could knock back twenty-five to him. Old habits die hard.
"Get yourself a clipboard, bounce around the neighborhood, ask some questions. Run yourself a week's work out of it without wasting more'n a couple of hours. Hit him up for a hundred a day plus expenses.
That's close to a K for you, for Christ's sake."
I said, "I'd like a look at your file on the thing."
"Why go through the motions? You're not gonna find anything there, Matt.
It was closed before it was opened. We had cuffs on the fucking kid before we even knew what he did."
"Just for form."
His eyes narrowed just a little. We were about the same age, but I had joined the force earlier and was just getting into plainclothes when he was going through the Academy. Koehler looked a lot older now, droopy in the jowls, and his desk job was spreading him in the seat. There was something about his eyes I didn't care for.
"Waste of time, Matt. Why take the trouble?"
"Let's say it's the way I work."
"Files aren't open to unauthorized personnel. You know that."
I said, "Let's say another hat for a look at what you've got. And I'll want to talk to the arresting officer."
"I could set that up, arrange an introduction. Whether he wants to talk to you is up to him."
"Sure."
TWENTY minutes later I was alone in the office. I had twenty-five dollars less in my wallet and a manila folder on the desk in front of me. It didn't look like good value for the money, didn't tell me much I didn't already know.
Patrolman Lewis Pankow, the arresting officer, led off with his report. I hadn't read one of those in a while, and it took me back, from "While proceeding in a westerly direction on routine foot patrol duty"
all the way through to "at which time the alleged perpetrator was delivered for incarceration to the Men's House of Detention." The Coptic jargon is a special one.
I read Pankow's report a couple of times through and took some notes. What it amounted to, in English, was a clear enough statement of facts. At eighteen minutes after four he'd been walking west on Bank Street. He heard sounds of a commotion and shortly encountered some people who told him there was a lunatic on Bethune Street, dancing around with blood all over him. Pankow ran around the block to Bethune Street where he found "the alleged miscreant, subsequently identified as Richard Vanderpoel of 194 Bethune Street, his clothes in disarray and covered with what appeared to be blood, uttering obscene language at high volume and exposing his private parts to passersby."
Pankow sensibly cuffed him and managed to determine where he lived. He led the suspect up two flights of stairs and into the apartment Vanderpoel and Wendy Hanniford had occupied, where he found Wendy Hanniford "apparently deceased, unclothed, and disfigured by slashes apparently inflicted by a sharp weapon."
Pankow then phoned in, and the usual machinery went into action. The medical examiner's man had come around to confirm what Pankow had figured out-that Wendy was, in fact, dead. The photo crew took their pictures, several of the blood-spattered apartment, a great many of Wendy's corpse.
There was no telling what she might have looked like alive. She had died from loss of blood, and Lady Macbeth was right about that; no one would guess how much blood a body can lose in the process of dying. You can put an ice pick in a man's heart and barely a drop of blood will show on his shirtfront, but Vanderpoel had cut her breasts and thighs and belly and throat, and the whole bed was an ocean of blood.
After they'd photographed the body, they removed it for autopsy. A Dr.
Jainchill of the medical examiner's office had done the full postmortem. He stated that the victim was a Caucasian female in her twenties, that she had had recent sexual intercourse, both oral and genital, that she had been slashed twenty-three times with a sharp instrument, most probably a razor, that there were no stab wounds (which might have been why he was opting for
"Get yourself a clipboard, bounce around the neighborhood, ask some questions. Run yourself a week's work out of it without wasting more'n a couple of hours. Hit him up for a hundred a day plus expenses.
That's close to a K for you, for Christ's sake."
I said, "I'd like a look at your file on the thing."
"Why go through the motions? You're not gonna find anything there, Matt.
It was closed before it was opened. We had cuffs on the fucking kid before we even knew what he did."
"Just for form."
His eyes narrowed just a little. We were about the same age, but I had joined the force earlier and was just getting into plainclothes when he was going through the Academy. Koehler looked a lot older now, droopy in the jowls, and his desk job was spreading him in the seat. There was something about his eyes I didn't care for.
"Waste of time, Matt. Why take the trouble?"
"Let's say it's the way I work."
"Files aren't open to unauthorized personnel. You know that."
I said, "Let's say another hat for a look at what you've got. And I'll want to talk to the arresting officer."
"I could set that up, arrange an introduction. Whether he wants to talk to you is up to him."
"Sure."
TWENTY minutes later I was alone in the office. I had twenty-five dollars less in my wallet and a manila folder on the desk in front of me. It didn't look like good value for the money, didn't tell me much I didn't already know.
Patrolman Lewis Pankow, the arresting officer, led off with his report. I hadn't read one of those in a while, and it took me back, from "While proceeding in a westerly direction on routine foot patrol duty"
all the way through to "at which time the alleged perpetrator was delivered for incarceration to the Men's House of Detention." The Coptic jargon is a special one.
I read Pankow's report a couple of times through and took some notes. What it amounted to, in English, was a clear enough statement of facts. At eighteen minutes after four he'd been walking west on Bank Street. He heard sounds of a commotion and shortly encountered some people who told him there was a lunatic on Bethune Street, dancing around with blood all over him. Pankow ran around the block to Bethune Street where he found "the alleged miscreant, subsequently identified as Richard Vanderpoel of 194 Bethune Street, his clothes in disarray and covered with what appeared to be blood, uttering obscene language at high volume and exposing his private parts to passersby."
Pankow sensibly cuffed him and managed to determine where he lived. He led the suspect up two flights of stairs and into the apartment Vanderpoel and Wendy Hanniford had occupied, where he found Wendy Hanniford "apparently deceased, unclothed, and disfigured by slashes apparently inflicted by a sharp weapon."
Pankow then phoned in, and the usual machinery went into action. The medical examiner's man had come around to confirm what Pankow had figured out-that Wendy was, in fact, dead. The photo crew took their pictures, several of the blood-spattered apartment, a great many of Wendy's corpse.
There was no telling what she might have looked like alive. She had died from loss of blood, and Lady Macbeth was right about that; no one would guess how much blood a body can lose in the process of dying. You can put an ice pick in a man's heart and barely a drop of blood will show on his shirtfront, but Vanderpoel had cut her breasts and thighs and belly and throat, and the whole bed was an ocean of blood.
After they'd photographed the body, they removed it for autopsy. A Dr.
Jainchill of the medical examiner's office had done the full postmortem. He stated that the victim was a Caucasian female in her twenties, that she had had recent sexual intercourse, both oral and genital, that she had been slashed twenty-three times with a sharp instrument, most probably a razor, that there were no stab wounds (which might have been why he was opting for
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