Dead Wrong Read online

  In fact, two near clones had found each other.

  Most people would find homicide work interesting in the abstract, perhaps in murder mysteries or crime novels. Most would have no taste for the reality. Some few would find a macabre fascination with the sordid details. For some homicide detectives, it was a job. For a precious few, it was the ultimate and consuming passion. For these, nothing surpassed the drive to discover who did it and, perhaps, why. In this latter select category were Davis and Koznicki. Koznicki recognized this, at this time, only in a hazy way. Davis recognized it in himself and in Koznicki as well.

  “There’s always the possibility we’ll never find out who she is. She could be from some other part of the country, even a foreign country. Maybe she was a discard; nobody wanted her and nobody cares what’s happened to her. But I don’t think that’s the case here.”

  “Why is that?”

  Davis shrugged. “A feeling.”

  Koznicki reacted internally. He had the identical feeling.

  Davis noticed Cooper getting ready to get into the patrol car. “Your partner looks like he’s ready to leave. And you look like you could dry off some more.”

  Koznicki started toward the car, then turned back. “Would you mind if I followed this case? Would it be all right if I looked in from time to time?”

  Davis, who had turned away, did not look back, but merely nodded.

  Actually, he was pleased. Koznicki was precisely the type who ought to get into Homicide. And all the better that he choose it rather than be tapped for it. Davis resolved to take Koznicki through this case step by step.

  In the car, Cooper was heading back to the station. His partner needed dry trousers and shoes. Both could use an extended coffee break. But first …

  “You were talkin’ to that lieutenant.”

  “Lieutenant Davis.”

  “Uh-huh.” Pause. “What was that all about? I mean, you were wet ‘n’ all. You shouldn’ta been out there. I told you to stay in the car.”

  “I wondered how the investigation would begin.” Koznicki had to smile; it was a little late for Cooper to be worried about Koznicki’s health. Sort of like an arsonist-firefighter who works to put out a fire he started and then figures everyone should be grateful he was there when the blaze started. If Cooper hadn’t ordered Koznicki into the water instead of calling for help, the patrolman would likely be dry and warm now.

  “That’s all it was? He didn’t ask how come you were wet? Or how we got the body out of the river?” Obviously Cooper was concerned that what he’d done would filter up through the lieutenant to Cooper’s superior.

  “That was mentioned,” Koznicki admitted.

  “And you said?”

  “Only that I got the body.” Koznicki knew what was on Cooper’s mind. “I think he did not think it that odd that I should have retrieved the body. He took it in the lighthearted way in which it was intended. We talked mostly about identification of the body.”

  There was something about the way Koznicki talked that bothered Cooper. It was … what? … too formal. Cops didn’t talk that way. It was like the guy got off the boat from some place in Europe not long ago. It wasn’t that his English wasn’t good; it was too good. “Well, we’re goin’ back to the station. You got spare stuff there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. We’ll get you dried off and warm. It’s not gonna sit well if I kill you.” Cooper’s laugh was forced. “Then, we’ll take a break. But, say, how ’bout we just let what went down at the river be between us … that okay with you?”

  “That will be fine.” Inwardly, Koznicki was enjoying the sergeant’s discomfort.

  There he goes again, thought Cooper. Not “Okeydokey,” not “Like hell,” not “Don’t shit me!” “That will be fine.” He doesn’t talk like a cop. Cooper more than ever couldn’t care less about the rookie’s academy trophies. So he was big! And so he was stronger than anybody Cooper had ever known. So what!

  Why, the galoot hadn’t even questioned Cooper’s order to go get the corpse—just went over the side. On the one hand, Cooper appreciated the absence of hassle; on the other, he’d like to see more spunk.

  Cooper did not subscribe to the theory that in order to give an order you have to be able to take one. Koznicki did. It was Koznicki’s experience that those who were the poorest leaders had been the most recalcitrant followers. They could give orders, all right, but mostly in the spirit of an attempt at proving their domination.

