Blind Sight (A Mallory Novel) by Carol O'Connell Page B

cans that littered a small table next to an armchair.
    “The perp’s a smoker, too,” she said. “He didn’t just take his butts with him. He washed an ashtray. No DNA left behind, and we won’t find any prints.”
    Riker picked up a week-old newspaper and uncovered another empty ashtray, but this one had not been cleaned in years. The detective recognized the crusted residue of every ashtray in his own apartment. He turned to look at the efficiency kitchen, rendered useless by dirty dishes overflowing the sink to cover the countertop and stove. That area’s small patch of linoleum recorded a hundred sticky spills never cleaned up. The garbage pail was full of soiled paper plates and cups, a few plastic knives, forks and deli napkins that accompanied take-out food—and solved the problem of no clean dishes. The old man who lived here never washed anything. So his partner had zeroed in on one ashtray, clean and shiny, and now Riker was a believer.
    “He’s finishing up his original kill list.” Mallory pulled out her cell phone and called in an all-points bulletin for Albert Costello, eighty-one years of age and last seen wearing a thick bandage on the back of his head.
    Riker studied a framed photograph on the wall. The resident of thisapartment was pictured here in younger days, standing with a gang of laughing people, and the woman beside him was his bride. There were other such pictures on every wall, a younger Costello among friends who, one frame by another, dwindled in number, and they were all dated to other eras by the clothes they wore. The most recent picture was at least a decade old.
    This completed Riker’s portrait of a loner to fit their victim profile. “You figure the kid and the nun witnessed the attack on Costello?”
    “There’s more to it. They did show up before our perp could finish with the old man. But I think Angela Quill knew the killer. That’s why he switched victims.”
    Riker was skeptical. There was only so much to be gleaned from one clean ashtray.
    —
    DOWN THE HALL , the squad room of Special Crimes was in chaos tonight, phones ringing, men coming and going, shouted words flying desk to desk.
    The incident room was an oasis of silence—no phones in here, only the rustle of papers being pinned to the cork walls. Blood-red was the dominant color of one broad patch that now held autopsy photos of all four victims. The adjoining wall held the paper clutter of their vital statistics and the statements of people living close to three of them with no clue that those victims had ever existed. Lieutenant Coffey could not claim a lack of manpower on this one. Every cop in town was at his disposal to run down leads.
    Detective Gonzales ducked his head in the door to say, “We got company. It’s Lieutenant Maglia.”
    “Good.” Just the bastard he needed to see. “Bring him in here.” Coffey turned to a group of detectives gathered at the back wall. “I need the room,” he said, and all of them filed out.
    The visitor walked in.
    No, that lieutenant strutted inside and slammed the door behind him. This was a departure from Maglia’s go-along, get-along nature, but offense was always the best defense in Copland. He had also come armed with a better head of hair, a few more inches in height, and ten more years on the job.
    Coffey waved his hand toward a group of metal folding chairs, but the lieutenant in charge of Missing Persons would not sit down. Tony Maglia jammed his hands into pants pockets and faked impatience when he said, “Jack, I haven’t got time for this.”
    Yeah, right . Maglia had refused to talk on the telephone, and this in-your-face visit was his own idea. His squad’s major foul-up on the two missing Quills required privacy, and that was understandable. This was not the first time Maglia’s people had mishandled a case, and this one would warrant investigation. Who knew how private a phone line might be, who might listen in—or what might be