Dead of Winter

by Stuart Melvin Kaminsky

  Two, is there enough for a search warrant of Cormier's apartment? Check it out with Mac.

  Three, more research on Cormier's background.

  Four, check with all the tenants who use the elevator. See if they own.22s. Could be wrong about Cormier. Don't think so.

  There hadn't been much left of the bullet, but there was enough to match with a weapon if one could be found.

  She half listened to The Daily Show, trying to think if there was something she had missed. She made a few more notes when the show was over, switched to ABC to see what was on Nightline. It was about whether serial killers were evil. Guests were going to be a lawyer, an FBI profiler, a psychologist, and a psychiatrist.

  Aiden switched off the television with her remote. She knew that evil existed. She had witnessed it, sat across the table from it. There was a difference between someone being crazy and someone being evil.

  Evil was not an acceptable diagnosis for a killer. There was no clinical description for it, no number assigned it. There were dozens of variations, all psychological, in the reference books for serial killers, brutal one- or two-time murderers, child molesters, but none of them could cope with the reality of someone being simply, clearly evil.

  She didn't want to go down that road before she got some sleep, didn't want to go down through the death penalty arguments again. If someone was, indeed, evil, there was no cure, no treatment. You either lock them up forever when you catch them or you execute them.

  She turned off the lights and was asleep almost instantly.

  * * *

  Big Stevie didn't give the driver the exact address where he was going. He didn't want him to write it down, remember it. He gave him an address a block away instead. He would have made it two blocks, but he didn't trust his throbbing leg.

  It was a risk. Stevie had been repeating the address to himself and was afraid of losing it if he gave the driver a different address, but Stevie had to be careful. Mr. Marco would want him to be careful.

  When the car stopped, Stevie paid the driver and gave him a decent tip, not too big, not too small. Stevie made a painful effort not to limp or wince, not to be remembered.

  The driver took off as soon as Stevie closed the door. He didn't ask if he should wait. Stevie found himself in a vaguely familiar area of Brooklyn Heights. There was no one on the sidewalk, no cars passing by on the narrow street. There were tightly packed together three-story brownstones and granite buildings. Garbage was stacked next to mounds of snow. Both sides of the street looked fortified with makeshift walls of snow and garbage.

  Stevie was on the opposite side of the street from his destination. He limped along, growing weaker with each step, knowing the bleeding had started again, that he had probably left blood on the seat of the car. Couldn't be helped.

  He was about to cross the street when he noticed another car. It was parked ahead of him on his side of the street. The windows were steamy. The motor was idling quietly.

  He thought he could make out two figures in the front seat but he wasn't sure because of the steamy windows. Were they watching the entrance to the brownstone where he was headed?

  Cops? No, couldn't be. Maybe they weren't looking for him. Maybe they were just waiting for someone else or stopping to talk about something or… Stevie didn't buy it. What had happened to him today made him think. He preferred to have others think for him, others he could trust, like Marco, but that was the problem. He was beginning to distrust Marco.

  Think it through, he said to himself as he stepped into the shadows of a dark doorway where he could keep his eyes on the two people in the car.

  I did the job at the hotel. I killed a cop. I busted up another cop. If I get picked up, Marco might worry about my talking. He should know better, but he might worry. Could I blame him? Yes.

  He couldn't wait. Stevie had to get somewhere where he could be patched up. He was bleeding again, and not a little bit.

  Take a chance with Lynn Contranos? He didn't know her. Think of someplace else to go? He had no real options. Well, maybe one, but he would avoid it if he could. He crossed the street and headed for the brownstone. He didn't look back, but he heard the car door open and close behind him.

  He found the name on a plastic plate on the stone wall, LYNN CONTRANOS, MASSAGE THERAPIST. He pressed the button, sensing the two people approaching him. No answer. He pressed the button again and a woman's voice came through the small speaker, "Yes?"

  "Steven Guista," he said.

  "Be right there," she said, her voice muffled, and clicked off.

