Death Angel

FORTY-THREE

“You know better than to think I would have left you out there on your own,” Mike said. He was sitting in the stern of a rowboat, in front of the boathouse on the Lake, as the last moments of twilight were giving way to darkness. “I figured you were pouting ’cause I wasn’t talking to you about anything personal. You said you were tired, and I thought you’d just walked on back down to the street.”

I was sitting on the grass next to the boat, my feet in the water. Mercer was on a bench behind me, rubbing my shoulders.

“How often have I quit on you?” I asked.

“I thought it was different this time,” Mike said. “You know, different since-”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Then I heard on the walkie-talkie that Mercer had talked the six-shooter right out of crazy Jessica Pell’s hot little hands, and I flew out of the Ramble and across to the Sheep Meadow like I was Usain Bolt.”

“That probably puts me next on Pell’s hit list,” Mercer said. “After she gets discharged from lockdown.”

“I just assumed you’d be with Mercer,” Mike said. “Not a good day for spelunking alone, kid.”

“Sorry?”

“Spelunking. Isn’t that French for cave exploring?”

“It’s not French for anything. Drop it there, okay?” I said. “I didn’t plan on going into a cave alone. I didn’t know it was a cave, and I thought you were right behind me. I counted on the fact that you’d see my shoes and sweater on the ground beside the stream, if nothing else. That you heard me calling to you.”

“I did. And I told you to wait.”

“You need to see a doctor, Alex?” Mercer asked.

“That toothbrush took care of all my medical needs.” The Loeb Boathouse had become the hub of all the police action again, as it had been on the Friday morning that Angel’s body had been found. One of the rookies had been dispatched to buy some toiletries for me so that I could clean up. I wasn’t leaving the Park until I had answers to most of my questions.

The Emergency Service guys were setting up floodlights so that Crime Scene could do its work above us, in the Ramble. Mike had been allowed to question Eddie Wicks before an ambulance took off with him to New York Hospital, cuffed and under arrest for the bludgeoning death of Janna Dixon, the homeless girl whose journal had been found in the cave, next to the box with Lucy’s bones.

I had been debriefed by Manny Chirico and two other homicide detectives from Mike’s team. I told them everything that Eddie Wicks had said to me.

“What did Wicks tell you?” I asked Mike.

“I read the diary first,” Mike said. “That’s what got the girl killed.”

“Jo was right, then,” Mercer said, referring to the homeless girl he’d brought to my office to be interviewed.

“Yeah. Janna’s life was pretty much all there, in her own words.”

“Where was she from?” I asked.

“Payson, Arizona. Nineteen years old.”

“Did you find her father? Have you called him?”

“I had no interest in speaking to that bastard,” Mike said. “She has an aunt who seemed to be Janna’s only lifeline. Her mother’s sister. I reached her an hour ago. We’ll fly her in tomorrow to make the ID and take the body home.”

I wrapped my arms around my legs and rested my chin on my knees. “It was all true, about the sexual abuse by her father?”

“Way too true. Years of it.”

“There’s so much help we could have given her here.”

“Wait till you read her words, Coop. The thing that Janna Dixon knew best was despair.”

“What a heartbreak. And why did her words get her killed?”

“It was Verge who introduced her to Eddie Wicks,” Mike said.

“Verge.” I straightened up with a start. “Have they found him?”

Mercer leaned me back to rest against his long legs. “He’s in the boathouse. Verge showed up in the Sheep Meadow while I was sweet-talking the judge, to see what all the ruckus was about.”

“And now?”

“The guys are inside, trying to make sense out of him. Seems he and Wicks knew each other way back as kids. Saw each other dozens of times over the years.”

“And the black angel?” I asked.

“It really did come from the graveyard of one of the churches in Seneca Village,” Mercer said.

“Verge helped Wicks take Lucy’s bones out of their resting place,” Mike said. “I don’t exactly think he knew what Wicks was doing, but he helped himself to the ebony carving while Wicks was up to his own business.”

“What about Janna?”

