Lullaby (An 87th Precinct Novel)

Chapter 1

Both detectives had children of their own.

The teenage baby-sitter was about as old as Meyer's daughter. The infant in the crib recalled for Carella those years long ago when his twins were themselves babies.

There was a chill in the apartment. It was three o'clock in the morning and in this city most building superintendents lowered the thermostats at midnight. The detectives, the technicians, the medical examiner, all went about their work wearing overcoats. The baby's parents were still dressed for the outdoors. The man was wearing a black cloth coat and a white silk scarf over a tuxedo. The woman was wearing a mink over a long green silk gown and high-heeled green satin pumps. The man and the woman both had stunned expressions on their faces. As if someone had punched them both very hard. Their eyes seemed glazed over, unable to focus.

This was the first day of a bright new year.

The dead sitter lay sprawled on the floor midway down the hallway that ran the rear length of the apartment. Baby's bedroom at the far end, off a fire escape. Tool marks on the window and sill, they figured this was where he'd come in. Mobile with a torn cord lying on the floor beside the crib. Monoghan and Monroe stood looking down at the dead girl, their hats settled low on their heads, their hands in the pockets of their overcoats. Of all the men in the room, they were the only two wearing hats. Someone in the department once said for publication that the only detectives who wore hats in this city were Homicide detectives. The person who'd said this was a Homicide detective himself, so perhaps there was some truth to the ancient bromide. In this city, Homicide detectives were supposed to supervise each and every murder investigation. Perhaps this was why they wore hats: to look supervisory. By department regulations, however, a murder case officially belonged to the precinct catching the squeal. Tonight's double murder would be investigated by detectives in the local precinct. The Eight-Seven. Detectives Meyer Meyer and Steve Carella. Lucky them.

The M.E. was crouched over the teenager's body. Monoghan guessed he would tell them any minute now that the girl was dead from the knife sticking out of her chest. Monoghan had been called out from a party. He was still just drunk enough to find all of this somehow comical. Dead girl on the floor here, blouse torn, skirt up around her ass, knife in her chest. A lapis pendant on a broken gold chain coiled like a blue-headed snake on the floor beside her. Monoghan looked down at the M.E. and smiled mysteriously. Monroe was cold sober, but he found all of this a little comical, too, perhaps because it was New Year's Day and in this rotten business if you didn't laugh and dance away all your troubles and cares --

"She's dead," the M.E. said.

Which made it official.

"Shot, right?" Monoghan asked, and smiled mysteriously.

The M.E. didn't bother answering him. He snapped his satchel shut, got to his feet, and then walked into the living room, where Carella and Meyer were still trying to get some answers from the baby's dazed parents.

"We'll do the autopsies soon as we can," he said, and then, in explanation, "The holidays. Meanwhile you can say one was stabbed and the other was smothered."

"Thanks," Meyer said.

Carella nodded.

He was remembering that years and years ago, whenever he got up in the middle of the night to feed the twins, he would hold one in his arms and prop the other's bottle on the pillow. Alternated the routine at the next feeding. So that one of them would always be held.

There was a dead baby in the bedroom at the far end of the hall.

"Mrs. Hodding," Meyer said, "can you tell me what time you got back here to the apartment?"

Gayle Hodding. Blonde and blue-eyed, twenty-eight years old, wearing eye shadow to match the green gown, no lipstick, the dazed expression still on her face and in her eyes. Looking at Meyer blankly.

"I'm sorry?"

"Two-thirty," her husband said.

Peter Hodding. Thirty-two. Straight brown hair combed to fall casually on his forehead. Brown eyes. Black bow tie slightly askew. Face a pasty white, shell-shocked expression in his eyes. Both of them walking-wounded. Their baby daughter was dead.

"Was the door locked?" Meyer asked.

"Yes."

"You had to use a key to get in?"

"Yes. I was drunk, I fumbled with the lock a lot. But I finally got the door open."

"Were the lights on or off?"

"On."

"When did you notice anything out of the ordinary?"

"Well, not until...we...Annie wasn't in the living room, you see. When we came in. So I called her name...and...and when I...I got no answer, I went to look for her. I figured she might be in with the baby. And didn't want to answer because she might wake up the baby."

"What happened then?"

"I started for the baby's room and...found Annie there in the hallway. Stabbed."

"Could we have her last name, please?"

"Annie Flynn."

This from the woman.

Coming alive a bit. Realizing that these men were detectives. Here to help. Had to give them what they needed. Carella wondered when she would start screaming. He wished he would not have to be here when she started screaming.

