Footsteps of the Hawk

with distaste, but he gave me a claim ticket without a word.

I knocked on Hauser's office door— he doesn't have a bell or a buzzer. He opened it quick, a phone with a long cord in his hand. Hauser motioned me over to the couch, made a 'just give me a minute' gesture and went back to his conversation.

'Of course it's sourced,' he said into the receiver. 'No way I'd write it otherwise.'

He listened impatiently to whoever was on the other end of the line. Then he said, 'Look, here's the deal. I'll let you see the stuff, but there's no way you can talk to my source. You want to do it that way…okay. If you don't, I'll just— '

Hauser listened again, this time nodding his head in satisfaction. 'I'll be there,' he said, hanging up the phone.

'Great–looking boys, aren't they?' he said to me, pointing to a framed color photograph on the end table next to the couch.

'Yeah,' I agreed. 'Yours?'

'All mine,' he said, a broad smile on his face. 'The big one's J.A., the other one's J.R. You want to hear something absolutely fucking incredible,' he went on without taking a breath, cluing me to one of those stupidass cutesy–poo stories all parents tell…like it's a big deal if their kid smeared jam on the wall or something. But I wanted something from him, so…

'Run it,' I said.

'Okay. Last night, I'm reading JA a bedtime story. 'Goldilocks and the Three Bears.' Now, he's heard this one before, see, but it's one of his favorites. You remember how it goes, right?'

'Sure,' I said, to prevent him from telling it to me.

'Okay, when you get to the part about the Papa Bear saying, 'Someone's been sitting in my chair,' J.A. pops up and asks me, 'How would he know?' I was gonna brush him off, finish the damn story so he'd get to sleep, but then he pipes up again. 'It's a hard chair, Dad. See? in the picture? So you couldn't tell by looking, right? So how would the bear know?' And it just knocked me out. You see it?'

'Yeah. The kid figured it out, right? How's a little girl gonna make a dent in a chair that holds a goddamned bear. That's amazing,' I said, not lying now.

I guess a minute or two passed. Hauser was staring at my face. 'What is it?' he asked.

'Nothing,' I told him, shaking my head to clear it, feeling wetness on my face. Thinking about Hauser's kid being a genius so early, how Hauser adored that kid, how he must have hugged him and kissed him and been proud of him. Thinking about another kid, a little kid who questioned what he was told. Thinking about the vicious slap in the face, the ugly curses. Thinking…Ah, fuck this! I didn't need Hauser poking around in my life. So I pointed at his kids' pictures, asked him, 'What's all those initials stand for?'

'Same as mine— nothing.'

'You wanted to name them after you, how come you didn't just call one of them Junior?'

'Jews don't do that,' he told me in a serious tone. 'You only name a child after someone who's dead.'

'Okay, I kind of knew that, I think. But I thought only Southerners named their kids with initials.'

'There's Jews in Atlanta.' Hauser smiled. 'Now, how about showing me what you got?'

I handed over the reports. Hauser put them on his desk, pulled a few sheets of paper from his wire basket, laid them side–by–side with what I gave him. I smoked a couple of cigarettes while Hauser browsed around in the paperwork.

'Nothing here,' he said finally, looking up from the desk.

'Nothing?'

'Nothing that would support the idea that it's the same killer.'

'The signature— ?'

'There is no goddamn 'signature,'' Hauser said. 'It's not there. Take a look for yourself.'

He shoved the sheaf of papers across the desk to me. I sat down to read, then stopped as soon as I saw AUTOPSY centered at the top of the first page. 'How'd you— ?' I asked.

His answer was a shrug, just a hint of self–satisfaction at the corner of his mouth.

The language of the reports was as cold as the corpses. They all ended the same way.

MANNER OF DEATH: HOMICIDE.

'Check where I marked,' Hauser said.

Portions of the reports were covered with a yellow highlighter. But I didn't need it to pick out the red ribbon Belinda told me about— the woman on University Place had one stuffed inside her, just a little piece trailing out. But the two later ones— after Piersall was locked up— there was no ribbon mentioned. What the hell…?

'So this one woman, the one in New York, that's the only place they found the red ribbon?' I asked. 'What about the one in Jersey— the one who survived?'

'They didn't need any red ribbon there, Burke. I did a NEXIS spin too. This cop pal of yours, he didn't happen to mention DNA, did he?'

'No,' I said, already getting it, wondering if I could possibly be as stupid as Belinda must be thinking I was.

'The investigation they did— the one in Jersey, not here— they introduced DNA–fingerprinting evidence on top of the ID. The woman had enough of Piersall's flesh under her fingernails to make it open–and–shut. No question about it— they got the right guy'

'You're…sure?'

'A dead match,' Hauser told me.

'So why wouldn't the ME report on the red ribbon in the other killings?'

'You got me, Hauser said. 'It's the same coroner's office, true enough, but they used a different doctor for each one. I don't see anything suspicious in that— whoever's around, that's who gets to do it. And I read it close,too— no red ribbon, no trace of red fibers, no nothing.'

'So there's no way this guy is innocent?'

'Not of the Jersey crime,' he confirmed. 'That DNA stuff is dynamite. I've been reading up on it. Even checked with an expert. There's some people in the forensics field who claim it can get screwed up pretty easy— wrong samples, not enough differentiation fields to work with, poor tagging procedures…all that. But the bottom line is that it's still being used— you got people being convicted with it every day— people getting out of jail with it too. They use it for paternity tests too–when the regular blood test isn't conclusive enough for the court.'

'So you're off the job?' I asked him.

'Not a chance,' he replied. 'Something's going on here. Maybe not what you— or that cop friend of yours— think. But something. Let me know what happens, okay?'

'Yeah.'

I called in to Mama's. 'Same girl,' she said, as soon as she recognized my voice. 'No wig this time.'

'It's starting to get messy,' I told her. 'Any other calls?'

'Lawyer call. Say his name: For–too–not–toe. He say, he have your material. Six o'clock tonight.'

'Thanks, Mama. Nothing from the Prof?'

'No. Maybe busy with fighter?'

'Maybe. I'll call you later.'

I ran through it in my head, showering and shaving on automatic pilot. Copycat crime, it's a fact of life. But most of the time, they copy the style more than the deed. There's no such thing as a first–time crime— humans have been on the planet too long for that. But once the media names a crime— like when the newspaper jerks started calling gang rape 'wilding'— it becomes the hot ticket and every punk wants to play.

Take carjacking— nothing new about it except the name. But once the name catches on, the crime catches