The Battle of Jericho Page 5

  “Are you saying Richman may have killed his wife?”

  “It’s a possibility,” Jericho said. “If she turns out to be a homicide victim, the husband automatically becomes a person of interest. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. The severed feet and the anonymous note do suggest we may be dealing with a serial murderer. But here’s the puzzling thing: serial killings usually have a distinct pattern. These victims are both totally different. One’s a young Latino female found on Block Island Sound Beach. The other’s a mature Caucasian female found on an ocean beach clear across the Island.”

  “So how do you see it?” Krauss asked.

  “It’s too early to say,” Jericho replied.

  “Okay, Jericho,” Krauss said. “It’s your investigation.”

  “With a little help from PO Salazar.”

  Krauss was silent for a moment. Then he turned to Maria. “You find out anything in the Mexican community?”

  “Well, yes,” she said. “I tracked down a woman whose daughter disappeared two years ago. The girl was fourteen and had a boyfriend. She apparently ran off with him. I’ve written it all down in this report.” She handed two copies to her colleagues.

  Jericho scanned the report. “So we don’t know if this Teresa Ramírez was a willing runaway, or if she was forced to go with some guy.”

  “Correct,” Maria said. “Then it occurred to me that Teresa might be our first victim, so I asked her mom if her daughter had any tattoos. If she’d said yes, that she had a heart tattooed on her ankle, we’d be pretty sure it was Teresa. But she said no.”

  “Still,” Jericho said. “There’s always the chance she got the tat after she left home.”

  Maria nodded in agreement. “I did a little more digging. I went up to Springs to check out the house where Teresa’s mother lived. But nobody would talk to me.”

  “Not surprising,” the Chief said.

  “Do you know about the mattress houses up there?”

  Both men nodded.

  “The only person I spoke to was a white guy walking his dog,” Maria said. “He complained about living next to those noisy overcrowded houses with slum-like living conditions.”

  “The whole situation sucks,” the Chief said. “You got longtime residents bitching about threats to their quality of life. Meanwhile, you got big-bucks Hamptons property owners needing people to do construction, landscaping, garbage collection, domestic work. These Hispanics are desperate and they’ll take low-paying jobs nobody else wants. And the contractors who hire them avoid taxes, workers’ comp, health insurance. They’re makin’ a goddamn fortune!”

  Then Krauss went on. “Hell, we can’t kick those immigrants out. Where do they go? And who’s gonna fill the jobs they leave behind?”

  Maria shook her head sadly. “I knew about these tensions before I left for college, but at school I wasn’t focused on problems out here. It’s certainly gotten worse, much worse.”

  “It’s the same all over the country,” Jericho said. “Illegal immigrants — despised by the communities who can’t function without them.”

  Krauss stood up. “Okay, why don’t we call it a night? We’ll meet again tomorrow.” He stopped at the door. “Remember — the possibility of a serial killer being out there gives this matter a certain urgency. Dig?”

  Jericho said, “I dig.”

  Maria stifled a giggle.

  Krauss left.

  As Jericho and Maria walked out of the building, she said, “Thanks, Detective.”

  “For what?”

  “For saying I helped.”

  “You did,” Jericho said.

  They smiled at each other and went to their separate cars.

  CHAPTER 15

  In the morning Jericho called Sanford Richman and said they’d like to ask him some questions at his home.

  Richman’s house on Middle Lane was a scaled down medieval castle built of gray stone, with gun turrets, a black slate pointed keep, and a grandiose Gothic arch over a thick planked entrance door. Its landscaping was rustic rather than formalized, and lush green ivy covered much of the outer walls.

  Jericho and Maria pulled up in a squad car and drove around the gravel porte-cochère. Maria wore a standard-issue blue quilted windbreaker. Jericho was dressed in a police bomber jacket which had belonged to his late father, a patrolman on the Newark Police Force.

  Richman greeted them at the door. Immediately the family cocker spaniel started barking.

  “Quiet, Ruff.” The dog whimpered and shut up.

  “Any news?” Richman asked anxiously.

