Blind Sight Read online

  On the other side of the room, his expert on nuns, Father DuPont, stood alongside Detective Janos, a gorilla cop with a face of pure menace and a voice of surprising softness. Janos, a gentle, polite person, confounded everyone he met, and that made him the perfect choice for this assignment. Priest and gorilla faced the cork wall—the bloody one, with pictures of a woman’s body laid open on the autopsy table, her innards hollowed out. For Jack Coffey’s purposes, these shots were better than the crime-scene pictures of wounds that were too modest by comparison.

  Though appointed by the Pope, Cardinal Rice was the town’s best-liked politician in every election year, and he had more influence than God. And so his emissary, Father DuPont, had been shown every courtesy at Special Crimes. Rare was the civilian who was allowed into the incident room, though this man had been invited only to view this one set of photographs—to soften him up for the detective’s interview. And the priest did seem paler now, sickened and so politely bludgeoned by the bloody ruin of Sister Michael’s dead body.

  —

  MALLORY KNOCKED ON THE DOOR of the mugging victim, Albert Costello.

  Riker leaned against a wall and read her copy of the old man’s police report. It matched the date when the nun and her nephew had disappeared from this same street. “But this guy won’t fit the pattern. The cop coded it as a straight up bop-and-drop.”

  “No, that’s a training-day screwup.” Mallory banged on the door one more time. “The partner, the real cop, signed off on it, but he let the rookie do the paperwork.”

  “How do you know that?” Who, apart from this precinct’s desk sergeant, would know that? Riker could not ask if she was setting him up for a sucker bet. They had an audience.

  “There’s people been livin’ here for years,” said a woman from the first floor, “and they think it’s an empty apartment. That’s how quiet the old guy is.”

  “Oh, yeah,” said the neighbor from an upper floor, when he looked at the photograph filed with the mugging report. “When I’m home on the weekends, I see him outside sometimes, just hanging out on the sidewalk.”

  Another tenant sniffed the air. “Cigarettes? A smoker.” Her face scrunched up. “Well, at least it doesn’t smell like he died in there.”

  Mallory turned to this woman from the top floor. “You pass this door every day, and you never caught a whiff of cigarette smoke?”

  “Hey, I would’ve noticed if it was this bad.”

  The jingle of keys bobbing on a belt loop announced the building superintendent, who was huffing up the stairs to unlock the apartment. When the onlookers and the super had been dismissed, Mallory opened the door and flicked on the light.

  The odor of cigarette smoke was thick, and dust coated lampshades and tables. Riker hunkered down to touch a spill on the carpet. It smelled like beer. “Still wet. The old guy hasn’t been gone long.”

  Mallory was staring at the only clean ashtray in the apartment. Others were in various stages of full to overflowing with cigarette butts. “Our perp’s been here,” she said.

  “What?” Where was this coming from? Riker only saw evidence of one occupant in the beer cans that littered a small table next to an armchair.

  “The perp’s a smoker, too,” she said. “He didn’t just take his butts with him. He washed an ashtray. No DNA left behind, and we won’t find any prints.”

  Riker picked up a week-old newspaper and uncovered another empty ashtray, but this one had not been cleaned in years. The detective recognized the crusted residue of every ashtray in his own apartment. He turned to look at the efficiency kitchen, rendered useless by dirty dishes overflowing the sink to cover the countertop and stove. That area’s small patch of linoleum recorded a hundred sticky spills never cleaned up. The garbage pail was full of soiled paper plates and cups, a few plastic knives, forks and deli napkins that accompanied take-out food—and solved the problem of no clean dishes. The old man who lived here never washed anything. So his partner had zeroed in on one ashtray, clean and shiny, and now Riker was a believer.

  “He’s finishing up his original kill list.” Mallory pulled out her cell phone and called in an all-points bulletin for Albert Costello, eighty-one years of age and last seen wearing a thick bandage on the back of his head.

