Pssst.
Charles Butler studied the stalker’s notes to Kennedy Harper. By comparison, the old ones left for Natalie Homer were almost poetry. He turned to Riker. ‘Did you tell Deluthe to ask if Natalie’s door was locked when the police arrived?’
‘No, Deluthe can’t ask about that, and I’m hoping Alan Parris won’t volunteer anything.’ Riker turned off his cassette player. ‘We have the old statement from Natalie’s landlady, and she says that door was locked.’
‘I’m sure it was when she called the police. But when they arrived – ’
The detective put one hand on Charles’s shoulder. ‘If the door wasn’t locked when the first cop showed up, then eight million New Yorkers had access to the crime scene. That makes it hard to narrow it down to a boyfriend with his own key. The district attorney won’t like that if the case goes to trial. You see the problem?’
Charles nodded absently. He was still preoccupied by the difference in the notes. ‘The man who killed Natalie Homer loved her obsessively. He crushed her windpipe with his bare hands – an act of passion. I rather doubt that he made a habit of it. Emotionally, the scarecrow is his polar opposite.’ He tapped the autopsy report on Kennedy Harper. ‘And the date – an anniversary murder suggests long-term planning. The man who did this was only obsessed with the act itself. A hanged woman, a few dozen candles, ajar of flies – all props. The scarecrow decorates his stage and goes away. It’s that cold. Oh, and he’s quite insane.’
‘Suppose we bypass a jury trial?’
‘Wise decision.’
‘What are the odds of getting the scarecrow to confess?’
‘Nothing easier. All you have to do is catch him. He’ll tell you everything he knows. In fact, he’s doing that right now, but no one is listening.’ Charles unpinned the plastic bag containing a bloodstained note. It was disconcerting to see that the scarecrow’s rigid printing so closely resembled Mallory’s.
‘You analyze handwriting?’ asked Riker.
‘No, sorry, I don’t do voodoo.’ Charles turned the bag over and showed Riker the deep grooves on the back of the paper. ‘If his pen had pressed down any harder, he would’ve torn the paper. I suppose you could read frustration or anger into that.’
‘He staked that note to a woman’s neck with a hatpin – a live woman. Yeah, I’d say he was angry.’
‘Oh, the rage is limited to his penmanship. It wasn’t directed at Kennedy Harper. I don’t think he expected her to feel any pain from the hatpin. She was an object – a bulletin board. But I think he definitely has issues with your people. He had to know she’d head for the nearest police station. This note was meant for you.’ Charles crossed over to Sparrow’s wall and stood before the photographs of the coma victim. ‘A recent razor slash on Sparrow’s arm – I’m guessing that’s an escalation because the police clearly were not getting his message. Incidentally, why didn’t she report that assault?’
‘Because she had a whore’s rapsheet. Sparrow didn’t think the cops would care. And she was right about that.’
Riker handed a cup of coffee to Charles, who must be uncomfortable at the small table built for people of normal size. But the man had wanted privacy, and there was no more secure room than the one that housed the lock-up cage. ‘We can finish this up at your place if you like.’
‘No, I’m fine, really.’ The man sipped from his cup and pretended to find the brew passable. ‘Just one more question.’
‘Shoot.’ The detective turned a chair around and straddled it, bracing his arms on the wooden back. ‘Anything you want.’
‘I gather Louis took an interest in Kathy some time before the night he brought her home. When exactly was that?’
Riker’s blood pressure soared, but he had to smile. Brilliant, Charles. A police station was the perfect location for stressful questions. But this time the truth was harmless. ‘This is just between us?’
‘Of course.’
‘Late one night, a social worker turns up in the squad room. Now Lou owes the woman a favor, so she begs him to find this kid – a very special kid. I guess Kathy was nine, almost ten. She used subway tunnels to get around town, but she didn’t always ride the trains. Earlier this same night, the kid played a game of chicken with an engineer in the tunnel. She stood on the track till the train was almost on top of her. At the last possible second, she jumped out of the way.’ Riker’s own private theory was that the child had wanted to die that night.
‘She almost gave this poor bastard a heart attack. So now the engineer’s afraid she’ll electrocute herself on the third rail. He calls out the Transit cops, and they block off the tunnel. Six of those clowns couldn’t catch one little girl. She laughed at them. So now the social worker arrives. This woman walks into the tunnel and rounds up the kid in two minutes flat. You know how she did that? Kathy walked right up to her, this tall blonde – ’
‘Like your friend Sparrow.’
‘Yeah, and the kid was real happy to go anywhere with this woman. Kathy even held the social worker’s hand while they were filling out paperwork at Juvie Hall. So the kid’s in custody. She’s been cleaned up and fed, all settled in for the night. But now the social worker goes home and leaves her alone in that place. Well, no tall blonde – no Kathy. The kid left five minutes later, and the guards never figured out how she got away. She was their only escapee – ever.’
‘Sounds like she picked up bad habits from the Wichita Kid.’
Riker froze. How long had the door been open? How long?
Jack Coffey stood on the threshold, saying to him, ‘You’ve got a visitor.’
And then, as if Charles Butler knew how dangerous the westerns were, he said, ‘I’m so sorry.’
When Riker returned to his desk in the squad room, an old friend was waiting for him. There was nothing in Heller’s expression to say that he had good news or bad, for he was the king of deadpan. He held up a business card. ‘You know this guy, right?’
Riker took the card and read the name aloud, ‘Warwick’s Used Books’. His stomach knotted as he eased into the chair behind the desk, and his mouth was suddenly dry. ‘Yeah, I interviewed him.’
Heller slowly swiveled his chair, turning away to look out the window. ‘John Warwick came in while I was here, and Janos palmed him off on me. So this little guy’s all excited. He waves a newspaper in my face. Then he goes into a ramble about some paperback book. He doesn’t ask – he tells me I found it in Sparrow’s apartment. Says he knows I found it – and he wants it back. Seems the hooker stole it from his store an hour before she was hung.’ He turned back to face the desk and the sorry-looking detective. ‘Warwick says you’ll vouch for that ‘cause you took his statement.’
‘Yeah, I did.’ Riker tapped the side of his head, a gesture to say that the bookseller was not quite sane. ‘The paperback probably went into the fire, but I didn’t tell that to Warwick.’
‘I told him,’ said Heller. ‘And you’re right – he is nuts. The little guy broke down and cried. I guess that book was pretty important to him – and Sparrow.’
‘I guess.’ Riker was recalling his suit jacket all buttoned up – very fancy for a sweltering crime scene. And Heller, a man who could do a postmortem on a dead fly, would have noticed the damp spot on the breast of that jacket – and every other detail of that night in Sparrow’s apartment.
Heller looked down at an open notebook in his hand. ‘Warwick says the title is Homecoming, by Jake Swain.’ He looked up. ‘But I figure you already knew that.’