Eight Black Horses Read online

  A check of the A-file revealed no criminal record for the lady found dead in the park.

  A check of the B-file came up negative against any latent prints on record.

  This meant only that she had never committed a crime for which she’d been caught, and had never left her fingerprints at the scene of a crime.

  The second file in the I.S. maintained fingerprint records of anyone involved in the city’s vast law enforcement organization, anyone working as a security officer in a municipal jail or prison and anyone who had been granted a carry or premises permit for a pistol.

  That was it.

  On the municipal level.

  But the United States is a big, big country, and it is also a free country, which means that anyone—even if he is intent on doing criminal mischief—can travel from city to city and state to state without an identity card or a by-your-leave from the local commissar. This is one of the nice things about living in a democracy. It is also a headache for law enforcement officers. The city for which Carella worked was the largest city in the state, but the fingerprint files in its police department’s Identification Section were minuscule compared to those in the state depository, some hundred and fifty miles to the north. When Isola’s I.S. section came up blank on Jane Doe, a search-and-return request was automatically sent upstate. The prints taken from the corpse were checked against the state’s base file, and the results were identical: no record.

  The buck could have stopped there, but it didn’t.

  A check with the FBI’s national files came back with a negative response: no criminal record for Jane Doe. Neither had she ever been fingerprinted for service in the armed forces or for any job considered security-sensitive by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

  Carella knew that the I.S. routinely ran courtesy checks for any institution whose employees handled large sums of money. Had any bank in the city sent Jane Doe’s fingerprints to the I.S. for a verification check against Sissies? The I.S. replied that such courtesy checks were made on a search-and-return basis, as opposed to a search-and-retain basis. In other words, after either a full or limited search-and-return was made, the I.S. automatically sent the fingerprints back to the financial institution or other commercial entity making the request. They did not retain the fingerprints in their files. Even if someone in Jane Doe’s immediate or distant past had requested a search against the Sissies file, there would be no record of it.

  Period.

  End of story.

  All of this took the better part of a week.

  By that time, though, the police department had circulated to the Missing Persons Section and to every precinct in the city a photograph and description of Jane Doe, together with a copy of the Detective Division report Carella himself had typed up on the morning the body was discovered.

  On Wednesday morning, November 2, Carella got a call from a Detective Lipman at Missing Persons.

  Lipman told him he had a positive ID on the dead woman.

  * * * *

  CHAPTER TWO

  The woman who had identified Jane Doe was staying at a once-elegant midtown hotel that now emanated an air of shabby dignity, like an exiled dowager empress praying for return to the throne. Huge marble columns dominated the lobby, where sagging sofas rested on frayed Persian rugs. The ornately carved and gilded mahogany registration desk was cigarette-scarred. Even the clerk who told them what room Miss Turner was in looked faded, his gray hair a shade lighter than his gray suit, his black tie as funereal as his dark somber eyes. The elaborate brass fretwork on the elevator doors reminded Carella of something he had seen in a spy movie.

  Inge Turner was a slender blonde in her late thirties, they guessed, her complexion as fair as her sister’s had been, her eyes the same shade of blue. She was wearing a simple blue suit over a white blouse with a stock tie. Medium-heeled blue pumps on good legs. A gold pin in the shape of a bird pinned to the lapel of the suit jacket. Blue eyeliner. Lipstick that was more-pink than red.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ she said. ‘Please come in.’

  The room was small, dominated by a king-size bed. Inge sat on the edge of the bed, crossing her legs. The detectives sat in upholstered chairs near musty drapes hanging over a window that was open to the sounds of traffic on the avenue six stories below. Already the second of November, and Indian summer was still with them. It would come with a vengeance, winter. It would come suddenly and unexpectedly, hurling false expectations back into their teeth.

  ‘Miss Turner,’ Carella said, ‘Detective Lipman at Missing Persons tells us...’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘... that you’ve identified a photograph in his files as ...’

  ‘Yes,’ she said again.

  ‘... your sister, Elizabeth Turner.’

  ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘Miss Turner, I wonder if you could look at that picture again ... I have a print here...’

  ‘Must I?’ she said.

  ‘I know it’s difficult,’ Carella said, ‘but we want to make sure...’

  ‘Yes, let me see it,’ she said.

