Liberty Falling Page 28

  The detective tweezed the safety pin from its paper and, while they watched, dusted the head, brushed away the excess powder with a soft brush, then with a piece of clear tape lifted the residue from the plastic and transferred it to a clean white square of cardboard. He repeated the exercise on the other side of the safety pin.

  “The deed is done.” He handed the card to Emmett. “One is quite a nice print. I hope it answers your questions. Now, if you’ll excuse me, there’s some lint waiting to tell me many things.”

  Emmett took over from Mallow. He scanned the prints into the computer and typed in the commands that would set it to matching with prints on file. “It’s not instantaneous,” he said, when it looked as if Anna intended to wait for the results. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  Frederick thanked him. As they were being ushered firmly toward the door, Anna said, “May I borrow a field fingerprinting kit? I’ve got a hunch.”

  Emmett shot Frederick an annoyed look.

  Stanton shrugged. “She’s like this. It’s a sickness.”

  “This is the family you want to marry into?” the policeman asked.

  “I do.” Frederick mocked himself and the marriage service.

  “It’s your funeral.” Emmett found a spare kit. Before handing it to Anna, he said, “You promise you’ll return it?”

  “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

  “You will if you don’t.” Emmett gave her the kit. As the elevator doors were closing, he said, “I don’t want to know how this turns out.”

  Gentrification hadn’t moved much above 110th. Buildings were worn and tired, posters plastered over posters. Graffiti splashed violent wallpaper on storefronts and lampposts. Broken glass scratched at sidewalks in need of repair. Few people were on the streets and those who were scurried like prey. The predators leaned in doorways, smoking, owning their night turf. Petty princes in a kingdom they’d clawed apart because they had no way out.

  “One question has been answered,” Anna remarked.

  “Yeah, what’s that?”

  “I know where all the poor people who used to live on the West Side went. They’re being pushed into the East River.”

  “Just keep walking and be ready to rescue me from bad guys,” Frederick said. After they’d reached the subway, laid down their tokens and waited on the platform, he said, “I bet you enjoyed that. You’re an adrenaline junkie, Anna.”

  “I didn’t,” she said honestly. “When the wildlife is sad it takes the fun out of it.”

  There was no good way to take the subway from East Harlem to the Upper West Side. Unless one went north over the river and back, it took at least three trains. This late, trains weren’t running with any frequency. “We should have hailed a cab,” Frederick grumbled.

  “Think they’re pretty common in East Harlem after midnight?”

  At least there were plenty of seats. A majority of the ride they had the car to themselves. STOPMUDP4J: the string of letters and the number tickled a seed in Anna’s psyche that gave her a feeling of impending disaster. Try as she might, she couldn’t coax the seed into flower. Ignorant and nervous: an all-too-human condition.

  New York’s underground flickered by, an industrial strobe blackened by dirt and use. Anna considered staying on the subway downtown to follow through on her hunch. In the end she had to give it up till morning. Dead of night was no time for sleuthing in public places. One needed the protective coloration of business as usual.

  EMMETT CALLED AT nine A.M. Frederick had left for Columbia-Presbyterian, the engagement ring in his pocket, Tom Sawyer under his arm. Anna had been up since six, passing the time staring at the phone, pacing and harassing Rani and, until he escaped, Frederick.

  “Emmett,” she said, and knew she was talking too loudly, holding the phone too tight.

  “Got your print results,” he said shortly. “No match.”

  “Did you check the boyfriend, Ma—” Anna started to say “Macho Bozo,” then took a second to dig up his real name: “Underwood, Michael?”

  “His prints are in the system. They were run just like the others. No go. Sorry.”

  The “Sorry” was very final.

  “Are you working back-to-back shifts?” Anna asked, to create the illusion she cared about him as a person. “You were on late last night.”

  “I’m on late tonight too. I came down to check this out, since you had your undies in a bundle.”

  Anna was on Molly’s cordless. She thanked Emmett on the way to the door, left the phone on the table in the entryway and took the stairs. The elevator did not suit her need to be doing.

