Authors: Bernice Gottlieb
Uninterested in the fancy little sandwiches and cakes likely to be served in the church social hall following the service, I hotfooted it out through the wide double doors behind Chief Betsy. “Wait up,” I called, as we descended the curving stone steps, the organ blaring “How Firm a Foundation” behind us.
The Chief looked back over her shoulder and sighed, but she waited for me to catch up. Together we walked downhill on bustling Main Street.
“Any updates?” I asked her, as I nodded at a former client who’d bought a post-modern McMansion in an exclusive gated community. The young blonde, trophy wife of a Wall Street mogul (second or third wife, I couldn’t remember), smiled widely. Looked like she was still married to her money guy.
“Updates?” Betsy scoffed. “Maggie, upon thinking it over, I believe it’s probably best if you back out of any involvement with this case.”
“Back out? What’s up, Chief? You were begging for my help!”
Maggie was feeling bru
ised.
She looked me straight in the eye. For her that meant looking down—way down—and that only enhanced the chilling effect. “Maggie, this is a professional homicide investigation. You have to understand that we are now cooperating with the Westchester D.A.’s office, and they have their own real-estate specialists.”
Okay, so the D.A. was giving her grief. “But, why the D.A., Chief?” I queried. “In Manhattan you must have handled lots of homicides without outside help.”
“Yes, I did, but Hudson Hills is not Manhattan, and they, er, we haven’t had a homicide here since 1923. To be honest, it’s a whole different ballgame in these small towns; we don’t have the budget or the manpower necessary to handle homicide ourselves.”
I was miffed about being so abruptly dropped from my investigative role. “But—” A stiff breeze came in off the river and blew my hair across my eyes.
“Of course,” she said, “our P.D. is nevertheless still very much involved. It’s our murder, and it took place in our jurisdiction.”
“I do understand, Betsy.” I shoved the errant hair back behind one ear. “But surely you’re still connecting this murder to the real-estate-agent rapes, you know, the serial rapist?”
She was a diva of the exasperated sigh. “Maggie, we honestly don’t know if there’s any connection. At the same time, we haven’t ruled it out entirely—it’s simply too early to make that determination. A murder investigation takes time. Some of the test results, the DNA, for instance, won’t be ready right away.”
Betsy was brand new as our police chief, and she knew everyone—especially the D.A.—was watching to see how she carried out her duties during this crisis; I could see the strain in those beautiful blue eyes. I didn’t envy her the job one bit, but, at the same time, I was even more obsessed with this rapist/murderer. Every time I thought about what had almost happened to me when I was barely seventeen … well, I almost went ballistic. I wanted in on this investigation.
Right there, in front of the pocket park with the Washington Irving sculpture in it, the Chief stopped and gave me a level look. Then she held up a finger, like a schoolteacher instructing a recalcitrant child. “Listen, Maggie. I’ve been doing my research. Statistics from the Department of Labor tell us that every year seventy to eighty real-estate agents, both women and men, are attacked in the pursuit of their professional work—raped, robbed, and/or murdered. It’s a dangerous profession, lonely and isolated. I’m worried about you. This perp is dangerous—smart and dangerous. And he’s after brokers. He’s killed once now—a Hudson Hills agent. He’ll kill again.
“And you’re a broker. A Hudson Hills broker.” Her schoolteacher finger had turned into a cop finger. “Stay out of it! You hear me? For your own safety!”
I swallowed hard and nodded.
“You hear me?”
I nodded again. “I hear you.”
“Good!” Betsy softened her tone. “By the way, Maggie, because you were first on the scene, you’ll be called into the D.A.’s office. They’re also going to call the Mullers.” She noticed my grimace. “What?”
Even I could hear the edge in my voice. “That poor couple is traumatized enough without being questioned again,” I said. “And now their baby is a week overdue. They don’t need any more hassle.”
“Well, at least the investigators can talk to David, can’t they? Or does the twenty-first-century father now suffer labor pains, too?”
“Ha! I wouldn’t be surprised.” So, the Chief had a sense of humor, did she? We walked past South of the Border Taqueria, and the spicy aromas of fresh fish tacos drifted towards me.
Turning the corner of Main and Elm, Betsy and I stopped for a moment in front of Olde Towne Antiques before we went our separate ways. “You know,” she said, “the listing agent at the murder house”—even the Chief was calling it the murder house—“left shoe covers at the front door for anyone showing the place …”
I would have done the same thing. “Because of the polished floors and white carpeting, of course,” I said.