  Riker studied a framed photograph on the wall. The resident of this apartment was pictured here in younger days, standing with a gang of laughing people, and the woman beside him was his bride. There were other such pictures on every wall, a younger Costello among friends who, one frame by another, dwindled in number, and they were all dated to other eras by the clothes they wore. The most recent picture was at least a decade old.

  This completed Riker’s portrait of a loner to fit their victim profile. “You figure the kid and the nun witnessed the attack on Costello?”

  “There’s more to it. They did show up before our perp could finish with the old man. But I think Angela Quill knew the killer. That’s why he switched victims.”

  Riker was skeptical. There was only so much to be gleaned from one clean ashtray.

  —

  DOWN THE HALL, the squad room of Special Crimes was in chaos tonight, phones ringing, men coming and going, shouted words flying desk to desk.

  The incident room was an oasis of silence—no phones in here, only the rustle of papers being pinned to the cork walls. Blood-red was the dominant color of one broad patch that now held autopsy photos of all four victims. The adjoining wall held the paper clutter of their vital statistics and the statements of people living close to three of them with no clue that those victims had ever existed. Lieutenant Coffey could not claim a lack of manpower on this one. Every cop in town was at his disposal to run down leads.

  Detective Gonzales ducked his head in the door to say, “We got company. It’s Lieutenant Maglia.”

  “Good.” Just the bastard he needed to see. “Bring him in here.” Coffey turned to a group of detectives gathered at the back wall. “I need the room,” he said, and all of them filed out.

  The visitor walked in.

  No, that lieutenant strutted inside and slammed the door behind him. This was a departure from Maglia’s go-along, get-along nature, but offense was always the best defense in Copland. He had also come armed with a better head of hair, a few more inches in height, and ten more years on the job.

  Coffey waved his hand toward a group of metal folding chairs, but the lieutenant in charge of Missing Persons would not sit down. Tony Maglia jammed his hands into pants pockets and faked impatience when he said, “Jack, I haven’t got time for this.”

  Yeah, right. Maglia had refused to talk on the telephone, and this in-your-face visit was his own idea. His squad’s major foul-up on the two missing Quills required privacy, and that was understandable. This was not the first time Maglia’s people had mishandled a case, and this one would warrant investigation. Who knew how private a phone line might be, who might listen in—or what might be recorded?

  And who was more paranoid than a cop? Nobody.

  Jack Coffey walked over to the evidence table at the back wall. By a come-hither hand gesture, he invited the other lieutenant to join him. He gently laid down the nun’s poster. Alongside it—bang—he slammed down the widely circulated photograph of a kidnapped schoolboy, the other missing Quill.

  Point made.

  He was pissed off.

  “Tony, they even look alike . . . and your guys never made the connection?”

  “The report was filed for Sister Michael, not Angela Quill. It was called in by a priest.”

  “No, it was made in person—and backed up by a doctor at New York Hospital.” Coffey made a show of scanning the cork walls. “Somewhere in here, I got a copy of the doc’s email confirmation. The nun’s medical condition should’ve bumped her up to the top of your list. That’s why the priest gave this—”

  “There was no photo whe
n we—”

  “Your squad got the photo and all her bio material . . . including the name and address for Angela Quill’s mother. It was personally handed to your guy.”

  “And that detective was out the door six seconds later—huntin’ for a missin’ kid!”

  “A kid with the same last name . . . same face.”

  “I’ve got no picture! No bio and no right name for that damn nun! I saw the goddamn file. So . . . whatever you think happened—”

  “Would a priest lie?” Coffey said this with a broad smile. “Father DuPont didn’t think your detective was all that interested in his missing nun. And that’s . . . odd. You see, before the report was filed, he went to Mayor Polk for help. He didn’t want the nun getting lost in your paper shuffle.” Following that visit to the mayor, the Catholic vote, in the person of the cardinal’s man, should have guaranteed that Tony Maglia’s detective was standing at attention and serving high tea when that priest walked in the door. “Oh, yeah, and Father DuPont was back at Gracie Mansion today—to ID his dead nun. Her body was on the top of the pile. I think he’s still in my office. Should I invite him in here right now?” No? Good choice. In any conversation of evidence lost—or destroyed—it was probably best to keep the witnesses to a minimum. “The priest tells me he gave everything to—”

  “Detective Fry.” And now Tony Maglia decided to take a seat. He needed to sit down. “Fry remembers the priest coming in.”

