Page 36 of The Accomplice
‘This is the place ?’ asked Bloch.
‘This is it.’
A brown Ford Sedan was parked up just in front of them. Two guys in the front. Street clothes and earpieces. One of them was drinking something from a thermos cup.
‘The FBI are here. Protection detail for the witness, Teresa Vasquez,’ said Bloch.
‘That’s fine. We won’t interfere. The Sandman dumped her body in that alley. Let’s take a look there first.’
‘And what exactly are we gonna do ?’ asked Bloch.
‘We’re going to lick our fingers and stick them in the air.’
Surprisingly there are few large, open alleyways in Manhattan. Most of them are gated. This one was open. Bloch watched Lake lead the way. He walked slowly, but confidently. There was a little swagger to his step. Yet he didn’t seem to be aware of it. He was not a self-conscious man. If he were, he’d shave that stubble, iron his shirt and get his suit pressed. She got the sense that all of his focus was outside of himself. As if he could talk intensely on a complicated subject for hours without realizing his ass was on fire.
The alleyway was perhaps fifteen feet wide but didn’t feel so spacious. The iron fire escapes on the buildings either side narrowed the gap. Bloch looked up toward the oyster-colored clouds. At the top of the buildings the ironwork fire escapes seemed thin, inky traces against the paper sky. Apart from three dumpsters and some garbage and cardboard boxes piled beside them, the alleyway was empty. Even though it wasn’t jam packed with garbage it sure smelled like it. The alley went on for fifty feet, dog legged left for another twenty. The red brickwork was dirty and chipped here and there, and there were even some fly posters stuck to the wall. One for a rock band advertising a gig that happened three years ago, and some others that the elements had torn down off the brick, leaving only ripped fragments of paper clinging to the wall.
It was a sad place to die.
‘They never found Lilian’s cameo brooch,’ said Lake. ‘And it was her mother, Joan Parker, who informed police it was missing. That cameo belonged to Joan’s mother, Lilian’s grandmother. The rest of the victims’ families will have the jewelry returned after the trial. It means so much to Joan and they can’t find that piece.’
‘I read her statement. Daniel Miller probably still has that brooch hidden somewhere.’
Bloch had brought her iPad from the car. She switched it on and opened the zip folder. Denise had scanned every document in the Carrie Miller case onto the firm’s computer system. Every piece of evidence, every motion, every scrap of paper was indexed so that it could be accessed in seconds. Double tapping on the file marked ‘Lilian Parker,’ Bloch brought up all the witness statements and photographs of the scene. Lilian had been found atop a dumpster, on a hot night – June 3 last year. She was dressed in jeans, boots and a white tee. He left her like all the others, mutilated and with sand poured over the body and into the empty eye cavities.
No one had heard anything. None of the occupants of the buildings on either side of the alley. Several stated they had their windows open because it was so hot, and they complained about the smell of garbage, and the noise from the damn cats, but the heat was worse than the shrill baying of alley cats.
Lake stopped at the dumpsters, which were gathered in a row on the left, just before the alley turned.
He looked back the way he had come, then bent down, checked the ground. Standing up, he checked his surroundings again. There were two ground-level exits into the alley. One for each building. Both were fire doors, with no way to open them from the outside.
‘The alarm was working on the fire door for Lilian Parker’s building,’ he said.
Bloch nodded, then raised her head. There was a ladder, hooked up, ten feet off the ground, leading to the first rung of the fire escape. In order to get down the side of the building from Lilian Parker’s floor, Lilian would have had to pass by at least twenty-one windows. Three on each floor. And some of them were open that night. It didn’t seem likely to Bloch that Lilian, nor anyone else, could’ve gone down the fire escape without either being seen or being heard, no matter what time of night.
‘How did he get her into the alleyway ?’ asked Bloch.
Nodding, Lake said, ‘That’s a real good question. She didn’t come from her building. Fire doors didn’t open because there were no alarms, and she didn’t come down the fire escape. You can’t get a truck into this street with the garbage, so he didn’t capture her somewhere else and move her body here. She came into the alley from the street ?’
‘Had to be that way,’ said Bloch, nodding.
‘This guy takes risks, butcalculatedrisks. Grabbing Lilian Parker off a busy Manhattan street and dragging her into an alleyway doesn’t make sense. Somebody would’ve seen or heard something.’
There were two distinct patterns in the method and execution of the Sandman’s crimes. In the beginning, victims were found on Coney Island beach, half buried in the sand. After the fourth victim was found, the twenty-four-hour police patrols along the entire length of the strip forced a change in the Sandman’s pattern. He began targeting victims in their homes. Except this victim.
‘Let’s go upstairs,’ said Lake.
The building supervisor was unlike any Bloch had ever seen. His name was Dennis, he was neatly dressed, didn’t smell, didn’t have the crack of his ass on display every time he turned around, and he was polite and co-operative when Lake told him they were here to assist the FBI with their investigations. Bloch didn’t think Dennis was going to last in this job.
He led them up to the seventh floor in the elevator, took out his keys and began to work on the door locks for Lilian Parker’s apartment. The door had at least four locks, with four different keys needed to open them. All told, it took Dennis close to a minute to unlock the door. A cat flap was built into the bottom of the door, but it was way too small to be a point of entry.
‘So, any idea when I can get rid of the furniture and lease this place out again ?’ asked Dennis.
‘Shouldn’t be too much longer. The Bureau is not insensitive to your business needs, Dennis,’ said Lake. ‘Thank you for your co-operation.’
That was Dennis’s cue to leave.
This was a studio apartment. Everything in one room. Soon as Bloch stepped inside, she saw the bed in the corner, a couch and TV opposite and behind that some cupboards, a fridge and what looked like a camping stove. The single door off the room led to a small shower and toilet. No bath.
