AND A TIME TO DIE Read online

  The crime scene unit efficiently collected blood and semen samples, including vaginal, oral and anal swabs. You can never have enough DNA, like you can never have enough fingerprints, not that I expected our man to have left any prints behind. Still, you never know.

  Frank said he wanted the rope cut, preserving the knot. Stan cut the cord with scissors and lowered her legs to the bed. There was no rigor, which meant she’d been dead less than four hours, probably a great deal less. The knot was placed in an envelope and sealed, dated and initialed. That done, Stan cut the rest of the cord, freeing her hands and feet. The cord was collected and placed with the rest of the accumulating pile of evidence.

  A man poked his head in the door and said, “The photographer just shot the car, inside and out. The tow truck’s here to take it to the yard, unless you want it here for some reason.”

  “I’ll take a look at it before they take it away,” Frank said.

  The guy said, “Okay,” and left.

  “We’ll dust it when we get it back to the garage,” Morwald said.

  A guy came in with a small vacuum cleaner and began going over the carpet, putting the sweepings in envelopes, tweezing things that caught his eye. We walked outside and looked at the car, a fairly late model Honda, black or dark blue, it was hard to tell. The sky was getting lighter now, turning pink at the edges, and looked to be another warm day.

  “Nothing unusual that I can see, partner,” Frank said. “Let’s let these people get on with their work.”

  We left them putting the car on a flatbed, and returned to the room. The vacuum guy was finished, and the fingerprint guys were dusting the room. The medical examiner arrived, rubbing her eyes.

  Sylvia Ruhl said god what a stink and got to work. Snapping on latex gloves, she took a thermometer from her bag and stuck it in the victim’s rectum. Reaching in the bag again she drew out a voice recorder and told it her name, location and time.

  “Early non-fixed lividity,” she told the recorder, “body warm to touch, no rigor. Eyes flattened. Feet and hands blue, nails and lips pale.” She put the recorder away and examined the slashed throat, shaking her head all the while.

  “Cut with a razor, Frank,” she said. “Scalpel maybe. Something very sharp, anyway.”

  “How long she been dead, Sylvie?” Frank asked.

  “More than thirty minutes, less than four hours.” She took the thermometer from the rectum. “Ninety five degrees. At a one and a half degree loss per hour, that would make it about two hours. If heat loss is accurate, and it seldom is.”

  “Two hours would make it about three a.m.,” Frank said.

  “Sounds about right,” Sylvia said, packing her gear. “Sometime between two and three, probably. Get her downtown. Maybe the autopsy will tell us more.”

  The EM team wheeled a gurney into the room. Sylvia Ruhl said goodnight and left. The medics put the body of Maggie Swain in a rubber bag and took her to the morgue.

  We rousted Charles and Lois. Embarrassed, they’d seen nothing, heard nothing. Charles drew me aside while Lois got dressed.

  “This won’t make the paper or anything, will it?” he asked anxiously. “I can’t afford anything like that, and neither can Lois. We shoulda been outta here long ago, but we fell asleep. We’ll both have some explaining to do when we get home as it is.”

  I told him their secret was safe with us.

  As expected, the spider showed no prints. Maggie Swain’s car was taken to the garage and gone over with a fine-tooth comb. We found lots of prints, lots of hairs and lots of fibers, and if we ever find the perp, and if he was ever in the car, we’ve a good chance of matching him up.

  Sylvia did the autopsy next day and found marks on the neck consistent with manual strangulation.

  “Rough sex, probably,” Sylvia said.

  “Could be,” Frank said, “if he was into playing games. Coulda just waited till she got undressed and choked her till she lost consciousness, then he taped her mouth and tied her up.”

  How long he waited to kill her after she regained consciousness I don’t know. Whether he killed her and then jacked off all over her, or jacked off and then killed her, I don’t know. Whatever her last moments were, they were spent in a dirty motel room with a maniac.

  2

  We found out a lot about Maggie Swain in the next few days. We found out she was a prostitute, twenty-six years old, with two small children being cared for by her mother. We brought the motel night manager downtown, to the Police Administration Building, figuring he might know more than he put out the night of the murder. Sure enough, Mr. Martinez was a lot more talkative sitting in the Roundhouse.

