Pariah

TWO

Despite their increased numbers, they are quieter than usual.

Normally, at a scene like this, there would be jokes and laughter and general chit-chat. About how fucking cold this Christmas is going to be, about how the latest caps on overtime suck, about how shitty the current police recruitment policy is. But this time it’s different. This crime involves a Member of Service. A brother. There is a need for reverence here. The audience gathers around the mouth of the vacant lot as if about to sing a hymn or utter prayers.

Detective Second Grade Callum Doyle approaches the throng with some trepidation. Anyone not familiar with him might puzzle over the slight bounce in his step on such a solemn occasion. Closer inspection might offer a hint that Doyle is not full of the joys of winter. If they can tear their gaze away from his startling emerald eyes, they might notice the slight crookedness to his nose — another relic from his boxing days.

He makes a quick scan of the surroundings. This section of East Third Street is mostly residential. Low-rise tenements, their faces zigzagged by fire escapes. Building lights are on everywhere. Despite the freezing weather, a bare-chested man is hanging out of a fourth-floor window, binoculars trained on the scene below. A cordon formed from sawhorses connected by yellow crime-scene tape keeps the gathering public at a respectable distance. Pressed against the tape, two elderly spectators fill plastic cups from a steaming thermos. Doyle wouldn’t be surprised if they’d brought sandwiches too.

Seeking protection against the bitter cold, he burrows his hands deep into the pockets of his leather jacket, then turns his attention back to the people on his side of the barrier. He keeps his head high, knowing what certain elements are thinking. He’s ready for them — possibly too ready. He warns himself not to be too eager to react.

His mind begins to sift the various officials here into categories: the uniforms, the night-watch detectives, the Homicide dicks, the Crime Scene team, the Medical Examiner. And then there are the detectives from his own tour, none of whom is supposed to be on duty for several hours yet. But when something like this happens, word gets around quickly and sleep is demoted to an unnecessary luxury.

As he reaches the periphery of the crowd, faces glance at him and swiftly turn away again. There are whispers, nudges. Doyle feels his intestines forming reef knots.

First to venture toward him is the lieutenant. Morgan Franklin — Mo to his friends — is tall and wiry and approaching fifty in a nosedive, but all of this belies his strength and aura of authority. Doyle has often wondered what it is about the man that causes others to hang on his words and swing at his command.

‘Cal,’ he says, the simple greeting carried on a white puff of breath.

‘There’s no mistake, then?’ Doyle asks.

Franklin shakes his head. ‘I wish there was.’ He looks up at the cloudless sky. ‘This is gonna be tough on you. In more ways than one. You know that, don’t you?’

Doyle just stares. He does know it, but hearing it from somebody else’s lips hammers it home.

The assembly parts like the Red Sea, and a squat man emerges and shuffles over. Norman Chin, MD, has stiff black hair that sticks out like the bristles of a toilet brush, and the magnifying effect of his glacially thick glasses lends him the appearance of a demented owl. But Doyle knows that behind the geeky facade lies a tough Brooklynite whom one derides at one’s peril.

‘Who wants the report?’ he asks the lieutenant.

Doyle chips in. ‘Me. I’ll take the case.’

Franklin looks at him. ‘You sure? Could be a poisoned chalice.’

‘He was my partner. I knew him best.’

Chin pulls his lapels together and stomps his feet. ‘Can we toss a coin here or something? This cold, my toes are about to snap off.’

Franklin thinks for a moment, then nods his assent.

‘Okay,’ Chin says, and turns to face Doyle. ‘Cause of death in Parlatti’s case was three gunshots to the right rear side of the head. Cause of death for the girl was probably also three shots to the head, but from the front.’

‘Probably?’

Chin shrugs. ‘I’m covering my ass. She had the crap beaten out of her. The injuries she sustained might have led to her death. Whatever, the three slugs in her brain didn’t cure her.’

‘Can you give us anything on the weapon?’

‘Small caliber, judging by the holes. Powder burns on the skin of both victims, suggesting close range. Oh, and no exit wounds, indicative of low-velocity ammo. If the slugs haven’t deformed too much, the lab will be able to tell you more. What I do know is that there’s no sign of any cartridge cases near the bodies.’

