Monday 24th November
The Male Locker Room, Floor 11, 1PP
As he washed his hands, Goren had to award the latest round to Rank Xerox and whoever designed those infernal machines. So it was impossible, for him anyway, to deal with a paper jam without getting his hands dirty.
"Hi Mike" he said turning from the basin as Logan came in from somewhere in his topcoat.
And made quickly for the urinal.
"Giants played a good game yesterday"
"Yeah" Goren pulled out paper towels. "Bit scary in the fourth quarter though. Hey Mike? Did you know a guy called Terry Cagney over in Richmond?"
His time on Staten Island was sometimes a sore point for Logan, who considered it more his personal and professional Alcatraz.
"Jimmy? Yeah. Sure. Good man. Why?"
"Just got a message from him. Thinks maybe a case of his could turn out to be linked to the two Eames and I are dealing with"
"Your dramatic crime spree" mocked Logan gently as he wriggled and got done. "Cagney is a good guy. Very diligent. Not as smart as you of course but if…"
"Thanks"
His zipper closed Logan turned around as Goren left in a hurry. He shook his head in mild bemusement and then at the basins had a horrible thought.
"Nah not even Ross could ever be that mean to me" Mike thought as he began to wash up.
Unaware that out in the hall, Goren was taking chance to call home on his cell. And getting no reply was slightly relieved. It told him Caro was over the bad morning sickness she got earlier and meant she had called Bellevue to say she would be a little late. And he had mentally crossed dry crackers off the list of things the book said might help. She just threw those up in the kitchen sink.
First Methodist Church, Rockland Avenue, Staten Island
With Terry "Jimmy" Cagney unable to meet them for a while, Goren and Eames got out of the SUV and hurried up the path to the porch. It was here or on his way to his home that Edward Rollins claimed to be. At the time his wife was murdered on Tuesday 14th October.
As Goren unzipped his folder Eames scanned the notices in the cases.
"Here you go" she tapped the glass front. "List of the deacons with their names and addresses. Including Ed Rollins"
"Can you see the meeting listed?" Goren checked "Umm…they called it a ministry meeting"
"Yep. Plain as day. All of them for the second half of the year. Looks to be the second Tuesday each month" Eames turned to him. "And an easily available public fact I could check. Once I knew where Rollins worshipped and he was a deacon"
"They did door to door mission work according to Cagney. No secret and I got the impression it was one reason he doubted Rollins was guilty"
"Being something in the church you mean?" snorted Eames "More likely to put him top of my list of suspects"
Goren shook his head at her slight cynicism; though it was true down the years they had come across more than one religious type turned out to be "guilty as sin". He followed Eames out into the driving, sleety rain glad of the watch cap covering his ears.
SVU, Manhattan
John Munch said nothing and kept his head down as Olivia Benson and Finn Tutuola began to raise their voices.
"He had sex with her" she gestured.
"And he admitted that. He was her damn boyfriend" Finn snapped. "He hardly needed to dope her for that now did he Liv?"
"Maybe he thought she needed that to loosen up or so she would do things he wanted!"
"Oh give me strength" barked an exasperated Tutuola. "Not every man thinks like that. Or maybe it's just you"
"And what the hell that does that mean?" Benson close to yelled.
"Whatever you want it to. Same as this case. And you are forgetting what these two witnesses said? That changes the situation or are you just going to ignore that because…"
The door at the end of the room burst open.
"What the hell is going on in here?" Dan Cragen did yell and with a gesture to his office. "I could hardly hear myself think for the two of you. And I expect the Chief of D's could hear it too"
"Ask her" snapped Finn snatching a folder from his desk. "I have a meeting with a witness and a sketch artist"
"Well?" asked Cragen of a red faced with annoyance Benson.
And beginning to think his wife might be right. He had enough of some of the goings on in this Squad. Or certain of them in particular. Something Elliot Stabler's not unexpected transfer request form, handed to him earlier, was not going to solve completely. Trouble was Benson put hers in two days ago. Cragen's problem now was deciding which of them he was going to let go.
Forest Hills Road, Staten Island
"The café on West Fifty Third is leased by Jemma, the older daughter and a friend from college" said Detective Cagney unlocking the front door of the house. "So when he got home between about nine forty-five and ten, Ed Rollins assumed Marylyn might have turned in early. Said the travel and working there was taking it out of his wife"
"Why was she suddenly doing shifts there?" asked Eames.
They stood for a moment in the hallway of the middle class family residence that felt very cold with no heating on. It was still, but only just, in the hands of NYPD as a crime scene and she could sense Goren beside her itching to start looking. Maybe to find something not seen as significant at the time.
