Sleight of Hand (7 page)

CHAPTER 5

"Hey pardner, how's it going?" Jimmy Dolan called out as Drake entered the squad room on the fourth floor of the Zone Seven station house the next morning.  "Good to have you back."

Drake winced at his partner's bonhomie.  Because of him, Miller had both of them working cold case files, obviously not trusting Drake to go it alone.  By rights Jimmy should be pissed as hell for being taken off the streets and forced into babysitting duty.  

Instead, Jimmy wrapped his beefy ex-marine's hand around a dusty homicide binder and handed it to him.  "This is the one we should be working."

"You've already gone through them?"  Drake had expected to take at least a day combing the files, seeing which cases had any viable leads worth following.

"Didn't have to.  I've been wanting another crack at this one for a long time."

Drake opened the murder book.  The seam of a manila envelope had worn through, and crime scene photos spilled out.  He spread them over his desk.  

Jimmy leaned back in his seat, hands behind his head.  "Me and your dad worked that one, nine years ago now, right before he made sergeant." 

Drake nodded, his attention riveted by stark black and white photos of the body of a young child.  A girl, maybe four or five, garroted and left on a muddy patch of grass.  She wore a pale flannel nightgown bordered with ruffles and lace.

"Sofia Frantz.  We kept coming back to her over and over, but we never got anywhere with it.  Your dad thought it was the work of a serial, tried to tie it in with several other murders, but got nowhere."

"You try VICAP?" Drake asked, his eyes raking quickly over the photos, absorbing every detail.  The FBI violent crimes database was supposed to pick up on patterns left behind by signature killers.  He turned to the next photo, a more distant view of the crime scene, and was surprised to see that the muddy lawn was actually a playground.

"Yeah, more than once.  But they couldn't find any pattern either.  Want to see the others?"  Jimmy slid a stack of photos across the desk.  "Two girls, one boy and one woman. The oldest goes back eleven years, the most recent four years ago."

He looked up at that.  His father had died seven years ago, so Jimmy must have continued working the case afterwards.  

Jimmy read his thoughts and nodded.  "This one's a ball buster.  Might want to think twice before you dive in."

Too late.  Drake sorted through the photos, taking the crime scenes one by one.  Frantz was the second, nine years ago now.  Two years before her was an older boy, Adam Cleary, six, found in identical circumstances but this time in the front of the Phipps' Conservatory, a well-traveled and well-lit area that attracted crowds of school tours and tourists every day.  

"All in public places?" he asked without looking up from the boy's bloated face.  Cleary was in his pajamas also.

"All but the woman, Regina Eades"  

"Guy probably lives in the city proper, comfortable with the roads, knows how to get in and out of potentially congested areas fast."  Drake continued cataloguing the carnage, turning to the next victim.  A woman in her early thirties, killed fourteen months after Frantz.  Nothing for four years, then another girl, Tanya Kent.  This one was African American and the youngest so far, just a toddler.  Body found in the playground at the Highland Park reservoir, just like Frantz's.  

"You sure about the woman?" he asked Jimmy.  "She's not in her night clothes like the children are.  And crossing races, sexes and ages–not typical for a signature killer.  The long delay before the last bothers me too. What cooled him off?  Unless he was picked up for something else."

"Your father decided on the first three based on the scenes and the autopsies.  I'm not certain about the woman.  She was the only one restrained, taken near her work, and killed right away.  He might have been wrong about her," Jimmy said this last as if it was a remote possibility.

"She's the only one large enough to pose any threat."  Drake shuffled the photos as if they were poker cards.  Placed side by side, the children's crime scenes appeared almost identical.  An unholy flush.  He had to agree with his father, something seemed to link them, they felt like they belonged to the same actor.  "No leads?"

"Nothing that panned out.  What'd you say we take a crack at them?"

"I'm in."

"All right then, grab that fancy camera of yours and let's go."  

They spent the morning on a tour of the crime scenes.  Drake took his time.  One good thing about cold cases, no one was breathing down your neck, forcing results.

