The Slaughter of the Innocent

By John F. Nolan

Nassau County Homicide Squad South was summoned to a murder scene on Election Day morning, 2016. An infant girl was found inside a seedy mens room gas station, shrouded with a blood-soaked cotton blanket. The babys throat had been severed with a box cutter, found alongside the body.

Visual examination of the body revealed a deformed right arm and a missing right foot. Crime scene further revealed the presence of a placenta with two umbilical cords. A search of the mens and womens bathrooms failed to yield a second body.

Besides the murdered girl, the only visible clue was a cryptic message, printed in lipstick, posted on the back of the door: Return to sender!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 2, 2018
• ISBN: 9781543482676

Book preview

Copyright © 2018 by John Nolan.

Main cover and artwork provided by Christine Patchen

Library of Congress Control Number:     2018901441

ISBN:                  Hardcover                  978-1-5434-8266-9

                            Softcover                     978-1-5434-8265-2

                            eBook                          978-1-5434-8267-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 02/01/2018

Xlibris

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I

am honored to dedicate Slaughter of the Innocent to Timothy Jaccard, retired ambulance medical technician of the Nassau County Police Department.

Mr. Jaccard was instrumental in having New York State enact a Safe Haven law, known officially as the Abandoned Infant Protection Act. The act allows a mother to relinquish a baby in a safe manner and not be held criminally liable for abandonment.

A Safe Haven is a designated public place, such as a hospital, firehouse, EMS station, or police precinct where a baby may be left in a safe condition so that it may be permanently cared for.

All the efforts of the foundation pay off when they can change the mind of one person who had been intent on either murdering their child or throwing them away. Focus is directed toward despondent people who would commit such a horrible crime. Enlightening these people to other options of solving their problems is the driving force behind the foundation. Although this is a huge undertaking, the foundation believes that doing nothing as more infants are abandoned shortly after birth would be a far greater tragedy.

Without regard to race, color, age, creed, or national origin, the foundation saves lives of infants who have been abandoned. They act as a Safe Haven and accept a newborn from a parent or guardian who wishes to relinquish custody. Referrals are made to appropriate government entities and other nonprofit social service agencies capable of providing advice and counsel to pre- and postpartum persons if the need arises.

The foundation’s mission is to focus on preventing infanticide and enabling Safe Havens to provide assistance to prospective birth parents. The foundation has saved many lives.

Timothy Jaccard is the founder and president for the AMT Children of Hope Foundation. He works endlessly and passionately to save lives and prevent the abandonment of infants.

CONTENTS

Book One

Chapter 1   Homicide Squad South

Chapter 2   Crime Scene - Election Day - 2016

Chapter 3   Crime Scene Search

Chapter 4   Help Or Hindrance

Chapter 5   The Big Boss

Chapter 6   Nuts and Bolts - The Basics

Chapter 7   The Last Rites

Chapter 8   Baiting the Trap

Chapter 9   Funeral Home

Chapter 10   High Mass

Chapter 11   Holy Rood Cemetery

Chapter 12   Rendezvous

Chapter 13   Moment of Truth

Chapter 14   Declaration of War

Chapter 15   What To Do?

Chapter 16   Game Plan - Tuesday, November 15

Book Two

Chapter 17   Is It Worth It?

Chapter 18   Possible Suspect

Chapter 19   Dialogue

Chapter 20   Wednesday Night

Chapter 21   Thursday Morning Mail

Chapter 22   Make Something Happen

Chapter 23   Forensics

Chapter 24   Loneliness

Chapter 25   Breaking News

Chapter26   McGinty

Chapter 27   Fires of Hell

Chapter 28   Moving On

Chapter 29   D-Day Friday, November 18

Chapter 30   Baiting the Trap

Chapter 31   Confrontation

Chapter 32   Showdown

Chapter 33   Catching the Spies

Chapter 34   Roosevelt Field

Book Three

Chapter 35   The Inquisition

Chapter 36   Aunt Jackie

Chapter 37   In Vitro Fertilzation

Chapter 38   Day of Atonement

Chapter 39   A Lifeline

Chapter 40   The Crucible

Chapter 41   Regrouping

Chapter 42   Expanded Investigation

Book Four

Chapter 43   Get the Rope

Chapter 44   Nailing it Down

Chapter 45   Occam’s Razor

Chapter 46   Chinese Wall

Chapter 47   Crossing the Rubicon

Chapter 48   Showdown

Chapter 49   Armistice

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

BOOK ONE

IF YOU HAVE TEARS, PREPARE TO SHED THEM NOW.

