Dead of Winter (CSI: NY)

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  She reached into her desk drawer suddenly and came up with a small gun which she pointed at Aiden. Neither detective flinched.

  “My gun,” King said, handing it across her desk.

  Mac took it and handed it to Aiden who examined it and said, “Never been fired.”

  “Not even loaded,” said King. “It’s like a chenille blanket I had when I was a little girl. I keep it around for comfort and a sense of security, which I delude myself is real.”

  “What happens to the manuscripts of Louisa Cormier’s books after she gives them to you?” Mac asked.

  “She doesn’t give me manuscripts,” said King. “She E-mails me her manuscripts as attachments. I read them and send them on to her editor. Louisa’s work requires very little editing by me or the publisher.”

  King picked up the pencil again, considered tapping it, changed her mind, and put it down.

  “What about the first three books,” said Mac.

  King looked at him warily.

  “The first three books were…a little rough,” King said. “They needed work. How did you know?”

  “I read them last night, as well as the fourth and fifth,” said Mac. “Something changed.”

  “With experience and confidence, Louisa’s work, I’m pleased to say, has steadily improved,” said King.

  “Do you keep her books on your hard drive?” asked Mac.

  “I have hard copies made in addition to disk copies of all Louisa’s books,” King said.

  “We’d like to borrow the disks,” Mac said.

  “I’ll have Amy make copies for you,” she said, “but why would you —”

  “We won’t take any more of your time right now,” said Mac, rising.

  Aiden got up too.

  King remained seated.

  “We’ll be in touch,” said Mac, going to the door.

  “I sincerely hope not,” said King, reaching for her cigarettes.

  When they got past the reception area and into the hall, Aiden said, “She’s lying.”

  “About?”

  “Those first books,” said Aiden.

  Mac nodded.

  “You noticed,” she said.

  “She’s protecting her golden calf,” said Mac.

  “So?” asked Aiden.

  “Let’s go see Louisa Cormier.”

  Stella saw the red, amoeba-shaped splotch of blood on a low snowbank on the sidewalk next to a black plastic garbage bag.

  The driver, a Nigerian named George Apappa, had taken her to the spot where he had dropped the man who had bled on his backseat. George had noticed the blood as soon as he got to his home in Jackson Heights. He couldn’t miss the blood. The man had left a small puddle on the floor and a dark, still-moist streak on the seat.

  It had taken George almost an hour to clean the bloodstains. He got into bed with his wife at two in the morning and the phone rang at six — his dispatcher, telling him to get into the garage immediately. He told Stella all this with the sound of a man who had planned to sleep until noon, but instead had dragged himself out of bed, half expecting to be told he was fired when he got to the garage. Stella had a feeling the twenty she slipped him would help him get over his lack of sleep.

  Stella could feel him watching her from the car as she wiped her nose and took a picture of the mound of snow, then scooped up some of the snow with a shovel and dropped it in a plastic bag.

  She started to move slowly along the sidewalk, pausing every few steps to take another photograph. The trail of blood was reasonably easy to follow, frozen in place. Few pedestrians had yet trampled the icy sidewalk.

  Stella put the back of her left hand against her forehead and felt both moisture and fever. She had a thermometer in her kit, but it was reserved for the dead. She had taken three aspirin back at the lab along with a glass of orange juice. She had no hope for this remedy.

  It took her four minutes to find the doorway. There were blood splatters on the door, not thick, but visible. There was blood on the doorstop and something yellowish-brown that looked like vomit. She took photographs, got a sample of the yellow-brown goop, and started to stand when she noticed a spot of white in the crevice of the concrete step. She knelt again. It was a tooth, a bloody tooth. She bagged it and rose to check the listing of the names of the tenants of the building lined up, white on black, near the right side of the door. The names meant nothing to her. She wrote all six down in her notebook.

  Whatever had happened here had happened just before ten, according to the driver’s log. It was possible someone inside had heard whatever it was that caused someone to vomit and lose what looked like a reasonably healthy tooth.

