Unknown Remains

by Peter Leonard

  “You know how to scroll?”

  “No, what’s that?” she said, looking at him, fucking with him. “Yeah, I know how to scroll.”

  “Well, then go to it. See a familiar face, come and get me.”

  Marquis walked out and went to his desk, thinking, man, this fine white suburban woman liked bourbon, liked to give him a hard time, get his attention. He could see himself with this girl, wouldn’t life be fun?

  He picked up the Victoria Ross file and started to read his own investigator’s report:

  Victoria Emilia Ross

  Height: 5' 6" Weight: 117 Hair: Brn Eye Color: Brn

  DOB: 6-12-80 SS: 367-54-0229 Age: 21 Sex: F

  Police were called to 142 Sullivan Street on a fatal shooting. At the scene and in charge from Homicide Section are Sergeant M. Brown, badge #11978, and Ofc. Jimenez badge #170313.

  Murder scene:

  The scene takes place inside the deceased’s apartment. The apartment building sits on the east side of Sullivan Street in Greenwich Village. The body is resting on an Oriental rug in a pool of coagulated blood. Head north, feet south, mouth open, eyes closed. Single gunshot wound through-and-through. Bullet entered the back of the head and exited through the forehead. Spatter is consistent with single shot to the head. The shooting was fatal. Manner of death was ruled to be homicide. The deceased was pronounced dead at 11:19 pm, September 22, 2001, and conveyed to the Medical Examiner’s office. Sergeant M. Brown will testify to his observations.

  Victoria Ross had been a beautiful girl, but she wasn’t anymore. Marquis studied the gritty reality of the photos, putting himself back at the crime scene. He remembered the wineglass on the coffee table a few feet away. Vicki Ross was dressed like she was going out for the night. No sign of a struggle, which might suggest Vicki Ross knew her assailant. And there were two bullet holes in the bedroom window, like the shooter was firing at someone on the catwalk, part of the fire escape. He’d talked to everyone, all the tenants on the floor, and the kitchen crew from the restaurant behind the apartment building. Not one person remembered hearing gunshots.

  Now his attention went back to Diane McCann. How could this sexy, well-dressed suburban woman murder someone in this manner? His conclusion: she couldn’t. His guess, Diane McCann’s Beretta was clean, because if she was involved, she hired out to get it done. Maybe the two guys she’d been talking about. They sounded real because they were. They weren’t hustling her; they were in on it. But how did she find them? Darien, Connecticut, wasn’t the kind of town you’d run into a contract shooter for hire. How could he connect those dots? One thing kept coming back to him, one thing for sure: Mrs. McCann most definitely had motive.

  Now he looked at the medical examiner’s photographs, close-up detail of the small cylindrical entrance wound that was visible after a rectangle of Vicki Ross’s hair on the back of her head had been shaved. The next shot showed the destruction on the opposite side, what the round did, blowing out part of her forehead. The victim’s nose and cheek also showed signs of trauma, which could have resulted when she fell forward on the floor. Could also have happened when Vicki Ross opened the door and someone stepped in and hit her with a fist.

  One of the evidence techs had dug a bullet frag out of the plaster wall. The frag had been tagged and taken to the lab for analysis. Other than the positive ID of Diane McCann by Victoria Ross’s neighbor, none of the other tenants in the building saw or heard anything. The neighbor did respond when Marquis had shown her a photo of Jack McCann. “I used to see him leave Vic’s apartment occasionally, in the morning.”

  From what Marquis had learned, Victoria Ross was born in Brooklyn, an only child, and her parents had passed, drowned when their cruise ship capsized off the coast of Malta in 1998. Brown had also talked to Ross’s work associates and learned that she had had little or no contact with anyone outside the restaurant. Didn’t date any of the waiters, bartenders, managers, busboys, or hostesses.

  Once again, Marquis added up what he knew. No one had motive except the wife. No one was even close.

  Diane had been in the room a little over an hour when Marquis returned and sat across the table from her. “See anyone looks familiar?”

  “I think this is one of them.” She turned the laptop toward him and pointed to a mugshot. “His name’s Ruben Diaz. I looked at hundreds of photos of murderers, armed robbers, and rapists—black guys, white guys, Asians, and Latinos—before I recognized him.”