There were three sites used to dump the four bodies.  Part of the signature, or just convenient?  The first was Adam Cleary's, age six, found dead in the lawn in front of the Phipps Conservatory. Jimmy drove, edging the unmarked white Intrepid into an empty spot between the two traffic lanes in an island of parking spaces reserved for conservatory volunteers.

A jogger passed them on the crest of the hill opposite, following one of the many paths in Schenley park.  Two elderly women sat on one of the benches that lined the stone wall while an Asian couple maneuvered, vying for the best possible photo of the sprawling Victorian edifice of metal and glass.

Drake had always loved the conservatory–so many colors and textures, light bending in a dozen delightful ways as it reflected through the multitude of glass panels and onto glistening leaves of plants from all over the world.  To him the Phipps was an oasis of quiet, muted footsteps, hidden alcoves revealing exotic treasures of silken orchids, tangled vines, colors that challenged his imagination.  

His mother brought him here often, bemused by his fascination.  Drake Sr. hadn't been as impressed by his son's passion for color and texture.  He insisted on dragging Drake across the bridge to the Carnegie natural history museum with its dinosaurs.  Or better yet, to a Pirate's game where he would pin Drake between himself and the railing, positioning them to catch a fly ball.

Jimmy slammed the car door shut and Drake blinked, remembering the crack of a bat connecting, the surge of the crowd around him, everyone scrambling for the ball hurtling in their direction.

He stepped out of the car, crossing the street without looking, hypnotized by the memory of reaching out, almost toppling over the rail in his quest to catch the ball just as his father had taught him.  But at the last moment the missile racing directly at his face had proven too much and he had shied away.  The ball landed with a hard slap of leather against flesh in his father's outstretched hand. 

Not even the roar of the crowd could drown out the look of disappointment as Drake Sr. dropped the ball into his son's forgotten mitt.  

"Right here," Jimmy said, pulling him back to the present.  "These bushes and stuff weren't here back then," he added after consulting the crime scene photos.  "I didn't work it originally, your father brought me here after we partnered up.  We came back whenever things got slow and we had time to work it again, but–" He shrugged, obviously embarrassed by his and Drake Sr.'s failure.

Drake stepped back, observing Adam Cleary's final resting place.  It was now a nicely mulched plot curving from the curb to the front entrance.  Rhododendrons with glossy leaves lined the route, interspersed with budding azaleas, holly and low growing juniper.  An exotic appearing tree that appeared out of harmony with the rest of the landscaping stood in the center of the plot.  Right where Cleary's body laid, Drake realized after glancing at his father's sketch of the crime scene. 

He stepped into the mulch, taking care not to disturb the plants anymore than necessary and leaned forward to read a small, brass plaque at the base of the tree.  

"Beloved son, never forgotten," he read aloud.

"Kid was dumped here," Jimmy said.  "We never did find the actual killing ground–not for any of them except the woman, Eades."

"Who found him?" Drake asked as he picked his way through the shrubs back out to the paved path.

Jimmy nodded to the park across the street.  "Jogger–not even light out yet.  Worked over in Bellefield Towers and was jogging into work.  He checked out.  Didn't see anything, just stopped to tie his shoe and saw a kid's pajamas.  Took another step and saw there was a kid still in them, lost his breakfast, then called us."

"Eleven years," Drake muttered as they headed back to the car.  He turned around one more time, marveling at how much seemed unchanged from the Phipps of his childhood.  But, for Adam Cleary and his family, everything had changed.  "Helluva long time."

"Yep," Jimmy said, leaning across the roof of the Intrepid, his gaze fixed on the graceful curves of the conservatory.  "Might help if we could figure out why here.  And why he never came back after the first one."

Drake frowned and opened the car door.  "After this long, we might never learn anything."

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Situated in the basement of the main building, the medical records department was about as close to the Underworld as you could get at Three Rivers Medical Center.  Even the morgue was upstairs with the pathology labs.  

Most of the recent records were computerized, but there still existed hard copy backups.  Cassie liked being able to look at the complete chart instead of one page at a time on the computer.  Especially at times like this when she had no idea what she was actually looking for.