‘Jesus,’ Franklin says, and Doyle knows they’re thinking the same thing: that this has all the hallmarks of a professional hit. Blowing somebody’s head off with a Magnum.44 is for amateurs and opportunists, since it has the disadvantage of alerting everyone within a five-block radius to what you’ve just done. Besides, it’s messy. You want a swift, efficient and quiet kill, then use something like a.22 at close range. With the peace and tranquility of your neighbors in mind, fit the gun with a silencer and use low-power shells. It might seem like a pussy’s weapon to you, but two or three of those projectiles bouncing around somebody’s dome still gets the job done — no muss, no fuss.

‘Were they killed here?’ Doyle asks.

‘I’d say so. Doesn’t look like a dump job. Nah, I’d say they were whacked here within the past two hours.’

‘What about the girl? Find anything there?’

‘She’s a user. Track marks on her arms and legs. One of your uniforms thinks he’s seen her before, on the streets. Thinks she’s a local pross.’

Shit, thinks Doyle. What the fuck was Joe Parlatti — who was married, no less — doing on a vacant lot with a known hooker?

Chin seems to have read his mind. ‘There’s no sign of any sexual activity immediately prior to death. But I can’t rule it out totally. I’ll know more when I get ’em back to the ranch.’

‘And the beating she took?’

‘Again, no signs that Parlatti did the deed. His knuckles are clean, and I couldn’t find any gloves. What I did find was his wallet still in his pocket, his detective shield in his left hand and a pocket flashlight in his right hand. Battery must be dead because the switch is on.’

‘Okay, thanks, Doc. Any chance you can bump this one for us?’

‘Already top of my list. Watch this space.’

Chin walks away, muttering something else about his frozen extremities. Franklin says to Doyle, ‘You wanted the case. Go work it.’

Doyle heads into the crowd. He receives a couple of sheepish nods, one or two grunts. Nobody for a high five then, he thinks.

He has worked with these people for a full year now. He was beginning to think he had finally become accepted. Now this.

‘Who found them?’ he asks nobody in particular.

Evasive silence. Then: ‘You taking this, Doyle?’

This from Schneider, a bull of a man with a stiff carpet of slate-gray hair. Doyle recalls remarking that it looked as though his head had been dipped in iron filings and a magnet pushed up his nose.

‘That okay with you, Schneider?’

Schneider smiles viciously and chews his gum. Doyle looks around at the others, challenging them to declare any allegiances. It takes a while for one of them to pipe up.

‘Kid over there. He’s a student, on his way home after a party. Feels the need for a piss, looks for somewhere away from the street. .’

Doyle is already on his way to the youth standing near one of the radio cars angled into the sidewalk, his arms folded and his head bowed.

‘Hey, kid. You okay?’

The student looks up. His eyes and nose are red with alcohol and the cold. ‘Yeah, yeah. I just. . I never seen a dead body before, you know? Much less two of them.’

‘Sure. So can you tell me what happened?’

‘Yeah. It was like I was telling the other cops before. I been drinking, see, and with the cold air and all, I really needed to pee.’

‘So you stepped into the lot. You really have to go all the way to the back wall to do that?’

It’s one of the few fragments of information Doyle was given before he arrived. Two DOAs found in the far corner of a vacant lot. One his partner, the other a woman who was not his wife. All the ingredients for one of the shittiest days imaginable.

‘No, no. I just went about halfway down. But when I was doing my thing, you know, I saw this light.’

‘A light?’

‘Yeah. A little light. And I wondered what it was. So I went down there to take a look. And that’s when I found them.’

‘And the light was. .?’

‘A flashlight, in the guy’s hand. It was really dim, like the battery was dying, you know? But it was just enough so I could see them. There was a lot of blood, but it didn’t look like blood, because it was so black, you know? And the girl’s face, it was wrecked, man. I thought she was wearing a mask at first. And you know what the really freaky thing was?’

‘What?’

‘Literally while I was standing there, the flashlight went out. Slowly dimmed, and then just went out, totally. Man, was I spooked. It was like. .’

‘Like what?’

