Pots, pans toppled. Sauce spilled. Artichokes flew. Malcom tried to remain standing, tried to make his way to the narrow kitchen door without falling. He failed.
The building was imploding. He could no longer see Frank or Anthony nor the bar or the window or Doohan or the tall man. Malcom went down when the refrigerator rose toward him and the floor came up at a rollercoaster angle.
Then there was an instant of silence.
Then there was a settling groan of walls, ceiling, tilted furniture and a section of the bar falling with a delayed thud.
Then there was a voice.
Then there was the rain.
2
IT WAS THE SIXTH DAY of rain. Ten people had been reported electrocuted by fallen power lines. Flooding in some subway lines had stopped trains. An Indonesian cab driver driven mad by the inching traffic on Second Avenue shot a Jamaican cabbie who had stalled out in front of him. Trash cans and dumpsters were turned over and garbage cascaded down streets. Rats scurried up from the sewers, running for the nearest building.
"Alf the sacred river is running amok," shouted one of Manhattan's army of mad street corner and subway prophets. He was a gangly creature with obligatory scraggly beard. He called out calmly, loudly over the beat, beat, beat of the rain. He would have been completely ignored if it weren't for the fact that he was completely nude. As it was, almost everyone passing by either ignored him or pretended to.
New Yorkers had seen it all. Well, almost all. There was still plenty to behold.
* * *
Under the crime scene tent on the rooftop above the Brilliance Deli, Detective Mac Taylor snapped photographs of the mutilated corpse, the few faint traces of blood that hadn't been washed away, the potted plants along the walls, the runoff holes and funnels. The dead woman whose skirt was pushed up was about fifty years old, slightly heavy-set, short dark hair with visible graying at the roots.
Mac had already taken dozens of photographs of the roof before he even entered the tent.
At Mac's side, Officer George Weathers, young, stone faced, shrouded in his dark raincoat, looked at Mac. Weathers had seen enough of the corpse.
"Call came at two minutes after nine," said Weathers over the beating sound of the rain on the tent. "Deli owner downstairs. Said blood was pouring on his awning. I got here just before ten. I was over on Lex helping an old man with a heart attack."
Weathers was talking to avoid looking at the corpse, thinking about it, being haunted by it. Mac understood. "Who is she?" he asked.
"Patricia Mycrant, resident in this building, apartment sixteen. Lives…lived with her mother, Gladys Mycrant."
Mac nodded again. The scene had been badly compromised by rain and the delay in his getting here. It had taken him and Detective Donald Flack forty minutes. Normally, it would have taken ten minutes from the forensics lab. If it hadn't been for Flack's stock car driving, it would have taken at least twenty minutes longer.
Water dribbled down Mac's neck under his raincoat. He ignored it.
"Search the roof for a weapon. Then search the ground on all sides of the building. After that, the hallways and the rooftop next door. Talk to the deli owner, anyone else, customers, waiters, cooks," said Mac. "Ask if they saw anyone going into the building before nine or coming out after they saw the bloody rain."
He and Flack would go over the rooftops and hallways and check on every tenant in the building. It didn't hurt to keep Weathers busy and he might turn something up.
"Right," said Weathers, who quickly left the tent.
Mac knelt next to the dead woman, took a dozen more photographs and then placed the waterproof camera in his kit. Then he examined the corpse of Patricia Mycrant.
There was a blood-tinged slit next to her left breast, just under her arm. Mac carefully unbuttoned her rain-drenched shirt and examined the neat wound. With latex gloves on his hands he gently touched the flesh around the wound. No ribs were broken. Whoever struck this blow either knew what he or she was doing or got very lucky.
It was very possible, even likely, given the look on the dead woman's face, that she had been alive while the mutilation occurred.
Mac removed small glass vials from his kit a few feet away and took samples from the wounds. Mac didn't use plastic containers. The possibility of the plastic contaminating a sample was a chance he was unwilling to take. His team had been stung at trial once because of possible contamination of evidence in a plastic vial. It wouldn't happen again.
The body would have to be taken to the lab where an autopsy would determine how many times the woman had been stabbed, how deep the wounds had been. If they were lucky and thorough, the autopsy would also provide some information about the weapon including its length, thickness, width and, if the weapon chipped off or hit bone or hard tissue, there might be enough evidence to identify the knife if it was found. If the weapon was found in the possession of the killer, residue- blood, shards of metal- could also identify it as the murder weapon.
The attack appeared to be sexual, but that could be a cover-up. An examination would determine if there had been penetration. If there had, there might be semen, which meant there might be DNA.
He moved the body slightly to check lividity and determined from the dark layer on the corpse's back that the woman had probably died where she lay. Beneath the body was a crumpled Starbucks coffee cup.
Mac took a photograph of the cup, then carefully deposited the cup in an evidence bag. Mac checked the dead woman's hands, scraped under her fingernails and deposited the residue in a tube.
After bagging her hands, Mac examined the pebbled rooftop around the body. He used a compact Alternate Light Source to look at and around the body again. The ALS was made up of a powerful lamp containing the ultraviolet visible and infrared components of light. The unit then filtered down the light into individual color bands or wavelengths that enhanced the visibility of evidence by the glow or fluorescence of evidence, the darkness of the evidence and small particles revealed by the light.