  “Twice in one day,” said Coffey—just being helpful. “First to report her missing, and then—”

  “And maybe my guy got an envelope or somethin.’ But it’s not like he had time to plow through it. Like I said, Detective Fry was out the door, followin’ up a lead on that blind kid. He’s got no idea what happened to the damn envelope.”

  Jack Coffey had an idea or two. Early this morning, the nun’s photograph and her personal details would have become an embarrassment to Maglia’s squad, and the envelope had gone into the shredder.

  His other idea revolved around a cover-up by the chief of detectives. That theory was born from Father DuPont’s colorful account of Detective Mallory’s interview style at Gracie Mansion. Added fuel was the absence of a complaint from Chief Goddard, who should have nailed her ass to a cross by now for insubordination.

  She would never mess with that bastard unless she had something on him. Or maybe she had only played the chief of Ds with that possibility. Mallory ran a good game.

  —

  ALBERT COSTELLO finished his take-out dinner in the stranger’s van as they rode up the parkway along the Hudson River. The road ahead was bright with streetlamps, headlights and taillights. Lit windows in tall buildings were popping out like stars. The day was done. A damn shame. The old man wished it could have lasted longer.

  The younger man at the wheel offered him another invitation.

  “Yeah, great idea.” An evening stroll by the water was just what he needed. A chance to walk off a heavy meal. A few smokes. A little conversation. “Oh, yeah, the bridge. Perfect.” He might see some more boats. “I live on a damn island, and ten years ago—that’s the last time I seen the water.”

  —

  THE COMMANDER of Special Crimes turned off the noise when he shut the door to his office—and locked it. Next, he closed the venetian blinds on his wide window view of the hustle out there in the squad room. After killing the ringer for the landline, Jack Coffey sat down at his desk.

  Head back. Feet up. Eyes closed.

  There were no more distractions, but he had no peace. No one in this city would give a damn about three of the murder victims. Hermits died every day, and who knew or cared till the bodies got ripe and the maggots hatched? But the fourth one, the dead nun, was a threat in high echelons. Why?

  Chief of Detectives Joe Goddard had not weighed in yet, and that was also strange. It was a rare day in a high-profile investigation when Coffey did not hear that thug’s heavy breathing on the telephone.

  Then there was the problem of Father DuPont’s station-house interview. It made a liar of Lieutenant Maglia. The priest had asked for the mayor’s clout behind a search for the nun. That was not in dispute. DuPont was the cardinal’s man; a favor for His Eminence was political bedrock, a guarantee that Andrew Polk would light a fire under Tony Maglia’s ass before the nun’s missing-person report was filed.

  But Maglia never got that phone call from the mayor?

  And lie number two?

  Maglia’s squad had never owned the blind boy’s case. A suspected kidnapping for ransom was not in their job description. So the story about Detective Fry running out the door to follow up a lead on Jonah Quill—that was bogus. Every squad in town had logged hours on that case, but not one single lead had come from Missing Persons. So why blow off the priest when he came calling, not once but twice, begging for help to find his lost nun? If Father DuPont had the full support of the mayor—

  The lieutenant opened his eyes.

  Shit!

  Clarity like this could knock a man to his knees in prayer for his job and his pension. He was making a Mallory kind of a leap, and that worried him. Twisted? Yeah. But there was one explanation for Maglia’s man not bothering to open an envelope with the nun’s picture and bio inside.

  What if the mayor did call Missing Persons—to bury the search for the nun?

