CHAPTER 9
M
el hurried along Central Park West to Seventy-ninth Street. He climbed the museum's front steps, where he passed the famed ten-foot-tall bronze equestrian statue of Theodore Roosevelt. At the top of the stairs, he entered the American Museum of Natural History, where outside its walls, engraved amid four giant pillars, were three words Mel knew by heart: “Truth,” “Knowledge” and “Vision.” He stood in the central corridor, where one of the famed dinosaur fossils stretched high into the vaulted ceiling. Tourists and school groups flocked together on benches and spoke in hushed tones; footsteps clicked and echoed. Mel found himself studying a colorful mosaic, one of many that filled the vast halls. Thinking that he might be waiting for a while, he scanned the room for something to read. Over in the far corner sat a wall of exhibit pamphlets, maps and guides. He joined the crowd that had swarmed there and grabbed a few documents. A moment later a young man in a white shirt, tie and black dress pants walked up to Mel.
“Mr. Glass?”
He couldn't have been more than eighteen, Mel estimated, examining the rosy cheeks, clean-shaven face and slicked-back blond hair of the gentleman standing before him.
“How did you know?”
The kid answered in one long run-on sentence. “People never know where to go here, and I'm always being sent out into the main corridor to recover various individuals scheduled to meet with Dr. St. Helme, and if you don't mind my saying so, you look like a lawyer.”
Mel stood up and straightened his tie. “I do, do I?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you are?” Mel inquired with a friendly smirk.
“Peter,” he answered brightly, leading Mel down a long hallway, through a narrow door and up a tight, winding side staircase to a very modest landing with three closed doors on the walls facing Mel. The floorboards were wide planks of old dark mahogany that creaked with each step Mel took. A few old red velvet upholstered chairs with brass nail-head trim rested between a long glass coffee table stacked with tattered issues of
National Geographic
and
Life Magazine
. Peter motioned for Mel to take a seat.
“Shouldn't be too long at all, Mr. Glass,” he said, pivoting and disappearing back down the winding marble staircase. Mel wondered where the kid was headed next and then grabbed from his jacket pocket one of the pamphlets he'd snatched. It was all about the “Star of India,” one of the largest gems in the world. Mel recalled it had been stolen from the museum just a few months after the Wylie-Hoffert murders. The story went that thieves unlocked a bathroom window during “open hours.” Then they climbed in at night and managed to seize a number of gems, including the coveted 563-carat, grayish-blue stone, dubbed the “Star of India,” valued at around half a million dollars. While the cat burglar, Jack Murphy, was caught a few days later, the famed jewel wasn't recovered until a few months later, far away in Miami, Florida, in a locker at the local bus station. Mel grinned at the thought of the thief trying to hide a jewel so big; he was amazed that it managed to escape all the way to the tropics of South Florida. He fanned himself with the pamphlet while glancing at another document advertising a North American Rare Birds exhibit, boasting 160 species.
No, thank you,
he thought, although he immediately felt guilty remembering a promise to take his wife out to see the World's Fair in Flushing Meadows. Somehow he felt as if she had mentioned a bird exhibition at the fairâor perhaps this was it. He flipped the glossy paper over and saw the image of a woman smiling pleasantly back at him. Her face was angular, pretty, with kind eyes. She wore her hair pulled back in a bun. Below the image, in fine print, was a name and identificationâ
Dr. Lucille St. Helme, Ph.D., Yale, 1940, Physical Anthropology.
Mel lifted the document closer, examining her cheekbones.
“Are you going to attend my rare-bird exhibit?” came a voice from nearby.
Somewhat startled, Mel jerked his head up and around. Dr. Lucille St. Helme, just as lovely as her photograph, peeked her head from around the corner. Mel stood up.
“How long were you standing there, Missâ”
“St. Helme. Dr. St. Helme.” Her voice was light and airy, and she wore no makeup except for a dab of red lipstick. She stepped forward with her hand out. Her three-inch beige heels clicked and creaked on the floor below. She wore a gray skirt and a matching blazer, with a pair of thick black-rimmed glasses. She had dark hair pulled back tightly in a bun, just like in the photograph.