  Koznicki was, in a word, secure. He had little or no need to prove anything.

  And so Koznicki easily agreed not to mention anything to anyone beyond the fact that they had been called to investigate a suspicious object in the river, they had retrieved it, it had turned out to be a dead body, and Homicide was now on the case.

  Having extracted this assurance from Koznicki, Cooper freely told the story to his cronies, whom he could depend upon to keep it within the fraternity. They laughed over it, and were in some small agreement that a guy with Koznicki’s attitude was not going to go far on the force.

  C H A P T E R

  20

  SO IT WAS A bent-nosed bunch of Detroit cops who learned that Patrolman Walter Koznicki had been transferred to Homicide.

  Two days and many questions after he had pulled a body from the Detroit River, Koznicki was summoned to a meeting with Lieutenant Davis. Over lunch at a Greek restaurant near headquarters, Davis, in effect, made an offer Koznicki would not have turned down under almost any circumstances.

  Membership in the Homicide Division, then, was not attained by any sort of seniority system or chronological order, or even by application. One had to be sponsored by a high-ranking officer, or by someone in Homicide. After which both the inductee and the sponsor were held responsible for the novice’s work. Thus, sponsoring a new member of this elite division demanded conviction that the new-comer would not foul up, but rather that he or she would measure up to every demand made.

  Davis had that sort of trust in Koznicki. And, as luck would have it, Squad Three was short one member. An officer who had been shot in the line of duty, and as a result paralyzed from the waist down, had just been granted disability retirement.

  Everything had been prepared, so that not only was Koznicki’s induction immediate, but his first assignment was the case he’d begun by retrieving the body of a murdered young woman.

  Even as the two men were finishing lunch, other members of the squad were coming up with a positive identification. Davis and Koznicki returned to headquarters to learn that the decedent’s name was Agnes Ventimiglia.

  One Rosemarie DeFalco, a fellow employee of the deceased at the County Clerk’s Office, had reported Ms. Ventimiglia as a missing person. DeFalco’s description had been close enough to Jane Doe #23 to warrant a trip to the morgue, where the hysterical Ms. DeFalco made the ID.

  Koznicki was dispatched immediately to question DeFalco, who had been given medication and was now more self-controlled.

  His first impression was that DeFalco was a very attractive young woman. He was particularly impressed, since her beauty was evident even though she had just undergone a horrible shock. A puffiness about her red eyes testified to that.

  After introducing himself and expressing sympathy, Koznicki asked his first question. “How is it that her family did not file the missing person’s report?”

  “She … she moved out of her parents’ home … oh … a little less than a year ago, maybe nine months. They wouldn’t have been aware that she was missing.”

  “But, you …?”

  “I work with her. I’m … I was … her friend.” Her eyes filled with tears. “A very close friend.” She shook her head. “When she didn’t come in to work the next day, I thought … oh, that maybe she was just taking the day off to sort of … you know.” Koznicki’s face was impassive. “Then, after the weekend, I started to wonder. But …” She shook her head again. “I thought that maybe they’d gone off together … you know, elop
ed or something. And if they had … well, I knew Aggie wouldn’t want somebody to barge in on them, and she’d have died of embarrassment—” She stopped, realizing that Agnes had indeed died, and of more than embarrassment. “Well, she would have been so terribly embarrassed if the police or some sort of investigator had tried to come after her, especially if it had gotten into the papers.

  “So, I tried to cover for her at work, and make excuses … although really nobody else paid much attention… they didn’t pay any attention to her when she was there, so they didn’t even miss her when she wasn’t. And it always slows down around the holidays anyway.”

  The tears overflowed. “I just kept waiting, hoping she’d come back, hoping I’d at least hear from her… and… I really didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t want to call her parents and get them all upset and make things worse.”

  Koznicki nodded sympathetically. “She had no contact with her family?”

