Chapter 6: Beating the Bushes
Everyone knows Sherlock Holmes’ famous saying that once you exclude the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. I am, however, unaware of Sherlock needing to deal with a scent distinctive to a dead man. But I was still left with the distinctive rotting scent that is distinctive to a dead man. So unless he had a family that had decidedly horrific body odor (that only I could smell) as a genetic defect, it was probably just a coincidence. Hayes had no family—IA had told me that during the interview.
I took a few photographs of the closet and the message carved into the wall. I called CSU to come upstairs and be careful along the way. No one was going to disturb the crime scene if possible, even though we’d all disturbed it the moment the door was opened.
Packard was waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs. I pointed outside, and we didn’t say a word as we made it through the door. I handed him my phone with the photo of the closet on the screen and told him where I found it.
“Patron Saint of what?” Packard handed returned the phone. “Any idea what it means?”
I shrugged. “No idea. We Papists have a patron saint of cops: as the prayer goes, St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. But no detectives that I’m aware of.”
“I’d say Daniel,” Packard said. “He had a nice trick with flour and three old guys. But I don’t recall him being a Saint.”
“Ditto.”
Packard sighed. “Great. Aren’t you glad they don’t let just anyone into your neighborhood? Only the Grade AAA plus psychos are allowed to kill here.” He jerked his head off to one side. “Want to talk to the parents? They’re over at the security office. They didn’t want to stay in the house.”
Across the street from my house. “Can’t blame them.”
“Not sure about that,” Packard snarked. “If they took their daughter to school, she’d still be alive.”
I would excuse his behavior as a result of working the murder of a child, but that would be a lie. After decades of man’s inhumanity towards man, Packard was always this grouchy. He once told me that his parents had declined to call him Richard because “We were never rich before, why should the family start with me being Rich?” He went on for a few paragraphs in a comedy routine that would make Jackie Mason go “Oy.”
The security office wasn’t very big, just enough for a front desk, and some locker rooms on a lower floor. One section in the back was a retrofitted living room that looked like a break room for five, but only if one person stood at a time.
In a back corner sat Briana and Keiran Whelan. Keiran was tall and tan, with a little gray in his five o’clock shadow. Briana was a big busty blonde with wide, high cheekbones and wide blue eyes. They were both beautiful people who looked like a train had crashed through their lives. On the way over, Packard had given me some background. They were a nice power couple who ran their own ad agency and hurt no one. They weren’t millionaires, but they were comfortable.
During the interview, it was exactly what you’d expect. It was as tough as an interrogation of the average street thug but worse, because even the gentlest question was apt to set off another round of crying from one parent or the other. I didn’t mention the joys of Heaven, or the glory of God’s embrace, because nothing would have been a comfort. Keiran acquitted himself well, but even he had to stop every now and again to pull himself together. Briana held up for an average of three questions before she had to cry. It was even difficult for Packard, who was as empathetic as a tree trunk.
Carol had been the youngest child of three. The first was away at college, being trained to become a Master of the Universe, the second was working his butt off at the CIA—the Culinary Institute of America up in Dutchess County—and Carol was the baby. She had been named Carol because she had been born in December, and Dickens was on in the background (the Muppet version, with Michael Caine, if that matters). With the innocent solipsism of the average child, growing up, she thought that A Christmas Carol was all about her.
No, there were no personal enemies. There were no spiteful, angry and jealous relatives seething with resentment, as both parents were only children, with no close living relatives. If a family member was involved, it would require distant relatives from California creaking out of their retirement homes to enact vengeance out of a Gothic novel. We would beat the bushes in that direction, but unless there was a scorpion lurking in the bush that used to be the family tree, it was unlikely. It was also a pain in the ass, since that sort of thing was the most likely source of killers—statistically, most human beings who are murdered are going to be murdered between two and four in the morning by their nearest and dearest. With the parents excluded (Packard had done so with a phone call) and no relatives, a great big chunk of the usual suspects were right out the window.