“She and Wicks got along at first. There are sketches of him in her journal. Stories about him, too, and how he showed her some of the Park’s secret places. He told her about the Indian Cave himself. That it had nothing to do with Indians, but it was just designed to be a mysterious part of the Ramble, with two entrances.”

“Two?” I said. “I’ll be damned if I could find a second one. I was counting on Mike to do that before he ran off on me.”

“Commissioner Davis just told me there used to be an inlet off the shore of the Lake, and you could row right up to it.”

“That must have been the part of the cave that’s on higher ground, where Wicks set up his noose,” I said.

“Yeah. Then there’s that steep flight of stairs that you found, kid. The lower chamber. But Davis said this cave in particular was such a hot spot for men harassing women back in the 1920s that the entire thing was blocked off-both entrances-as though they had never been open. The Park records suggested to him that no one would ever be able to penetrate it without getting a bulldozer up there.”

“They were certainly wrong about that,” I said. “It’s a pretty sinister place.”

“There are Indian caves-really ancient ones-in Arizona, not far from Payson. Janna wrote about how they fascinated her, and so when Wicks told her about this one, she wanted to see it. He even let Janna stay there, sleep there a few nights. None of the other kids in the homeless crew, just Janna.”

“Without-?”

“No sexual overtures, Coop,” Mike said. “At least nothing she wrote about, although there were plenty of references to what her father had done to her. But then Janna found the box with Lucy’s bones, which Wicks had hidden in a corner, under a blanket.”

“And he went berserk, I’m sure. Did she write about it?”

“It looks like she never had the chance to do that. She sketched a picture of the box, and then one day she must have looked inside it and seen the bones. She drew those, too.”

“Then Eddie Wicks must have found the drawings and knew Janna had seen Lucy’s bones. That’s what set him off on killing me, too,” I said. “Did he admit anything to you?”

“Yeah. In his own way. He killed Janna because she was afraid she was going to tell someone about the bones. That they didn’t belong in a cave.”

“He said that to me, too. Called her ‘impetuous,’ though I don’t know who he thought she was going to tell. Do you figure it was Verge?” I asked.

“Wicks doesn’t seem too worried about Verge and his stories. He said he knows no one takes the guy seriously. That’s why no one believed him about people living in houses in the Park or finding the angel in a churchyard.”

“That’s why no one would have listened to Verge if he said they dug up a body together,” I said. “What did he kill her with? Janna, I mean.”

“It’s been a long day, Coop.”

“Give me the rest of it, please.”

“He hit her with the same piece you used to crack his skull.”

I lifted my head and looked across the Lake at the regal figure of the beloved statue on the Bethesda Terrace. “Death angel, Mike. You weren’t wrong about her.”

“Well, the silver miniature of her is on its way to the lab. Maybe we’ll get some of that mixture DNA you’ve been talking about.”

“Janna Dixon, Eddie Wicks, and me all over that precious little statue.”

The water gently lapped at the edge of the Lake. It hardly seemed the same deadly site that it had a week ago. But the Park was treacherous that way, pulling you in with its beauty and betraying you with the dangers that lurked in its darkest recesses.

“Maybe it’s true,” I said. “I mean, the story he tells about Lucy and how she died.”

“Yeah, but if you’re saying he didn’t kill her, he was still a mutt way back then-and a despicable criminal-for taking the body and disposing of it. Think how it tormented Lavinia not to have any idea what became of the child for the rest of her life.”

“I’m not on his side, Mike. Do you get that? I’m the one who just spent a few hours in a spider hole with the man. He’s as responsible for Lucy Dalton’s death, in my view, as if he put his hands around her neck instead of the scarf. It was totally reckless of Wicks-even though he was only a kid himself-to put that little girl in a dumbwaiter and send her off to her death. And now there’s Janna.”

“Janna wrote about the silver objects, too,” Mike said. “She had no idea they were valuable, but she had a habit of stealing things-food, clothes, and maybe things she thought she could cash in. She tried to barter with Wicks-brought him food and stuff, and then she asked for one of the pieces-but he said no. She wrote that two days before she found Lucy’s bones.”

“Did Wicks carry Janna’s body down to the Lake?” I asked.

