Lethal Legacy

THIRTY-THREE

Pridgen was waiting for us outside the patient’s room on the fourth floor of St. Vincent’s Hospital, pacing the quiet hallway. We had worked with him in the SVU when we’d had our first cold hit, just after Mercer was shot by a desperate killer.

“Good to see you both,” he said. “Wish I could sit down, but the chief of d’s ripped me a new one at yesterday’s COMPSTAT.”

“Been there,” Mercer said.

The brilliant Computerized Statistics program originated with the NYPD in 1994 as an aggressive approach to crime reduction and resource management. Weekly meetings of the department’s seventy-six precinct commanders, on Friday mornings at headquarters’ most high-tech facility, were designed to improve the flow of information between supervisors.

“The captain made me go yesterday ’cause he thought my case was so unique,” Pridgen said. “I stood at the podium, laid out the facts, and that crew leaped on me like I was a rookie just out of the academy. ‘Why didn’t you do this? Why didn’t you think of that? Why didn’t you call Special Victims?’ How was I supposed to know about your case? It wasn’t in the papers or anything. And mine wasn’t a sex assault.”

“But one of the execs figured they might be related?” I asked. “Is that why they made you hook up with Mercer?”

“I got a push-in with a bastard who chloroforms the vic. Those guys think I didn’t question her as good as you would have about a sex crime. They think I might have missed something. Said you had a similar case a few days earlier.”

“Let’s hear what you’ve got,” Mercer said.

Pridgen’s plaid polyester jacket was so worn, it almost shined. His cheap tie wasn’t knotted, just crossed-detective style-below the open collar of his shirt.

“Jane Eliot-one tough broad,” he said. “Eighty-one years old.”

“Your witness?” Mercer asked.

“Yeah. I mean, I know we’ve had sex crimes with women older than that, but my guys asked her about it. She passed out and all, but her clothes were never disturbed. All we got is a push-in with a guy who ransacked the apartment.”

“Take anything?”

“Don’t look like she had much of any value. Not even electronic stuff. She hasn’t been back there to tell us whether anything’s missing.”

“Can we talk to her?” I asked.

“Yeah. She doesn’t see too good. Has real thick cataracts.”

Pridgen opened the door to the room and announced himself as we went in. “Hey, Miss Eliot, how’s it going? Pridgen here.”

“I’m doing well. Though the social worker says they won’t release me until Monday,” she said. “Observation and all that.”

The handsome woman, perfectly erect in a vinyl hospital chair with her feet on the ottoman, was dressed in a housecoat, listening to the opera on a small portable radio.

“I brought you those friends I told you about. This here is Ms. Cooper, and the big guy is Detective Wallace.”

“How do you do?” she asked, shifting her head as though trying to make us out. “I’m Jane Eliot.”

“I’m Alex and he’s Mercer. I guess you know who we are.”

“I do. And I know you’re not here for my blood or my temperature, so that’s just fine,” she said, smiling at us. “Pridgen, would you bring in a few chairs?”

I explained our purpose to Jane Eliot, without mentioning Tina Barr, and told her we needed to do another interview, to probe even more thoroughly.

“It’s rather odd for me, Alex. I’ve lived such an ordinary life for so very long that I can’t understand all this interest.”

“Why don’t we work backward, then?” I said, sitting on one of the chairs that the sergeant had brought into the room. “Get the worst over with first. When did this happen?”

I wanted the facts, and I also wanted to know how clear she was.

“Wednesday. It was shortly before noon,” Jane Eliot answered without any hesitation. “I’ve got my favorite shows to listen to, so I know exactly what day and time it was.”

“Where do you live?”

“ Greenwich Village,” she said. “On Bedford, between Morton and Commerce streets.”

“How lovely. Such a pretty area.” The historic district of tree-lined streets and small townhouses was one of the safest parts of the city. “That’s the block where Edna St. Vincent Millay’s house is, if I’m not mistaken.”

“Precisely, young lady. The narrowest house in the Village-nine and a half feet wide. Are you a poet as well as a lawyer?” Eliot asked, leaning over to pat me on the knee.

No question she was as sharp as a tack. I laughed. “No, ma’am. All lawyer.”

“I’ve been there for many, many years-on the first floor, thank goodness. I don’t think I could climb those steps very well anymore.”

