Shadow Dancers Page 5

  “There didn’t appear to be any reason. I —”

  Konig lowered his head into his palms and slowly rubbed his eyes. “It was an incisor, wasn’t it?”

  “The left lateral.”

  “Notice anything unusual in those bite marks around the breast?” He continued to rub his eyes but looked up when it appeared no answer was forthcoming. “Something different from the other bites we’ve seen?” The first thing he saw was her staring down at him, a startled, wary look in her eye, as if he’d reminded her of something she, too, had noted but had been lax enough to forget.

  “Now that you mention it, there was. The skin around the bite marks was …”

  “Jagged? Shredded?”

  “For Chrissake, you don’t have to lead me by the hand.” Her voice dropped with contrition. “It was shredded, as if …”

  “The incisor that made the marks was …”

  “Broken, okay?” she snapped crossly. “Will you please let me come to my own conclusions?”

  “Well, good God then, stop dancing around it. Come to the point instead of standing there, hemming and hawing. Right. Those incisor impressions around the aureoles were abraded and broken. Very astute observation, Doctor.” He beamed at her with an air of triumphant spite. “Now will you kindly go get an impression made? And I’ll lay you odds that when you get the prints back from Odontology, you’ll find that at least a third of that left incisor is gone.”

  Rumpled and depleted in her bloodied smock, the young woman stared back at him dismally, then turned abruptly and left.

  SIX

  (1) Hank of laundry rope, 7 feet, 6 inches.

  (2) Can of Red Devil spray paint. Alizarin Crimson.

  (3) No prints. Assailant probably wore gloves.

  (4) Bloodstains.

  Mooney scribbled hastily into his note pad, then glanced down at the long jagged line of spattered blood not far from his feet. Surrounding it nearly completely was a police artist’s chalk drawing scrawled on the concrete basement floor. It showed a rudimentary outline of where a body had lain three days before. The chalk outline had the crude look of a petrograph drawing found on a cave wall. It was situated a foot or two from a washer-dryer arrangement where the assault had taken place. The bloodstains, absorbed now into the whitish concrete, had bleached out to a pale orange. Unlike the vivid shapeless splashes characteristic of typical assaults with knives, these were composed of a series of jagged peaks and troughs.

  This was arterial bleeding from a thin slash made by a long razorlike blade that had not only severed the carotid artery but nearly severed the head as well.

  Whoever wielded that blade, Mooney thought, did it with impressive skill. No newcomer to the art. And that red, unbroken, sawtooth signature of blood suggested that all the while the victim was bleeding to death on the basement floor, her assailant had subjected her dying body to some final horrific outrage.

  “… Broken central and left lateral incisors,” Konig had bawled at him over the phone earlier that morning so that he had to hold the receiver away from his ear. “Look for some creep with broken teeth. Central and left lateral incisors.”

  “What else?”

  “What else?” There was a stunned pause. “Isn’t that enough? What the hell you want me to do? Come down there and draw you a picture?”

  Mooney ignored the tirade. “Those footprints all over her face …”

  “What about them?”

  “There were bootprints all over the face and chest. Like he used her face for a doormat.”

  Mooney listened to the agitated breathing on the other end, attributing the momentary pause to a cigar being lit. “We’ve got bootprints with the girl up in the park too.” The reply came at last without much enthusiasm. “Could be the same guy.”

  “Any identification on her yet?”

  “We’ve X-rayed the skull and we’re running fingerprints and dentition through the computer.”

  “So far no one’s come in lookin’ for anyone sounds like her,” Mooney said. Konig muttered something incomprehensible, his thoughts already moving elsewhere. “I’ve got to go now.”

  “Listen — I need —”

  “Not now,” Konig bawled. “I’m busy.”

  “These broken teeth. I could use —”

  “In a day or two. I’ll call you when I’ve got something.” The phone banged down, leaving in its wake the dying thunder of the M.E.‘s voice ringing in his ear. “Fuck off, old gas bag,” Mooney muttered and smashed the phone down.

  He looked up, startled to see Pickering standing there watching him with an odd expression. He wondered if the younger man had caught him muttering to himself. “Well?”