  “No. Not really. I think they never let her grow up. So when she moved out, there were… bad feelings.”

  “Bad feelings?” Koznicki was taking notes in his own form of shorthand. “How bad? Was there physical violence?”

  “Oh, I don’t think so. At least she never mentioned any. And I think she would have. It was just a kind of, ‘If you leave, don’t ever darken our door again’… that sort of thing.

  “But,” DeFalco continued, “if you’re looking for whoever killed her, I don’t think it was anybody in her family. I think I know who did it.”

  Koznicki, who had been standing, sat down next to her on the bench. “Oh? Who?”

  “His name is Peter Arnold.”

  “Who is he?”

  “He was… well, I guess you’d call him a boyfriend.” She sounded uncertain.

  “Do you know where we can find this Peter Arnold? Do you know where he works?”

  She thought a moment. “No, not really. Aggie never mentioned … I mean, she was a very private person—even with me.”

  “Tell me all you can about this Peter Arnold. What does he look like? Can you describe him?”

  “Well … not really. I’ve never seen him. But Aggie did tell me about him. She said he was average height, and he had dark hair, and very strong eyes—that’s what she said: ‘strong eyes’ … no, wait—” She squinted, in an effort to call up her friend’s words. “She said … he had dark, brushed-back hair that clung tightly to his head—she said he had a patrician head—and he had heavy eyebrows and… and riveting eyes. Yes, that was it: riveting.” She thought for a moment. “He was considerate, she said … and she said they had a lot in common—”

  “A lot in common?”

  “Yes… things like he was Catholic, he had voted for Kennedy… like that. And the big thing was, most of all, he didn’t try to take advantage of her.”

  “Oh? What do you mean, ‘take advantage’?”

  “Well, I mean… Aggie was very innocent. She was a virgin.” She reddened. “That’s what she said. And I believe … believed her. As a matter of fact, the last time I saw Aggie—I remember it was last month, the thirtieth—we thought that was going to be the night when he was going to pop the question. She was ready to spend the night with him—make love for the first time … the first time for her, that is.

  “That’s what I meant that he didn’t take advantage of her. He never pressed her. He didn’t rush her. They dated almost every chance they got… even spent a weekend or two in a resort motel—in separate rooms.”

  “Separate rooms?”

  “That’s what she said. And I believe her. I have no reason not to.

  “In fact,” she added, “that was one of the things that helped me identify—” She bowed her head and held a handkerchief to her nose. After a minute she continued. “That was one of the things that helped me identify Aggie. Even if I hadn’t recognized her face, I would’ve recognized the clothes she was wearing. I helped her pick out most of them, especially the lingerie.”

  “And that was the last time you saw her alive … November 30?”

  DeFalco nodded and dabbed her face with her handkerchief.

  Undoubtedly, the medical examiner had determined a time of death, but Koznicki was not yet advised on that. He would learn that November 30 was well within the M.E.’s ballpark time frame.

  “You said,” Koznicki continued, “that they—Agnes and this Peter Arnold—dated frequently. Do you have any idea how long that had been going on?”

  Her expression brightened. “I can tell you exactly when it began.”

  Koznicki was amazed at how quickly this case was coming together. His first homicide interrogation, and his informant—the decedent’s closest friend—could testify on virtually every important question, and—most significant surprise of all—believed she knew who the killer was. Beginner’s luck? He waited for DeFalco to recall the precise date Ventimiglia and Arnold had begun dating.

  “It was his twenty-first birthday. I remember she said he asked her out to dinner to celebrate his becoming a man—an adult. It was… November seventh, I forget which year—wait a minute: If that was his twenty-first birthday, his year of birth would have to be … 1939, wouldn’t it?”

  “My arithmetic agrees with yours.”

  “So that’s it, then,” DeFalco said. “Peter Arnold was the only man she was ever serious about … golly, the only man she ever dated! They saw each other constantly for about a month. As far as I know, he was the last person she saw before she disappeared … unless … unless she was on her way to her date with Peter and maybe she got mugged. Was she… uh … attacked?”

