Abby placed a computer printout on the desk in front of Dart, a single line highlighted in a bright yellow. Reading the name on the file, his body reacted as if he had taken a niacin tablet-every pore on fire. His blood pressure rose so quickly that he could hardly hear her whisper. “This is from our files,” she said, meaning Sex Crimes. “And this,” she emphasized, “is from CAPers.” Another highlighted line that shared the same name.
He forced himself to inhale, a drowning man attempting to recover.
“A suicide, Joe-and a suspected sex offender. As far as I can tell, the two have never been connected,” she said excitedly, “which I can explain. We do not reveal the identities of suspected offenders because of the libel suit lost in New Haven. Only arrests and convictions. This guy was never arrested-we didn’t have enough evidence.” She paused and said, “Do you recognize the name, Joe? Remember that case? Think what the papers would have done if we’d showed them this,” she said, tapping the Sex Crimes folder. “Can you believe it?” She waited, knowing he would recognize the name. And although he did, he said nothing. He wasn’t sure what to say, in part because he felt in a state of physical shock. She misunderstood his hesitation. “It’s the Ice Man, Joe! Come on! The Ice Man! And he flew out of a window just like Stapleton did. What’s that, coincidence? Stapleton was not the first.” A critical part of the job working a string of crimes was to identify the first in the series. Abby, believing as Dart did that they were on to a string, was ebullient with her discovery. “Get it?”
“I was second on the Ice Man,” he informed her. A lump filled his throat, painfully choking him. He understood at that moment that there was no running away, only avoidance. Things believed dead and buried inevitably returned, either symbolically or literally, stepping out of the grave. He saw no way to tell her, no way to ask her to return the files and forget about it. The Ice Man had crawled back out of his grave. A part of Dart actually felt relief; the remainder of him was in a state of total panic.
“Kowalski was the lead,” he explained. “I was the second.”
“Talk about coincidence,” she said, lowering her voice. “Teddy is going to pull the evidence for us.”
“What?” Dart asked, astonished.
“Yeah, isn’t that great?” she said, mistaking his reaction for enthusiasm. “He agreed to review it with Rankin and Haite after lunch-to see if we can make any physical comparisons to Stapleton and the others.”
The 3-D animated software had already made just such a connection-no wonder that Bragg felt prompted to delve into possible connections.
Dart felt short of breath. He could feel his skin go alternately hot and cold. His head swam. Damage control, he warned himself.
“What’s wrong, Joe?” she asked cautiously. “I thought you’d be thrilled. It’s an obvious connection.”
Dart felt paralyzed by the numbness sweeping through him-he was in the midst of an anxiety attack. He heard her footsteps coming down the stairs and the whoosh of her dress. He looked up, only to see Abby.
He weighed the options available to him.
She placed her hand tenderly on his arm, and that did it. He snapped his head toward her, startling her, and said, “How would you like to take a walk?”
Concern stealing the excitement from her face, she pushed her chair back and stood.
A bitter cold had descended on the city in anticipation of winter, still more than a month away. They walked from headquarters toward a path that led down to the river. They passed a few smokers and then found themselves alone in the woods.
He wasn’t sure how or where to start.
“I was the second on the Ice Man,” he repeated. “Kowalski was the primary, but he was worthless and everyone knew it. They wouldn’t assign Zeller because he had lost Lucky only a few months before and there wasn’t much left of him. But I consulted him nonetheless, because then, as now, there’s none better.”
“Yes, I remember a lot of it,” she said sadly. “I was directly involved because it was the Asian Strangler, because of the Sex Crimes connection, although I was still with CAPers then.”
“So,” he explained, “even though I was technically the second, it actually ended up my case in many ways.”
“Nothing new for a Kowalski investigation.”
They stopped; she leaned against a tree stump and Dart sat onto a rock embedded in the earth. But he didn’t feel connected to the earth; he felt almost as if he were floating. He continued. “The guy was found naked and frozen-as you’ll recall-his head bashed in from the jump, no identification. The pressure to clear it got pretty intense. Media slump. City Hall going ballistic. They came down on Kowalski like a ton of bricks. I was left pretty much unscathed. I continued to consult Zeller. He was drinking pretty heavily at the time and was starting to lose it. I loved him like a father,” Dart confessed, his throat tight. “It was hard for me to see him like that.”
“I’m sure.” She studied him. “Hard on anybody, Joe.”
“Kowalski ended up in the hot seat, but because of his connections he was pretty well protected. Spent most of his time defending an investigation that had basically gone nowhere.”
“If it’s any consolation, Joe,” she said, still misunderstanding him, “I’m sure you did as good a job as could be done, given the circumstances.”
“Me? No. It was Zeller who broke the case.”
“Meaning?” She had that Abby look of concern that he had come to know-knitted brow, pursed lips, lowered chin. If she had read those files, then she knew that the case had never been “broken,” but simply cleared as a jumper.
“It was Zeller who ID’d him. He had jumped from a window on the night of that terrible blizzard. Hit hard, and either landed or rolled into the street. Covered by the falling snow, he was struck by a city plow and pushed three blocks down the street, where he was deposited under a snowbank for three weeks. When it finally thawed, we had the Ice Man on our hands.” He stood and she followed, and they walked deeper into the woods. Gray and brown tree trunks; leaves mushy underfoot. He wasn’t sure how much to tell her, but he began to realize that it was all going to come out, that secrets were a thing of the past. If nothing else, he thought, this is a dress rehearsal for my discharge. “Zeller found the apartment first.” It should have sent up a red flag, he thought. “He didn’t want it to appear that he was working Kowalski’s turf, so he funneled the information through me-pointing me without actually telling me anything.” He’s doing the same thing again, he realized.
“He was the best,” she said admiringly.
“Maybe too good,” Dart replied, confusing her, judging by her expression. “He taught me-drummed into me, is more like it-to always return to the crime scene, not just once, but several times, that you always see it differently. And so that’s what I did.” He stopped. This was the dangerous territory, and despite his resolve to tell her everything he felt himself holding back, and he hated himself for it. This was the voice of the devil, he realized-still looking for a way out, still believing that the secret could be reburied.
“Are you going to explain that?” she asked. She pulled at her jacket, fending off the cold. She sat down on a log and Dart joined her.
He nodded and swallowed, his mouth and throat bone dry, and said, “It wasn’t from my repeat visits, but Teddy Bragg’s report and the accompanying inventory of the Ice Man’s apartment. It listed a spool of hemp rope. It was put down as a fifty-foot spool of three-eighths-inch hemp. Your mind does funny things. Who knows where my mind was, or what it was up to, but that hemp rope leapt out at me and wrapped itself around my neck like a noose.” Again he tried to swallow. Again his throat constricted. “Lucky Zeller had been found tied up with three-eighths-inch hemp.”