—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, JULIUS CAESAR, ACT 3, SCENE 2

CHAPTER ONE

Homicide Squad South

M OST WORKING STIFFS are either anchored to an office, cubicle, or cab of a truck. Being handcuffed to either a desk, telephone, computer, printer, or gear shift, they sit and dream of being someplace else.

I don’t have the luxury of lounging around in a pristine workplace. My job description gives me the authority to run murder investigations. Hunting killers with a vengeance is my mission in life. Someplace else for me is in the streets, basements, attics, back alleys, dumpsters, car trunks, parks, motels, and tenements.

Too often to count, I’ve been a frequent visitor to seedy places where the cockroaches know my name and scurry for cover from my stiletto heels. Maggots snarl at my appearance. They know I’m about to steal their buffet and put the lot into a morgue freezer.

My name is Patricia Ann McAvoy, detective lieutenant, commander of the Nassau County Homicide Squad South. Subordinates call me boss, close friends call me Patti Mac, acquaintances know me as Patti, and the rest, just lieutenant.

Homicide South has jurisdiction of cases below the Long Island Expressway, which runs west from New York City’s East River to Riverhead in Suffolk County. Nassau County sits between the city and Suffolk County like the white cream in an Oreo cookie. The roadway, seventy-five miles of ugly concrete, is not unlike the Mason-Dixon line. North of the expressway lies the fabled gold coast, where robber barons erected fenced-in estates. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald described the life of the idle rich in this idyllic land. In many sprawling estates, landscaping and fences cost more than the houses of the working classes.

South of the expressway belongs to me. The bulk of the population resides in congested bedroom communities. Murdered bodies from this crowd land on my lap.

I’ve seen them all: brother kills brother, husband murders wife, armed robber shoots deli clerk, rapist strangles victim, murder of parents by children, gang revenge, suicides, overdoses, and serial killings.

The worst of the lot are baby killers. Infanticide investigation is not work for the squeamish. I wage jihad against child murderers. I believe they are cretins, spawned in the chasms of hell. Most of them go to prison, but if I had my way, I would return them alive to the fire and brimstone of hell.

CHAPTER TWO

Crime Scene - Election Day - 2016

I STARED INTO the gray eyes of my lead detective as he squatted over the tiny victim. His eyes revealed he’d also seen too many murdered innocents. He returned my gaze as he held up his right hand, like a traffic cop, halting me from stepping into the crime scene.

In a flat tone matching his eyes, Det. Ron Horton said, Boss, I’ll handle this one, as he snapped on a pair of latex gloves and hunched over a tiny body, facedown, wispy blond hair jutting out from the corner of a blood-drenched white cotton blanket.

My ego was offended. After all, I am Horton’s boss and his first female commanding officer. I know Ron wasn’t being insubordinate. He was old school and wanted to protect me from an ugly sight, so I backed off, delegating control of the scene to him.

Go ahead, Ron, I said. Your name is on the case. You’re the craftsman. You’ve been given the most distasteful job in this world. The physical exam of the baby is your job.

I deferred to Ron because I knew he and the rest of the team were aware of my history. There are no secrets in the police department. A hysterectomy during prime childbearing age destroyed my chance at motherhood. They also knew I had terminated a pregnancy, kowtowing under pressure from my unfaithful ex-husband, Det. Jack O’Brien. Both events combined to have an intense emotional effect on my psyche.

Straddling the doorway, blocking daylight, I surveyed the crime scene, a small men’s room gas station bathroom. The urinal flush handle was broken off, resulting in a pint of human waste percolating in the bowl. Ceramic mold covered wall tiles, once snow white now riddled with hair-thin black cracks resembling varicose veins—dark, thin, and ugly. A pool of dark red newborn baby blood seeped into the floor tile grout surrounding the body. Black magic marker phone numbers underlined with obscene promises of free love and amateur pornographic smut covered the tile. Soiled toilet paper litter, the result of a backed-up toilet bowl and an overflowing trash bin, told the story of slobs who didn’t care. Blood-drenched napkins were strewn about the small bathroom.

My senses of taste, sight, and smell recoiled from the murder scene.

Ron, I said, this filthy hovel is unfit, even for rats. I doubt this place has seen the swipe of a broom or mop in months. Our Nassau County towns close beaches when the bacteria count in the water gets too high. This pit is an incubator for the black plague. It’s a degrading place to be born and die. How is it allowed to stay open for use by the public?

Horton nodded. He took it as a rhetorical question and didn’t answer.

