Killing Critics

by Carol O'Connell

  She tripped on the curb and lurched suddenly, upsetting the cart. The tea tin went tumbling as the cart settled in a gutter. The tin was rearranged among the other contents layered over and around it. A crusted knapsack spilled a shiny stream of bottle caps, broken pins, tin silverware and other small found things—pretty only, good for nothing.

  The woman righted her cart and veered east on Houston. Forgetting, minutes later, that the dead child’s brains had ever spoken, she turned a corner onto Essex Street. Trash cans seemed to grow there in abundance. She looked over her newfound wealth with the eye of a connoisseur. A flash of metal caught her eye with a ricochet of sunlight. There, on one trash can, was a knife. It was crack-toothed and broken-handled, but still good for cutting meat. She stared at it until the voice from the tea tin cautioned, “Forget.”

  But the mad persistence of memory won out. She began to shake. A cold miasma of fear settled about her shoulders and forced her to her knees and to ground. She clawed at her hair, eyes bulging at what memory was showing her, sobbing, shuddering, screaming, screams quieting now to moans as the dead child’s brains called up the blessed snow of forgetfulness.

  Emma Sue Hollaran was sedated when her body was being transferred to the operating table. The nurse partially draped her in a green sheet. Her exposed legs were marked in sections with black crayon lines like the diagram of a cow in a butcher shop.

  Her eyes slowly roved the small operating theater and the familiar gowned figures of the surgeon and the nurse. Another familiar person was the anesthesiologist. Since this man spoke not one word of English, she was certain that he was not certified to practice medicine in this country. So she could assume he worked cheap, and she never complained.

  The plastic surgeon’s face hovered over her for a moment before her eyes closed, and her mind was swept away in the anesthetic whirlpool. She was well beyond feeling the first stroke of the scalpel as it cut into her body.

  A long hose was inserted into a bloody hole in her left thigh. The music of youth and beauty began with squishy suction noises, the siphoning of fat sucking to the steady beat of the motor which powered the wildly upscale vacuum cleaner. What came out of her was the color and texture of yellow chicken fat, grease and blood. Another hole was made on the inside thigh, and the ugly bits of her body collected in a glass jar at the end of the hose. Another hole was cut in her skin, and another for the next leg—more globules slopped into the jar.

  In a dream state she heard a voice say, “Time to roll the meat.”

  More holes were made in the back of her knees. The long rod was moving under her skin, minding the black marks of the butcher shop diagram. The vacuum cleaner was slurping up fat, ripping away pieces of her body with its greedy incessant sucking.

  Two hours later, her eyes were open again. The surgeon was standing over her, saying a polite variation of You’re nuts—totally insane! His exact words were, “At your insistence, I removed more fat than I should have. You’re going to need rest for at least three days, if not longer. No lifting, no bending, no stairs. Going to a dress ball is absolutely out of the question.”

  “Bullshit.”

  The Manhattan Charities Ball was a networker’s dream. Every power figure in the city would be there. But best of all, Gregor Gilette would be there. She was nearly ready for him. Her triple chin had been suctioned away to a mere double roll of flesh. And her legs would be svelte beneath the tight wrap of a ball gown that was not designed for dancing, and most certainly not designed to be worn by the likes of Emma Sue Hollaran.

  “So how’s Doris?”

  Dr. Edward Slope pushed back the Plexiglas face guard and looked up at her with a quizzical eye.

  Kathy Mallory was one of few cops who could make idle conversation over the open chest of a dead man. The only thing that bothered him was that she never made small talk.

  Now he left his assistant the chore of bagging the body parts and replacing them in the open cavity. He removed his gloves and gown as he walked Mallory to the door of the autopsy room. “Doris is just fine.” He tossed the bloody garments into a disposal bin. “She wonders why you never come by for dinner.”

  “And Fay?”

  “Oh, you know kids. Last week she wanted to be a veterinarian, and now she’s decided to be a musician. I can see the tuition bills rolling in from Juilliard now.”

  “Is she giving you any problems?”