  Marquis was watching her pale skin get red as she got into it, seeing her as a good-looking woman: the blonde hair tied in a ponytail, the slim white neck, the small nose and those lips had some plumpness to ’em. “He’s kind of handsome in this photograph.”

  “It was taken in 1979, when he was arrested for assault. You know who he is? Ruben Diaz, a former middleweight, a journeyman. Tough guy. Why would Ruben be coming after you?”

  “He works for San Marino.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You don’t believe a thing I say, do you?”

  He didn’t confirm or deny, and his blank gaze held on her for a time.

  “You tell me you went to Vicki Ross’s apartment, and a few hours later, she was found shot to death. You tell me there was a contract with your signature from San Marino Equity, but you can’t find it and the company doesn’t seem to exist. You tell me two men have been harassing you, and now you point out one of them, a former prizefighter. You understand why I’m having trouble with all of this?”

  “A former prizefighter with a record.”

  “That was more than twenty years ago.”

  “My husband was killed in a terrorist attack. I found out he was having an affair. I found out he spent most of our savings and borrowed a lot of money, and you’re blaming me?” She glared at him. “This is unbelievable. Listen, I didn’t shoot Vicki Ross. Everything else was out of my control. I’m the victim. Do you hear me? Am I getting through to you?”

  He didn’t say anything, and now she got up and walked out of the room.

  Marquis wanted to arrest Mrs. McCann, he was so sure she did it, and if ballistics confirmed her gun was the murder weapon, he’d be able to. But as it was, he didn’t have anything that’d hold up. Marquis was thinking about this as he drove to the poker club where Vicki Ross had worked. He talked to Vincent Gallo, trying to ascertain some information. The interview went like this:

  MARQUIS: Know who killed Vicki Ross?

  (Gallo shook his head.)

  MARQUIS: That don’t cut it. Got to say something verbally.

  GALLO: You tell me.

  MARQUIS: Vicki worked for you and so forth.

  GALLO: Uh-huh.

  MARQUIS: In what capacity?

  GALLO: I don’t understand the question.

  MARQUIS: What did she do for you?

  GALLO: She was a dealer.

  MARQUIS: A dealer, huh? That unusual, a young girl dealing?

  GALLO: Vicki knew cards.

  MARQUIS: Anyone have a problem with her?

  GALLO: What do you mean?

  MARQUIS: Somebody she worked with?

  GALLO: Everybody liked her.

  MARQUIS: Customer ever get pissed off, she didn’t deal the right cards?

  GALLO: Not that I saw.

  MARQUIS: Well somebody did. (He paused.) How long have Duane Cobb and Ruben Diaz worked for you?

  GALLO: Never heard a them.

  MARQUIS: They don’t work for you?

  GALLO: No.

  MARQUIS: Tell me about Jack McCann.

  GALLO: Who’s Jack McCann?

  That was the end of it.

  PART

  TWO

  SIXTEEN

  Jack opened his eyes and coughed smoke from burning jet fuel. He could feel the heavy weight of wallboard and a section of ceiling on his chest. Jack turned on his side, got on his hands and knees, and climbed out from under the rubble. The sprinklers were on. Everything was wet.

  He looked up to where the ceiling had been a
nd saw flames and smoke engulfing several floors, and pieces of the airplane, a row of seats with dead passengers still strapped in place. The executive offices of Sterns & Morrison, including Stu Raskin’s, were in the impact zone. It didn’t look good for anyone up that high.

  Jack went through the trading room, a bullpen of cubicles on the other side of the building that had been badly damaged by the blast. “Anyone in here?” he yelled. No answer. There were charred bodies on the floor. Then he saw a leg in black pants sticking out of a pile of debris, pieces of the aircraft: a five-foot rectangle of sheet metal and a fiberglass inner cabin wall with the oval window still intact. He uncovered the body. It was Chuck Bellmore, a good friend, whose skull had been crushed. Jack crouched over the body, felt for a pulse and got nothing. He took Chuck’s wallet and keys. Jack would call Chuck’s folks in Denver, tell them what happened and help any way he could.