  “Nothing so far,” Jericho replied.

  Richman ushered them into the high-ceiling living room. It was furnished in a surprisingly shabby fashion, with worn and faded chairs and couches that looked as if they’d been bought forty years ago. This was in sharp contrast to Richman’s stylish outfit — Hugo Boss jeans and a Polo plaid shirt. However, his belly overhung the jeans and his man boobs were not what Ralph Lauren had in mind when he designed this shirt.

  “Quite a place you’ve got here,” Jericho said.

  “It’s modeled after Chateau de Sully-sur-Loire in France — smaller, of course. It’s featured in the book Great Homes of the Hamptons.”

  Gesturing to the furniture, Richman said, “My wife — she doesn’t like change, she wants things to be as they always were. I guess that’s why our marriage is so…enduring.”

  “Mr. Richman,” Jericho said, “we’d like you to tell us about your wife, her habits, friends, anything you think can help us find her.”

  Richman looked fearful. “You’re saying something’s happened to her, aren’t you?”

  “Please, sir. Just help us, if you can.”

  “I’ll try.”

  Richman closed his eyes for a few moments before speaking. “Ann is…a solitary, private person. Set in her ways, very shy. She doesn’t have a lot of friends…well, she had a few out here but they’ve either died or moved away. She’s a member of some online women’s book club but I don’t know the name of it. Fridays she goes to the Belle Hair Salon in Amagansett, where she has her hair done and gets a — what-do-you-call-it? Mani-pedi. She jogs on the beach most mornings — takes Ruff with her. She just loves that puppy dog. And Ann does all the grocery shopping. Once a week she drives to the East Hampton Waldbaum’s.”

  “Just once a week?”

  “Yes. She plans all her recipes in advance and makes a list. I know it sounds odd, but as I said — my Annie is set in her ways. And — she’s a wonderful cook.”

  “How does she spend the rest of her time?”

  “Mostly reading. In the past she bought lots of books — mysteries and thrillers.”

  He pointed to a wall lined with bookshelves and filled with hardcover volumes. “I used to say our living room looks like a Barnes & Noble bookstore. But a few years ago she got a Kindle — now she only reads e-books. Oh, and she plays computer games — hidden objects and mysteries. I don’t know how they work — I just hear a lot of bleeps and bloops coming from her computer.”

  Maria spoke up. “Sir, do you mind telling us what you do for a living?”

  “Me? Oh, I’m a stockbroker, or I was till Lehman Brothers went under. Now I’m retired, just do a little day trading for myself — E*Trade; I play around with ETFs and some futures and options, nothing too risky.”

  “This is all very helpful,” Jericho said. “Rest assured we’re putting all our resources into this case.”

  “Thank you, Detective,” Richman said, his voice trembling. “I’m praying, I’m hoping…I’m sorry, but I feel so lost without Ann.”

  “There’s one thing you could do to help us, sir,” Jericho said.

  “Anything.”

  “Does Mrs. Richman have her own bathroom?”

  Richman looked puzzled. “Why…yes, she does.”

  “Could you take us to it?”

  “Sure. But…”

  “I’ll explain when we get up there.”

 
; Richman led them up a grand stairway, now rather rickety and carpeted with a threadbare stair runner.

  They went down a hall and entered what was clearly Ann Richman’s separate bedroom. It featured a Queen Anne low post bed, mahogany serpentine front end tables, and a bureau. The spacious bathroom had a Rococo Louis XV vanity dresser with an oval mirror.

  On the dressing table was exactly what Jericho expected to find — a pedicure foot file rasp. On its surface were dead skin cells, filed off by Ann Richman from her corns and foot calluses. He picked it up with his handkerchief.

  “What do you want that for?” Richman said testily.

  “DNA, sir, in case we need it to identify your wife.”

  “Then…then you think something’s happened to her?”

  “This is standard operating procedure in a missing persons case,” Jericho explained. “Don’t be concerned.”

  Jericho put the file in an evidence bag and, as they walked back down the stairs, Richman spoke.

  “Have you notified the newspapers?” Richman asked. “Gotten the word out that Ann’s missing?”