  Did he recognize that voice? Stevie wasn't sure. A few seconds later he heard a metal ping coming from the front door. He reached for the door handle sensing now that the two people were only a few feet behind him. Instead of opening the door, Big Stevie turned quickly, surprising them, two men, both of them much younger than Stevie, neither of them as large. One of the men had a gun in his right hand.

  Stevie recognized both of them. One was a baker's assistant at Marco's. The other was the bakery security guard. It was the security guard who held the gun.

  Stevie didn't hesitate. His fist pounded deeply into the stomach of the man with the gun who doubled forward. At the same time, with his free hand Stevie reached out for the neck of the second man who was groping for something in his pocket.

  Stevie forgot about the pain in his leg and concentrated on simply staying alive.

  11

  "WHO?" asked Danny the next morning after Stella finished reading the E-mail message on the screen in front of her.

  Danny hadn't slept well. He dreamt of a chain dangling in the cold wind and himself slowly sliding down it, trying to hold on, his hands slipping, knowing he would eventually run out of chain and fall into the darkness below him. It was a long dream. He remembered calling out for help below but no one could hear him at that distance in the darkness and the whistling wind. He had been happy to get out of bed at five and get to work.

  "Jacob Laudano," Stella said.

  Danny looked over her shoulder at the screen and read out loud, "Jacob the Jockey?"

  "That's what he's called," she said.

  "He's a jockey?"

  "Was," she said.

  "Which means…" Danny began.

  "He's probably small," said Stella. "Let's…"

  She used the mouse and hit more keys.

  "The last time he was pulled in, that was last August, he stood four ten and weighed ninety pounds. Look at his rap sheet."

  Danny looked. The list was long and included an arrest for stabbing a prostitute and five other arrests for bar fights, all involving knives.

  "Laudano is a known associate of Steven Guista," said Stella.

  "What do we do?" he asked.

  "Attach a ninety-pound weight to that chain," she said. "Lower it twelve feet and see if it holds."

  "We'll need more chain," said Danny.

  "We'll need more chain," Stella agreed. "But that can wait. Guista's bakery truck was picked up last night. It's at an impound on Staten Island."

  "So we're going there first?" asked Danny.

  Stella shook her head "no" and said, "First we go to Brooklyn."

  "Brooklyn," Danny repeated. "Why?"

  "Guista took a car service from a location in Brooklyn last night," said Stella, reaching for a report next to her desk and handing it to Danny. "We check the company. Find out where he went. Should be easy. One of the two kids who took Guista's truck for a spin remembered Guista, the time and the car."

  "It's going to be a busy day," said Danny. "What about Laudano, the Jockey?"

  "Flack is on it," she said.

  "He should be in bed," said Danny.

  "He should be in the hospital," said Stella, "but he's not. He's on the street. Let's go."

  "Since we're on the subject of hospitals," he said. "You're not looking any better."

  "I'm fine."

  "Your face is red," he said. "You have a fever."

  She ignored h
is comment and put the computer in sleep mode, dropped a small stack of reports in a file folder, and stood up.

  "The Jockey," Danny said almost to himself. "Who would have thought? It makes no sense."

  "Why not?" asked Stella, leading the way out of the lab.

  "A crooked union boss with mob connections hires a circus act to murder a witness? A strong man and a…" Don asked.

  "Little person," Stella completed.

  "Why?" asked Danny. "They were sure to be noticed."

  Stella picked up her kit in one hand and her file folder in the other. Danny took her place at the computer.

  "Maybe we're supposed to think it's a circus act," she said.

  "Red herring?" asked Danny.

  "It smells fishy," she said with a smile.

  Danny groaned.

  Stella left the lab, went to the elevator, and pushed the button for the lobby. Stella coughed, a raspy cough.

  * * *

  "Why?" said Louisa Cormier's agent, Michelle King, a twitchy woman in her late forties. Like Louisa she was well groomed, thin, and dressed for business in a black suit and white blouse. She did not have her client's good looks, but she made up for it with a handsome, confident severity. The room smelled of cigarettes and a flowered spray scent.

