When Reardon got to the precinct house later that morning, Mathesson met him at his desk. He stood hesitantly for a moment, as if waiting for the bustle of the precinct house to die down. Then he offered Reardon a slight smile.
“You’re back on the case,” he said.
“What?”
Mathesson’s eyes roamed over Reardon’s face and body. “Jesus, you look busted,” he said.
“What about the case?”
“You’re back on it.”
“Why?”
Mathesson stepped aside to allow Reardon to get to the chair behind his desk.
“Well, looks like Piccolini overstepped his authority a little, the prick. He got his ass chewed out. Downtown told that little dago they’d decide when you were off the case.” Mathesson smirked. “That little prick is just a paper pusher, and they know that downtown. He’s just a paper pusher; he don’t break cases. He don’t do anything.” Mathesson grinned. “Well, he got the shit kicked out of him this time.”
“What about Petrakis?” Reardon asked.
“What about him?”
“Where is he?”
“In the clink.”
“He was arrested?”
“Damn right,” Mathesson said. “I arrested him, myself, but it’s gonna go out as a real team effort.”
“Go out?”
“Haven’t you read the paper this morning?”
“No,” Reardon said.
Mathesson took a Daily News from under his arm and gave it to Reardon.
The whole story was there. The killing of the fallow deer, the investigation, and the arrest of the alleged perpetrator: Andros Petrakis. On the front page, directly under the headline, “Arrest in Deerslaying Case,” there were large full-scale photographs of Wallace, Melinda and Dwight Van Allen. On the inside there was a photo spread of the fallow deer cage, the entrance to the Children’s Zoo and the apartment building in which the Van Allens lived. There was also a picture of Reardon himself. In small type, under Reardon’s photograph, the copy read: “Detective John Reardon headed investigation which led to arrest.” There was a picture of the evening press conference at which the Police Commissioner had announced the breaking of the case. And in the right-hand corner there was a small photograph of Andros Petrakis.
“Did you meet the Van Allen kids?” Mathesson asked.
“One of them.”
“Twins,” Mathesson said.
“Yes, I know,” Reardon said indifferently. He stared at the pictures of the Van Allen family.
“That Melinda’s not a bad-looking girl,” Mathesson said.
Reardon remembered the rather tall, slightly overweight, generally unattractive young woman who had so annoyed and befuddled him a week before. “Not bad,” he said. He looked at Mathesson. “She has a kind face.”
Reardon’s first act after being reinstated on the case was to visit Petrakis at the Tombs, even though he dreaded seeing him there. If the precinct house had reduced Petrakis to a kind of gelatinous inactivity, he could only imagine what the grinding oppressiveness of the Tombs would do to him. It had been well named, Reardon thought, this prison of the City of New York; it was a place for the dead.
Petrakis was led out by a guard and seated at a table opposite Reardon. He had not changed much, Reardon saw instantly. The face retained its motionless, stony aspect, the eyes staring rigidly ahead but seeming to comprehend nothing beyond them – not movement or person or meaning.
“Have you contacted your family?” Reardon asked.
“No,” Petrakis said dully. He did not seem to see Reardon at all, but only to look through him, as if he were a ghost.
“Why not? Won’t they worry about you, about where you are?”
“I tell them I not come back,” Petrakis said in the same granite monotone of the precinct house.
“When?”
“Before I come to police.”
All around them there was sound and movement. Prisoners and their visitors were filing in and out amid a humming welter of hellos and good-byes, but Petrakis did not seem to be aware of any of it. It was as if he had closed himself up in a box of his own making and had sealed all its cracks from light and sound.
“Mr. Petrakis, did you kill those deer in the Children’s Zoo?”
“I will die for it,” Petrakis said.
“Killing animals is not a capital offense in New York State,” Reardon said, “or any place else I know of. You can’t be executed for that.”
“Then something else,” Petrakis said.
Instantly Reardon thought of the Village murders. “Have you ever heard the names Karen Ortovsky or Lee McDonald?” he asked.
“No.”
“Do you ever go to Greenwich Village?”
“No.”
Reardon could never remember having felt such exasperation. There was life all around them, even in the intolerable hurt and confinement of the Tombs. But Petrakis’ heart seemed to beat beneath a breast of stone.
“Have you done anything that is punishable by death in this state?” Reardon asked.
