Kling was thinking that signs advising graffiti writers of the prison sentences they faced should be posted all over town.
Parker was saying, “What I’d like you to do, Cathy—when you finish your work here, I don’t want to interfere with your work, I see you have a lot of work to do—I want you to make a list for me of all of your son’s friends, so I can look them up and see whether there’s a possibility here of one of them being the person responsible.”
Kling was thinking that this was a dead end here. The Herrera kid seemed to be at the bottom of the pecking order, a simple “toy” in the hierarchy of graffiti writers. Timmo, on the other hand, had been a well-known writer back in the days when subway cars were being decorated top to bottom. God alone knew where the lawyer fit into the scheme of things. Was he some kind of nut who filed briefs during the daytime and then put on a Batman costume and went around spraying buildings at night? Either way, Kling figured the killer for some vigilante type choosing his victims at random.
“I’m working today and tomorrow, but I’ve got all day Sunday off,” Parker said, and smiled into Cathy’s open blouse. “We can spend the whole day together, if you like, going over the list. Do you think you’d like to do that? Cathy?”
And to Kling’s everlasting surprise, she said, “Yes, I think that would be very nice, thank you, what time should I expect you?”
CHARLIE’S CLOTHES told the same story.
Or rather, they didn’t tell any story at all.
Dr. Mookherji at St. Sebastian’s Hospital had told Meyer that all the labels had been cut out of the old man’s clothes, and Meyer had accepted the observation at face value. But Mookherji wasn’t a cop, and Meyer was still looking for a place to hang his hat—as Parker might have put it—which was what took him back to St. Sab’s that Friday.
True to Mookherji’s word, the labels had been cut out of everything, including Charlie’s bathrobe, his pajamas, and his bedroom slippers. Somebody had gone to a lot of trouble to make certain that neither of these two old people would be identified. Meyer had no real reason to believe that the dumpings were related, of course, except for the fact that he’d got an immediate response from the old woman when he’d described the man who’d dropped Charlie—“Buddy,” she’d said at once. Not to mention the remarkably similar M.O.’s, guy drives off with each of them, dumps them in the middle of the night….
“The slippers, too,” he told the woman behind the counter, and sighed heavily. “Which wasn’t easy, getting the labels out.”
The woman nodded. She was thinking she’d have to refold all these clothes when he got through with them. Put them back in their proper bin.
“Well, thanks a lot,” Meyer said, and gave the countertop a little farewell pat. “I appreciate your help.”
“Did you want to see his blanket, too?” the woman asked.
THEY HAD TOLD HER the “rescue” workers would try to chain the doors of the clinic shut, looping a Kryptonite chain through the door handles, if that’s the way the doors were constructed, and then fastening the links with a Kryptonite lock. If the doors were fashioned differently—say a simple flush metal door with a dead-bolt keyway in it, or possibly a metal door with a wire-embedded glass panel in the upper half—they would try other ways to bar access to the clinic. They would chain themselves together, for example, and lie down in the walk leading to the entrance door so that if the police tried to remove them, they would be struggling with lifting or dragging twelve bodies chained together instead of a single body.
The idea was to make certain no one got in or out. Not the doctors who were murdering babies inside there, and not the girls or women who were carrying unwanted babies and who were seeking medical assistance to terminate their pregnancies—as was their right under the law of the land. The rescue group gathered outside the clinic this morning had deliberately chosen this location only three blocks from the Claremore College for Girls. Their strategy was to bring home the fact that many of the so-called women seeking abortions weren’t women at all but were, in fact, merely uninformed girls. These girls had to be taught that they were not exercising a right concerning their own bodies but were instead usurping a fundamental right of another human being—the fetus in the womb—trampling upon that right in the most fundamental way, terminating the life of that human being,murdering that human being. Once this was made clear to the young girls in this country, why, then and only then could the slaughter of the unborn innocent be stopped.
None of these rescuers seemed to realize that abortion was legal, that they were attempting to stop people from doing something that was entirely legal. In their interference and harassment, they had been supported by a president who—though sworn to uphold the laws of the land—had given succor to them by telephoning whenever they were disrupting a clinic and telling them how much he admired their position. To Teddy’s way of thinking, this was akin to the Commissioner of Police calling a bank robber while he was inside a bank holding hostages and telling him how much he respected the courageous stand he was taking.
They usually hit the clinics before dawn.
Chained the doors shut, nailed them shut, anything to prevent access, anything to make it more difficult for someone in desperate need of help. Sometimes they got inside the clinics and chained themselves to radiators or heavy pieces of furniture, the better to disrupt the entirely legal activities within. Mischief was the name of the game. Do their mischief, create their havoc, make it so difficult to pursue a legal right that eventually the right would erode and the small minority of people hoping to destroy it would have triumphed.
Frequently, their mischief was illegal.
Targeting a doctor who performed abortions, telephoning him and screaming the word “Murderer!” into his ear was considered a crime in most states of the union. In this state, it was called Aggravated Harassment, and it was a Class-A misdemeanor, punishable by the same year in prison and/or thousand-dollar fine a graffiti writer could get for vandalizing a building. Calling that same doctor, reeling off the names of his children, and asking how they were feeling today, was the sort of veiled threat many states considered the crime of Coercion—which in this state was a Class-D felony, three to seven in the slammer, correct. Printing posters with an innocent doctor’s name and picture and the wordsWANTED FOR MURDER on them was in most states called “libel,” which, while not a crime, was a tort for which a person could seek punitive damages in court.
That morning at twenty minutes past ten, a man demonstrating outside the abortion clinic committed two crimes in rapid succession—threeif you counted the fact that he had ignored the court order prohibiting him from coming any closer than fifteen feet of the police barricade.
The first crime was called simple Harassment, as opposed to the aggravated kind. This was a mere violation, for which all the perpetrator could expect was fifteen days in jail. This was defined as “engaging in a course of conduct or repeatedly committing acts which alarm or seriously annoy another person and which serve no legitimate purpose.” The specific action in which the man was engaged happened to be repeatedly shouting the word “Murderer!” into a woman’s face from six inches away.
The second crime was more serious.
It consisted of hurling a bag of blood into that same woman’s face from six inches away.
The woman was Teddy Carella.
The man was wearing a black suit, and a black shirt, and a white collar.