  Carella took the photograph from the manila file envelope. As photographs of corpses went, it was not too grisly—except for the exit wound in the hollow of the throat. Inge looked at it briefly, said, ‘Yes, that’s my sister,’ and then reached for her handbag, took a cigarette from it, said, ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’ and lighted it without waiting for an answer.

  ‘And her full name is Elizabeth Turner?’ Carella said.

  ‘Yes. Well, Elizabeth Anne Turner.’

  ‘Can you tell us how old she was?’ Brown asked.

  ‘Twenty-seven,’ Inge said.

  Both detectives thought, at precisely the same moment, that for once in his lifetime Monoghan had been right.

  ‘And her address?’

  ‘Here or in California?’ Inge said.

  ‘I’m sorry, what... ?’

  ‘She used to live with me in California.’

  ‘But she’d been living here, hadn’t... ?’

  ‘Yes. For the past three years now.’

  ‘What was her address here, Miss Turner?’

  ‘Eight-oh-four South Ambrose.’

  ‘Any apartment number?’

  ‘Forty-seven.’

  ‘Do you still live in California?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re just visiting here, is that it?’

  ‘Yes. Well, I came specifically to see my sister. We—do I have to go into this?’ She looked at the detectives, sighed, and said, ‘I suppose we do.’ She uncrossed her legs, leaned over to an ashtray on the night table beside the bed, and stubbed out her cigarette. ‘We had a falling-out,’ she said. ‘Lizzie moved east. I hadn’t seen her in three years. I felt it was time to ... she was my sister. I loved her. I wanted to ... set things straight again, on the right course again.’

  ‘You came here seeking a reconciliation?’ Brown asked.

  ‘Yes. Exactly.’

  ‘From where in California?’ Carella asked.

  ‘Los Angeles.’

  ‘And when did you arrive?’

  ‘Last Thursday.’

  ‘That would have been...’

  ‘The twenty-seventh. I was hoping ... we hadn’t seen each other for such a long time ... I was hoping I could convince her to come home for Christmas.’

  ‘So you came here to...’

  ‘To talk to her. To convince her that bygones should be bygones. I think I had in mind ... I guess I thought if I could get her to come home for Christmas, then maybe she’d stay. In California, I mean. We’d ... you know pick up where we left off. We were sisters. A silly argument shouldn’t...’

  ‘What did you argue about?’ Brown asked. ‘If you’d like to tell us,’ he added quickly.

  ‘Well...’

  The detectives waited.

  ‘I guess she didn’t approve of my life-style.’

  Still they waited.

  ‘We led very different kinds of lives
, you see Lizzie worked at a bank, I was...’

  ‘A bank?’ Carella said at once.

  ‘Yes. She was a cashier at Suncoast Federal. Not a teller, you understand, but a cashier. There’s a big difference.’

  ‘And what sort of work do you do?’ Brown asked.

  ‘I’m a model,’ she said.

  She must have caught the glance that passed between the detectives.

  ‘A real model,’ she said at once. ‘There are plenty of the other kind out there.’

  ‘What sort of modeling do you do?’ Carella asked.

  ‘Lingerie,’ she said. ‘Mostly stockings and panty hose.’ She reached into her bag, took out another cigarette, lighted it, and said, ‘I have good legs,’ and crossed them again.

  ‘And you say your sister disapproved of this?’

  ‘Well, not the modeling as such ... though I don’t suppose she was too happy about my being photographed in my underwear.’

  ‘Then what was it about your life-style... ?’

  ‘I’m a lesbian,’ Inge said.

  Carella nodded.

  ‘Does that shock you?’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘You’re supposed to say something like, “What a waste,”’ Inge said, and smiled.

  ‘Am I?’ Carella said, and returned the smile.

  ‘That’s what most men say.’

  ‘Well,’ Carella said, ‘actually we’re only interested in finding whoever killed your sister. You don’t believe your life-style—quote, unquote—had anything to do with her murder, do you?’

  ‘Hardly.’

  ‘But you did argue about it.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘She disapproved of the friends I invited to the house.’

  ‘So she came all the way east...’

  ‘Not immediately. She moved into an apartment on La Cienega, a temporary arrangement until she could find work here.’

  ‘Did she find work here?’ Brown asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Inge said.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘A bank someplace.’

  ‘Here in the city?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Which bank?’

  ‘I have no idea. This was all hearsay. A friend of mine used to live here in the city, and occasionally she’d run into my sister...’