Betsy chuckled. “Actually Maggie,” she said, “what I wanted to tell you is, those gorgeous Ferragamos of yours were the only shoe prints the forensic people could immediately identify; your entry by way of the patio, in the master bath, and at the front door when you went to open it to let the Mullers in. Both your clients had stepped out of their shoes at the door and Amy had as well.”
My heart suddenly felt like a stone. “I hope that doesn’t make me a suspect. What about the murderer? Didn’t he leave foot prints?”
“Various imprints were found, but they still need to be analyzed. Remember, a couple of men from the cleaning crew had also walked around earlier in the day—but they didn’t have those killer stiletto heels!”
Betsy’s cell phone beeped, and she cut the conversation short, turning away from me as she answered the call.
I knew the Chief couldn’t tell me much more, and I appreciated what she did share. But of one thing I was sure: a person couldn’t kill someone in such a messy way without leaving lots of evidence behind. I waved goodbye and turned toward the office, but I was still frustrated. I still couldn’t control my obsession; I still wanted to have a role in the capture of this madman.
“Y’know,” I said to Andrew, “I could try to contact the Page Six reporter from the New York
Post
. Because of the high profile of that case, the reporter’s probably doing her own research. Hmm. Do you think maybe the husband hired someone to ‘take care of his wife?”
He turned abruptly from his apartment window, where he’d been looking down onto the lazy Sunday midtown streets. “Maggie! Let it be!”
But I just couldn’t. “You know, because of the nasty divorce and custody battle. I’ve read that a large percentage of female homicides are committed by their husbands or lovers.”
I know I’d promised Andrew that I’d stay out of the investigation, but that had been before the murder of Amy Honeywell. I knew Amy. Amy had been a colleague. Not a friend, but a professional colleague. The ante had been upped, from rape to murder, from across the river to right here in my very own town. Yes, I’d promised Andrew, but now I was torn. I was in love with him. I didn’t in any way want to jeopardize our relationship, but I felt compelled, despite that promise—and despite the warning from Chief Betsy—to do what I could behind the scenes to help put Amy’s killer behind bars. But what could that be?
We were at his apartment that sunny Sunday afternoon shortly after the funeral when I began to get restless: after all, how much making love and eating five-star leftovers could two people do? The type A in me kept nagging to get something more substantive done before I headed home. Curled up on Andrew’s tan leather chaise, wrapped in a faux mink throw, I picked up a yellow legal pad from the side table and began writing.
“What are you up to now?” he teased when he saw me wrinkling my brow in concentration.
“I’m trying to explore every possible motive that homicidal psycho could have,” I replied, “however mundane it might appear to be.”
Andrew sighed in the way men do when a woman is taking something other than them far too seriously: sort of a huge huff, like an old steamboat getting ready to launch. “You’re wasting your time! Glassy-eyed lunatics don’t need motives for their craziness.”
“Andrew …” I frowned at him as I continued to write.
But he just went on—“I can think of much better things we could be doing on this beautiful day. I’ve wanted to see Mich Hamer’s exhibit at MoMA, for starters. Frankly,” he said, without meeting my gaze, “I’m beginning to feel jealous of this miserable nutcase interfering in our lives. It seems you’re spending more time thinking about him than you are about me!”
Whoa
! And women are supposed to be the jealous ones! Andrew was acting like a child. I’d give it right back to him. “Yeah, right. How about you keeping your promise to help me instead of criticizing what I’m trying to do?
Hmm
?”
He spun around and glared at me. Until, that is, he saw the grin on my face. Then he laughed and walked over to sit beside me. “Okay,” Sherlock, so what’ve you come up with so far?”
Before answering Andrew, I looked straight into those dark, intense eyes of his, to see if he was being serious or not. It looked like he was.
I’d made a list of unethical or stupid things a real-estate broker might do, and I showed it to him.
Failure to disclose judgments against a h
ouse.
Misrepresentation of square foo
tage.
Failure to confirm latest taxes and assessments on a prop
erty.
“Any of these things could infuriate a buyer, “I said. “For one thing, if a broker was selling a home and didn’t disclose that there were judgments against the property, and at closing the client finds out he’s responsible for thousands of dollars which he can’t possibly come up with, he could lose the house as well as his down payment. Could that set someone off?”
“
That’s not bad” Andrew commented.
“Or, if the square footage was far less than what the listing declared, or the broker neglected to confirm the latest taxes and assessments on a property?” I looked up at Andrew for his reaction.
“Yep. That could be a problem.”
“And, here’s a complicated one, Mr. Attorney. What if a half-way house for pedophiles was located right next door and the buyers had young children?”