What friends were in the neighborhood? Who cleaned the house? Any creepy friends who they wouldn’t let their kids around? No, all of their nearby friends (who actually lived within driving or train-trip distance) were at a bash out in the Hamptons for the week while it was still warm—if Carol hadn’t had school, or if she had been older, the Whelans would have gone to the party. Keiran, especially, had considered taking Carol along so they could get in tennis before it became too cold ... but Carol had been the one to insist that she had to go to school to see all of her friends.
At that comment, all four of us had to take a ten-minute timeout.
When we came back from our brief adjournment, it was time for another tack. How about professional enemies? Professional enemies were always a good thought.
Strangers? Sex fiends in the neighborhood? I didn’t even ask, since I knew the answer—I lived a few blocks away, with a child, and me being a cop, trust me, I kept tabs on that sort of thing. There was no one who lived or worked in the area. Of course, that meant nothing if a predator came out of his comfort zone so he could stalk fresh prey.
But you could start to see our problem. They had relatives, and we had to make sure that all of the relatives that they knew about had stayed in their corner of the country, and make sure that some random apple that nobody noticed hadn’t dropped out of the tree and rolled off into a corner. They say they don’t know about any business rival or colleague who could or would have done this, but who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? And who knows if any random nut on the street had spotted Carol one day and took a depraved fancy to her?
And we had to work all of those angles.
If you’ve ever done research into how real-life murder investigations work, they range from easy to impossible. Easy was, as I said, being murdered by the nearest and dearest in the bedroom. More difficult was the one where the killer was an acquaintance or a friend, or even a slightly distant relative—this is what most murder mysteries boil down to, be it at a dinner party out in the country, or trapped in a locked train car filled with suspects. Solving those crimes boils down to the ancient question of Cui Bono? Who benefits? After that, it starts to get more difficult. The reason so many murders go unsolved is because there are so many strangers killing strangers—be they serial killers, a street mugging, or a hired gun from out of town. The impossible is the hired gun from out of town, since they’re flown in just for the killing and fly out after the job is done.
As you’ve read, we had excluded a lot of possibilities. Some were still possible—sure, a friend could have slipped the leash of the week-long Hampton party and come out to cosplay as Jeffrey Dahmer. There was a Long Island Rail Road station within an hour’s walking distance, so it was possible. But was it likely? Not really. There was no hangover that could last long enough for someone to go missing from the Hamptons for over twelve hours (a four-hour round trip, and eight hours of violence). Second possibility: a business rival or colleague who harbored a secret resentment of both Keiran and Briana that they were totally unaware of. Was it truly likely? Not really, unless it was someone really unstable who decided that his true ambition in life was to play Iago. The out-of-town assassin was also thrown right out the window—no one who could be considered professional would be this much of a butcher.
The nightmare scenario was “the total and complete stranger.” Unfortunately, in this day and age, it no longer had to be someone local. If Carol had been in a photograph or a video put on social media, anyone within flying distance could be a suspect—again, highly improbable, but not impossible. If the killer were a total stranger, we would need to be lucky, with the parking ticket or the fake nickel, or any other famous clue that led to the apprehension of a spy or a killer. The worst part here is the other cliché mystery authors made use of: we would have to hope that this killer screwed up. Massively. We would have to hope for DNA, and that he was in the system. Or that he removed his gloves, or there was a surface he failed to wipe down. Worst case scenario, we would have to hope that he screwed up at the next crime scene.
You can see why we hope that this was done by someone they knew: a narrow pool of suspects was comparatively easy.
Before you ask yourself, “Tommy mentioned security cameras earlier. What happened to that angle?” That angle died during the interview, when I got a text message that reported no security cameras within two blocks of the crime. That may seem like only a start, but there were more small winding paths through the neighborhood than even I could count. If there wasn’t a camera close by, the killer could have come from almost any direction.
Three hours of questions, prodding, and poking at the relationships of all the Whelans—Keiran, Briana, Carol, and both of their sons—and we were finished. I will give them this, they held up. They broke down a few times – I nearly broke down a few times, and so did Packard – but they endured every question we had, and I offered a continuation at a later date once every thirty minutes. They took the opportunity for a brief break, but they both insisted that they answer every question we had.
