by James Hayman
“The Nakamura murder? Nah. You don’t really care about that one. It’s just your niece’s disappearance.”
“If I sign on for one, I figure I’m signing on for both.”
“And possibly a few more.”
“Yeah. I’ve heard about them. Serial killers are national news.”
“Let me think about it.”
“Yeah, do that, Arturo,” said McCabe. “You think about it. But when you’re done thinking, please make sure your answer is yes. I’m as good a detective as I ever was, maybe even better than back when we were partners, and yes, the fact that Zoe’s my niece is why I want in.”
“The fact that she’s your niece, McCabe, is what’s got me worried. Like I said, let me think about it.”
“Okay. Think about it. In the meantime, why don’t you show me what we have?”
A moment of silence passed between the two men while Astarita let McCabe’s use of the word we sink in.
“One missing person,” Astarita finally said. “Your niece. One homicide. In there. Vic’s a woman named Annie Nakamura. Zoe’s neighbor. No idea yet how well they knew each other.”
“How’d you know to look in there?”
“I didn’t, but when Zoe didn’t answer her door, I figured I’d check with the neighbor and ask her if she saw or heard anything suspicious. I rang the bell, and while I waited for somebody to answer I looked down. Right there. Spotted what looked like blood. Not much. Just a couple of pinprick spatters at the bottom of the door. But I knew what it was. That’s when I located the super and had him open both apartments for me.”
McCabe squatted down and looked. There was barely anything to see. He was amazed Astarita had actually noticed the spatter. Especially standing in the less than bright landing light.
“Good eyesight. How’d you know it was blood and not just dirt?”
“Gut feel. Got another gut feel. We’re gonna see a lot more blood when we spray the area with luminol.”
“What do you think went down?” McCabe said as he and Astarita entered the apartment.
“I figure Zoe was the target. She fits the profile perfectly.”
“Not perfectly. She’s not nearly as well-known as the others. The others all had made names for themselves. Zoe was working on it but hadn’t gotten there yet.”
“Still, she’s a beautiful young actress on the way up. Recent success under her belt. Most likely Nakamura got off the elevator just as the bad guy was dragging Zoe out, who we’re pretty sure was rolled up in a rug your brother swears was there. I figure Nakamura reacted when she saw what the guy was trying to do. Maybe she screamed. Or maybe just tried to get away. Or, who the hell knows, maybe she just stood there looking. Bad guy dropped your niece and attacked Nakamura. No weapons involved. Just his boots and hands.”
“Beaten to death?”
“From the look of her head I’d say he dropped her to the ground and kicked her a couple of good ones to the head. When he found she was still alive he finished her off by strangling her. Put these on and we’ll go inside.”
Astarita handed McCabe some Tyvek booties, a Tyvek cap and a pair of latex gloves. McCabe put them on and they went inside.
“Not much to this place.”
“Nah. It’s tiny. A mirror image of your niece’s.”
Tiny was an understatement. The place was maybe half the size of McCabe’s condo in Portland, which wasn’t all that big. He found it hard to believe his niece or any other sane person would agree to pay three thousand a month for a mouse hole like this on the Lower East Side. Okay, so it boasted high-end appliances, hardwood floors and freshly painted sheetrock. But, Jesus, three K a month? Manhattan real estate had obviously gone totally nuts in the years since he’d left town.
“There are a lot of these small renovated apartments down here these days. Charge a fortune for ’em.”
A youngish man approached. Probably in his midthirties.
“Detective Sergeant McCabe, meet Jonah Eisenberg. Jonah’s our MLI on this case. Sergeant McCabe’s my ex-partner.”
“Ex-partner?”
“Yeah. We used to drive around together a long time ago.”
The two men shook hands. McCabe had often worked with medicolegal investigators, MLIs, back when he was still in New York. Portland didn’t have them. Didn’t really need them. But because of the sheer volume, not just of murders, but of other deaths in New York, the city started training and using MLIs back in the late ’80s. They weren’t doctors, they were physician’s assistants specially trained in the art and science of analyzing murder and other death scenes and determining the cause, manner and timing of the victim’s demise. Often they were better at it than the medical examiners would have been.