  “Nothing, Frank. Not a trace of it.”

  “You look out back?”

  “Out back. Out front. In between. Even across the street. There’s an empty lot there. Lotta rubble and junk, but no knife, no razor. Nothing you’d imagine could cut a head off.”

  Mooney stared down at the little pad he’d been scribbling notes in. “Swell. What about the neighbors?”

  “Lady next door thinks she saw a car parked out front that morning around eleven A.M.”

  The pencil ceased. “What kind of car?”

  “Green, she thinks.”

  “Green, she thinks.” Mooney shook his head despairingly.

  “Saw it from the front window. Doesn’t know the make. Wasn’t close enough to catch a plate number.”

  “She didn’t happen to see the guy?”

  “Nope.”

  “Course not,” Mooney muttered. “Why would she?” lie enjoyed magnifying the hopelessness of everything. “I’ll talk to her.”

  “I wouldn’t advise it, Frank. Least, not now. She’s blubbering too much.”

  “Good. I’ll give her more to blubber about.”

  She was a diminutive, dried-out little creature of sixty or so, with a pinched, anxious face and an overbite. She had a way of looking almost chronically fretful. Eyes red, a handkerchief wadded into one fist, she sat slumped at her kitchen table, fidgeting with a salt cellar. Mooney sat across from her before a cup of untouched coffee she’d poured him while Pickering hovered about somewhere over his shoulder in the shadows behind them. Rolling the salt cellar back and forth in her hand, she gave the impression of a squirrel rolling nuts in its tiny, prehensile claws.

  “Please. Please don’t ask me any more about it. I can’t bear to …” She crammed the crumpled handkerchief against her mouth and made a wet, whimpering sound. “I appreciate that, Mrs. …”

  “Wisdo,” she whimpered.

  “Mrs. Wisdo. But if you could just think back. Try to remember.”

  She shook her head at the shadowy outline of Pickering in the corner. “I’ve already told the other gentleman.”

  “I realize you don’t know the make of the car or any of the numbers on the plates. You say it was green?”

  “That’s right. Green.”

  “Light or dark?”

  “Light.”

  Mooney started to write in his pad.

  “No, wait.” She stopped him. “Maybe not exactly light.”

  “Dark, then?”

  “No, not dark.”

  Mooney felt a flush of heat rise from beneath his collar. Only ten A.M. on a crisp spring morning and already his shirt was damp. He tried to engage her again, but his mind was not entirely there. It was about sixteen miles south and east of there, out at Belmont in the paddocks where he knew Fritzi to be.

  “Any special detail about the car you might recall?” Mooney persisted with stiff civility. “Like, was it a two-door or a four-door? Maybe it was a convertible.”

  “A convertible?” Mrs. Wisdo looked at him as though he’d asked her to state some arcane formula in quantum mechanics. “No … I don’t … I don’t think so.”

  “Did it look new or old, this car? Was it banged up or in good condition?”

  “I don’t know,” she wailed. “I don’t know what it was. I told the
other man —”

  “Yes, I know what you told him.”

  She broke off wailing, something sparking in her eye. “But it did look shiny and bright.”

  “It did?”

  “Yes. It did.”

  Pen poised, Mooney regarded her with cautious hope. “You’re sure?”

  Her nods momentarily ceased their frantic motion. The salt cellar dangled in midair. “Yes, I’m sure. It was bright and sunny that morning. I have a distinct impression of sunlight flashing off all of this chrome. There was a great deal of bright shiny chrome.”

  Mooney’s ears cocked. “Where? The bumper? The lenders? The grille? Where?”

  “The grille.” Finally involved, Mrs. Wisdo had forgotten to whimper. “That’s right. It was the grille. I’m sure now. It was a big grille.”

  “Big, what way?” Pickering drifted out of the shadows. “Big horizontal? Or big vertical?”

  Baffled, she looked at Mooney.

  “What he means is, was it wide this way or tall that way?” Mooney indicated with his hands what he meant.

