Murder in Central Park Page 2

  “What’s happening?” he asked, propping himself up on his elbows.

  “I have trouble sleeping. I usually go for a walk at two in the morning. But having you here is throwing me off, and I’m going to go now.”

  When Lauriat opened the door, more came in than fresh air. Donovan heard the sounds of kids … teenagers, he supposed … talking and playing the radio.

  “Are you going to join the party?” Donovan asked.

  “The party?”

  “The one that’s going on downstairs.”

  “Oh, the two teenagers. They show up every night almost, drinking beer in a clearing not far from here.”

  “I thought this whole section of woods was pretty impenetrable,” Donovan said.

  “There’s another trail like the one we walked up … twenty or thirty yards to the north, leading right up to the water. There used to be a gazebo, but it fell down years ago and is overgrown with weeds. The kids don’t mind the moss.”

  Donovan said, “A lot of people spend nights in this park,” Donovan said. “Most of them are harmless. That said, do you want a police escort?”

  Lauriat shook his head. “They’re harmless. Besides, I’m only going to walk back to the Range Rover to stretch my legs. I won’t come anywhere near them. Look, it’s a bit cold out tonight. Do you mind if I borrow your sweater?”

  “Be my guest,”

  “My jacket is in the cleaners,” Lauriat said, taking Donovan’s black sweater and pulling it over his head.

  “See you later,” Donovan said, and lay back down as Lauriat closed the door behind him and started down the stairs.

  After a moment, Donovan got up and went to the workbench. He got his cell phone and called Marcie, waking her up long enough to exchange a few air kisses and I-love-you’s. Then he sat it back on the workbench. At quarter to two, with Lauriat still out, Donovan took a look out the window at the moon, by then well to the west and dipping toward the western skyline, then stretched out on the cot once again and pulled a plain white sheet up to his chin.

  His heels pressed against the crossbar that stretched the bottom of the canvas web beneath him. This set off a memory, one of those falling asleep memories. Donovan was twelve again and on the last of the camping trips he used to take with his parents before childhood faded into the confluence of his teenage years, the sixties, and the loud and angry arguments with his father over Vietnam. And then the elder Donovan, a respected old-school police sergeant, was shot dead … by a Harlem junkie, the file on the still-unsolved murder read … and that was it for sleeping on cots and the idylls of youth. For a few moments fading into twilight sleep, however, Donovan was a boy again and back stretched out on the old Army cot, his feet so proudly reaching all the way down to the bottom crossbar, listening to the roar of the surf at Hither Hills State Park near Montauk.

  A while later … around two, according to the captain’s watch … he was aware of Lauriat returning. The two men exchanged grunts and the scientist settled onto the air mattress, which squeaked like an old rocking chair on a bare wood floor for a minute or two until Lauriat fell asleep. There was no sound after that, not the wind, not the treetops, not the hundreds of clever black birds a scant inches away, not the City of New York.

  All changed with dawn’s early light. Donovan sat bolt upright, awakened by a racket that sounded like the old number 1 local clattering into the 110th street subway station. It came from all directions.

  “What the hell is that?” Donovan asked, rubbing his eyes.

  Lauriat too sat up, a bit groggily, and looked around. “The crows,” he said.

  “Do they always get up on the wrong side of the nest? Are they angry or what?”

  The scientist looked alarmed. “Not angry,” he said. “Frightened.”

  “I thought they fought hawks,” Donovan insisted, lowering his feet to the floor.

  “Something is wrong.”

  Both men scrambled to their feet, the fiftyish Donovan feeling the ache of the morning cold in his joints a bit more keenly, he was sure, than the forty-something Lauriat. That notwithstanding, Donovan beat the man to a window.

  The gray of dawn pounded into the Crow’s Nest, a blue sky about to emerge, a hint of a wind coming from the north. Donovan was amazed at how near he was to the sky. Climbing up into the canopy in the pitch black of midnight, he would have sworn the sky was gone forever, lost in a mat of little green leaves and big black birds. Now the sky seemed at arm’s reach, gray turning blue, with the living canopy swarming below.