  “We’re keeping it quiet for the moment,” Jericho said.

  “Keeping it quiet won’t help. Maybe somebody knows something.”

  “Believe me, that’s best. Please trust us on this.”

  Richman stopped and turned on the bottom step. “Goddamn it,” he shouted. “You’re poking around here when you should be out questioning somebody who knows something!”

  Maria reached out and lightly touched his hand. “We’re doing all we can, sir.”

  “Well, thank you for your cooperation,” Jericho said. “We’ll be in touch. Meanwhile, you have my number if you need to reach us.”

  “Okay. Fine. That’s fine,” Richman said curtly.

  After they left, Jericho wanted to tell Maria that police investigators don’t physically touch people, but he thought better of it. I’ll sound like a jerk, he thought.

  “Something suspicious about that guy, don’t you think?” Maria said.

  “Definitely,” Jericho said. “Erratic mood swings, and his emotions don’t really ring true.”

  As they were about to get into the squad car, they heard a loud grinding noise. It was coming from a garbage truck across the street — a guy was picking up the neighborhood trash bags. Jericho looked at a stuffed plastic garbage bag in front of Richman’s driveway.

  “How ’bout we do a little trash pull?” he said.

  “What?”

  “Oh, that’s cop talk from my days at NYPD.”

  “You were a cop in the city?”

  “Yeah, it’s a long story,” Jericho said. “Anyway, we’d grab garbage bags off the street in front of drug cribs. They can be treasure troves of evidence.”

  “Is that legal?”

  “Absolutely. The courts say once garbage is left out on the street it’s considered ‘abandoned,’ so it’s fair game.”

  “Cool.”

  “Let’s grab it before the garbage man does.”

  “What do you hope to find?”

  “Who knows?” Jericho said. “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”

  Jericho fetched Richman’s garbage bag and heaved it into the trunk.

  At Headquarters they dragged the trash bag to a corner of the parking lot. Putting on latex gloves, Jericho dumped the contents onto the pavement.

  “This is gross work,” Jericho said. “I’ll do it myself.”

  “I changed my sister’s diapers — I think I can handle this.”

  Jericho gave Maria a pair of gloves. She got down on her knees and together they began to rummage through the rubbish.

  They found nothing unusual in this mix of paper, plastic, and organic material. Clearly the Wall Street jerk didn’t recycle. Maria found a receipt from Men’s Hair Solutions in Southampton, LI, marked Maintenance — obviously for Richman’s hairpiece.

  “Maintenance?” Jericho said. “That rug looks like a cow-flop on his head!”

  Maria laughed and they kept rummaging. Jericho picked up a supermarket receipt. It was from the IGA, a family-owned competitor of the larger Waldbaum’s chain. Dated a few days ago, it listed mainly cookies and crackers, Cokes, and frozen dinners.

  He showed it to Maria.

  “Whoa!” she said. “Richman said his wife did all the grocery shopping…once a week at Waldbaum’s.”

  “Right.”

  “So he wasn’t telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

  “Correct.” Jericho said. “Maybe he’s a secret eater. His weight certainly suggests that.”

  “Or he could be a Prepper — one of those paranoid freaks who stores up food to survive the coming apocalypse.”

  “Well,” Jericho said. “There may be a perfectly logical explanation for this receipt. But I agree with you — Richman’s behavior is suspect.”

  “He definitely wasn’t telling us everything.”

  “Nobody tells anybody everything,” Jericho said.

  Maria thought for a moment. “That’s true.”

  CHAPTER 16

  The next morning Krauss was at his desk when he received a call from the 911 operator. “Chief,” she said, “I got a hysterical woman on the line. She’s on her cell out at Wiborg Beach, screamin’ somethin’ about another foot.”

  “Tell her to stay where she is. We’ll come out right away.”

  He went to the Detective Squad Room. “Where’s Jericho?” he shouted.

  Dobrowolski stood up. “He’s in Sag Harbor again, checking the Latino community for missing girls.”