“Mr. Glass, is it? And you are
the
assistant district attorney?”
Mel smiled, and his cheeks flushed. “Well, that's what my mother tells all her friends, but, in fact, I'm just one of about two hundred others.”
He reached out and shook her hand. She had small, thin hands, and her glasses drifted to the bridge of her nose. She laughed and then suggested Mel come into her office. He eagerly followed, stuffing the pamphlets back in his jacket pocket, and entered what was a relatively small but astoundingly spacious office. The floors still creaked, but the walls were white and the ceilings high, perhaps fourteen feet. There were windows on two sidesâtall, old windows, with thick moldings. Along the north wall, Dr. St. Helme had a long wooden table piled with various artifacts, models, documents and books. Behind her desk was a wall of books stretching almost to the ceiling. Least impressive was her desk, which was bulky and worn, not unlike Mel's metal office desk. He admired the globe on the right side and found himself, standing there, spinning the metal orb absently. His index finger landed near Bangkok.
“Please have a seat, and just ignore the mess,” she said. “I'm afraid I'm just back from South America. In fact, I have been doing a fair bit of bird-watching, Mr. Glass.”
“Mel, please.”
She motioned toward a forlorn wooden chair beside her desk.
“And call me Lucille. I'm sorry I can't offer you a better chair, but we spend our money on other things. . . .”
Mel didn't even look at the chair . . . he just fell onto it.
Lucille folded her hands and rested them neatly on her desktop. She smiled gently. “Well,” she said slowly, “it isn't often that we have members of the district attorney's office up here, so I'm intrigued. I also have heard rumors that you're directly involved in the Wylie-Hoffert case.”
Mel opened his mouth to speak, but Lucille cut him off.
“I don't live far from East Eighty-eighth Street.”
She stretched her left arm out, resting her palm on a stack of magazines, and sighed. “I just feel awful about those murdersâthe person who committed those crimes acted like a savage.”
Mel nodded. “Yes, it's an extremely tragic case, which is why I'm here. I'm hopeful that you can help me achieve some clarity with an important piece of evidence, Dr. St. Helme.”
“Lucille,” she corrected him gently.
“Lucille,” he continued, reaching into his jacket pocket for the photograph in question and holding it out in front of her, “I need to find the location of where this photo was taken, which would be the starting point to find the two girls depicted in it.”
They stared at each other knowingly. Silence fell over the room. After a few seconds, Mel dropped the black-and-white image of the Pontiac convertible on Dr. St. Helme's desk. She snatched it up and held it closer for a look.
“Are you familiar with W. H. Auden, ADA Glass?”
“Of course,” Mel answered, “the poet.” He then gazed contemplatively and cupped his chin with his left hand. He said, “ âA real book isn't one that we read, but one that reads us.' ”
It wasn't every day that her visitors could recite poetry. She was impressed, and she smiled before adding, “He also said that âhistory is, strictly speaking, the study of questions; the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology.' ”
Mel shifted in his chair and pointed his right index finger toward the photograph. “What do you think? Can you help me? I need to know where that photograph was taken.”
Dr. St. Helme reached into her desk drawer and fumbled around, searching for her magnifying glass. After a moment her hand emerged holding a modest, circular magnifier with a narrow, brown leather handle. She held the tool close to the image, pulling it toward and away from her eyes.
“I interned with a famed arborist during my studies at the universityâI should be able to sort this mystery out for you.”
Mel leaned forward anxiously; Dr. St. Helme sighed, her eyes laser focused as she examined the image.
“That's a pitch pine,” she announced, pleased with her discovery, then looked up. She studied Mel for a moment with a look of satisfaction in her eyes.
He waited for her to say something else. When she simply sat there, gazing at him with an excited grin on her face, as if she'd discovered the theory of evolution, Mel said, “Forgive me, Lucille, but I'm a simple guy. I grew up in Brooklyn. What's a pitch pine?”
Dr. St. Helme stood up and walked over to the long table by one of her windows. She grabbed a book, leafed through it and then handed it over to Mel.