  The little breeze from the north rippled the water of Fiddler’s Pond, visible between the trees below. And there was the source of the commotion, plain as day, a few yards from where the billowing leaves of the skunk cabbage and the drooping branches of a weeping willow concealed most of the shoreline and an Eastern painted turtle that had climbed out of the water onto a forked branch. A man’s body lay on its back, half submerged, a white shirt ripped open to reveal a distended, disemboweled torso. Blood stained the water in a slick around the man, spreading from water’s edge to midstream. And there was more. Perched on the corpse’s chest, blood running down its beak and spattered across the black feathers of its chest, was a triumphant looking, proud old one-eyed black crow.

  As it looked up—Donovan swore it was looking at him—it opened its beak and let out a piercing cry that stirred the rest of the flock to an even higher level of racket. Donovan thought he saw the crow smile.

  Lauriat said, “Nevermore.”

  That’s why they call it a ‘murder’ of crows

  Lauriat was speechless, literally so. He gripped the windowsill tightly, his knuckles white. After a horrified silence, he said, “That’s a body down there.”

  “A tasty one, apparently,” Donovan replied, fetching his cell phone and making a quick call.

  “Who … who were you calling?”

  “My office. The boys and girls will start arriving soon. I’d better get down there. Want to come?”

  Lauriat turned away from the window, but stiffly, as if he had to think out the motions before making them. “You mean … to see the body?”

  “Why not? You never saw bodies in the rain forest?”

  “Not bodies of people. Of carrion … of animals that were killed and being eaten.”

  “Look out the window again and explain to me the difference,” Donovan said.

  “Oh, my God,” Lauriat stammered, fumbling his way across the room to sit on the cot.

  The captain had moved down the wall and was using the portable potty. When he was done, he reached into a storage compartment on the side of the device and plucked from it a spare plastic liner bag.

  “You may as well come with me,” Donovan said. “I guarantee you there will be no bird-watching today.”

  “I … I don’t think I can.”

  “Why not? You didn’t kill that man, did you?”

  “What! Me! A murderer? Of course not. How could you even ask?”

  “It’s my job,” Donovan replied.

  “I don’t know how you could bring yourself to ask that question. I was with you all night.”

  “With the exception of the hour between one and two in the morning,” Donovan replied.

  Lauriat said, “I thought you were my friend.”

  “I am your friend, and that’s why I’m asking. ‘Cause if I don’t, some other cop will, and whoever you get will be a lot less friendly. Now that you’ve gotten used to the idea of being a murder suspect …”

  “A … murder … suspect,” the scientist said slowly. He shook his head, then laughed bitterly. “There goes my grant,” he said.

  “Not if Nevermore was using a tool to pry out that guy’s spleen,” Donovan replied.

  Lauriat buried his head in his hands. “I can’t believe this has happened?”

  “If you didn’t kill that man, do you know who did?”

  “No,” Lauriat said, this time flatly. Donovan sensed that he was getting accustomed … and fairly
fast … to being involved in a police investigation.

  “Not those kids last night?” Donovan asked.

  “Kids … oh, the ones over by the old gazebo. I never saw them. I did what I said I was going to do. I walked out to the Range Rover and stretched my legs and stretched my legs.”

  “For an hour?”

  “I listened to the news on the radio, then played some music. A Chopin nocturne, if you must know. To help myself fall asleep. On the way back to the ladder, I noticed that the music the kids were playing had stopped. I assumed they went home.”

  “More likely down to Times Square to mug tourists. So, are you coming with me or not?”

  “Oh, okay,” Lauriat said, walking across the room and reaching for his boots.

  “Hold on a second,” Donovan said, reaching out for the boots. “I’ll take those.”

  He got them from the scientist and put them into the plastic bag he had just appropriated.

  “What’s this about?” Lauriat asked.

  “And the clothes you wore when you went on that walk. Your pants and shirt.”

