Thomas Cook - Blood Innocents

He picked up the ax and perused the handle slowly. It was spotless from the base up to about seven or eight inches from the blade. Then spots of blood began to dapple the wood. The blade itself was almost completely sheathed in bloodstains.

Mathesson motioned toward the ax. “Well, that’s it,” he said. “When you’ve got the weapon, you’ve got the killer.”

“Not always.”

“Sometimes,” Mathesson said. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and offered one to Reardon.

“No, thanks,” Reardon said.

“Oh, right,” Mathesson said. “I forgot. You quit.”

Reardon’s eyes remained riveted on the ax. In the presence of a weapon he became almost reverent, not out of respect for the weapon itself but for the human being, obscure and silent, who had been slaughtered by it.

“Do you watch much TV?” Mathesson asked.

“What?”

“Do you watch much TV?”

“A little.”

“They had a goddamn good show on last night.” Mathesson chuckled. “A real whodunit, you know? First I thought it was the wife, then the lover, then the brother-in-law. Hell, I’d have put the whole goddamn family in the slammer before I’d have fingered the right guy.”

Reardon’s eyes continued to move up and down the ax. Mathesson’s voice was recorded only as passing unintelligible sounds, like street noise.

Finally, Reardon said: “What do you make of that?”

“What?”

“The way the ax is so thoroughly cleaned of prints on part of the handle and covered with them on the rest.”

Mathesson looked at the ax. “Well, the only thing I figure is that the killer got scared, panicked, started running, and threw the ax in the sewer drain on Fifth Avenue. And if the killer is Petrakis, then it stands to reason he might run east up to Fifth Avenue, ’cause he lives on the East Side, East Ninetieth, right?”

“That’s his old address, but remember, he’d been evicted. We don’t know where he was living the night the deer were killed.”

“Oh, yeah,” Mathesson said, “that’s right.” He looked at the ax again. “I’ll admit that a guy who’d clean a weapon as good as this guy did, you could expect him to clean the whole thing, not leave any prints. But who knows what was going through his mind? And remember, John, those prints belong to Petrakis and nobody else. Now, I figure he just plain bolted. Just plain panicked. Forgot everything. Just started running home.”

“If his new address is on the East Side.”

“Right,” Mathesson said. “And another thing. That ax came from a toolshed not far from the deer cage. I just got this from Bannion this morning. I asked Bannion to check and see if it looked like the toolshed had been broken into, and he said no. He said that whoever took that ax had to have had a key to the shed.”

“Who has access to the shed?”

“Noble, Bryant and Petrakis. The regular night crew. I talked to Bryant just before I came over, and Bannion talked to Noble last night. They hadn’t been using the ax. Noble said he saw it in the shed earlier that night when he went to take out something else.”

“So it had to have been in there,” Reardon said, “and whoever took it out had to have had a key.”

“That’s right,” Mathesson said. “Everything’s right for Petrakis.”

“All right,” Reardon said, “what’s your idea of the whole thing, from beginning to end?”

“Well,” Mathesson said, “I figure Petrakis was real upset. His wife dying and all, you know. And on top of his wife dying and this costing him all his money, he gets kicked out of his apartment. So that sets him off, you know? Puts him over the brink, you might say. He’s real agitated by now. Crazy. So he goes to the park, maybe just to walk around at first, who knows? Anyway, he goes to the zoo and on the way he meets Bryant. He’s so mad that the only thing he can talk about is his lousy landlord. Which is none other than your friend and mine, Wallace Van Allen.”

“You think he’d have known who his landlord was?” Reardon asked.

“I don’t know, to be honest with you. Of course, that stuff is in the public record. Anybody has access to it. Anybody can find out who their landlord is.”

“But it takes a while to track it down.”

“Yeah,” Mathesson said, “but look at it this way: I once had a buddy who lived in a building on East 72nd Street. Now, normally he wouldn’t know who his landlord was. Just some corporation, you know what I mean? But it so happened that his building was owned by some movie star – I forget who it was exactly – but a big Hollywood star, you know? So my buddy knew who owned the building. Kind of took pride in it, you know? Like it made him kind of different, kind of important or special or something, living in a building owned by a famous person.”

“Yeah,” Reardon said.

“Well, Wallace Van Allen is a big name, you know what I mean? So Petrakis could have known who his landlord was without going through the hassle of researching it. I’d be willing to bet that if you canvassed Petrakis’ old building the tenants would know that Wallace Van Allen owned the building they live in.”

This made sense to Reardon. He leaned on the metal table and concentrated his attention on Mathesson. “Go on.”

“Well,” Mathesson said, “Petrakis goes to the zoo. Now remember, he’s goofy. He takes the ax and decides to get even with Van Allen. So he kills the deer in a crazy rage. Uncontrollable, you might say.”

“Why did he kill them like he did?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why did he cut one of them to ribbons with fifty-seven different wounds and then kill the other one with a single blow?”

“Maybe he was tired,” Mathesson said. “What he did to that first deer would take a lot out of you. In any case, after he’s through with the killing, he starts cleaning the fingerprints off the ax. He probably plans to put the ax back in the toolshed. Then he hears something, maybe that muffled and grating sound Noble heard. Anyway, he panics. He forgets about cleaning the goddamn ax and just decides to ditch it.”

“On Fifth Avenue?”

“That’s right,” Mathesson said, visibly warming to the narrative. “But he sees he’s on a city street that could have witnesses, and there he is holding a goddamn ax that’s dripping with blood, so he pitches it in the sewer drain under the street. And that’s it. He takes off for home.” Mathesson took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, clearly pleased with his account.

For a moment there was silence, while Reardon thought about the scenario just presented by Mathesson. “So Petrakis took off toward home?” he asked finally. “Remember, we don’t know where he lives since he was evicted.”

“The chances are he stayed on the East Side. I’ll bet when you find his new address, it’ll be on the East Side.”

“It may be,” Reardon admitted.

“May be, bullshit!” Mathesson laughed, shrugging off the frustration that Reardon could see building in him. “Well,” he said, “we may have the clincher anyway.”

“What clincher?”

“It may not be sure,” Mathesson said with a teasing smile, “but it’s a chance. That kid, Daniels.”

“The kid with the cocaine bust?”

“That’s right. I finally got through to him.”

“So?”

“I got through that goddamn wall of legal eagles his rich papa hired to get the little prick off the hook,” Mathesson said proudly. “He’s coming in to talk to us. He may have seen something.”

Daniels might have the answer, Reardon thought. Cases had been broken that way before, and Reardon hoped the killing of the fallow deer and of the women in the Village could be solved quickly. He was not sure why this case disturbed him so particularly. He only knew that it did, and he wanted to escape the pressures he could feel building in himself with every hour it remained unsolved. “When’s he coming in?” he asked.