Astarita led the way into the bedroom where a heavyset and very dead Asian woman was lying half in and half out of the closet. Her face, her clothes, her black hair and the closet floor were all covered with drying blood. The blood and the damage to her face made it tough to even guess how old she was or even what she’d looked like before the attack.
“He stuffed her in there after he killed her,” said Eisenberg. “Since a big woman like her would barely fit I figure he pulled all her clothes and other crap out of the closet to make room to shove her in.”
Eisenberg waved his hand at the piles of clothes and shoes and other stuff that were strewn around the room. “Then, once he gets the door closed, he seals the outer seams of the closet with duct tape. When we pulled off the tape and opened the door, out she slid.”
“Any estimate of time of death?” McCabe asked Eisenberg.
“Based on body temp and state of rigor, I’d say he probably killed her between one and two a.m. But not in the apartment. From the tiny blood spatter it looks like he did the deed outside in the hall. When she was dead, he dragged her into the apartment and stuffed her body into her own closet. Taped up the seams. Probably figured it’d help contain the smell of decomposition. He might have helped himself with that if he’d turned down the heat in the apartment and maybe opened the windows. But he didn’t bother. Thermostat’s set to seventy-five.”
“After that,” said Astarita, “he cleaned up as best he could. Actually did a pretty good job, as you saw. When he was finished he came back out, picked up the rug with your niece inside and took off.”
McCabe imagined the scene. “So his clothes must have been covered with blood when he left.”
“Most likely,” said Astarita.
“So we’ve got a guy with bloodstained clothes carrying a rug? This is Manhattan. Even if it was two or three in the morning somebody must’ve seen him. A surveillance camera must have picked him up.”
“One camera at the far end of the street picked up the back of a guy carrying something that could have been the rug out to a double-parked black SUV. I haven’t checked the footage yet, but I’m told it’s mostly his back and side, plus it’s a pretty blurry image. You couldn’t tell much about him from the back except he was big and wearing some kind of wide-brimmed hat, probably to hide his face. Also, there was a camera on the entrance to a small bodega across the street. Lousy camera. Lousy image. Plus it was pointed the wrong way. But just on the edge of the frame my people say you can just see a partial side image of what might be somebody stuffing something in the back of an SUV.”
“Might be?”
“Yeah. Might be.”
“You have people canvassing the area?”
“Not yet. We’ll get that going soon.”
“You think this is the latest victim of our theater buff?” asked Eisenberg.
“Yeah. I think so,” said Astarita. “In fact, I’m pretty sure it is.” The MLI ran his eyes carefully over the earthly remains of Annie Nakamura. “Interesting. She doesn’t fit the profile. Even if she was some kind of performer he usually likes his girls younger. Prettier. A whole lot thinner. With not so many clothes on.”
“She wasn’t one of his girls. We think she was a possible witness,” said Astarita. “Inter
rupted our boy at precisely the wrong time.”
“And you’re sure the cause of death was strangulation?” McCabe asked Eisenberg.
“I’m sure. Come here and look at this.” Eisenberg knelt by the body and directed a small high-intensity light into each of Anne Nakamura’s eyes. He then shifted the light so it pointed at her neck. After he did that, Eisenberg put the light back in his pocket and carefully felt around Nakamura’s neck with his fingers.
“As you can see? We’ve got petechiae in the eyes, and while there are no ligature marks on her neck, we do have a fracture of the hyoid bone. What that means is he didn’t use a rope or a belt. Just his hands. Grabbed her around the neck and squeezed. If he squeezed hard enough to actually break the hyoid in someone her age, it means the guy we’re dealing with has a lot of strength in his hands.”
“A big guy?”
“Not necessarily big. But strong. And I’d guess with big hands. We’ll know more once the ME gets her into Langone for the autopsy. Hopefully he left a little something of himself behind.”
Langone was the NYU Langone Medical Center on East 34th Street where most autopsies of homicide victims in Manhattan are performed. After the autopsy, any evidence found on or in Nakamura’s body would be sent down the street to the Hirsch Center for Forensic Sciences on East 26th Street. McCabe knew Hirsch only by reputation since it had opened three years after he’d left for Portland. But he did know it housed one of the largest and best public DNA crime laboratories anywhere in the world, including the FBI lab down in Quantico.
