The Shadow Man (7 page)

Mr Finkel nodded his head in agreement. ‘This is true,’ he said.

Mrs Kadosh shot him a quick glance, as if to say that she

was accustomed to interruption by her husband, but that her neighbor should wait his turn. Then she continued:

‘So, Finkel, of course, he has his hearing aid out, and so he doesn’t know from nothing, but he gets his robe too, and the two men, they go downstairs and knock on Mrs Millstein’s door. Knock, knock. But there is no answer. “Mrs Millstein, Mrs Millstein, are you okay?” But nothing. So Henry and Mr Finkel, they trudge back upstairs and he says to me, “What should we do? There is no answer.” I tell them to go around the back and look in the patio door, and so, back they go, to do that. And you know what?’

‘Patio door is broken in. Pulled right off,’ Henry Kadosh answered.

‘So,’ Mrs Kadosh continued, ‘Henry and Mr Finkel come rushing back to the front, where it is I am waiting, and saying, “Maria, Maria, calling police, 911 dialing. Right away!” And, as he is saying this, we are hearing another noise, right from the back. This noise, it comes from the patio. Around we all run, and Henry, he sees quick—’

‘Is not cats or dogs in garbage. Is nigger running out of Mrs Millstein’s apartment!’

Mrs Kadosh shook her head. ‘Henry, he chases man to alley. And old Finkel and I, we stick our heads in the door. And inside, is poor Mrs Millstein. Murdered dead.’

Winter’s head reeled and he felt a rush of heat rise through his gorge, flooding him with a disorienting dizziness. The young patrolman touched his back, and Winter turned toward him.

‘Come on, old-timer. Now you know what happened. You still wanna talk to a detective?’

‘Yes,’ Winter replied. ‘The victim …’ He stumbled and stopped, thinking to himself: The victim what}

His mind raced with a blistering equation. An old woman arrives at your door, afraid that she is going to be killed. And then she is killed, but by someone totally unexpected?

He thought he needed time to think, but then realized that he was walking across the courtyard, following the young patrolman, heading toward the entrance to Sophie Millstein’s apartment. He walked past the trumpeting cherub. The figurine was hit every few seconds with a shaft of red light, so that it appeared to be bathed in blood. He paused at the doorway, staring inside at the activity that seemed to energize the interior. He saw a man with a fingerprint case working the kitchen. Another was taking carpet samples. The young patrolman walked up to a wiry black man who was loosening his tie against the building, thick humidity of the room, gesturing toward Simon Winter. The old detective paused, waiting for the younger man to approach him. He studied the activity within the apartment. He clamped down hard on emotions that seemed to dash about headlessly within him, trying to concentrate, steadying himself with memory. You have been here many times before, he told himself. Process the scene. It will tell you everything, if only you take your time and let it converse in its own way, in its own voice, speaking in the ancient language of violent death.

For a moment he watched Simon Winter, and saw the way his eyes scoured the room. He mistook this attentiveness for nervousness. Walter Robinson turned to the uniformed officer who’d escorted the old man into the apartment.

‘So, what’s the geezer’s story?’ he asked.

‘Name is Winter, lives across the courtyard. Says he saw the deceased this evening. Probably the last person to see her before the breakin. Heard her lock herself into the

place. Thought you might want a statement.’

‘Uh-huh,’ Robinson replied. ‘Yeah. You take it.’

The patrolman nodded. ‘Maybe he could do the ID for us?’

Robinson considered this, and thought: why not?

‘Good idea.’ Making a short gesture, he and the patrolman walked over to Simon Winter. Walter Robinson quickly introduced himself as the detective in charge.

‘We’d like this patrolman to take your statement,’ he said to the old man. ‘And, if you’re willing, we’d like to have you make a tentative identification for us. If you’re up for it, of course. Just for paperwork, you know. And we like to be completely certain before we call the next of kin. But only if you’re willing. It’s not pretty…’

Simon Winter kept his eyes darting about, then finally turned and fixed them on the detective.

‘I’ve seen it all before,’ he said quietly.

‘What?’

‘I’ve seen it. Twenty-two years with the City of Miami Police Department. The last fifteen in homicide.’

‘You were a cop?’

‘That’s right. Retired. It’s been a while since I was at a crime scene. At least a dozen years.’