  “How well did you know Maggie Swain, Mr. Martinez?” I asked.

  “Just to talk to,” he shrugged. “She was a regular, she rented a room maybe once or twice a week.”

  “Did you know she was a prostitute?”

  “Sure.” He smiled, showing two rows of very white, very even teeth. By the way he smiled it was clear he was proud of them.

  “What made you look into the room, Mr. Martinez?” Frank said.

  Martinez leaned forward, as if about to tell us something unusually important. “We have an arrangement with the ladies, Mr. Kopf. Miss Swain wasn’t the only prostitute to use the motel. They rent for one hour, two hours. I’ve never seen one of the ladies rent a room for the whole night. That is why I went to the room. Miss Swain should have checked out, and she did not.”

  “I looked at the register, Mr. Martinez,” I said. “I didn’t see anything about renting for one or two hours.”

  He shrugged again. “No, it isn’t noted. But I know.”

  “How long did Maggie Swain rent the room for?”

  “For two hours. She should’ve been out by two fifteen, but we usually give them some leeway, being regulars.”

  “How much leeway did you give her?”

  “At four o’clock I walked down to check the room. Sometimes they leave and forget to turn in the key. The door was locked, the key in the lock. I thought it was strange she’d do that, you know, leave a key in the door like that, anybody comes by can get in the room. I opened the door and smelled something bad. I turned on the light and saw her on the bed. I ran back to the office and called 911.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Martinez,” Frank said.

  We discovered Maggie Swain had a more or less regular clientele. We eventually found out who they were, or most of them anyway. We talked to everyone who had been in that motel that night, and no one had seen or heard anything.

  The DNA came back and the technicians went over it with us. The technicians talked about autorads and markers, but it was beyond me technically. All I knew was, if we ever caught the guy, the DNA would prove it was his semen.

  We braced for more spiders, but as the weeks and months went by without another killing, we gradually forgot about Maggie Swain and went on with our lives. Until a couple of kids found Constance Delavaria. Over the next two years there were six more, and then it stopped. We never found him.

  The pictures slowly stopped, the smell of that motel room slowly faded. I came back, as if from a particularly vivid dream. That’s the funny thing about dreams. When I dream, I can see again. I had just seen that motel room as clearly as I did the night it happened.

  Thinking about it, though, there were differences. Cathy said Driscoll had been spread-eagled and tied to the bed. That’s not what he did to Maggie Swain or Constance Delavaria or any of the others. He tied them up, but not spread-eagled, and not tied to the bed. Maybe it isn’t the same guy. Maybe he hasn’t come back after all these years. Maybe the spider was a coincidence. And maybe my name wasn’t Matthew J. Doyle.

  Another difference between Louise Driscoll and the others bothered me. Maggie Swain and all the others were prostitutes, and this one didn’t fit. Louise Driscoll wasn’t a prostitute.

  The telephone rang, shaking the memories loose.

  “Hi, Matt,” Valerie Bauman said. “Have something fo
r you, if you’re interested.”

  “Always interested, Val.” Valerie is with the Public Defender’s Office, our largest single client, so we do our best to keep them happy. Valerie is one of the few women I know who doesn’t wear a scent of any kind, which seems to me to be counterproductive, but maybe she just doesn’t want to advertise.

  “What do you remember of the subway concourse stabbing?” she said.

  “Some. Happened a couple months ago as I recall, early March, late February.”

  “February twenty sixth, bitter cold. Carl McReady, age forty-two, and William Sasser, age thirty-six, both white, both apparently friends, or at least acquaintances, were with a group of other homeless, mostly men but some women, taking shelter in the subway concourse. McReady and Sasser got into an argument over a box, a big box, one of those you can curl up and go to sleep in. McReady stabbed Sasser and Sasser died on the way to the hospital. McReady was arrested and is in jail awaiting trial. His trial is scheduled for December, but we probably won’t be in court until January or February.”

  “Sounds fairly cut and dried, Val. What do you want us to do?”