  In the lobby of St. Vincent’s Hospital in the Village, she slowed down enough to find a pay phone and punch in the thirty-three numbers required to make an AT&T credit card call. Patsy was in her office and not on the phone, a double dose of luck.

  “Busy, busy, busy,” Patsy said, before Anna could tell her the call wasn’t social. “A zillion crates of champagne get delivered today. In the heat and the crowds, whatever ‘bouquet’ the stuff has is going to get majorly bruised. And a dim sum of the world. Mrs. Weinstein’s got haute couture food designers doing a bunch of cuisines to celebrate the old melting pot. Hah! The ‘old’ melting pot never had it so good. With Ralph Lauren cushions and designer food, this ought to be the lips-to-heinies fashion event of the century.”

  “Yeah. Hey,” Anna said, caught up in her own program. “Any word on Corinne?”

  Patsy shifted gears effortlessly, unperturbed by—or accustomed to—Anna’s preoccupations. “Hang on a sec. Let me ask Charlene if the Chief called the hospital this morning.” Charlene, Anna remembered, was the Chief Ranger’s secretary. She hadn’t the foggiest idea what the Chief’s name was. She would never be a political animal.

  Patsy was back. “Okay. Here’s the scoop.” A paper rustled and she continued in a voice that indicated she skimmed and paraphrased. “Corinne has been moved from intensive care to critical care. Looks like they think she has a bad brain injury. Other than that, all systems are go. In a coma. May or may not come out. If she does . . . ooooh. Not good. Probably suffer loss of speech and motor control. Poor kid.”

  Fleetingly, Anna wondered if she’d done the actress any favors by saving her life. No guilt was attached. Anna was comfortable with her role as an EMT. She had no secret desire to be either an angel of death or an angel of mercy. Her job was to get them out of the park alive. Here it wasn’t even her job, but it was still her duty. One picked others up when they got knocked down. One didn’t have to love them, like them or ever see them again, just set them on their feet and move on.

  “Thanks,” she said, and belatedly, “Good luck with the soiree.”

  “Keep tomorrow night free.”

  “Will do.”

  The hospital was busy in the antiseptic and diseased way of hospitals, employees either lethargic or harried depending on their caseload. Once Anna had thought of New York in terms of theater, bus exhaust and the ever-present smell of urine. From now on she would remember it as an endless maze of hospital corridors linked by subway trains.

  A bored young black woman, hair high and lacquered, nails impossibly long and impossibly red, told her where she could find critical care. Anna rode the elevator up several floors with a beefy ward assistant stoically listening to a litany of complaints from an elderly man in a wheelchair.

  Critical care was quieter—hushed, a library where those hovering between cured and dead were housed. Nurses seemed to stand a bit straighter, weigh a bit less and walk with more purpose than their counterparts on the first floor. Voices were muted. Overhead fluorescents spread a cold fever of light. Anna loitered by the elevators as if she were waiting to ascend or descend until the hall was nearly empty. One woman remained, a stalwart nurse in white smock and trousers seated behind a high counter. A computer screen absorbed her attention. A better chance might not present itself. Trying to look as if she had a reason to be in the ward, Anna moved purposefully down the hal
l, opening each door as she came to it and peeking in on misery in myriad forms. The third door was the one she sought. Having slipped inside, she closed it noiselessly behind her.

  She’d never seen anyone in a coma before. Corinne didn’t look dead and she didn’t look as if she were sleeping. Her blond hair had been washed free of blood and lay neatly combed on the pillow. The blue eyes were closed and the lips bloodless, slightly parted. Sleeping Beauty, Anna thought. The actress had that death-in-life look of the fairy tale princess awaiting a kiss.

  If caught, Anna knew she’d be tossed out if not arrested. Losing no time, she moved to the bedside, pulled the field fingerprinting kit from her pack and inked the fingers of Corinne’s right hand. As she rolled each one, marking the print in its proper place on the fingerprint card, she noticed how slender the woman’s hands were. No strength there. In a sudden flash of anger, Anna condemned those who clubbed baby harp seals, drowned kittens and attacked fragile women.