Petrakis stared straight ahead. “I do not obey my mother.”
“Besides that.”
“That is enough.”
“But besides that,” Reardon insisted.
“No.”
Reardon stood up. “I think you should call your family and let them know where you are. If you want, I will call them for you.”
“They know where I am,” Petrakis said.
“They know where you are?”
“Dead,” Petrakis said.
Reardon took one of his cards and placed it carefully on the table in front of Petrakis. “Call me if you need anything, or if anything comes to you that can shed some light on this case.”
Petrakis said nothing.
“Will you call me?” Reardon asked.
“I am dead,” Petrakis said.
“Not yet, Mr. Petrakis,” Reardon said, “not yet.”
When he reached the door Reardon turned to watch Petrakis disappear behind the door that led to the cells. He glanced at the table where he and Petrakis had talked. His card rested face up on the table like a corpse on a mortuary slab.
Driving back to the precinct house, Reardon felt the case of the fallow deer plummeting toward him like a bird of prey. He believed Petrakis could be convicted for the killing of the deer on the evidence already assembled. He knew how it would go in the courtroom. Witnesses could place Petrakis at the deer cage with an ax in his hand only moments before they were killed. Bryant would testify that Petrakis was highly agitated, even furious, when he had met him in the coffee shop the morning the fallow deer were killed. On the witness stand Daniels would paint a sinister portrait of Petrakis, one which would doubtless chill the nerves of the jury; the district attorney’s office might even give Daniels a break on the cocaine bust if his testimony was convincing enough. The ax itself would be displayed before the jury, complete with bloodstains. It would be pointed out that Petrakis’ fingerprints were all over it. Worst of all, Reardon knew, Petrakis would probably confess. He had seen far stronger suspects crumble under grueling interrogation. And Petrakis already seemed beyond caring whether he was guilty or not.
But there were still the murders of Lee McDonald and Karen Ortovsky. So far the only thing that could connect Petrakis with their deaths was Mathesson’s revenge theory. Reardon knew that still left a lot to be explained. Why were the deer and the women killed in exactly the same way with fifty-seven blows on one body and only one on the other? And what did the roman numeral “two” and “dos” mean?
Reardon was certain that the deer and the women had been killed by the same person. The deer investigation seemed at a dead end. But the case of McDonald and Ortovsky still had one line of investigation open: Jamie O’Rourke.
Reardon stopped for a traffic light and glanced through his notebook for O’Rourke’s address. When he had found it he turned his car around and headed toward the Brooklyn Bridge.
Time was what he did not have much of, and he felt its movement like an enormous wave thundering toward shore.
Jamie O’Rourke lived in a Brooklyn row house on a street of Brooklyn row houses, drab, featureless, decaying like a dead body in a warm room. Reardon had seen these neighborhoods before, always feeling that somehow an immense and secret crime had been committed against the residents. They lived like citizens of a besieged city, in constant dread of invasion by any people different from themselves – non-Catholics, nonwhites, both, anything.
He climbed the steps to the door of O’Rourke’s house and rang the bell. He heard slight movements within the house but no one came to the door. He rang again.
This time the door opened. “If you’re a Jehovah’s Witness selling God, I ain’t buying none,” said a man dressed in dark-blue pants and a T-shirt, a bathroom towel wrapped loosely around his neck.
Reardon showed his gold shield. “My name is Reardon,” he said.
“What do you want?” the man asked harshly. He swabbed the back of his neck with the towel and looked suspiciously at Reardon.
“Are you Jamie O’Rourke?” Reardon asked.
“That’s right.”
“I understand you were married to Patty McDonald.”
The man pulled the towel from around his neck and wiped his hands. “You think I killed her?”
“I’m trying to find out who did,” Reardon said.
“I don’t know nothing about her,” O’Rourke said sharply. “She run out on me a long time ago. I ain’t seen her.”
“You were at her funeral.”
O’Rourke looked at Reardon warily. “Well, I got a right to go to her funeral, don’t I? She was my wife.”
“I’m not here to cause you trouble,” Reardon said.
“I’m not afraid of trouble.”
“Well, maybe you wouldn’t mind talking to me about her then.”
O’Rourke wiped his face with the towel. “I was just shaving,” he said. “I got to go to work tonight.”
“It won’t take long.”
