“There are plenty of tree-huggers here. See this-this mini forest? All of it brought in more than a hundred years ago, to look subtropical and exotic. You got tupelos and American sycamores, cucumber magnolias and sassafras. The place is dominated by black cherry and black locust ’cause they self-seed so aggressively.”
“But they don’t talk,” the Staten Island cop said. “So what do I give a shit about the trees?”
“Because the people who study the trees, kid, are extremely observant,” Chirico said. “They can tell you the difference between the leaves on a Kentucky coffee tree and on a scarlet oak. I listened to them all weekend. They’ll be able to tell me if you were on this path last Wednesday, and whether or not your nose was running like it is now.”
The cop wiped his nose with his handkerchief and stepped back.
“And then there are the birders,” O’Day said. “Another super-friendly bunch. And also great eyes for detail. There are more than 275 species of birds that drop into the Ramble and forty that stay here-we’re part of the Atlantic Flyway.”
“What’s that? The Flyway?” It was the female officer again.
“The migration route that birds follow from Canada down to Mexico. They like a line that doesn’t have high mountains in the way, and plenty of food to eat. They love it here.”
“Birders are also keen observers,” Manny Chirico said. “Keep in mind that many of them have binoculars and cameras with them to take pictures of rare birds-to prove that they saw them and that kind of thing-so be sure to ask about that. And lots of them do sketches, so check if they have a pad with any relevant drawings.”
“The Ramble had a certain reputation once,” a serious young cop said. “Is that still an issue?”
“You mean the gay thing?” the sergeant asked.
“Yeah. Like in the ’60s and ’70s. Wasn’t there a lot of gay bashing up here?”
Tom O’Day answered. “Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the seclusion of this part of the Park made it especially popular for gay men to cruise. And then, you’re right. It was the perfect place to beat and rob them. Very few gays were open then, so many of the crimes never got reported.”
“But now it looks like just a remote nature reserve,” I said.
The ranger smiled at me. “It’s still a haven for gay sex. Maybe it’s the retro feel of sneaking off into the woods instead of hanging out in a bar. Anyway, by the time you each set up a post, you’ll be overrun by my Ramblers.”
“Okay,” the sergeant said. “Start in pairs and see how it goes. Try not to let anyone give you the brush-off. Everything’s in the details, so have your memo books ready and take it all down. And guys? Canvassing is tedious work. Maybe the most tedious. So expect a lot of rejection before you make any headway.”
Within seconds, at the fork in the path by the antique luminaire, or lamppost, numbered 7528, all sixteen of the cops had vanished from sight. The overgrown foliage and the curving pathways provided perfect camouflage. We were in a wilderness aerie, climbing and climbing away from the city streets but able to see the tips of skyscrapers that ringed the entire Park.
Manny Chirico was wearing a brown linen jacket, chinos, and a polarized pair of Ray-Bans. He looked more like a GQ cover model than a homicide sergeant. “Stick with me, Alex.”
“Okay, but what are we going to do?”
“Walk every square inch of this park within a park-I’d get them to turn over every boulder if I could.”
“I thought the groundskeepers here were meticulous.”
“They are,” Chirico said. “The rules are zero tolerance for garbage and graffiti. But we’re talking about physical evidence.”
“You like the Ramble for finding the perp, or for thinking the crime scene is here?”
Manny’s expression suggested he was as frustrated as one might imagine. “Like it? We’ve got four sergeants, Alex, and each one is assigned an area adjacent to the Lake to supervise and hope to find a weapon or a piece of clothing or a real clue. Me? I pulled the short straw of the northern border. You think I wouldn’t rather be talking to half-naked sunbathers on Bethesda Terrace than crawling through the Ramble? Everybody else has wide-open spaces with some trees and bushes around them. Me? I got such a tangle of rocks and streams and tree stumps that I’ll be lucky if I don’t find three more bodies under the dead leaves.”
“Well, you put on a good show for the kid cops,” I said.
“Let’s start at Azalea Pond.”
We wound around more pathways, over short rustic bridges that spanned the gorge, until we came upon an opening just after lamppost 7736. There was a large pond surrounded by bright fuchsia azaleas in bloom, with several benches-empty at the moment-and vines and creepers everywhere underfoot around the water’s edge.
Chirico was taking detailed notes, and both of us were snapping photos with our cell phones.
“Ever been up here before?” he asked.
“Not this far. It’s spectacular.”
“Glad to see it through your eyes. To me, there’s a perp behind every bush.”
Chirico’s walkie-talkie crackled, and he held it up to talk. It was still more reliable than a cell in some of the Park’s more remote locations. “Go ahead.”
“Sarge? I’m Jerry McCallion. Staten Island, remember? Read me?”
“Yeah.”
“Got a man who thinks the deceased looks like someone he knows.”
“Keep him there,” the sergeant said. “Where are you?”
“7616.”
“Give me five.”
I tried to keep up with Chirico as we wound our way down the path. Several of the teams had engaged a variety of morning walkers, showing the copy of the dead girl’s photo and asking for help. Most of the cops shrugged their shoulders and shook their heads as we passed by, suggesting they had come up empty so far, despite cooperative citizens.
Manny Chirico introduced both of us to the man who was waiting beside the cop. “I want to thank you for talking with us, sir. Do you think you can help?”
The man was holding a cocker spaniel on a leash. “I was out of town all last week, so I can’t be useful in that regard. But this girl does look sort of familiar to me.”
“Someone you know?” I asked.
“She might have gone to school with my daughter.”
“What school is that?”
“Brearley.” The man was referring to one of the most prestigious private schools in Manhattan. Something in the girl’s life had taken a dramatically bad turn if this man wasn’t mistaken.
“May we talk to your daughter?”
“Sure. But she’s in Hong Kong for the summer, on an internship.”
“Is there a Brearley yearbook at your home? We’re pretty anxious to identify this young woman.”
We took all the man’s information and told him there would be a uniformed cop at his door within the hour to follow up.
He started to walk away and then turned back to us. “Did either of you see The Wall Street Journal on Friday?”
We both shook our heads.
“Google just acquired a company called PittPatt. It’s out of a project at Carnegie Mellon. Recognition software called Pittsburgh Pattern that was developed from an army grant after 9/11. Supposedly one could take a photograph of a crowd, highlight a single face within it, and compare that face automatically to images on Facebook and social media sites.”
Chirico was writing as fast as he could manage. The well-dressed dog walker had just gone from promising information about his daughter’s once-schoolmate-even though our corpse didn’t look much like a Brearley girl-to giving us an entirely new state-of-the-art way to identify an unknown victim. He handed Manny his card and walked off.