Just like Dad.
Riker noticed more trouble when the suit jacket opened. Geldorf wore a revolver holstered at the hip. The old man was definitely back in the game.
Lieutenant Coffey dropped his polite smile. ‘I understand you’ve got something for me.’
‘It’s all in here.’ The retired detective held up a zippered pouch with the smell of new leather. ‘The Natalie Homer case. I got the details on your perp’s MO from the morning paper.’ His eyes narrowed with a foxy smile. ‘Too bad you couldn’t keep the press away from the crime scene.’ This was an unmistakable criticism, for he had done an excellent job of keeping his own case details under wraps. Until today, no one had ever heard of the twenty-year-old hanging of Natalie Homer.
Jack Coffey held up the old autopsy folder. ‘But your case didn’t have the same MO.’
‘Oh, yeah,’ said Geldorf. ‘It did. Every detail matches.’
‘Natalie Homer’s autopsy didn’t mention any hair in her mouth.’ And the newspapers had made much of that. Coffey opened the red folder and glanced at the first page of the old report. ‘The chief medical examiner was – ’
‘Dr Peter Norris,’ said Geldorf. ‘A drunk and a third-rate hack. I’m glad he’s dead. And you’re wrong, son. I pulled the hair out of her mouth before the meat wagon showed up.’ He leaned back and smiled in self-congratulation. ‘In those days, all the worst press leaks came from the medical examiner’s office.’
Lieutenant Coffey read aloud from the old autopsy report, ‘„Manual strangulation.“ According to the ME, your victim was strangled before she was strung up.’
‘Oh, yeah. What a psycho.’ Geldorf smiled. ‘Or maybe he only wanted it to look that way.’ He glanced up at Mallory. ‘What’s your theory?’
‘I like the psycho,’ she said.
The old man turned to Riker. ‘And what about you? I’ll give you a hint. You wouldn’t expect the victim to have a coil of rope lying around the house.’
Riker only drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair. He recognized all the signs of this ritual – Learning from the Master of Old Farts. Previously, he had believed that this was his father’s invention, a game devised to drive his son insane. He reached over to take the leather pouch from the retired detective. It was a tense moment, for this file was Geldorf s ticket to ride with Special Crimes Unit, and he would not loosen his grip. Mallory caught the old man’s eyes and silently conveyed a threat, Hey, this is going to happen, old man. And Geldorf s hand slowly opened. Riker grabbed the pouch and unzipped it, then riffled the contents. ‘So what happened to the hair you took from her mouth?’
‘It’s with the rest of the evidence. After the case went cold, I packed it myself Lieutenant Coffey shook his head. ‘No hair.’
‘So they lost it,’ said Geldorf with a casual lift of one shoulder. ‘Happens all the time.’
Riker handed the lieutenant a photograph from the pouch. Natalie Homer’s mouth was stuffed with a gag of wadded blond hair.
Detective Janos stood behind Geldorf s chair and leaned down to the old man’s ear to say, ‘Tell them about the candles.’
What the hell?
Twenty-four candles and ajar of dead flies were the only details not mentioned in the morning papers. Why would Janos confide in the old man? Riker glanced through the rest of the crime-scene photos, but found no pictures of votive candles.
‘That summer, the East Village had rolling blackouts,’ said Geldorf. ‘The electricity was off for three hours after sundown, and Natalie had three candles in her apartment.’
Mallory pulled a bag of melted red wax from the carton. The long tapers were fused together.
‘Now you see?’ said Geldorf. ‘This is how they treat evidence. Those candles were brand-new. Check out the wicks. Never been lit. So I figure the perp showed up while it was still light. Early evening works with Norris’s call for time of death.’
The candles were the right color, red, but the wrong shape.
Riker counted only three candles – not the dozens found in Sparrow’s apartment.
Geldorf was awaiting a compliment on his astute reading of three unlit wicks.
‘Nice work.’ There was no sarcasm in the lieutenant’s voice, though the old man had botched the chain of evidence. Jack Coffey was always respectful to the visiting ghosts. ‘I need a few minutes alone with my people. Detective Janos will look after you.’
When the office door had closed on Geldorf and his keeper, Coffey shook his head. ‘There’s still no case connection.’ He held up the photograph Riker had given him. ‘This perp has to be in his forties by now, and stringing up blondes is a young man’s game.’ He tossed the picture back to Riker. ‘You guys don’t have a serial killer. And Sparrow’s still alive. You don’t even have a corpse yet.’
Riker turned to his partner. Mallory had been raised by the best poker player in the universe. She was the source of all his hopes for keeping Sparrow’s case in Special Crimes Unit.
‘I say he’s picking out another victim right now.’ Mallory took the pouch from Riker’s hand and held it up as her hole card. ‘I can link these two cases.’
‘You think so?’ Coffey bent down to the carton at his feet and pulled out a plastic bag with a smaller segment of the rope. It was not a good container for water-damaged evidence. Riker could smell mildew when the lieutenant opened the bag. And now he was staring at a classic hangman’s noose with a neat row of coils below the loop.
Sparrow’s case was lost.
‘Try explaining this away.’ Coffey reached into a stack of paperwork and pulled out a photograph of the more recent hanging. ‘The nooses aren’t the same, not even close. Sparrow’s has a simple knot.’ He held up the rope used on Natalie Homer. ‘This one is guaranteed to kill. If your perp knew how to tie a hangman’s noose, why didn’t he use it on the hooker?’
Mallory kept her silence. She only stared at the noose, the last piece of evidence Coffey had been withholding, waiting for her to show him everything she had. It looked like a clear victory for the boss, yet Riker sensed that the man’s graceful-winner smile was premature, that Mallory was not quite played out.
Jack Coffey continued. ‘You know why this case bothered your old man? Markowitz didn’t know the hanging was just for show. The autopsy report was sealed. He never knew the woman was strangled before she was hung.’
‘He knew!’
‘Prove it!’
Mallory pulled a battered notebook from her back pocket and handed it to the lieutenant. ‘You’re wrong about the hanging.’
Even without the reading glasses that Riker never wore, he recognized Lou Markowitz’s handwriting as Jack Coffey flipped through illegible pages of shorthand punctuated by single words.
Coffey looked up at Mallory. ‘I can’t even read most of the – ’
‘I can,’ she said. ‘The tape on Natalie’s wrists was so tight it dug into her skin. But no sign of cut-off circulation. And you won’t find that in the autopsy report – another screwup. Markowitz could read a corpse better than that drunk Norris. He knew the perp bound a dead woman’s hands. He knew she was dead before she was hanged, and that rope still bothered him.’
Lieutenant Coffey closed the notebook. ‘You just made my case. It was a garden variety murder dressed up like a psycho hanging.’
‘No! The killer always planned to hang Natalie Homer, but something went wrong.’
‘That’s reaching, Mallory.’
‘If the perp didn’t plan on a hanging, why would he bring a rope?’ She snatched the old notebook from the lieutenant’s hand, then stalked out of the office. An outsider would have read her exit as cold anger. Coffey did. In reality, Mallory simply had a flawless sense of timing.