Three-Day Town (30 page)
Authors: Margaret Maron
“Was he carrying anything? More garbage?”
“Sorry, ma’am,” the young cop said. “He said the guy helped load some of the bags, but he didn’t say if he brought one out with him.”
Something in the lieutenant’s look made him feel like a complete incompetent.
“I’ll go back and ask him,” he said hastily.
“You! Horvath,” Dwight called as the night man headed for the break room.
“Yeah?”
“You said you came down here around six-thirty. You sure you didn’t notice anything? Was the outside door open?”
He shook his white head. “Might’ve been a few minutes before six-thirty, and if that door was open, I’d’ve felt a draft, and I didn’t.”
Even as they spoke, the outer door opened again and the second porter, Hector Laureano, arrived.
“Hey, what’s up?” he asked Horvath, following the older man into the break room.
The young cop was back almost immediately. “No, ma’am,” he told Sigrid. “He came out empty-handed, stayed to help throw the bags in, and then went back in. Said he saw a big guy come out to the sidewalk a few minutes later and then go back in. No woman either time.”
“Dammit!” Dwight exploded. “They’re still here then! Horvath says Lundigren was the only one who could unlock the stairwell doors from this side. You have to go up to the second-floor service landing to get to the stairs and come down to open either the lobby door or this one. So he’s done something with Deborah and he has to be hiding here somewhere.”
“You said you found one of her gloves by the outer door,” said Sigrid. “If she stuck it in the door to keep it from locking, maybe she did the same on that door. If so, Jackson could be anywhere in the building. Or he could have been waiting around the corner of the lobby till Horvath left and then walked out the front door.”
Nevertheless, she sent the troops up on the service elevator to search the stairwell and the hallways. After giving them a description of Sidney Jackson, one man was put on the lobby door and another positioned at the outer door just in case he was still in the building.
Frustrated and unable to stand around doing nothing, Dwight had combed through the storage area himself, shining the flashlight from ceiling to floor, looking behind anything bigger than a wastebasket that wasn’t locked in one of the cages.
As he passed by Hentz and Sigrid on his way to check out the front part of the basement again, he saw that Sigrid had her phone pressed to her ear again.
“They find the truck?” he asked.
Sigrid shook her head and stepped away to finish listening to what Jim Lowry had to report. No way was she going to tell Dwight Bryant that the truck had been found and that it carried a bag containing Corey Wall’s body.
“I cut it open so that I didn’t disturb the knot,” Lowry said. “Looks like the poor kid was smashed on the head just like Lundigren. Probably happened around the time he went missing. No rigor anyhow. I’ve called for the crime scene unit, but we’ve gone down another layer of bags below that one and I’m pretty sure it’s nothing but garbage.”
“Good work, Lowry,” she said. “Keep me informed.”
In a low voice, she told Sam Hentz what Lowry had found, but before he could comment, they heard Dwight call to them from the service elevator.
“Look here,” he said and turned back one of the quilted plastic pads that hung from a series of hooks along the top edge of the elevator wall to protect the walls from getting banged by heavy furniture deliveries. “I noticed that one of the grommets wasn’t on its hook, and when I reached up to put it back, the first one slid off and—well, look for yourselves.”
He turned back the loosened pad and they saw a large blood spatter across the width of the pad.
Hentz stepped into the car and lifted the rear pad. More blood. Fairly fresh, too. None on the wall, though, which meant that someone had reversed the pads.
The floor of the elevator was fairly clean, but Dwight pointed his flash to the side wall where it joined the floor. “That grunge in the crack look like blood to y’all?”
“Call for a crime scene crew,” she told Hentz, “and let’s secure this elevator till they get here.”
Dwight immediately brought over a chair that stood against the far wall and positioned it so that the door couldn’t close.
“Major…” Sigrid began.
“You don’t need to say it,” Dwight said grimly. “I can see it’s not fresh enough to be Deborah’s blood. You reckon it’s from that kid that went missing?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“He came down to go sledding,” Dwight said slowly, piecing together the likely scenario. “And he probably saw Sidney stuffing Antoine in a bag, so Sidney had to stop him, too. Only why you reckon Sidney killed Antoine?”