  Aiden sat in one chair of King's office on Madison Avenue. King played with a pencil, tapping it impatiently against the top of her mahogany desk.

  "Why?" Michelle King asked again.

  Mac looked at her for ten seconds and said, "We can go to our offices and discuss this. I don't think you'd like it there. Dead bodies and evidence from things people don't like to touch or even see."

  "I did advise Louisa to get a gun and keep it loaded in her apartment," Michelle King said, reaching for a cigarette in a packet in one of her desk drawers.

  "You mind?" she asked, unsteadily holding up the cigarette.

  "We won't arrest you for it, if that's what you're asking," Mac said. Smoking was illegal in New York City buildings. "Besides, many of the people we have to deal with smoke," Mac said. "We accept it. One of the hazards of the job."

  "Second-hand smoke?" Michelle King asked lighting up with a silver-plated lighter. "It's a myth created by anti-smoking fanatics who have nothing better to do."

  "And first-hand murder," said Mac. "Is that a myth?"

  The agent looked at Aiden, who said nothing, which seemed to unnerve King more than Mac's questions.

  "All right," King said. "I advised her to get a gun, even suggested the kind she might get, one just like mine."

  "Can we look at yours?" asked Mac.

  "You think I shot that man?" she asked, blowing out a plume of smoke and pausing in her pencil tapping.

  "We know he's dead," said Mac.

  "Why on earth would Louisa or I want to kill this man, whoever he was?"

  "His name was Charles Lutnikov," said Aiden. "He was a writer."

  "Never heard of him," King said, putting out her cigarette.

  "Your name and phone number were in his address book," said Mac.

  "My-?" King said.

  "He called your office three times last week," said Aiden. "It's in his phone records."

  "I never spoke to him," King insisted.

  "Your secretary?" asked Mac.

  "Wait, the name does ring a bell," said King. "I think that may have been the name of the person who kept leaving his number. The message from Amy, my assistant, was that he said he had something important to tell me."

  "But you didn't call him back?"

  She shrugged.

  "Amy said he sounded nervous, was very insistent and… well, I'm an agent. I've got lots of oddballs wanting to talk to me about their ideas for books. One of Amy's jobs is to keep them away from me."

  "But this oddball lived in the same apartment building as one of your biggest clients," said Aiden.

  "My biggest client," King corrected. "I was unaware of that."

  She reached into her desk drawer suddenly and came up with a small gun which she pointed at Aiden. Neither detective flinched.

  "My gun," King said, handing it across her desk.

  Mac took it and handed it to Aiden who examined it and said, "Never been fired."

  "Not even loaded," said King. "It's like a chenille blanket I had when I was a little girl. I keep it around for comfort and a sense of security, which I delude myself is real."

  "What happens to the manuscripts of Louisa Cormier's books after she gives them to you?" Mac asked.

  "She doesn't give me manuscripts," said King. "She E-mails me her manuscripts as attachments. I read them and send them on to her editor. Louisa's work requires very little editing by me or the publisher."

  King picked up the pencil again, considered tapping it, changed her mind, and put it down.

  "What about the first three books," said Mac.

  King looked at him warily.

  "The first three books were… a little rough," King said. "They needed work. How did you know?"

  "I read them last night, as well as the fourth and fifth," said Mac. "Something changed."

  "With experience and confidence, Louisa's work, I'm pleased to say, has steadily improved," said King.

  "Do you keep her books on your hard drive?" asked Mac.

  "I have hard copies made in addition to disk copies of all Louisa's books," King said.

  "We'd like to borrow the disks," Mac said.

  "I'll have Amy make copies for you," she said, "but why would you- "

  "We won't take any more of your time right now," said Mac, rising.

  Aiden got up too.

  King remained seated.

  "We'll be in touch," said Mac, going to the door.

