by Robert Pobi
“Did you have to get the guy in the nutsack?” Lincoln asked. “You’re already on the Interweb—you flipped the bird at two German tourists.”
“At least I smiled at them.” And she went to her office.
Phelps was at his desk, his big feet up on the beaten oak, fingers knitted together on top of his head. “Hey, Hem, you okay?” He was trying to sound casual but she recognized concern in his tone. The father of two boys, she always felt she filled the space of de facto daughter in his life.
“You really worried?”
Phelps smiled, shook his head. “Not about you. But the kid you shot in the pills is another thing.”
She shrugged and sat down. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“Yeah, well, don’t it always?” Phelps dropped his feet to the floor, reached forward and picked up a mug with a happy face on the side. Took a sip. “You hungry?” he asked.
“Do you have to ask?”
Phelps stood up and fed one thick arm through a jacket sleeve. “Let’s go get us some food.”
———
They sat in their usual booth at the back of Bernie’s. The diner was the best place in the neighborhood for sandwiches and coffee and its proximity to the precinct had made it a recession-proof success since 1921. At any given moment—night or day—there were a dozen cops sprinkled around the place, reading papers, writing notes, or simply avoiding going home to bad marriages.
Hemingway was downing the last bits of a chopped steak with mashed potatoes, peas, and gravy while Phelps looked on, astounded. “You know, Hemi, I been eating with you for almost seven years now and I still can’t wrap my brain around how much food you can shovel away.”
“Shovel away?” She smiled over a forkful of peas. “You’re smooth with the compliments, Jon.”
“I’m not kidding.” Phelps shook his head. “In the Marines I never seen a guy eat like you. And there were some big motherfuckers in the war. That was back before they let chicks into the forces. At least in combat positions.”
Hemingway washed the peas down with a slug of coffee and pushed her empty plate to the edge of the table. “Yeah, well, now they give us guns and shoes and the right to vote. It’s a brave new world out there. The times they are a-changin’.”
“Don’t steal my generation’s music, too.”
It was then that her phone rang. She wiped her mouth with a napkin and answered with her usual, “Hemingway.”
Michael Desmond, the dispatcher for the detective squads, identified himself. Then he told her what had happened.
She felt the chopped steak twitch in her guts. “Jesus. Sure. We’ll be there in ten minutes.”
When she hung up, Phelps was already on his feet. “Where we goin’?”
“East River Park.”
“Who we got?”
She pulled a wallet out of her jacket. “Dead kid.”
“Sure it’s a murder?”
“Unless he chopped off his own feet, yeah.”
||| FOUR
THE BONES of the bridge filled the sky overhead and reflected off the windshield as Hemingway rolled past the police barrier. A uniformed officer in a yellow traffic vest waved her through the utility gate and she parked the Suburban on the grass at the edge of a small park under the shadow of the Queensboro. They sat in silence for a few seconds, each going through a personal checklist of preflight preparations. After a few ticks of the clock the internal monologues were done and they stepped out onto the manicured green.
The circus was in full swing on both sides of the yellow tape. Joggers took photos with their cell phones, excited that something was happening to break the monotony of the health train. A handful of news crews had set up camp at the tapelines on either end of the path, chattering into the cameras like pageant contestants, rictus grins and polished hair competing with non sequiturs for attention. The reporters were almost shouting to be heard over the traffic of the FDR a few yards away. Two of the borough’s big forensic RVs were parked nose to nose, blocking off any chance of an errant camera—cell phone or news variety—from converting death into entertainment.
They headed for the Jacob’s Ladder pulse of the photographer’s flash behind the RVs, ignoring the white-haloed forms of the newspeople bottlenecked at either end of the footpath. The esplanade felt weird without joggers whipping by or Rollerbladers barking Coming through! They stepped off the thin strip of asphalt that cut through the imposed green space and Hemingway spotted a stone on the ground. She reached down, picked it up. It was smooth, the size of a robin’s egg. She slipped it into her pocket.