‘Like. . his soul just left him. I know it sounds crazy. He already looked stone-cold dead when I found him. But that’s how it felt at the time. Like his life was draining out of him while I watched.’

An image enters Doyle’s brain. A memory. Of standing over a body drenched in blood. He is aware of the life force leaking away, and is powerless to prevent it. He is crying in frustration. .

Doyle shivers, and blames the cold. He asks the student a few more questions, thanks him, and returns to the crime scene. Slipping wordlessly between his colleagues, he enters the lot. It is brightly lit by banks of floodlights. He can hear the thrum of the generator that powers them. Members of the Crime Scene Unit are scouring the weed-pocked ground and sifting through garbage. Doyle gets as close as he can without disturbing them. Close enough to get a good look at the bodies.

The woman is young. Perhaps not yet twenty. To the uninitiated she might appear older, but her line of work adds years in that way. She is wearing a faux-fur jacket that ends at the waist and a skirt that extends not much farther. The signs of a severe assault are not hidden behind her face mask of caked blood. Her features are contorted and misshapen, her nose looking like a squashed strawberry. Her mouth is open and the tip of her tongue is wedged in the gap where one of her teeth has been smashed out.

He has seen this woman before. Well, not her exactly, but quite a few like her. She’s another corpse, another DOA. As yet she doesn’t even have a name. She’s paperwork, she’s tracking down friends and family and acquaintances, she’s interrogating suspects. She’s his job. She’s what puts bread and butter on his table.

At least, that’s what he’s learned to tell himself at scenes like this. It’s a defense mechanism that doesn’t always work. Sometimes the sheer waste of it all still gets to him. Sometimes he cares a little too much for his own good.

And then there’s Joe, and for him Doyle cannot make even the pretense of detachment. That crumpled lifeless mass lying there in a puddle of its own blood is the body of a man who, just yesterday, was telling Doyle a joke about a blind beggar and a nudist. This was minutes after they had worked in perfect harmony in the interview room to get a confession from a suspected rapist. Which in turn was not long after they had spent over three hours freezing their asses off doing surveillance from a rooftop coated in pigeon shit.

There are strong ties here that Doyle cannot and does not choose to deny. They make him wonder whether he made the right decision in requesting this case: he knows that the end of Parlatti’s journey is the start of a new one for himself, and that it’s going to be a rough ride. But they’re also the reason he doesn’t trust anybody else to get to the bottom of it.

He sighs, slowly and heavily, and feels as though he exhales more than just breath.

He looks around the enclosed space. He guesses that the chain-link fence separating it from the street has been broken for some time, making it an ideal dumping ground. Against the walls are huge piles of boxes and bags, overflowing with garbage. The air is thick with the stench of rotting food, making Doyle grateful that December is not noted for its muggy nights. The mountains of junk have converted a perfectly rectangular area into a landscape filled with dark, forbidding recesses.

Doyle heads back toward the street, conscious of the sea of faces studying him. He pushes through, finds the lieutenant. Franklin is instructing a couple of his men to initiate a door-to-door. Doyle waits for him to finish before delivering his thoughts.

‘The killer’s not somebody Joe knew as a friend, not someone he trusted.’

‘Okay. Why?’

‘Because a friend could have killed Joe anywhere. He could have talked his way into Joe’s apartment and done it there, or in his car. Anywhere.’

‘I’ll give you that. What else?’

‘Although the killer wasn’t a close acquaintance, he knew a lot about Joe. Or he was hired by somebody else who knows a lot about Joe.’

‘Why so?’

‘Because last night was Wednesday. And every Wednesday night, without fail unless he’s on duty, Joe hooks up with some buddies at a bar on First. They sink a few beers and then move on to a pool hall farther down here on Third Street. At midnight precisely, Joe leaves the pool hall and walks down here, past this lot, and on to the subway station at Houston to catch the F train.’

Franklin removes his hands from his pockets and holds them up.

‘Wait a minute. That’s kind of a leap. Why does the hitter have to know all that info? Maybe he’s just following Joe around. He sees an opportunity, gets the drop on Joe, forces him onto the lot and. . and that’s it.’

Doyle catches the way that Franklin puts a stop sign on his mental journey past the fence bordering the vacant lot, as if he cannot yet fully accept what has happened to a member of his squad.

