cold and the glow had curdled into ashes.

His mouth was dry. He thought perhaps he needed a coffee before he went in, maybe another cigarette too, so he could run through in his mind all the things he needed to say.

He walked away from the ashtray and passed by Frank’s room. Then he stopped. His head dropped and his hands buried themselves in his pockets.

He stood still and gazed blankly at the floor. There was nowhere to go.

He turned around and went back, knocked gently at Frank’s door and entered the room.