  On the positive side, she couldn’t but notice how much easier it was to fingerprint a “dead” person. Small blessings. She bagged the card and got out a wet wipe to clean Corinne’s hand. Voices in the hall frightened her away. She hurried out, leaving the caregivers to marvel over what medical phenomenon had blackened the digits of their new patient.

  EMMETT WAS NOT yet on duty. For that Anna was grateful. She’d worn out her welcome, and possibly that of Frederick, for years to come. Detective Mallow was in, a chicken-necked young officer informed her, his tone suggesting Mallow was always in and this was a bad thing.

  Declining escort, Anna threaded through the jumble of cops and criminals to the corner where Mallow dwelt. Puffs of lint still held his undivided attention. To announce herself, Anna fell back on the cliché of clearing her throat.

  “I know you’re there,” he said without reproof. “I’m just not at a stopping place. Be a minute.”

  Anna drifted to the bulletin board on the wall next to his desk and read detailed descriptions of items she’d thought too ordinary to describe. Detective Mallow had broken down such homely things as a smear of Pepsodent and a chip of Pretty in Pink nail enamel to their basic components. To what end, she had no idea.

  “Done,” he said. “Evil laid low by a speck of lint. How do you like them apples?” His triumph was so heartfelt Anna couldn’t but admit she liked the apples just fine, enjoying with him the lesson in humility the little things could teach the best and worst humanity had to offer.

  “Emmett run your prints?” He pushed back from his desk and Anna followed him to a nook in the rear of the room, where he poured himself a celebratory cup of coffee and offered her one. A brief look at the tarry mess and she politely declined.

  “He ran them last night,” she said, watching him spoon precise amounts of Cremora into his cup with an aluminum measuring device attached to his key ring. “No matches.”

  “And what is it that brings you back to this garden spot on such a lovely summer morn?”

  “I’ve got another set of prints.” She trailed him back to his corner.

  “I see. You want these run too?”

  “No. I want to compare them with the print you lifted from the safety pin.”

  The detective thought a moment, blowing gently on coffee Anna suspected hadn’t been hot for several hours. “We can do that. It’ll cost you, though.”

  The sour taste of disappointment flooded her throat. Not at spending the money, at losing respect for Mallow. “I’ll want to hear the story,” he continued. “I never could resist a story. I think it’s why I got into this business. I’ve always got to stay till the end. Find out who did it. Who gets the girl.”

  Anna’s relief was out of proportion to the incident and she realized how deeply she needed to believe that members of the human race could harbor the altruism gene.

  Back in his immaculate cubbyhole, Mallow retrieved copies of the prints taken from the plastic head of the safety pin, laid them next to the card Anna had brought from the hospital and sat down, his jeweler’s glass over his eye. Humming “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” he studied the two. With the end of a finely sharpened pencil he pointed out the match points. When he finished he handed her back the card and cleaned his work space. Only when all was in order did he speak.

  “The prints from the safety pin were partials,” he told her. “And one was smudged. But I can say with reasonable certainty that there is a match to the thumb and forefinger of the card you showed me.”

  “Reasonable certainty?”

  “A perfectionist, eh?” Mallow leaned a skinny haunch against the desk, folded his arms and let his eyes wander as his brain engaged at full capacity. “I’d say a sixty to sixty-seven percent certainty on the index finger and a ninety-seven point three percent certainty on the thumb.” He winked at Anna. “Now my story.” Over unbelievably bad coffee and stale bear claws, Anna told him what she knew and what she suspected. Mallow listened with flattering intentness.

  “So the lady scratched the code or whatever it is on her own arm?” he asked when she’d finished.

  “It looks that way. We’d thought it was some kind of signature or message from the attacker, but the delicacy with which it was done bothered me. I’ve had zero experience with serial, mutilation-type murders—” A look of such pain and sorrow flashed across the detective’s mild features that Anna knew the same was not true of him. “But it seemed to me a person violent enough to bash in a woman’s skull would have hacked out his message in a bloodier fashion.”

  “You were right,” Mallow said, and Anna could tell being right ranked high on the detective’s priority list. “Now that you know the woman made the marks herself, what does that tell you?” He used the tone of an instructor to a promising pupil. Anna was not offended. If she was lucky, she would never know as much about man’s inhumanity to everybody and everything as Detective Mallow did.

