A Simple Act of Violence

  Miller looked at Roth. ‘A man?’

  ‘Yes, definitely a man. No question about it. I took the details - stuffed crust, extra monterey jack, double mushroom, you know? I’m writing down the order. I ask the guy for his number, he gives me the number. I ask his name, he says “Catherine”. I say “What?” He laughs. He says “That’s who the pizza’s for. Catherine”. I say “Okay, for Catherine”. I read him back the order. He then repeats it back to me real slow. Made the conversation stick in my head, you know?’

  ‘Like he wanted you to remember the conversation?’

  ‘That’s what I’m thinking now. He wanted me to remember him.’

  Miller looked at Roth. Everything that needed to be said was right there in Roth’s expression. Catherine Sheridan’s killer had called and ordered pizza. He had wanted her to be found immediately.

  ‘How did he sound?’ Miller asked Sam.

  ‘Sounded like Washington, you know? Nothing special. Just sounded like a regular guy. Maybe if I’d known I was gonna be asked about him I would have paid more attention.’

  ‘It’s okay, you did good. You kept the number he gave you?’

  ‘It’s on the order slip.’

  ‘You have that?’

  Sam shuffled through things behind the counter, looked in two places, came back with a yellow paper the size of a playing card. ‘Here,’ he said, and handed it to Miller.

  ‘Can I keep this?’

  ‘Sure you can.’

  Miller took the slip, glanced at it. ‘Three-one-five area code,’ he said. ‘We have a three-one-five area code in Washington? ’

  Sam shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I’m not sure. Tell you the truth I didn’t even think about it when I wrote the number down. Saturday we’re so busy—’

  ‘It’s fine,’ Miller said. ‘We’ll check it out.’ He handed Sam one of his cards. ‘You think of anything else—’

  ‘Then I’ll call you,’ Sam interjected, smiling again like he was glad to be helpful.

  ‘Thanks,’ Miller said, and shook Sam’s hand.

  ‘No problem.’

  Miller reached the door and paused. ‘One other question. About payment. Don’t you take card details over the phone?’

  ‘Sure, sometimes we do, but most of the deliveries are cash.’

  ‘And this was a cash order?’

  ‘Sure yes. It was just a regular order. Only thing about it was when he gave the woman’s name. Apart from that it was no different from any other call.’

  ‘Okay,’ Miller said. ‘Thanks for your time.’ He held up the yellow order slip. ‘And for this.’

  Neither Miller nor Roth spoke during the brief walk back to the car.

  Miller felt a quiet sense of certainty that anything resembling a normal life would now cease for the foreseeable future. Cease until they had someone, and only begin again if that someone was the someone. Always the way these things went.

  Once they were in the car, he looked at the number printed across the top of the order slip. ‘I really don’t think this is a Washington area code,’ he said. ‘I think this is something else.’

  ‘Question I have is who the fuck orders pizza for a dead woman?’ Roth asked.

  ‘He wanted her found,’ Miller replied matter-of-factly. ‘He wanted everyone to know what he’d done. Previous three were found almost by accident, by chance, something usual. This one? This one’s different.’

  He shook his head. Almost everything had been the same - the lack of forced entry, the beating, the ribbon and tag, even the smell of lavender. Everything the same, except Catherine Sheridan’s face had been left unmarked, and now this. Killarney would have said that the killer had reached his embellishment phase. Modifications, minor changes, knowing that with each aspect of his work he would garner further attention.

  ‘This is what he wants,’ Miller said quietly. ‘He wants people to see what he has done.’

  At the precinct Miller tried the number. He got nothing but a continuous tone. He taped the small yellow slip on the wall beside his desk. He did not want to forget it amidst the madness of paperwork he knew was coming. He and Roth then made the necessary requests to have files relating to Mosley, Rayner and Lee brought to the Second. Miller spoke with Lassiter, asked for whatever help he could get putting the records into some sense of order. Lassiter gave him Metz and Oliver and a couple of uniforms from admin. By two o’clock there were six of them crowded into the second-floor office.