  Stella rubbed her hands together and called Danny Messer at the lab.

  “Check out these names,” she said. “Got a pen?”

  “You sound terrible,” he said.

  “I sound terrible,” she agreed. “The names.”

  She read off the names slowly, spelling each one.

  “Got it,” he said.

  “Check them all out. If you find something, call me back. Guista may have been on his way to see one of them last night when something went wrong.”

  “What?” he asked.

  “I’m sending what I’ve got over to you with a cabbie,” she said. “Pay my fare. I’ve already given him a tip.”

  Stella tried to hold back a cough. She couldn’t do it.

  “Stella…” Danny started, but she cut him off.

  “Got to go.”

  She clicked off and went to the car where George Apappa sat, head back, eyes closed. She opened her kit, dropped the digital disk of photos, the blood samples, the bloody tooth, and the clump of vomit, all separately bagged, into a zippered insulated bag. Then she opened the driver’s side door.

  George awoke and had the bag in his hand before he could speak.

  She gave him the CSI address and told him to put the bag directly in the hands of Daniel Messer, who would be waiting for it. Messer, she said, would pay whatever the charge was. She handed him a ten dollar bill on top of that.

  There was a beat in which she saw George wanted to ask what this was all about, but he didn’t. He placed the bag on the seat next to him as Stella closed the door.

  This time when Louisa Cormier opened the door for Mac and Aiden she was not quite so bright and bubbling. She looked as if she hadn’t slept and she was wearing what looked like an oversized flowered smock. Her hair was in place, as was her make-up, but not as perfect as the day before.

  She stepped back to let them in.

  “Michelle, my agent, called to tell me I should expect you,” she said.

  Neither Mac nor Aiden spoke.

  “You suspect me of having killed that man in the elevator,” she said calmly.

  Mac and Aiden were expressionless.

  “Please, let’s sit,” said Louisa. “Coffee? Good manners die hard. Unfortunate choice of words, but…”

  “No, thank you,” Mac said for both of them.

  The three stood just inside the door.

  “Well I was just having one so if you don’t mind…” she said and headed for the kitchen. “Please, have a seat.”

  Mac and Aiden moved to the table by the window. A cold fog had settled over Manhattan. There wasn’t much to see besides a few lights through the dense gray and the peaks of skyscrapers over the cloud.

  “I’m sorry,” Louisa Cormier said, cup of steaming coffee in hand, sitting at the table in the same seat she had been in the day before. “I’ve been up all night working. Michelle may have told you I have a book due by the end of the week, not that my publisher will do anything about my being late, but I’m never late. Writing for a living is a job. I think it’s wrong to be late for work. Sorry, I’m rambling a bit. I’m tired and I’ve just been told I’m a murder suspect.”

  “Gun residue,” said Mac.

  “I know what it is,” she said. “Bits, traces of powder left when a gun has been fired.”

  “It’s har
d to clean off,” said Aiden.

  Both CSI investigators looked at Louisa Cormier’s hands. They were scrubbed red.

  “You want to check my hands for gunpowder residue?” she asked.

  “Gunpowder residue can be transferred from a person’s hand to another object they touch,” said Mac.

  “Interesting,” said Louisa, working on her coffee.

  “When we were here yesterday, you touched a few things,” Mac continued.

  Louisa was alert now.

  “You stole something from my apartment?” she said.

  Mac ignored the question. He was giving her as little as possible. Neither he nor Aiden had taken anything.

  “You fired a gun recently,” Aiden said.

  Mac thought he detected the hint of a smile on the author’s face.

  “You have no way of knowing that,” said Louisa. “You’ve not examined my hands and I doubt you would take an item of my clothing without a warrant.”

  Aiden and Mac did not respond.

  “However,” Louisa said, “you may do so. I think you will find residue on my right hand. I fired a gun at a nearby range two days ago, just before the storm. I think I should call my lawyer,” Louisa said with a smile.

  “Press will find out,” said Mac. “But you have the right to call a lawyer before you answer any more questions.”

