Bender suddenly realized he’d met Kenny Andronico. Laura had introduced them at a New Jersey train station the previous summer. Bender and Laura had just arrived on a train from Philadelphia, heading to her family’s estate for an amorous weekend, and there in the parking lot was this lumbering big guy with a mustache in a casual suit.
Laura was effusive introducing her lover to her old friend, but Kenny didn’t pick up on the emotion, Bender recalled. “He shook my hand, but he barely grunted at me. He was clearly possessive of Laura. I sensed he didn’t like me being with her.”
Bender sighed. He wanted to help Laura. But he had sensed a dark and controlling spirit in Andronico. He was happy to get away from the guy. He also had the unsettling feeling that Laura was trying to manipulate him into getting involved as a ploy to prolong their relationship.
But as he heard her troubled voice pleading for help for her friend Kenny, his doubts washed away. He was touched. He liked the girl and decided to help. He felt he owed it to her, being as he was going to dump her and all.
“Sure, I’ll do anything I can,” Bender said. “Have Kenny call me.” Laura was deeply grateful, and Dr. Andronico didn’t waste any time. He called Bender that evening.
The voice on the line was bold and assertive.
“Hey, Frank, my good buddy,” he said.
Bender stiffened. “I barely know the guy. Now I’m his good buddy?” All six of Bender’s senses went on hyperalert.
“Frank, I need your help,” Andronico pressed on, imploringly. “My fiancee disappeared, and the police have no idea what happened to her, and I’m scared to death. I know from Laura that you’re the best forensic artist in the world, and work with the best detectives. Please help me.”
Bender remained cool. “I’ll do what I can, Kenny. Who would want to kill Zoia?”
“She was living with her sister, but there were serious conflicts in the home.” He explained that Zoia’s brother-in-law, a state police sergeant, was having sex with Zoia—sleeping with his wife’s sister under the same roof. He was afraid the cop might have had something to do with Zoia’s disappearance.
“What’s the story with the cop?” Bender asked. “Has anybody investigated him? Has he taken a polygraph?”
Yes, the policeman took a polygraph, Kenny said, and he passed it.
“OK, I’ll make a deal with you. You take a polygraph and you pass it and I’ll help you.”
“Wait a minute!” Kenny sounded furious. He was practically shouting. “I’m your good friend!”
“Kenny, you’re not my good friend. You’re a friend of Laura’s, but I barely know you. You want me to help you—you have to pass a polygraph.”
Andronico was quiet on the other end of the line.
“I work with two of the best polygraph examiners in the world—Bill Fleisher and Nate Gordon, both in Philadelphia. Both are members of the Vidocq Society, a group of detectives I belong to that looks at cold cases pro bono.”
He gave him Fleisher’s telephone number. “Call Bill and set it up. You’ll have to pay for the polygraph yourself—four or five hundred dollars. I also want you to call my friend Richard Walter. He’s a profiler; he can tell you more about what might have happened to Zoia than anyone I know.” He gave him Walter’s phone number.
Andronico grunted OK.
“Kenny, can you pass a polygraph?”
“I think I can.”
Bender’s anger flared. “You
On Thursday, November 28, 1991, Thanksgiving evening, Richard Walter, home for a spell after trips to Hong Kong and Sydney on murder investigations, was dressing to go to a friend’s house for turkey and all the fixings. He was standing at the gilt Victorian hall mirror knotting his red tie on a white collar when the phone rang.
He stared at the bleating instrument thinking if it didn’t stop soon, one of them would have to go. Walter’s hypersensitive hearing was a gift on murder investigations, when he heard suspects whispering far out of normal earshot, and detected suprahuman signs of fear, such as sub-aural breathing increases, during interrogations. But the auditory assaults were getting worse with age. He couldn’t tolerate the sound of someone chewing food on the telephone line. When he detected the wet smacking of gum or the dry crunching of crackers on the other end, he hung up immediately.
His condition was apparently caused by sensory overload, the trademark of a man who absorbed too much information simultaneously. The aging ear sometimes lost the ability to screen noises, his doctor said.
He had been looking forward to crowning a successful year with a bottle of Chardonnay with friends. What execrable human being was delaying his celebration and jackhammering his ear-drums? He picked up the telephone.
“Who?” he exclaimed.
It sounded like a sales call. Walter prepared to hang up. He did not recognize the slippery, unctuous voice. Then he realized it was a stranger asking for a favor, and his ire rose along with his suspicion.
“Dr. who?”
“Frank told me if you want to solve this, and exonerate yourself, call Richard Walter,” the voice insisted. “He said, ‘He’s one of the best profilers in the world. He’ll give you good advice.’ ”
As the voice purred on, it came back to Walter: It was Dr. Kenneth Andronico, the ophthalmologist in Florida whose girlfriend, Zoia Assur, was missing in New Jersey. The police were getting nowhere; the doctor feared foul play and wanted help. Bender had told him to expect a call from “a good friend of one of my girlfriends.” Kenny was a confused and grieving man, Bender said, and needed some guidance.
Frank!
“Do you have a moment to give me some advice?” Andronico pleaded.
Walter scowled into the telephone. He instinctively didn’t like the oleaginous, manipulative voice. He checked his wristwatch: five minutes to seven. He would be late for Thanksgiving dinner.
“Oh, all right,” he said.
As Andronico told his story, from Zoia going missing to his suspicions of her policeman brother-in-law and general police ineptitude, Walter’s scowl deepened. The doctor didn’t sound like a confused and grieving boyfriend. He’d contacted a former FBI agent in Florida for help, and now Bender and Walter and the Vidocq Society.
After a few minutes, Walter cut him off sharply. He joined Bender in insisting that the doctor submit to a polygraph examination with Bill Fleisher, president of the Vidocq Society.
“Young man, you’re looking under all sorts of beds and stirring up a lot of dust. But the fact of the matter is you are the primary suspect because you’re not credible. I won’t be looking forward to the case unless you are checked out.” Walter hung up.
As he drove to Thanksgiving dinner, Walter couldn’t decide who was more confused, the doctor he now suspected of murder or his licentious partner Bender. Bender took the concept of knight-errantry, the wandering warrior, to a different dimension.
• CHAPTER 28 •
CATCH ME IF YOU CAN
The big, mustached ophthalmologist Dr. Kenneth Andronico sat in a small windowless room melting like a candle, which was better than his fiancee, Zoia Assur, who had been found in a shallow grave in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. But he wasn’t in great condition, either.