“Because Clarke could put him in your apartment at the same time Lundigren was killed. He must have seen people going in and out. Clarke was in early, planning to spend the night because of the predicted snow. Jackson could have told him he needed a bathroom break or something, and while Clarke ran the elevator, Jackson probably intended to duck in and grab those gold pillboxes, thinking their loss could be blamed on Denise Lundigren or some of the party guests. Just his bad luck that Lundigren picked that time to bring back that painted cat. Jackson probably panicked, grabbed up that brass maquette, and hit him as hard as he could. God knows what he hit the Wall kid with. We’ll have the whole basement processed. They’ll turn it up if it’s here.”
As they spoke, the door to the stairwell was opened from the other side by one of the uniformed officers. “No sign of him here, Lieutenant. You want me to prop this door open?”
“Yes, please. What about the hallways?”
“That’s gonna take a little longer. People are going to work, and so far, none of them have seen this Jackson guy today. There’s a Mrs. Wall up on twelve who says she wants to speak to you.”
Her cool gray eyes met Hentz’s dark blue eyes.
“Want me to go?”
She shook her head. “Too soon. I want to talk to Lowry again.”
Dwight looked around. “Was he that other detective? The one that called Sanitation? Where’d he go?” He took one look at their faces and his own face tightened. “He found the truck, didn’t he?”
“She’s not there, Major,” Sigrid said. “The boy is, but she’s not.”
“Then where the hell is she?”
“If they’re in the building, we’ll find them. I promise.”
He glared at her, then turned away.
“Where are you going?”
“To look for some rat holes. That bastard’s worked in this building for almost twenty years. He’s bound to know some we’ve missed.”
As he strode away, Sigrid said, “Stay with him, Hentz. If he does find Jackson, we don’t want another killing on our hands before we find out what he did with Judge Knott.”
Aside from the regular patrolmen there is the Sanitary Squad, that has to do with enforcing health regulation; the Traffic Squad, that regulates the traffic of the great thoroughfares;… the Boiler Squad, that examines engines, boilers, and engineers.
—
The New New York
, 1909
D
WIGHT
B
RYANT
—T
UESDAY MORNING (CONTINUED)
I
thought you said you’d already searched here,” Hentz said, following Dwight into the dim and cavernous boiler room.
“I didn’t go down to the lower level.” Dwight flipped the switch beside the door and frowned at the low-watt bulb that hung from a cord overhead. “I can’t believe Lundigren kept that thing running with no more light than this.”
He shined his flashlight on the steel steps that led down to the steam boiler. Near the bottom was another wall switch, and this one turned on an array of fluorescent tubes concealed from above by the crossbeams to which the fixtures were attached.
While Hentz watched from the upper level, Dwight ducked under the many pipes and edged past the boiler into a recess in the wall beneath Hentz’s feet.
“See anything?” Hentz called when Dwight disappeared from view.
“Looks like a barrel of rags back here.” Dwight’s voice bounced and echoed off the concrete walls and metal pipes.
He approached the chest-high barrel cautiously and gave it a shove that tipped it over and sent it clanging along the floor. “Nothing but rags,” he called up to Hentz.
As he stooped to avoid the pipes that crisscrossed overhead, he heard an oddly familiar yet unidentifiable noise carried to his ears by an acoustical trick of the pipes. “Was that you?” he asked Hentz.
“Was what me?”
“I don’t know. I thought heard something.” He put his ear close to the return pipes but heard only the faint flow of water. As he started back around the boiler, he noticed a low flush door with simple thumb latch. He stooped to open it and flashed the light inside a space that opened up higher at the back and seemed to terminate in a door secured with a heavy padlock. “Looks like it might have been the coal bin when the boiler was coal-fired,” he said.
Again, he flashed the light all around and under the antiquated boiler, to no avail.
“I could’ve sworn this would be the sort of place he would hole up in,” Dwight said.
As he came back up, he flicked off the bright lights till they were once again in near darkness, and his conviction was stronger than ever. That unexpected noise he had heard while below only strengthened it.
