A second coffee poured, I sit back down. Still the insistent drops. Is it a leaking radiator? The roof? Boston’s having a wet autumn, but it’s doubtful that the roof… anyway, my ceiling is Steven Damelin’s floor, so it’s unlikely that a leak would escape his notice. Maybe one of his sinks is stoppered, his bathtub overflowing.
Wide-awake, I go room to room scanning the ceiling. Plaster, moldings, everything’s okay starting from the two bedrooms in back, mine and the smaller second one, which is the study. Then to the bathroom off the hall, forward to the kitchen, once again to the hall and back to the front room right to the corner behind the sofa—
Where I see the spatter on the floor by the radiator.
Droplets dashed on the hardwood have formed a small puddle. A phase of my Molly’s art flashes, her Pollock period. I lean down and touch and smell it. That iron odor. The darkening red.
“Biscuit, no, get away from there.” I pull her back and scoop her into my arms. Then a drop falls into my hair, sticky wet on my scalp.
I look up. Drops are falling where the steam pipe runs from my radiator upstairs to Steven’s.
From Steven’s down onto my floor.
Let it be paint.
Let it be enamel, finger paint, rustproofing, any kind of paint. Pray for paint. Because in that frozen moment, denial is the lifeline. Please, God, paint—because the minute you let go, the world will rupture forever.
Dashing upstairs, I try Steven’s door—locked from inside—and bang the brass knocker. And slam my palm on the door panel. And I scream his name.
Tripping on my robe going back downstairs, I ask, where’s that key? Where did I put the key to the upstairs flat? In the hall table drawer. The dog squirms and yelps, but I hold her tight against me and root among coupons, stamps, rubber bands. No key.
The phone book—nutty, but I call Steven’s number—tethered by the cord of one of Jo’s old land line phones. Fourth ring, and here’s his upbeat voice. “Leave me a message…”
Back to that spot by the heat pipe. The slow drip. The pool of blood. Then I remember—the key is on a hook by the kitchen window. I grab the key, dash upstairs, open the door—and find fifties-sixties furniture, fake zebra pillows, boomerang tables all tumbled and knocked over. A sideways Lava lamp forms a slow blue belch.
Biscuit leaps, dives, and hits the floor. “Here, Biscuit!” But she barks frantically and runs to the next room. “Come here! Here!” She’s back a moment later, her white muzzle stained, her paw marks rusty red against my robe.
Back and forth she runs as if to show the way, barking and whining me to Steven’s radiator.
First, a sneakered foot, then a jacked-up knee. Then his body lying on its back, a twisted mannequin, arms out stiff, something dangling from the wrists, dark strips, like shoelaces. Mouth open, a ridge of teeth, wax museum eyes that stare at nothing.
And so much blood, his shirtfront mapped in blood, continents of blood. Small blood circles up and down his arms are a polka-dot pox of wounds that weep.
The floor slants, I retch, grab at a wall, stumbling on something hard that slides when my foot kicks at it—a yellow drill that’s slick with blood… the murder weapon, could it be?
It touched the hem of my robe.
Then something else. I lean close to see… nailheads. They pin down the skin of Steven’s calf and ankle, and his wrists and neck too. A few inches apart, they stretch the skin tight. It looks upholstered, like a button-back sofa. Human flesh treated like upholstery—I lean closer and fight for balance. It takes everything not to throw up.
Chapter Three
Sudden as lightning, the thought that a killer could still be inside. In his kitchen, a back bedroom?
I grab the dog, run back downstairs, slam my door, and call 911. Unreality sets in, like a jerky handheld camera. Whose voice do I hear reporting a dead body at 27 Barlow Square? Whose words say the unspeakable? Me and not me. Steven and not Steven.
The patrol car comes fast, the cop like on TV. I give him Steven’s key.
“Lady, you stay inside here.”
Still in my robe, I slip into moccasins. Stupid quandary: can I dress? Is a witness required to stay as is? For that matter, am I a witness?
“Settle down, Biscuit,” I say as much to myself as to the dog. The sight of Steven Damelin. My gorge rises.
More sirens, then heavy footfalls upstairs.
