Maggie and McCabe arrived at the entrance to the Seventh Precinct just as a man and a woman, both of whom looked to be in their midthirties, were about to go in.
“Mr. Mooney?” McCabe called out. “Richard Mooney?”
The guy turned and peered at McCabe and Maggie. “That’s right. Are you Sergeant McCabe?”
“Yes. And this is Detective Savage. Thanks for coming in.”
“No problem. This is my girlfriend Sarah Slade.”
Slade smiled and nodded her head.
McCabe opened the door for his two new witnesses. Told O’Hara, who was still on duty, they were going on up to the second floor. Capriati and Morales were waiting when the elevator doors opened. Morales escorted Mooney and Slade to a waiting area and told them he’d be right back.
“Okay, here’s the drill,” Diane was explaining when Morales returned. “I’ve printed out blow-ups of the frames from the street video that best show the suspect’s face. We’ve also printed similar video prints of four other guys on the street that are roughly the same size shot at roughly the same distance. We’ll show all five separately to Mooney and his girlfriend to see if each of them can pick the right one out of the bunch. If they can we’ll repeat the exercise with four sketches, one of which Tony Renzi produced working with Randall Carter. If they each pick the right one we’ll see if either one of them has suggestions that might improve the likeness. I’ll talk to Sarah Slade. Ramon will talk to Mooney. You two guys can watch from the monitor in the conference room. Work for you?”
Less than two minutes later, a uniformed cop showed Richard Mooney into a small interview room where Ramon Morales was waiting with the photos and the sketches.
“Which one’s the right one?” asked McCabe.
“The fourth,” said Capriati.
On the monitor McCabe watched Morales ask Mooney, “I’m going to show you five shots of men who may or may not resemble the man who confronted you last night. Please give me your initial reaction how closely each shot resembles that man. At the end I’ll turn over all five shots and ask you to tell me which one is the best likeness and if anything can be done to improve it.”
Morales turned over the first photo.
“No. That’s not him. Not even close.”
He turned over the second.
“Kind of looks like him. But no, I don’t think so.”
He turned over the third.
“This one’s much more of a likeness. Not exact but pretty close. Shall I tell you what I think should be changed to make it better?”
“Tell me after you’ve looked at all five,” said Morales as he turned over number four.
Mooney didn’t say anything for a minute. “That’s him.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure. The one before looked like that bastard. But this one is him.”
“Okay. Just let me show you one more.”
“No. The guy we’re talking about doesn’t just look like the guy in the fourth one you showed me. It is the guy.”
“Now, before you make a final decision I want you to look at them all together.” Morales turned all five of the photos from the street cameras over.
There was no hesitation. He pointed at number four. “I’m telling you this is the guy.”
“All right. Thank you, Richard. Now I’m going to show you five sketches of five guys who look like the one you selected from the photos. I want you to pick out the one who most closely resembles the man who confronted you in the theater last night.”
Once again Morales showed the images to Richard Mooney one at a time. Mooney picked out number two, which was the sketch Tony Renzi had created with Randall Carter’s help. “Not perfect,” said Mooney. “But pretty close.”
“What changes would you suggest?”
“The guy in the theater had a bigger nose. Bigger ears too.”
“Anything else?”
“Not that I can think of.”
“Thank you Richard. Now my partner, Detective Capriati, will take Sarah through the same drill you went through. Would you mind waiting outside?”
Morales and Mooney left and were replaced by Sarah Slade and Diane Capriati. The two of them went through the same set of photos, and Slade was even more certain than Mooney that number four was the man they had the run-in with the previous night at the theater. She repeated the exercise with the five sketches. Slade also picked number two.
“Is there anything that doesn’t look quite right in the sketch or that you’d change about it?”
“It’s a pretty good likeness. But yes. There’s one thing not there you should know about,” said Slade.
“What would that be?”
“The creep last night had a very obvious scar on the left side of his neck. That’s not here. It went from right about here,” she said, pointing at her own neck, “all the way down to under his collar. I don’t know if Richard could see it or not looking straight on at the guy. But I had more of a side view and I couldn’t stop looking at it. It was one of the things that scared me about him. I kept thinking he must have gotten it in a knife fight or something like that. He wasn’t anybody I wanted to see Richard tussle with.”
“Okay, thank you Sarah,” said Diane Capriati. “Thanks for your help.”
“Are we finished here?”
“No. Just stay where you are. One of our other detectives would like to ask both you and Richard a few more questions. One at a time.”
Capriati left and Mooney came back in followed by Maggie. By agreement, Capriati, Morales and McCabe would watch the interview on the monitor in Art’s office.
“Hi. I’m Detective Margaret Savage,” she said. “I should tell you before we start that we’re still video-recording our discussion for the record.”
She asked Mooney for his name and address.
“And what do you do for a living?”
“I’m a project manager,” said Richard. “For a civil engineering firm.”
“And you and Sarah live together?”
“Yes. For the last three years.”
“Okay, why don’t you just tell me and the camera up there in your own words what you experienced last night at the McArthur/Weinstein Theater?”
Mooney went through his run-in with the man who wanted to sit in A12. “I just sat there trying to wait him out, figuring if we stay put, what’s he going to do? I didn’t think he’d be crazy enough to physically attack me in a public place. But Sarah was right. He really did look unhinged. Hey, you think this guy’s the serial killer that’s been in the news?” asked Mooney. “The one that killed the dancer?”
“At this point I can’t comment on that,” said Maggie. “But I’m sorry that you had to go through this.”
She told Mooney to wait outside and called Sarah Slade in. Slade confirmed that she and Mooney lived together and told Maggie she was a freelance jewelry designer. When they got to the incident in the theater she pretty much confirmed everything Mooney had just said and added a pretty precise description of what the guy was wearing.
“Sarah, it sounds like this guy really frightened you,” said Maggie.
“He scared the crap out of me.”
“Why? Was it his size? His expression? Or what?”
“Both. I mean he was a big guy. But more than that, there was this high level of tension in him. You could see it in his eyes. In the way he looked at Richard. Then at me. Intensity sort of radiated out of him. He looked like his whole head might just explode at any minute.”
“You mentioned a scar before. Show me where it was.”
Sarah ran her index finger about two inches along the left side of her own neck.
“Did it look like a fresh scar?”
“No. The skin was white. Looked like it had been there for years.”
“Anything else you can remember that might help identify him?
Slade thought about it.
“Just a gold signet ring. Like a college class ring on his left hand. Engraved with what looked like some kind of image and letters in the middle. I couldn’t see what it said or what college it might’ve been from.”
“Anything else about him that you can think of?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“All right. That was very helpful. Before you go, I’d like you and Richard to sit with our sketch artist and see if, with your help, we can make the likeness of this man even better.”