Phelps watched her, used to the ritual, then headed toward the screens. “When you gonna get tired of doing your Virginia Woolf imitation?”
They walked the rest of the way in silence.
The boy lay on a tarp, eyes pointed at the sky, chin on chest, the pose reminiscent of Caravaggio’s Crucifixion of St. Peter—only there was no tension in the muscles, no flex in the little neck. His clothes were filthy and ripped and stuck to his flesh, one jacketed arm under the railing, reaching for the East River. Queens beyond. He wore a school jacket and tie. His feet were gone.
Dr. Marcus was down on one space-suited knee, practicing his arcane arts on the child. Unblinking. Unmoving. A photographer moved around the tarp, snapping frames. Marcus looked up, nodded an unhappy greeting, and turned back to the body.
Someone came out of the darkness between the privacy screen and the RV and the eerie strobe of the photographer’s flash gave the shape a jittery, unhealthy cadence. Three steps later it morphed into Walter Afonia—an old-timer doing the tail end of forty years at the Seventh, most of it in the detective squad.
“Hemingway, Phelps,” he said in way of a greeting, then nodded at the boy on the plastic. “Kid’s name was Tyler Rochester. Some jogger found him about a half an hour ago.”
“The jogger?” Phelps asked.
“Dentist. Name’s Zachary Gizbert. He was out here doing ankle training—whatever the fuck that means—and found the kid. Called it in on his phone and a car was here in a little over four minutes. A pair of patrolmen from the Ninth pulled the kid from the drink. He was against one of the pilings to the utility bridge.” He nodded at the world beyond the screens. “Gizbert’s back at the station giving a statement. Guy shit himself.” Afonia paused, waiting for someone to crack a smile or tell a joke or cry. No one did. He continued with the same flat tone that had gotten them to this point. “Kid was dumped upriver. Tide’s been going out for three hours.”
Hemingway turned to Dr. Marcus. “What’s TOD?”
Marcus looked up, nodded. “Two, two and a half hours.”
Afonia moved in beside Marcus and looked down at the kid. “Tyler here made a call from his cell phone at six twenty-one to tell the housekeeper he was on his way home. He took a taxi up Fifth. Got off at the corner, stopped at a deli for a Coke. Paid for the cab and the soda with his debit card. Stepped back out onto the street and off the grid.”
Hemingway stared down at the child, her interpretive software trying to convert the image of the dead boy into some sort of approachable geometry. “What about his cell phone?”
Afonia nodded like he was just getting to that. “Wasn’t in his pockets. Good guess would be the bottom of the East River. If it’s not, it’s turned off.”
“Anything unusual about the body?” she asked.
Afonia shrugged. “Someone took his feet off.”
Hemingway looked off into the water washing by, thinking of kayaking on the other side of Manhattan a few hours back. The boy had been alive then. Now he wasn’t. All in a few short hours.
Afonia looked down at the kid for a second. Then he swallowed and turned away from the body. “All I know is he disappeared sometime after buying a Coke at six forty-three p.m. and less than three hours later he washes up here. Kid’s family lives up near you. You want this case, you can have it.” Afonia fished around in his pocket, his hand coming out with a pack of Parlia
ment Menthols. He offered one to each of them, then excused himself for a smoke in the darkness beyond the privacy screens.
Hemingway crouched down on her haunches beside the medical examiner. He didn’t bother looking over; for him, a crime scene was not a place of greeting, it was a place of solemnity.
Clear polyethylene bags were secured over the boy’s hands with cable ties. Inside the foggy plastic his fingers looked scrubbed and clean, in direct contrast to the filthy clothing and matted, tangled hair that knotted on his forehead. Tyler Rochester had been a good-looking kid who would probably have grown up into a handsome man. Only now he would stay ten forever.
After a few silent moments of magic with a black light, the ME said, “His feet were removed by a saw of some sort. Small, serrated blade. Not a bow saw. Something smaller. Hacksaw most probably.” Then he leaned in and pointed at the boy’s left eyeball. “There’s a small puncture through the sclera, right here. I’m guessing premortem but it might have happened in the river. I’ll have a better idea once I have the body back in the lab. Right now, that’s all I can give you.”