Steven’s leg, his splayed fingers and purpled throat. Those strips. The nails.
The lights of patrol cars flash up and down Barlow Square. Blue uniforms are everywhere on the sidewalk out front. Clutching my robe, I step outside on the stoop. Yellow crime tape already bands the front of my building like crazy gift wrap. Police Line Do Not Cross Police Line Do Not . . .
“Lady, get back inside.”
“Yes, Officer.” In the vestibule, however, I’m stopped by the sight of big rust-red smears on the outside of my own door. Did I somehow get blood on my door when I ran downstairs minutes ago? No, there’s not enough blood on me to leave those marks. They don’t look random. They’re not smears. They’re too definite. Patterned, they’re patterned. They’re like… brushstrokes.
How did they get there? Who marked my door in blood? I go inside, grab my phone, call Frank Devaney in the Homicide Division, and fight hysteria as I leave him a voice mail.
Seated near the phone, I wait out an eternity. Finally there’s a knock on my door and a voice calling, “Ms. Cutter?”
“Come in, Frank,” I yell, then move toward my door as it opens.
But it isn’t Frank Devaney.
“I’m Detective Edward Maglia. You called 911?” Before me in the door frame stands a compact man in his late thirties, with short dark brown hair, narrow face and features. He wears a blue suit with a certain sheen, and his nails look manicured. “I’d like to ask you some questions.”
“But I called Detective Devaney. I left a message for him.” As if he were a custom-ordered dial-a-detective? Reggie, get a grip. “Please come in.”
At the flash of the badge, he’s in like a weather front. I gather my robe around me as he stares at a disheveled woman whose robe is stained with blood. A woman who hasn’t washed after kicking that drill. The hem of my robe is streaked the color of iodine.
“I didn’t know whether to get dressed. Still in my robe.”
Maglia nods. He’s in the rocker where Steven Damelin sat less than twenty-four hours ago. I excuse myself a moment to put Biscuit in the study and close the door. Refusing coffee, Maglia opens a notebook and starts into my background. Who am I? How long have I resided here? What relation to the owner of record, Josephine Cutter?
“I am her niece and heir. My aunt died last February, of cancer, and I moved in the same month. Steven Damelin was my upstairs tenant.” I spell “Damelin.” “He moved in about a month ago. He was subletting.”
“When last did you see the deceased alive?”
“Yesterday, about two in the afternoon, I was crossing the street out front here on Barlow Square with my dog, and a small blue car hit me. Hit-and-run, actually.” His eyes narrow. I part my robe just enough to show the deep bruise on my calf and the gauze pad on the kneecap. “The car clipped me. I barely made it across. I fell forward—” He stares at the gauze pad. Face it, Reggie, Steven’s murder dwarfs your near miss. Natter on about the blue car, you’ll sound worse than callous. “I fell forward on the pavement,” I say, “and Steven ran out to help and came inside with me until I felt better, about an hour altogether. That’s the last I saw him.”
He makes a note. “So he left here at approximately three p.m.” Maglia’s voice is soft but probing. “As landlady, you had a key to his apartment?”
“To his door, which is off the second-floor landing.”
“And you used it to enter the apartment this morning when you discovered his body? Any sign of anybody in the stairwell or hallway?” I shake my head. “The first-floor door to the street, Ms. Cutter, was it also locked?”
> “The door to the street?” It’s the main door at the top of the granite stoop. I’d opened it to let the uniformed cops in. It has a spring bolt. In my frantic state, had I twisted it open? Is there blood on it too? “I think it was locked.”
“You’re not sure?”
“I think… surely it was.” But “surely” isn’t good enough. If the killer came in the front, he or she—or they?—first had to enter through the street door, pass my door, then take the inside vestibule stairs up to Steven’s apartment.
It hits me—Steven’s killer then came back down and marked my door. The marks are Steven’s own blood. Life blood, death blood. Nausea rolls from the pit of my stomach, and it’s all I can do to focus on the door, the outside door that I’d paid no attention to. “I was very upset,” I said. “I didn’t really think about the outer front door. It wasn’t on my mind.” My arm and leg throb. Maglia’s eyes narrow as if the lapse is a mark against me.
