Part 5 (2/2)
”Clean it?”
”Yeah, clean it.”
”Was Bryant around?”
”I didn't see him.”
”Where was he?”
n.o.ble shrugged. ”I don't know. Probably working somewhere else around.”
”So you went to clean the deer cage yourself?”
”Yeah.”
”And you found them?”
n.o.ble grimaced. ”It was terrible,” he said. ”They was beat up awful bad. Just awful. Blood everywhere. I never seen nothing like it.”
”Yes,” Reardon said. ”What did you do when you found them like that?”
”I called the police.”
”Immediately?”
”Yeah. I run right to the little workroom in the main building and called the cops. I was real scared myself, you know? I mean, I figured that a guy that would do that to them deer might hang around and do it to a person just as easy, you know? So I just wanted the cops to get on over there in a hurry.”
”Did you see anyone at all in the zoo between, say, midnight and three in the morning?”
”Sure,” n.o.ble said, ”there was a couple making out on the bench across from the bird house till about two-thirty.”
”Did you see them leave?”
”Yeah. They went up the stairs to Fifth Avenue.”
”What did they look like?”
”They looked like Puerto Ricans to me,” n.o.ble said with a little grin.
”Anything unusual about them?”
”No. Nothing that I can remember. Just a couple making out.”
”Anybody else?”
”An old man. I remember thinking that that was odd. You know, old people don't usually come out that time of night.”
”When was he there?”
”Same time as those Puerto Ricans. He came by just before they left.”
”Did he stop?”
”No, he just kept walking right through the zoo and up to Fifth Avenue. He was walking kind of fast. I guess he was a little afraid of being out that time of night.”
”Did anything strike you as unusual about him?” Reardon asked.
”No. And those were the only people I saw.”
”And you're sure that all of them had left the zoo by two-thirty?”
”Yeah, as far as I know, they was all gone. I didn't see n.o.body except Bryant after that.”
The interrogation lasted for another hour. Reardon went over each detail again. He went over the sounds n.o.ble had heard. He asked him to describe the couple. He took him back through his statements about the old man he claimed to have seen and asked him if he knew whether or not either the couple or the old man had gone into any of the buildings on Fifth Avenue. n.o.ble said that they had simply disappeared up the stairs and he had not seen them again. Had he seen any of them before in the zoo? No. Had he noticed anyone spending a lot of time at or near the cage of the fallow deer? No. Reardon asked him what he knew about his fellow workers. Harry Bryant, n.o.ble said, was a ”funny guy” who constantly made jokes about the animals, particularly when they were in the process of copulation. Did Bryant show any resentment toward his work? No. Toward the animals? No. Did he ever drink on duty? No. Andros Petrakis was ”a nervous type” who did not say much. But as far as n.o.ble knew, Petrakis liked his work, enjoyed the animals as much as could be expected and bore no grudges related to the zoo.
After n.o.ble left, Reardon reviewed the notes he had taken during the questioning. The interrogation of Gilbert n.o.ble had established at least one possibility. If the scuffing sounds that n.o.ble heard were not made by the killer but by someone else, then it was possible that the unknown person might have seen the killing. But what could have made the sounds n.o.ble described? Reardon thought they could have been made by a man with a limp dragging one foot behind him after each step. But there were two sounds, one metallic and harsh and the other m.u.f.fled, and they had occurred simultaneously. In that case, Reardon thought, n.o.ble may have actually heard the killer dragging two weapons behind him as he walked, one of them wrapped in something, the other uncovered. But the sounds n.o.ble described were not continuous, like objects being dragged. Instead, they were interrupted by pauses.
Reardon went into Piccolini's office and told him what n.o.ble had described. Piccolini leaned back in his chair and chewed a cigar. Anything less than an arrest seemed uninteresting to him.
”So what do you make of it?” he asked after Reardon had finished.
”I really don't know,” Reardon said.
Piccolini crushed the stub of his cigar into the ashtray on his desk. ”Mr. Van Allen has asked to speak with the head of the investigation. He wants a firsthand report. I made an appointment for you to see him at three-thirty this afternoon.”
”Schedule him for tomorrow morning,” Reardon said. ”I'm seeing Bryant this afternoon.”
”No,” Piccolini said. ”Schedule Bryant for tomorrow morning.”
”Look, Mario, if n.o.ble heard something it's just possible that Bryant saw something.”
”It can wait.”
”You've been a detective a long time,” Reardon said. ”You know better than that.”
Piccolini opened a desk drawer, pulled out some papers and threw them on his desk. He started shuffling through them. ”Bryant will have to wait,” he said.
Reardon shrugged. ”All right. When is Van Allen coming over?”
”He's not coming over here. You're going over there.”
”Where?”
”His place on Fifth Avenue. Right across from the zoo.” Piccolini took a small piece of paper and started to write down Van Allen's address.
”I know where it is,” Reardon said brusquely, and turned to leave the office. For the first time in all the years he'd worked for Piccolini, he did not close the door behind him.
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