“This photo,” I told him, pulling the tattered snapshot from out of my jeans pocket, setting it on top of the closed laptop.
While he turned his attention from the ‘Taste’ painting to the photograph, I told him about the jimmied window; how someone had definitely tried to break into the house. I told him about my confrontation with Franny; about how I didn’t get a word out of him other than confirming my own suspicions. That, number one, he’d somehow witnessed Whalen assaulting Molly and me thirty years ago. Maybe witnessed it through a basement window. And number two: he was trying to warn me of something. I also told him that it was time I went to the police.
Michael looked at me with squinty eyes.
“So long as they believe you,” he said, handing the snapshot back to me. “It’s the right thing to do. But they’ve got to believe you.”
My portfolio bag was stored in the narrow space between the couch-back and the far wall. I pulled it out, unzipped it, reached inside and took out two of my own blank canvases, setting them against the bookshelf. Then I slipped Franny’s paintings inside. I zipped up the bag, slung it over my shoulder and checked my pockets for my cell phone and car keys.
“I really want you to come with me,” I said. “But if you’d rather keep out of it.”
He pursed his lips and shot me a wink of his right eye.
“Let’s go make believers out of the cops,” he said.
Chapter 29
Our decision to drive downtown to the South Pearl Street Precinct had not been indiscriminate. According to the info we’d found online, this was the very place in which Whalen had been jailed after his arrest for the abduction and attempted rape of an eighteen year old college freshman thirty years ago. That single assault led to the discovery of at least a half-dozen prior rapes when, after a photo of Whalen was posted on every local TV station and newspaper, a small flood of brave, young women started coming forward and pointing the finger-women with more courage than Molly and me. Or maybe less to lose by telling the truth.
Being that my father had been a state trooper, I wasn’t entirely a stranger to police stations. But that didn’t make them anymore comfortable to be around. My cumbersome portfolio bag slung over my shoulder, I followed Michael up the granite steps, through the glass doors, across the vestibule waiting area to the large bench. Seated on the bench was a heavyset, gray-haired officer. Set before him was a desktop computer, a phone and a small plaque with the words ‘Watch Commander’ embossed in it.
“Help you?” he grumbled, eyes focused not on us but his computer screen.
“We need to speak with a detective,” Michael announced.
Behind the watch commander’s shoulder, I could make out the not too unfamiliar inner workings of the wide open station-the many uniformed and plain-clothed policemen and women, the identical metal desks set out equidistant from one another, each of them topped with a computer where typewriters might have been back when Whalen was first arrested. Back when my dad was ‘Trooper Dan’. There were the bright overhead ceiling-mounted lamps, the ringing phones, the chiming cells, the buzzing fax machines and at least a dozen voices competing with one another.
“And why is it you need to see a detective?” the watch commander smirked.
I took a step forward.
“I have reason to believe I’m being stalked by a sexual predator.”
The old cop pulled his eyes away from the computer for the first time since we’d approached the bench.
“Come again,” he said, looking up directly into my face.
“I’m being followed.”
Behind his shoulder, I saw that two people were taking notice. Police detectives, or so I suspected. An older man and a middle-aged woman, both dressed in normal everyday, plain clothes. They shot a quick glance in my direction.
“Do you have an ID of the supposed perp?” asked the watch commander.
I hesitated, as though the question shot over my head.
“He’s asking if you know for certain that it’s Whalen who is stalking you?” Michael jumped in.
I nodded.
“Yeah, I can identify the man.”
“You mentioned a name,” the watch commander added, eyes now on Michael.
“Joseph William Whalen,” Michael exclaimed. “He’s registered with Sexual Predators and with ViCAP.”
“Oh, ViCAP,” the old cop smiled. “Looks like you been doin’ your homework.”
“I write detective novels,” Michael said.
“Of course you do. Wait here a minute please.”
He got up, made his way over to the two plainclothes cops. He talked with them while they looked us over again. More carefully this time. When the older of the two approached, I felt my pulse pick up.
“My name is David Harris,” the tall, salt and pepper-haired, black man confessed. “I understand you’re here to lodge a complaint?”
“I have reason to believe I’m being followed.”
“By Joseph Whalen?”
“Yes.”
“You’d better come on through,” he said. “I know of Whalen. I know about what he’s done and what he might have done to more than a dozen still missing young women.”
“How well?”
“I’m the guy who busted him thirty years ago.”
Chapter 30
The watch commander buzzed us in. But not before making us sign the log book and issuing us laminated visitor’s passes which we held onto instead of clipping to our jackets.
Harris personally led us through the big open room to his first floor office where he closed the door behind us.
“Take a seat,” he offered, while making his way around his desk, sitting himself down hard in his swivel chair.
While I sat down in one of the two metal chairs placed in front of the desk, Michael remained standing. Leaning the bag against my knees I took a quick survey of the office. It was square-shaped and small. It smelled faintly of onions, as if Harris had just lunched on a submarine sandwich at his desk. Subway maybe. Or Mr. Sub.
There was a coffee mug on his desk that said ‘I love my job’. When he picked it up and took a sip from it, I could see the word ‘Not’ printed on the bottom. It made me smile. Mounted on the windowless wall behind him was a calendar. Each day that had passed thus far in the month of October had been X’d out in ballpoint pen. In just a little while he’d be able to X out another day.
Harris must have noticed me looking at the calendar. He said, “I’m closing in on retirement. The progressive-minded Empire State doesn’t have much use for its detectives once we get past sixty-two.”
He shrugged, rolled up his shirt sleeves and sat back in his chair.
“But to get back to the issue at hand,” he went on, “I was a part of the team that tracked Whalen down and eventually arrested him. That was back in ‘77 and ‘78. We’d been tracking him for a long while. We were aware of his past as a sexual predator and suspected him in at least a dozen abductions and possible homicides. But we could never quite put the finger on him.”
“Since it’s impossible for the dead and missing to testify,” Michael interjected. “No body, no proof.”
Harris nodded. “Exactly, young man.”
“What about missing persons?” Michael went on. “Records of women who disappeared around that time?”
“Again, it goes back to the bodies, none of which have been recovered. Which means no evidence that will link directly to Whalen.”
“You might check the basement of that creepy house in the woods.”
“We did, as a matter of course, on several occasions.” The detective tossed up his hands. “But we got squat.”
We were quiet for a weighted beat until Michael spoke up again.