Hemingway looked out across the river, to the lights of Queens on the other side, dappled with the unblinking eyes of apartment windows. Over there it looked alive. She turned back to the dead boy. Then to the medical examiner. “Defensive wounds?”
“His nails look pretty clean but I’ll know a lot more when I get the swabs under a scope. Other than his feet there aren’t any signs of a struggle.”
The feet were enough.
Marcus stood up and pulled off his latex gloves. “The first cuts are tentative, unaligned. After an inch he hit his stride and did a clean job. But the killer didn’t have any practical knowledge of anatomy. The cuts are too high—he went through the bottom flange of the tibia. Half an inch lower and he would have missed both the tibia and talus—it’s mostly cartilage and it’s a lot easier to saw through.
“I’ll have blood work and a tox screen in a few hours. Come see me in three hours.” He dropped his eyes to the stumps of the boy’s legs, one sticking out of a cuff that the river had not been able to rinse of blood.
Afonia came back in.
“You can go home. We’re taking the case.”
Afonia blinked once then nodded. “I thought you would.”
She turned to Phelps, “Call Papandreou and have him put a list together.” She nodded at the dead boy without taking her eyes from Phelps. “Anyone who’s walked. Countrywide.”
The big cop reached for his phone. “Released in the last six months?”
“Make it twelve,” she said, “I don’t want to miss this guy because he controlled himself for six months and a day.”
||| FIVE
THE ROCHESTERS lived in a remodeled brownstone that had everything new money could buy. The home vibrated with the comings and goings of busy people.
A wiry man sporting a well-tailored suit and the fluid movements of a street fighter ushered Hemingway and Phelps into the library. He stood at the door as if an invisible fence prevented him from entering the space and introduced himself as Benoit. Then he told them that the Rochesters would be with them in a few minutes and asked if they wanted anything to drink. Phelps waved it away. Hemingway asked for a Perrier. Benoit disappeared.
Phelps finished casing the room and asked, “How much a place like this cost?” Like any good detective, curiosity was built into his genetic code.
“In this neighborhood? Maybe six mil.” She glanced around the room, then amplified the result to include the rest of the brownstone. “The renovating about two. The furniture and paintings another three. Some of it’s good.” She leaned over and examined a bronze jaguar sitting on a painted Pembroke table. “Most of it’s just all right.”
“No shit?” Phelps jerked a thumb at the library walls. “I checked and the books are in Swedish and German. This isn’t a library, it’s a movie set.”
She shrugged again. “They’re supposed to look good, not be read.”
“The rich are different.”
She shook her head. “They’re like everyone else: insecure.”
The low hum of ambient noise beyond the doors of the library went silent and a few seconds later the Rochesters came in, followed by Benoit who had Hemingway’s Perrier on a small silver tray.
Mr. Rochester clocked in at a fit sixty and had the sharp black eyes and firm handshake of a Wall Street poster boy. Mrs. Rochester was younger by two decades and had the unfocused eyes and loose body movements of a Xanax and vodka cocktail.
When everyone was clear on names, the Rochesters sat down and Hemingway nodded at Benoit as he brought her drink over. “Mr. and Mrs. Rochester, I have some very personal questions to ask and you may not want Benoit—”
Mr. Rochester held up his hand and shook his head. “He stays.”
She took a breath and began. “We are sorry for what happened to your son. We want to find who did this and we want to do it quickly. In order to do that, we are going to have to reconstruct his routine. We have one objective: to find the person who did this.”
Hemingway focused on Mrs. Rochester—the mother usually knew the routines, tradespeople, help, and schedules—but she was staring into the past, her mouth open, her eyes red and black from crying through her makeup.
Hemingway looked down at her notebook. “The first thing we need is a list of everyone that you can think of who might have had contact with Tyler. The school has given us a list of their teachers and personnel but we’ll need to know his extracurricular life as well. Doctor, dentist, piano teacher, fathers of friends who have driven him home, any of your people; tutors; maintenance; cleaning crews; household staff; tradesmen—as comprehensive a list as possible.”
