If I Should Die Before I Die by Peter Israel Page B

Maybe we’ll have some other things to talk about, once this one’s over.”
    This did the trick. I guess Bobby’s no different from most people, in terms of his ego and his dreams, and maybe I’m not much different from people who’d make use of them.
    Anyway, I worked through one other idea with him. I wanted somebody I could talk to myself, who knew Carter McCloy. He didn’t think that would be easy; from what he’d seen, the broads were mostly one-night stands; besides, hadn’t he told me they wouldn’t let me in at the Rosebud? But he said he’d keep his eyes open.
    Money, I told him, might help.
    He seemed to like that suggestion.
    Breakfast with Bobby Derr wasn’t the only work I did for the Counselor’s Wife on “company time.” I could use Bobby up to a point without telling him why, but there was no way I could call any of our regular contacts at the NYPD or the media and not arouse suspicion. Not when a whole task force was, as it was put, “combing the city” for the anonymous killer and every tip, or shred of a tip, was being tracked down and women on the streets and in the stores, blondes as well as brunettes now, were wearing scarves around their heads. The media, of course, had been full of it all that week since the Riverside Drive murder, complete with criticism of the police, scientific explanation of death by suffocation and capsule rundowns of the four previous crimes, and an enterprising reporter on the Post had even got hold of, and run, the police file on “open” homicides involving women victims over the last two years. The reporter suggested that the Pillow Killer might have been operating for much longer, only that his modus operandi had changed.
    But knowing that the media have a way of changing things over time, dropping this or that detail in order to fit a developing story, I wanted to look at the original reportage, so I put in some time in the Periodical Room at the New York Public Library on 42nd Street, and from it I abstracted some interesting facts and discrepancies.
    Of the first four murders, the first had taken place the previous winter, then three in the spring and early summer. They had all happened in Brooklyn, the first in Cobble Hill, the second way out in Bensonhurst, the third in Park Slope, the fourth in Brooklyn Heights. The victims had all been white, brunette, single. The oldest had been twenty-seven. All had worked. All but one of them—the last—had lived alone. All but one—the last—had been murdered during the night. All have been called “party girls” by the media, connoting something south of prostitution but north of the straight arrow. None appeared to have known or been linkable to any of the others. All dated frequently. The kind, in sum, who might have been found in places like Melchiorre’s on the Upper East Side, or discos like the Rosebud, though neither of these two was mentioned in the accounts.
    The third murder, the Park Slope one, was the only one where there’d been signs of violence. The police had found blood traces on the victim’s bed. It was their only forensic evidence in all four cases, but they’d never been able to match it with a suspect.
    The fourth murder, the one in Brooklyn Heights, differed in several respects. The victim, Annette Costello, had a roommate, and the killing had taken place on a Sunday in broad daylight. The roommate, away for the weekend, had discovered the body when she returned that evening. There was evidence that Annette Costello had been out shopping in the neighborhood before she was killed, possibly in the company of the killer. Witnesses claimed to have seen a young man with her in a local supermarket, but none could agree on what he looked like and that lead too, like all the others the police had uncovered, had apparently evaporated in the course of investigation.
    Annette Costello had died on a