Thomas Cook - Blood Innocents

“And so you took the ax from the work shed and started to cut the brush?”

Petrakis nodded.

It was inconceivable, Reardon thought, that Petrakis had gone this far into an interrogation without discerning the reason for it. But he only said: “Then what?”

“I cut the brush. I think of my sick wife at home. I feel bad. My wife is sick.”

“Yes,” said Reardon, “go on.”

“I cannot work. I think of my sick wife. Only my children are home.”

“So what did you do?” Reardon asked.

“I cannot work,” Petrakis said, “I go home.”

“You went home? After coming that far?”

“Yes.”

It could have happened, Reardon thought. He, himself, had come to work many times during Millie’s illness and had then gotten sick with the pain of her dying and had gone home to see her and to be with her, to bring her what little comfort he could, while he could. “What did you do with the ax? Did you put it back in the shed?”

“No, put it down,” Petrakis said.

“Where?”

“By the deer cage,” Petrakis said.

“And then you went home?”

“Yes.”

“To East 101st Street?”

“Yes.”

“What did you do when you got home?”

“I go to sleep.”

“Did you go out again during the night?” Reardon asked.

“No.”

This was going nowhere, Reardon knew. He had to get to the point quickly, flush Petrakis out, hit him hard. “You said that you don’t know why the police were looking for you. Well, the reason is: the fallow deer, the ones whose cage you sometimes cleaned, were killed early Monday morning.”

Petrakis received this information without any sign of emotion. He seemed to project only a dull acknowledgment of yet another insignificant fact.

“Were you aware that they had been killed?” Reardon asked.

“No.”

“You would have noticed that they were dead when you came to the park, wouldn’t you?”

“They alive.”

“And you say you placed your ax outside the cage when you left the park. Why didn’t you lock it up?”

“Too tired,” Petrakis said. “I put it down and leave.”

Reardon nodded. Then he said sternly, almost accusingly, “Your ax was the weapon that killed the fallow deer.”

Petrakis was unmoved. He simply nodded, staring dreamingly into Reardon’s face.

“Your fingerprints are the only fingerprints on the ax,” Reardon said in the same commanding voice.

Petrakis did not answer.

“Have you ever heard of Wallace Van Allen?” Reardon asked.

“He gives the deer to the zoo,” Petrakis said.

“And he threw you out of your apartment too,” Reardon said, “didn’t he?”

“No,” Petrakis said. “Robles.”

“Wallace Van Allen owns the building,” Reardon said.

“Oh,” Petrakis said.

“You knew that, didn’t you?”

“No.”

“And you hated him, didn’t you? Didn’t you want to get even?”

Petrakis did not answer.

“Didn’t you?” Reardon repeated.

Petrakis’ face seemed to darken. “It is the curse,” he said. “I will die!”

Reardon leaned forward in his chair. For a moment he believed that he had broken the impenetrable surface of Petrakis’ consciousness. “Die for what?”

“This is the last,” Petrakis said.

“Last of what?”

“The curse.”

“What curse?”

“She curses me with three deaths.”

“Who?”

“My mother.”

“Why?”

“Because I leave my village in Greece. She says three would die.”

“She cursed you for coming to New York?” Reardon asked. He had heard of such things among the Irish.

Petrakis continued, dazed. “She says that three will die. My daughter last year. Now my wife. Now me.”

“Your daughter died last year?” Reardon asked.

“Born dead,” Petrakis said without emphasis, as if filling in an inconsequential detail, as if all his nerves had been seared down to a final insensibility.

Reardon could feel a pressure behind his eyes, his skin tightening in the old, remembered fury of his pity.

Reardon was still questioning Petrakis, searching for contradictions, breaks, discrepancies in his story when Mathesson walked into the precinct house later that afternoon. He seemed to be moved by a dynamo, gaining energy from the pursuit of the killer. Reardon could sense that Mathesson smelled blood, felt he was on the right track and had already fingered Petrakis as the killer in his mind. He looked at Petrakis, then at Reardon. “Can I see you a minute?” he asked Reardon.

Reardon stood up, and he and Mathesson walked into an empty office not far from Reardon’s desk. Mathesson was poised, ready. He paced to the back wall of the office, leaned his back flat against it and slapped his hands together jubilantly.

“The Van Allen connection still checks out,” he said. “Julio Robles is just the lousy superintendent of the building. He’s not the landlord.”

“Van Allen is the landlord?”

“That’s right,” Mathesson said, “and I did a little survey. You know, on my own. Everybody in that building that I could talk to knew that Wallace Van Allen was the landlord.”

Reardon nodded. There was no doubt now, Reardon knew: Mathesson was after Petrakis and already believed he had him.

“It was just like I thought,” Mathesson said, “just like my buddy with the Hollywood star for a landlord.”

“I see,” Reardon said.

“So the connection holds.”

“Yes, I guess it does.”

“You gonna arrest him?” Mathesson asked. “Got a lot on him, you know.”

Reardon looked at Petrakis through the internal office window. He was sitting erect in the chair, his hands folded motionlessly in his lap, his face still holding to its doomed rigidity, the face of a cow waiting for the hammer.

“He says he crossed Fifth Avenue on the way to the subway,” Reardon said.

“Then that’s it,” said Mathesson. “Piccolini wants an arrest.”

“I know.”

“Do you think you can get a confession out of Petrakis?”

“Like they got one out of Whitmore,” Reardon said harshly, “by feeding him the details of the case.” He felt his anger flash almost uncontrollably. He gazed at Petrakis, thinking of that impregnable passivity the man gave off like an odor. “They actually got him to tell them the color of a bedspread in a murder room he had never been in,” Reardon said softly, controlling himself. “That’s not the kind of confession we want, is it?”

“Of course not,” Mathesson said. “You know better than that. You know I wouldn’t go for anything like that.”

“If I build a case against Petrakis,” Reardon said, “I want it to stick. Besides, I’m not sure we have a case yet.”

Mathesson seemed amazed. “Are you kidding?”

“I have an opinion,” Reardon said firmly, turning to face Mathesson, “and that’s it. I don’t believe we have a case nailed down against him yet.”

“The connection holds, the prints hold, the motive holds, the weapon holds. He was in the area of the crime near the time of its commission.”

Reardon thought Mathesson sounded like a textbook on criminal procedure.

“I’m not convinced.”

Mathesson’s initial amazement was obviously now turning into irritation. “Are you going on hunches now?”

“You can call it what you like.” Reardon pointed his finger toward the closed door. “Outside that door a man is sitting in a chair. That man is a part of this case. He’s a part of this case, just like the ax and the prints and the rest of the physical evidence. He just does not connect with the facts. I don’t believe the case is solid against him and I am not going to subject him and his family to an arrest before I have a case I can send to court.”