  “The obvious would be that she was trying to tell us who her attacker was,” Anna said, forming her thoughts carefully, not wanting to disappoint her teacher with sloppy thinking or poor logic. “If we take STOP at face value, that leaves MUDP four J. Could be initials. M.U.D. There’s a violent boyfriend in the mix. A guy named Michael Underwood. That’s a start. Stop M.U.”

  “Underwood’s the drunk with the half-alibi,” Mallow said.

  “Right. His Stanley Kowalski routine on Liberty could have been a cover-up.”

  “Could be.”

  “I don’t buy it either. The guy had a blood alcohol content of point three five. Not exactly in any condition to be clever or circumspect.”

  “And there’s theDPfour J left hanging about,” Mallow added.

  Anna dumped her half-consumed coffee in the garbage and slung her daypack over her shoulder. “Thanks for everything. Are you off Fourth of July weekend?”

  “I am, but I’ve got a few loose ends to tie up. If you need me I should be around.”

  The world was made up of loose ends and Mallow couldn’t resist them. Total job security. “Thanks,” Anna said again, and ventured out into the heat. Not yet noon and it was so hot she was tempted to stop in at one of the hole-in-the-wall groceries and buy a dozen eggs just to see if one would really fry on the sidewalk.

  Cabs were out; cabs were cursed with cabdrivers. Anna hadn’t seen Molly yet today, but thinking of the long subway ride from East Harlem to the Upper West Side brought on a twinge of nerves. Not at the incarceration or the crowding but at the time. Anna wasn’t sure why, she just knew she had to be moving. Ambient anxiety, panic attacks: this was the stuff she should be talking to Molly about, or at least one of her colleagues. Anna had gotten a B+ in Psych 101. She could hazard a guess as to what the psychiatrists might say: She was projecting her own fears onto a criminal case. Because she was out of control of Molly’s health and her own life, she needed to control something, hence her preoccupation with Corinne, Agnes and Hatch. Because her ex-boyfriend kept proposing to her older sister, she needed to find an arena in which she was neede
d.

  Anna wasn’t interested in hearing any of that. Law enforcement believed in little voices more than they did in psychology. Anna believed in both. Today she chose to ignore Freud and the gang; she was in tune with the little voice.

  From Grand Central, she called Patsy’s number on a pay phone. To shut out the clamor of loudspeakers, voices and feet, she jammed a finger in her free ear. At noon on a weekday the place was as busy as Grand Central. Patsy didn’t answer. Lunchtime. On the eleventh ring somebody picked up. Anna didn’t recall having seen a switchboard. The secretaries probably took turns covering each other’s phones. A garbled voice said, “Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island National Monuments.” Poor dear had to say that every time the phone rang. Over lunch she evidently had to say it around a mouthful of egg salad. Anna let a drop of compassion soak in, then asked her, “Could you put me through to law enforcement?”

  Two rings and law enforcement picked up.

  “Joshua?”

  “He’s on nights. May I help you?”

  Nights. Of course. Her mind was not up to par. The voice was that of the one ugly Park Policeman. Proving she was as shallow as any regular Joe, she couldn’t remember the ugly one’s name. She made a mental note not to be such a pig in the future.

  “Can I help you?” he repeated.

  “No. Thanks, though.” Anna had to tell the Park Police what she’d found out about the pin. She was not deviant—or foolish—enough to hoard information that might help an investigation. A pay phone in a noisy train station wasn’t the place to do it. She’d be on Ellis in person soon enough.

  THE LESS THAN exquisite Park Policeman’s name was Brandon. Though she hated wearing them, Anna appreciated name tags for situations such as this. Dutifully, she gave him the safety pin and both sets of prints. Dutifully, she sat through his lecture on jurisdiction, removing evidence from a crime scene and obstructing justice. When she didn’t seem properly contrite he turned up the heat, making vague threats about reports to superiors. After a while he ran down, his need to be boss sated for the moment. To soften him up, she made flattering chitchat, then asked what they had on Michael Underwood.