“It’s getting late,” said the caller. “I thought you’d ditched me for a hot date.”
“Nope, a threesome. Me, Matt and the popcorn man,” Naomi replied, feeling buoyed by the call. “How’re you doing?”
“Ol’ Ike is just fine, little lady, don’t you go worrying about a fossil like me. The reason I’m calling is you. You doin’ okay?”
“I’m doing all right,” she said after a slight hesitation. Now, it was his turn to pause. Naomi could picture her friend surrounded by monitors, tubes running in and out of him, hitting on every nurse he deemed to be on the ‘right side’ of 50. “The older ones,” he’d explained, “Don’t pay a geezer like me no mind.” But Naomi did. Had it not been for Ike...
“What is it, hon?” he asked. “You don’t sound right.”
Naomi considered how to answer. In the end she settled on the truth. Ike would see through anything less.
“It’s nothing, really. It’s just…today, that’s all. It’s six months today.”
“I know,” Ike said in that low, husky voice of his. Naomi wondered just how many women he’d seduced with that voice alone. He’d spent the better part of forty years playing barroom piano, until the booze and the smokes and diabetes finally caught up with him.
“You go to a meeting tonight?” he asked.
“Yeah, the usual. Got my chip, had enough congratulations and fanfare for one day, thank you very much.”
“It’s an anniversary. A good anniversary. You need to keep that in mind,” the old jazzman advised. Naomi knew he was right, but still, her feelings remained mixed.
“I know,” she gave in. “It’s just that, oh, I dunno. It seems like forever sometimes, and it feels like, like,” she searched for the words. Ike supplied them.
“Like twenty minutes. Like you just turned that last bottle upside down and watched it drain into the toilet.”
“Exactly,” she admitted, her back pressed to the wall and her fingers massaging her temples.
“Well, that ain’t nothin’ to worry about, and it sure ain’t new. Believe me when I tell you, honey, you are not alone. You understand? You are not alone. Take that from a crusty ol’ fogey with a ten year chip on his keychain.” Naomi couldn’t help herself. She smiled.
“Thanks, Ike. I knew I could count on you.”
“Every lady on this here island can count on Ike ‘cept one, baby, and that’s the one I divorced. That woman was meaner’n a pole-cat. But, enough about Godzilla...what are you doing to celebrate? That low-sodium crap or extra butter, the way ol’ Ike likes it?”
“In your honor, I will sacrifice my hips to the gods of real butter. To celebrate, I just popped a cork and am letting it breathe.”
“Cork? Breathe?” Ike almost sounded concerned.
“Sparkling grape spritzer,” Naomi said, hefting the bottle. She poured a glass, listening to the ice cubes fracture. How many nights it had been a different bottle, a different drink filling her tumbler. Memories, triggered by the splintered cubes and the plastic chip and Ike’s voice, flooded in. He was chuckling, but Naomi could hear other voices in the background.
“Well, you hoist one for ol’ Ike, y’hear? I gotta get going, sweetheart, I got two women here giving me the eye. One thing I never do, that’s disappoint the ladies.”
“Go get ‘em, tiger,” Naomi encouraged, ending the call. She took a sip and felt the electric tingle on her tongue. Carbonation now, not fermentation. Despite Ike’s phone call, despite Terri and Jen taking her out after work, despite those who had invited her to join them after the meeting for pizza and companionship, Naomi recognized that what she was feeling, was alone. Alone inside as well as out. Without being aware of it, she wrapped her arms around herself and rocked. She shut her eyes, fighting the emptiness and despair.
She didn’t know how long she’d been standing there holding back the tears. Time simply passed, and when she regained control, she tried to forget everything that had led up to this. She had endured loneliness before. She’d be damned if she would allow it to master her now.
Moving from the kitchen into the living room, Naomi barely had time to register the shadowy figure before powerful arms encircled her, knocking her off balance. The tumbler flew from her hand. She opened her mouth to scream, but a filthy rag was stuffed into it before she could utter a sound. The cloth stank. A foul, chemical odor that reminded her of ammonia and laundry detergent.