"You've used her before?" Meyer asked. "This same sitter?"

"Yes."

"Pretty reliable?"

"Oh, yes."

"Ever any trouble with boyfriends or...?"

"No."

"Never came home and found anyone with her, did you?"

"No, no."

"Because kids..."

"No."

"Nobody she was necking with or...?"

"Never anything like that."

All this from Hodding. Drunk as a lord when he'd walked in, sober enough the next minute to be able to dial 911 and report a murder. Carella wondered why he'd felt it necessary to tell them he'd been drunk.

"Excuse me, sir," Meyer asked, "but...when did you learn that your daughter...?"

"I was the one who found her," Mrs. Hodding said.

There was a sudden silence.

Someone in the kitchen laughed. The Crime Scene technicians were in there. One of them had probably just told a joke.

"The pillow was on her face," Mrs. Hodding said.

Another silence.

"I took it off her face. Her face was blue."

The silence lengthened.

Hodding put his arm around his wife's shoulders.

"I'm all right," she said.

Harshly. Almost like "Leave me alone, damn it!"

"You left the apartment at what time?" Meyer asked.

"Eight-thirty."

"To go to a party, you said..."

"Yes."

"Where was that?"

"Just a few blocks from here. On Twelfth and Grover."

This from Hodding. The woman was silent again, that same numb look on her face. Reliving that second when she'd lifted the pillow off her baby's face. Playing that second over and over again on the movie screen of her mind. The pillow white. The baby's face blue. Reliving the revelation of that split second. Over and over again.

"Did you call home at any time tonight?" Meyer asked.

"Yes. At about twelve-thirty. To check."

"Everything all right at that time?"

"Yes."

"Was it the sitter who answered the phone?"

"Yes."

"And she told you everything was all right?"

"Yes."

"She was okay, the baby was okay?"

"Yes."

"Did she sound natural?"

"Yes."

"Nothing forced about her conversation?"

"No."

"You didn't get the impression anyone was here with her, did you?"

"No."

"Did you call again after that?"

"No. She knew where to reach us, there was no need to call again."

"So the last time you spoke to her was at twelve-thirty."

"Yes. Around then."

"And nothing seemed out of the ordinary."

"Nothing."

"Mr. Hodding, does anyone except you and your wife have a key to this apartment?"

"No. Well, yes. The super, I guess."

"Aside from him."

"No one."

"Your sitter didn't have a key, did she?"

"No."

"And you say the door was locked when you got home."

"Yes."

In the hallway, one of the technicians was telling Monoghan that the knife in the sitter's chest seemed to match the other knives on the rack in the kitchen.

"Well, well," Monoghan said, and smiled mysteriously.

"All I'm saying," the tech said, "is that what you got here is a weapon of convenience. What I'm saying..."

"What he's saying," Monroe explained to Monoghan, "is that your killer didn't walk in with the knife, the knife was here, in the kitchen, with all the other knives."

"Is what I'm saying," the tech said. "For what it's worth."

"It is worth a great deal, my good man," Monoghan said, and nodded gravely.

Monroe looked at him. This was the first time he had ever heard his partner sounding British. He turned to the technician. "Michael was out partying when I called him," he said.

"Which may perhaps explain why he seems a little drunk," the tech said.

"Perhaps," Monoghan said gravely.

"Which, by the way, I didn't know your name was Michael," the tech said.

"Neither did I," Monoghan said, and smiled mysteriously.

"So what it looks like we got here," Monroe said, "is an intruder finds a knife in the kitchen, he does the sitter, and then he does the baby."

"Or vice versa," the tech said.

"But not with the knife," Monroe said.

"The baby, no," the tech said.

"The baby he does with the pillow," Monroe said.

Monoghan shook his head and clucked his tongue.

"What a terrible thing," he said, and began weeping.

He was weeping because he had suddenly remembered a very beautiful, dark-haired, dark-eyed woman who'd been at the party tonight and the terrible thing was that he'd forgotten her name. He was also weeping because he'd had his hand up under her skirt when Monroe telephoned. Lying on a lot of coats on the bed, his hand up under her skirt when the telephone rang. Scared him half to death. He took out his handkerchief and wiped at his eyes. Monroe patted him on the shoulder. The technician went back into the kitchen again.

A pair of ambulance attendants came into the apartment, took a look at the dead teenager, and asked Monroe if he wanted them to leave the knife in her chest that way. Monroe said they should check with the officers investigating the case. One of the ambulance attendants walked over to where Hodding still had his arm around his wife.