She stumbled as she crossed the entrance, her coordination hampered by a lack of sleep.  A perpetual problem ever since what happened two months ago.  Last night Cassie had almost been tempted to take a few of the Percocet her orthopod had prescribed and which still sat un-opened in her medicine cabinet.

Every time she did fall asleep, each groan and creak of her old house transformed into a killer's footsteps.  A killer waiting to pounce on her, beat her unconscious, drug her, leaving her helpless to warn Drake as he walked into an ambush.

Ed and Adeena had hired a cleaning company that specialized in crime scenes to deal with the mess left in the wake of the killer's attack.  It had taken days to scrub her oak floors clean of the dried blood, to clear the air of its stench, to vacuum and erase all the fingerprint dust and Luminol.  

The worst had been finding the blackened, wilted and crushed remains of the roses Drake had brought her that night–only to confront a killer in her living room instead.

She yawned, covering it with the back of her hand.  Last night had been particularly bad, the now-familiar scenes of that night six weeks ago mingled with Charlie's resuscitation yesterday.  In the end it had been Drake staring up at her from the gurney, his blood covering Cassie's hands as his life slipped away.

There was only one clerk this early in the morning, and he seemed less than thrilled to be working, favoring her with a glare designed to send lesser beings skittering away to seek comfort above ground.  Cassie met his gaze, undaunted.  After the hell she'd been through, the dour-faced, pasty-skinned denizens of  medical records failed to intimidate.

She wrote down George Ulrich's name and date of birth on the request slip and handed it to the clerk.  The paper crackled between his fingers as if his touch might set it on fire.

"No medical record number?" the clerk asked in an annoyed tone as dry as the paper he handled.

"I don't have it."

He sighed, rolled his eyes, and punched the information into the computer.  "Why didn't you tell me the patient was expired?" he snapped.  "It'll be a minute.  Wait here." He rose and left the desk, disappearing into the shadowy stacks of musty medical charts.

He returned in a few minutes and dumped three thick volumes onto the counter, releasing a small wave of dust.  Cassie took them over to one of the dictation cubicles that lined the room.

The manila covers were printed with Charlie's older brother's name, date of birth, medical record number and the Three Rivers logo as well as a confidentiality disclosure.  Overtop of all the printing was stamped in large red letters the word "Expired".

Expired.  Medical records term for dead.  Cassie hated it.  It made the often messy process of death seem sterile and uncomplicated.  What was wrong with good old-fashioned dying?  Why was everyone so frightened by the word?  After all, it was something that happened to them all, no avoiding it.  

If anyone knew that, it was Cassie.  She closed her eyes briefly, willing the image of Drake, covered in his own blood, away from her mind.  It was painfully obvious that something she'd done was keeping him at a distance.  If she just knew what it was, she could fix it...

She pulled her attention back to the chart before her and the lost child whose story it told.  

George's chart was thick for someone who died at such a young age.  Cassie thumbed through the indexed tabs and counted nine admissions and at least twice as many ER visits interspersed with clinic notes.  

She grabbed a piece of the ubiquitous hospital notepaper and started on the first volume.  George's birth was unremarkable.  Full-term, no complications.  But things quickly changed.  His first ER visit was at three weeks of age for a blue spell.  He was admitted and evaluated for possible sepsis as well as cardiac problems, but no cause was ever found.

It was then that Karl Sterling got involved.  He invited the Ulrichs to participate in a study of children with "near miss SIDS" or Apparent Life Threatening Events.  He would provide free care and a monitor for George.  The parents were both in trained in CPR as well as the monitor use, and George went home after a week in the hospital.

The very next day Virginia Ulrich brought him back into the ER for another blue spell.  She reported giving the baby CPR for several minutes before he responded.  He was admitted again.

And so it went. 

By the time he was a year old, George had spent more time in the hospital than out of it.  Nursing assessments and social work notes described Virginia as a devoted, concerned, intelligent mother who would do anything to make her baby healthy.

George stopped growing and a feeding tube was placed.  Then he developed an intolerance to his feeds and experienced such profuse diarrhea that a central line was inserted near his heart so that he could receive nutrition intravenously.  The IV became infected, he was treated, it again became infected, he was treated a second time and evaluated for an immunodeficiency.