Chain of Evidence

“I want his name. I want the exact times.”

She asked her attorney, “Do I have to?”

Gambelli nodded.

She provided Dart the details of her assignation, and said, “You satisfied?” It would require a phone call to verify, but he suspected she was telling the truth.

“The doctors,” Dart said. “I need everything and anything that you can tell me.”

“I don’t know shit, I’m telling you! Only that Harry said that some doctors were going to help him get better- about hitting me, you know, about roughing me up-and that I wasn’t to tell no one.”

“Did he meet with these doctors?” Dart asked.

“I don’t know. He must have. Right?”

“Did he take medication?”

“Injections,” she said, touching her own arm. “I know that because I saw the Band-Aid on his arm one night, and he said how that was part of making him better.”

“Injections,” Dart repeated, taking this down in his notepad. “Those were his words, ‘making him better,’” Dart checked.

“Right.”

“And you took that to mean?”

“Better … you know … less hitting … less rough stuff. Not that I mind it a little rough, you know-the for-fun kind of rough, but Harry had a temper on him that wouldn’t quit sometimes. And it wasn’t me, you know-he used to tell me that. It wasn’t me. It was just me being a woman. It was like something chemical in him. Like a bad seed. Like that movie where the guy changes into the crazy doctor who kills people, you know? Like that.”

“You never met these doctors.”

“No.”

“Never spoke to them on the phone.”

“Not that I know of.”

“And he received these injections …?”

“Every two weeks, just about. Seems to me. He’d had maybe four or five.”

“Your husband changed his medical insurance,” Dart stated. “Do you remember that?”

“Don’t know anything about it. Swear.”

“The dates of which appear to coincide with this treatment.”

“He didn’t tell me jack shit about anything to do with money. That was his department. My department …” She hesitated and then said, “My department was the bedroom.” She locked eyes with Dart, hers a fire of fierce intensity and resentment. He had demeaned her, debased her with this questioning.

“If these doctors should contact you-”

“They won’t.”

“But if they should.”

“I should call you,” she stated. “Forget it. No way. Harry’s dead. Let him be. They were trying to help him. So maybe they’ll help someone else.”

An alarm sounded in Dart’s head. Zeller had made a riddle out of it-people taking their own lives but not committing suicide. A drug gone bad, he thought. Guinea pigs. Test subjects.

As Zeller had warned: The blood of the victims could be the key.

CHAPTER 20

“Joe, I’ve got another one,” Abby announced in a forced whisper, dragging a chair over to his desk. She smelled like lilacs in bloom; her cheeks were flushed and her blond hair needed combing.

Dart’s attention was elsewhere. He had just hung up from speaking first with Teddy Bragg and then with pathologist Dr. Victor Ray, requesting the results of Harold Payne’s blood toxicology. The discussions had strayed into unfamiliar territory as Dart explored what could and could not be detected by such tests, finally persuading Dr. Ray to request a complete workup, since, typically, blood toxicology tested only for the more common narcotics and alcohol levels and tightwad Teddy Bragg had not wanted to release the funds necessary for such testing without “some damn good reasons,” which Dart found impossible to provide.

Abby placed a computer printout on the desk in front of Dart, a single line highlighted in a bright yellow. Reading the name on the file, his body reacted as if he had taken a niacin tablet-every pore on fire. His blood pressure rose so quickly that he could hardly hear her whisper. “This is from our files,” she said, meaning Sex Crimes. “And this,” she emphasized, “is from CAPers.” Another highlighted line that shared the same name.

He forced himself to inhale, a drowning man attempting to recover.

“A suicide, Joe-and a suspected sex offender. As far as I can tell, the two have never been connected,” she said excitedly, “which I can explain. We do not reveal the identities of suspected offenders because of the libel suit lost in New Haven. Only arrests and convictions. This guy was never arrested-we didn’t have enough evidence.” She paused and said, “Do you recognize the name, Joe? Remember that case? Think what the papers would have done if we’d showed them this,” she said, tapping the Sex Crimes folder. “Can you believe it?” She waited, knowing he would recognize the name. And although he did, he said nothing. He wasn’t sure what to say, in part because he felt in a state of physical shock. She misunderstood his hesitation. “It’s the Ice Man, Joe! Come on! The Ice Man! And he flew out of a window just like Stapleton did. What’s that, coincidence? Stapleton was not the first.” A critical part of the job working a string of crimes was to identify the first in the series. Abby, believing as Dart did that they were on to a string, was ebullient with her discovery. “Get it?”

“I was second on the Ice Man,” he informed her. A lump filled his throat, painfully choking him. He understood at that moment that there was no running away, only avoidance. Things believed dead and buried inevitably returned, either symbolically or literally, stepping out of the grave. He saw no way to tell her, no way to ask her to return the files and forget about it. The Ice Man had crawled back out of his grave. A part of Dart actually felt relief; the remainder of him was in a state of total panic.

“Kowalski was the lead,” he explained. “I was the second.”

“Talk about coincidence,” she said, lowering her voice. “Teddy is going to pull the evidence for us.”

“What?” Dart asked, astonished.

“Yeah, isn’t that great?” she said, mistaking his reaction for enthusiasm. “He agreed to review it with Rankin and Haite after lunch-to see if we can make any physical comparisons to Stapleton and the others.”

The 3-D animated software had already made just such a connection-no wonder that Bragg felt prompted to delve into possible connections.

Dart felt short of breath. He could feel his skin go alternately hot and cold. His head swam. Damage control, he warned himself.

“What’s wrong, Joe?” she asked cautiously. “I thought you’d be thrilled. It’s an obvious connection.”

Dart felt paralyzed by the numbness sweeping through him-he was in the midst of an anxiety attack. He heard her footsteps coming down the stairs and the whoosh of her dress. He looked up, only to see Abby.

He weighed the options available to him.

She placed her hand tenderly on his arm, and that did it. He snapped his head toward her, startling her, and said, “How would you like to take a walk?”

Concern stealing the excitement from her face, she pushed her chair back and stood.

A bitter cold had descended on the city in anticipation of winter, still more than a month away. They walked from headquarters toward a path that led down to the river. They passed a few smokers and then found themselves alone in the woods.

He wasn’t sure how or where to start.

“I was the second on the Ice Man,” he repeated. “Kowalski was the primary, but he was worthless and