Although invisible to the naked eye, the ALS revealed a faint trail of blood that led beyond the tent. Mac followed the trail. It led him to the edge of the roof and to one of the drain funnels, the one through which the torrent of blood and rain had cascaded down to the awning below. Without touching the tile rim, Mac examined it. In the oily dirt there was a handprint the rain had not washed away.
Mac thought he could make out the hint of blood in the print. A scan of the print proved him right. There were no visible ridges in the print. The killer had probably worn gloves very much like the ones Mac was wearing. The prints would yield nothing, but the fact that the killer had stood at the edge of the roof might. Someone could have looked up, seen the killer. Not an outlandish possibility. Blood had cascaded down to the awning below. People had seen it. Someone might reasonably be curious enough to step out in the street and look up to see the killer with blood on his hands looking down.
* * *
Flack sat patiently, sympathetically across from Gladys Mycrant in her apartment. He had taken off his raincoat. She had hung it on a hanger in the bathroom after shaking it out.
He had his notebook and a pen in his lap. Until recently, members of the New York Police Department took notes in pencil. Pencil notes could be erased, altered. The district attorney's office did not like pencil notes.
Flack felt himself wince. Two, three, five times a day a shock of pain shot through him and he had to resist putting his hand to his chest to reassure himself that he wasn't bleeding, that his heart wasn't exposed and beating madly.
He had pills in his pocket, pills for the pain. He took them as seldom as possible. They dulled not only the pain but his senses.
Mac had saved his life in the rubble of a bombed-out office building in which they had been trapped. Flack had come very close to death. Sometimes he felt that life had not fully returned.
Gladys offered coffee. He had accepted both because he could use a cup of coffee and because it c
reated a slightly less clinical atmosphere. The coffee was instant, not very hot, served in delicate, ornate, too small china cups. Flack usually took his coffee black. This time he took it with milk and sugar.
"She got a phone call, Patricia did," she said.
Gladys was sixty-eight, thin, wearing a robe that might have been authentic Chinese silk. Her hair was pulled back and her face made up. She was a professionally handsome woman. She was also remarkably calm for someone who had just been informed that her daughter had been murdered on the roof.
"Who called?" Flack asked.
"Don't know," she said, starting to lift her cup of coffee and changing her mind.
"The call came on that phone?" Flack asked, looking at the phone on the table between them.
"Yes."
"What did she say when she got the call?"
"She said she'd be right back, but she was wrong, wasn't she?"
"Yes," said Flack.
"She knew it was raining but she went out without an umbrella. She looked angry and frightened and in a hurry."
"You have any idea of who might want to hurt her?"
Gladys Mycrant smiled and shook her head.
"I can't think of a single person who would want to hurt Patricia."
"Anyone she's had an argument with? Boyfriend?"
"No boyfriend," said Gladys. "Not Patricia."
"Who were her friends?"
"None."
"None?"
"She was a lonely, bitter woman," said Gladys.
"Bitter?"
"Unlucky in love many years ago, more than once."
"Any names?"
"Lost in antiquity, Detective. Another lifetime. A decade ago."
Flack forced himself to drink some coffee. Maybe he and Mac could pick up a real cup in the deli downstairs.
"Did she have a job?"
"My daughter managed this building and the one right next door."
"Who owns the buildings?"
"I do. I should have offered you some Rugers. I'm fond of them but I ration my allotment. The carbs."
"Yes," said Flack.
"I own the buildings but I also work," she said. "Sales at Found Again on Ninth Avenue, the charity resale shop. We deal only in donated items from celebrities. People vie to give their clothes and costume jewelry to us, and customers love the idea of wearing a skirt that was recently worn by Britney Spears or a pair of Antonio Banderas's discarded shoes."
"Sounds interesting," said Flack.
"Fascinating," said Gladys with a sad smile. "This gown I'm wearing belonged to Cher."
"You don't seem…?"
"Devastated by the gruesome murder of my daughter? We all suffer in different ways. I've learned to suffer in increments, not explosions, to expect disappointment. I'll grieve in my own way and not the way the world expects me to. Does that answer your question?"
"It does," said Flack. "Anything else you can think of that might help?"
"No, but I'm sure you will give me a card with your name and phone number on it should something come to me."
"I will," he said. "May I look at your daughter's room?"
"You may not," she said.
He put away his notebook. "You have some reason?"
"I need none. My daughter just died. I dislike the image of you rustling around through her underclothes, her privacy."
"I can get a search warrant," he said gently. "This is a murder investigation."
"I'm sure you can and will, but on this issue you will not have my cooperation."
"There may be something in her room that can lead us to whoever killed her," Flack pressed. "The faster we move, the more likely we are to find him."
"Or her," Gladys Mycrant added. "Your plea would suggest that I have a vested interest in finding out who murdered my daughter. I have none. She is dead and not returning. Punishing the guilty party strikes me as irrelevant. It is your concern and business, not mine."