  “Oh, right. I see.” She glowed. “Was it wide or tall?” She gnawed her thumbnail while she pondered that. “Well, it was tall. This way. Vertical.” She demonstrated with her hands. “It was a tall, very shiny grille.”

  “Good.” Mooney scribbled the words into his pad. “A green car. Not necessarily dark or light green. Medium.”

  “Right.” Her head nodded eagerly. “Medium.”

  “With a shiny, vertical grille.”

  “Right.”

  “What about an emblem on top of the grille? A statuette? Maybe a circle or a square or an animal or something?”

  It had all been a bit too much for Mrs. Wisdo. She suddenly remembered to grieve again. Another wail; went up. “I don’t know. Please … I don’t know. Poor Marie. Poor, dear Marie. Oh, how she loved her garden.”

  Mooney rose, frowning his displeasure. “Okay. That’s fine, Mrs. Wisdo. You’ve been very helpful. We’ll be in touch if we need anything more.” He shoved the pad back into his inside pocket, and, snapping the crumpled fedora back on his head, he started out. Pickering fell into lock-step behind him. Even as the door closed behind them they could hear a resumption of the terrified, baleful whimpering.

  “Well, at least we know it was a late model,” Pickering said as they moved down the flagged walk.

  “Oh, yeah? How do we know that?”

  “She said it was shiny and bright.”

  “Lots of guys have old cars they keep shiny and bright. And big vertical grilles they hardly make anymore. Not since the forties, anyway. Too expensive to produce. Maybe some foreign cars still had ‘em as late as the sixties and early seventies. And who knows if this light green, dark green, medium car even belonged to the j guy. Most likely he just glommed it for this job.”

  They’d reached the foot of the walk where a patrol car with Mooney’s old Buick parked behind it waited. “Check with the M.V.B. when you get back. See what’s been stolen lately that’s green, vintage sixties or seventies.” Mooney lumbered into the Buick and sank heavily behind the wheel. Pickering leaned on the sill of the car window and peered in. “I don’t have too much faith in this old dame, Frank.”

  “Who would? She’s ditsy. Tells me the day was bright and sunny. I already checked the weather bureau. They say it was cloudy and overcast all day.”

  “So wherefore the bright, shiny grille, pray?”

  “You tell me. But check it out anyway. Oh — and one more thing. Pull every mug shot you can find on guys with broken front teeth and a history of sex offenses.”

  A soft, piteous moan issued from somewhere deep within the younger man. “Who said anything about broken front teeth?”

  “The M.E. saw something funny in those bite marks.” Mooney flicked the ignition on and gunned the accelerator. “I’ll speak to you tonight. You oughta have something by then.”

  Pickering made a pained, puzzled face. He sighed, contemplating the deadly hours of search that lay ahead of him in the photo morgue. “Where are you going? The ponies?”

  Seeing the resentment in his eyes, Mooney winked. “That’s our little secret, isn’t it, Rollo?”

  “He’s got zero victories in twenty-two starts. That’s zero. Zip. Zip.”

  “So, who’s counting?”

  “Five seconds and four thirds. Take my word for it. He’s your quintessential sucker horse.”

  “That’s what you say. I say today he’s in the money.”

  “In your money, pal. Not mine. You know where this horse went last time out?”

  “Six lengths out behind the winner. I read the same forms you do, Mooney. But that was a mile-and-a-quarter handicap. Today he’s going three quarters of a mile. That’s his strong suit.”

  “His strong suit is sucking dust.” Mooney pronounced the phrase with pursed lips and maximum contempt. “I wouldn’t touch him with a barge pole.”

  “Your loss. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  Mooney made a clucking sound with his tongue, then hoisted the binoculars to his eyes. He was not a long odds player. Never much on hunches or touts, he scorned them like the plague, preferring instead to study speed figures and focus his attention on the horse with superior numbers who could win the day’s race.