“He kept her in the cave for a while. He wouldn’t give it up to me completely,” Mike said, “but I’m betting Verge helped him do that.”

“Is that what Verge is saying tonight?”

“He’s doing his rope-a-dope, make-no-sense dance for the detectives right now,” Mercer said. “I think we’re going to find out that Wicks trusted Verge to help him dispose of Janna in the Lake. Maybe promised to give him back the black angel. Janna claims in her journal that Verge did give it to her. Like a talisman, a spirit to watch over her. I’m thinking once he was in the cave and saw that statue again, along with the silver pieces, he tried to steal them out from under Wicks’s nose.”

“You’re probably right,” Mike said. “Maybe Verge carried them with him. Got as far as the bushes near the Lake when Wicks went after him. Then couldn’t go back for them because of all the cops around the Lake when Janna’s body was found. I’ll have you that news by morning.”

“Morning? I’m ready to go to work on those other cold cases you have from the Park,” I said. “Will you let me in on them?”

Central Park was the most seductive place in New York City. It offered the magnificent vistas, public thoroughfares, private pathways, and natural scenes of great physical beauty. But it wasn’t a place to enter alone in the dead of night, and I had seen far too much evidence of that fact in my decade as a prosecutor.

“I don’t think Battaglia’ll be too keen on that idea. But I like your style, Coop. All cred to you for that crater you put in Eddie Wicks’s head.”

“My footwork was even better.”

“I’m not surprised.”

Mercer pushed me forward and stopped kneading my shoulders. A uniformed cop was coming toward us, and he was carrying things in both hands.

“What’s up?” Mercer asked him.

“Sergeant Chirico sent this out to you.”

The boathouse was an elegant restaurant as well as a police staging area. The officer had two bottles of white wine and three glasses, along with an opener.

“Thank him for us, will you?” I asked.

Mercer uncorked the bottle and poured us some of the chilled wine. I reached out to Mike with one of the glasses. He took it from me, eased off the seat and put the oars inside the boat, then sat down on the bottom of it. He rolled up the legs of his jeans and hung his feet over in the water.

“Now all we need to find is Raymond Tanner, and we’ll have a trifecta,” Mike said.

“Let’s take a couple of days off, guys,” Mercer said. “Let the task force deal with Tanner.”

“But-”

“Not to worry, Alex. I’m on the task force. You’ll know everything the minute that I do.”

“But I’ve got ideas about him, Mercer. I bet his next hit is Van Cortlandt Park.”

“What’s your hunch?” Mercer asked.

“He’s doing parks in each of the boroughs. Manhattan’s over for him. Too many cops on his tail here. He’s tried Brooklyn. I’m guessing the Bronx is next. I wish I could warn every young woman in town not to venture in after dark.”

“Listen to her, Mercer,” Mike said. “Coop isn’t wrong till she’s wrong.”

“I’ve been listening to her for years, Detective. Time for you to tune in.”

I got up and gave Mercer a hug, then stepped into the boat. I sat facing Mike, my back against the other side of it and my feet up on the gunwale. I sipped the wine and rested my head back.

“Will you take me home tonight?” I asked.

“I’d like to, Coop. I really would. Didn’t Mercer tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“I got a twenty-one-day rip. Suspended without pay for three weeks.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“Scully got the order directly from the mayor.”

“For-?”

“Crossing the line with Jessica Pell. I’ve sworn off crazy broads for the moment. That goes for you, too.”

I picked up my foot and poked Mike’s thigh with my toes.

“Three weeks from now and no paycheck? You’ll be back. Even my kind of crazy might start to appeal to you.”

“Don’t get too cocky, Coop,” Mike said, combing his fingers through his hair while he grinned at me. “Old ways are hard to change.”

“I’m your escort tonight, Ms. Cooper,” Mercer said. “Detective Chapman has a lot of paperwork to do on his big arrest. Let me top off those glasses, will you?”

Mercer reached over to refresh both of us. Then he put the bottle down next to me and with one strong shove, he launched our rowboat onto the Lake.

“We’ll be leaving here in half an hour, Alexandra. In the meantime, don’t make waves.”

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