She understood what was happening, and struggled to turn her face, to break free before the chloroform overwhelmed her. Reflexively, she gasped for air. She couldn’t draw a breath. The rag—she was choking on the rag!
Her legs buckled, and she crumpled to the floor. Before the blackness engulfed her, she gazed into the face of the man who’d broken into her apartment.
“You,” she hissed, unsure if he could hear her or if the sound was only in her head.
Then, he smiled. He could see it in her eyes—the recognition. The smile told all. He wanted her to know that seeing him would make no difference. He did not care.
Cold dread gripped her as she spiraled into unconsciousness. Death was coming for her, and it tortured her to know that her final memory would be that of the intruder’s cruel smile following her into the afterlife.
But Naomi was wrong. In truth, the smiling man had much worse in store. For those horrors, he wanted her conscious.
Conscious, and painfully aware.
CHAPTER 1
The squad room was nearly empty. Across the bullpen from me, Denny Egan, a chunky, chain-smoking D1 stretched and yawned. He patted his breast pocket, his expression turning sour at finding it empty. He rifled through a drawer, coming up with a pack of Camels more rumpled looking than he was.
“Hey, Whelan,” he barked. “I hear you and the big man took down Phipps today. That right?”
“Yeah, caught him crashed out at his girlfriend’s. Sure didn’t appreciate us waking him up.”
Egan nodded his approval. He jammed one of the stale smokes between his teeth and rose from his chair. I could just about hear the vertebrae crack and pop.
“Good job,” he proclaimed. “Fucking scumbag!”
I let my eyes drift away from the computer again and regarded him. I was starting in on a mountain of case-related paperwork, and the distraction was welcome. Egan made to adjust his tie, then recognizing the futility of the gesture, simply pulled it off, balled it up and stuffed it in his pocket.
“You cutting out?” I asked. He sure looked like he needed to. Dave Beck, his partner, had been off the past three days, his wife having given birth to their first child. Egan, who only knew one way to do the job, had forged ahead solo. It showed.
“Yeah, Going home to have dinner with the old lady,” he confirmed. “See how the normal people live for a change.” Like a lot of the guys, he referred to anybody who didn’t work homicide as ‘normal people.’ Egan, who’d spent the past three decades investigating murders, though, wouldn’t have been able to live like ‘normal people’ if he woke up tomorrow on Mars.
“You tell the big man way-to-go on Phipps,” he said, rapping his knuckles on my desk as he passed. “Fucking A. One for the good guys.”
“Will do, Eegs. Get yourself some shuteye. The bad guys’ll still be here tomorrow.”
He’d almost reached the beyond-salvage carpet when he turned back, fixing me with his stare. For the first time, I saw a flicker of life in his eyes.
“Your grandfather used to say the same thing, did’ja know that?” he asked. I didn’t. Egan must’ve seen that in my face. He smirked, but there was no humor in it.
“The dead ain’t getting any deader, and the bad guys’ll still be here tomorrow,” he quoted, more to himself than to me. “It’s the only thing I wish the old man had been wrong about, kid. The only thing.”
I was still staring at the spot where Egan had been when Burton rounded the corner. He had a cup of coffee in each bear paw and something wrapped in cellophane I found hard to identify. T
he mushy paste inside the wrapper looked like it had been used to pad a boxing glove.
“Don’t look at me, man,” he said. “I just put quarters in the machine. I don’t stock it.”
I took a sip of coffee, estimating that it had been brewed sometime during the Clinton administration. After a minute, I decided on a strategy for the danish. I’d open the corner of the wrapper and squeeze it out like toothpaste. While hunting for scissors, Frank Shea, the duty sergeant, called out. During busier times, the intercom would’ve buzzed, but Shea was an old time cop, and when the place was deserted, the old way was the best way.
“Hey, Jack, Burton—got a hot one for ya’!”
The big man was already getting to his feet. He’d been staring at the stack of paperwork related to the Phipps case the way a French chef might regard a dog turd in his soufflé pan.
“No rest for the weary,” I said, grabbing my jacket.