  “McReady doesn’t remember any of it, claims he was strung out on angel dust. What I hear is, McReady, Sasser and another white male named Arthur Donaldson were using PCP that night. I hear there was a woman, too, but I don’t have a name. I’d like to find Donaldson and the woman. If I can get their testimony they were all snorting angel dust, maybe I can plead diminished capacity. Probably won’t work, but it’s the only chance he has. Too many people saw him do it.”

  I knew enough not to say these people aren’t worth it, Val, so I didn’t. She’d only have been upset.

  “Do you have a description?”

  “No, only the name.”

  “How many homeless were in the group that night?”

  “About thirty.”

  “All of them snorting?”

  “I don’t know. Those who could afford it, probably. If not angel dust, then something, if only jug wine.”

  “Which concourse?”

  “Thirteenth Street.”

  “How did McReady, Sasser and Donaldson get the price of angel dust?”

  “I don’t know. Does it matter?”

  “Just being a cop, Val. Sorry.”

  “They probably got it panhandling. Anyway, I need you to find Arthur Donaldson for me, and through him the woman.”

  “Any idea where he might be found?”

  “None. I’ve inquired at all the city shelters. They haven’t seen him in months.”

  “Val, it’s summer. He’s probably living in a park somewhere, or in a doorway. He’ll show up at a shelter eventually.”

  “Sure, next winter. The trial’s scheduled for December, I need him before then. Check out the concourse for me. Maybe somebody’s seen him.”

  “Okay Val,” I said, getting up. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  The Thirteenth Street concourse was just a couple of blocks away. The concourse was part of the Market Street subway, and ran underground for a mile or more, on both sides of the tracks, connecting the various subway stations from the lower end of Market Street to beyond City Hall. The Market Street and Broad Street subways crossed at City Hall, just west of Thirteenth Street, and a maze of underground concourses connected them. In the winter, an entire city of homeless people congregated in the concourses, living in boxes, urinating and defecating where they stood, a menace to the students and working people who use the trains. They are not truly homeless, not in any traditional sense of the word. They are not honest, hard working folk who find themselves temporarily in straitened circumstances. They’re street people, drug addicts and alcohol abusers for the most part. A good many of them are victims of a compassionate liberalism that believes a mentally ill person is better off living in a subway concourse than in an institution.

  I’d spent my life in this city, a good part of it as a cop. I knew it backward and forward. I had the geography fixed in my mind. I knew exactly where the Thirteenth Street subway stop was, and what’s more, unless Valerie used the subway, I knew something she didn’t know. The subway platforms had newsstands, and I knew the newsagents.

  We got to the subway entrance and Buster wouldn’t move until he was sure I had the handrail. We went down a steep flight of steps, with Buster cautious as always. Running footsteps raced by us, people hurrying, even though they knew there was a train every two minutes.

  I flashed a pass at the cashier and was buzzed on through. The platform buzzed with activity, but we made our way through the crowd without incident and stopped in front of the newsstand.

  “That wouldn’t be Jiggs Maloney still hard at work, would it?” I demanded, and a booming voice called, “Hey, Mr. Doyle! How ya been?”

  “Pretty fair, Jiggs, how’s yourself?” It was good to hear his voice. I hadn’t been down here in years, and I was afraid he’d be gone, or wouldn’t remember me.

  “Can’t complain, Mr. Doyle. Excuse me.”

  People brushed past me, picking up the paper, a magazine or two. I heard the cash register, heard Jiggs say thank you, heard voices ask for cigarettes. A train pulled in across the way, going in the opposite direction. It’s busy at lunchtime, but I only had one question.

  “Sorry Mr. Doyle,” Jiggs said. “What’s up?”

  “I’m looking for a homeless guy named Arthur Donaldson, Jiggs. I understand he hangs out here in the winter. Do you know him?”

  “Didn’t know them people had names, Mr. Doyle. I try to keep them as far away from the stand as possible. What’s he look like?”

  “I don’t know, I only have a name. Are there any hanging out in the concourse now?”

  “Haven’t seen any in months. They disappear in summer, reappear in winter. Regular as clockwork.”

