Blood Innocents

9

On Friday morning Reardon reported to Piccolini on the fallow deer and the murdered women. He began with the deer. “Bryant said -”

“Now that’s the guy that works with Petrakis, right?” Piccolini interrupted.

“That’s right. He said that he saw Petrakis about three A.M. in a coffee shop only a few blocks from the zoo. Petrakis told him that he was just about broke and that he had decided to come to work that night because he needed the money.”

“Okay,” Piccolini said.

“But Petrakis never reported coming to work that night to anybody in the Parks Department.”

Piccolini nodded.

Reardon continued. “Now Bryant said that Petrakis was in a rage at being thrown out of his old apartment on the East Side. He kept talking about how rotten his landlord was, how he hated him, all that.”

“So?”

“Well, his landlord was Wallace Van Allen,” Reardon said. “It’s our first real angle. Our first connection. It may not be anything, not even worth a second thought, but it could be something. Petrakis could have killed the deer to get back at Van Allen.”

“For evicting him.”

“Right.”

“He knew that Van Allen gave the deer to the zoo?” Piccolini asked.

“All the people at the zoo knew that and Petrakis was working at the zoo when the donation was made. It’s not likely that he wouldn’t have been aware of it. You know all the publicity it got.”

“Yeah,” Piccolini agreed, “he would have to have known. Where is this Petrakis?”

“We haven’t been able to locate him yet. After he was evicted nobody seems to know where he went.”

“Well, find him,” Piccolini said. “And do it fast. I would be the last person to blame it on the guy if there’s no connection, but he could be our man.”

“And we’ve also got a cocaine bust not far from where the deer were killed at about the same time – I mean, a little after the time they were killed. We’re trying to get to talk to the guy who got busted.”

“Trying to talk to him? What’s the problem?”

“Well, there’s a lot of lawyers between him and us.”

The idea of a lot of smart lawyers hanging around a potential witness seemed to cool Piccolini’s determination. “Well, do your best,” he said quietly. Then he changed the subject. “What about the girls in the Village?”

“We have one witness.”

Piccolini’s ears perked up like those of a hunting dog. “A witness?”

“Well, not to the murders themselves…” Reardon added quickly. “Not a witness to those. But a woman saw the women go up to the apartment with a third person.”

“Description?”

“No. They all had their backs turned the whole time. They were going up the stairs.”

Piccolini nodded. “Well, what about that number? Dos?”

“It’s there. Probably written in Lee McDonald’s blood.”

“How’d the bodies look?” Piccolini asked. Then he caught himself. “I don’t mean exactly how. But I mean, was what Mathesson said right? Was one of them pretty well cut up and the other one not?”

“Yeah,” Reardon said. He did not want to go any further with it, any more than Piccolini wanted him to.

“Well, is that it, then?”

“For now it is,” Reardon said.

“Okay,” Piccolini said. “Stay busy.”

Reardon nodded and walked out of the office. Yeah, he thought, stay busy.

Late that afternoon Reardon met Melinda Van Allen in the Children’s Zoo. He had remembered Steadman saying that she was a strange girl and that she spent a lot of time in the park. It was not altogether inconceivable, Reardon thought, that she could have killed the fallow deer. Cases had been broken on slimmer leads before. Consequently he had gone back to Van Allen’s building and mentioned to Steadman that he wanted to question Melinda Van Allen. Steadman had told him she was not in the building, but that he could probably find her sitting in the Children’s Zoo.

That was where he found her.

“Miss Van Allen?” he said as he approached.

She looked up from a book. “Yes?”

Reardon had expected her to be prettier than she was. He had never really discarded the notion that rich young women were always beautiful. But Melinda Van Allen was not. She was large-boned and slightly overweight. Her hair was coarse and unruly, and her face was plain except for a certain fragile softness about the eyes which Reardon – in his present state of mind – instantly took to be a sign of sadness.

“My name is John Reardon. I’m a detective with the New York City Police Department. I’m investigating the killing of the deer your father donated to the zoo.” He sat down on the bench beside her. “It’s a pleasant day, isn’t it?”

“Lovely,” Melinda said. “Would you like some grapes?” She held out a paper bag.

“No, thank you.”

“Now that the boycott is over, I can eat all I want,” she said.

Reardon nodded. During the strike in the California vineyards he had quietly boycotted grapes himself.

“I’m very sorry about the deer,” Melinda said.

“Do you come to the zoo often?”

“All the time. It’s one of my favorite places. I wanted to be a veterinarian when I was a child.”

Reardon smiled. He shoved his hands into his overcoat pockets to protect them from the cold. He noticed that Melinda did not seem to be bothered much by the chill that surrounded them. But her coat was much heavier than his and, of course, she was younger.

“I wanted to be a kind of female Saint Francis,” Melinda explained.

“Is that what you’re studying in school,” Reardon asked, “veterinary medicine?”