Like a good hostess of twenty-five years, I try to compensate, mentioning Luis and the Big Buddies charity. I tell the detective that Gibralter Realty did a background check on Steven and might provide additional information. Breathless, I also tell about the night bumping noises and the dripping, how I came to find the body. My statement lasts at most ten minutes, a monologue from hell.
“Let’s go back to yesterday, Ms. Cutter. When Steven paid a visit.”
“It wasn’t a visit. It was first aid.”
He looks as though I’m an NPR word quiz lady. Ed Maglia shows no real empathy for a civilian reeling from carnage in her own home, blood on her door. “Like I was saying, after Steven left you, he went back upstairs?”
“I assumed he was up there. He’s a financial analyst. He worked part of the time in his apartment.”
“But you have no actual knowledge.”
“Well, no, I didn’t see or hear him. I was resting from the hit-and—… the fall. My kitchen and bedroom are to the rear of the house, away from the square. Whoever came or went last night, I didn’t see him. Or her. Them.”
Maglia taps a nail against his wedding band. I assume that his gun is holstered inside his suit jacket. “A few minutes ago, Ms. Cutter, you referred to a nighttime bumping noise. Yet you say the building seems soundproof.”
“The walls are very thick. These Victorian town houses are built like fortresses.”
“When you woke up in the night and heard the bumping, the noises you called violent—”
“I didn’t say violent.” Or did I?
“What about voices?”
“No voices. None.” Should I try to make the actual bumping sounds, like when you take your car in? “It was like a storm, like thunder. It felt both close and distant. Maybe it was somebody’s fireworks left over from the Fourth. Or it might have been a nightmare. A dream not related to Steven—”
“Isn’t that unlikely? I mean, the noises woke you, isn’t that right?”
“My dog was agitated. Maybe a sleep cycle was interrupted. I didn’t get up and look at a clock, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“So you heard the violent bumping noises, Ms. Cutter, and stayed in bed? Can you make a best guess about the time?”
“I’d rather not.” A minute ago, he was all for supposing. Now he wants guesswork. I’m a hit-and-run victim, lucky to be alive, but he acts as though I deliberately lounged in bed listening to a homicide in progress. Maglia reminds me of Marty, even though the homicide detective looks nothing like my ex-husband. One thing I know for sure: Detective Frank Devaney wouldn’t treat me like this.
“How about showing me where you saw the blood drip?” We troop to the radiator, but Maglia bars me from getting too close, as if I have no judgment on my own. He says something about getting a photographer and a tech to take a sample. “Could I see your bedroom, please?”
He follows me back, unmade bed and all, and he taps the walls, stares at the ceiling like a building inspector, opens the window, and leans out to look up and down at the narrow back alley. Cold October air blows in.
I, too, try leaning out to see, but Maglia shuts the window, and we go back to the front room and sit back down. He faces me. “One reason all this is important for you, Ms. Cutter… there’s a stain on your own front door. We think tests will prove it’s blood.”
Chapter Four
Detective Maglia, I saw the bloody door when I stepped outside moments ago. It shocked me. I don’t know how it got there.”
“You didn’t make physical contact with the door? Is that what you’re saying?”
“I… only the knob. I grabbed the knob with my right hand and pulled the door closed behind me.”
“You didn’t bump the door?”
“No.”
“And you’re sure? Because if you’re sure, Ms. Cutter, then we have to investigate two possibilities. One, the probable killer either bumped the door or leaned on it for balance. In that version, the door stains are accidental.”
I nod.
“But the second possibility is that whoever killed Steven Damelin deliberately marked your door.”
I swallow and nod again.
“Suppose we go see that bloodstain on the door.” He follows me into the vestibule, and we peer at the door for a full silent moment. My worst fears are confirmed. Try as I might to see the marks as random streaks and splotches, they look shaped. They’re brushstrokes. Like calligraphy.
“Any guesses about the marks, Ms. Cutter?”
“They look brushed on, don’t they? Painted on. They look Oriental. Don’t you think so? Maybe Japanese?” I fervently hope he’ll say that I’m too upset to judge. I want him to say the eye can play tricks. “Or am I seeing things?”
