The Innocents Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Detective John Muttenperl found himself choking back a gush of vomit that quickly filtered up from his gut as he stood knee- deep in a black sludgy, muck-mire funk that harbored the remains of a little boy. Sighing deeply, he snapped on a pair of latex gloves, bent down and began scooping the muddy sewage away from the boy's nude body. He knew he should wait until after the Crime Scene Unit had arrived to photograph and examine the area, but he couldn't help himself.
Wiping off what he could of the slimy soil, he lifted the child out from the sodden ground. The boy's face was angelic. Muttenperl clutched the tiny body in his arms. What kind of monster could.... He trudged fifty yards out past the dilapidated, wooden barges into the East River. The rush of dirty water rolled up against him as he sank deeper and deeper into the muddy quagmire.
Muttenperl stopped for a moment and looked back at his fellow officers as they stood on the docks waving and shouting to him. He pressed on.
Waist-deep, the temperate water washed over the child's body removing the grime. What remained in Muttenperl's arms was a lifeless white pasty figure. The throat had been slit from ear- to-ear and the head dangled loosely exposing what appeared to be bone and tissue matter. Muttenperl gazed down over the torso. The letter "C" had been carved into the young boy's chest.
"John, let me take him," a voice whispered from behind.
"No," he muttered back, standing his ground.
"It's okay, I'll take care of him."
Muttenperl turned and gazed into the soft green eyes of Doctor Richard Stanton, a newly appointed thirty year old medical examiner with the Queens County Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
Stanton reached out, but Muttenperl tightened his grip.
"John," Stanton said again, attempting to pry the child's mutilated body from his hands.
Letting go, Muttenperl stepped back and turned away.
"I'm going to get the bastard who did this!"
The anger in Muttenperl's voice reverberated as he turned
back toward Stanton.
Stanton faltered for a split second as something brushed up against him in the water, and then, he walked slowly out of the river carrying the child in his arms.
The area was taped off with yellow crime scene tape as two other detectives searched for clues in the mucky terrain. They had been warned earlier by the owner of the Cresthaven Yacht Club to stay clear of the three broken down, decaying, wooden barges that had laid dormant for the past forty years in the nearby bog.
Cresthaven was a small community on the northern tip of Queens nestled between Whitestone and Malba. It housed a population of about twenty-three thousand, half of whom were kids raised with a strict Catholic upbringing -- Irish and German mostly, with a few Italians mixed in.
Muttenperl had been born and reared there, and both his father and grandfather had served as law enforcement officers for the City of New York before him. It was kind of a family thing, but unfortunately it would end with him because during the course of his marriage he sired only one child.
Muttenperl headed in from the water to take control of the situation. He caught the call, and as the only first grade detective in a unit that consisted of twelve men, was responsible for handling the case.
As Muttenperl reached the site where the boy's body had been found, Tommy O'Hara and Bill Dougherty, two seasoned detectives
from the NYPD's Queens Crime Scene Unit, had arrived. Muttenperl nodded to them both and stepped aside so they could do their job. They quickly unpacked their gear and went to work photographing the area, making sketches and taking notes.
"Who found the body?" Muttenperl asked.
"Officer Carbone called it in, but we haven't gotten all the details yet," Sergeant Gerhardt said from several feet away.
"Why not?" Muttenperl turned toward the strapping, middle- aged man.
"Weak stomach."
"Where is he?"
"It's a she, and she's up there by the fence." Sergeant Gerhardt pointed up at the dock behind him.
Muttenperl started off.
"Hey, Muttenperl," Gerhardt shouted.
"Yeah?"
"Go easy on her, she's four weeks out of the academy."
"You got it." Muttenperl saluted his right index finger off his forehead.
Muttenperl made his way through the brush covered steep incline into the parking lot of the Cresthaven Yacht Club. Yacht Club, now that was a real kicker, he thought. Cresthaven was made up of mostly working class people, none of whom could afford a yacht. Hell, if you put the entire community's yearly salaries together after expenses, they probably still couldn't afford one.
It was nothing more than a shoddy, old marina with two dozen fishing boats; all of which sat up on cement blocks in front of the back fence because low tide left the water level sitting fifty yards away from the property line.
