Thomas Cook - Blood Innocents

“Reardon thought he might have had something to do with the deer killing,” Mathesson said.

“The deer were killed between three and three-thirty the same morning you made the bust,” Reardon said. “Daniels could have been involved in it and still be on Fifth Avenue by the time you busted him. Or he could have seen something. Maybe he came through the park, you know? He might have passed the deer cages just about the time they were being killed.”

Langhof shook his head. “Well, he didn’t look like he could have killed no deer. He didn’t have no blood on him or look tired or anything like that. He was too cool, man. That’s what we noticed the most. And he didn’t have no blood on him.”

“You sure?” Mathesson said.

“Hell, yes. Come on, Mathesson, don’t you think we’d have noticed something like that?”

“Where is this Daniels now?” Reardon asked.

“At home, I guess.” Langhof pulled a notebook from his back pocket and flipped through it. “Here it is. He lives at Thirty-one East Sixty-Eighth Street.”

“Any apartment number?”

“No, it’s a townhouse I guess.”

Reardon wrote the address in his notebook. “Okay. Thanks.”

“What do you think?” Mathesson asked Reardon after Langhof had gone back upstairs.

“About what?”

“About this guy Daniels?”

“I don’t know for sure,” Reardon said quietly, “but I want to talk to him.”

Mathesson grinned. “You’d better take a dozen or so lawyers with you before you try that.”

Reardon did not smile. “Maybe so.”

“I’ll go talk to Langhof’s partner,” Mathesson said. “Maybe he noticed something.”

“Okay,” Reardon said. “Have him go through the whole thing, just like Langhof.”

“Right.”

After Mathesson had gone, Reardon sat down at his desk and looked at the map again, running his fingers back and forth over the inch of space that divided the stairs at Fifth Avenue from the cages of the fallow deer. He remembered Langhof’s description of Daniels as the two patrolmen had approached him, the way he had leaned casually at the top of the stairs, the way he seemed to regard the police as little more than a brief, irritating intrusion. He wondered how much money it took to buy confidence like that.

Reardon planned to spend the rest of the afternoon interviewing two of the three members of the night crew assigned to the Children’s Zoo. The third regular member, Andros Petrakis, had been working only irregularly of late, since the illness of his wife often made it necessary for him to remain at home. On the Sunday afternoon prior to the killing Petrakis’ daughter had informed the Parks Department that her father would not be coming to work his shift but that he hoped to be back at work within a few days. Consequently, only two people had been scheduled to work in the Children’s Zoo the morning the fallow deer were killed.

Reardon’s first interview was with Gilbert Noble, who had spoken to the patrolmen called to the scene. He was a large black man who had worked for the Parks Department for twelve years. Reardon’s preliminary investigation had established that Noble had no criminal record and that he had never been treated for emotional problems of any kind. He had been hospitalized once for an injury sustained while at work as an employee of the Parks Department, but the department had paid all of Noble’s hospital expenses, as well as his salary during hospitalization. There was no reason to suspect that he held any animosity toward the Parks Department.

“You were working in the zoo the night the fallow deer were killed, is that right, Mr. Noble?” Reardon began.

Noble sat opposite Reardon, his eyes darting from one corner of the room to another. He was nervous, but that was common. In itself, it meant nothing. “That’s right,” he said.

“Were you in the zoo at around three-thirty on Monday morning?” Reardon tried to make his voice as casual as he could.

“Yeah,” Noble said. “Yeah, I was there. I was in the zoo. I got to work a little before midnight.”

“Where were you in the zoo at about that time?”

“I was cleaning the elephant cages.”

Reardon jotted Noble’s answer down in his notebook. “Where are they located?” he asked in the same casual tone with which he might have asked directions from a stranger on the street.

“They’re at the far end of the zoo, behind a big building. The elephants stay in that building at night.”

“How long would you say you were working in the elephant cages?”

“Maybe a half hour or so. Maybe a little more.”

“From when to when?”

“From about three to three-thirty.”

“Did you see anybody in the zoo during that time?”

“No, I didn’t see anybody. I didn’t see nothing while I was in them elephant cages or on the way to them either. I would have remembered seeing anybody in the zoo around then. Ain’t nobody in the zoo that time of night.”

“Did you hear anything while you worked at the elephant cages?” Reardon asked.

“No.”

“Anything at all?”

“No.” Noble paused, gazed toward the ceiling. “Well…”

“Anything at all,” Reardon said, “no matter how insignificant it might seem to you.”

“Well, you know,” Noble said slowly, “I think I did hear something while I was working with them elephants. I’d say it was about… let me see, well, about three o’clock or a little after. Had to be before three-thirty, though.”

“What was it you heard?”

“Well, just a kind of scuffing sound, like something being pushed or dragged on the ground, on the pavement, maybe.” Noble thought for a moment. “I mean, really there was kind of two different sounds.”

“Two sounds?”

“Yeah. One was like… like metal being pushed or dragged along the sidewalk. But the other sound was kind of muffled, you know?”

“Did you hear them at the same time?”

“Yeah, right at the same time. Right together.”

“So whatever was being dragged or pushed was partly covered and partly not covered.”

“That might be right,” Noble said. “I don’t know if it means anything or not.”

Reardon smiled. “Maybe not,” he said, “but we like to know all the details. Do you know where the sound came from?”

“I don’t know for sure,” Noble said. “It was just on the other side of the elephant house, that’s all. But I could hear it pretty good. It’s real quiet in the zoo at that time of the morning and the sounds only lasted a few minutes. I didn’t pay much attention. But it wasn’t like a continuous sound. You’d hear it, then it would stop.”

“There was a pause in between the sounds?”

“Yeah,” Noble said, “like a pause. First you’d hear it, then it would stop, then you’d hear it again.”

“How long did this sound last? How long did you hear it?”

“Just a little while.”

“It passed then?”

“Yeah.”

Reardon nodded and jotted in his notebook. “Did you hear anything else while you were there?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“When did you find the fallow deer?”

“About three-thirty. I went to see if Bryant was around. I figured since Petrakis was out again – I mean since he wasn’t going to come to work – well, maybe Bryant would help me do the deer cage.”

“Clean it?”

“Yeah, clean it.”

“Was Bryant around?”

“I didn’t see him.”

“Where was he?”

Noble shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably working somewhere else around.”

“So you went to clean the deer cage yourself?”

“Yeah.”

“And you found them?”

Noble grimaced. “It was terrible,” he said. “They was beat up awful bad. Just awful. Blood everywhere. I never seen nothing like it.”