Flack knew that by the time he got a warrant, Gladys would be able to hide or dispose of anything in her daughter's room or the apartment that she didn't want the police to see. It wouldn't necessarily have anything to do with the murder, but it might.
"If the rain lets up, I'll be going to work this afternoon," she said, rising from her seat along with Flack. "It will take my mind off of what has happened. Good-bye, Detective."
"I'm very sorry for your loss," he said, moving to the door.
"Why?" she asked. "You barely know me and you did not know Patricia."
"I'm sorry for anyone who loses a child," he said.
"Patricia was forty-six years old, hardly a child."
Flack gave up. He had been doing interviews of suspects, victims and their families for more than ten years. He had met crazies who would confess to anything, killers who were sure they could get around the evidence, religious fanatics who didn't know the difference between real and unreal, but he had never met anyone like Gladys Mycrant. All he could be sure of about her was that she was both lying and hiding something. He wanted to find out what her secrets were. Those secrets might lead to a murderer.
Flack went to find Mac. Before calling to arrange for a search warrant, he was determined to have a real cup of coffee and maybe, just maybe, one of the pills in his pocket.
* * *
Earlier that morning, before his execution of Patricia Mycrant, the limping man paused in the hall-way of an office building twenty-one blocks away. He had pulled the waterproof hood of his raincoat back so he could drink the tall Starbucks coffee he had purchased minutes before. The latex gloves made it slightly awkward, but only slightly.
The rain, deep, dark, protective, beat noisily, a dull tom-tom beat, a million drums, relentlessly uncaring, which was just what he wanted, why he had chosen this day, why he now stood in the hallway outside of Strutts, McClean & Berg on the eighth floor of the Stanwick Oil Building.
The limping man hadn't needed to follow James Feldt. He knew where Feldt would be. He was certain that Feldt would not be stopped by the rain. He knew enough about the man to know that staying in his studio apartment alone for even one full day would be intolerable. The limping man had counted on it.
James Feldt had no friends. His relatives had little to do with him and what contact they had was by snail mail, never face-to-face. James Feldt was fifty-two, pink baby face; luxuriant, fine, short white hair neatly combed at all times. The limping man had never seen James Feldt when he wasn't wearing a suit, and Feldt seemed to have an endless supply of suits, or at least sartorial variations.
Feldt wore granny glasses and thought he looked like John Lennon, which he decidedly did not.
James Feldt was an auditor, a good one judging by the number of clients he had throughout Manhattan. All of his work came by way of referrals. Most of his income was spent on books he kept in shelves in his apartment. Hundreds of books. Classics, ancient, old and modern. The books were all purchased used so they would look as if he had read them. He had not. James Feldt spent his free time on the Internet, in therapy sessions and working. His solace, his meditation was in numbers, not words. He clung to his laptop like a novitiate might cling to his Bible.
The limping man knew him well.
He finished the coffee. James Feldt was alone in the office. Most of the offices in the building were closed because of the weather. In most cases, employees, partners and management had just assumed it would not be business as usual. And they were right. Power kept flicking on and off. Now it was dark inside and outside the door to Strutts, McClean & Berg.
Feldt did not pause. Glasses perched on the end of his nose, he played at the keys of his battery-powered laptop and kept working.
The desktop computer he had turned off sat silently. He would turn it back on when the power was restored or the backup building generator kicked in. He had plenty to do until that happened.
The limping man drained the last few drops of coffee from the cup, crushed the cup and stuffed it into one deep pocket of his rai
ncoat. With his free hand, he reached into the other deep pocket and took out the knife, the knife he would later use to carve, abuse, punish and kill Patricia Mycrant on a roof twenty-one blocks away.
The glass outer door wasn't locked. James Feldt had seen no reason to lock it. It wouldn't have mattered much if he had. The man would simply have knocked and waited till the curious auditor had opened the door. But this was much better.
The man, knife now open in his pocket, went through the outer door and walked to the inside office door that James had left open. He walked silently, though James wouldn't have heard him in any case against the background of rain.
Clap of thunder. Perfect. Perfect. A horror movie. A lone victim in an isolated room, a mad or calculating killer. But the limping man was most assuredly not mad.
He stood in the office doorway, waiting. He was not in a hurry, at least not in a big hurry. He waited for James to look up or sense that he was there. It didn't take long.
When James Feldt looked up, fingers arched lightly over the keyboard like a piano virtuoso, he was startled but not instantly surprised.
When James Feldt recognized the man in the doorway of the office, the man who was closing the door behind him, he was not frightened. He was puzzled.
"You working in the building?" he asked, looking down at his screen, typing in a few words, finishing his thought before looking up again.
The limping man shook his head.
James was completely confused now, wrenched from the numbers he had danced with seconds ago.
"Then what are you doing here?"
The limping man took out the knife and showed the blade to the man seated behind the desk. James adjusted his glasses so he could better see what the man was holding.
The lights came back on and James had a good look at the man's face, but it wasn't the face that suddenly frightened him as much as the clear vision of the knife and the latex glove gripping it.
James sighed deeply, turned off his laptop and closed the lid.
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