“Do you live alone, Miss Eliot?”

“Yes, dear. Always have.”

“How large is your apartment?”

“Just a small parlor, my bedroom, the kitchen, and a little den.”

“Why don’t you tell us exactly what you remember about Tuesday?”

“Certainly. I was waiting to get my local news and weather, enjoy the chatter on one of those midday shows. There was a knock on my door, which surprised me, because the buzzer hadn’t rung.”

“There’s an outer entrance that’s kept locked?”

“Always.”

“What did you do?”

“I was in the den, turning on the television, so I walked through the apartment to the living room. The knocking came again, and I asked who was there.”

“Did someone respond?”

“Oh, yes. The young man spoke to me. Told me he had a package.”

“For you?”

“That’s what has me feeling foolish. I don’t get many packages, other than an occasional fruitcake from my niece and nephews around the holidays. Can’t give them away fast enough.” She was spunky and quick to smile. “‘Not for me, you don’t.’ That’s what I told him.”

“What did he say?”

“That it was a delivery for my neighbor. He even had the name and apartment right. Miss Ziegler in two-C. Then he told me to look through the peephole so I could see his uniform.”

While Jane Eliot was talking, I heard Mercer ask the sergeant whether there was a list of names in the building’s vestibule. He nodded and mouthed the word “yes.”

“My vision isn’t too good these days,” she said, “but I can make out shapes and colors. I can see, Mercer, that you’ve got a very large frame, that you’re a tall man, black skinned. And you’re quite tall yourself, Alex, with lovely golden hair.”

“Thank you.”

“Mine was red,” Jane Eliot said. “Fiery red. Well, there he was in one of those brown jackets. You know that delivery service that’s all done up in brown?”

Tina Barr’s assailant had dressed in a fireman’s uniform but lost his mask at the crime scene. Was he enough of a chameleon to change his disguise less than twenty-four hours later?

“Tell me about Miss Zeigler,” I said. “Have you ever taken packages for her before?”

“Heavens, yes. It’s hard for someone like me, without a computer, to understand how she does it, but the girl buys everything online-her books, her clothes, and sometimes even her food. She works for a travel magazine so she’s on the road often, and I’m used to accepting deliveries for her.”

“Had she asked you to take anything in this week?”

Jane Eliot bit her lip. “It’s not that I like to look foolish, Alex. But she doesn’t always remember to ask me.”

“There’s nothing wrong with what you did, Miss Eliot. What happened isn’t your fault. I don’t blame you for opening the door,” I said. “Would you tell us what happened when you did?”

She inhaled deeply and continued speaking. “The fellow pushed his way in, and that’s when I lost my balance. I didn’t fall, thank the Lord, but I grabbed for the bench behind me and sat down on it. That’s when he dropped the parcel-a small box-and I thought maybe he had stumbled on something.

“Then he bent over, not to get the box, but to get me,” she said, becoming a bit emotional. “He covered my mouth with a cloth, with some kind of fabric that he’d soaked in something dreadful. I thought I was going to die, young lady. I-I couldn’t breathe. I got so dizzy. I remember the room spinning, and that’s all.”

“A few more things, if you don’t mind,” I said, letting her recover from reliving those frightening moments. “Can you tell us anything about the man who did this?”

“Nothing that Sergeant Pridgen found very helpful.”

“Now, Miss Eliot,” Pridgen said. “You’ve been terrific.”

“You called him a young man, Miss Eliot. And I understand you have cataracts, but do you have any idea how old he was?”

“Look at me, Alex. I call everyone young.”

My turn to bite my lip.

“He was white, I know that for sure. He was an adult, not a teenager. But I couldn’t see his features, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“No marks on his face, when he got up close to you?”

“Clean shaven is all I can say. Usually I can make out facial hair if a man’s got it. Didn’t see any of that.”

“Did his uniform have any markings on it? Could you see?”

“You mean like the name of the company? I’m sorry. I just couldn’t tell you that.”

“We’ve checked those services, Alex. These days, they’ve got their scanners current to the second. They can account for all their drivers in the area,” Pridgen said. “He wasn’t legit.”

“Was the box still there when you came to?” Mercer asked.

“I never saw it again.”

“What’s the next thing you remember?” I asked.