He doesn’t answer. “To your knowledge, is there anything in your apartment that might attract someone with violent intent?”
“I have one last mink coat in case my daughter decides she wants to wear fur.” He gives me a look. Reggie, I think to myself, don’t be ridiculous. “Wait… there’s something Steven said to me about his relationship to my late aunt. He said she was working on some kind of deal with him.”
“What kind of a deal?”
“It was confidential. He promised to tell me about it. He thought I might be interested, maybe get involved.”
“Financial?”
“I have no idea.”
“And did your late aunt talk about it? Maybe use a word like ‘arrangement’ or ‘partnership’?”
“No.”
“You said you were close to your aunt?”
“It was holiday visits and phone calls. It wasn’t day in and day out.”
“Maybe she said something offhand. Could you refresh your memory?”
“There’s nothing to refresh. I told you everything.” Then I hear my own voice, starting small, turning sarcastic. “Detective Maglia, let me just say, if I knew Steven Damelin was upstairs being murdered, I’d have checked my watch and called police on the spot. I’d remember for sure whether the outside front door was locked. In fact, I might even have the killer tied up with duct tape.”
I mumble something about police as public servants who need counseling skills. My credibility’s washing down the gutter. Years of TV cop shows don’t help. The interrogation feels somewhere between Dalí’s dripping watches and NYPD Blue, with touches of Columbo reruns. My work with Devaney feels NA, not applicable.
Maglia’s eyes are flat, as if suspicion is the only thing they know how to see. We stand awkwardly in the vestibule. “I’m just trying to get the sequence of events, Ms. Cutter.” Inches from my door, he puts on eyeglasses to give the blood-marked panel the closest scrutiny, as if the marks might yield secrets. As if the blood might speak.
Beside him, I shiver and fight nausea. “I’d like to get dressed now.”
“Not yet. Step back inside, please. A female officer and a tech are on the way. I have a few questions about when you found the body. You didn’t touch anything in the apartment?”
“No, but my dog ran
ahead and… got bloodstains on her paws and muzzle. And the drill. I didn’t see it at first. I accidentally kicked it.”
He frowns his disapproval. Yes, I disturbed a crime scene.
“Did you see a hammer?”
“No.”
“Or a nail gun?”
“I wouldn’t know a nail gun if I saw one, Detective Maglia.” A memory flashes. “In the grooves of the drill bit, I saw a . . . pink mush.” I try not to throw up.
Maglia makes a note, then calls two blue-uniformed cops who’ve been searching the basement. The three huddle, though the red-faced one casts furtive looks at me. Then the photographer comes to snap pictures of the puddle, and the technician, Judy, takes a sample of the blood, whereupon Maglia asks for my robe to turn over to the lab.
It goes through my mind, where’s a lawyer? Nasty thought, given my recent experience with the legal profession through my divorce. Did Maglia refer to our talk as an interview? He didn’t say interrogation, I’m sure of it. Should he read me my rights? What about the Miranda thing? “You have the right to remain silent.” Except that’s for drug dealers and car thieves. Miranda is for suspects, not for me. Certainly not for me.
Maglia introduces a sharp-faced brunet, Officer Prish, whereupon Judy, wearing plastic gloves, opens a paper bag. Officer Prish accompanies me to the bedroom, where Judy takes my robe and closes it in the bag.
“I thought you used plastic.”
“Plastic degrades the evidence.”
“Will I get my robe back?”
“In due course.”
As if I’d ever wear it again. But my very own robe—evidence in a murder in my own home. Quickly I put on a sweater and slacks. Back in the front room, Maglia reports that the basement search is finished for now. “No signs of disturbance, Ms. Cutter, though we might want to come back.” He adds, “I advise you to change your locks.”
“I’ll do that.”
“And, Ms. Cutter, any further thoughts on anything that links Steven Damelin to your aunt, any ties?”
I think of Steven’s necktie. And those strips on his wrists. “You mean their ‘deal’?” He nods. Walking to the door, I feel less escorted than released from custody.
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