'Be sweet if we did. Couple of uniforms from our house were first on the scene, so if there's a case it's our case, and I'd fucking love to hang it on your guy's neck. But everything says this is a guy who doesn't leave prints. He called her twice, right? First time he whispered.'
'That's right.'
'And that's what you got on tape, an unidentified male whispering and saying he sent flowers. And a
vague threat, says it's not her turn yet but doesn't say her turn for what. Try making a case out of that.'
He looked for someplace to get rid of his cigarette. His eyes went to the floor, then to the open window.
He went instead to the kitchen sink and held the cigarette under the tap, then dropped the butt in the trash.
He said, 'Then when he does threaten her and talks in a normal voice it's after he tells her to turn off the machine, and of course she does what he says and turns it off. So we got her word he threatened her, and her word that he confessed to killing Cleary and Fitzroy. And even that's thin, because he didn't say exactly what he did or mention anybody by name.'
'Right.'
'So unless we've got some physical evidence, I don't see that we've got a thing. I'll copy that sketch and we'll try it on the doorman, the guy who was on that morning, and the rest of the crew, too, just in case somebody spotted him lurking around the premises the past few days. I wouldn't expect much, though.
And placing him in the area, or even in the building, is a long way from convicting him of her murder. First you've got to establish that there's been a murder, and I don't know how you can do that.'
'What about the medical evidence?'
'What about it?'
'What was the cause of death?'
He looked at me.
'Wasn't there an autopsy?'
'It's required. You know that. But you also know what they look like after they fall that far. You want medical evidence? Cleary fell headfirst, and her head collided with Fitzroy's head. Don't even think about
the odds of that, but it happened. You know what both their heads look like? Long as the ME doesn't find a bullet in her, he's going to put down that she died from injuries sustained in the fall. You're thinking he may have killed her first.'
'It seems likely.'
'Yeah, but go prove it. It's just as likely he knocked her out and tossed her out unconscious. What are you going to find, marks on her throat? Evidence of a blow to the head?'
'How about semen? He left some in the woman in Ohio.'
'Yeah, and they couldn't even say whose it was. I'll tell you something, Matt, if they find semen in Cleary it could even be Fitzroy's, the way the two of them shared their last moments and all. And say it's Motley's, what does that prove? It's not against the law to go to bed with a woman. It's not even against the law to fuck her in the ass.' He reached for another cigarette, changed his mind. 'I'll tell you,' he said,
'we're not gonna get this guy for Cleary. Not without very strong fingerprint evidence, and probably not even with that. Placing him on the scene, even in the room with her, doesn't make it a murder or him a murderer.'
'What does?' He looked at me. 'Just what do we have to do, wait for a corpse with his signature on it?'
'He'll fuck up, Matt.'
'Maybe,' I said. 'I don't know that I can wait.'
Durkin was good. He might not believe the case had a chance of amounting to anything but he went through the motions all the same, and without wasting time. He got some lab techs over there right away, and that afternoon he called me with a report.
The bad news was that they hadn't turned up a single print of Motley's anywhere in the Cleary apartment. The good news, if you wanted to call it that, was the lack of prints at strategic spots on the frame and sill of the window she went out of, which tended to indicate that someone had either taken care not to leave prints or had wiped them away after the body cleared the window. You couldn't call it evidence, people don't leave a print every time they touch a surface, but it helped confirm for us something we already knew. That Toni Cleary hadn't killed herself. That she had help.
All I could think of to do was what I'd already been doing. Talking to people. Knocking on doors.
Showing his sketch around, and passing out copies of it, along with cards from my diminishing supply.
That made me think of Jim Faber, who'd printed them as a gift to me. Call your sponsor— that's what you heard all the time in meetings.
Don't drink, go to meetings, read the Big Book, call your sponsor. I wasn't drinking and I'd been going to meetings. I couldn't think what the Big Book might have to say about playing hide-and-seek with a vengeful psychopath, nor did I figure Jim was an authority on the subject. I called him anyway.
'Maybe there's nothing you can do,' he said.
'That's a helpful thought.'
'I don't know if it's helpful or not. It's probably not very encouraging.'
'Not very, no.'
'But maybe it is. Maybe it's just a way of acknowledging that you're already taking all the appropriate actions. Finding a man who doesn't want to be found in a city the size of New York must be like finding the proverbial needle