  “That’s all I have to wear,” he objected.

  “Then I guess you better stay up here after all,” Donovan said. “I’ll send someone to get you a change of clothes.”

  Traumatized once again, Lauriat got back into his sleeping bag and rolled into the fetal position atop his air mattress.

  Donovan returned to the window and looked down at the body. It was still there, with the old black bird still atop it. Donovan opened the window, and the bird turned to give the captain a sharp look.

  “Shove off,” Donovan said but not, apparently, loud enough to be heard. So he aimed his Smith & Wesson at the bird, who responded with a loud caw and an languorous fluttering of wings as he rose into the day and flew off.

  Donovan put the gun back in its holster and shut the window just as the sounds of sirens approaching were drifting across Piper’s Pond.

  Sergeant Brian Moskowitz handed his boss a brown paper bag with a baseball-sized lump in the bottom as well as a paper cup—the sort that diners give out, printed with ersatz Greek columns and amphora—that steamed in the morning air. As Donovan peered into the bag suspiciously, his aide said, “They didn’t have everything bagels. I got you poppy.”

  Donovan scowled. “There’s no bagel shop in the city that doesn’t have everything bagels at this time of day.”

  “I swear on my mother’s grave,” Moskowitz said, pressing his fist to his chest in a devout sort of way.

  “Your mother’s not dead.”

  “A technicality.”

  Fishing out the bagel, Donovan said, “You’ve been going behind my back again, talking to my wife.”

  “This would be about the health thing?” Mosko said.

  Donovan nodded, unwrapping his breakfast and taking a bite before mumbling, “At least it’s fresh.”

  “And the coffee’s hot. Really hot. Try it.”

  “Admit it. She got to you. It was that gyro that she thought had goat meat in it.”

  “We didn’t discuss that.”

  “So you have been talking to her.”

  “Come on, boss, the woman wants you to live forever. Can I help it if she calls me now and then and asks me to watch what you eat? No everything bagels. Too much salt. Marcy is my boss’s wife. And very persuasive. Not to mention a black belt in kung fu.”

  “Her skills have lapsed since the baby came,” Donovan said.

  “So you argue with her, then.” Mosko’s tone of voice indicated that he felt he had won the argument. He said, “What happened here last night? I thought you were taking time off. Bird watching or whatever.”

  “It wasn’t bird watching. It was science, son. Canopy research.”

  Mosko imitated Chico Marx. He did it badly, saying, “I don’t see no can of peas.”

  Two hours had passed since dawn and the discovery of the body. In that time, the area surrounding Fiddler’s Pond had undergone a transformation. Emergency vehicles were everywhere, in each open space. Yellow crime-scene tape—maybe a half mile of it—extended from Park Drive West all the way around Fiddler’s Pond to the Ramble on the far end of Central Park Lake. At least a hundred law enforcement personnel—uniformed cops, detectives, and forensic technicians—swarmed around the pond, out of the water and in it, both in hip boots and in rowboats. Some were dragging the bottom of the pond, looking for the murder weapon. The body had been removed from the water and laid out on a rubber mat that itself was placed on a patch of shoreline newly swept for evidence.

  “Where are these birds I keep hearing about?” Mosko asked, looking up into the treetops, around.

  “They ate and ran,” Donovan responded. “You should nag them about the cuisine. I heard you found a wallet while I was back up in the Crow’s Nest checking on Lauriat.”

  Moskowitz bent over and squinted at his laptop, which was perched, precariously, on a tree trunk in a clearing about twenty yards from the body.

  “Yeah, wallet, a lid to a can of Sterno, and some beer bottle caps. The I.D. in the wallet reads Harvey Cozzens,” Mosko said, spelling out the surname. “He was forty-seven and lived on First Avenue near 85th Street. An employee identity badge in one pocket lists Tamarisk Software.”

  “A computer guy? Do we know what, exactly, he did?”

  Mosko shook his head. “It’s too soon to get anything but the barest details.”