  ‘I need phone records,’ Miller said. ‘Landline and cell phone. I want bank records, any computers and laptops from the respective houses. I need employment histories, details of club memberships, libraries, gyms, trade associations, magazines they subscribed to, anything like that. We need to look at this like a fingertip search, go back inch-by-inch through everything . . . see if there’s any common denominator, anything that connects these women to one place, one person, especially to each other.’

  Miller then called the coroner’s office, was told that the Sheridan autopsy had not been completed, that assistant coroner Hemmings would not be able to see them until the following day. Miller had not seen Hemmings since the coroner’s inquiry on November the 2nd, the testimony that had exonerated him from civil and criminal action. It had been a mess. At one point the police department believed that it could be contained, but no, it had been shared with the world. A routine murder investigation, a visit to question a hooker called Jennifer Anne Irving as a potential witness, the interruption of an act of violence, and Miller had wound up with a lengthy IAD investigation and three months’ suspension.

  Following that had come public appearances, statements from Lassiter and the chief of police, the entire circus cavalcade that followed such things. Outside the courtroom after the final evidence had been submitted, down along the cloisters that separated the main public thoroughfare from the respective judges’ chambers, Miller had shared a few words with Hemmings. Away from the bright lights of intrusive reportage, he had taken a moment to thank her, and as they parted he had hugged her - nothing more complicated than a wish to express his gratitude. It was that moment that had been caught by an alert and eager Globe photographer. The implications of that picture did not need to be spelled out. Nine days had passed since that moment. The death of Catherine Sheridan had intervened. Now he would have to speak with Marilyn Hemmings again. It would be awkward, Miller knew. He was not looking forward to it.

  That Sunday afternoon Roth and Miller buried themselves in the case files. The day would end with more questions than answers. Miller felt the tremendous pressure of the thing, felt the weight of it bearing down on him. He read reports that did not make sense. He isolated areas where questions could have been asked and were not. All the way back to Margaret Mosley in March there were lines of investigation that could have been followed, but now - as in all cases - whatever might have been there would have disappeared. People moved. People forgot things. People touched the edges of such tragedies and did their utmost not to think of them again.

  At six the uniforms left. Metz and Oliver stayed until eight to complete the wallboards that would hold all the relevant maps and photos for each of the four murders. By nine Miller’s head ached relentlessly, and no amount of coffee seemed to relieve it. There were things that did not add up with each of the victims, predominantly questions relating to their identification. Dates of birth did not tally with hospitals or registry departments. The previous investigations had been slipshod. There was a great deal of work to do, and Miller - already feeling the rush and punch of the investigation - nevertheless did not relish the time and attention that such work would entail.

  Roth got ready to leave at quarter of ten, stood in the doorway of the office and asked Miller if he wanted to come over and stay.

  Miller smiled and shook his head. ‘I don’t need to be a fifth wheel anywhere.’

  ‘Go home then,’ Roth said. ‘Get a shower, some sleep. This ain’t going anywhere overnight.’

  ‘I
won’t be long,’ Miller said. ‘Go see your kids . . . take whatever chances you can get.’

  Roth didn’t say anything else, merely raised his hand and left the room.

  Miller got up from his desk and walked to the window, waited until he saw the lights of Roth’s car pass along the street below. Miller knew Amanda Roth, his partner’s wife; little more than social contact, but he liked her. He had met the Roth children, three of them, fourteen, eleven and seven. Amanda’s folks had helped their daughter and son-in-law buy a three-storey brownstone walk-up when Al was on a nothing salary. Al and Amanda had waited patiently while the MCI Center, now the Verizon, started to attract people back into the area. Waited on through the promises of regeneration money, saw the promises broken, a change of mayor, the promise reinstated, sat back and laughed when the figures started improving, and now the five Roths sat in a house worth the better part of four hundred thousand dollars, all of it paid for, a receipt to prove it. Albert and Amanda Roth were Washington through and through. Anything they had they’d earned, and what they’d earned they deserved. People like the Roths, holding onto their Jewish heritage by their fingernails, were the kind of people Miller’s mother had wished him to be, the kind of people he would never become.