  Given every fact and lie, that was the only scenario that made any sense, and it made no damn sense at all.

  5

  Four and five flights of apartment dwellers lived private lives on the upper floors of the old brownstones. At ground level, the cafés, shops and bars were jumping, manic, and the crawling cars were helpless; foot traffic ruled here. Riker had stepped out of his partner’s slipstream, and now he executed the New York step-and-glide to avoid an incoming tourist with a kamikaze way of walking, leading with the nose and begging to get clipped.

  The street was jammed with people and humming with energy along these three blocks between Third Avenue and Avenue A, though it was not like the old days. Over time, even the air had been gentrified when the scent of weed had gone indoors. But the local headshop still sold gaudy feather boas alongside the bongs.

  Passing a store where he could get a cappuccino and a tattoo, Riker looked up to see the mustard-colored words, eat me, written on a giant hotdog suspended over the sidewalk. That was new. Or was it? So many years had passed since he was last here. This narrow tree-lined stretch of nineteenth-century houses was more than a neighborhood to Riker. St. Marks Place was not a place at all. It was a time. Many a midnight in his youth had been a rock ’n’ roll party for a stoned teenage boy, dodging cars to dance in the street that reeked of weed and thrummed with canned music from high windows and live tunes from his own guitar, played for dollars and change.

  Where did the time go?

  A middle-aged Riker stopped by a building as familiar as an old friend. Back in the eighties, Keith Richards and Mick Jagger sat on that stoop in a rock video to promote an album. He shook his head, squinting a bit, as if that might help him recall the name of the—

  “The old Stones album?” Mallory had been watching him waste their time, and she had caught him in this struggle with his memory. “It’s called Waiting on a Friend.”

  Like her foster father, she was an encyclopedia of rock ’n’ roll trivia. And though that music was Riker’s religion, not hers, he knew she could even supply the album’s release date if she wanted to get him for getting old, a drag that slowed her down. But she only turned her back on him and walked away.

  He caught up to her as she entered a corner bodega with a flower stall out front, the one visited by Father Brenner while backtracking his lost nun. The detectives confirmed the day and the hour for a purchase of two red roses. The owner only knew Sister Michael as “My Angie.” He had known her since she was a child, and—bonus—he recalled that she had been in a hurry. But tha
t was at nine o’clock in the morning, and Mrs. Quill had not expected her daughter before ten. So, somewhere along this street, the nun had planned to meet up with her nephew, and a café was a likely fit.

  Out on the sidewalk again, they retraced Angela Quill’s steps, but Mallory moved past the first café, showing more interest in the wares that a young sidewalk hawker had laid out on a spread cloth. She leaned down to grab a white baton and held it inches from the crouching teenager’s face. “Were did you get this?”

  There was no badge or gun on display, but everything about her said cop to the strung-out youngster. A drug addict was an easy call. The boy was way too thin and too scared. “I dunno. . . . I get lots of stuff from the trash.”

  “No, you stole it.” Mallory held the baton by its ends, pulling them outward to telescope the short piece of fiberglass to the length of a white cane. “You stole this from a blind boy.” And the words, you cockroach, were implied.

  “No! I found it on the sidewalk up the street. I swear.”

  “When?”

  “Who knows,” said the hawker. “Maybe a few days ago.”

  “Where? Exactly . . . where?”

  The teenager’s hand shook with a palsy as he pointed up the street. “You see that store with the big rental sign? I found it on the sidewalk . . . maybe a few yards past that building.”

  The detectives walked back the way they had come, passing Albert Costello’s street door to stand before a dark storefront with a realtor’s sign. This was the address where the old man had been found unconscious—a vacant store. And now Riker knew how Mallory had pegged the mugging report as a rookie kind of error. Obviously, the victim had been moved to this secondary location, and so the assault had not been a classic bop-and-drop and rob ’em where they fall. Oh, and the door was not locked—an open door in the most locked-down town in America.