Instead, he said, Boss, newborns should smell of talcum powder and Ivory soap. They should sleep in comfort surrounded by fluffy clean blankets and be loved. Someone despised this baby. Excuse me, I have work to do.

I turned my head to hide a tear. Horton spotted it. Homicide detectives don’t miss much. They live and die by reading body language. Out of kindness, he said nothing and let me recover.

An impeccable dresser, Horton avoided staining his knees in the muck. Squatting over the body, he manipulated his right index finger and thumb-like forceps, Horton removed a bloody shroud with the care of an archeologist peeling away an Egyptian mummy’s bandages. Finished, he rolled the tiny victim over. Face up, I couldn’t avoid staring at the naked infant. Streaks of red blood covered sections of the girl’s white skin.

She’s a little thing. Her torso’s no bigger than a teapot, Horton said.

My roving eyes locked onto three defective digits on the baby’s right hand. Her index, middle, and ring fingers were stumps. Fingernails had fully formed at the tip of each stub. Her left leg was missing from the knee down.

Horton’s leg muscles gave out. He borrowed a clipboard from a cop and he rested his knees on the piece of wood, and reached across the body to check out a suspicious lump under a second blanket.

Lifting the blanket, Ron summoned me with his free hand, exposing two umbilical cords attached to two placentas. The sight stole our voices. A blood-smeared box cutter lay next to the organs. The box cutter’s razor blade fully extended was used to sever the umbilical cords from the babies’ stomachs as well as the throat. The weapon lay as mute evidence of intentional murder.

I exchanged a knowing glance with Ron. Both of us thought, There’s another one.

Jesus, I finally said, there’s another baby. Where is it?

I’ll look, Ron said as he stood, lifted the toilet tank cover, and dumped out the contents of the trash bin. Grabbing a plunger, he dipped the wooden handle in the muck to swish around the feces-ridden toilet water. Lifting the toilet tank cover, he announced, Nothing here, boss. Horton squeezed his nostrils to deny entry of the stench. Nearly retching, he continued his search around and under the urinal.

Not here, he said, No blood either. Take a peek behind the door, boss. Maybe it’s back there.

I swung the bathroom door, exposing a filthy wall. The backside of the door contained scrawls of misspelled X-rated notes penned in magic marker. One message stood out. Printed in red lipstick are block letters that read,

RETURN TO SENDER!

CHAPTER THREE

Crime Scene Search

S WIVELING THE DOOR so the full backside allowed Horton to read the message seemed to stun Ron.

Boss, what the hell does ‘return to sender’ mean?

We’ll know the answer when we find the murdering bitch.

Take a look at this, Ron said, pointing to the baby’s neck.

A razor-thin slice under her chin revealed the source of the bloody mess.

Staring at the sight, I ran the artifacts through my mind. Blankets, box cutter razor blade, bloody murder, and an odd message all pointed to one thing.

I’m not going to allow an alibi like ‘I didn’t know I was pregnant or I got scared and didn’t know what I was doing.’ This is the big one, a full-blown intentional murder carrying a prison sentence of twenty-five to life in the women’s prison at Bedford Hills.

Ron nodded. I may be out of line here, boss. Don’t get yourself emotionally involved. I’ll take care of business here. Maybe you should go back to the car and call out all the troops.

Rather than reveal another chink in my armor, I took Ron’s advice and retreated. I don’t want to spend another second in this filthy sepulcher. The sight of three stubby fingers is getting to me. Saving face, I added, We’re going to find this bitch. I’m pulling out all the stops on this one, Ron. I want a full-court press, and everyone is taking a piece of this case. All leaves and vacations are canceled.

Returning to my Crown Victoria police car, I recalled our arrival at the scene. Eavesdropping on patrol car radio traffic, Ron and I overheard a uniformed cop’s voice requesting homicide detectives at his scene for a suspicious event. His tone signaled the event was more serious than a drug overdose.

I went for my cell phone. Wanting to control the flow of communication, I avoided my police radio. I had learned early on my detective days every Tom, Dick, and Harry listens to police chatter on scanners. Talk of a baby murder would bring out bored, lonely souls to the scene and get in the way, not to mention the media.

Ginger McCullough, my longtime secretary, answered on the first ring. The call identifier tipped Ginger the boss was on the line, and she never kept the boss waiting.

"Ginger, Ron and I were heading to the Tuesday Medical Examiner’s meeting when we heard a call requesting Homicide South. We diverted ourselves and walked into a murder scene. The victim is a newborn girl. I want you to make the notifications for me and have whoever is left in the squad