Blood Innocents Part 24

"You can make a positive identification?"

"Yes."

"Of this man?" Reardon thumped the picture of Dwight Van Allen with his finger.

"Yes," Mrs. La.s.siter said. "I recognized the face even before I read about the deer."

Reardon was not at all sure he believed her. She had told him nothing she could not have taken from the papers. For a moment he was furious at Piccolini for releasing the critical information that the murder weapon was an ax.

"But you don't know exactly when you were in the Children's Zoo," he said.

"Not exactly," Mrs. La.s.siter said. "Only that it was before dawn."

"And what did you say he had in his hand when he ran toward you?"

"An ax."

"Do you remember what it looked like? Was it large? Or was it small? Could it have been a hatchet?"

"No," Mrs. La.s.siter said decisively, "it was an ax about three or four feet long."

Reardon nodded. "And you didn't see what he did with it?"

"When he ran out of my sight he still had it."

Quickly Reardon's mind raced over the things she had said. He wondered about everything, questioned everything: her vision; her memory; her arthritis; her desire for death; even whether or not she had actually been in the Children's Zoo that night. "Are you willing to testify in court as to what you saw?" he asked, knowing she would say yes.

"I would not have come forward if I had not been willing to testify in court," she said.

"Why did you wait so long to talk to the police?" Reardon asked, knowing it would be one of the first questions Dwight Van Allen's defense attorney would ask her on the stand.

"I wasn't sure a crime had been committed," Mrs. La.s.siter said. "At first I checked the papers every day after that Monday morning, but there was nothing there, so what was there to report? Then I went away for a few days. When I came back, I saw the paper. I called the police and one of your officers came to my house, so I told him what I had seen."

Reardon nodded. "Dwight Van Allen," he said almost to himself. He stood up. "Thank you for coming forward."

"I'll escort you to the door," Mrs. La.s.siter said.

"That won't be necessary," Reardon said.

"No, no," Mrs. La.s.siter insisted. "I still make feeble attempts at good manners."

Reardon smiled.

"Excuse me a moment," Mrs. La.s.siter said.

Reardon watched as Mrs. La.s.siter painfully stood and reached behind her chair. She brought out her walker and used it to balance herself. Her eyes returned to Reardon.

"I am unable to walk without a.s.sistance," she explained. "Now, may I show you out?"

"Fine, thank you," Reardon said, and together they took the first step toward the door.

It was then that Reardon heard it: a sound at once m.u.f.fled and grating on the flagstone walk of the garden. It was the same sound, Reardon realized instantly, that n.o.ble had heard the night the fallow deer were killed. Immediately Reardon stepped in front of Mrs. La.s.siter and stared down at the four legs of the walker. Three of them were sheathed with rubber tips; they had made the m.u.f.fled sound as she placed the walker in front of her. But one of the tips was bare and made a sound of metal dragging across stone.

An icy wave of recognition pa.s.sed over Reardon's body. "Did you use this walker in the Children's Zoo the night the deer were killed?" he asked.

Mrs. La.s.siter stared at him with confusion. "Of course," she said. "I cannot walk without it."

Reardon took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, staring almost transfixed at the walker.

23.

For a long time after talking to Mrs. La.s.siter, Reardon sat in the park thinking, his mind filled with images: weapons, distances, sounds, directions, motives, crumpled bodies. Images on top of images, thoughts consuming thoughts, until there was nothing left but a mood, an atmosphere at once indistinct and profound: sadness and resolution combined with an intense desire for release from the park, the street, the city, from the face of Karen Ortovsky, the futile bleating of the fallow deer, the whirr of the ax blade slicing through the air. He wanted to be something else besides a detective, a widower, a man.

He had expected to be pleased if Mrs. La.s.siter cleared Petrakis. And there was no doubt in his mind that Mrs. La.s.siter's statement had cleared Petrakis entirely. But the cowering, weeping figure she had described as the real killer seemed to Reardon to be no less pitiable than Petrakis. Now he would have to go after Dwight Van Allen like a trained hunting dog, switching indifferently from one fox to another.

When he returned to the precinct house Reardon walked directly to Piccolini's office. He did not have any time to waste. Petrakis' mood seemed too unpredictable, and Reardon wanted to get him out of the Tombs as quickly as possible.

Piccolini looked up from a roast beef sandwich as Reardon entered the office. "Well, what did she say?" he asked. In one long burst Reardon told him, repeating his exchange with Mrs. La.s.siter almost word for word. He described the way she looked, the way she spoke, why she had been in the park at such an unusual hour, and the sounds the walker made as it sc.r.a.ped across the garden pavement. With each new detail Piccolini's mouth seemed to open wider. He pushed the sandwich to the left side of his desk and stared intently at Reardon.

Finally Reardon reached the critical element in the interrogation. "She identified Dwight Van Allen as the man with the ax," he said.

Piccolini bolted back in his chair as if he had been slugged in the chest. "Dwight Van Allen?"

"That's who she identified."

Piccolini stood up. "Dwight Van Allen? Are you crazy?"

"She made a positive identification."