“All right,” Astarita called to a pair of EMTs out in the hall. “Let’s move Ms. Nakamura out of here.”
He asked Hollister, who was standing in the bedroom door, “Anything on Nakamura’s next of kin yet?”
“Yeah. That’s what I wanted to tell you. We found a mother who lives in White Plains. And a brother who’s a doctor on the West Coast. Professor at Stanford Medical School.”
“All right. Pete. I want you to head up to White Plains and tell the mom. Then have somebody in California visit the brother.”
He turned to McCabe, “Okay, first thing I need you to do is to send your brother home. Once he’s gone, I’ll give you a quick tour of your niece’s apartment. After that, you and I are going somewhere private and talk.”
McCabe glanced over at Bobby. He was still leaning against the wall exactly where McCabe had left him. McCabe went up to him. “You need to go now.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“I’m not going anywhere. Not until I know what happened to my daughter.”
“I’m telling you. Either head back to the hospital and see how Mam is doing or back to your apartment and try to get some sleep. You’re not helping anything by staying here. You’re just getting in the way.”
“Fine.” Bobby pushed himself off the wall. “But I’m telling you, you’d better find the guy who did this because if you don’t, I will. And when I do it won’t be pretty.”
McCabe watched his brother descend the stairs.
Chapter 18
“This room will be your home for a while,” Bradshaw told Zoe after she emerged from the bathroom. “I suggest you take care of it. You also might want to clean yourself up a bit. Speaking frankly, you’re more than a little stinky at the moment. I have a few things to do. I’ll be back after dark.”
A few things to do? Zoe resisted a strong urge to tell Bradshaw that first thing he ought to do was to go fuck himself. Instead she silently watched him leave, using the numbers and then his thumb to unlock what she guessed was a steel core door under the fancy wood paneling. When he was gone, she walked over to see if by some miracle her thumbprint could open the lock.
She knew it wouldn’t work. Still, she had to give it a try. She tapped in the numbers 0391 and then placed first one and then her other thumb on the pad. Then each of the rest of her fingers. As expected, the lock remained in place.
Next, she checked the two barred windows. She pulled the curtains aside and looked out over the backyard and the woods beyond. Bradshaw probably chose this room for his prisoner du jour because the windows faced the rear. Unless someone wandered around back and just happened to look up, there would be no way he could see her wave or hear her banging at the window to call for help. Mailmen, deliverymen, lost hikers. None of them were likely to go to the back and look up. Not even a wandering prince to call out Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your long hair. Of course, if the prince did show up, there was no way Zoe’s hair was long enough to do the job, and no way for her prince to get her out through the bars. Sadly, she was stuck.
She studied the view for a minute. Looked down at a stone terrace at the back of the house. No chairs or tables or other outdoor furniture populated the terrace. Because the summer was over? Maybe. More likely because Tyler and his guests didn’t spend much time outdoors. Beyond the terrace lay about a hundred feet of lawn. A little overgrown but not too much. Somebody must have mown it not too long ago . . . maybe at the end of September. A gardener? Could there be a gardener who might come to her rescue? No way. Hoping for that was bullshit. More likely the mower was Bradshaw himself. Or maybe his little brother, if there really was a little brother. If Tyler was in the habit of abducting women and locking them in this ridiculously comfortable prison, he certainly wouldn’t want gardeners or landscapers or any other kind of help coming around and possibly catching sight of his guests. And the gardens she’d seen at the front of the house would have been more carefully tended.
Beyond the scruffy lawn was more woodland. Acres and acres of it. All in the brilliant colors of autumn. Some of the trees had lost enough leaves for Zoe to see what looked like a glimmer of water in the distance. The ocean? No, it didn’t look like the ocean. Too still. Too placid. More likely a lake. Or possibly even a river. The Hudson? No way to tell. Sadly, the water, whatever it turned out to be, was too far away for anyone on a boat either to see Zoe waving or to hear her calling to them. The fact that there was water nearby didn’t help. Unless, she suddenly thought, she could find a mirror or piece of mirror to act as a sun reflector signaling device.
