‘Well, did someone go back later? Was the car towed into the precinct?’
Russo’s chin finally came down. ‘Look, the way our snitches are tellin’ the story, David Lodge was blown away by DuWayne Spott who first swore to take revenge seven years ago. So you’ll have to excuse me if I don’t understand why you wanna know what happened to Clarence Spott’s car.’
‘It’s just that…’ Adele waved her hand, a circular gesture that might have meant anything. ‘I mean, all this happened on Knickerbocker Avenue. That’s the main drag in Bushwick, the shopping district, and there’s a subway stop at Myrtle Avenue, too.’
‘At three-thirty, everything’s closed up. And the subway — if it should happen to be on time, which mostly it isn’t — runs every twenty-five minutes.’
Adele smiled brightly. ‘What about CSU? Didn’t they process the Knickerbocker scene? Why didn’t they tow the car to their evidence yard?’
Russo’s chin resumed its customary jut and his smile vanished. ‘Detective, I have no idea what happened to Spott’s car. As you can imagine, the house was swarmin’ with bosses at the time. Internal Affairs was there too, and they had lots of questions.’
He should have let it drop at that point. The first rule of resistance, in a police interrogation room or on a witness stand, is never volunteer anything. But Russo needed to impress the two pissant detectives who’d come to question him. He couldn’t help himself.
‘They were gonna try to take me down with Lodge,’ he finally added, ‘but I lawyered up right away.’
‘How about your partner? Did Lodge get a lawyer?’
‘Hey, I was the PBA delegate. Helpin’ cops out is what I did. No way I’d let the cop-haters from IAB get their hands on Davy.’
FOURTEEN
When we left the precinct house at Knickerbocker and Myrtle a few minutes before noon, the snow had stopped. Although the sun wasn’t shining (as Adele had predicted), there were breaks in the lower cloud banks that revealed thinner and much brighter clouds high above. The temperature and the humidity were rising as well. Within a few hours, the snow, driven by liberal applications of rock salt, would turn into an icy, leather-destroying slush.
‘Anything to say?’ Adele asked as I started the Caprice.
‘You fucked up.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Definitely.’
‘How so?’
I finally turned to look directly at her. ‘You fucked up when you said Spott was originally pulled over on Knickerbocker Avenue. We didn’t get that from Linus Potter and it wasn’t in the papers. That means you saw the case file. I don’t think you wanted me to know that.’ I put the car in gear and pulled away from the curb. We’d only have time for a quick lunch and I headed for the Taco Bell a quarter-mile away.
‘So, what’s the harm? Who’s going to know?’
‘The harm is that you’re not going to stop. You’re like a junkie. The harm is that you led me to believe that you were gonna let Sarney get Lodge’s file. When you had it all the time.’
‘Are you very pissed off?’
‘No, not really. It’s too predictable.’ I might have added that once this case was disposed of, I intended finally to seek another partner, that I was drawing a line of my own. But there was no point to that, either. ‘Anything else in that file I should hear about?’
‘Nobody gave a statement, not Szarek, Russo or Lodge, for two weeks, so the investigators didn’t know where the original contact with Spott took place. By the time they found out, Spott’s car was long gone. It was never recovered.’
Adele had my complete attention now and I motioned her to continue.
‘Russo, he drew a pass for three reasons. He had no prior brutality complaints on his record, he was willing to testify, and he didn’t have blood on his uniform, not his partner’s or Clarence Spott’s. That supported his claim that he took no part in the original beating.’
‘It also means he didn’t kill Spott in that cell.’
‘You’re wrong there, Corbin.’
‘How so?’
‘A single blow from a blunt object rarely produces spatter. It’s the follow-ups that spread the blood.’
‘Explain that.’
Though my tone was anything but challenging, Adele frowned. ‘Slap your right fist into your left palm,’ she ordered. ‘Now do it again and imagine that your palm bled between the first and second impacts. You see? When Spott was struck, he naturally started to bleed. A second blow would have impacted this blood and scattered it. In the process, Lodge’s killer would have gotten blood on him.’
‘But there wasn’t a second blow?’
‘According to the ME, Spott was killed by a single blow that crushed the back of his skull. Russo — or anyone else — could have delivered it and come away clean.’
I slid to the curb in front of the Taco Bell, dropped my ON OFFICIAL POLICE BUSINESS placard onto the dash board and shut off the car. Though I hadn’t begun to complete the puzzle, I could now see a few of the pieces.
‘Something else,’ Adele said as we got out of the car. ‘The bosses scapegoated the desk lieutenant, Justin Whitlock. The theory was that Spott should have been transported to an emergency room, not dumped in a cell. Whitlock was run out of the job after a departmental hearing and a series of appeals. The way it reads in the file, he was lucky to keep his pension.’
I got on the horn to Bill Sarney after we finished eating, summarizing our interviews with Ellen Lodge and Dante Russo, then repeating the anonymous tip I’d received on my cell phone. If Sarney was unhappy with Russo’s treatment, he didn’t say so. He jumped right on the tip.
‘You think he was talking about DuWayne Spott?’
‘That would be my guess, lou, but it would’ve been a lot more helpful if he’d told us where to look. Adele got the names of a few relatives from the gang unit yesterday, but if DuWayne isn’t willing to make himself available, we’re not likely to find him. Not in the short term, anyway.’
When Sarney told me that we’d have to look anyway, I didn’t argue. Instead, I changed the subject.
‘I want to jam Pete Jarazelsky’s parole,’ I told him. ‘Jarazelsky’s a rat in his heart. He’d roll over on the Pope if he thought it was in his best interest.’
‘Keep goin’.’
‘First, Jarazelsky took protective custody after a bad beating, so he’s doing hard time. Second, he’s scheduled for release six months down the line. What I was thinking…’ I stopped suddenly as an idea caught my attention, a sequence of events which I filed away for later. ‘I was thinking it might be possible to contact Jarazelsky’s parole board, tell ’em we have strong reason to believe that Pete obstructed a homicide investigation and maybe they should reconsider their decision to release him.’
After a moment, Sarney told me that he’d ‘look into it’, then went on to other matters. The NYPD lab, he explained, had done a preliminary analysis of the blood evidence. All of the samples they’d examined contained Type A blood, matching Lodge’s blood type. DNA results would follow in forty-eight hours. The Toyota had also been examined. While no fingerprints had been found, blood, fiber and hair evidence were recovered. The blood was all Type A. The fibers were black wool and might have come from the masks worn by the shooters. The hairs, two of which were dyed, had been deposited by four different Caucasians.
I wasn’t overly concerned with any of this physical evidence. A comparison of two human hairs, unless they contain some obscure deformity, can never be said to match, not the way fingerprints match. The best that can be said is that a comparison doesn’t exclude the defendant. Fibers are better evidence, but unless very rare, just marginally.
Nevertheless, after hanging up, I dutifully relayed the information to Adele before describing the sequence of events that had caught my attention a few minutes before.
‘According to Nagy,’ I told her, ‘Lodge became certain of his innocence about six months before his release. Around the same time, Jarazelsky caught a bad beating and asked for segregation. Why can’t these two events be directly related?’