ON THE DRIVE downtown, I ring Jimmy O’Neill. The latest call from The Chatterbox to me has him fuming.
At the Precinct, I pour fresh coffee. My heart beats against my ribs like a caged jackrabbit. In the toilet, I rinse my face. A summons by O’Neill to his office.
“This is now officially a Major Case investigation, Dex. I notified McGowan this morning.”
Malachi Mac McGowan is our current Chief of Ds.
“He’s assigned an Inspector from the Central Investigation and Resource Division to coordinate the investigation. His name is Thomas Upton. I know Upton by reputation. He’s smart, and he’s ambitious; a deadly combination. He’s an African American who fancies himself the next Police Commissioner. He’s betting his skin-color will allow him to leapfrog the competition, be selected by the Mayor to replace Dipshit (our presiding PC). He may be right. And as Upton is now the man in front of the cameras, he won’t think twice about throwing you under the bus.”
But there’s more to come.
Looking pained, O’Neill says, “Why you, Dexter?”
“Why me what?”
“Don’t be a putz. Why you, why does this whack-job call you?”
On edge, I flirt with insubordination. “I was on the front page of The Post for a goddamn week, Jimmy. What do you think?”
Be still my beating heart.
Jimmy lets it slide. “You need to show this isn’t personal, some prior connection Upton will use to remove you from the investigation.”
“Why would he do that?”
What he says next makes me sit upright in my chair.
“You’re a smart, cop, Dex. I don’t need to tell you your relationship with this lunatic makes you suspect.”
I try not to react badly. “Sure Jimmy, I’m a smart cop. But how ‘bout you explain what you mean by suspect? Or is it A suspect?”
“At best, it’s unorthodox, at worst, suspicious.”
“Are those your words or some asshole from 1PP.” (One Police Plaza being headquarters of the New York City Police Department, known otherwise to cops as 1PP.)
“It won’t help you to be calling people names.”
“Are you saying I’m under investigation?”
“You wouldn’t be here if you were. But the longer this thing drags out?”
At my desk, I tremble with indignation. Gabby arrives and eyes me with concern.
“You okay? Get your knuckles rapped?” she says. When I don’t respond, she says, “Don’t sweat it, partner. This case has the makings of a six-figure book deal. By this time next year, you’ll be retired to Florida. You can tell Jimmy to take a swim in the East River.” Gabby tosses a copy of the morning New York Post to the desktop. “Maybe this will cheer you up.”
Splashed across the front page is the headline: Chatterbox Killer Terrorizes City: Three Women Dead and Counting! The subheading reads Manhattan’s own Boston Strangler, with the article below describing how the women died. There’s a thumbnail photo identifying me as the investigator in charge.
The news does not cheer me. I glare at Gabby as if she’s responsible. “I hate Barcaloungers, and I’m not living in a double-wide. Not in goddamn Florida!”
Perplexed, Gabby stares.
✽ ✽ ✽
By the time Giardano arrives with coffee and goodies, I’ve calmed down because I know I’ve put Jimmy in a bad spot from the moment I decided to take the whack-job’s call.
Crossing the floor to our desk, Giardano deposits coffee and sweets.
“Help yourself,” he says. “Where’s the Hobbit?”
“Freshening up,” Gabby says.
“I love it when you talk dirty.”
“Fuck-off, Tony.”
“Like I say, I love it when you talk dirty.”
Melissa returns, and we discuss the feature in The Post. “This stinks of an inside leak,” I say. “Anyone here responsible?” As expected, no mea culpa.
Gabby says, “It’s not us, Dex, and you know it. It’s The Chatterbox.”
Knowing the man, I acknowledge the possibility.
Dropping the second bombshell of the morning, I say, “The file has been referred to Central Investigation and Resource Division, Homicide Analysis Unit. Chief of Ds has assigned Inspector Thomas Upton.” The news plays to the team like heavy metal to fans of chamber music. “It’s still our investigation,” I reassure them but only half-heartedly. “Upton will supply the resources we need to get the job done.”
Skeptical.
To ease the sting, I say, “By the time Upton gets settled, maybe we have The Chatterbox behind bars, yeah?”
“Go, team,” Melissa says fist-pumping the air.
“In the meantime, do we know how he chooses his victims?”
Taking the lead, Gabby says, “Tats. They’re unique. He’s a tattoo artist or works in a parlor where they’re done. Not likely he goes around asking women to show him their boobs, is it?”
Tony snorts. “Sure, he does; goes around asking women to show him their boobs.”
“Seriously, Tony,” I say, before Gabby can tell him to eff-off.