"Leave the knife in her or what?" he asked Carella.

Which was when Mrs. Hodding began screaming.

It was four o'clock in the morning when Carella knocked on the door to the Flynn apartment. Both detectives had the collars of their coats pulled up. Both detectives were wearing mufflers and gloves. Well, Carella wore only one glove, since he'd taken off the right glove before knocking on the door. Even inside the building, vapor plumed from their mouths. It was going to be a cold year.

Meyer looked colder than Carella, perhaps because he was entirely bald. Or perhaps because his eyes were blue. Carella's eyes were brown and they slanted downward, giving his face a slightly Oriental cast. Both men were tall, but Meyer looked cold and burly whereas Carella looked warm and slender. It was a mystery.

They had obtained the baby-sitter's address from Hodding, and now they were here to break the news to her parents. This would have been a difficult thing to do on any day of the year. Bad enough that a child had died; it was not in the natural order of things for parents to outlive their children. Bad enough that death had come as the result of a brutal murder. But this was the beginning of a new year. And on this day, two strangers dressed for the freezing cold outside would stand on the Flynn doorstep and tell them their sixteen-year-old daughter was dead. And forevermore, the first of every year would be for the Flynns an anniversary of death.

Meyer had handled the questioning of the Hoddings. Carella figured it was his turn. He knocked on the door again. Knocked long and hard this time.

"Who is it?"

A man's voice. Somewhat frightened. Four o'clock in the morning, somebody banging down his door.

"Police," Carella said, and wondered if in that single word he had not already broken the news to Annie Flynn's parents.

"What do you want?"

"Mr. Flynn?"

"Yes, what is it? Hold up your badge. Let me see your badge."

Carella took out the small leather case containing his shield and his ID card. He held it up to the peephole in the door.

"Could you open the door, please, Mr. Flynn?" he asked.

"Just a minute," Flynn said.

The detectives waited. Sounds. A city dweller's security system coming undone. The bar of a Fox lock clattering to the floor. A chain rattling free. Oiled tumblers clicking, falling. The door opened wide.

"Yes?"

A man in his mid-forties was standing there in striped pajamas and tousled hair.

"Mr. Flynn?"

"Yes?"

"Detective Carella, Eighty-Seventh Squad," Carella said, and showed the shield and the ID card again. Blue enamel on gold. Detective/Second Grade etched into the metal. 714-5632 under that. Detective/Second Grade Stephen Louis Carella typed onto the card, and then the serial number again, and a picture of Carella when his hair was shorter. Flynn carefully studied the shield and the card. Playing for time, Carella thought. He knows this is going to be bad. It's four o'clock in the morning, his baby-sitting daughter isn't home yet, he knows this is about her. Or maybe not. Four A.M. wasn't so terribly late for New Year's Eve -- which it still was for some people.

At last he looked up.

"Yes?" he said again.

And with that single word, identical to all the yesses he'd already said, Carella knew for certain that the man already knew, the man was bracing himself for the words he knew would come, using the "Yes?" as a shield to protect himself from the horror of those words, to deflect those words, to render them harmless.

"Mr. Flynn..."

"What is it, Harry?"

A woman appeared behind him in the small entryway. The detectives had not yet entered the apartment. They stood outside the door, the cold air of the hallway enveloping them. In that instant, the doorsill seemed to Carella a boundary between life and death, the two detectives bearing the chill news of bloody murder, the man and the woman warm from sleep awaiting whatever dread thing had come to them in the middle of the night. The woman had one hand to her mouth. A classic pose. A movie pose. "What is it, Harry?" and the hand went up to her mouth. No lipstick on that mouth. Hair as red as her dead daughter's. Green eyes. Flynn, indeed. A Maggie or a Molly, the Flynn standing there behind her husband, long robe over long nightgown, hand to her mouth, wanting to know what it was. Carella had to tell them what it was.

"May we come in?" he asked gently.

The squadroom at a quarter past five on New Year's morning looked much as it did on any other day of the year. Dark green metal filing cabinets against apple green walls. The paint on the walls flaking and chipping. A water leak causing a small bulge in the ceiling. Cigarette-scarred wooden desks. A water cooler in one corner of the room. A sink with a mirror over it. Duty chart hanging on the wall just inside the wooden slatted rail divider that separated the squadroom from the long corridor outside. A sense of dimness in spite of the naked hanging light bulbs. An empty detention cage. Big, white-faced clock throwing ...