Slipping Into Darkness (22 page)

 

“I’m telling you to put that blade down, Hoolian. I got my eye on you.”

 

———

 

“And I got my eye on you.” Hoolian forced himself to close the knife up before he did something stupid.

 

“Yeah, how’s that?”

 

“I been doing my homework.” Hoolian jabbed a finger, the whistle still rising in his head. “I know all about you.”

 

“Sure you do.” Loughlin grinned again, goading him.

 

“I know you got brought up on disciplinary charges back in ’81.”

 

“Pardon me?”

 

“It was right there in the case file, asshole.”

 

“What are you talking about?” Loughlin gave him a molelike squint.

 

“
The case file.
They didn’t just have my record in there, they had yours.”

 

“Yeah, right.”

 

“It’s true. How would I know otherwise?” A voice in Hoolian’s head was warning him to stop, that he wasn’t helping himself, but he ignored it. “My lawyer FOIA’d your ass to see what else we could get. She thinks you got disciplined for ‘testilying.’”

 

“Knock yourselves out.” Loughlin shrugged. “
I’m
not the issue here.”

 

But Hoolian was on to him. He’d been to the great universities of fear—Elmira, Auburn, Attica, Clinton—and had studied with the masters. He’d learned the language and customs, the symbols and signifiers. He could tell the difference between mere woofing and dangerous growling, and right now he
knew
he had this man scared.

 

“And she’s gonna hear about you showing up like this with a Q-Tip,” he said, the whistling in his ears starting to drown out the calm warning voice. “That’s not right, man. It’s just more harassment, pure and simple.”

 

“You think so?” Loughlin asked. “I just see an officer doing his job. You don’t want to give me a DNA sample and clear your own name, that’s fine. We’ll just keep bringing you back to court.”

 

“You want my DNA?”

 

“That’s what I came for.”

 

Just seeing the man standing here, still trying to bluff and pretend he wasn’t spooked, made bile gather at the back of Hoolian’s mouth.

 

“You really just want a sample?” he asked, feeling himself start to go off the rails.

 

“Absolutely.” Loughlin twirled the swab stick. “Ready when you are.”

 

“Well, all right then . . .”

 

Don’t do it, man. You’re only hurting yourself.
Hoolian ignored the voice, sucked in his juices, and let fly the thickest, most acidic gob of spit he could gather right into the middle of the detective’s face.

 

“There. Is that enough for you to work with?”

 

———

 

“Now I remember why we used to call you Fuckin’ A.”

 

Francis crossed the street to his car, still wiping his face with a handkerchief and talking on his cell phone.

 

“And how are you, Francis?” Debbie A.’s voice crackled through the static. “I’m surprised to be hearing from you. Outside of court.”

 

“Your client tells me you’re pulling up
my
file. What the fuck is that about?”

 

“Context me, Francis. I’ve got a client in my office.”

 

“My fuck-ing departmental hearing in ’81.” He shouted to be heard above the traffic. “Total bullshit, Deb. I’ve lost all respect for you.”

 

“Don’t blame me. That letter was in the case folder at the DA’s office. Obviously, your friend Paul Raedo must have put it there back in 1983.”

 

“Why the hell would he do a thing like that?”

 

“Maybe he thought Julian’s lawyer would find out about it. He probably thought he’d have to bring it up to the judge beforehand and try to defuse it as an issue.”

 

“No way,” he insisted. “You’ve got somebody on the inside helping you with a favor.”

 

“If you want to delude yourself, Francis, be my guest,” she said, voice rising even as the signal grew weak. “But tell me something. What are you doing talking to my client anyway? I don’t want you anywhere near him —”

 

He hit the Off button just as a minivan came flying out of his blind spot, horn screeching, its shiny front grille rushing right at him.

 

———

 

At the end of the shift, Angel called Hoolian into his office and held up the card that Loughlin had left, the words “Manhattan North Homicide Task Force” printed in bold black ink on an eggshell backdrop.

 

“
żQué hubo?
You wanna tell me what this is?”

 

Hoolian felt his mouth go dry, as if he’d used up all his spit on the detective. “
Lo siento,
man. I’m sorry. I thought maybe you knew.”

 

“How would I know if you didn’t tell me?”