  ‘Does that mean you’d had no word from her ... directly, I mean ... in the past three years?’ Carella said.

  ‘That’s right. Not since she left California.’

  ‘But you came here to see her...’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you know where she lived?’

  ‘Her address is in the phone book.’

  ‘Did you write to her first?’

  ‘No, I was afraid to do that. Afraid she wouldn’t want to see me.’

  ‘So you just came east.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Carella looked at his notes.

  ‘Would you know your sister’s social security number?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t.’

  ‘The bank she worked for was Suncoast Federal, did you say? In California, I mean.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the bank she worked for here in the...’

  ‘I told you. I don’t know which...’

  ‘Yes, but when was this, would you know? When you heard from your friend that she was working for a bank here.’

  ‘Oh. Two years ago? Perhaps a year and a half. I couldn’t say with any accuracy.’

  ‘Would you know if she was still working at this bank? Immediately before her death, I mean.’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘You haven’t stayed in touch with your friend?’

  ‘I have. But she’s living in Chicago now.’

  ‘Then for the past two years—a year and a half, whatever it was—you really didn’t know what your sister was doing.’

  ‘That’s right. We lost touch completely. That’s why I came here.’

  ‘And you arrived on October twenty-seventh, is that right?’ Carella said.

  ‘Yes. Last Thursday.’

  ‘Checked into this hotel, did you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Planning to stay how long?’

  ‘As long as was necessary. To see my sister, to ... make amends ... to ask her to come home.’

  ‘For Christmas.’

  ‘Forever.’ Inge sighed heavily and leaned over to the ashtray again, crushing out her cigarette. ‘I missed her. I loved her.’

  ‘When you arrived, Miss Turner, did you try to contact your sister?’

  ‘Yes, of course. I phoned her at once.’

  ‘This was on the twenty-seventh of October?’

  ‘Yes. My plane got in at six, a little after six, and it took a half hour to get into the city from the airport. I phoned her the moment I was in the room.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘There was no answer.’

  ‘Was she living alone, would you know?’

  ‘Yes. Well, I didn’t learn that until later. When I went to her apartment.’

  ‘When did you do that?’

  ‘Two days later. I’d been calling her repeatedly and ... well ... there was no answer, you see.’

  ‘So you suspected something was wrong, did you?’

  ‘Well, I didn’t know what to think. I mean, I’d been calling her day and night. I set my alarm one night ... this was the night after I arrived ... for three a.m., and I called her then and still got no answer. I went to her apartment the very next day.’

  ‘That would have been...’

  ‘Well, the twenty-ninth, I suppose. A Saturday, I guess I was hoping she’d be home on a Saturday.’

  ‘But she wasn’t, of course.’

  ‘No. She ... was dead by then. But I ... didn’t know that at the time. I went up to her apartment and rang the doorbell and got no answer. I found the superintendent of the building, told him who I was, and asked if he had any idea where my sister might be. He ... he said he hadn’t seen her in ...in ... three or four weeks.’

  ‘What did he say exactly, Miss Turner? Three weeks, or four?’

  ‘I think that’s exactly what he said. Three or four weeks.’

  ‘And he told you that she was living there alone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did you do then?’

  ‘Well, I... I suppose I should have gone directly to the police, but I ... you see, I was somewhat confused. The possibility existed that she’d met someone, some man, and had moved in with him. That was a possibility.’ She paused. ‘My sister wasn’t gay,’ she said, and reached for her package of cigarettes again, and then changed her mind about lighting one.

  ‘When did you contact the police?’ Brown asked.

  ‘On Monday morning.’

  Carella looked at his pocket calendar.

  ‘October thirty-first,’ he said.

  ‘Yes. Halloween,’ Inge said. ‘They told me they’d turn it over to Missing Persons and let me know if anything resulted. I gave them an old photo I had ... I still carried it in my wallet... and apparently Detective Lipman was able to match that against the ... the picture you just showed me. He called me yesterday. I went down there and ... and made identification.’

  The room was silent.

  ‘Miss Turner,’ Carella said, ‘we realize you hadn’t seen your sister in a long time...’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘... and Los Angeles is a long way from here. But ... would you have heard anything over the years ... anything at all ... from your friend or anyone else ... about any enemies your sister may have made in this city...’

  ‘No.’

  ‘... any threatening telephone calls or letters she may have...’

  ‘No.’