  Louisa Cormier hesitated.

  “I told you I did fire a weapon,” she said. “I test all the weapons I use in my books. Weight, noise, kick-back, size. I was at the range two days ago. I told you. It’s Drietch’s on Fifty-eighth Street. I’ll give you the address. You can check with Mathew Drietch.”

  “What was the weapon?” Aiden asked.

  “A .22,” she said.

  “Like the one in your desk,” said Mac.

  “Exactly. I decided to write about a weapon like the one I own,” she said.

  “Lutnikov was killed with a .22,” said Mac.

  “I found the bullet at the bottom of the elevator shaft,” said Aiden.

  “We’ll find a weapon,” said Mac. “And we’ll match the bullet to it. You said you didn’t own any gun but the one you showed us yesterday,” said Mac.

  “I don’t,” Louisa answered. “Mathew Drietch has a gun just like mine. He has hundreds of guns. You can chose the one you want to use. Mr. Drietch was quite happy to let me do so.”

  “You wouldn’t know where that .22 is now, would you?” asked Mac.

  “I presume it’s safely locked away at the firing range,” said Louisa.

  “You mind if we search your apartment?” asked Mac. “We can get a warrant.”

  “I do mind if you search my apartment,” she said, “but if you get your warrant and do so, you’ll find no weapon here other than the gun in my desk, which you know has not been fired recently.”

  “One more question,” said Mac.

  “No more questions,” Louisa said gently. “My lawyer’s name is Lindsey Terry. He’s in the phone book. I’m sorry if I’m a bit edgy but I haven’t slept and…”

  “I read some of your books last night,” Mac said.

  “Oh,” said Louisa. “Which ones?”

  “Another Woman’s Nightmare, Woman in the Dark, A Woman’s Place,” said Mac.

  “My first three,” Louisa said. “Did you like them?”

  “They got better after those three,” he said.

  “I’ve always thought the first three were my best,” said Louisa. “Did You read the others?”

  “Two of them,” said Mac.

  “You’re a fast reader.”

  “I did a lot of skimming. I’m asking a professor of linguistics at Columbia to take a look at your books,” Mac said.

  “What on earth for?” Louisa said.

  “I think you know,” said Mac.

  “You have my lawyer’s name,” Louisa said somberly. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to finish my book and get some rest.”

  When Aiden and Mac were in the small reception area in front of the elevator, Aiden said, “She did it.”

  “She did it,” Mac agreed. “Now let’s prove it.”

  They started toward the front entrance, footsteps a chill echo. In front of them, about twenty yards away, stood a lean man in his late twenties or early thirties. The expressionless, pale, clean-shaven man in jeans and a blue T-shirt and a down Eddie Bauer jacket had his hands folded in front of him as he watched Aiden and Mac approach.

  When the detectives were a few yards away from him, he stepped in their path.

  “You’re investigating the murder of Charles Lutnikov,” he said, his voice even, speaking slowly.

  “That’s right,” said Mac.

  “I killed him,” the man said.

  He was trembling.

  “How are you doing?” Stella asked, standing back a few feet so she wouldn’t breathe on Danny.

  She was sick, no doubt about it. Temperature, chills, slight nausea.

  Nausea was no stranger to CSI investigators, and Stella was no exception. She seldom wore a mask at a crime scene no matter how foul the smell, no matter how long a body had lain in a bathtub bloating and emitting up a putrid, familiar stench.

  The last time she had held back the unplanned rush of bile had been two weeks earlier when she and Aiden had gone to the home of a cat lady in a brownstone on the East Side. A uniformed cop had been at the door, a look of disgust on his face, which he made no attempt to hide.

  Stella and Aiden had gone in and been hit by the reek, the sound of dozens of cats howling, and a sweltering heat from radiators along the walls. The dark room smelled of death, urine and feces.

  “Let’s not play macho,” Stella had said.