“You ever go deer hunting?” he asked Hentz.
“Huh?”
“Deer can’t count, you know. They’ll stay in the bushes and watch while four guys climb up into a deer stand.” Dwight had gradually lowered his voice till Hentz could barely hear him. “When three guys climb back down and leave, the buck doesn’t know there’s still a man in the stand.”
“Because deer can’t count?” Hentz asked, humoring him.
“You got it, pal.” Raising his voice to a normal conversational level, Dwight said, “No, we can cross the boiler room off. He’s not here.”
He opened the door for Hentz, gave the detective a significant look as the other man passed through, and in one fluid motion flipped off the light and slammed the door loudly.
Then he stood in the darkness and waited. Almost immediately, he heard a faint sigh, followed by that same rustling sound he’d noticed before.
It came again and he finally recognized it for what it was. His first impulse was to dig Jackson out of his hiding place and wring his scrawny neck. Instead, he opened the door and motioned Hentz back inside.
“He’s over there,” he told the detective. “Burrowed down deep in that bin full of tarps and drop cloths. I was sloppy when I checked it the first time. Didn’t go down far enough.”
Hentz walked over to the wooden bin and gave it a kick. “Come on out, Jackson. It’s over.”
They heard strangled noises as that pile of plastic tarps heaved and shifted till the night man surfaced and stood up. His face was contorted and they realized that he was crying like a guilty child who fears there’s a whipping in his future.
“I didn’t mean to!” Sidney Jackson sobbed when he hoisted himself over the edge of the bin. “They made me do it.” He fumbled in his pocket for a handkerchief. “They made me! Phil! And Corey! Oh, God, Corey!” he wailed. “I knew him since he was a baby. I didn’t want to hurt him. I didn’t! I used to help take his stroller in and out. I let him pull the gate back for me when he was just a little kid. Why would I want to hurt him? Three minutes later—three lousy minutes!—and he’d still be alive.” He wiped his streaming eyes and nose and tried to make them understand his hard luck.
“You think I wanted them dead? But they kept popping up. Every time I turned around, there they were—Phil, Corey, even Mrs. Bryant. Every damn time! I couldn’t let them tell, could I?
Could
I?”
Sobbing as they led him out into the basement, he was a mixture of remorse and indignation. Grief for his victims mingled with petulance and self-pity for what he felt they had forced him to do. He collapsed onto the nearest chair and buried his face in his hands, blubbering and snuffling.
“Where is she?” Dwight snarled. “What have you done with my wife?”
“I didn’t want to hurt her,” Sidney sobbed, “but she was out there on the sidewalk when I got here to beat the garbage truck. She found Corey. She wanted me to call 911. She was going to tell. What could I do?”
People when “cabined, cribbed, confined,” cannot be very happy or comfortable.
—
The New New York
, 1909
I
came to slowly, disoriented and hot. I was lying on my side in total darkness. Cautiously I wriggled my fingers and felt rough cloth. There was something familiar about it, but I couldn’t make myself concentrate. More cloth touched my face and weighed on my body, which was probably why I was so warm. To my surprise, I could breathe. Not as deeply as my oxygen-deprived lungs wanted, but enough to keep me alive. My mouth and one nostril were completely covered with the duct tape, but as long as I lay quietly and took slow even breaths, I wouldn’t suffocate.
Where the hell was I, though? Taped and swaddled, I had no clues. I could hear voices, muffled and far away. Should I try to draw attention to myself, or would that make Sidney come back and finish me off for good? Stupid, stupid,
stupid
not to have realized that he was the figure I saw disappear around the corner last night after setting the bag with Corey’s body out by the curb.
He must have come back to make sure it got on the garbage truck without one of the sanitation workers noticing. Probably threw it in himself. Is that where he is now? Will he come back with a garbage bag for me?
I moved my head forward almost imperceptibly and felt a solid wall. Oh, God! Was I in a coffin? About to be buried alive? I gingerly tried to flex my legs backward. They were hampered by the weight of the cloth, but there seemed to be nothing solid behind me. Wherever I was, it wasn’t a coffin.
