Switch (2 page)

"Everything's psychological."

"This is
psycho
-logical." He grinned, pleased with himself; master of wordplay, he wouldn't need a ghostwriter when he retired and wrote his book.

Janek
waited to hear about it, but now Hart was onto something else. "...couple asshole detectives acting like goddamn four-year-olds. Embarrassing scene, personally embarrassing to me, at the Medical Examiner's yesterday afternoon." He glanced at
Janek
. "You want to hear?"

"Sure. What happened?"

"Couldn't believe it. Couple of goddamn four-year-olds." Hart wiped his forehead. There was still a strip of sweat above his lip. "Two homicides over the weekend. One in the One-nine, the other in the Twentieth. Monday morning they find this schoolteacher. You probably read about it in the papers."
Janek
had read about it: a female teacher at a private girls' school found murdered in an East Side brownstone; the afternoon papers had made a big deal about it because the school was classy and the woman lived at a good address. "The second one was on the West Side. Tenement building. All-night call-girl type. They found her Monday, too, but we didn't say much about it then even though there was something peculiar that connected the two cases which we weren't actually aware of until yesterday afternoon." Hart grinned. "Tell you one thing, Frank. You never had a case like this."

"Like what?"

"Hold on. I'm getting to it. Understand that what I'm telling you isn't going to the papers." He turned in his seat so he was facing
Janek
. His voice turned serious. His tiny eyes were boring in. "The heads were switched. Get what I'm saying? The head of the teacher was with the body of the hooker and the other way around. Now, you see what that means. Someone took an awful risk. Ever hear of anything like that? Like a terror movie or a book."

Janek
looked down at the floor of the car. Hart's shoes were elevated—he hadn't noticed that before. He didn't know if it was the smell in the air, or Al's suicide, or the thought of heads being switched, but whatever it was, it was starting to make him sick.

"...The killer decapitates victim A, then goes
crosstown
and decapitates B, then takes B's head back to A's apartment and places it with her corpse, then goes back
crosstown
with A's head and places it so it looks like it goes with B."

Maybe much simpler than that,
Janek
thought, but Hart was probably right—you usually don't carry around a victim's head when you go out to kill someone else. Hart was right about the risk, too, and that the case was psychological. Some sort of crazy statement by a psychopath. But it was not the kind of case he liked.

"...There has to be a reason, right? That's where you come in. Figure it out. I'm handing it to you. Two heads on a silver platter. Interested?"

"What happened at the Medical Examiner's?"

Hart groaned. They were speeding down the FDR; the UN Building was just ahead. "Couple of
jerkoffs
got the calls. Stanger in the One-nine. Howell in the Twentieth. Know them?"

"Stanger—vaguely."

"Then you gotta know he's a jerk. Take it from me, Howell's just as bad. Okay, Stanger gets a lousy ID on the teacher from her building super. They cart her downtown and then there's some trouble getting someone from the school to look at her, and her parents live in Buffalo, so they can't get down here right away. Meantime, Howell gets the hooker, they cart her down, and at noon yesterday the ME starts to scream. There's a
mixup
. The heads are switched. Like someone fucked the bodies up."

"They're not perfect down there. They get sloppy, too."

"I know, but not this time. We got photographs. That's the way the bodies were found. Anyway, Stanger and Howell rush down there and they get into a fight. 'Whose case is this anyway?' 'You got my head. I got yours.' 'Let's switch them back and do our own investigations.' 'No sweat—we'll go our separate ways.' They tried to make some kind of bullshit deal, with the photos staring them in the face." Hart shook his head. "Can't believe it. Next thing they started swinging. A fistfight down there between the bodies with the whole staff of pathologists looking on. Why? Because they're morons. They're both detectives, they each got a homicide, each guy wants to work his own case, and if they have to share—I mean God forbid the two killings should be connected!—then they both know one of
them's
going to end up getting screwed."

"So now you need a lieutenant from outside."