 

“It was in the news before you hired me,” Hoolian said lamely, knowing he was just making it worse.

 

“And that makes it okay for you to lie? Because you know all I read is the sports and business?” Angel slapped the desk with a three-week-old copy of the
Post
that Loughlin had obviously left as well. “I hate this tabloid shit.”

 

“You asked if I was ‘convicted.’ And I’m not. Anymore.”

 

“That’s weak,
compańero.
You knew what was up. The application says ‘have you
ever
been convicted?’”

 

Hoolian hung his head in shame, realizing, of course, that it was Papi’s voice he’d been ignoring right before he hocked in Loughlin’s face.

 

“I kept meaning to speak to you on this. I just wanted to show you I could do the job first. . . .”

 

“You tied my hands,
hermano!
I took a chance hiring you. And this is how you thank me? That cop just told me he wants to subpoena all your time cards and get the receipts from all the buildings where you did deliveries. You mind telling me what
that’s
all about?”

 

“No idea.” Hoolian tried to swallow.

 

“Mierda.”
Angel squeegeed his eyes with the heels of his palms. “Do you know what Corporate is going to say when they find out about this shit?”

 

Hoolian looked over at Angel’s computer monitor. The screen saver showing a red brick wall coming closer and closer, as if the viewer was in a car about to crash into it.

 

“I know I made a mistake. Let me make it up to you.”

 

“How?” asked Angel. “What are you going to give me? Your word?”

 

Hoolian watched the screen saver hitting that same wall over and over. How many times? When was he going to stop hitting that same wall?

 

“Here. I paid you through the end of the week.” Angel pulled open the top desk drawer and took out a seafoam-green check for him. “Don’t worry about missing Friday and Saturday. I’ve got you covered for those days.”

 

Hoolian studied the check dolefully, seeing that in fact Angel had tacked on a hundred extra dollars beyond the two days’ pay.

 

“I feel bad about this, man,” he said. “It’s all been a big mistake. It’s not like you think.”

 

The screen saver hit the wall again and a web of virtual shattered glass spread across the monitor.

 

“Claro que sí,”
said Angel. “Now you tell me.”

 

 

PART IV

I HEARD HER CALL MY NAME

 

 

24

 

 

 

THREE DAYS AFTER he wiped a generous dollop of Julian’s DNA off his face, Francis went back to Bellevue, a place that always filled him with bubbling dread, not only because Allison Wallis had worked in its ER but because he’d been there himself twice as a patient. Once after a bullet grazed the side of his head during a drug raid—Patti showing up, white-faced, three months after their honeymoon. And then again, twelve years later, when a sudden bout of pneumonia put him in an oxygen tent, with Francis Jr. in the doorway, saying, “Please don’t die, Daddy.”

 

Today his business was up on the ninth floor, where the medical examiner’s office had a lab for processing crime-scene evidence from rapes and homicides.

 

The elevator doors parted and David Abramowitz stepped up to greet him. “Hey, Francis, what’s the good word?”

 

“Doctor Dave, you been working out?” Francis squeezed the forensic scientist’s biceps through his lab coat and was surprised to feel a muscle the size of a regulation softball inside the sleeve.

 

“I’ve been hitting the gym a little more. And your friend Paul had me out playing paintball a couple of times this summer.”

 

How things change. When he’d first run into Abramowitz a few years back while working a triple homicide up in Inwood, he’d made the guy for a typical lab rat: all buggy eyes, long arms, Ichabod Crane throat, swollen-looking brain casing under nebbishy black curls. But since 9/ 11 and the Queens airline disaster a couple of months later—when the ME’s office had stepped up and developed revolutionary techniques to process the remains of more than three thousand victims at once—science had gotten studly. Dr. Dave, Ph.D., had become the Man. He’d gotten LASIK and ditched the horn-rims; he’d developed shoulders like a horse and a neck like a thigh; he’d grown a groovy little jazz pharaoh beard that somehow worked for him; he’d learn to swagger and speak up when asked his opinion about a case.
I don’t care if she told you she had sex with only one guy that night, Detective. She’s lying. . . .

 

“Listen, I want to prepare you for something.” He dropped his voice into a manly grumble as he guided Francis through the lab area. “The result we got is not quite the one you expected.”