Looking like a man with experience in these matters, Tony says, “Listen-up. A guy with too many beers in his belly will walk up to a woman in a bar and ask for her to show him her boobies. He will not open by asking if she’s lost custody of her children and been denied financial support in the bargain. It’s not an ideal come-on, is it? Eventually, he may want to know these things before engaging in a relationship because you want to know, up-front, about a husband, ex, and screaming kids? If he’s looking for damaged goods, I can tell you he’s not trolling bars for a one-night-stand. Boobs are a different matter altogether.”
“Good point, Tony. So, if he’s looking for damaged goods, where would he find them?” I ask.
Melissa says, “Want-ads, classifieds, dating websites, Tinder, Craigslist, Facebook, Instagram, you name it.”
Tony removes a package of Lucky Strikes from a breast pocket, extracts a dart. He puts it to his lips but does not ignite—the Precinct is smoke-free. Under his watchful eye, Gabby licks the crumb of a cranberry scone from her top lip.
“Makes sense,” Tony says. “The Gilgo Killer trolls Craigslist for his victims.”
“Social worker?” Gabby says. “If not told by the women, themselves, how can The Chatterbox know their personal circumstances? Provided damaged goods are what he’s looking for and not just coincidence, these women are easy targets.”
“Corrections worker, probation officer, a prison psychologist, chaplain? These people have access to inmate’s personal records,” I say. “Distinguishing features and markings, marital status, offspring, family relationships, too. Do these women have records, Tony?”
Without needing to reference the case folder, he says, “DWI, drunk and disorderly, possession, public mischief. Nothing felonious, but yeah, they’ve all been flirting with Johnny Law.”
“It’s a start. In the meantime, I’ll see where the original investigation stands. Lattimer and Danilenko may have asked and answered some of these questions already. As for Miranda, let’s find out what, if anything, she’d been doing online. Did Miranda put herself out as a divorced mother of two children seeking advice and support from an online community? If so, where and to who did she reach out?
“Check her bank records, run her name through Social Services databases to see if she was in a State-funded addictions support or mental health program, how she might have passed through the System. Was she dating online? I’ll run it by CSU. They’re working to recover data from a flip-phone found at the crime scene. Maybe they can offer insight.”
At this moment, a Crime Scene tech enters the bullpen to take possession of my own mobile phone. On orders from O’Neill, the tech has been instructed to: “Lift digital data from your phone and install an application that will notify us each time you receive an incoming call, so we can begin to record the conversation and triangulate immediately.”
Wary, I say to the tech, “That’s my personal phone, too.”
The tech lifts her palm and says, “We have better things to do than sift through your sext-messages, don’t we? We’ll provide you with a secondary device. If The Chatterbox calls, we record and triangulate. If it’s personal, message us, and knock yourself out.”
She winks. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m cute or she thinks I’m gullible.
We ask about tracking the victim’s online behavior. The tech frowns. “We didn’t recover a computer at the crime scene, so that makes it difficult. We’ve run a log on outgoing and incoming calls to her flip-phone. The model didn’t allow for her to access the internet and she didn’t text. As to being online, if she was, she was doing it elsewhere. A library, or maybe an internet cafe. Anything like that in the vicinity of the crime scene?”
Tony offers to coordinate a canvass.
Gabby says, “The house key?”
“No prints. Your perp is being pretty careful. Hasn’t left much for us to go on. I don’t envy your odds.”
By noon, we’re going through the motions and routine typical to any homicide investigation. We push around a lot of paper—figuratively, as most everything, now, is digitized—making a lot of calls, taking notes, everyone looking earnest and dedicated in anticipation of Inspector Thomas Upton’s arrival.
We’ve been assigned a handful of tech-savvy junior investigators to check out social media to see if Miranda was online using her own name—or a combination, thereof. Tony has set up an outside team to work Miranda’s neighborhood. The team will canvass libraries, internet cafes, and other public locations to discover where she might have used a computer to go online.
Melissa reviews the videos she lifted from locations around Bumpers Tavern. Tony investigates bank and social service records. Gabby tracks down friends from Miranda’s past and present life and makes calls to confirm the whereabouts of Dr. Marcus Livingstone on the night of the crime.
Repeated calls by me to Lattimer and Danilenko go straight into voice-mail hell: “Unavailable. Leave a message. Get back to you soon.”
Just past the noon hour, the CSU reappears. In her hands she holds two mobile phones; my personal phone and a spare. As she approaches, she pauses, looking perplexed. Putting my own phone to her ear, she listens. Quickening her pace, she shuffles over to my desk.
“It’s for you, boss,” she says. I’m not her boss but I don’t quibble.