  From the car pool Miller took a nondescript sedan. He drove home, seeing nothing but text before his eyes, the close print of interview notes, the incident reports, the missing details that jumped out at him and reminded him of how hasty and superficial the preliminary crime scene analyses had been. Such was the case with Margaret Mosley, with Ann Rayner, with Barbara Lee. It would not be the case with Catherine Sheridan - she of the library books, the delicatessen lunch she did not eat, the unknown sexual partner somewhere between ten-thirty in the morning and four in the afternoon.

  The lights were with him all the way and Miller parked the car at the top of Church Street just before eleven. The deli was closed, but there were lights in back. He knocked on the door and Zalman came through to let him in. Standing no taller than Miller’s shoulder, thinning hair, his face a maze of wrinkles, Zalman Shamir was everything an elderly Jewish man should have been. His manner belied his depth, and though he let his wife run the delicatessen Miller knew that there would not have been a delicatessen without Zalman’s tireless work.

  ‘Ach, she is pissed with you,’ he told Miller. ‘You leave without eating this morning. Last night we are here when you come and you have nothing to say.’

  ‘Hey, Zalman,’ Miller said.

  ‘Hey Zalman you,’ he replied. ‘You get yourself in back there and explain yourself. Enough of this headache I’m getting already.’

  Miller walked past the two or three tables along the right-hand side of the delicatessen, the handful of chairs for the old friends who came down and played chess on Mondays and Thursdays. To his left was the cool counter, the glass shelving upon which Harriet set potato latkes, matzoh balls, gefilte fish . . .

  Harriet and Zalman Shamir were good people. They did everything slow, the way it was done in 1956 when they took over the diner on the corner of Church Street. They used to live in the apartment above. Their son was successful, bought them a three-storey brownstone, and they’d moved there eleven years before. Miller took the apartment when he’d made detective, and since then he’d seen the Shamirs nearly every day. Harriet made food, too much food; sometimes she figured Miller wasn’t eating enough and let herself into the apartment to put things in his refrigerator. Most nights, most mornings, he would stop and talk with them. She’d always make breakfast for three, had started making it for four when Marie McArthur had stayed over. And sometimes in the evening, when he returned to find the deli still open, they would sit together in the back kitchen and she would ask him about his life, about the things she read in the paper. Zalman would say nothing, there in the background slicing chicken or bagels, squeezing orange juice or some-such. And Miller would talk to them, these strange old Jewish folk, like surrogate parents, like some small brief respite from the darkness of his life beyond those walls. Harriet would ask about cases, about murders, in her eyes a glint of fascination, and Miller would smile and tell her what he could.

  ‘You soften these things up so,’ she would say, and press her hand over his reassuringly. ‘Zalman and I, we were children at the end of the Second World War. We saw what people could do to each other. We saw the ones that came back from the camps.’

  But Miller, regardless, did not feel it was right to drag the details of his day into their life, and so he did not. He would smile at her, he would hold her hand, he would hug her when he left the deli and made his way upstairs. She would call after him, tell him to get a new girl - ‘a nice one this time mind you!’ - and Miller would hear Zalman Shamir tell his wife to stop interfering, and she would tell him, Ssshhh, such things were her business.

  That evening Miller heard her call his name from in back of the store.

  ‘Hey, Harriet,’ he called back, and he started to smile.

  ‘I hear you,’ she said. ‘I hear you laughing at me.’

  ‘I’m not laughing at you.’

  Harriet appeared in the doorway, her hair tied up with a net, her hands covered in flour. A handful of inches shorter than her husband, a housecoat beneath her apron, a kitchen towel over her shoulder. She always looked the same - old, but never growing older. ‘Look at this business,’ she said disapprovingly. ‘Two days I make breakfast and where are you, eh?’