  “Thanks Jiggs.”

  I had another card to play. Under the Thirteenth Street subway was the subway surface line, light rail cars they called them now, trolley cars to us city boys. Near the end of the train platform was another stair leading down to the subway surface cars. We made it down okay, and onto another platform, this one for trolleys heading out to West Philly. This station had a newsstand too.

  I saw no reason to vary my approach, so I said, “That wouldn’t be Harry the Hat still hard at work, would it?”

  A woman’s voice said, “No, Harry retired last year. Went to live with a daughter in Jersey. Can I help you?”

  “Thank you,” I said. “Quite possibly you can. I’m looking for a homeless man named Arthur Donaldson. I understand he hangs out in the Thirteenth Street concourse in the winter. You wouldn’t know Arthur, would you?”

  “Wouldn’t know him if I fell over him,” she laughed. “But there’s a couple of them back in the warrens there. I seen ‘em go in a couple hours ago, and I ain’t seen ‘em come out. Generally they don’t spend much time down here in the summer, but there’s a couple of them live back there more or less full time. See them go in and out the door from time to time. Give me the creeps, but I guess they’re harmless. The city doesn’t seem to care if they’re back there or not.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” I said, giving her my best smile. I knew what she meant by warrens. At the end of every platform in the subway system a door led into below street working spaces. She used just the right word. They were warrens of dark and gloomy pipe spaces, storage rooms and passageways, filled with steam lines, water lines, sewage lines and electrical lines. They were wet and dirty, full of rats and giant cockroaches. They stank, and if you ever got lost in one of them you might stay in there a long time.

  I’d never been in the Thirteenth Street warrens, but many years ago, when I was still a cop, I had to go into the working spaces beneath Erie Avenue, so I had a pretty good idea of what it was like in there. A maniac had grabbed a young girl off the platform and took her into the warrens. She was alone, on her way home from school, and had no one to help her, no one to go in after her. The cops were called, but by the time t
hey got to her the girl was dead. They cornered the guy and shot him to death, and Frank Kopf and I had to go in afterward and try to determine what happened. This incident resulted in two immediate hues and cries. The first hue and cry was from the people who demanded the cops who shot the guy be held for trial, and the second was a demand to make the subways safe for innocent folk. They couldn’t make the subways safe, but they could lock the maintenance doors on the platforms, which they did, with great fanfare. But vigilance is in direct proportion to outrage, and when the outrage died so did the vigilance. Over time, doors were again routinely left unlocked for the convenience of the maintenance people, or the locks were broken by vandals or street people and never fixed. Gradually the underground spaces were once more accessible to anyone who cared to use them.

  Buster and I walked slowly to the end of the platform. No one stopped us. Voices were all around us. I heard people walking on the platform, heard the steel wheel on steel rail trolley cars come screeching around the curve. The station was a busy place, but no one seemed interested in our activities. A blind man heading for the end of the platform will usually be asked if he needs assistance, but with Buster I guess people assumed we knew what we were doing. Which of course we did.

  I reached out my hand and felt the smooth, cool tile. I moved along it until I felt the door. Sure enough, the doorknob turned in my hand. We went in, and I closed the door behind us. The stench of mold and long laid dirt and standing, fetid water rose to greet us. I’m not sure what Buster thought about it, but he didn’t complain, so we pressed ahead.

  Sometimes I do things without thinking out the consequences. Like now. Here was a situation for which Buster had been untrained. Low ceilings, narrow passageways, pipes running every which way, dangerous conditions even if you can see. But I was here now, and I certainly wasn’t going to leave without at least trying to do what I came for.

  We continued slowly down the narrow passage. I was aware of pipes crossing just above my head, so we went a lot more cautiously than we’re accustomed to. I brushed against walls and pipes and panels. A stack of what appeared to be cardboard boxes blocked our way at one point, but we got around it and pressed deeper into the warren. We stopped from time to time to listen for voices, but it was going to be tough to hear anything above the roar of the subways overhead and the steady hum of electrical equipment. There must have been a large water main nearby, for the sound of rushing water was close at hand.