Zoe tried opening one of the windows. No surprise. It wouldn’t budge. She tried the second window with the same result. Closer examination of the frames revealed that Bradshaw had nailed them shut. She supposed if she ever saw anyone back there she could break the glass and shout for help. But deep down she knew she could stand there all day and all night and never see a soul. And if by some miracle she did see someone and managed to signal him, Bradshaw would probably just kill the would-be rescuer before finishing her off. As she stood there looking out, Zoe, who hardly ever cried, felt tears rolling down her cheeks. She was, she decided, totally and completely fucked. In every sense of the word.
She went into the bathroom. Spacious, modern and well outfitted. Deep tub with Jacuzzi spouts and a separate oversized glass-enclosed shower with a little triangular seat in one corner. She opened a closet door. Filled with stacks of thick white towels. Bottles of shampoo, conditioner and bath gel. Rolls of toilet paper and, hanging on a hook on the door, a white terry-cloth robe like one you might find in a Four Seasons hotel but minus the Four Seasons or any other kind of logo.
She longed to take a shower to clean herself and to put on some fresh clothes, most especially underpants that hadn’t been peed in. But did she dare? Would her co-star come sneaking in like Tony Perkins in Psycho and cut her to pieces in the shower? She felt an involuntary shiver as she remembered Hitchcock’s famous shot of the dying Janet Leigh’s blood circling the drain. On the other hand, she was sure he intended to rape her at least once before he killed her. Dead or alive, it was just a question of when. For a moment, she wondered if not showering and remaining “a little stinky” down there might deter him. Probably not. And even if it did, wouldn’t he just kill her sooner rather than later? She wondered if the dream of her funeral represented a portent of things to come. Could you really see the future in your dreams? No! No
! No! No! Zoe told herself. That was ridiculous, and she swore once again that she would not give in. She’d fight the bastard any and every way she could. If it meant having sex to keep him from killing her, she decided she’d rather do it on her own terms.
Zoe was no saint and it had been a long time since she’d been a virgin. Not since she was fifteen and she and her best male friend from Dalton, Josh Haskins, both decided they wanted to find out what all the fuss was about. It turned out, with Josh at least, to be much ado about nothing. Of course, there’d been a fair number of other encounters since. Most were more enjoyable than her outing with Josh. A couple of serious boyfriends and a couple not so serious. The only one she’d thought might be the real deal was Alex, at least until she’d caught him fucking Call Me Bella in Zoe’s own bed. But that was all history. Her problem now was Bradshaw.
And maybe, just maybe, she told herself again, if she could make herself fascinating enough, make the sex good enough, make her bon mots amusing enough, manage to keep him from erupting in anger, maybe, just maybe, she could keep Bradshaw from killing her. Or maybe if she was smart about it she could find a way to kill him first. However, if it turned out to be her who was killed first, she thought she’d rather die clean rather than “a little stinky.” She smiled sadly at the thought, wiped the last of her tears away, and told herself to toughen up. Dead or alive, sooner or later the cops would find her. She just hoped it was alive and not too fucked up.
Zoe went back to the bedroom. She opened her black flowered duffel bag and took out all the stuff Bradshaw had crammed in there, including the black dress she’d bought recently to attend the wedding of one of her Dalton classmates. Her stepmother had commented that black was not really an appropriate color for a wedding, but Zoe had worn it anyway. She looked good in black.
She went back to the bathroom and despite throwing an occasional nervous glance at the unlockable door, she tossed her dirty things into an empty hamper. She briefly wondered if it was Bradshaw who did the laundry. Or maybe he gave that chore to the little brother he’d mentioned. Or maybe he just threw the dirty things into the garbage and killed his victims when they ran out of clean clothes. She draped the white bathrobe over the glass wall of the shower where she could get at it quickly and threw a towel next to it. She selected expensive-looking bottles of shower gel, shampoo and conditioner from the closet and climbed into the glass enclosure. She turned on the water, turned it up as hot as she could take it, washed her body and then her hair, and then just stood there letting the water beat against her, hoping the heat would ease some of the tension in her muscles.