  Aiden had nodded and they had put on the masks in their kit and made their way to the bedroom where they found the corpse of the old woman in the print dress. Dried vomit was on her chest. Wide eyes stared at the ceiling. Something crawled at the edge of her mouth, and a large orange cat sat on her distended stomach and hissed at the two women.

  “Check with the officer,” said Stella. “If he hasn’t called Animal Control, have him do it now.”

  With that and the sound of her own voice speaking inside her, Stella reminded herself that this was what she did, what had to be done, and that she did it better than anyone else.

  And so she had spent an hour in the filth, which had begun to accumulate long before the woman died. An examination of the body by Hawkes showed that the woman, who looked as if she had been strangled, had instead died after a heart attack, which caused her to choke on her own vomit.

  Danny’s back was turned to her. He held up a corked test tube with a yellow viscous liquid inside.

  “Last time,” he said. “You’re sick. You should be in bed.”

  “It’s a cold,” she said.

  He shook his head.

  “I’m taking care of it. I had some tea,” she said.

  “One small step for mankind,” he said.

  Stella ignored him and asked, “What did you find?”

  “Whoever produced this vomit, should change his diet,” said Danny. “He’s using his stomach to store and process fat. He had both pepperoni and some kind of sausage, also a large quantity of pasta with a spicy sauce that on a scale of one to ten I’d give an ah caramba.”

  “Danny,” Stella said with barely veiled impatience.

  “Flour,” Danny said. “Unprocessed, unbleached. This guy has been breathing in flour.”

  “You tested the flour?” she said, holding back a sniffle.

  “Traces in the vomit. Marco’s Bakery. Perfect match to our sample,” he said.

  “And the rubber marks in the hallway of the bakery definitely match the heels of Collier’s shoes?” asked Stella.

  “All trails lead back to Marco’s Bakery,” he said.

  He put the test tube down and turned to her.

  “Mind if I make a clinical observation?” he said. He didn’t wait for an answer. “Your nose is as red as a marasch
ino cherry.”

  “Stella the red-nosed CSI investigator,” she said.

  “No kidding,” Danny said. “You should be —”

  “I thought you said you were finished with playing doctor,” she said.

  Danny shrugged.

  “Want to know about the blood work?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  “As expected, most of the samples from the sidewalk and the doorway match Guista’s,” she said. “He’s losing a lot of blood. If he hasn’t already, he’ll pass out soon if he doesn’t get to a doctor. But there’s also blood from someone else.”

  Danny sat on a lab stool. Stella sank slowly into another one.

  “Guista gets shot by Flack,” she said. “He drives his bakery truck to Brooklyn, abandons the truck in front of a deli, takes a car. Gets out and walks half a block. Someone’s waiting for him.”

  “And someone gets a surprise,” said Danny. “My guess: Guista hits him hard. He throws up, bleeds, loses a tooth. Guista’s on the run again. Or on a slow walk.”

  Stella nodded and said, “Something like that. The kids who took the bakery truck said he used the telephone. Did you check the call?”

  Danny shook his head. “I’ll check it now. You go home.”

  The look she gave him made Danny decide to end his crusade to get Stella to take care of herself. Finally.

  “Did you check the names of the people in that apartment building?”

  “Thought you’d never ask,” said Danny. “All but one has an arrest record.”

  “So —” Stella began.

  “The one without the arrest record is a Lynn Contranos,” he said.

  “You look absolutely glutinous with self approbation,” Stella said.

  “With…?”

  “It’s from a Hitchcock movie,” she said, wiping her nose. “What about her?”

  “Lynn Contranos aka Helen Grandfield,” he said. “Dario Marco’s trusted assistant.”

  Stella nodded.

  “But that’s not all,” Danny said adjusting his glasses, eager. “Helen Grandfield’s name, before she married Stanley Contranos, who is doing a minimum of ten to twenty for Murder Two, was Helen Marco, niece of Anthony Marco who is on trial as we speak. Ergo, Dario Marco is her father.”

  “All roads lead back to Marco’s Bakery,” said Stella. “Let’s pay them another visit.”