 

“Whaddaya mean?”

 

Dr. Dave put a finger to his lips, cautioning him, as they passed hip-looking young techs working with biohazard hoods, spinning centrifuges, and big screwdriver-size Pipetman tools. So this was where the action was these days. Even the machines seemed set to rock ’n’ roll, swiveling and shimmying as he walked by them. DNA samples lit up in fluorescent shades of red, blue, and yellow on blackened gel screens, like flashy pieces of modern art. Every surface gleamed, reminding Francis how ancient and crusty-looking most precincts were by comparison.

 

He followed Dr. Dave into his office and closed the door after him, slightly irked by the blond-wood furniture and the photos of firefighters on the walls with their arms around Dave, thanking him for a job well done in helping put their lost brothers’ remains to rest.

 

“Something very strange has happened.” Dave settled behind his desk. “And we need to talk about it.”

 

“Shoot.”

 

“And I want to be very clear about the sequence of events that’s occurred here.” Dave picked up a sheaf of papers. “So there’s no misunderstanding.”

 

Queasiness rolled over Francis, as if he’d just heard an airline pilot announce that the FASTEN YOUR SEAT BELT sign had been turned on.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Monday morning, we took autopsy samples from a brand-new victim named Christine Rogers, including fingernail swabs and a hair fiber she’d had clutched in her hand.”

 

“Right.”

 

“Next day, you dropped off a saliva sample for analysis from a Julian Vega and asked me to compare it. I have a photocopy of the voucher right here.”

 

“Yeah, I remember.” Warily, Francis sat down and took the photocopy Dave was offering. “You setting me up for something here?”

 

“I’m just trying to be clear about the chain of custody, because it’s very important in this case.” Dave shuffled his remaining papers, studiously avoiding Francis’s glare. “Two days later, a Detective Ali from the Nineteenth Precinct came in with fingernail scrapings and part of a bloody pillowcase that had apparently either been missing or misfiled at the evidence warehouse until he found them. Both pieces were labeled as being samples from a 1983 victim named Allison Wallis. Would you like to see a copy of that voucher?”

 

“No, that’s not necessary,” Francis said. “I know he did that.”

 

At the time, he’d been so pleased that he offered to take Rashid up to Coogan’s on Broadway and give him the “attaboy have a couple on me” in front of half the squad. But Rashid had begged off, saying he had to go study for night school, and now Francis wondered if something had gone terribly wrong out at the evidence warehouse.

 

“So then you asked me to do another comparison, between the blood that was found under the fingernails of your 1983 victim Allison Wallis and what was found under the fingernails of your 2003 victim Christine Rogers. Your theory, of course, being that we would find a match for Julian Vega’s DNA on both these ladies. Since both of them appear to have scratched their assailants.”

 

Francis put the photocopy he’d been given facedown on the desk. “David, I feel like you’re trying to wall me in here, brick by brick. Just tell me what the hell’s going on.”

 

“I know how you like to be methodical in laying out a case.” Dave pulled on his beard, refusing to be hurried. “And that’s what I’m doing here.”

 

“Why? Am I the one under indictment or something?”

 

“No, but you’re not going to like what I’m about to tell you: there was no match for Julian Vega’s DNA under Christine Rogers’s fingernails. In fact, there was nothing with a Y chromosome at all.”

 

“Shit.”

 

He experienced disappointment as a sharp cramp below the rib cage. Immediately he began fumbling around in his mind for an explanation. Hoolian had been more careful this time. He’d had twenty years to review his mistakes. Maybe he’d worn gloves and a condom on Sunday night. Maybe he’d wiped the place down for prints and thrown away anything he might have left saliva on.

 

“But for sure you must’ve found a DNA match for him under Allison’s fingernails in ’83,” he said hopefully.

 

“No.”

 

“What?!”
His vision suddenly narrowed with the rush of blood to his head. “We already proved it was his blood type they found under her nails. And he had visible scratches on his face.”

 

“ABO typing is broad-side-of-the-barn stuff these days,” Dave explained. “More than one out of every three people have type O blood, which is what they found. They could just as easily have matched you or me to the original crime scene. With DNA, the chances of finding another donor with a matching profile are a trillion to one, unless there’s an identical twin.”