‘You’re not missing much,’ Robinson said.

‘That’s right,’ Winter said quietly. ‘I don’t miss much.’

Robinson ignored the double entendre, extended a hand, and they shook. The younger man did this out of a professional courtesy. ‘Things must have been different back then,’ he said.

‘No,’ Winter replied. ‘People die in much the same fashion. What was different was the science. We didn’t have a lot of the stuff you young guys have today. Scientific profiles. DNA testing. Computers. We didn’t have computers. Are you good with computers, Detective?’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘Think they can solve this crime?’

Robinson shrugged. ‘Maybe.’ Then, after thinking for an instant, he added, ‘More than likely.’

For a moment he watched Winter, whose eyes had once again started to sweep the crime scene, absorbing what he saw there. The young detective had two quick thoughts. First, that he wasn’t sure he liked Simon Winter, and second, that he was sure he didn’t want to end up an abrasive old man, retired to the Beach, existing on memories of years on the force. Dozens of killings, rapes, and assaults remembered in advanced age as the good old days. His mind abruptly wandered to a torts law problem discussed in a class two nights earlier. He had written a mock brief on the issue, and it had been his effort that the professor singled out for praise.

Walter Robinson was determined not to simply trade in his badge and revolver for a briefcase and a slightly more expensive suit and work the other side of the criminal street, as had many of the other policemen he’d known who went on to law school and became criminal defense attorneys or prosecutors. He told himself that he would land in some corporate firm, shaking hands with executives and businessmen, and soon enough would forget about crime scenes and the helplessness of sudden death.

‘Okay,’ he said, shaking the pleasant images of the future out of his awareness, ‘let’s make the ID, then you can tell your story to the patrolman.’

Simon Winter followed the young detective through the apartment, remembering that he had taken the same path earlier that evening. But the small space was crowded with technicians and policemen, every light was turned on, and strobe patterns from the assembled squad cars outdoors marked the walls, disorienting Winter, almost as if the

apartment he’d entered while Sophie Millstein waited at her door was someplace different and distant, like a memory from childhood. The angles, the colors, the smells, all seemed alien to him. He looked about for the cat, but it had disappeared. He followed the detective into the bedroom.

Sophie Millstein lay on her back on the bed.

Her nightclothes were torn from her struggle, the flaccid curve of her breast exposed. Her hair had come unpinned, and fanned out haphazardly from her head, as if she was underwater. Her nose had been bloodied and her upper lip was stained brown where the blood had dried. One knee was thrust over the other, almost coyly, and the flesh of her hip was bared. The sheets on the bed were tangled around her feet. He had an urge to reach out and pull the off-white nightgown over Sophie Millstein’s alabaster skin.

Simon Winter glanced quickly around. He saw a photographer taking a picture of her purse, which had been ripped open and discarded on the floor. Another was dusting the bureau for fingerprints. The drawers had been torn open and clothes were strewn about. Winter remembered the small jewelry box next to the picture of Leo on the bureau top. But the picture was now in a corner, glass shattered, and the jewelry box missing.

He turned to Walter Robinson.

‘She had a box, you know, a little metal thing. It was sort of reddish brass with a little design carved on the top. She kept her rings and earrings and stuff in it. Right up there.’

He pointed, and the detective took notes.

‘It’s gone,’ Winter said redundantly.

‘You would recognize it?’ Robinson asked.

‘I think so,’ Winter replied.

He turned back to Sophie Millstein.

A second fingerprint technician was working on her

neck, carefully dusting her skin.

‘Bodyprint?’ Winter asked.

‘Yeah,’ Robinson replied. ‘Shot in the dark, really. Maybe lift a usable print about one time out of a hundred. Still, worth trying.’

‘We used to try, occasionally. But it never worked for us.’

‘We’ve got new paper. And the lifting tape is much better. Sometimes use an ultraviolet technique as well. And, you know, they’re developing this laser that reads the print ridges. Still…’ He shrugged.

The technician bent over Sophie Millstein, obscuring her from Simon Winter’s view. He had a small piece of tape in his hand, which he pressed to the old woman’s skin, then lifted carefully. He placed the tape against a sheet of special white paper, depositing the print. ‘Maybe,’ the technician muttered. ‘Looks okay.’