“Responding says it’s a nightmare!” Shea continued. “Just like that. ‘Tell ‘em it’s a fucking nightmare.’” He tore a sheet from his pad. As I read the details, Burton deposited my mangled danish into Shea’s trash can.
“Hey, that was my dinner!”
“We’ll grab some grub on the way,” Burton said consolingly. “We’re goin’ to a nightmare, may as well stop by McDonald’s, first.”
I weaved through sluggish traffic, muttering profanities at a never-ending stream of daredevil cabbies and discourteous urban guerrillas in SUVs. The unmarked’s A/C was pushing out a flow of decidedly tepid air. I was reviewing the cell phone call I’d taken while Burton was inside Mickey D’s. The number on the caller ID had caught my eye, keeping me from letting it roll to voice mail. It had been placed from the squad room.
“Shea says the CSU van’s on the way. We should beat the techs there by ten minutes, give or take,” I explained.
“And Shea needed to go incognito on that news because...?”
“He says the kid on the scene didn’t want this going out over the radio. All he gave Shea was the basics. One vic, deader than disco, unquestionably a homicide. Says the rest could wait. What the fuck is that about?”
Burton, his eyes watchful as a hawk, just shrugged his shoulders. Shea’s words echoed as I found a gap and shot through traffic. Fucking nightmare...a real fucking nightmare.
The building was familiar to me. The ground floor was taken up by a hardware store, the floors above it apartments. Around the corner were the West Fourth Street basketball courts, and across 5th Avenue was the Waverly Twin, where I’d spent countless nights watching movies that wouldn’t ever make it to Astoria. In the opposite direction were Washington Square Park and the campus of NYU. A Chinese food delivery man was pedaling a three-wheeler. I wondered how long it took to get an order of lemon chicken from that place.
We took the stairs to the top floor which was divided into four units. When I came around the newel post, I saw a uniformed officer standing outside the door to the right rear apartment. Beside him was a short, stocky man who looked both agitated and concerned. The landlord, I guessed.
The first-on-scene introduced himself as Luke Greene. He shook our hands with a polite, “Detective Whelan, Detective Carver,” and glanced at the odd-man-out, who was shifting nervously from foot to foot. Burton suggested that the man, whom Greene identified as Dante Vicelli, go get some coffee, preferably decaf, and wait for us in his office. Caught somewhere between panic and relief, the little Italian nodded and darted down the stairs. He was mumbling the Hail Mary as he went.
Greene began summarizing.
“I responded to a check-well-being call about 6:15. Tenant is a woman named Naomi Weaver. The resident across the hall called the landlord to complain about a foul odor. Landlord shows up, sniffs, and as you can tell, doesn’t like what he gets a whiff of. He calls the station because he doesn’t want any complaints about entering a tenant’s apartment without the police present.”
“He didn’t open the door until you got here?” Burton asked.
“Says he didn’t. He met me downstairs, and we walked up together.”
“You believe him?” I asked.
“Yes sir. After entering, I believe him.”
“Why?” The kid paused. An expression crossed his face that I couldn’t read. Up ‘til now, he’d been as rigid as a Marine. I wondered if he’d served. Though young, Greene wasn’t exhibiting the overzealous attitude some did when attending their first 187, nor did he show any signs that he desired to find somewhere private to go toss his cookies.
“I told Mr. Vicelli to remain outside. He backed away pretty quick when the real stink hit him. When I saw the vic, I was sure he hadn’t been inside.”
“Good,” I said, and I meant it. The kid was observant. Vicelli had been mouth-breathing the entire time he’d been up here. The odor coming from the apartment was one Burton and I knew all too well. It was a safe bet that Vicelli hadn’t the stomach to endure a noseful of putrefaction.
“What then?”
“I asked Mr. Vicelli to wait while I went in. I gave the crime scene wide berth, checked the remaining rooms to be sure there was only one victim and that the perp wasn’t still inside, then reported in to request a homicide team.”
“Why didn’t you use the radio?” Burton asked. The million dollar question.