  Like any first-class handicapper, he could win about four bets out of ten … that is, if he was conservative, bet relatively few races, and favored mostly horses whose odds averaged about 2 to 1, or who ran with a comfortable margin of overlay. Never much on book reading, he pored over result charts and past-performance records with rapacious energy. He supplemented those with periodic tabulations summarizing the success or failure of jockeys, trainers, and owners. He kept abreast of breeding transactions, livestock sales, and equine injuries. For a man who could scarcely recall his own phone number, his memory retrieval system for this sort of information was nigh unto superhuman.

  With Fritzi, on the other hand, it was all mysticism. She had to hear voices or see something in the animal’s eyes before she’d commit money; if the signs were right she was perfectly capable of committing big.

  Coming Sunday, the horse Fritzi had just bet forty dollars to win and forty dollars to place, was running at odds of 38 to 1. What Mooney saw through the glasses when he looked was a quiet, almost solemn three-year-old. Except for the tail switching easily behind him, he stood motionless in the gate. Possibly he was even a little somnolent. Despite his wretched numbers, in all fairness the horse did have a nice look about him that somehow belied the record of distinguished mediocrity he’d managed to amass for himself over the past fifteen months. The aloof imperturbability of the animal suggested an intelligence and self-possession not demonstrated by the majority of other horses lined up at the post. Mostly they were champing and bucking about in the gates, tossing their heads, nervous and dissipating energy before the race. Also, Coming Sunday had an inside position, and an inside post position represented advantage. This horse was also known to be a strong mud runner, another bias in his favor. But today he was running on a pasteboard track with blinkers and front bandages, generally a sign of tendon problems, all of which made Mooney nervous.

  He swung his glasses three or four positions down to the left where Casual Air, his own personal selection, surged and bucked in the confinement of the gate. His tail was up. His ears were forward as if he were trying to hear something. His head lashed from side to side and his neck was straining. Although the day was cool, in the low fifties, through his glasses Mooney could see splotches of kidney sweat between the flanks and along the loins and withers. Not all that casual was Casual Air. But for all of the kicking up, the overall impression was not negative enough to make Mooney discount the solid clout of the horse’s charts. This was an all-out contender with plenty of energy, and raring to go.

  Casual Air’s credentials were impeccable. He’d won five out of his last seven starts and his speed figures were notably impressive. His worst out for the season
was a figure of 81, which still looked good enough to beat anything on this field. Even a mere duplicate of his worst performance would demolish anything in sight.

  Mooney had few doubts about the horse’s current condition. Except for that sweating, which could have just been the result of an overly enthusiastic workout, the animal looked superb. His trainer, A. T. Stoddard, was an old pro out of the Lexington school. The horse had raced and won only twelve days ago. Since that effort, he’d rested nicely but had also worked five furlongs in a blazing :59 4⁄5. Better even, he was being ridden by a jockey who’d won on him before.

  Mooney put his glasses down with a sigh of contentment. He was easy in his mind. The fifty dollars to win and fifty dollars to place he’d staked on Casual Air at modest but by no means inconsequential odds of 5 to 1 he’d already counted as money in the bank. To him that worked out to a 17 percent chance of winning — far better than Fritzi s 38 to 1, which gave her little better than a 2½ percent shot at the money. A sucker’s bet, but you couldn’t tell her that. Besides, she won quite often.

  “You might as well scrub this one, Fritz.” He handed her the glasses back. “It’s a washout.”

  “For you, my friend.” She snatched the binoculars and snapped them to her eyes just as the bell rang and the gates shot open.

  There was an explosion of dust as the field of twelve pounded out of the gate. A great roar went up for the first race of the day. Pennants flapped wildly atop the grandstand and clubhouse. The scene below was a dazzling palette of track colors all flowing together in a blurry collage.

  By the time the dust had cleared, the field had already pounded past the three-sixteenths pole where Mooney and Fritzi stood at the rail, cheering. Coming Sunday and Casual Air were neck and neck, leading the pack by a full length. They were still neck and neck at the far turn and swinging into the back stretch. At the three-quarter pole, it looked as if both of them would finish in the money.

  “Go on, you Casual Air,” Mooney bellowed until he was hoarse.

  “Come on, Sunday.” Fritzi jumped up and down. “Come on, you sweet boy.”