Muttenperl shook his head and turned toward the street. Two police cars sat parked in front of the closed gates with a half a dozen uniformed officers scattered across the walkway. Opposite them stood thirty or so onlookers who had come out of their nearby homes to see what all the ruckus was about. He was glad it was a weekday, otherwise the whole area would be crowded with curious neighbors.
He looked down at his black, Italian leather shoes; they were ruined along with his charcoal suit. Shaking his head a second time, he reached into the breast pocket of his jacket and pulled out a small plastic Ziplock bag containing three cigars and a cutter. He took a moment to savor the aroma. They were Cubans, Monte Cristo No.2's, otherwise known as Torpedos. He had a friend that brought them down from Canada every couple of months. The guy would switch the bands with Dominican ones and no one was the wiser. He removed one from the bag, clipped off the end and placed it in his mouth. He sighed in relief, as if it were a pacifier. Then he returned the bag to his breast pocket and took out a gold lighter with the initials "JM" engraved on it. Gazing at it, he smiled, thinking of his grandfather. Now, that was a man who had truly enjoyed his life, he thought.
Muttenperl eyed the scene below. Stanton was placing the infant into a white body bag. The rage he felt began to rise and fall within his chest like a blocked steam pipe. He turned away and walked off in search of Carbone.
When he found her, she was sitting on a large boulder against the back fence with her head buried in between her mud stained knees. She was a skinny, little thing with long, wavy red hair stuffed up into her navy blue standard issue police cap.
"You okay?" he asked, stopping in front of her.
Looking up at him with a glum face, she shook her head.
"Mind if I sit down next to you?"
She nodded, and scooted over to the side.
"I remember my first homicide," he said.
"You do?" she said as if he were ancient.
"Yeah, I do."
"When was it?"
"Not too long after I got out of the academy."
"Really?"
"Yeah," he said, convinced she believed him.
"What was it like? I mean, you know...the victim."
Muttenperl stayed silent for several minutes and then began to describe in detail a homicide.
"It was in the summer, my partner and I were pullin' OT on a Saturday night when the call came over the radio. Bar fight that spilled out onto the street. The vic had multiple stab wounds to
the chest, lot of blood, a real mess on the sidewalk. The perp took off and everybody clammed up."
He paused, and she looked at him through her watery, blue eyes for a long time. "Were you scared?"
"What do you mean?"
"Afraid. You know, like that maybe the guy who did it was still there watching you and he was going to come and get you and do the same thing to you."
Muttenperl did not know how to respond.
"Is that how you feel?"
"Well, not now I don't, but when I first found him I did."
"Why don't you tell me what happened from the time you arrived until the time Sergeant Gerhardt got on scene."
She stood up and began pacing.
"I was driving my scooter down that street over there," she pointed off in front of her, "doing a routine check of the area. Everything seemed normal, nothing out of the ordinary to report."
"What made you go down by the old shipping yard?"
"I don't know." She shrugged. "Curiosity, I suppose. I've never really been on this side of town before. My father used to tell me stories from when he was a kid, how him and his friends would pretend they were soldiers in battle fighting against enemy ships."
"So you walked down to see them?"
She nodded.
"What happened when you got down there?"
"I noticed something sticking up out of the ground. I thought it was a doll. I got so sick looking at him, I...."
"It's okay, I felt the same way."
"I radioed in and secured the area right away."
"You did a good job kid, don't worry about it." He patted her on the back.
Muttenperl smiled as he walked away; he had managed to coax every piece of information out of her he needed without her even realizing it. The smile quickly disappeared as he watched Stanton load the small white body bag into the back of the black van.
"Don't worry, I'll work all night if I have to," Stanton said as he climbed into the front seat.
"Thanks for coming out on this one," Muttenperl said as he watched him drive off.
CHAPTER 2
Officer Francesca "Frankie" Carbone leaned up against the wire fence that separated the Cresthaven Yacht Club from the old shipping yard. A fresh faced twenty-two year old, she had not been taught in the academy what to expect at crime scenes and she realized what she had stumbled upon would leave a part of her forever changed. She wondered if she had made the right choice in becoming a New York City Police Officer.
"Carbone."
"Yes sir," she said, turning quickly toward Sergeant Gerhardt as he came up behind her.
