Thomas Cook - Blood Innocents

“This afternoon,” Laura snapped.

“Thanks,” the man said. He retreated out of the doorway, carefully closing the door behind him.

Reardon could see that Laura was jittery, almost panicky. “Miss Murray,” he said gently, “would you like to go for a walk with me? Someplace where we can talk privately?”

She smiled sadly. “Yes, that might be the best thing.”

“There’s a coffee shop just down the street,” Reardon said. “It should be just about empty this time of day.”

“Fine,” Laura said.

At the coffee shop Reardon felt it necessary to make something very clear. “Miss Murray,” he said, “we know a lot about Karen Ortovsky already. Or at least I think we do. What I mean is, we know

…” Reardon stopped. He could not think of the right words. “We know her sexual habits.” They were still not the right words, and Reardon knew it.

Laura looked at him with relief. “I see,” she said. “I’m glad. There’s no point in avoiding anything then. We had – Karen and I – we had the same – as you say – sexual habits.”

“I’m only interested in this if it could have had anything to do with her death,” Reardon said quickly. “Believe me, Miss Murray, it’s of no importance to me. This is a murder investigation. I’m not concerned with anything else. I just want to know who killed Karen and her roommate.”

“I didn’t know her roommate very well,” Laura said. “But before Lee came along Karen and I were very close. I don’t know what you think about anything, Mr. Reardon, but Karen was a good person, a sweet person.”

“I’m sure she was,” Reardon said, and he meant it. He suspected that the same could be said for Laura Murray.

“I loved her,” she said. “For a while as a lover, then later as a friend. When I first came to New York from Virginia I didn’t know anybody. I’m shy. It’s hard for me to get to know people. For a year I didn’t know anybody except the local grocer, people like that. People you just say ‘hello’ and ‘good-bye’ to, and that’s it. Then I came to work at Tristan, and I met Karen. For a long time we were just friends. That’s all. Just friends. We’d go to movies together, or to dinner, things like that. We even double-dated a few times. Then one night – after a double date, as a matter of fact – I stayed at her apartment. It was late and so rather than make my date go all the way to Brooklyn Heights with me on the subway, I just stayed with Karen. It seemed like the most reasonable thing to do.” She stopped and looked at Reardon, evaluating him, then came to some decision in her mind. “We made love that night. I don’t know how it happened. It just did.”

The tension was gone from her face, and all the nervousness. She sat calmly, glancing occasionally out the window at nothing in particular. For a moment Reardon was lost in the spacious decency of her face. He wondered if that was what it felt like, to be released.

“When did you see her last?” he asked quietly.

“Wednesday. The Wednesday before she died. At work. I haven’t seen Karen outside the office for two years. She met Lee, and after that I didn’t see her anymore except at work.”

“Did you know Lee?”

“Lee? I met her a few times when she would meet Karen at the office in the afternoon. That’s all. But I know Karen must have been absolutely devoted to her. There was no other way for Karen. It had to be total or nothing.”

“Did she have any other friends at the office?”

“No, not that I know of.”

“Surely she must have been friendly with other people.”

“They had mutual friends, I think. Karen and Lee, I mean. Sometimes they’d mention a name – a Phillip or a John or something like that – and it was obvious they both knew this person. So I guess they had friends, but I didn’t know them.”

“Do you know of any list of addresses or anything like that, something that Karen might have had somewhere other than her office or apartment? The police couldn’t find anything.”

“I know something about that,” Laura said suddenly. “She didn’t write addresses down. She said them over and over again until she had them memorized. A year after she started living with Lee I moved and changed my address. So I wanted Karen to know my new address. You know, in case she ever wanted to get in touch with me, needed help or something like that. But she wouldn’t write it down.”

“Did you ask her why?”

“Yeah, I said, ‘Why don’t you just write it down? Wouldn’t that be easier?’”

“What did she say?”

“Now that you mention it, she looked a little strange when I asked her that, a little frightened or something, like she’d let down her guard or something like that. A little embarrassed maybe. She just said something about always memorizing these things. She said Lee thought it was a good idea. She said it trained her memory or something like that.”

“She said Lee thought it was a good idea?”

“Yes,” Laura said. “She definitely mentioned Lee.”

After leaving Laura Murray Reardon went to the city morgue at Bellevue Hospital. He wanted to see the bodies of Lee McDonald and Karen Ortovsky once again and to see the pathologist’s report.

He found Jake Simpson, a morgue attendant he’d known for years, reading a paperback novel at his desk. Years of menial labor at the command of other men vastly better educated and better paid had done a job on Simpson, grinding him down to a fine edge of resentment.

“What can I do for you?” Simpson asked glumly, putting his novel facedown on his desk. The crooked cigarette dangling from his mouth made him look like an aging pool hustler.

“I’d like to take a look at the report on the women in the Village, McDonald and Ortovsky.”

Jake struggled to his feet. “I’ll get them.” He went to a gray metal file cabinet and extracted two manila envelopes from one of the drawers. “Here they are,” he said. “Just came in.”

“Thanks,” Reardon said. He took the envelopes and pulled out a chair at an empty desk. “Okay if I sit here?”

“Who gives a shit,” said Simpson, who had gone back to his paperback novel.

Reardon sat down and opened an envelope.

Jake peered up from the book. “She took a dump, you know.”

Reardon looked over at him. “What are you talking about?”

“The one that got her throat cut,” Jake said. “She took a terrible shit. Rothman said he’d never seen so much crap.”

“Karen?”

“The one in the closet. Crapped her pants.”

“She was scared out of her goddamn mind,” Reardon said, feeling the heat of his anger rise in his face.

“Must of been,” Jake said. He smiled. “Not that unusual, you know. Rothman’s kind of new around here. Don’t know his ass from a hole in the wall.” He went back to his book.

Reardon turned to the first page of the pathologist’s report on Lee McDonald. It was the usual, the same sterile language. Each of Lee’s major organs had been cut out of her body and weighed in grams: heart, liver, pancreas, kidneys, everything. The lacerations received by each organ were recorded in centimeters. The contents of her stomach and intestines were recorded in cubic centimeters, with references to texture and color. The consistency of her feces was described as part fluid, part pulpy.

Reardon winced but continued reading. Even the arid language of the report suggested that her body had been cut to ribbons. But Mathesson had been right: Lee McDonald had not been sexually abused. There was no residue of semen in or around either the vagina or the anus.

Then he saw it. The definite connection. Lee McDonald had been stabbed fifty-seven times. These were direct, purposeful blows, deep and wide, not the numerous scratches and cuts any victim receives while fending off a blade with bare arms.