By the time we left, it was after midnight, and the Whelans were going to check into a hotel. I offered to contact their son at the CIA to make certain that he didn’t come home into this mess. When I tried calling him, the interference was so heavy, I couldn’t call out. Packard called out on his phone, and handed it to me...and it stopped working for me as well. Packard took over the notifications, and said, “Maybe your hot-line to Heaven is causing interference.”
“Funny.”
“Yes, I am.”
It was time to really get to work. As most TV shows will inform you, the first 48 hours of the investigation is the most important. After that, evidence gets wiped away by the weather, time, and just people who could carry physical evidence on their shoes. Witnesses forget things, and we had to find these witnesses before they forgot anything.
But in this case, we had the canvass started. Every house in the neighborhood was being canvassed by uniforms (except for mine; I could ask Mariel myself).
One of the first things I did, once we were settled in the car, was to call Erin Quintanilla. Packard had to call and put it on speaker, since my phone still didn’t want to work for me.
As the phone rang, Packard asked, “You sure she’s going to be up at this hour?”
“She’s so Goth I’m surprised she goes out in daylight,” I answered.
There was a click, though there was a lot of static. She still sounded so damn perky. “Tommy? What are you doing up at this hour? You’re not working, are you?”
“Kinda. Listen, Erin, how did you get to my house today?”
“I went up Little Neck Boulevard, hung a left at the first stop sign, and went straight to your place. Why?”
I frowned. That was the wrong path for her to have seen anything. “How about the way out?”
“Same path, just the other way...why do you ask? Did something happen?”
“There was a crime in the neighborhood.”
Erin gave a humorless laugh. “Crime. Tommy, you’re homicide. Who died?”
“A kid. Carol Whelan. Do you know the name? The family?”
“Nope. Sorry. Did you ask Mariel? Even Jerry?”
I winced at the thought of my son knowing this girl. “Not yet. They’re on the list.”
“Okay. But if it helps, I didn’t see anyone aside from the little old people who really want me to run them over.”
I smiled a little. One of the problems with Glen Oaks was that there were a surplus of little old folks who took their sweet time going from point A to point B. They do it so often, I half-suspected that they deliberately crossed in the middle of the street and wore black as soon as the sun went down. They either wanted people to hit them or wanted to be traffic hazards. Either way, I understood what Erin meant.
“Anything else?” Erin asked.
“No. If I have anything else, I’ll call you.”
“That’s one mark checked off of the list,” Packard muttered. “Any other blind alleys you can think of?”
“Sure. Want to type this into VICAP?”
For those who don’t know, the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (or ViCAP) is part of the FBI out of Quantico that analyses things like Carol’s murder—serial violent and sexual crimes. It was originally started to track serial killings via their signatures; things left behind that are distinctive and unique to the killer himself. The FBI gave the VICAP database, used by cops across the country to compile data on sex crimes, missing persons, and homicides. Local cops entered data from these cases into the system and the data is compared to other cases in an attempt to make connections.
There’s a major drawback with the system, though: Cops have to enter their cases into the system. If they don’t, VICAP has nothing to go on. If a killer kept themselves in the right precincts, ones that kept their records on paper and never digitized them, then he could avoid detection for years.
You may wonder why I refer to the killer as male. The likelihood of Carol’s killer being a woman are so low, I’d have to be a mathematician to give you an accurate answer.
Since I drove, Packard had to access VICAP via his phone, because, of course, there was an app for that. It would take forever to search the whole system with a phone keyboard, but dismemberment AND disarticulation were distinct search terms. And we would have more terms to search by when we were at a real keyboard, checking off all the boxes and dotting all the i’s.
VICAP came up with no results.
A geographic search for recently released degenerates came up empty, which surprised me. I would have figured there would have been one closer than five miles, but there were a lot of school zones in the area. The nearest cluster of them were south of Jamaica Avenue. That gave us something, but probably not in the way you’re thinking.