Mrs. Rochester’s head bobbed up, as if gravity had let go for a second. She tried to focus on Hemingway. “God, you don’t think that it was someone he knows—we know—do you?”
Hemingway didn’t look away. “We don’t know.”
The woman’s mouth turned down and her eyes began ratcheting back and forth, as if the gearing had suddenly skipped. The tears very quickly started. “Why did this happen to us? All I wanted was a baby.”
Her husband leaned over and put his arm around her. It seemed an awkward, unnatural gesture.
“Just a baby,” she said, hugging herself and rocking slightly.
Hemingway thought of the cells dividing in her own body and she felt a flush of weird shame. “Have you, or any of your people, noticed anything unusual lately?”
Mr. Rochester turned to Benoit, the replicant, who simply shook his head and said in an even tone, “Nothing unusual.”
“At what time did Tyler usually get home each day?” Hemingway kept her eyes locked on Mr. Rochester. A man like him would want to be certain that the detective investigating his son’s murder had backbone; when they had shaken hands he had squeezed a little too tightly, one of those sexist tests men threw at her every now and then—probably his version of the acid test for competency.
It was Benoit who answered again. “He was usually in the elevator by four thirty-seven. Tonight he stayed late to use the library. Tyler is one of those rare children who likes books.” He paused, then corrected himself. “Liked books.” The man had a precise foreign accent that she couldn’t quite place. It had a lilt of French to it but his Rs were a little hard.
“Did he walk to school unescorted every day?”
Benoit again. “Since January.”
“And before that?” Hemingway kept her eyes locked on Mr. Rochester, ignoring Benoit.
Benoit opened his mouth and Phelps interrupted. “Mr. Rochester, you were his parents, you are the best source of information.”
At that, Mrs. Rochester snorted. It was a loud farm girl guffaw. She stopped when her husband hit her with a hard stare.
“Unfortunately we have been occupied with other things as of late. Of everyone in his life, Benoit knew him best.”
Hemingway’s eyes flicked to Benoit; his face wa
s still molded into that flat battlefield stare his type always had. His head rotated toward her, and she could almost hear the metallic click of gears and grease in the movement. “Until last week I followed him to and from school each day. I think he knew. I discussed it with his father, and Mr. Rochester agreed that he should spend the last month of the year learning what independence was. This was the first time he walked home without my presence.”
And Hemingway recognized something else going on behind the flat eyes. She knew the type; Mank had been like that. If she really wanted to think about it, she was like that, too.
“Put a list together of everyone who saw him on a regular basis. Highlight new people in his circles—the last six months or so.”
Mrs. Rochester was nodding off into Mother’s Little Helper Land again and Mr. Rochester looked like it was starting to sink in.
“All I wanted was a baby—” She sniffled, a loud inelegant pop, and wiped her sleeve across her nose. “How could someone do this to him?”
Mr. Rochester’s face tightened.
Hemingway tried to get the interview back. The next question was a tough one, but standard operating procedure. “Is there anyone who would want to hurt you? Past business dealings, maybe?”
Mr. Rochester stared at her for a blank moment, and then his software was back up. He didn’t hold up his hands and give her an emphatic no fucking way and he didn’t think about it as if it had never crossed his mind, he simply stared at her and said, “Detective Hemingway, I can in no way think of anyone who would feel that something like this could be even remotely justified. This is beyond retribution, Detective. In any capacity.” And for an instant his eyes found Benoit. They shook their heads in unison.
“Has anyone noticed anything out of the ordinary recently? Anything at all? A new delivery man, or florist, or car detailer? Any new spouses or boyfriends in your social circle? Anything at all might help, no matter how insignificant.” Phelps kept his tone even, direct.
“What can you tell us about Tyler?” Hemingway automatically looked at Benoit but it was Mrs. Rochester who answered from behind some unseen curtain of communication.