O’Rourke studied Reardon’s face, came to some conclusion about him, and opened the door wider. “Come on in then.”
Inside Reardon quietly viewed the disarray around him. The room was furnished with an overstuffed sofa and two chairs, a heavy coffee table and matching end table. The stuffing of the couch was easily visible through gaping rents in the fabric. The coffee table was spotted with water stains and scarred as if raked with a fork. Sheets of floral wallpaper barely hung from the walls, and leaks had caused yellowed paint to peel halfway across the ceiling. There were no curtains; the Venetian blinds which afforded some privacy hung askew from dirty windows. The only signs of habitation were old copies of the Daily News piled on chairs and the floor and four or five crushed Schlitz cans.
“Sit down anywhere,” O’Rourke said. He looked around the room as if disgusted with it himself. “My old man told me I didn’t give a shit for nothing. That was the only truth that old man ever told me.”
Reardon grabbed a handful of newspapers from a chair and deposited them on a nearby table. “I’ll just sit here,” he said.
“Suit yourself,” O’Rourke said. He plopped down on the tattered sofa across from Reardon and stared at him silently, waiting.
Reardon pulled out his notebook and removed a ballpoint from his shirt pocket.
“You Irish?” O’Rourke asked suddenly.
Reardon nodded.
“From Brooklyn?”
Reardon shook his head. “Bronx. University Avenue around Fordham Road.”
O’Rourke grinned. “Jesus Christ, you might as well have been born in the Vatican.”
Reardon smiled. “Father Zeiser Place, actually.”
O’Rourke smiled widely. “Good God, how come you ain’t a priest?”
“Everybody else was,” Reardon said.
“I’d offer you something to eat,” O’Rourke said, “but I don’t keep no food in the house. Brings rats.” He glanced about the room again. “I know what you must think of this place, but just remember, if you think I like it, you’re wrong.”
“I’ve seen worse.”
“You’ve probably seen blood all over the walls,” O’Rourke said darkly.
“Sometimes.”
O’Rourke took a handkerchief from his back pocket and blew his nose. “I have a cold all winter,” he explained as he returned the handkerchief to his pocket. “I work as a night watchman in this old warehouse on Flatbush Avenue. They got this one little heater for the whole place. So I’m sick all the time.”
Beneath the worn, lined face Reardon could see that O’Rourke remained a young man, prematurely aging, strained and slowly breaking under the load.
“Well, I guess you got some questions to ask,” O’Rourke said, “so go ahead. I got to be at the warehouse in an hour.”
Looking at O’Rourke, Reardon sensed something that he believed was important, sensed that O’Rourke might understand the troubles of Andros Petrakis and offer across the great distance that divided them some element of concern. He decided to take a chance.
“I’m going to lay it on the line for you,” he said. “They’ve got a guy in the Tombs, and they’re going to try to pin the double murder on him.” Reardon looked intently into O’Rourke’s face. “I don’t think he’s the one.”
O’Rourke raised himself up slightly from his slumped position on the sofa.
“They arrested him for something else,” Reardon said, “for another crime. But I think they’ll try to get him for killing Patty and her roommate too. I don’t think he committed any of these crimes, Mr. O’Rourke.”
O’Rourke’s face hardened. “What’s this guy do?”
“He worked in the Parks Department, cleaning up the animal cages, things like that.”
“That’s a shit job,” O’Rourke said. “And they’re trying to lay a murder rap on him?”
“Yes.”
“That stinks,” O’Rourke said. “That really stinks.”
“Yes, it does, Mr. O’Rourke,” Reardon said quietly.
“What makes them think he did it?”
“They have some evidence,” Reardon said. “But I don’t believe any of it. I’ve met the man. I don’t think he could have done it. He’s too worn out. It takes a lot of energy to kill.”
O’Rourke pulled himself erect on the sofa and planted his feet on the floor. “How can I help?”
“I’m not sure you can,” Reardon told him, “but I think the only way I can get him off is to find out who killed Patty and her roommate. You see, whoever did that did the other thing too. The one the guy is charged with.”
“I know what you mean,” O’Rourke said. “I’ll do whatever I can. Ask me anything. If it takes a long time, tough shit. There ain’t nothing in that warehouse anybody wants anyway.”
Reardon looked closely at O’Rourke. “How long were you married to Patty?”
