Cop Hater (8 page)

associates, relatives, sweethearts, enemies, etc:
Ditto.

places frequented, hang-outs:
Ditto.

habits:
Ditto.

traces and clues found on the scene:
Heelprint in dog feces. At lab now. Four shells. Two bullets. Ditto.

fingerprints found:
None.

Carella scratched his head, sighed against the heat, and then headed back for the precinct house to see if the new Ballistics report had come in yet.

 
The widow of Michael Reardon was a full-breasted woman in her late thirties. She had dark hair and green eyes, and an Irish nose spattered with a clicheful of freckles. She had a face for merry-go-rounds and roller-coaster rides, a face that could split in laughter and girlish glee when water was splashed on her at the seashore. She was a girl who could get drunk sniffing the vermouth cork before it was passed over a martini. She was a girl who went to church on Sundays, a girl who'd belonged to the Newman Club when she was younger, a girl who was a virgin two days after Mike had taken her for his bride. She had good legs, very white, and a good body, and her name was May.

She was dressed in black on the hot afternoon of July 25th, and her feet were planted firmly on the floor before her, and her hands were folded in her lap, and there was no laughter on the face made for roller-coaster rides.

"I haven't told the children yet," she said to Bush. "The children don't know. How can I tell them? What can I say?" '

"It's a rough thing," Bush said in his quiet voice. His scalp felt sticky and moist. He needed a haircut, and his wild red hair was shrieking against the heat.

"Yes," May said. "Can I get you a beer or something? It's very hot. Mike used to take a beer when he got home. No matter what time it was, he always took a beer. He was a very well-ordered person. I mean, he did things carefully and on schedule. I think he wouldn't have been able to sleep if he didn't have that glass of beer when he got home."

"Did he ever stop in the neighborhood bars?"

"No. He always drank here, in the house. And never whiskey. Only one or two glasses of beer."

Mike Reardon,
Bush thought.
He used to be a cop and a friend. Now he's a victim and a corpse, and I ask questions about him.

"We were supposed to get an air-conditioning unit," May said. "At least, we talked about it. This apartment gets awfully hot. That's because we're so close to the building next door."

"Yes," Bush said. "Mrs. Reardon, did Mike have any enemies that you know of? I mean, people he knew outside his line of duty?"

"No, I don't think so. Mike was a very easy-going sort Well, you worked with him. You know."

"Can you tell me what happened the night he was killed? Before he left the house?"

"I was sleeping when he left. Whenever he had the twelve-to-eight tour, we argued about whether we should try to get any sleep before he went in."

"Argued?"

"Well, you know, we discussed it. Mike preferred staying up, but I have two children, and I'm beat when it hits ten o'clock. So he usually compromised on those nights, and we both got to bed early—at about nine, I suppose."

"Were you asleep when he left?"

"Yes. But I woke up just before he went out."

"Did he say anything to you? Anything that might indicate he was worried about an ambush? Had he received a threat or anything?"

"No." May Reardon glanced at her watch. "I have to be leaving soon, Detective Bush. I have an appointment at the funeral parlor. I wanted to ask you about that. I know you're doing tests on ... on the body and all ... but the family . . . Well, the family is kind of old-fashioned and we want to ... we want to make arrangements. Do you have any idea when . .. when you'll be finished with him?"

"Soon, Mrs. Reardon. We don't want to miss any bets. A careful autopsy may put us closer to finding his killer."

"Yes, I know. I didn't want you to think . . . it's just the family. They ask questions. They don't understand. They don't know what it means to have him gone, to wake up in the morning and not. . . not have him here." She bit her lip and turned her face from Bush. "Forgive me. Mike wouldn't . . . wouldn't like this. Mike wouldn't want me to . . ." She shook her head and swallowed heavily. Bush watched her, feeling sudden empathy for this woman who was Wife, feeling sudden compassion for all women everywhere who had ever had their men torn from them by violence. His thoughts wandered to Alice, and he wondered idly how she would feel if he stopped a bullet, and then he put the thought out of his mind. It wasn't good to think things like that. Not these days. Not after two in a row. Jesus, was it possible there was a nut loose? Somebody who'd marked the whole goddamn precinct as his special target?

Yes, it was possible.

It was very damn possible, and so it wasn't good to think about things like Alice's reaction to his own death. You thought about things like that, and they consumed your mind, and then when you needed a clear mind which could react quickly to possible danger, you didn't have it. And that's when you were up the creek without a paddle.

What had Mike Reardon been thinking of when he'd been gunned down?

What had been in the mind of David Foster when the four slugs ripped into his body?

Of course, it was possible the two deaths were unrelated. Possible, but not very probable. The m.o. was remarkably similar, and once the Ballistics report came through they'd know for sure whether they were dealing with one man or two.

Bush's money was on the one-man possibility.

"If there's anything else you want to ask me," May said. She had pulled herself together now, and she faced him squarely, her face white, her eyes large.

"If you'll just collect any address books, photographs, telephone numbers, newspaper clippings he may have saved, anything that may give us a lead onto his friends or even his relatives, I'd be much obliged."

"Yes, I can do that," May said.

"And you can't remember anything unusual that may have some bearing on this, is that right?"

"No, I can't. Detective Bush, what am I going to tell the kids? I sent them off to a movie. I told them their daddy was out on a plant. But how long can I keep it from them? How do you tell a pair of kids that their father is dead? Oh God, what am I going to do?"

