Dartelli allowed as how any CAPers detective would have acted in pretty much the same way; suicides cleared quickly.
“Listen,” she confessed openly, “this is the kind of thing I celebrate. A known piece of shit takes himself out. Saves me time and energy. Five months on a five-year sentence? That’s justice?” she asked angrily. “But it was a suicide, and it was investigated by Kowalski.”
“Meaning?” If she had evidence to support that Kowalski had somehow mishandled the investigation, then it was a case for Internal Affairs, not CAPers, not him.
She didn’t answer his question directly. “Gerry Law worked the young girls in the neighborhood. Befriended them. Got them to trust him. Obtained a promise of secrecy. And then the horrors began. He took his time with them to make sure he could count on their secrecy-broke them in slowly. Kept some of them for several years. Took photos and videos. Sold some of them, used the photographs to blackmail the older ones: ‘You wouldn’t want your mother to see this.’ Pure slime. Discarded those over fourteen. We had some mothers who suspected someone in the neighborhood, but couldn’t find a witness. He had them all too well trained.”
“You knew but couldn’t do anything?” Dartelli asked incredulously.
“Suspected,” she corrected. “This kind of abuse is often first noticed in the bathtub at home or at the doctor’s office. It’s insidious because it’s not always that obvious, depending on the act. A doctor has to know what to look for. Parents-mothers in particular-are often the worst: They don’t want to believe what they see. Happens all the time.”
“But you busted him,” Dartelli recalled. He leafed through the CAPers file, studying the photographs of the hanging. Lawrence’s body hung by the neck from a length of wire fixed to a ceiling light fixture that was itself pulled out of the Sheetrock.
“Sure. We got lucky, but only once. Seven arrests, one conviction-you know the drill.”
Dartelli also knew the frustrations that went along with such work.
As he reached Bragg’s forensics report, she asked him, “Why use a strand of lamp wire? Does that sound right?” He flipped forward to the detailed report of the apartment’s contents.
“What are you saying?” he asked. But he understood the question perfectly welclass="underline" She doubted the suicide.
She said, “If you’re Lawrence and you’re planning to do something like this, why not get a piece of rope?”
Dartelli hurried through Bragg’s crime scene report. It lacked detail, indicating a hasty job typical of both a suicide investigation and Kowalski’s lax approach-the usual cotton and synthetic fibers expected in any home, some copper filings from the lamp cord found on the floor under the body, nothing special.
“How did you finally get him?” Dart asked, trying to keep her away from questioning the suicide.
She answered, “An eighteen-year-old girl came forward. She had seen some Oprah program that dealt with sexual abuse, and realized what had been done to her and how she had blocked it out. We put her on the stand and she identified him, but she fell apart on cross and that cost us. He gets five years, commuted to one-out in six months; five, as it turned out, because of prison overcrowding. I mean, here’s a piece of shit that had done over a dozen young girls by some counts, and he gets virtually nothing.”
Dartelli pulled out the medical examiner’s report.
Abby reached over his shoulder and flipped past to a photocopy of Lawrence’s suicide note. “Let me ask you this,” she said. “You’re Gerry Law, slime ball pervert, and here is your last comment to the world. Two sentences, the grammar correct, the message simple. ‘I can’t live with my crimes. Forgive me.’”
Dart studied the photocopy. The lettering was jerky, indicating stress-understandable, he thought, given that the man was about to kill himself. Nonetheless, the wording was curious, though he was loath to admit it. What is she after?
“The choice of words is what intrigues me,” she said. “The word crimes for instance. Is that how a guy like this thinks? Crimes? I’ve interviewed dozens of these men, Joe. It doesn’t ring right with me.” He could see in her doubting expression that he faced trouble. “Does that sound right to you? Some down-and-out slime ball living on the edge of Bellevue Square?” She answered herself, “It sounds more like a prosecuting attorney than Gerry Law.”
Or a detective, he kept to himself, thinking of Walter Zeller.
“What if Gerry Law was into drugs?” she asked. “What if he has a Narco record as well?”
Roman Kowalski had worked Narcotics before coming over to CAPers; Dartelli finally saw what she was after-she suspected Kowalski. Not Zeller.
She had nearly flawless skin, belying her age. She nibbled at her lower lip as she concentrated and said, “The Narco files are kept separate, same as mine. Without access to those files, we’d never know if there was a connection between an investigator and these suicides or not.”
“Listen,” Dartelli said, feeling heat spike up his spine, “this is interesting, Abby, but I doubt there’s any great cover-up going on here.” There had been a shake-up in the department a year earlier. Two Narco detectives had been sent packing. She was still sniffing these same bushes.
“You’re CAPers, Joe. You could take another look at the Lawrence case-maybe it’s connected to Stapleton.”
Maybe it is, but not in the way you think. It occurred to him how convenient it would be for him if it could be connected to Kowalski. Realizing that she had handed him the Lawrence file not for his sake, but because of her own curiosity, Dartelli wondered how to shake her interest. “What is it you want from me, Lieutenant?”
“It’s Abby, Joe. Please! And you know how it is with me and CAPers. How far would I get with any of this?”
It was true, her rank and privilege were coveted and the source of much envy and resentment in CAPers. Sexism was rarely discussed, but it existed. “Any of what, Abby?”
She offered him a look of annoyance and disappointment that reminded him of his mother. He felt a pang of guilt and he wanted to shout: Leave me alone!
She reminded, “Two suicides, both investigated by the same detective-one, with a questionably worded note. You were at the Stapleton scene, Joe. All I’m wondering … what I’m asking … was there anything there to suggest any kind of-”
“No,” he cut her off. “Nothing.” Leave it alone, he mentally encouraged. Drop it.
The interruption infuriated her. “You, Joe? You’re not one of them.” She meant the clique at CAPers, the old boys’ club. No, he wasn’t one of them; he was Ivy, the outcast with the education-only Zeller had included him. “Don’t tell me that. I don’t believe that for a minute. We’re not so different, you and me. And don’t tell me to go running to Internal Affairs, because you know damn well that would be the beginning and end of it. Kowalski is far too well connected.”
Roman Kowalski was loved by all. Perhaps the worst cop on the force, the biggest fuck-off, and the detective with the best connections to the top, the most friends and allies. “You want me to stir up trouble? Is that what you’re asking?”
“Just forget it,” she said, standing up, glaring down at him, and then storming off.
He wanted to call out to her-to stop her and tell her that yes, he too was curious. But he sat in his chair watching her go, hurting, knowing somehow that things were different now, and that with Abby’s involvement he would have to beat her to the truth.