Melinda frowned. “Oh, no, that was just a childhood thing. No, I’m studying art now. I want to be a sculptress. There’s no money in it of course.”

That struck Reardon as a curious remark from such a rich young woman, but he kept his opinion to himself.

“But I love it, you see,” she said energetically. “It’s a passion with me.” She looked intently into Reardon’s face. “I think it is important to be passionately committed to your work, don’t you, Mr. Reardon?”

“I suppose,” Reardon said. “Of course, some jobs don’t call for much passion.”

“But all jobs should,” Melinda said very seriously. “No one should do anything without having a total commitment to it. Total commitment is the key. Don’t you think? Total commitment is the necessary element of total happiness. Without it, there is only frustration and bitterness.”

Reardon felt reasonably certain that Melinda had underlined and memorized that remark from something she had read. “Maybe so,” he said.

“Have you ever read Carlos Castaneda?” she asked.

“Who?”

“Carlos Castaneda. He’s a sociologist.”

“No.”

“Well, he had a great experience with Don Juan, an old Indian. And Don Juan says that there are many roads down which a man may travel, but only one of them has a heart.”

Reardon did not know what that meant. “Do you know of anyone who might have wanted to hurt the fallow deer?”

Melinda lowered her head. “No,” she whispered.

“Any people mad at you or your brother or your father or anything like that?”

“No,” Melinda said. “I don’t think any of us have any enemies.”

Reardon could not imagine that being true. “Almost everyone makes somebody mad at them sometime,” he said.

Melinda did not reply. She popped a single grape into her mouth and began to munch it quietly.

“Miss Van Allen,” Reardon said sternly, “we are dealing with someone capable of a more serious crime than the killing of animals.”

Melinda turned toward him furiously. “What could be more serious than that?” she demanded.

Reardon was jolted by the question. He looked deeply into Melinda’s face to assure himself that she was serious, and saw that she was. “The killing of human beings,” he said.

“Human beings are only animals,” Melinda said, “and animals are just as sensitive as human beings, just as capable of feeling pain and loss. Do you eat meat?”

“Yes,” Reardon said, almost defensively.

Melinda smirked. “Well, then. You’re a killer.”

Reardon could feel himself growing angry. “Miss Van Allen, I am trying to solve a crime. Someone killed those deer, and whoever it was may have also killed two young women. Two women not much older than yourself.”

“I can’t help you,” Melinda shot back.

Reardon stood up. “No,” he said, “I don’t suppose you can.”

As he was about to walk away, Melinda grabbed his hand. “Sit down a minute,” she said.

“Why?” The fierceness with which she held his hand suggested to Reardon that she might have something important on her mind. He did not try to pull away.

“Please,” she said.

Reardon sat down again beside her and watched carefully as her face relaxed. It was as if she were using her face, positioning it for maximum effect. Everything around her – the cold, the gray sidewalk lined on either side by strips of dead brown grass the black-lacquered bars of the animal cages – everything seemed to accentuate Melinda’s face, and as Reardon peered at it, waited for her to speak, it seemed the only thing in the park that was really alive.

“How do you feel right now?” Melinda asked. “Inside, in your emotions, right this second?”

“Miss Van Allen, I am trying to find a person who is killing things, animals and maybe people.”

Melinda smiled sweetly. “I know that,” she said, “but how do you feel, right now, right this second?”

Reardon paused. She was staring at him intently, fixedly, and it came out before he could stop himself. “Alone,” he said.

“Why?”

Reardon felt ridiculous, but he answered her anyway. “Well, for one thing, my wife died recently.”

“Are you mourning her?”

“Naturally.”

“Have you ever read much Buddhist philosophy?”

Reardon was growing impatient, regretting that he had mentioned Millie’s death. Such things, things like mourning, he had always considered to be very private, no one else’s business. “No,” he said.

“Oh, you should!” Melinda exclaimed excitedly. “There is a story in Buddhist philosophy about a woman who lost her husband to death, and she just could not stop mourning for him. She was simply incapacitated by her grief. She went to see the Buddha, and the Buddha said for her to make a potion out of a few very common herbs. But he said that the herbs must be gathered from households in which no one had ever died, in which there had never been a death.”

Reardon nodded.

“Well, the woman could not find a single household where there had not been a death.”

Reardon looked at Melinda blankly.

“Well, don’t you see?” she said. “The woman learned that everyone has grief, everyone experiences the death of loved ones, relatives and husbands; but everyone learns to bear it. And so could she.”

Reardon stood up and handed Melinda his card. “If you come upon any information that might help me in finding the person who killed the deer, call me.”

“But don’t you see?” Melinda asked, almost pleadingly.

“Keep that card,” Reardon said, and he turned and walked away.

When he reached the street above the zoo, the story of the Buddha was still on Reardon’s mind. But he could not understand how the knowledge that everyone suffers could possibly ease the suffering of anyone.