  “We’re working it out.”

  “So you’re going to keep her?”

  “She’s a little girl. It’s not quite the same as returning an unsatisfactory pet to the Puppyland Kennels. And Doris is already planning on grandchildren. You could say it’s a done deal. So now you’re doing civilized small talk. Helen would be proud of you, Kathy.”

  “Mallory,” she corrected him. “So, can we talk body parts now?”

  “Sure.” He plucked a file from the rack and held the door for her. The air in the hall was warmer, and the odor of death was exchanged for the strong disinfectant smell of chlorine.

  His office farther down the hall had the smell of stale cigar smoke, and a hint of the aftershave he slathered on for his wife’s sake. “You’re lucky Starr’s gallery dealer didn’t want to waste money on embalming.” As he sat down to his cluttered desk, he waved her to a leather armchair. “So tell me what you want first. Markowitz would’ve wanted to know what he had for breakfast.”

  “Did he die instantly?”

  “No, by the blood flow, I’d give him a full minute to live.”

  “I want to know why he didn’t scream. He’d just been stabbed. That must have hurt like hell.”

  “Not necessarily. He had enough drugs and wine in his system to dull the pain of major surgery. And the back isn’t the most sensitive area of the body. You’d be surprised how many people have reported not realizing they’d been stabbed in the back. They know something’s happened. There’s a localized pain, but they’re not aware of the penetration. I can tell you there’s evidence of long-term drug habituation.”

  “Same as Peter Ariel, the artist who died twelve years ago.”

  She handed him a copy of his own autopsy report on Ariel. He scanned the lines, and finding the entry he wanted, he nodded his head. “Both artists used the same combination of drugs. It’s a heroin cocktail with some interesting additives. Why in God’s name are you digging around in that old case? It was over and done with twelve years ago.”

  “It’s being reopened ... quietly. We never had this little chat, okay? So, the heroin cocktail gives me a link to Peter Ariel.”

  “Well, no it doesn’t. You won’t find the exact same combination. They have brand names now. Even if the combo is close, a lawyer could argue that link is no stronger than two people sharing the same blend of tobacco or coffee beans.”

  “What about the weapon?”

  “I agree with the first postmortem. Ice pick probably. But you were right, it couldn’t be the one they found by the body. It had to be at least six to seven inches in length. I’m guessing the point of the weapon was filed down. The rod was thin for an ice pick, and razor sharp. No tearing on entry. Very smooth, very neat. There wouldn’t be any blood splatters on the clothing of the killer. It’s the perfect weapon for a public killing.”

  “I need another link to the old murder.”

  “Frankly, outside of the drugs, I can’t see the similarity at all. The first crime was brutal, insane. Kathy, I don’t—”

  “Mallory,” she corrected him as she always did. They had played this game for all of the five years since she had joined the police force and forbidden him to use her given name.

  “Well, you’re still Kathy to me. I’ve known you since you were ten.”

  “Eleven,” she corrected him again.

  “Ten. You lied that extra year onto your age. You put it past Helen Markowitz, but you never fooled me. So don’t expect me to treat you like a cop, when every time I look at you I see a ten-year-old brat. You haven’t changed all that much, Ka
thy.”

  “Mallory.”

  “All right, what else do you want from me?”

  “I want to know about the detail that Markowitz held back.”

  “I have no idea what you mean. We never discussed the case after the autopsy. I know Markowitz didn’t believe it was Oren Watt, but I did.”

  “I know the old man was holding out—that was his trademark. There was something he didn’t want anyone else to know, not even his own men. It was a real bad year for department leaks. It seemed like every damn detail of a case wound up in the tabloids. He knew Oren Watt was lying when he confessed. I know the old man had something, and he used it to trip up Watt. It was something about one of the bodies, wasn’t it?”

  “That was twelve years ago. I’ve worked on a great many bodies since then.”

  “This was the most brutal homicide you ever worked on. Don’t tell me the details just slipped your mind. You know what I remember about that year?”

