To the Siwanoy Indians, the island had been for centuries a fertile fishing and oyster ground, to the European settlers, a ship building and maritime center, to the current residents, a middle-class enclave of modest single-family houses mixed with fine Victorian seafarers’ mansions, its coastline dotted with yacht clubs for wealthy off-islanders. With a rabbit-warren of small streets, some almost country lanes, myriad ocean dead ends, the incessant infantile cries of gulls and the briny smell of the shore, it was evocative of vacation spots or childhood haunts, not metropolitan New York.
Nancy could see he was slack-jawed over the place. “Ever been here before?” she asked.
“No, you?”
“We used to come here for picnics when I was a kid.” She consulted the map. “You need to take a left on Beach Street.”
Minnieford Avenue was hardly an avenue in the classic use of the word, more like a cart path, and it was another poor spot for a major crime scene investigation. Police and emergency vehicles and media satellite trucks clogged the road like a thrombosis. He joined the long single file of hopelessly stuck cars and complained to Nancy they’d have to walk the rest of the way. He was blocking a driveway and was expecting a fracas from a thick-limbed fellow in a wife-beater who was giving him the once-over from his steps, but the guy just called out, “You on the job?”
He nodded.
“I’m NYPD, retired,” the man offered. “Don’t worry. I’ll watch the Explorer. I ain’t going nowhere.”
The jungle drums had beaten loud and fast. Everyone in law enforcement and their uncles knew that City Island had become ground zero in the Doomsday Killer case. The media had already been tipped off which ratcheted the hysteria. The small lime-green house was surrounded by a throng of journalists and a cordon of cops from the 45th Precinct. TV reporters jockeyed for angles on the crowded sidewalk so their cameramen could frame them cleanly against the house. Grasping their microphones, their shirts and blouses fluttered like maritime flags in the stiff westerly winds.
When he spotted the house he had a mental flash of the iconic photographs that would blanket the world should it prove to be the place where the killer was captured. Doomsday House. A modest 1940s-era two-story dwelling with warping shingles, chipped shutters and a sagging porch with a couple of bicycles, plastic chairs and a grill. There was no yard to speak of-a spitter with good lung power could lean out the windows and hit the houses on either side and to the rear. There was just enough paved space for two cars-a beige Honda Civic was crammed between the house and the neighbor’s chain-link fence and older red BMW 3-series was parked between the porch and the sidewalk, where a patch of grass might otherwise have been.
He wearily checked his watch. It was already a long day and it wasn’t going to end anytime soon. He might not get a drink for hours and he resented the deprivation. Still, how superb would it be to wrap the case up here and now and coast to retirement, reliably hitting the barstool by 5:30 every night? He quickened his pace at the thought, forcing Nancy into a trot. “You ready to rock and roll?” he called out.
Before she could answer, a babelicious reporter from Channel Four recognized him from the news conference and shouted to her cameraman, “To your right! It’s the Pied Piper!” The video cam swung in his direction. “Agent Piper! Can you confirm that the Doomsday Killer has been captured?” Instantly, every videographer followed suit and he and Nancy were surrounded by a baying pack.
“Just keep walking,” he hissed, and Nancy tucked in behind and let him plow through the scrum.
The kill zone was in their faces the instant they walked inside. The front room was a bloody mess. It was taped off, perfectly preserved, and Will and Nancy had to peer through the open door as if they were viewing a cordoned museum exhibit. The body of a thin open-eyed man was half-on, half-off a yellow love seat. His head was lying on an armrest, well and truly caved in, his brown hair and scalp cleaved, a crescent of dura mater glistening in the last golden rays of the sun. His face, or rather, what was left of it, was a swollen pulpy mess with exposed shards of ivory bone and cartilage. Both his arms had been shattered into sickeningly unnatural anatomical positions.
He read the room like a manuscript-red splatter all over the paint, teeth scattered on the carpet like popcorn from a messy party-and he concluded that the sofa was where the man had died but not where the attack had begun. The victim had been standing near the door when the first strike landed, an upwardly arcing swing that glanced off his skull and splashed blood onto the ceiling. He had been struck again and again as he reeled and spun around the room, unsuccessfully fending off a hail of blows from a blunt instrument. He had not gone easily, this one. Will tried to interpret the eyes. He had seen that wide-eyed stare countless times. What was the final emotion? Fear? Anger? Resignation?
Nancy was drawn to another detail in the diorama. “You see that?” she asked. “On the desk. I think it’s the postcard.”
The Commanding Officer of the precinct was a young turk, a spit-and-polish captain named Brian Murphy. His athletic chest proudly bulged under his crisply-ironed blue shirt as he introduced himself. This was a career-altering collar for him, and the deceased, one John William Pepperdine, surely would have been irritated at how much ebullience his passing had engendered in this policeman.
On their drive over, he and Nancy had fretted about the 45th Precinct trampling another crime scene but they needn’t have, because Murphy had taken personal charge of this one. Fat, sloppy Detective Chapman was nowhere to be seen. He complimented the captain on his forensic awareness and it had the same effect as stroking a mutt while cooing “good dog.” Murphy was now his friend for life and he giddily briefed them how his officers, responding to a neighbor’s 911 about shouts and screams, had discovered the body and the postcard and how one of his sergeants had spotted the blood-soaked perpetrator, Luis Camacho, wedged behind the oil tank in the basement. The guy wanted to confess on the spot and Murphy had the good sense to videotape him waiving his Miranda rights and giving his statement in a dull monotone. As Murphy disdainfully put it, it was a fruit-on-fruit crime.
Will listened calmly but Nancy was impatient. “Did he confess to the others, the other murders?”
“To be honest with you, I didn’t go there,” Murphy said. “I left that for you guys. You want to see him?”
“As soon as we can,” he said.
“Follow me.”
Will smiled. “He’s still here?” Instant gratification.
“I wanted to make it easy for you. You didn’t want to go hauling around the Bronx, did you?”
“Captain Murphy, you are a fucking all-star,” he said.
“Feel free to share your opinion with the Commissioner,” Murphy suggested.
The first thing he noticed about Luis Camacho was that he was a dead-match of their physical composite: dark-skinned, average height, slight build, around 160 pounds. He could tell from the stiffening of her lips that Nancy pegged him too. He was sitting at the kitchen table, hands cuffed behind his back, tremulous, his jeans and swooshed Just Do It T-shirt starched with dry blood. Oh, he did it, all right, he thought. Look at this guy, wearing another man’s blood like something out of a tribal ritual.
The kitchen was tidy and cutesy, a collection of whimsical cookie jars, pasta shapes in acrylic tubes, place mats with hot-air balloons, a baker’s rack stacked with floral china. Very domesticated, very gay, Will thought. He loomed over Luis until the man reluctantly locked eyes.