He shakes his head. ‘I don’t think it went down like that. First of all, Joe wasn’t the kind of guy you just sneak up on, even with a couple beers inside him. Even if he was, the killer wouldn’t know that. All he would know is that this guy’s a cop, and cops have guns, and cops have street smarts. An amateur or your average stupid mutt might take a chance, but from what we’ve seen, our hitter was careful. He wouldn’t want to risk this thing blowing up in his face. Besides, we have to fit the pross into this somehow.’

‘Yeah, I was wondering about her. Somehow I don’t see Joe as the type to-’

‘He wasn’t, and I’m certain that Norm will confirm that. I don’t believe he beat the shit out of her either.’

Franklin nods, and Doyle can almost hear the wheels turning. ‘So explain to me how Joe ended up like this. If it wasn’t for sex, what was he doing with this girl?’

‘Joe had his flashlight and his shield out, right? That means he went in there looking for something, and that he needed to identify himself. Suppose the girl was already in there, that she’d already been beaten up.’

‘Okay, so Joe finds the girl. He tries to help her. He’s distracted. The killer sees an opening. .’

‘No, there’s too much chance involved. I think this was a setup. I think the girl was involved, but not out of choice. That’s why Joe’s at the back of the lot with a flashlight in his hand. He’s trying to help her, only he doesn’t know he’s just walked right into a trap. He doesn’t know he’s just been led to a spot where nobody on the street is going to see or hear anything.’

‘And that would require the killer to know that Joe was going to come past this spot at about this time.’

‘Exactly. He would also know that Joe couldn’t ignore something like this. Most people, they hear noises in a dark corner, they cross the street to avoid it. Not Joe. Not when somebody’s in trouble.’

Franklin draws breath through his teeth. ‘Jesus. She was bait? If you’re right, that’s a clinical kill.’ The roof lights of the radio cars bounce colors off his face as he looks around. ‘Okay. Put the word out. We want anything on someone looking to buy a hit. Also anything on the movements of known professional hitters. Find out where the pross worked, see if anyone saw her being picked up tonight. Look at the scumbags Joe put away — anyone who might have had a reason for wanting him dead. And somebody needs to speak with Maria.’

Doyle picks up on the expectation dangling on the end of those words. ‘Yeah, I know. My first port of call when I’m done here.’

Franklin frees a hand from his pockets, slaps Doyle on the arm to send him on his way. Doyle walks toward the uniforms, intending to find out more about the prostitute.

The name carries to him on the thin air, not quite hidden in the snatches of conversation. It cuts him, and he snaps.

‘Fuck!’ he yells. ‘You fuck!’ He runs straight at Schneider. The self-assured smirk drops from Schneider’s face, but it is all he has time to do before Doyle piles into him, slamming him into a tenement wall.

The other cops are quickly on Doyle. Arms snake around him and pull him away. He watches Schneider bounce himself off the wall and prepare to come barreling back at him, but then something stops the man in his tracks. He has seen the figure of Franklin standing there, condemnation written on his gnarled face.

‘What the fuck, Doyle?’ Schneider growls. ‘You feeling guilty about something?’

‘Fuck you, Schneider,’ Doyle answers. ‘That’s my partner lying back there. My partner, get that?’

‘Yeah, I get it. Your partner. Kind of like a running theme with you, huh, Doyle?’

Doyle struggles to free himself for another pop at Schneider, but the hold on him is too strong.

‘You keep your shit-stirring thoughts to yourself, you fat fuck! I got nothing to be ashamed of. And I don’t ever want to hear that name from your mouth again, you got me?’

Schneider is laughing now, taunting him.

‘Enough!’ Franklin commands, and an anxious silence descends once more. ‘We have two homicides to solve here. One of them’s a cop. Somebody you all worked with. Show him the respect he deserves by acting professional and doing your jobs.’

Schneider straightens his tie and brushes something off his sleeve. The grip on Doyle is relaxed, and he yanks himself free. As he heads toward his car he gives himself a mental slap for his stupidity. He knew something like that was probably coming, so he should have been more prepared to handle it.

Today was always going to be a bad day. He’s probably just made it a hundred times worse.