“My goodness, it was hours later. Almost five o’clock. There I was, right on the very same bench. Like I was Sleeping Beauty, gone for a long nap and never been missed.”

“Were you injured?”

“I-I didn’t know. There’s no cushion on that old bench, so I was stiff as a board. And awfully dizzy still, with a terrible headache. Must have been that stuff he had on the cloth. The doctors think it was chloroform.”

“But nothing broken?”

“How many times have they had me to X-ray, Mr. Pridgen? MRIs and all these other fancy tests.”

“I’m going to ask you something very personal, Miss Eliot. Sergeant Pridgen has explained what my job is, why Mercer and I work together,” I said. “We need to know whether this man touched any part of your body before you lost consciousness.”

Jane Eliot sat up straighter and talked more seriously. “Now, why would anybody want to do that?” she asked. “I’m an old, old lady. Of course he didn’t touch me.”

It was the specifics I had to establish, whether she wanted to hear them or not.

“What had you been wearing, Miss Eliot? Can you tell us that?”

“Pridgen knows. A housecoat, like this one, but light green. They button up the front so it’s easier for my arthritic shoulders than lifting over my head.”

“And was your clothing disturbed?”

“Hard to disturb a wrinkled housecoat, isn’t it?”

“Do you have any sense that this man might have touched your breasts?”

She put one arm to her chest and chuckled. “They were right where I left them, Alex. He didn’t have anything to do with them.”

“And your undergarments? Did you have any type of underwear on?”

“These young men probably don’t remember the word ‘girdle.’ I wear a firm girdle, and support hose for the circulation in my legs. Might take a construction crew to get through all of that.”

“I’m glad to know that you weren’t molested,” I said, “and that nothing was broken. Do you have any idea why someone would want to break in to your home?”

“I’ve been sitting here going on four days. Plenty of time to think about it,” Jane Eliot said. “He was either just a fool, or he broke in to the wrong apartment.”

“Do you have any valuables there?” I asked. “Has anyone had a chance to see what was missing?”

“I taught elementary school till they put me out to pasture at sixty-five. Fourth grade mathematics. Multiplication tables and time tests-everything that became obsolete with the new math. I’m at an age at which I give my possessions away, Alex. Never had the money for fine things, and don’t like the clutter. Had a sweet set of porcelain dolls people brought me from all over the world, but I gave them to my niece years ago.”

“No cash that you kept in the house? No jewelry?”

“I was wearing the only piece of gold I own. Couldn’t have missed it if he was looking for something pricey to steal. It’s bright and shiny, and practically the size of an alarm clock,” Jane Eliot said. “Show her, Pridgen.”

He walked to the bedside table and picked up the watch, noting its heft before passing it to me. “I’ll tell you what, Miss Eliot. If you had cracked the bum over the head with this, he’d have been a goner.”

“Wish I’d thought of it then,” she said. “It’s a man’s watch, Alex. It was given to my father after fifty years at his job. The big size-and the large numbers-suit me well. I’ve worn it ever since he’s been gone.”

“Fifty years,” Pridgen said to Mercer. “Today most guys would be lucky to get a bologna sandwich and a pat on the back after working someplace half a century.”

I examined the striking face of the old timepiece. The famous French maker’s name written on the dial added value to the watch, which appeared to be made of solid gold.

“He obviously missed the opportunity to take this-it’s such a beautiful keepsake. I’m sure that would have been a terrible loss to you. Were there any other things like this that you had hidden away? Any reason for him to ransack your rooms?”

“Not a blessed thing for him to find, I promise you.”

I turned the watch over in my hand and read the inscription on the back of it. To Joseph Peter Eliot with gratitude for fifty years of devoted service. September 1, 1958. Trustees of the New York Public Library.

I had begun to think the connection to Tina Barr was a coincidence. But now my adrenaline surged.

“Miss Eliot,” I said, “your father worked for the library?”

“Started there right out of high school, Alex, as assistant to the chief engineer.”

“And you, did you have any direct association with the place yourself?”

“My dear, I was born in the New York Public Library during a snowstorm in 1928.”

“Not literally?”

“Yes, quite literally, young lady. There was an entire apartment within the library where the chief engineer and his family lived, till they threw us out. Needed the room after the Second World War. Until I went off to college, Alex, the public library was my home.”