"Jemma is six months pregnant, seven now I guess and with a toddler as well, Marylyn was helping out. Recruiting staff up there wasn't the problem Jemma told us. Plenty of 'resting' theatrical types available. Trouble was, soon as they got a part in a show they would not turn up. Leave her and her business partner in the lurch. She has young kids too"
That made sense. "Café Othello" was in the heart of the theatre district and was the only reason Mrs Rollins, normally a fifty four year old homemaker and community volunteer was going to Manhattan four days a week.
"So could you walk us through?" asked Goren.
"Sure" said the younger black man. "Ed says he hung his coat in the hall here and came right through"
Cagney opened the door to a kitchen/family room. "Everything was normal in here as he got some coffee and went to switch on the TV. That's when he says he heard a noise out back"
They went to the glass doors to look down the neat back yard to the fence at the far end.
"Time he opened the drapes, Ed says he just got the impression someone went over the fence"
Goren read something in his folder. "Didn't think to check or go out because that backs onto the park and kids have climbed over before to retrieve a ball"
"Except that time of night it must have been dark" said Eames "For kids to be playing over there"
Rollins nodded. "Yes and that's one of the things looked at another way made his story suspicious. The local kids to here are not gun toting hoodlums he might have been afraid of"
"So you might argue any other person would have gone out to check, see it wasn't vandalism or kids climbed over to mess around" mused Eames. "And he didn't go out because it never happened. He just said that to back up his intruder story"
"Yes" said Rollins. "It gets to ten forty five and Ed goes upstairs. To check if Marylyn was asleep and if not to make her a hot drink. That's when he finds her dead on the bed"
"Smothered with a pillow like Othello did to Desdemona" said Goren softly as they headed for the stairs.
In the master bedroom there was only one obvious thing missing. The matching porcelain bedside lamp for the one still there. That had been found smashed on the floor. The assumption being, since it contained the victim's prints, she had grabbed that to hit her attacker. If so, if left no trace of them on it.
"When he finds Marilyn, Rollins says he attempted CPR. Had been trained in First Aid by the bank he worked for. And some bruising on her chest might be consistent with panicked compressions" said Rollins.
"And that on her arms consistent with someone kneeling on them" said Eames recalling snippets of the ME's report Goren had read aloud on the way over to the island.
"Stops any risk of skin or hair under the nails if they struggle"
Cagney glanced at Goren for that remark.
"Then of course there is the fact he either lied or was genuinely confused when we first interviewed him. About dinner that night. Didn't help with time of death given the stomach contents"
"Can't always be accurate" said Goren "People digest at different rates. Four hours for food to clear the stomach is only an average"
Eames paced across the room "Let me get this straight. Rollins said when he came home late and in a rush to get to his meeting, his wife already ate?"
"That's what he said when he described the events of the evening" said the Staten detective "Which would have been around six. But when the ME found partially digested food and put that with the rest, she pushed the time of death after ten. When Ed was home. Only later did he say that was an assumption, not something he knew for fact"
"It's a thin calculation anyway" said Eames. "The defence should make chopped liver…excuse the pun…of anything more precise than an hour. Even when the body was found fresh"
"He was unlucky" said Goren checking his folder for the papers Rollins had mailed over. "That this witness, Mrs Hollander, put her alive at seven thirty when she telephoned, reports Marilyn saying she just ate"
"And there were the clothes" said Rollins. "The washer finished soon after I arrived at eleven fifteen but there's no telling how long it ran for. It could have been a short cycle when Ed shoved in things like his pants might have picked up fibres from the fluffy robe she was wearing. After he killed her"
Eames peered round Goren's shoulder. "He was either very smart to think of that or again unlucky. To be wearing at the meeting an identical pair of pants to some in the washer. Let that be a lesson to you Bobby. Never own two items the same"
"I buy my socks in packs of three pairs" he muttered. "Saves the trouble of matching them. Terry? Do you have a list of what was in that washer?"
"Uhuh. Was all taken for forensic"
He opened his file at the page and Goren ran his finger down it. Then tapped it. At one item.
"Did you ever account for or match this?"
"No we didn't. You think…?"
When Cagney turned Goren was opening drawers and then pulled out a neat pile of men's handkerchiefs he began to spread out. They were all either plain white or other single colour shades.
Eames looked at him "So why was one in the washer embroidered with a 'C' Goren?"
"Ed Rollins has no second initial" said Cagney quickly.
"It's the other pointer to the play" said Goren pacing the room. "There had to be a second…in Othello he smothers his wife because he thinks she's having an affair…"
"So it was left to look like motive?" said Eames. "Marylyn was having an affair with Chuck or Chris?"
"Could be. It's a handkerchief used to trick Othello into thinking Desdemona is unfaithful. With a man called Cassio" he turned to Cagney.
"I think we need to speak to the DA and see if we can find some other explanation for that handkerchief being there. If not, it looks more like the killer might have left it"
To be continued…