I pulled up at a street corner at Hempstead Turnpike and 222nd street, a little over a mile from the station house. The corner had a “massage parlor” that gave out specific massages and also dealt other “medicinal herbs” that were technically legal. Yes, we knew about it, but as these things went, they were the least of a few dozen devils that we could name you.
The owners of the establishment were outside on the corner. My conversation with IA included the casual talks with crooks I knew. The owners were said people. They were crooks who saw crime as a business. It was how they made their money. They were borderline respectable. They dressed in black, with leather jackets, but their black shirts were professional, button down collars with the top button undone. Their pants were professional, with a few scattered black jeans, and most importantly, they wore belts and wore their pants up around their waists.
I parked the car at the corner and stepped out, leaving Packard in the car. I headed for the biggest, blackest guy on the corner.
“Hey, D.”
“D” was Daniel David DiLeo. Someone tried calling him 3D once, and the ensuing brawl quickly put a stop to that nickname. He nodded at me, then continued surveying the street. “ ’Sup, Detective?” he rumbled in a voice like a base drum.
To my recollection, he had never called me by name, only my rank. “Bad night. Have a second?”
“Probably.”
I took out my phone, and called up a photograph of Carol Whelan back when she was a beautiful, happy, lively young girl. D spared me a glance and shrugged. “Am I supposed to know her?”
“She’s my victim,” I replied. I slid the phone away. “I’ll spare you the ‘after’ photo.”
“And this has what to do with me?”
“The area is littered with school zones,” I told him. “Therefore all the people we might like for this have clustered into certain areas. One of the larger clusters is in your area of operations.”
D’s face become dark and menacing, with his brow furrowed so deeply, it looked like a dent in his skull. “Really?” he drawled. “Well, then, I’m going to have to look into that.”
I held up a hand. “All I’m asking is that you keep an ear open for anything you or your men might hear.”
“Can’t promise my boys won’t take matters into their own hands.”
I sighed. I couldn’t figure out the business model D wanted to take inspiration from—Hell’s Angels, the Zetas, or Michael Corleone. The situation wasn’t helped by D having a little girl with one of his girlfriends in the neighborhood. “Try to avoid a situation that would put me on your case, D, would you? You need to be out to tend to Julie. Let me handle it.”
D grimaced. “You say so.”
I tried to give him a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry about it. Put him in general population at Rikers, you might get the end result you desire anyway.”
D nodded. I didn’t have to connect the dots for him. He knew Carol had to be dead because I was on the case. Pederasts and child killers were in season all year round in jail and in prison. They tended to herd together for protection, because being separated from the herd on the South African veldt was safer than being separated from the pack behind bars.
“How is Julie, anyway?”
D smiled slightly. “She’s doing good. Spelling whole words. Going straight to cursive. Pity she can’t be a doctor. Handwriting’s too good.”
I grinned. “That’s wonderful. Tell her to keep it up. I—”
I was suddenly hit with a whiff of something familiar. It wasn’t the scent of Hayes or from the crime scene, but similar enough that it caused me to turn around.
A car was pulling up to the curb, heading the wrong direction, so the driver opened his door and stepped onto the sidewalk. I took two steps towards the car, and the driver reached inside his jacket as he saw me. I lengthened my stride so that it was two long steps, and I kicked the door closed, slamming him between the door and his car. I threw my shoulder into the door, keeping him and his arm pinned. I met his face with the blade of my forearm, and reached down his open side to grab what he was looking for. Unsurprisingly, it was a gun, a nice little MP5K-PDW sub-machinegun.
“Lovely,” I drawled. I leaned harder on the door and in the newcomer’s face, and looked at D. “Friend of yours?”
D frowned, studying him. “Hard to see with your arm in his face.”
The perp reached down with his free hand, and came out with a knife, point down, like an ice pick. He raised it over his head, and I hammer-fisted his elbow and held it there, driving the arm back. I was joined by Packard, who had leaped out of the car when the fight started, as well as D himself, holding the left arm. D yanked down at the sleeve, and revealed a mess of tattoos that even I recognized.