The technical term "positive identification" seemed to impress Piccolini for a moment. He sat back down behind his desk and stared inconsolably at the papers which littered it. "But that's crazy," he said. He pounded his fist hard on the desk. "G.o.dd.a.m.n this f.u.c.king case!"

Reardon was startled by Piccolini's sudden use of obscenity; he usually avoided such language. Reardon had always suspected that he did so in order to prove some imagined superiority.

"Anyway," Reardon said, "Petrakis is clear."

"Why's that?"

It seemed simple to Reardon. "Because the only living witness in the case identified another man, Dwight Van Allen."

"An old woman with a crazy story about looking to be murdered in the park?" Piccolini said contemptuously. "You call that a witness?"

"She was there," Reardon said emphatically. "The sounds that walker made fit the sounds that n.o.ble heard around the time the deer were killed."

"Ridiculous," Piccolini said, "I don't think she saw anything. I think she's a lonely old broad with a vivid imagination. Unfortunately, Dwight Van Allen got stuck in her mind somewhere."

"She saw him," Reardon said. "She saw him covered with blood and carrying an ax."

"What does the great detective, John Reardon, think was the motive for Dwight Van Allen to kill those deer?"

"I don't know," Reardon said, "but I'm going to find out."

Piccolini jumped to his feet. "No!" he shouted. "The people downtown are sick and tired of you meddling with the Van Allens."

"Dwight Van Allen is a prime suspect in this case," Reardon said.

Piccolini strode angrily around his desk to face Reardon. "Petrakis had a motive and he was seen near the scene of the crime at approximately the time of its commission," he said. "He had access to the murder weapon, and his fingerprints are all over it. That's real evidence, not some idiotic hallucination by some lonely old lady who's probably crazy as h.e.l.l anyway."

Reardon turned to leave; he had heard enough.

"That's evidence," Piccolini repeated. "Build a case on that. Real evidence. Physical evidence."

Reardon stopped in the doorway, his hand on the doork.n.o.b. "Be careful, Mario," he said.

"About what?"

"About this case. About who did it. About avoiding a frame-up."

Piccolini's face quickly went through phases of anger, then shock, then sadness. "Is that what you think I'm trying to do in this case, John? Do you think I'm trying to frame Petrakis?"

"Sometimes it just happens."

"I wouldn't do that," Piccolini said.

Reardon looked at Piccolini and saw that he really believed himself incapable of such a thing. It was as if he was a little like Benedict Arturo, unconscious of his urges and even of the acts that flowed from there. For a moment Reardon thought of going over the entire case with Piccolini, demonstrating how each of his decisions had moved the investigation toward Petrakis. But he did not. It would only be a series of futile allegations which Piccolini would deny. Piccolini would not even have to lie to deny them, at least not to himself. Reardon did not want to talk to Piccolini anymore or be in his office ever again. "I think I'm going to retire after this one, Mario," he said.

Piccolini stared rigidly at Reardon. He would not, Reardon knew, try to dissuade him from early retirement, not after this.

Reardon had a witness, but he did not have a motive. And there was only one place where he could find one. He left the precinct house immediately and headed toward the Van Allen residence on Fifth Avenue. His old colleague, Steadman, was again on duty at the door.

"Is Wallace Van Allen here?" Reardon asked.

"No," Steadman said. "He's in Washington."

"How about Dwight?"

"He's gone to school in Ma.s.sachusetts." Steadman looked at Reardon curiously. "You look beat."

"Is Melinda Van Allen in Ma.s.sachusetts too?" Reardon asked dryly.

"No, she's in the park. In the zoo I guess."

"Thanks," Reardon said. He turned to leave.

Steadman grabbed his arm. "Is she expecting you?"

Reardon pulled his arm from Steadman's grasp. "Do you have a buzzer system in the park?" he asked irritably, and immediately felt ashamed.

"No," Steadman said, but he smiled, almost gently, as if something told him to be kind, and Reardon felt relieved.

"Melinda's in the zoo, you think?" he said.

"Yeah."

"Well, I'll see if I can find her."

Melinda Van Allen was not hard to find. She was sitting on the same bench where Reardon had talked to her before, just beyond the cage of the fallow deer. She had drawn the collar of her coat up around her neck to protect her from the light breezes that darted through the park.

She looked up from a book as Reardon approached. "h.e.l.lo," she said brightly.

"h.e.l.lo, Miss Van Allen," Reardon said. "I'd like to talk to you if it's okay."

"Sure," Melinda replied airily. "It's John, isn't it?"

"Yes, that's right."

"Detective John Reardon, New York City Police Department," she said in a deep voice with mock seriousness.

"May I sit down?"

"The park is for the people," Melinda said.

Sometimes, Reardon thought as he sat down, the park is for killing.

"Is this business or pleasure?" Melinda asked pleasantly. She put her book face down on the bench beside her and folded her arms in front of her, pressing her bare hands under them for warmth.

"Business," Reardon said.

Melinda's face darkened.

"Who lives in your apartment?" Reardon asked.

"My father, my brother and myself," Melinda said. Then she added: "And a few servants."

"Do all of you usually live together?"

"We have until now."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, Dwight's gone off to school."

"When did he leave?"