  Jack stood up and looked south, saw the top half of Tower Two engulfed in smoke. It was a terrorist attack, had to be. He could see people standing at the gaping opening in the building, and then they were jumping, choosing the way they were going to die.

  He ran to the lobby, no sign of Bonnie. The floor and walls were cracked, a twisted metal frame hanging where the ceiling had been. He ran to the hall; the bank of elevators had been blown out. The smoke was thick, it was difficult to breathe, difficult to see. His eyes were burning. Jack ripped off his shirt and tore it into strips, tied a sleeve over his nose and mouth, climbed over a pile of debris, and moved to the stairwell on the northwest side of the building.

  He raced down twelve flights before he caught up with people on the seventy-seventh floor. He’d seen some of them before: in the mezzanine and in the mall, riding the elevators up or down, but didn’t know anyone by name. The stairwell was packed now, people moving slowly but calmly, friends joking, no one seemed to have an idea what had happened. One guy said it was an earthquake. Another guy thought a gas main had exploded. No one, including Jack, thought the building was in any danger of collapsing. Jack moved shoulder-to-shoulder with a guy in a suit carrying a briefcase. They went quickly down a few floors and then had to stop for a few minutes before they could move again.

  On the fiftieth floor, a big man in a wheelchair was blocking part of the landing and people had to squeeze by him. Jack offered to help. The man said an emergency rescue team was coming to get him. On the forty-third floor, a scared woman was sitting on the stairs crying as people pressed past her. Jack stopped. “Let me help you.”

  “I can’t move, I’m too afraid.”

  “Just relax. You’re going to be okay. What’s your name?”

  “Kimberly.”

  “That’s a nice name.” The woman stood up. She was a load. “Lean on me,” Jack said, hoping she didn’t take them both down. Kimberly took tiny frightened steps, stopping and waiting for the line to move, people entering the stairwell on almost every floor, firefighters in full gear, passing them, going up.

  It took forty-eight minutes to reach the lobby, which looked like it had been hit by a bomb. The elevator doors had been blown out, the frames around them scorched black. A transit cop and two med techs met him and put the woman in a wheelchair, and that was the last time he saw her.

  It was raining. The fire sprinklers were on, and he was soaked. He was walking in several inches of water, shoes crunching on broken glass, the air thick with smoke and dust. Above him, it sounded like the building was cracking, falling apart. He tried to walk out to the plaza, but a cop told him all the exits were closed because of falling debris and people jumping. Through the windows, he could see crumpled, flattened bodies and pieces of the aircraft: a row of empty seats, a section of the fuselage, luggage and shoes strewn around, and a snowstorm of burning paper floating down from the towers.

  Jack was escorted by police down a broken escalator to the mall. He was moving through the concourse past storefronts when he heard what sounded like sticks breaking and then a deafening rumble, a train approaching at high speed. The ground shook, and he felt an enormous concussion. He was thrown off his feet, and everything went black.

  He awoke in darkness. People were moaning, some were screaming, but he couldn’t see anything. Jack moved with his arms out in front of him, feeling his way, no idea what direction he was going. Even with the shirt sleeve over his nose and mouth, it was hard to breathe, everything engulfed in the smoke.

  In the gloom ahead, he saw a flashing light, a medical emergency vehicle that had been destroyed by falling debris, its light bar still intact. A voice said, “Come this way. You have to evacuate the building.” And then he saw lights coming at him, firefighters and cops with flashlights, and he was escorted along a maze of corridors and through a door. He was outside now, disoriented and short of breath, walking into a tidal wave of dust, the sun blotted out, eyes stinging, watering. It smelled like burning plastic, burning jet fuel, and odd things he couldn’t identify.

  Jack was on a street, walking past abandoned cars, the sound of sirens coming from every direction. He looked back at the towers, but only one was still standing. He headed north, moved past a police barrier, two cars with their lights flashing and barricades set up blocking the street.

  A cop said, “Sir, are you hurt? Do you need medical attention?”

  Jack shook his head and kept going. A few blocks further, he walked out of the cloud, squinting in the bright sun. He was covered in white dust and ash. He pulled the shirtsleeve off his mouth and sucked in fresh air, felt the heat of the sun on his back, and heard the sounds of the city around him. A woman handed him a bottle of water and said, “Are you okay?”