“MS-13,” I griped. “Wonderful.” I glanced to D. “There something I should know?”
He shrugged. “They asked to sell in our territory. We told them no. We want nothing to do with these people.”
My partner glanced at D. “And you thought they’d take no for an answer?”
D shrugged. “That was a week ago. They’re usually not that patient.”
“But do they usually stink this much?” I asked.
Packard cuffed the gunman, then gave me a look like I was crazy, a look that D matched.
“What are you talking about?” Packard asked.
D nodded. “No idea what you mean.”
Is my nose broken? I thought. Can’t be, I smelled this guy before I heard or saw him.
I glared at this idiot. “This is going to cost me time I don’t have to book your sorry behind, dumb ass. Hope you’re happy.”
By the time the MS-13 idiot had been processed, it was dawn. He was cuffed, Mirandized, printed, identified (he didn’t want to talk to us, and didn’t have any ID on him), booked, and sent into the system with our blessing. He was one Rene Ormeno, with a dozen warrants out on him for child prostitution, trafficking in children, murder, rape, racketeering, conspiracy, witness tampering, et al. Given how many different crimes he was wanted for, we decided it would be a good thing if he was lost in the system for a day or two before anyone else was alerted to his presence. All we needed was one idiotic judge who decided that Ormeno could be released on his own recognizance, and he would be in the wind ... if you think that’s not possible, I will merely inform you that the history of the New York City judiciary includes a man nicknamed “Turn ‘em loose Bruce.”
But the momentum of the case was slowed shortly thereafter with phone calls. For some reason, every time I wanted to make a call to keep the case moving forward, I got static or poor reception. Every time some paper pusher wanted to talk about the arrest—be they lawyers, bureaucrats who wanted Ormeno in the system right this minute, and at least two calls from the US Marshal service who wanted Ormeno’s head on a platter for crimes in another state—I had crystal clear reception. I couldn’t even call home when I tried—four times over the course of the day. Anything I wanted to get done by phone had to be done by text—and that was 50-50—or my partner had to do it.
By 8:00 that evening, we had made no headway on the case. None. We had ruled out the friends at the Hamptons party by speaking to each one on the phone in turn, and there was enough overlap that they were all alibied for our window of opportunity, unless a minimum of three people were in on it. We had to drive 15 miles into Manhattan to talk to the Whelans’ employees. Not one of them could consider the possibility that one of their coworkers, or one of their competitors, could have been involved—and every employee had been in yesterday for a staff meeting. With traffic, that was six hours of the day wasted.
The most productive use of our time that day was our trip to Hempstead Turnpike. There had been a sudden spike in arrests that day for possession of child porn or perverts found in school zones. The only thing they all had in common was that they were all in D’s area of operation.
As I told IA, a lot of criminals are good people who do bad things.
I got home at 8:30 that evening. I had Packard drive me home, and he was happy to do it. This was one of the few times we had ever “given up” on an investigation this early. No, we weren’t going to consider this case a lost cause until we worked it to death, or worked ourselves to death. But after a 24-hour day, where we didn’t even have a viable suspect, we decided to turn in and try again tomorrow.
My front door opened as soon as I closed Packard’s car door. Mariel was there and rushed out of the house to hug me. I caught her, and, unlike with Erin’s tackle-hug the day before, I fell back against Packard’s car and had to push myself straight.
“Tough day?” I asked.
“Jerry came home crying. They waited for the end of the day, right before the last period. Who does that? I mean, it was just dropped on them, and they had Father Ryan come in and talk to them, and I don’t even think that they were going to tell anyone if they could have avoided it, like they could have hidden it away from the entire school, or maybe even the entire parish, and—”
I held up my hand in surrender, one arm still around her. “Avoided what? Waited to do what?”
Mariel closed her eyes, and tried not to cry. “One of Jeremy’s friends was murdered, Tom. He’s already cried himself to sleep over it. She was an older girl, named Carol Whelan. She was killed just down the street... what is it?”