“Well, Maggie, that situation is covered under the Fair Housing Act, just like buying a house where a suicide or murder took place, and a broker is not legally required to disclose such facts. Of course, there’s a moral issue in these scenarios, and if not disclosed, they could cause a great deal of rancor, and rightly so, on the part of the unsuspecting buyers.”
“There are endless scenarios, Andrew.” I paused to think over examples during my own career. Thank god, nothing as egregious as any I’d listed. I shrugged. “But I suppose none of them are enough to actually turn someone into a rapist or a murderer. There has to be a pathological reason for such an animus against one particular profession.”
“Oh, Maggie, law enforcement’s task isn’t to analyze the bastard—it’s to find him and put him away before he kills someone else.” Andrew jumped up from the cozy chair, took both my hands and pulled me up. Then, before he spoke again, he hugged me, long and tenderly. Then he looked into my eyes. “Maggie, interfering in something like this could turn out to be so dangerous for a person with no experience in detective work. It’s not just me concerned about you—Chief Betsy wants you out of it, too. If this nutcase learns about your intervention, he will find you and kill you as well. You’d better give that some serious thought. I certainly have.
“Chief Betsy asked you only one thing—to coordinate with the real-estate broker community. She didn’t ask you to solve the crime. Leave that to the professionals!” Andrew actually had tears in his eyes, and his concern gave me pause.
But my determination to do what I could to help identify and apprehend this rapist/killer wasn’t because I was some wanna-be girl detective or neurotic sensation monger. I had a much more personal motivation than that, and I began to think about telling Andrew what it was.
So, the next Friday evening, after a meal of chilled Blue Point oysters followed by T-bones grilled on my patio, I poured fresh glasses of Australian Shiraz and, after a long silence, said, “Andrew?”
“Yes, Sweetie?” I loved the way he smiled at me, as if I was so very easy to smile at. As if there was nothing in the world he’d rather do than smile at me. “I want to tell you something.”
“Hmm?”
It was so lovely sitting there: a river breeze blowing, the ripe midsummer sun beginning its descent over the Hudson Palisades. I was afraid to ruin the mood, but I had to risk it, so I told Andrew something I’ve never talked to anyone about before: something that had happened to me when I was very young; something that explained why these attacks in Hudson Hills haunted me so.
“I know I promised you,” I began, “that I’d stay away from the investigation into the attacks on the real-estate brokers …”
Andrew was suddenly very still. Very attentive. “Why do I fear there’s a ‘but’ coming?”
“But,” I said, and the story poured out of me. “I was only seventeen when it happened,” I began.
I was just leaving our brick rowhouse in Brooklyn the first time Josh drove past in his white convertible. It was a beautiful summer morning and the top was down. When he saw me he stopped and offered me a ride. I’d been brought up to be a proper young woman, so I ignored him. A few days later, he passed my house again, stopped, and smiled at me. I asked him to please leave me alone.
Somehow he got my name and started phoning me. He was funny, charming and persuasive and eventually wore me down. I was only seventeen, after all. What did I know? I told him I would go out with him if I could bring my friend Gloria with me. He agreed and brought one of his own pals along. The four of us had a nice dinner at a local restaurant, then went to the movies.
My parents had made it clear that, since I knew very little about this fellow, I was to be home no later than 10:30 p.m. All Josh had told me was that he’d graduated from Hofstra and the convertible was a gift from his parents. I liked his looks; he was tall, with straight black hair that fell over his forehead. It was charming, the way he kept brushing it away from his eyes.
We left the theater at 10 p.m. Josh ignored my request to drive me home first because of my curfew—which I mentioned again. Instead, he dropped Gloria off at her house, where his friend’s car was. Then he pulled out of their driveway and turned his car in the opposite direction from my house.
“Josh, you’re going the wrong way!”
But he didn’t say anything, just kept going.
“What are you doing? This will take us onto the highway!”
He grinned at me with all his teeth showing and gunned the motor.
I knew then I was in deep trouble. Should I jump out of the car? At the next red light! But there were no red lights. There were no stop signs. We turned onto the highway. He started speeding. The convertible top was up, and he’d turned on loud music. I wanted to scream. I wanted to wave my arms at the passing cars. I started to roll down my window, but he backhanded me across the face. Hard. Stunned, I lost track of time.
We exited Oriental Boulevard at Manhattan Beach, a neighborhood of beach homes and condos. I cried and pled with him to take me home. But, no. He pulled up to a secluded parking area on the beach where there were no other cars, no people, no houses, only a high-rise apartment building looming in the distance.