The technician stepped back, moving aside.

‘You want to do the ID now?’ Walter Robinson said.

Winter stepped forward and looked down at Sophie Millstein.

Strangled, he thought immediately. He fixed the red and blue-black bruise marks on the old woman’s neck in his memory. The skin by her windpipe was crushed, deformed by the force that had encircled her. Mentally, he measured the distance between the marks.

Large hands, he thought. Strong hands.

‘Is that Mrs Sophie Millstein?’ Robinson asked.

Simon Winter continued to stare. The woman’s eyes were still wide open, staring sightlessly up toward the ceiling. Winter saw the fear in his neighbor’s face. She must have known, if only briefly, that she was dying then and there. He wondered if he’d worn the same look earlier in the evening, when he lifted his own pistol to his mouth.

He wondered if she’d managed to think of Leo in her last panicked moments.

He looked at Sophie Millstein’s eyes again. No, he thought. All they saw was terror.

Winter took note of a scratch, really a long frayed slice of skin on her neck, oddly unaccompanied by blood. He remembered the gold necklace she wore. It was gone. Ripped from her postmortem, he thought. That’s why the cut to the skin didn’t bleed.

‘Mr Winter?’ Walter Robinson’s voice was questioning.

Simon Winter quickly glanced down at his neighbor’s fingers. Did she fight back? Did she scratch and flail away and try to win her remaining years back from the man who sought to steal them? Her killer’s flesh should be beneath the fingernails. But he saw Sophie Millstein kept hers cut close.

His eyes moved up to Sophie Millstein’s right forearm. He could just make out the number tattooed there in faded blue.

Winter felt something touch his sleeve, turned and looked hard at the young detective.

‘Of course,’ he said slowly. ‘It’s Sophie Millstein. Her necklace is missing. A single strand, gold chain, but it had her name stamped in a charm at the center. The same kind that kids like to wear, but hers was distinctive. There were two diamonds, not big ones, at either end of the 5. Her husband gave that to her about eighteen months ago, and she never took it off.’

He took a deep breath, watching Walter Robinson make a notation in his book. ‘You’d recognize the necklace?’ the younger man asked.

‘Yes.’ He continued, ‘You might try taking samples from beneath her fingernails …’

‘They do that at the morgue,’ Robinson replied. ‘Standard procedure. Do you know her next of kin?’

‘Yes. She has a son named Murray Millstein, who’s an attorney on Long Island. She has an address book in a drawer in the living room. The little table that holds the phone. A little leather address book. That’s where she said she always kept it.’

‘In the living room?’

‘That’s right. I’ll show you.’

Robinson started to lead Winter from the room. ‘Thank you for your help on this, Mr Winter. We really appreciate it …’

‘She was scared,’ Simon Winter said abruptly, under his voice, to the detective. ‘That’s why she came to me.’

‘Scared?’

‘Yes. She’d had a fright. Today. She saw someone. She was scared and threatened.’

‘You think this person that scared her had anything to do with the crime?’

‘I don’t know. It was unusual. She was very frightened.’

‘It was unusual for her to be frightened?’

‘No,’ Winter replied, slightly exasperated. ‘She was old and alone. She was always frightened.’

‘That’s what I would have thought. Well, just give your statement to the patrolman. Tell him what happened.’

‘This person was someone—’

‘He’ll take your statement. I need to secure this scene and contact the family.’

‘But the person—’

‘Mr Winter, you were a detective. What do you think happened here?’

Simon Winter didn’t look around. Instead he eyed Walter Robinson. ‘I’d say someone broke in, killed her, robbed her, and ran when he heard the neighbors. That’s the obvious explanation, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right. And we even have several witnesses who saw the perpetrator fleeing. Mr and Mrs Kadosh and Mr Finkel. Your neighbors. So what is obvious is also true. Now, let the patrolman take your statement. Tell him who she was scared of.’

He didn’t finish his thought out loud, which was: Whoever it was, it was the wrong damn person.

The two men paused in the center of the living room. Simon Winter wanted to get angry, but felt himself searching instead for a grip on the events. He cursed his age and indecision inwardly.

‘Now, where’s that address book?’

‘In the drawer.’

Winter pointed, and Walter Robinson stepped across the small room and opened the drawer beneath the phone.