Bush remained silent. In a little while, May Reardon went for the stuff he wanted.

At 3:42 P.M. on July 25th, the Ballistics report reached Carella's desk. The shells and bullets found at the scene of Mike Reardon's death had been put beneath the comparison microscope together with the shells and bullets used in the killing of David Foster.

The Ballistics report stated that the same weapon had been used in both murders.

Chapter EIGHT

on the night
that David Foster was killed, a careless mongrel searching for food in garbage cans had paused long enough to sully the sidewalk of the city. The dog had been careless, to be sure, and a human being had been just as careless, and there was a portion of a heelprint for the Lab boys to work over, solely because of this combined record of carelessness. The Lab boys turned to with something akin to distaste.

The heelprint was instantly photographed, not because the boys liked to play with cameras, but simply because they knew accidents frequently occurred in the making of a cast. The heelprint was placed on a black-stained cardboard scale, marked off in inches. The camera, supported above the print by a reversible tripod, the lens parallel to the print to avoid any false perspectives, clicked merrily away. Satisfied that the heelprint was now preserved for posterity—photographically, at least—the Lab boys turned to the less antiseptic task of making the cast.

One of the boys filled a rubber cup with half a pint of water. Then he spread plaster of Paris over the water, taking care not to stir it, allowing it to sink to the bottom of its own volition. He kept adding plaster of Paris until the water couldn't absorb anymore of it, until he'd dumped about ten ounces of it into the cup. Then he brought the cup to one of the other boys who was preparing the print to take the mixture.

Because the print was in a soft material, it was sprayed first with shellac and then with a thin coat of oil. The plaster of Paris mixture was stirred and then carefully applied to the prepared print. It was applied with a spoon in small portions. When the print was covered to a thickness of about one-third of an inch, the boys spread pieces of twine and sticks onto the plaster to reinforce it, taking care that the debris did not touch the bottom of the print and destroy its details. They then applied another coat of plaster to the print, and allowed the cast to harden. From time to time, they touched the plaster, feeling for warmth, knowing that warmth meant the cast was hardening.

Since there was only one print, and since it was not even a full print, and since it was impossible to get a Walking Picture from this single print, and since the formula

 
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a formula designed to give the complete picture of a man's walk in terms of step length, breadth of step, length of left foot, right foot, greatest width of left foot, right foot, wear on heel and sole—since the formula could not be applied to a single print, the Lab boys did all they could with what they had.

And they decided, after careful study, that the heel was badly worn on the outside edge, a peculiarity which told them the man belonging to that heel undoubtedly walked with a somewhat duck-like waddle. They also decided that the heel was not the original heel of the shoe, that it was a rubber heel which had been put on during a repair job, and that the third nail from the shank side of the heel, on the left, had been bent when applying the new heel.

And—quite coincidentally
if
the heelprint happened to have been left by the murderer—the heel bore the clearly stamped trade name "O'Sullivan," and everyone knows that O'Sullivan is America's Number One Heel.

The joke was an old one. The Lab boys hardly laughed at all.

The newspapers were not laughing very much, either.

The newspapers were taking this business of cop-killing quite seriously. Two morning tabloids, showing remarkable versatility in headlining the same incident, respectively reported the death of David Foster with the words SECOND COP SLAIN and KILLER SLAYS 2ND COP.

The afternoon tabloid, a newspaper hard-pressed to keep up with the circulation of the morning sheets, boldly announced KILLER ROAMS STREETS. And then, because this particular newspaper was vying for circulation, and because this particular newspaper made it a point to "expose" anything which happened to be in the public's eye at the moment—anything from Daniel Boone to long winter underwear, anything which gave them a free circulation ride on the then-popular bandwagon—their front page carried a red banner that day, and the red banner shouted "The Police Jungle—What Goes On In Our Precincts" and then in smaller white type against the red, "See Murray Schneider, p. 4."

And anyone who had the guts to wade through the first three pages of cheesecake and chest-thumping liberalism, discovered on page four that Murray Schneider blamed the deaths of Mike Reardon and David Foster upon "the graft-loaded corruptness of our filth-ridden Gestapo."

In the graft-loaded Squad Room of the corrupt 87th Precinct, two detectives named Steve Carella and Hank Bush stood behind a filth-ridden desk and pored over several cards their equally corrupt fellow-officers had dug from the Convictions File.

"Try this for size," Bush said.

"I'm listening," Carella said.

"Some punk gets pinched by Mike and Dave, right?"

"Right."

"The judge throws the book at him, and he gets room and board from the State for the next five or ten years. Okay?"

"Okay."

"Then he gets out. He's had a lot of time to mull this over, a lot of time to build up his original peeve into a big hate. The one thing in his mind is to get Mike and Dave. So he goes out for them. He gets Mike first, and then he tries to get Dave quick, before this hate of his cools down. Wham, he gets Dave, too."

"It reads good," Carella said.

"That's why I don't buy this Flannagan punk."

"Why not?"

'Take a look at the card. Burglary, possession of burglary tools, a rape away back in '47. Mike and Dave got him on the last burglary pinch. This was the first time he got convicted, and he drew ten, just got out last month on parole after doing five years."

"So."

"So I don't figure a guy with a big hate is going to be good enough to cut ten years to five. Besides, Flannagan never carried a gun all the while he was working. He was a gent."