He stood up quickly, held the book in his hands and gazed down at the image before him. It was a photograph of a tree. Mel couldn't help but find it to be a funny-looking plant, with multiple trunks and branches that sprouted oddly. In some ways it looked like a kind of bonsai tree. Dr. St. Helme handed the photograph of the two girls seated in the Pontiac back to Mel.
“Pitch pines are native to North America. While you can find them in various locations, specifically Maine and even northern Georgia, they thrive best in acidic sandy uplands or swampy lowlands.”
She leaned against the table behind her, lifted an arm and straightened her glasses.
“It's the same type of tree, all right,” Mel agreed, “but where do you suggest I start looking?”
Dr. St. Helme tilted her head casually and smiled. “Well, can you tell me about any location unique to this photograph that might be helpful?”
Mel responded, “When the defendant was first asked how he came into possession of the photograph, he said that he found it in a garbage dump in Wildwood, New Jersey. Subsequently I've learned from his mother that he told her that's where he found it. She also confirmed that, indeed, he frequently went to the garbage dump and scavenged around.”
Dr. St. Helme grinned. “Very interesting. Given that the pitch pine is primarily located in a specific coastal plain, southern New Jersey, in and around the Shore, certainly qualifies as a legitimate site.”
She turned and began sifting through a pile of rolled-up tubes of paper.
“It's here somewhere,” she said absentmindedly. Mel walked over and stood beside her. He couldn't help but notice a lovely scent of jasmine and freesia. He glanced at her wrist. She wore a delicate Hamilton watch, with a thin white-gold roped band. The sound of paper, rolling and unrolling, echoed throughout the room.
“Here it is,” she said eagerly, unrolling a wide, long document that revealed a map of the state of New Jersey. Mel leaned in. He could hear the sound of a pigeon cooing at her window. A taxi honked; wind from the fan beside her desk rustled the edges of pinned-down documents. Her finger slid along the delicate paper until it finally stopped at a small land area. The spot was covered with tiny illustrations of pine trees, positioned at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean.
“Here,” she said, tapping her finger, “it's just between Philadelphia and Atlantic City.”
Mel edged in closer, squinting, trying to get a closer look on the map. “Is it a town?”
Dr. St. Helme jerked her head up. “No, not really. It's very rural. Lots of lakes and campgrounds. The ground is acidic and sandy. You can practically drive through and reach the shoreline.”
She continued speaking. “Melâin the upper-right portion of the photo is what appears to be a body of water, most likely a lake. Yes, I think the Wildwood area is an excellent starting point for your adventure.”
Mel glanced back at the photograph of the blonde in the Pontiac convertible and noticed the body of water that appeared through the trees.
Lake, campgrounds, sandy areas all around the pitch pines,
he ticked off silently.
“Well, I guess I have what I need,” Mel said aloud.
“I guess you do,” she answered.
There was an awkward silence before they both headed toward the door. Just as he was stepping into the hallway, she called him back. He turned. She was leaning in the archway of her door, a book held tightly to her chest.
“What is that other relevant Auden quote again?” She closed her eyes briefly. “Ah, now I remember. âMurder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures . . .' ”
Mel smiled knowingly and continued, “ â. . . so that society has to take the place of the victim and on his behalf demand atonement or grant forgiveness,' ” he finished.
Her eyes beamed. “A pleasure, ADA Mel Glass, âone of about two hundred,' ” she said, extending her arm to shake his hand.
Mel accepted the gesture. With an affirmative nod, he smiled warmly and said, “Many, many heartfelt thanks, Dr. Lucille St. Helme, chief physical anthropologist, part-time expert arborist and full-time terrific individual. I can't tell you how much I appreciate your help. I owe you, big-time.”
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Belleplain State Forest lies to the north and the west of the city of Wildwood in Cape May County, New Jersey. It is a heavily wooded area, sprinkled with a number of lakes and campsites only a stone's throw from the pretty, bustling oceanfront communities of the Jersey Shore. Lake Nummy was the largest and most visited of the lakes in the region.