While we’d been on the highway, I’d considered my options. I checked out the button that unlocked the car door; it was up. That meant unlocked. I kicked off my shoes, so I could run if I got the chance. The high, narrow heels had metal shanks, I knew—perfect weapons. I reached down in the dark and grabbed one, held it tight. A strange calm came over me. Suddenly I was in possession of my wits.
I envisioned headlines in the Daily News—School Girl Raped on Manhattan Beach. I wasn’t going to let that happen.
Josh shrieked the car to a halt, rammed it into Park, and swiveled toward me. The look on his face was monstrous. Grabbing my neck with both hands, he started to choke me.
I fought him, biting his wrists, scratching him, kicking.
“Motherfucking bitch!” He grabbed my ponytail, pulled me towards him, punched me in the side of my head. The pain of the blow was stunning. My ears rang. My vision blurred. He pulled my sundress from my shoulders, reached down and ripped off my underpants.
With all the strength I could muster, I lifted the shoe with the stiletto heel and struck him right in the eye. He dropped the underpants, raised both hands to his bloody eye. I grabbed the chrome door handle, pushed open the car door, rolled out, jumped to my bare feet, slammed the door on his grasping hand, and started running. It was dark and all I could see was sand. I didn’t know which way to go. Bare feet thumping on the hard sand, I just kept running. In straight lines. In circles. Anywhere, just to get away from him.
Behind me, the car motor roared to a start. Then the brights came on, picked me out, the only human creature on the beach. The roar and the lights came after me. “I’m gonna get you, you crazy bitch!” I ran in ever-tighter circles to make it harder for him to hit me. I didn’t feel the broken shells cutting into the soles of my bare feet. It was days before I could walk again.
I was never a praying person, but, God help me, I prayed that night. I prayed as I ran, as I stumbled, as I staggered.
From nowhere a police car appeared in front of me, shrieked to a stop, and two cops jumped out. One, a young redhead, caught me, held me by the shoulders, steadied me.
“He’s trying to kill me … he’s trying to kill me!”
The other cop, bald and burly, jumped in front of the now-slowing convertible, slammed his fist on the hood, brought Josh to a halt.
I heard it all. The creep told them that I was some slut he’d picked up, some whore who’d led him on, that going to Manhattan Beach had been my idea. That, then, for no reason, I’d turned on him, brutally attacked him. They looked at him, up and down. He was six feet tall, a muscular young man in the prime of his life. Yes, his face was pocked and bleeding from stiletto-heel wounds, one eye was swollen shut, blood dripping down his cheek. They looked at me. I was seventeen, looked younger, slender and underdeveloped, five feet four. My dress was ripped in half. My panties were gone.
The younger officer rummaged through the car’s front seat, came out with the torn panties dangling between his thumb and forefinger. The big cop reached behind his belt, pulled out his handcuffs, slapped them on Josh, shoved him in the backseat of the squad car. Shoved him hard. Josh screamed, his voice high and hysterical, “You won’t get away with this! My uncle …” The cop mumbled something I couldn’t hear, slammed the car door, and that was that.
Then the redhead sat me down on a bench and bandaged my feet tightly to stem the bleeding. While we waited for the paddy wagon to come and get Josh, he told me that someone in the apartment building had seen me running away from the car and notified them. The officers drove to the precinct station, took down my story. I could hardly talk. I was in shock.
It was 2 a.m. when the squad car pulled up in front of my house, and my parents were waiting for me, frantic with worry. They’d called Gloria when I missed my curfew. She said she’d been dropped off at 10 p.m. Then they’d called the police.
No charges ever stuck against my would-be rapist. His uncle was a well-known attorney on Long Island. Hotshot uncle got the case dismissed. I saw Josh Gagliardi’s name in the newspaper awhile back; he was running for Congress.
It’s been decades. He’d gotten off scot-free. That was what haunted me. I was certain that he’d intended to kill me.
“Anger broods and blisters,” I said to Andrew, as the lights came on across the Hudson. “I try to keep mine under control, but I’ve never really been able to let it go.” I sighed. “If I could play even a small role in getting this rapist off the streets, in bringing him to justice, I might find some sense of closure.”
Andrew took my hand, kissed it, then placed it on his heart. I loved that gesture. It spoke of love and concern. It helped begin to absolve those traumatic memories.
“Just to be safe, Maggie,” he said, “let’s work together on this, and keep a low profile. Armchair sleuths can sometimes impede an investigation and do more harm than good, but maybe together we can help.”