“Four years. That’s how long we lived together. We’re still married. Never did get no divorce.”
“Four years,” Reardon repeated.
“That’s right,” O’Rourke said, “and not a good year among them, to tell you the truth. She was sixteen years old when I married her. Just a little girl really. Beautiful too.”
“That’s young to marry,” Reardon coaxed.
“Yeah, it’s young. But if you lived with Sam McDonald you’d of married young too. That’s her father.” O’Rourke’s eyes narrowed spitefully. “He’s a brutal bastard. Used to beat the shit out of his wife, the fucking pig. Used to beat the shit out of Patty too.”
Reardon nodded.
“Patty was an only child,” O’Rourke continued. “You know why?”
Reardon shook his head.
“ ’Cause his wife couldn’t have no more children, ’cause she was carrying another baby, would have been Patty’s brother or sister, and he beat his wife up and she had a miscarriage, and she couldn’t have no more children after that.” O’Rourke sneered. “He’s a good Catholic, ain’t he? Just about lives in the confessional over at Saint Jude’s. Well, he’s got a lot to confess, but if I had any say in it, Sam McDonald would roast in hell.”
“Was there an investigation of that beating?”
“Who would testify against him? A little five-year-old girl like Patty was when it happened? His wife? Mary McDonald wouldn’t testify against her husband if he roasted her on a skewer.”
Reardon recognized that none of this had much to do with the case. But sometimes people had to be allowed to talk, to ramble, to work up to the relevant issue. By the time they got there, Reardon knew, they would be ready, and nothing could hold them back.
“Naw, hell,” O’Rourke said with disgust, “old Sam probably gave her a little peck on the cheek and whispered a mea culpa or two and that was the end of it.” His face saddened and his voice became abruptly softer. “Well, I learned something from Sam McDonald,” he said. “I learned what beating up on people leads to. And I’ll tell you something, I never hurt Patty. I never laid a hand on her. We had our troubles, who don’t? And she left me. Happens to a lot of people. But I never hurt her, never hit her or anything like that. Fact is, I loved that little girl. Problem was, she didn’t stay little. She was smart as a whip. Read all the time. I’m not that way at all. Just a dumb Brooklyn mick, that’s me. A working stiff. But I loved her, and I never hurt her. I don’t have to crawl over to Saint Jude’s every fifteen minutes confessing about all the people I’ve destroyed. Not like Sam.”
“Did Patty have any friends in Brooklyn? People she stayed in contact with after she moved to Manhattan?”
O’Rourke shook his head. “She said good riddance to everything and everybody in Brooklyn. Myself included.”
“No one at all?” Reardon asked again. “This could be important.”
“I’d like to help, but she left Brooklyn for good. She didn’t have nobody but me here anyway. She didn’t have no friends. She used to just sit in this front room and stare out the window. I’d come home. I had a day job then. I’d come home, drive up out there, and there she’d be. Curled up in that little chair you’re sitting in, staring out the window, just like a cat. No expression on her face. Just staring like she was watching a boring movie or something.”
“How often did you see her after she left?”
“Not much. It’s like she built a wall around herself. I’d see her once in a while. I’d try to be friendly. I’d say, ‘What’s new?’ or ‘What you been up to?’ – things like that. And she’d just say, ‘I’m okay, I guess,’ and that’d be the end of it.”
“She never mentioned anyone she knew there?”
“No, not that I can recall.”
“Never?”
“I don’t think so,” O’Rourke said. “I know it’s strange. I thought so at the time. But I figured she just didn’t want me to know anything about her, wanted me to keep my nose out of her life. Well, I figured if that’s what she wants that’s what I’ll do. So after a while we just talked about nothing whenever we saw each other: movies, TV, shit like that. Nothing personal.”
“Did you ever visit her in her apartment in Manhattan?”
O’Rourke’s eyes widened. “Oh, no,” he said, “that was impossible. She was very strict about that. I never saw where she lived. The whole four years she was in Manhattan I was never up to her place.” O’Rourke looked embarrassed. “I know I must sound like a jerk to you, seeing somebody that long that wouldn’t even let me in the front door, but I couldn’t help it.” O’Rourke’s voice tightened. “Fact is, I couldn’t leave it alone. I kept loving her. Ain’t that goofy?”
“No,” Reardon said quietly.