"If you want to take a couple of days off, it's okay with me."
"Thank you, Sir, but I don't want any special treatment because I'm a woman."
Gerhardt sighed.
"That thought never even entered my mind Carbone. You're a scooter cop in the Community Policing Division who has been on the job for a month. We got guys down there that been on the job fifteen, twenty years and never seen what they've seen today. All I'm saying is, that if you need some time, it's okay, I understand."
"Thank you, Sir." She shifted her gaze to the ground.
"Listen kid, I'm only trying to help you, the scene was pretty gruesome and I don't want it messing up your head so soon into the job."
"I appreciate your concern, Sir."
"Why don't you get out of here, go home, get cleaned up. You're off tomorrow morning, aren't you?"
"Yes, Sir."
"Go to your father's restaurant," he said as he walked away. "Tie one on at the bar. I'm sure that's where you'll find the rest of the guys tonight."
She stood there for a moment thinking about what he had said. Then pulled off her hat allowing her long, wavy red hair to fall down over her shoulders as she took one last glance at the scene below. Detective Muttenperl and Sergeant Gerhardt were standing near the site where the child had been found. She watched them for several minutes and decided she had made the right choice. They were the type of police officers she wished to become and she beamed with pride knowing she was listed alongside them among the ranks of New York City's finest.
Stepping back away from the fence, she walked over toward the hose and began rinsing the mud off the bottom of her work boots. Being on the street was nothing like being in the academy. The twenty-six weeks she had spent as a cadet in training were very similar to the two years she spent floundering through business management courses in the local community college.
Going to college was her father's idea. She did it just to shut him up, but her heart wasn't in it.
She'd been sitting on a curb one day waiting for a bus when pregnant woman crossing the street had suddenly gone into labor right in the middle of the afternoon traffic. She'd watched in horror as the woman screamed and fell to the ground. A police officer had come out of nowhere and delivered a beautiful baby boy right there in the middle of the intersection. It suddenly became very clear to her that she wanted to help people, so on her twentieth birthday she applied to take the Police Civil Service Exam.
The test had taken her two and a half hours to complete. The hundred questions were based on reading comprehension, memory and details. For Frankie, it was like riding a bike. A curious child since birth, she absorbed things like a sponge.
The scoring process would take months, so she kept busy with work and school. She continued taking classes at the college,but she'd switched her major to law knowing it would come in handy when the time came to attend the academy.
Eight months passed. She came home one day and found the letter on the kitchen table and her father was furious. In all that time, she had never mentioned it to him because she knew exactly how he would react. She had picked up that envelope,gone to her room and read the letter. She had scored a hundred,the highest grade awarded to an applicant.
When she woke up the next morning, she quit her waitress job at her father's restaurant, packed up her belongings and moved to a small attic apartment on the other side of town.
Climbing back into her three-wheeled scooter, she closed the door and started the engine. She inched her way up to the front gates of the Cresthaven Yacht Club and waited as the two uniformed officers stationed there moved their vehicles to let her by. As she passed through the entryway, she hesitated, but didn't look back. She drove straight up the hill as fast as she could but she stopped short in the middle of the street, then parked the scooter on the side of the road. Leaning forward, she buried her face in her arms across the steering wheel and began to sob.
Twelve years ago her mother had been six months pregnant with Joey Jr. She had been sleeping when she heard her mother's screams. Climbing out of bed, she walked to the door and opened it. Her father had grabbed her by the arm and thrown her back into her bedroom, slamming the door behind her. She could hear him yelling to stay in there and go back to bed. Go back to bed. She remembered being scared as she laid there listening to her mother's agonizing wails through the night.
The next morning she overheard her father talking to the doctor on the telephone. He was explaining how her mother had lost the baby in pieces during the night. Something about rest and fluids. Her father had agreed to bring her mother in for a checkup in two weeks. After that, her father closed up, leaving her to fend for herself.
She'd thought she'd put it all behind her, but seeing that little child laying dead on the ground just made her realize how much it still bothered her.
She leaned forward into the rearview mirror and cleaned the black smudges from beneath her eyes with a tissue. She couldn't compare the two, it was different she thought. Maybe if she talked to her mother....
