flicked her tit. You think she’s going to take time out to catalogue his eye color and the odd scratch here or there? Give me a break.”
I felt my face flush with anger. He brought back the image of every self-confident, stupid bully I’d ever known in grade school-the guys who made ignorance a martial art. The fact that he was actually a pretty smart guy who was drowning in his own troubles made no difference; he’d been on this kick for too long.
I spoke directly to Frank. “That scratch is a mess. It’s infected and a couple of days old. No way either she could have missed it or he could have gotten it between midnight and now. Show her Rodriguez’s hand, and his eyes. She’ll tell you he’s not the man.”
Frank nodded and I turned to leave. Kunkle grabbed my arm. “Pretty sure of yourself.”
I shook him off. “I’m also right.”
I walked into my own office and slammed the door. Stan Katz was sitting on the edge of my desk. “Get out, Stan; you’re trespassing.”
“Testy, testy.”
I grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and shoved him toward the door. Kunkle’s style was catching. Stan opened the door and paused. “I just wanted to get your side before I started writing.”
“My side of what?”
“The events of last night, and the night before.”
“What about them?”
He gave me a smile custom-made for a fist. I buried my hands in my pockets. “You ought to know. You’ve been involved with all of them, according to the scuttlebutt. What’s going on?”
That cooled me down a notch. He was fishing. “Investigations are going on, like they always are. This is a police department, Stan. We bust people. And Woll was just a screwup.”
“Why are you the hot man, all of a sudden? You’re popping up all over. I heard DeFlorio pulled the Woll case, but you’ve been poking around in it. I also heard Kunkle was pissed off that you were treading on his turf.”
I put my hand on his shoulder and pushed him-gently-out into the hall. “We always get into each other’s hair; it’s standard. Besides, I’m their lieutenant; I’m supposed to keep an eye on ’em, you know that. Your problem is you don’t have enough to keep you busy. That happens when things are slack. Don’t take it out on me, okay? Go see a movie.” I closed the door in his face.
I had just sat down when Murphy stepped in. He leaned against the wall and smiled. “Well, well, Mr. Diplomacy.”
“Lay off, Frank. Kunkle’s a jerk. If he’s got problems, you can change his diapers.”
“I won’t have to. He just told me I might as well hand the Stiller case over to you since you stole it anyway. I must say, you two aren’t very friendly.”
“I’m tired of trying.”
“By the way, I sent a unit over to fetch Stiller. We probably ought to dot the i’s and so forth before we kick Rodriguez loose.”
“Fine. I just threw Katz out, by the way. He’s sniffing the air like a hyperactive pointer. You better make sure any paperwork he’s liable to see doesn’t have any names on it and that all this shit is on a need-to-know basis, or he’s going to start making the same connections I have.”
Frank sat down and shut the door with his foot. “Which are what so far?”
“Rodriguez makes it the fifth jury member in two days. Whoever’s doing this really did his homework. He stole Phillips’s dog, Rodgriguez’s tools, spent days terrorizing Reitz, and cased both Wodiska’s and presumably St Spree siller’s daily habits. He’s been working on this for a long time.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “The number-one question. I still think it’s the Harris case.”
Frank sighed.
“It’s the common thread. Of course, maybe it’s the moon or the alignment of the planets, or maybe the entire jury took LSD time capsules and simultaneously flipped out three years later.”
“I’d take that over reopening Harris.”
“I don’t think we’ve got a choice. Even you have to admit a similarity in all these cases, and the likelihood that they were all orchestrated by the same man. Besides that, none of these set-ups was built to last-they were to get our attention, not to sidetrack us. Whatever it is Ski Mask wants, he obviously thinks it involves Harris.”
Frank grunted. “And Phillips’s death guarantees we can’t just ignore him.” He got up. “So I guess we won’t.” He paused at the opened door. “You can look into Harris, with my incredibly valuable backing, but still try keeping it under your hat, okay?”
7
Early on September 15, 1983, the police were called by the manager of the Huntington Arms on Putney Road. One of his tenants, Kimberly Harris, had made arrangements with a local cab company to be picked up and driven to the Keene airport, but she wasn’t answering the repeated knocks on her door. From what the manager could see through the living room window, the apartment appeared ransacked. He said he didn’t want to use his pass key until the police were with him.
Two patrol cars were dispatched to the scene, driven by Sergeant George Capullo and Patrolman John Woll respectively, each of whom was near the end of his shift. They entered the apartment with the manager and found the nude and strangled body of Kimberly Harris tied to her bed. Calls were put out to Support Services, the State’s Attorney and the regional medical examiner. Detectives Willy Kunkle and J.P. Tyler arrived ten minutes later; Kunkle took charge of the investigation while Tyler went about gathering physical evidence.
A preliminary review of the site led officers to believe that a struggle had taken place, ending in Kimberly Harris being tied to her bed. The rope attaching her right hand to the bedpost had worked loose, and her fingernails were jagged and bloody, indicating she had scratched her assailant. A broken, blood-smeared lamp was found on the floor near that same hand, rousing suspicions that it may have been used for self-defense. Wet, viscous deposits in and around her mouth and pubic area led Tyler to assume she had been sexually assaulted.
The regional medical examiner, Alfred Gould, recommended that the state medical examiner take personal charge of the forensic investigation, and James Dunn, the State’s Attorney, agreed. Dr. Beverly Hillstrom was therefore contacted and arrived on the scene from Burlington three hours later.
Meanwhile, based on the manager’s statement that the leather belt found around the victim’s neck belonged to the janitor, Kunkle quickly secured a warrant allowing a search of the janitor’s quarters. During the search, th Ved e police found a woman’s undergarments, a small quantity of heroin with the appropriate paraphernalia, and the janitor, a black man named William Davis. Davis was sitting on the edge of his bed under the influence of the drug, nursing both a bad head wound and several deep scratches on his left cheek. He was booked on a charge of felony-murder.
Several days later, Dr. Hillstrom reported her findings. They were compared with additional tests conducted by the state crime lab. According to both reports, the blood under Harris’s nails matched Bill Davis’s; his fingerprints were in various parts of her apartment and on the belt used to strangle her; the blood-smeared dent found on the lamp matched the cut on his head; the rope used to tie her down was cut from a coil found stored with the rest of his tools; and the semen found on her body was compatible with his blood type.
One additional detail surfaced but was deemed largely irrelevant: Kimberly Harris was five-and-a-half months pregnant at the time of her death. Davis’s blood chemistry ruled him out as the father.
Davis’s statement to the police, obtained after he’d been apprised of his rights, was a rambling, barely coherent denial of the accusations made against him. He claimed he’d been hit on the head from behind sometime the night before and had woken up in his bedroom shortly before the police had arrived. He also claimed he’d been injected with heroin while he was unconscious. He denied ever having an interest in Harris. When asked if he had a lawyer, he burst out laughing. The public defender was called in to take his case.
From that point on, the legal dance began, and the police all but vanished from the scene. Davis was arraigned, his counsel pleaded for release, the judge set a stiff bail, and Davis ended up as a target for the white