  "I sincerely hope not," said King, reaching for her cigarettes.

  When they got past the reception area and into the hall, Aiden said, "She's lying."

  "About?"

  "Those first books," said Aiden.

  Mac nodded.

  "You noticed," she said.

  "She's protecting her golden calf," said Mac.

  "So?" asked Aiden.

  "Let's go see Louisa Cormier."

  * * *

  Stella saw the red, amoeba-shaped splotch of blood on a low snowbank on the sidewalk next to a black plastic garbage bag.

  The driver, a Nigerian named George Apappa, had taken her to the spot where he had dropped the man who had bled on his backseat. George had noticed the blood as soon as he got to his home in Jackson Heights. He couldn't miss the blood. The man had left a small puddle on the floor and a dark, still-moist streak on the seat.

  It had taken George almost an hour to clean the bloodstains. He got into bed with his wife at two in the morning and the phone rang at six- his dispatcher, telling him to get into the garage immediately. He told Stella all this with the sound of a man who had planned to sleep until noon, but instead had dragged himself out of bed, half expecting to be told he was fired when he got to the garage. Stella had a feeling the twenty she slipped him would help him get over his lack of sleep.

  Stella could feel him watching her from the car as she wiped her nose and took a picture of the mound of snow, then scooped up some of the snow with a shovel and dropped it in a plastic bag.

  She started to move slowly along the sidewalk, pausing every few steps to take another photograph. The trail of blood was reasonably easy to follow, frozen in place. Few pedestrians had yet trampled the icy sidewalk.

  Stella put the back of her left hand against her forehead and felt both moisture and fever. She had a thermometer in her kit, but it was reserved for the dead. She had taken three aspirin back at the lab along with a glass of orange juice. She had no hope for this remedy.

  It took her four minutes to find the doorway. There were blood splatters on the door, not thick, but visible. There was blood on the doorstop and something yellowish-brown that looked like vomit. She took photographs, got a sample of the yellow-brown goop, and started to stand when she noticed a spot of whi
te in the crevice of the concrete step. She knelt again. It was a tooth, a bloody tooth. She bagged it and rose to check the listing of the names of the tenants of the building lined up, white on black, near the right side of the door. The names meant nothing to her. She wrote all six down in her notebook.

  Whatever had happened here had happened just before ten, according to the driver's log. It was possible someone inside had heard whatever it was that caused someone to vomit and lose what looked like a reasonably healthy tooth.

  Stella rubbed her hands together and called Danny Messer at the lab.

  "Check out these names," she said. "Got a pen?"

  "You sound terrible," he said.

  "I sound terrible," she agreed. "The names."

  She read off the names slowly, spelling each one.

  "Got it," he said.

  "Check them all out. If you find something, call me back. Guista may have been on his way to see one of them last night when something went wrong."

  "What?" he asked.

  "I'm sending what I've got over to you with a cabbie," she said. "Pay my fare. I've already given him a tip."

  Stella tried to hold back a cough. She couldn't do it.

  "Stella…" Danny started, but she cut him off.

  "Got to go."

  She clicked off and went to the car where George Apappa sat, head back, eyes closed. She opened her kit, dropped the digital disk of photos, the blood samples, the bloody tooth, and the clump of vomit, all separately bagged, into a zippered insulated bag. Then she opened the driver's side door.

  George awoke and had the bag in his hand before he could speak.

  She gave him the CSI address and told him to put the bag directly in the hands of Daniel Messer, who would be waiting for it. Messer, she said, would pay whatever the charge was. She handed him a ten dollar bill on top of that.

  There was a beat in which she saw George wanted to ask what this was all about, but he didn't. He placed the bag on the seat next to him as Stella closed the door.

  * * *

  This time when Louisa Cormier opened the door for Mac and Aiden she was not quite so bright and bubbling. She looked as if she hadn't slept and she was wearing what looked like an oversized flowered smock. Her hair was in place, as was her make-up, but not as perfect as the day before.