“I never had one like this before.”
“Neither have I.”
“I’ll need a cross-checked breakdown,” Eileen said. “On Mary Hollings and the other two victims.”
“We’re working that up now. We didn’t think there was a pattern until now. I mean...”
Eileen detected a crack in the hard-nosed veneer.
“It’s just...”
Again Annie hesitated.
“These other two... one’s out in Riverhead, the other’s in Calm’s Point, it’s a big city. I didn’t realize till Saturday, after I talked to Mary Hollings... I mean, it just didn’t register before then. That these were serial rapes. That he’s hitting the same women more than once. Came to me like a bolt out of the blue. Now that we know there’s a pattern, we’re cross-checking similarities on these three victims we’re sure were attacked by the same guy, see if we can’t come up with anything in their backgrounds that might have singled them out. It’s a place to start.”
“You using the computer?”
“Not only for the three,” Annie said, nodding. “We’re running a check on every rape reported since the beginning of the year. If there are other victims who were serially raped...”
“When do I get the printouts?” Eileen asked.
“As soon as I get them.”
“And when’s that?”
“I know it’s your ass out there,” Annie said softly.
Eileen said nothing.
“I know he has a knife,” Annie said.
Eileen still said nothing.
“I’d no more risk your life than I would my own,” Annie said, and Eileen thought of facing down two armed robbers in the marbled lobby of a midtown bank.
“When do I start?” she asked.
5
The second hanging victim turned up in West Riverhead.
The 101st Precinct caught the squeal early on the morning of October 14. This was not the rosiest precinct in the world, but none of the cops up there had ever seen a body hanging from a lamppost before. They had seen all sorts of things up there, but never anything like this. They were amazed and astonished. It took a lot to amaze and astonish the cops of the One-Oh-One.
West Riverhead was just a short walk over the Thomas Avenue Bridge, which separated it from Isola. Half a million people lived on the far side of that bridge in a jagged landscape as barren as the moon’s. Forty-two percent of those people were on the city’s welfare rolls, and of those who were capable of holding jobs, only 28 percent were actually employed. Six thousand abandoned buildings, heatless and without electricity, lined the garbage-strewn streets. An estimated 17,000 drug addicts found shelter in those buildings when they were not marauding the streets in competition with packs of wild dogs. The statistics for West Riverhead were overwhelming — 26,347 new cases of tuberculosis reported this past year; 3,412 cases of malnutrition; 6,502 cases of venereal disease. For every hundred babies born in West Riverhead, three died while still in infancy. For those who survived, there was a life ahead of grinding poverty, helpless anger, and hopeless frustration. It was places like West Riverhead that caused the Russians to gloat over how far superior for the masses was the Communist system. Compared to West Riverhead, the 87th Precinct territory was a dairy farm in Wisconsin.
But Carella and Hawes were up here now because a smart detective on the 101st Squad remembered reading something about a girl hanging from a lamppost in the Eight-Seven, and he promptly called downtown to inform the detectives that they had another one, nobody being eager to step on the toes of somebody already investigating a case, and anyway who the hell needed a hanging victim in West Riverhead where there was enough crime up here to keep the cops busy twenty-eight hours a day? Exotic? Terrific. Who needed exotic? Better to let the Eight-Seven pick up the pieces.
Carella and Hawes got there at a little past seven in the morning.
The Homicide team had already come and gone. In this city, any crime, big or small, felony or misdemeanor, was left to the precinct that caught the initial squeal — unless another precinct had already caught the squeal on an obviously related crime. With a murder, the Homicide Division carefully watched over the shoulders of the investigating precinct detectives, lending their expertise where necessary, but the case technically belonged to the responding officers, with Homicide serving as a sort of clearinghouse. Carella and Hawes were the fortunate responding officers on another bright October day that could easily have broken the heart.
A detective named Charlie Broughan was still at the scene; Carella had worked with him before on a gang-related series of murders. There were an estimated 9,000 teenage street-gang members within the confines of the 101st. Maybe that’s why Charlie Broughan looked so tired all the time. Or maybe working the Graveyard Shift up here was worse than working it anyplace else in the city. Broughan looked even wearier than he had the last time Carella saw him, a big beefy cop with a thatch of unruly brown hair and a two days’ growth of beard stubble on his face. He was wearing a pale blue windbreaker, dark blue slacks, and loafers. He recognized Carella at once, came over to him, shook hands with him, and then shook hands with Hawes.
“Sorry to bother you with this shit,” he said, “but I guess by the regs it’s yours.”
“It’s ours, all right,” Carella said, and looked up at the body.
“The last one was a girl, too, huh?” Broughan said.
“Yeah,” Carella said.
“We didn’t cut her down yet, the M.E. and everybody’s still waitin’. Didn’t know how you wanted to handle this.”
“Mobile Crime here yet?” Hawes asked.
“Yeah,” Broughan said. “Well, they were a minute ago. They probably went out for some coffee.”
“We want to save the knot,” Carella said. “Anywhere midway up the rope’ll be fine.”
“I’ll tell the Emergency boys,” Broughan said.
Carella was glad there was no one there to comment on the color of the girl’s panties, which happened to be a blue as electric as the sky spreading wide and clear above the lamppost. He watched as Broughan walked over to the emergency van. The emergency cops took their time getting out their ladder, net, and bolt cutter. It was too early in the morning to work up a sweat.
“Who found her?” Carella asked Broughan.
“Got a call from an honest citizen,” Broughan said, “which up here is a miracle. On his way to work — he lives about eight blocks over, in an area that ain’t burned out yet — was driving by and spotted her hanging there. Actually called us, can you believe it?”
“What time was this?” Hawes asked.
“Clocked it in at six-oh-four. I thought the shift was about to end, I was already typing up my reports. Bang, we got somebody hanging from a lamppost.” He reached into his jacket pocket, and pulled out an evidence envelope. “You’ll want this,” he said. “Found it under the lamppost.”
“What is it?”
“The girl’s wallet, I guess. I didn’t open it, didn’t want to smear anything. But I don’t know any men who carry red wallets, do you?”
The emergency cops were cutting her down. She dropped suddenly, her skirt ballooning out over her long legs as she fell. The net sagged with her dead weight. The emergency cops lowered the net to the ground.
“Wasn’t taking any chances on anybody seeing him do the job, was he?” Broughan said. “Ain’t nothing in these buildings but rats, dog shit, and cockroaches.”