“I look around this place sometimes,” O’Rourke said gently, “and I remember what it was like when she was here. The worst of it was better than this shit.”
Reardon nodded.
“You married?” O’Rourke asked.
“I was,” Reardon said. “My wife died.”
“Sorry to hear it.”
Reardon nodded. “Do you think Mr. McDonald could have done anything to Patty?”
O’Rourke looked at Reardon with surprise. “You mean kill her? No, he’s a rotten bastard, a real pig, but he couldn’t do that.”
“You have any idea at all who might have done such a thing?”
“No. I wish to hell I did. I’d break his fucking back if I caught him. Maybe she had some enemies in Manhattan. I wouldn’t know about that. Or maybe they came after the other one, the roommate, or maybe it was just some crazy man.”
“Why did you stop seeing Patty?”
“That’s the way she wanted it,” O’Rourke said. “She said she was starting a new life.”
“What did she mean?”
O’Rourke smiled. “I’ve heard lots of people say that and I never saw it mean anything at all.”
“She didn’t tell you anything about what she meant?”
“Yeah,” O’Rourke said. “She told me, or tried to. I couldn’t make much sense out of it.”
“What did she say?”
“She said a friend of hers and her was going to get out of the States,” O’Rourke said. “She said she couldn’t take it here anymore. Maybe Sam was bothering her again, maybe some boyfriend dumped on her, I don’t know. Anyway, she had some shit left in the house here and she wanted to come and get it. She wanted to sell it. She was trying to get the money together to go to Europe and live. Her and her friend were going together.”
“Was that Karen Ortovsky?” Reardon asked.
“She never mentioned a name.”
“Did she say anything else?”
“Yeah,” O’Rourke said weakly. “Yeah, she hit me with the divorce stuff. But I just couldn’t do it. I must of been crazy to say no to her about that. I ain’t religious. I didn’t give a shit what the Church said. But somehow I just couldn’t get it into my damn head that she was never going to come back to me.” O’Rourke waved one arm across the room. “Never going to come back to this,” he said with a painful laugh.
“So you refused to give her a divorce?” Reardon said.
O’Rourke stared at Reardon. “She got real mad about that,” he said softly. “She abused me a little, to tell you the truth. When I heard her I knew it was the last time we’d ever have a friendly word with each other. We were in a coffee shop. She just seemed to blow up, and I just sat there listening to heir. She was calling me all kinds of names. I’d never heard that kind of stuff come out of her mouth. I must of been in shock. I couldn’t say nothing back. If a guy on the job called me those names I’d break his goddamn neck. But I just sat there like a stupid ass. Then she just stopped. She just looked at me for a long time without saying nothing. Then she got up and walked out. And I came home. And you know what I did?”
Reardon shook his head. He wondered how long O’Rourke had held this hurt mutely within him. He felt like the whiskey priest who waits and listens, but who knows that in the end he will have no balm to offer.
“I guess you noticed I’m a big guy?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I came home and for the next two hours I tore this fucking house apart. That’s why it looks like this. I turned over everything. I ripped off the wallpaper. I pulled down the shelves that were on the wall. And I ain’t fixed nothing yet.” He paused, breathing heavily. His face was flushed. Slowly he regained control of himself. “When I was finished, when there was nothing else to rip up or tear down, I curled up on this sofa and I cried like a baby until morning. If I hadn’t had a job to go to the next day I think I would have killed myself.”
“And you never saw her or heard from her again?” Reardon asked.
O’Rourke shook his head. “No, I never did,” he said. “Heard from a guy said he was her lawyer, but never from her.”
“A lawyer?” Reardon asked.
“Yeah,” O’Rourke said contemptuously. “Some bastard called me the next day. Said he was representing Lee McDonald. He said I had to give her a divorce, and if I didn’t he’d drag me into court and smear my name all over New York – sue me for everything I had, get me fired from my job, all that shit. He was a real nasty bastard.”
“Did you ever meet him?”
“Hell, no,” O’Rourke said angrily. “I told him he could go fuck himself. I told him if he ever came anywhere near me I’d tear his head off. I never heard from him again.”
“Did he tell you his name?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you remember it?”
“I never forgot anything that had to do with Patty.”
Reardon took out his notebook. “What was his name?”
“Phillip Cardan,” O’Rourke said.