  “You were only a little kid, and you lived inside a computer. Don’t go telling me that Markowitz discussed this case with you. He wouldn’t—he didn’t.”

  Slope was right about that. The old man had only given her shopping lists of things he needed from other people’s computers. And Mallory had never cared to ask what the information was for. She had been perfectly focussed on the wonderful novelty of sitting at a computer terminal in a police station and raiding cyberspace for all the data she could steal, stealing until she was sated with theft. And getting away with it—that was the best—licensed to steal. It had been one great year.

  “I’ll tell you what I remember best,” she said. “It was the weekly poker games. You missed three games in a row that year. Everybody knew you’d had a falling out with Markowitz. But I’m the only one who knows why. You were a long time forgiving him for asking you to bend the law and hide the facts.”

  “You’re blowing smoke, young lady.”

  Slope had been the best poker player among Markowitz’s old cronies. His face was always a model of composure, defying even God to guess what cards he held.

  She reached into the pocket of her blazer and pulled out a sheaf of yellowed pages bearing the seal and signature of Chief Medical Examiner Edward Slope. She set the papers down on the desk in front of him and tapped them with one long red fingernail. “This is the first autopsy report on Aubry Gilette. It’s dated two days earlier than the report on file.”

  “Where did you get that?”

  Slope reached out for the papers. Mallory was faster, picking up the report and casually turning it over in her hands.

  “I found it in the basement of the old house in Brooklyn. That’s where Markowitz kept his personal case notes.”

  She leafed through the pages. “It’s much more interesting than your amended report. I think Aubry Gilette’s brain weight is a bit light. I have a weight of three pounds, one ounce for Peter Ariel’s brain—that’s standard, right? But there’s barely six ounces left of Aubry Gilette’s brain. I didn’t see any mention of missing organ parts in your second report, the official report.” As though she were merely confirming the time of day, she asked, “Now falsifying an autopsy on a homicide—that’s a felony, isn’t it?”

  Edward Slope stared at the pages in her hand, his head shaking slowly from side to side. “Why on earth would Louis have kept it?”

  “He probably wanted to protect you. If anything had gone wrong, he could have substituted this original for the one on file. The signature copy is the only one that could come back on you. None of the duplicate copies would be admissible in court.”

  She understood the shock in Slope’s eyes. In her hand was damning proof of the worst crime in his profession—the collusion of police and ME to falsify and suppress evidence. “If you remember any other irregularities in the old case, call me.”

  She slipped the papers back into her pocket.

  “I think you can trust me with this,” she said softly, with only a suggestion of sarcasm, “because you know how well I can keep a dirty secret. You can trust me because you know I wouldn’t rat on you if you broke a hundred laws.” Her eyebrows lifted with the afterthought of a third reason for his trust. “Oh, and I’m a cop.”

  Night and dark came on. Andrew Bliss settled down with a new bottle and looked up at the stars. There were hardly any. He had to hunt them down with his binoculars. They were faint, pathetic things, washed out by the glittering cityscape, only pinholes in the ceiling. He believed the poetry of stars would be more deservedly dedicated to the dazzle of city lights. The traffic of headlights and turn signals kept to the rhythm of classical symphonies. Great buildings loomed as shimmering behemoths footed in concrete. Poetry was here in every physical metaphor. An aureole of light crowned the city.

  God lived here. Screw the cowboy lore of the western Big Sky Country. Mere stars could not compete with this.

  CHAPTER 3

  EMMA SUE HOLLARAN HAD AWAKENED ON A BED OF pain. Now she lay nude under the four-poster’s canopy of red velvet, which matched the flocked red-on-gold wallpaper. The carpets and curtains were deep purple, the sheets were shocking-pink satin, and every red lampshade was rimmed with black tassels. A player piano was all that was needed to complete the cliché of an antebellum brothel.