  “Yeah,” Detective Fred McCoy said. “Him and that bimbo PO Salazar. What’s up, Chief?”

  “We may have another foot.”

  “On the beach, like the other two?”

  “Yeah, Wiborg. I’m gonna check it out.”

  “Lemme go with you. I got a new camera.”

  Krauss nodded and they drove quickly to the beach.

  Wiborg is in front of the snobbish Maidstone Club, midway between Main Beach and Two Mile Hollow. Far to its left is the town’s only gay-friendly beach, and on the right is a popular family area. In the off-season Wiborg is usually deserted.

  When Krauss and McCoy arrived, they could see a woman at the water’s edge, pacing, her eyes covered with her hands. As they approached they could see the foot. It lay in the wet sand where it had apparently been dumped by the receding tide.

  “McCoy,” said Krauss. “Calm that damn woman down.”

  The Chief crossed to the foot and knelt down to examine it.

  But it wasn’t a foot — it was a Reebok running shoe with a wooden shoetree inside it. A thin metal ring handle jutted up from its adjustable cedar shaper. It was a right-footed sneaker.

  “Fuck me!” Krauss said loud enough to be heard.

  McCoy came running over and looked down at the “foot” in disbelief.

  “The bastard’s doin’ a number on us!” Krauss growled.

  The woman came over and looked down warily.

  “It’s not a foot, ma’am,” Krauss said. “As you can see, it’s just a sneaker with a shoe tree in it.”

  “Oh, thank the Lord,” the woman said. Her voice had an Irish lilt. “After what I read in the paper, I was afraid to look too close.”

  “I don’t blame ya,” McCoy said.

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “Is this a joke?”

  “We don’t know,” Krauss said. “What were you doing out here?”

  “Oh, I’m a housekeeper at the Maidstone. I just nipped out for a smoke.”

  “Would you give us your name, please?” McCoy asked.

  “Gracie Connelly.”

  “Well, Miss Connelly,” Krauss said, “I’d appreciate it if you kept this quiet. We don’t want to create a panic.”

  “I’ll say nothin’, sir. I promise.”

  Krauss doubted she’d keep her promise, but it was worth a try.

  McCoy whipped out his Nikon. “L
et me get some pictures.” As he shot, he crouched and twisted to get the best angles, as if he were a Pulitzer Prize–winning photojournalist.

  Krauss pulled out a handkerchief and used it to carry the sneaker back to the squad car.

  On the way, McCoy spoke quietly to his boss. “Hey, Chief, how ’bout lettin’ me in on this foot case. Jericho’s got this PO chick workin’ with him, and you know that ain’t the way it’s done. Hell, I got the experience. Of course, she’s got the tits, so there might be some funny business goin’ on.”

  “McCoy, let me handle this.”

  “Look, Chief,” McCoy said. “I’ll grant you Jericho’s got the homicide experience, him bein’ NYPD and all. But what he doesn’t have is a top-to-bottom knowledge of this area. You know I’m a Bonacker, born and raised here. I know the territory and I know the people. This case ain’t gonna be solved by some hotshot Harlem detective. It takes somebody who can dig deep into the local community, talk to people who know me, people who would never talk to Jericho.”

  “I’m not worried about Jericho. He’ll…”

  “Lemme ask you somethin’,” McCoy cut in. “If Jericho clears these cases, would you bump him up from sergeant to lieutenant?”

  “It’s a possibility.”

  “Don’t you think I deserve that possibility? I mean after all my years on the force…”

  “Enough, Fred. End of discussion.”

  “I’m just sayin’…”

  CHAPTER 17

  Back at Headquarters, Curtis the mailman was waiting in Krauss’s office. He had a second letter, addressed to the Chief of Police in the same wobbly handwriting as the first.

  “I was on the lookout for another letter, like you said,” Curtis said. “Voila.”

  “Voila to you too, Newman,” Krauss replied. “And thanks.”

  “No problem.”

  When Curtis left, Krauss called Jericho to see if he was back. “You find out anything in Sag Harbor?”

  “No.”

  “Well, get in here. We got another letter.”