  “Such as how he died. By the knife, I presume.”

  “You got it. The field coroner says it was a large one, maybe a foot long. We’re dragging the bottom of the pond now, looking for it.”

  Donovan said, “I got a closeup look of the body when we dragged the victim out. Did you?”

  Mosko shook his head. “You got a stronger stomach than I do, boss. All that scotch over all those years, I guess.”

  “The late Mr. Cozzens was sliced more times than a smoked salmon, both in the back through his jacket and in front,” Donovan said. “The throat was cut. The tummy was cut open and left to become crow food. Whoever did it wanted to make sure the bum was dead. And went to a lot of trouble. What does that suggest to you?”

  “Amateur night,” Mosko replied.

  “Yeah, an amateur … and one who was incredibly pissed off at the victim. This was personal and not just some random killing. What else was in the wallet?”

  “A stub from a dry cleaner. A Master card and a Visa. A Cost Plus membership card with his picture on it.”

  “The deceased was fond of a bargain,” Donovan said.

  “A library card,” Mosko said, reading further down a list.

  “From where?”

  “The Mid-Manhattan Branch.”

  “My old library,” Donovan said. “Go on.”

  “A card from Jack LaLanne. But I don’t think the guy went often enough. He was five-foot eight and at least two hundred and fifty pounds.”

  “Two hundred and forty-nine after Nevermore got through with him,” Donovan said.

  “There also were four coupons for ninety-nine cent Big Macs. But the coupons expired before their owner did. There also was a ShopRite card and a bookstore receipt.”

  “From what bookstore?”

  “Black Orchid Books on East Eighty-First, a few blocks from where he lived.”

  “What did he buy?”

  “Doesn’t say. But I’ll find out. That’s it for the contents of the wallet.”

  “No driver’s license?” Donovan asked.

  “The guy lived in Manhattan. Who needs a car? The only reason that you have one is that you can park anywhere you damn well fell like. There was something else in Cozzens’ wallet, though … some white powder.”

  Donovan was interested. His aide noted it.

  “What kind?” Donovan asked.

  “We’ve having it tested. It looks like a pill that crumbled when he sat on it. There still are a few tiny chunks.”

  “I want to know right away about this powder,” Donovan said.

/>   Mosko made a note on his laptop. To do so, he had to bend over considerably. Donovan found the image of his muscle-bound sergeant bending over to peck away at a laptop computer perched on a tree trunk slightly ridiculous.

  “All the same, I don’t think that Cozzens was the drug-using type,” Mosko said. “Did you see ‘Jurassic Park’?”

  Donovan had. “I had to sit through half a dozen tearjerkers to pay Marcy back for watching that movie with me.”

  “You remember the fat computer nerd who ate Hershey bars all day? Cozzens reminds me of him.”

  Donovan stuck his hands in his pockets and looked around. He could make out the boxy frame of the Crow’s Nest high above in its oak tree, the base of which was forty or fifty yards away. He wondered how Lauriat was making out, sitting alone in his cabin, awaiting further instruction.

  “What in hell did Cozzens do to get himself disemboweled and tossed into the pond … presumably in the middle of the night,” Donovan wondered out loud.

  Moskowitz said, “You got the ‘middle of the night’ part right, boss. The preliminary estimate by forensics says that Cozzens shuffled off this mortal coil about six hours ago.”

  Donovan looked at his watch. “Two a.m.,” he said.

  “About that.”

  “Just as Lauriat was getting back from his walk,” Donovan said.

  Mosko asked, “What about the kids you heard?”

  “Lauriat thought they split before two.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  Donovan replied, “I’ll tell you when we get the results back from his clothes. Did you send them downtown?”

  “They’re on their way now. That was quick of you to have thought to snatch Lauriat’s duds before he could ruin any evidence.”

  “That’s what they pay me for,” Donovan said, patting his associate on the back. “To be thorough and on top of everything.”

  Mosko shook his head. “No, that’s what they pay Bonaci and me to do.”