They were passing under the Brooklyn Bridge. "I need a real detective, for Christ's sake, Frank. That's why
I'm giving
this to you."

Two men were waiting in Hart's outer office.
Janek
recognized Stanger; the beefy one, he guessed, was Howell. They were sitting at opposite sides of the room studying the carpet. Stanger had a black eye. Hart didn't acknowledge them.
Janek
followed him in.

"Set yourself up in that special squad office on the second floor of the Sixth. I'll call Taylor and tell him you're coming. You'll want some of your regular people, I guess."

"Sal
Marchetti
and Aaron Rosenthal."

"Don't know
Marchetti
. Aaron's good. Now what am I going to do about those repentant jerks out there?" Hart motioned toward the waiting room.

"They drew the calls."

"Yeah. And disgraced the division. Still, if you can stand them you can have them. Just sit here and nod while I tell them what kind of creeps they are."

Stanger and Howell were called in, and Hart went at them mercilessly. They were assholes.
Jerkoffs
. Four-year-olds. He ought to discipline them. He ought to take away their shields. But this time he was going to be generous. He was going to give them a chance to redeem themselves. It was one case now,
Janek's
case. They were both going to work for
Janek
, and they were going to work their butts off, too. Any questions? No questions—good. Then get the hell out of here. And one other thing—not a word about the switch. Any leaks on that and the ax will fall, and then there'll be four goddamn heads rolling around the morgue.

When
Janek
left, Sweeney handed him the keys. "Nice car, Lieutenant, but something funny about your engine. I happen to know an honest garage. They give a good discount to NYPD."

S
tanger made the presentation from the middle of the room, a studio apartment on the top floor of a brownstone on East Eighty-first. Howell stood back against the door. Sal
Marchetti
stayed close to
Janek
. Aaron was busy and would join them the following day.

Stanger and Howell had made up. They were serious and tried to act competent and
Janek
was glad of that. But he had trouble concentrating. His mind kept drifting back to Al. He knew he had to bear down, give shape to this investigation. More than forty-eight hours since the discovery of the first body, a crucial period, usually the most crucial in a murder case, and this time there were two homicides and the time had been squandered away.

"Amanda Ireland," Stanger said. "Taught French at the Weston School. When she didn't show up Monday—they're running some kind of summer makeup session now—someone called, and when she didn't answer the phone, the art teacher, male, Caucasian, a friend, taxied down here and got the super to open up. Soon as he saw the mess he turned away and vomited. Neither he nor the super looked too closely, which was why they didn't observe the other girl's head."

Howell
gaffawed
.

There was a quality to the apartment that aroused
Janek's
compassion.
Hallowed ground,
he thought. Ground that had been made sacred by the terrible act performed upon it, the taking of human life, the spilling of human blood.

Plants hung from the ceiling in front of the windows—he felt like watering them; already they'd begun to wilt. A cloth bedspread in faded rainbow stripes—needed a laundering; now it was stiff with congealed blood. Pile of quiz papers on the desk, half of them graded, half still unread. It was the apartment of a nice person who had tried to create a little refuge for herself. A dog dish half full of water stood just outside the kitchenette. A leash and a light-tan belted raincoat hung from an old-fashioned coat stand beside the door.

The crime-scene crew had been thorough. No physical evidence, tracks, fibers, prints. Neither apartment had been ransacked, and both were double-locked. Stanger, who was balding and cadaverous, was pointing through the bathroom door.

"Stabbed in here. Toothbrush on the floor and toothpaste in her mouth. Seems she was brushing at the time." He stopped, noticed they were gaping. "Well, guess that's pretty obvious. Anyway, he must have been waiting for her in the tub. Stabbed her in the back through the shower curtain. Plastic's shredded. Protected him from spatter. Then turned her over, still wrapped in the curtain, and started working on her chest. No defensive wounds on her palms or arms. Looks like he took her by surprise."

"Brilliant," whispered Sal.