“You’ll see when you go in. Sure ain’t a suicide, Detective.” The kid’s assurance suggested to me that he had more than enough visual evidence to rule out natural death. Sometimes, though, when rooks viewed their first bathtub heart attack or saw the amount of fluid expelled from a body that’d been ripening a few days, it was easy to see how some jumped to the conclusion it was homicide. I thought I’d sized Greene up pretty well. Time to find out if I was right.
“How bad is it,” I asked, pulling on a pair of latex gloves. Burton was already slipping on shoe covers.
“I was in Iraq,” Greene said, looking not at me, but through me. I wondered what he was seeing in his mind’s-eye. I didn’t want to think about his point of reference as he came back and continued his thought. “This is pretty goddamned bad.” He produced the landlord’s key and opened the door, glancing at our paper shoe covers.
“Just so you know, those aren’t gonna help if you plan on getting close.” Greene’s voice remained monotone, but his words conveyed an ominous sense of foreboding. Burton was ready. We stepped inside.
There was no mistaking the stench of decay, strong enough now to overpower the reek of loosed bowels. We stepped into a small foyer, where the first thing I noticed were coins. Four of them, one marking each impression of a shoeprint. From the open doorway, Greene explained.
“Those four prints are mine, sir. To the right is a kitchenette, which opens off onto a hallway leading to the bedroom and bath. Straight ahead and to the left is where you’ll find the vic. I found no footprints leading in to, or out of the rear hallway, bedroom or bath. There’s around a buck seventy of me moving around.” Greene’s attention to detail impressed even Burton. This kid wouldn’t be stuck on patrol long, assuming somebody upstairs bothered to take notice.
We moved into a spacious living room, an open floor plan Weaver had used furniture to divide. A large, L-shaped sectional split the space, with half devoted to home fitness, and the rest set aside for entertainment. A 40-inch flat screen television stood against one wall, bookended by art deco component cabinets containing a satellite receiver, DVD player, VCR and surround sound stereo system. In the center of the technophile’s paradise was what remained of Naomi Weaver.
“Shee-it,” breathed Burton, taking in the scene.
“We should’ve let Phipps nap a while longer,” I said, understanding now what Greene meant about the shoe covers.
We took only a cursory look, not wanting to risk contaminating the scene. Stepping closer, I saw that the white sectional was streaked with blood. It didn’t appear to be arterial spray, though given the damage done to the body, there was no way to be sure. The deep pile carpet was mat
ted with congealed blood, the largest pool concentrated beneath the chair to which Weaver’s torso remained attached. Only her torso--the rest of her was been completely dismembered.
The disarticulated limbs had been laid out roughly in correct anatomical position. Bone jutted out from ragged tissue. The organs had been piled on the seat of the chair. I thought I saw duct tape beneath her bloated breasts, but I couldn’t be sure. I’d leave that to the CSU guys.
Positioned above where the torso would fit sat Weaver’s head, eyes open, her mouth set in a frozen scream. It was hard to look at, but harder still to look away.
“You ever play the game Operation?” Burton asked. I nodded. “That’s what this looks like. Like whoever did this was playing some sick fucking game.”
From the door came the sound of voices, and men lugging cases of equipment. CSU had arrived.
Something gnawed at me. I didn’t know what, or why, but I had a growing sense of unease as I stared at the body. Burton nudged my arm. I turned to see Dr. Michael Loscalzo, the medical examiner, approaching.
“Jack, Burton,” he said, extending a hand to each of us in turn. The doc was already gloved up.
“Sweet mother of god,” he said, punctuating it with a low whistle. “This isn’t a crime scene, it’s a slaughterhouse!” The three of us regarded the tableau. Loscalzo was right. This was as far from a run-of-the-mill homicide as I’d ever seen. Even the Doc, who’d worked everything from jumpers to floaters to the recovery effort after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, viewed this as something out of the ordinary.
“Whoever did this,” he pronounced, “spent an awful long time taking this woman apart. If you don’t find a lion or grizzly bear unaccounted for, you boys have one hell of a two-legged animal walking around out there.” The doc sighed, took a deep breath, and went to work. I didn’t want to poke around any more until the techies had done their thing and Loscalzo could give us his preliminary findings.
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