  Jack nodded. He didn’t want to be recognized. He broke the seal on the cap, unscrewed it, rinsed the dust out of his eyes and mouth, and guzzled the rest of the water. The streets were lined with people, and everyone was looking south at the Trade Center. Jack turned as Tower One started to collapse, the people around him screaming, yelling, feeling the tragic effects. It took about eleven seconds for the 1,368-foot building to crumble in an explosion of dust and debris.

  Jack glanced at the street signs: W. Broadway and Murray. He kept going north and cut over through Tribeca. Chuck Bellmore, the friend and co-worker he had found dead in the office an hour and a half earlier, lived alone in a loft on Hudson Street. Jack had been there a couple times for parties. He used Chuck’s key to open the front door, crossed the lobby, no one around, to the elevators and rode to the fifth floor.

  There was a big floor-to-ceiling mirror in the main room. Jack stood in front of it, but didn’t recognize himself. Except for the flesh-colored circles around his eyes, he looked like a ghost.

  In the bathroom, he turned on the shower and stood under the hot water in his clothes, rinsing off the white coating that swirled around the tile floor and went down the drain. Jack took off his clothes, threw them in a pile on the shower floor, and saw cuts on his arms, shoulders, and head, and felt shards of glass and fibers that were still embedded in him. He coughed dust and spit it out, washed his mouth out with warm water. He washed his hair twice and turned off the shower, opened the glass door, and stepped out, looking through the window where the twin towers used to be and felt sick to his stomach.

  On his knees in front of the toilet, Jack coughed, heaved, and puked up water and bile, took a couple breaths, wiped his mouth with a wet towel, and flushed the toilet. He found tweezers and a tube of Neosporin in the medicine cabinet and a metal bowl in the kitchen. He took everything into the living room and sat naked on a towel in front of the giant mirror. The incredible thing, he had shards of glass all over his body and hadn’t felt anything until now. Using the tweezers, he pulled eight jagged pieces out of his forearms and shoulders and dropped them into the metal bowl. Jack leaned close to the glass and studied his face. It looked like he had little patches of light brown hair high on his cheeks. He touched the bristles. They felt like plastic fibers.

  With the tweezers, he pinched one and pulled out a two-inch stra
nd. What the hell was it? There were twenty-two in all. He pulled them out and rubbed Neosporin on the pin-dot holes. The wet clothes in the shower, he stuffed into a plastic trash bag along with the shards and fibers he pulled out of his body.

  Now he had to find something to wear. He went into Chuck’s bedroom, opened the top drawer, and grabbed a pair of boxers. He got them on but felt like they were cutting off his circulation, so he snipped the elastic waistband with scissors. This wasn’t a surprise; Chuck weighed about 160, and Jack was 195. He found a pair of warm-up pants with a drawstring waist that fit okay and a polo shirt that was skintight but fine for now.

  At the kitchen table, he dumped out the contents of his own wallet and cut up his driver’s license and credit cards and slid the pieces off the table into a sandwich bag.

  Now he turned on the TV, watching the continuous 9/11 coverage, seeing the plane he saw, American Airlines Flight 11, smash into the north tower at 8:46 AM and explode between floors ninety-three and ninety-nine. No way his co-workers, Stu Raskin included, could’ve survived.

  He watched United Airlines Flight 175, coming from the opposite direction seventeen minutes later, crash into the south tower, floors seventy-five through eighty-five. The accompanying explosion blew out three sides of the building.

  At 9:37 AM, hijackers flew American Airlines Flight 77 into the western facade of the Pentagon. And at 10:07, United Flight 93 crashed in a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania.

  Jack watched the Trade Center towers collapse in great clouds of dust, people on the street staring in disbelief, and turned off the TV. He’d seen enough. The events were difficult to comprehend. It seemed impossible. How could it have happened? He was wound up, angry, didn’t know what to do with himself. He went into the bedroom and lay on Chuck’s bed, staring at the ceiling.

  After what had happened today, his problems seemed insignificant, but it didn’t change what he was going to do. He wanted to call Diane, tell her the whole story, tell her he was sorry, tell her to move on, but he knew that wasn’t possible.