"Excuse me," said Stanger. "I'm trying to make a presentation to the lieutenant here if that's okay."

"It's okay," said
Janek
. "You're doing great. Go on." He glanced at Sal, a signal to lay off.

"After he killed her, he wrapped her in the shower curtain and dragged her over to the bed. Undressed her, laid her face down, then cut off her head. Medical Examiner says two different weapons—short pointed knife in the can, something longer with a sharp blade out here. No sexual assault—front, rear or mouth. And nothing missing far as we can tell, except her keys. No one heard anything or saw anyone enter or leave."

Janek
shook his head. "Nobody heard
anything
?"

"Just the dog. The dog barked, but she did that every night. She barked whenever anybody crossed the hall. People have complained a lot about this dog. Someone even wrote a letter to the landlord a couple months ago."

"Well, there's your motive," said Sal.

"What happened to the dog?"

"Injured. Killer kicked her in the head. ASPCA took her away. Put her to sleep, I guess."

"There goes your witness."

"Knock it off, Sal." Stanger was still too beaten down to stand up to razzing. He'd made a fool out of himself at the morgue, been dressed down by the CD, suffered the indignity of a black eye, and now
Janek
knew he'd be useless if someone didn't puff him up. "Any idea how he got in?"

"Assuming for now the perpetrator's a
he
, Amanda could have let him in, though that doesn't fit with hiding in the shower. No sign of forced entry, so I checked out the super. He carries his keys on a huge ring on his belt, and everyone who knows him swears by him up and down. My gut feeling is our guy came in off the fire escape. Now, notice there's an accordion grill. It was closed, but there isn't any lock. Seems strange, maybe, since she's got a high-security lock on the door, but a lot of these girls are afraid to lock their grills. Makes them nervous. They want to get out fast if there's a fire."

So, Stanger was a self-styled expert on the lifestyles of East Side single girls.
Janek
didn't agree with Hart, he didn't think Stanger was a jerk. Just a reasonably hard-working mediocre detective. No wonder he wanted to keep the case. A chance for glory: society girl homicide. He could hang out at Second Avenue singles bars for weeks talking to her friends, cadge himself a hundred drinks, get laid a couple times, maybe even get lucky and pick up something that would help him break the case.

"What about a boyfriend?"

Stanger shook his head. "She didn't go out. A loner. Lonely sort of girl. No one ever heard anything through the walls. And so far as anyone around here knows she never gave a party or had a guest stay overnight."

"Little Miss Perfect," muttered Sal. "I don't buy that. I don't believe in that."

"This one comes close. Good teacher. Everybody liked her. Not bad-looking either. Walked her dog on a regular schedule: before she left for work, soon as she came home, and every evening around nine o'clock. Both parents teach school upstate. A married sister in Hawaii. I think the guy came in through the window when she was out with the dog, which suggests he knew her habits. He might have seen her coming out of school one day. There're creeps who linger around up there. The school warns the girls not to talk to them. He could have spotted her there, followed her home and she never even noticed. Once he picked up on her routine he'd know when it was safe to slip inside and wait."

A perfectly decent second-rate theory,
Janek
thought, except it didn't take into account the other girl and the switch. Stanger still hadn't come to grips with the fact that Amanda Ireland was not an isolated case.

As they drove over to look at the other apartment,
Janek
instructed Sal. Check the taxi sheets and the drivers of the
crosstown
buses. Time how long it would take to walk. Talk to patrolmen who were on duty that night and find out if any cars were ticketed or double-parked. Talk to doormen along the route. Did anyone see a man coming back and forth on Saturday carrying some sort of package or bag? The killer crossed town at least twice and possibly three times. He was carrying heads, and also weapons. He returned to one of the crime scenes and possibly to both. He might have had blood on him. He might have acted strange, impatient, nervous, tense. That was Sal's job—run down the mechanics, figure out how the killer had gotten back and forth. And yes, for now, work on the assumption the killer is a male, but don't forget to ask about a woman too.