David Jackson - The Helper

What was that he said to Rachel last night? Something about making it up to Amy, wasn’t it? And is he making it up to Amy? No. Because while Amy is trying to tell him all about what life is like in her small world, mixing with all kinds of small people doing small things that seem oh so immense to her, her father is just grunting at her while he tries to concentrate on the local news stories on the television. Grunting so often, in fact, that she eventually gets the message and gives up and requests the cartoon channel for its greater intellectual challenge.

The news programs continue to demand his attention on the journey to work too. Early Sunday morning is the one time of the week when driving to the precinct station house is a comparative breeze, and so he knows when he finally gets there that he has listened closely to every local story deemed noteworthy enough to be broadcast without listeners wondering what the fuck they are being told this for. And guess what? A murder in Manhattan did not figure among them. A councilman fracturing his toe — that made it in. A woman suing her cosmetic surgeon for botching an enhancement job on her buttocks — that made it in too. But homicide? Uh-uh. Not in this city, buddy.

At his desk he reflects on this. What does it mean? Either butt-jobs have leaped ahead of homicides on the scale of what matters most to people these days, or else there was no killing last night. The caller got it wrong. And if he got that wrong, then the stuff about the diary is probably bullshit too. In fact, Doyle thinks he can probably disregard everything that was said by that cuckoo and get back to worrying about poor old Mrs Sachs.

There is, of course, one other possibility. .

The call comes through at ten-forty.

‘Detective Doyle. Eighth Precinct.’

‘Hey, Doyle. This is Lopez up at the Two-Seven. Sorry to bother you, but we caught a weird one here, and your name came up.’

Doyle feels his insides drop into his shoes. Even without the details, he knows this is his worst fears coming true.

‘My name? Why? What’s the case?’

‘Homicide. A woman crushed between two cars on West 107th Street.’

‘You sure? That it’s a homicide, I mean? Not some kind of freaky accident?’

‘Nah, it was deliberate all right. According to the ME, she was rammed twice.’

‘Jesus, what a way to go. You got any wits?’

He’s thinking there has to be a witness. Surely you can’t make a vehicle sandwich on the streets of New York like that without somebody seeing something?

‘Nope. Nobody that’s come forward so far, anyhow. There are no occupied buildings near where it happened, and it was four o’clock in the morning.’

‘Four a.m.? There was nothing on the news about it.’

‘Body wasn’t discovered until seven-thirty. A woman jogging back from Central Park stopped for a rest and saw a foot underneath one of the vehicles. Then she took a closer look and found the foot-bone was connected to the leg-bone, and she heard the word of the Lord. Thing is, she’d already passed it on her way to the park and thought nothing of it. Just two mashed-up cars, looked like. My guess is other people walked past it too and thought the same thing. Who’s gonna call the cops for something like that, right?’

Doyle finds himself nodding in agreement. He knows that many people wouldn’t have called the cops even after they’d discovered the body.

‘I still don’t get how it went down. What was this woman doing out on the street at four in the morning?’

‘Yeah, that got us too. Especially when we find the woman’s wallet and learn she lives over in Brooklyn and works on the East Side. We contact the husband, deliver the bad news, wait for the crying to stop, then ask him the same question. Only he has absolutely no idea what she was doing there either. So we start knocking on doors, and eventually we find a guy in one of the apartment buildings farther along the street. Turns out she’s having an affair with him. A regular thing, apparently. She tells her husband she’s pulling a double shift, then goes and pulls something else over at this younger dude’s place.’

‘Still doesn’t explain how she ended up getting squashed.’

‘No. That’s where you come in.’

‘Me? How?’

‘Reason we know she was killed at four was that she got a call on her cellphone when she was in the apartment. She told the boyfriend about it. He says it was a cop, or someone pretending to be a cop, telling her that her husband had been locked up for drunkenness, and could she come take him home. The boyfriend thinks the cop called himself Boyle, or maybe Doyle, at the Eighth Precinct.’

Doyle finds himself shaking his head. The sheer deviousness of that bastard.

‘Shit, Lopez. I don’t know what I can tell you.’

‘That’s okay. I didn’t expect nothing. Whoever did this probably just picked your name at random off a list. I just needed to check it out, okay? You know, tick the boxes.’

‘Sure, no problem. You look at the husband for this?’

He asks because it’s an obvious question. Cuckolded husband doing away with his cheating bitch of a wife — it’s one of the oldest reasons under the sun. But deep in his gut, Doyle knows it’s not the story here.

‘Natch. The boyfriend too. Both of them look safe right now, but we’re digging. CSU are checking out the SUV used in the hit. It’s stolen, but maybe we’ll get some useful forensics. Anyways, Doyle, thanks for the input. Now I’ve crossed you off I can get on with something useful.’

A thought occurs to Doyle. A question. He’s not sure he wants the answer, but it tumbles out of his mouth nevertheless.

‘Anything you can give me on the DOA?’ Then, so as not to seem as though he has a pressing need for this, he adds, ‘Just so I can make sure I don’t have a connection to her.’

There’s a pause, during which Doyle thinks he’s been rumbled. But then Lopez comes back at him.

‘Her name is Lorna Bonnow. She’s a nurse at Bellevue. That strum any chords with you?’

And now Doyle really is wishing he hadn’t asked that question. Because yes, there is a huge fucking orchestra in his skull right now. His mind is pouncing on Lopez’s words, tearing at them for meaning, and they’re telling him what a complete fucking idiot he has been.

‘Doyle? You still there, man?’

‘Uh, yeah, sorry — there’s somebody else trying to talk to me here. No, I never heard of her.’

‘Okay. For a minute there I thought you were going to tell me it was you who aced her. Catch you later, Doyle.’

He hangs up. Doyle puts the phone down without knowing he’s doing it.

Shit.

Shit!

What was it his anonymous little helper said to him?

What actions you take will determine whether the second person dies or just ends up somewhere like Bellevue.

Doyle had taken that to mean the victim would end up either dead or severely hurt. But it didn’t mean that. Not at all. It meant: if you act on this information in time, the target will make it back into Bellevue.

Because that’s where she works, you dick!

It was all there in the phone conversation, wasn’t it?

By the way, Cal, how are the nightmares these days? About you and. . oh, what’s her name? Lorna? No, Laura.

That was no slip of the tongue. He’s too clever for that. No, he was giving out her first name. Lorna.

And the surname? That was the cleverest thing of all, you sneaky bastard.

Bonnow. Sounds like Bono. Lead singer of U2. Playing loud and clear in the background during the call.

Lorna Bonnow who works in Bellevue. I had all the information I needed to save her, thinks Doyle. I just didn’t know it. And so she died.