Elizabeth Turner had worked for a bank in Los Angeles. She had worked for a bank here in this city, and she had also worked for a bank in Washington, D.C. Honest citizens, like criminals, will most often seek the same line of work when they move from one state to another. Wasn’t it likely, in fact almost mandatory, that Elizabeth would have sought a job in yet another bank upon her return here?
The detectives knew that in this state all employers had to fill out a so-called WRS-2 form, which was a quarterly report of wages that had to be filed with the state’s Department of Taxation and Finance on April 30, July 31, October 31, and January 31. The WRS-2 form listed the name and social security number of each employee, together with the gross wages earned in that quarter. The detectives were in possession of Elizabeth Turner’s social security number. They knew she had left the job in Washington on May 1. They further knew that she had been found dead in Grover Park on October 25. Wasn’t it a likelihood that at least one and perhaps two WRS-2 forms had been filed for her since her return to the city? Carella made a call upstate and spoke to a man named Culpepper there. Culpepper said he would check the WRS-2 forms filed on July 31 and October 31 and get back to him.
He did not get back to him until November 11, a dismally gray, wet, and cold Friday, by which time the case was already seventeen days old. He told Carella that none of the forms filed on July 31 reported wages for an Elizabeth Turner in that quarter.
‘How about the October thirty-first forms?’ Carella asked.
‘Those haven’t been processed yet.’
‘Haven’t you got a computer up there?’
‘Not for these quarterly forms,’ Culpepper said.
‘Well, when do you think they will be processed?’
‘When we get to them.’
‘When will that be?’
‘When we get to them,’ Culpepper said again. ‘Sometime before the next quarter’s filing is due.’
‘You mean in January? Next year?’
‘The WRS-2’s are due on January thirty-first, that’s right.’
‘This is a homicide here,’ Carella said. ‘I’m trying to find out where this girl worked. Can’t you do something to expedite this?’
‘It’d be different if the forms were filed under an employee’s name,’ Culpepper said. ‘Or even his or her social security number. But they’re not. They’re filed under the employer’s name. You don’t know how long it took us to check all those July forms, looking for this Elizabeth Turner. And those forms had already been processed.’
Carella knew exactly how long it had taken. He had made his request six days ago. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘it’s very important for us to find out where...’
‘I’m sorry,’ Culpepper said. ‘I’ll have the October thirty-first forms checked once they’ve been processed, but I can’t do better than that.’
‘Okay, thanks,’ Carella said, and hung up.
He sat staring at his typewriter for a moment, anti then he rolled a D.D. Supplementary Report form into it. He had typed almost a full page when Alf Miscolo came from the clerical office down the hall. There was a plain white envelope in his hand. This one was postmarked November 10. As with the four that had preceded it, the letter was addressed to Detective Stephen Louis Carella, the name neatly typewritten on the face of the envelope.
‘I thought maybe he’d forgotten us,’ Miscolo said.
‘No such luck,’ Carella said and tore open the flap of the envelope.
The same single white sheet of paper inside.
And pasted to it:
‘That looks to me like four police hats,’ Miscolo said.
‘Yes,’ Carella said.
‘You think he’s a cop?’ Miscolo asked.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Then why’s he sending us pictures of all this police shit? Walkie-talkies, shields, handcuffs? Police hats?’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t like the idea of somebody sending us pictures of police paraphernalia,’ he said. ‘It’s spooky.’
He was not a handsome man, Miscolo. His nose was massive and his eyebrows were bushy, and I here was a thickness about his neck that created the impression of head sitting directly on shoulders. But normally there was an animation to his face and a sparkle to his dark eyes—never more evident than when he was defending the truly abominable coffee he brewed in his office—and this was totally lacking now as he stared disconsolately at the sheet of paper in Carella’s hand.
A police station was sacrosanct to men like Miscolo and Carella. Whatever happened out there on the streets, it did not come into the station house except in handcuffs. Although once—as they both remembered well—a woman with a gun and a bottle of nitroglycerin had held this very room hostage for more hours than either of them cared to count. For the most part, though, the precinct was as much a castle to these men as was a shabby row house to a British miner. It was enormously troubling to Miscolo that someone was using police equipment to make whatever the hell point he was trying to make. He felt as if he’d wandered into a filthy subway toilet and found his wife’s monogrammed towels on one of the sinks.
He knew what the other four messages had—well, advertised, if that was the correct word. They were all posted side by side on the squadroom bulletin board in the order in which they’d been received:
Eight black horses.
Five walkie-talkies.
Three pairs of handcuffs.
Six police shields.
And now this.
Four police hats.
Except for the horses, it was as if somebody was putting together a policeman piece by piece.
‘They all got to do with cops., you realize that?’ he said. ‘Except the horses.’
‘Cops still ride horses in this city,’ Carella said.
‘Them shields on the hats got no numbers on them, you realize that? He prolly cut out a picture of a hat someplace and then Xeroxed it.’
‘There’s a number on this picture of the shields, though.’
‘You suppose that’s a real shield?’
‘I don’t know.’
“Cause you can Xerox anything nowadays,’ Miscolo said. ‘You lay something on the glass there, you close the cover, you press the button, you get a pretty good picture of it.’