  “I will know that when I talk with the medical examiner, which will be immediately after I finish talking with you. But, if she did not keep her date with Arnold … or if she disappeared after her date, I would think it only natural that he would report that and probably join in the search for her. Unless, of course, you are correct and he killed her.

  “One would think,” he added, “that if she were missing, he would check with her place of employment. He did not call or get in touch with you, with anyone in this office?”

  “Not with me, and I don’t think with anyone else. Everyone here knows I am—” She shook her head. “I was Aggie’s friend; they would’ve come to me if they’d gotten a phone call or an inquiry like that. What happens now?” she asked, half-hopefully, half-hopelessly.

  “We will proceed with the investigation. Meanwhile, if you think of anything else that might be helpful, any bit of information, please get in touch with me.” New on the job, he did not have a business card to give her. He wrote his name and the Homicide number on a page of his notebook, tore it out, and handed it to her.

  As he was leaving, she called after him. “Officer! Officer Koz … Koz …” She read his name from the paper he’d just given her. “Koznicki. I just remembered: where they were supposed to go on their last date. She mentioned it just before she left me. It was the Pontchartrain Wine Cellars. She also said that they never went to the same restaurant twice; it was always different ones.”

  Koznicki entered that in his notebook.

  “Thank you, Miss DeFalco. You have been very helpful. Remember, if you think of anything else, please call us.”

  Teary-eyed again, she nodded, as her shoulders slumped and she gave herself up to grief.

  Before leaving the Wayne County Morgue, Koznicki checked with the M.E.’s office. Among the things he learned: The November 30 date was well within the parameters established for the time of death of the deceased. And there was no indication of any sexual assault; indeed, physically the dead woman had been a virgin.

  There was no doubt in Koznicki’s mind that Rosemarie DeFalco was an accurate witness, both as to the facts in this case and in the conclusions she had drawn.

  Lieutenant Davis took charge of what was, with the information DeFalco had supplied, now a fast-paced investigation.

  It was not difficult to locate Peter Arnold, the Peter Arnold born on November 7, 1939. Fathe
r: Samuel Arnold, white, age 22, born in Michigan, owner of a small auto parts factory, living at 30105 West Seven Mile in Redford Township; mother, Laura Jean Trucky, white, age 18, born in Michigan. Peter Arnold’s birth had been in Redford Community Hospital.

  It scarcely could be any other Peter Arnold.

  But it was not Agnes Ventimiglia’s Peter Arnold.

  Peter Arnold, at six feet four, was hardly of “moderate build or average height.” His hair was not dark, but blond. His eyes were undistinguished. But above all, he traveled extensively for his employer-father. He had been out of town, indeed much of the time out of state, during most of November—including November seventh and November thirtieth. And this was corroborated by a variety of business associates and customers.

  The explanation was simple enough: Anybody could get anybody’s vital record as long as it was filed in the county clerk’s cabinets. It would be many years before that system was tightened and regulated.

  Somehow, the killer had learned that Peter Arnold was about to have a twenty-first birthday. It could have been anyone. Statistics are easily available. Births are even listed in the daily newspapers, back issues of which are available at any library. The twenty-first birthday would be a logical event to celebrate, giving the killer a pretext to invite someone out to dinner.

  But why?

  Not why would someone want to date Agnes Ventimiglia; she may have been rather plain, but plain girls dated. Besides, from what Koznicki could tell, she had had the potential of being attractive. With a little work, and help from Rosemarie DeFalco, Agnes had become a desirable package for the occasion of her murder.

  But why would a man who wanted to date her pretend to be someone else? And why would that man date her on a practically incessant basis rather than merely periodically, for nearly an entire month, only to kill her at the end of that month? And if he lied about his name in the beginning, was it because he had planned from the beginning to kill her?