  As the plastic surgeon examined Emma Sue’s swollen thighs, her maid of the week paced the length of the bedroom, eyes cast up to heaven and muttering prayers or curses in a language her employer had not yet been able to identify. The succession of maids had all been illegal aliens, the cheapest labor to be found. Some had done only a single day in hell, and others, like this one, had lasted an entire fortnight in Emma Sue’s employ. She could not remember the maids’ names from day to day, week to week, and so had taken to calling all of them Alien.

  “Alien, stop that damn pacing!” she screamed.

  This week’s Alien stepped quickly to the bed, having recognized only her own new name in the spate of words. She looked down at Emma Sue’s bare body and turned away in disgust to resume her pacing and muttering.

  Emma Sue was a mass of red splotches from hips to knees. The swelling made her legs twice as big as they had been before the fat was suctioned out. She stared down at the offensive limbs.

  “Drain that crap out!” she screamed, more outraged than pained.

  “I warned you,” said the surgeon. “This was entirely too much to—”

  “Make it go away!”

  “Don’t you remember when we did your abs and buttocks? You were swollen then, too.”

  “Don’t you remember? My stomach and butt were swollen because you nearly killed me, you idiot! You drained me then. Do it now.”

  “I drained an infection. This is just the normal post-op swelling.” He was writing on his prescription pad. “I want you to take these pills. The swelling will go down in two to three weeks. Try to—”

  “Weeks? You moron, I haven’t got two to three days. The ball is tonight!”

  “You can’t possibly go anywhere.”

  “Watch me.”

  Within the hour she was attached to the medical apparatus. She did not seem to mind the sight of fluid draining into her veins from a plastic bag attached to a long pole, nor the other fluid coming out through the series of drains plugged into her legs. The maid fled the room, as the doctor monitored the cortisone IV. The air was foul. The doctor’s face was going to that pale vomit shade of green, and then he too left the room in search of a toilet.

  The bad drawings of body parts had been taken down, and gone was the babble and the crush of television people and tourists who had wandered in off the street. The last cable for the camera equipment was pulled out of the wall and rolled up by a crew grip.

  His back turned on the door, Sergeant Riker stood alone in the quiet emptiness of the high white walls. The room was all too familiar, a long rectangle, coffinlike in the convergence of parallels toward the end of the room. Though this space was vast, there was the feeling of walls closing in, the coffin li
d coming down on him. Koozeman’s new location was upscale, high-rent SoHo, but it was only a larger version of the old gallery in the East Village, the site of a crime so brutal, the photographs had never been published.

  Twelve years ago, in the blood and butchery of a double homicide, Riker had come close to understanding art. Never had he seen anything so compelling. The image of the bodies would never leave him.

  On that long-ago night, he had reported to the crime scene, pressed through the crowd and past the guards at the door. Two rookie officers had been standing in the room with the bodies. The young cops were statues, struck silent and still by shock. Flashbulbs had gone off from every angle, and everyone was blinded by the light. The dark shadowy bodies were the stuff of bad dreams, but they took on a terrible clarity with each blast of light, intermittently real and illusory.

  The forensic technicians had gone about the night’s work with only the exchange of necessary words. Orders were issued in the low tones of talking in church. There had been no black humor that night. The youngest officer had looked on the bloody face of the dancer and cried. Riker had gently wiped the boy’s face and sent him away.

  Now his reverie was broken. He was aware of Mallory standing beside him, waiting.

  “The room in Koozeman’s old East Village gallery was smaller,” said Riker. “But it’s the same layout. The killer didn’t do them at the same time. Peter Ariel died first. Markowitz figured the perp laid in wait for Aubry.”

  Mallory moved to the center of the room. She was reading from a yellowed sheet of paper. “Quinn had blood on his shoes.”

  “Yeah, we all did,” said Riker, pulling out a cigarette to kill the phantom smell of blood and spoiled meat, urine and feces. “You had to be there. You can’t tell what that scene was like from the paperwork and the shots. Then Aubry’s father shows up. He’d been waiting for her in a coffeehouse three blocks west of here. Aubry was hours late. Her father called everyone she knew to track her down. She was supposed to meet Quinn at the gallery earlier that night.”