  ‘I had to leave early, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Sorry is as sorry does. You look like hamburgers and soda pop. You have eaten hamburgers and soda pop, am I right or am I right?’

  Miller shrugged.

  ‘Come in the kitchen. Come and eat something sensible for once in your life.’

  ‘Harriet - I’m not hungry.’ Miller turned and looked at Zalman. ‘Zalman . . . tell her will you?’

  Zalman held up his hands, a gesture of surrender. ‘I say nothing. I cannot help you with this, Robert.’ He shrugged, walked through into the back and made busy with his preparations for the following day.

  ‘So come have some coffee and honey cake, eh?’

  ‘Just one piece . . . a small piece, okay?’

  ‘Ach, so foolish,’ Harriet replied, and led him by the arm to the kitchen table.

  ‘So you are on some big business, yes?’ she asked, as she sliced honey cake, poured coffee.

  Miller nodded. ‘Big business, yes.’

  ‘So what is such big business you cannot say hello in the morning?’

  Miller smiled knowingly. ‘We’re not going there again, Harriet. I’ll tell you about it when it’s done.’

  ‘And what’s with Marie now? She has gone for good?’

  ‘I think so . . . I think she’s gone for good.’

  Harriet shook her head. ‘This is a stupid business. Young people without any persistence. One little fight and it’s all finished, yes?’

  Miller didn’t reply. He glanced at Zalman. Zalman shook his head. I am not involved, that gesture said, and don’t you dare get me involved.

  ‘So eat,’ Harriet said. ‘Eat before you collapse from starvation.’

  Miller picked up the honey cake. He sat there in silence for a little while - there in his small oasis, a narrow window through which he could slip unnoticed and leave everything behind.

  The world and all its darkness would wait for him ’til morning. Monday the 13th would be a day of autopsy details, returning to the Sheridan house, collating and cross-referencing every detail they could glean from the earlier case files. The prospect both frightened and excited Miller. He felt some sense of purpose. He had not thought of his ex-girlfriend, Marie McArthur, for a good half a dozen hours, and was only reminded by Harriet, then by the presence of boxes in the hallway near his bathroom. Boxes containing the last of her things, the remnants of the months they had shared. Perhaps this - amidst all things - was some small saving grace.

  He saw Harriet and Zalman away a little before midnight, and
shortly after one - having showered and heaped a pile of clothes into the washing machine - Robert Miller lay down on his bed, the sound of the city through the inched-open window, and closed his eyes.

  He did not sleep immediately, however. He lay awake and considered the one thing. The one thing that would speak to him quietly when no-one else was listening.

  Eventually, close to two in the morning, he slept, but his sleep was fractured and restless.

  Back, a long time back, before I became John Robey . . . there was my father.

  Big Joe. Big Joe the carpenter.

  He would stand silently, sometimes for minutes at a time. And I would know at times like that that the worst thing to do would be to disturb him. Could hear my mother talking to him, mumbling words that became more and more incoherent as time went on, and he would listen, the soul of patience, and then he would sit on the edge of the bed with his needle, his vial, his patience, his heartbreak, and he would help her overcome the pain.

  ‘Morphine,’ he told me. ‘Comes from poppies . . . bright red poppies. Blood red they are. Fields of them somewhere as far as the eye can see. Produces opium, and from opium they make morphine, and it helps her, you know? Takes away the pain . . . just for a little while . . .’

  Tears in his eyes.

  Turns away from me as I back up and stand in the hallway outside their bedroom door.

  Looks perpetually exhausted. Sort of man who would wear himself out with thinking. Like no matter when he left, no matter how well prepared, for my father it was always dark before the journey home. I think one time he lost his way. Looked for it ever since, and still didn’t find it.

  That was my introduction to morphine, to opium, to heroin . . .

  Heroin. Comes from the Greek ‘heros’. Means hero . . . the warrior . . . half god, half man . . .

  Means a great deal of things depending on which side of the thing you’re looking at.

  Me? I’ve looked at it from both sides.