‘‘Hey, up there,’’ Mirabel yells. ‘‘Don’t mess up our crime scene.’’ Her voice is so loud they all turn.
On his cell, Tony says, ‘‘Gotcha, Sarge. Everyone stays till the detectives get here, and no one else goes up there.’’ He clicks off. ‘‘You heard?’’
‘‘Yeah.’’ Mirabel folds her arms across her chest.
Pigeon crap coats everything, including the staircase, which is fenced off at entry by a gate with a padlock. It wouldn’t be easy to get to the top of the rise without climbing over the fence, unless someone has a key to the padlock of the gate. The padlock hangs loose now, either broken by the perp or by the FDNY.
The EMTs come back down the stairs, hauling their kits. First, black woman, her curves almost, but not quite, hidden under the regulation uniform. Simone Norwood, Corporal, National Guard, served two tours in Iraq as a medic and could be called back any day now, which doesn’t make her happy, her being a single mother with two kids under ten and her own mother whining all the time about taking care of kids again at her age. Simone’s wire-rimmed glasses have slid down her nose on beads of sweat. She pushes them up and gives her gear to the probie Ryan Moore to load into the bus.
‘‘You gotta hang out till the detectives get here,’’ Mirabel says. She has her notepad out.
‘‘Yeah.’’ Simone leans against the bus and gives Mirabel her name, serial number, time of arrival, time of pronouncement of death, then motions for Ryan to do the same. Boy, she’d like a cigarette, except she’s trying to quit. Pack she carries in her pocket is burning a hole in her Windbreaker.
‘‘What’s the word?’’ Tony says. He’s unrolling the yellow crime scene tape around the staircase area.
‘‘Not a pretty sight.’’
Fire Marshal Richard Fergussen comes clanking down the stairs. He ducks under the tape. He’s done. He hates this kind of call, dead girl, beaten to hell and back. Nothing he can do for her. Makes him worry about his Anna Marie, who’s going off to Boston College in August. Wouldn’t listen about Fordham and living at home. At least he could protect her from some of the bad stuff out there. She’s such a sweet, trusting kid. The ulcer starts grinding his gut. He’s got his bottle of Maalox in the car. He can’t hold back the shudder, can’t shake the image of that poor girl up there, something he can’t do a goddam thing about. His job is saving lives. Now it’s up to the NYPD.
An unmarked screeches to a stop next to the FDNY bus. A radio car follows.
Fire Marshal Fergussen joins the patrol officers.
‘‘Homicide?’’ Officer Castro asks.
‘‘Possible,’’ Fire Marshal Fergussen replies.
THE DETECTIVES
‘‘What do we have?’’ Detective First Grade Molly Rosen, wearing a white shirt, black linen pants, climbs out of the passenger side of the unmarked, while her partner, Greg Noriega, pops the trunk and collects camera and booties. She’s sweating right through the shirt she paid too much for at Banana Republic, even though it was on sale.
‘‘First Officer?’’ she says.
‘‘Foot Patrol Officer Anthony Warbren.’’
Rosen tilts her Mets cap upward. She takes in the scene. The EMTs, the fire marshal, the staircase to the High Line, the loosened padlock. The sun like a fucking ball of fire overhead. The parking lot with scattered vehicles. ‘‘Okay,’’ she says. ‘‘Let’s have it.’’
Tony Warbren reads from his notepad. ‘‘Call came in at nine twenty. Chopper 6 reported what looked like a body on the High Line, around 19th Street. Castro and I were three blocks away and arrived on the scene at nine forty-two. Two FDNY EMTs, Norwood and Moore, running up the stairs.’’ He nods to Norwood and Moore, who lean against the bus. ‘‘Fire Marshal—’’
‘‘Richard Fergussen,’’ the fire marshal says. ‘‘Got here first. Dead woman. Face down. Didn’t touch anything except her wrist for a pulse. EMTs turned her on her back.’’ He blinks as Noriega begins taking photos.
‘‘I want the scene extended,’’ Molly Rosen tells the two uniforms from the radio car. She points. ‘‘There. There. There.’’ Barriers are set up and the taped area is widened. ‘‘The plates on every car. Get me a printout.’’
‘‘The padlock was hanging loose,’’ Warbren continues.
‘‘Like it was when I got here,’’ Fire Marshal Fergussen says.
‘‘In order to preserve the integrity, Castro and I didn’t climb the stairs or enter the crime scene,’’ says Warbren.
‘‘Good. Warbren, you stay here. Castro, canvass these buildings.’’ She nods at the commercial buildings and a tenement across 10th, facing the High Line. ‘‘See if you can round up a few witnesses.’’ She eyes the gathering group of the curious held back by the wooden horses and yellow tape strung around by the patrol officers. ‘‘Let’s get some additional personnel here to make nice with the crowd and maybe come up with something valuable.’’
Molly Rosen slides the latex gloves on heat-swollen hands and ties the booties over the black pumps, which have begun to pinch. She opens the gate and climbs the rattling stairs. She’s sweating buckets. Doesn’t like that she has to stop at the top to catch her breath, for chrissakes, and to quiet her stomach. Her mouth tastes like raw fish. She is forty-one, a fifteen-year veteran NYPD, gold shield eight years. Anyone would tell you, she’s tough, knows her stuff. Worked her way up butting heads with the good old boys in the department. Has great kids—Josie three, Del Jr. five, and Mary eight. Great kids thanks to Del, who quit his teaching job to be a stay-at-home dad. It was a case of who wanted what more.
Noriega’s flash goes off. Rosen wobbles. ‘‘You okay?’’ he says. Rosen doesn’t look okay. She’s got this pasty look on her face. She’s tough as nails with this rep of chewing up rookie homicide detectives and spitting them back to narcotics, and he for sure doesn’t want to go back there.
‘‘Yeah, why wouldn’t I be okay?’’ She wipes the oily sweat off her face with a tissue. Okay if being fucking pregnant again is okay.
‘‘Looks like all that’s missing are the cows,’’ Noriega says. He snaps what may or may not be the path to the vic made by the perp and/or the fire marshal and the EMTs.
Dr. Larry Vander Roon from the ME’s office appears on the stairs. He’s overweight and only months from retirement, but everyone else is busy. He could do without this, but they can’t do without him. They don’t have enough on staff. Cutbacks all the time, now they’re talking about his retirement as attrition. If it was up to him, he wouldn’t retire. It’s Joanne who wants it. She’s got her eye on a condo in Fort Myers. What the hell would he do there, sit by a pool and listen to the jabber? Not him.
When he gets to the top of the stairs, the sun bakes right down on him. It’s an oven up here. The body is going to stink something awful, the corruption difficult. Give him a winter body anytime.
THE CRIME SCENE
The meadow is green, almost lush in the late morning heat. The sun is high and there are no clouds to offset the glare. A faint breeze barely moves the blades of tall grass and the wildflowers. The footfalls of the fire marshal and the two EMTs are unmistakable, marking a passage of approximately twenty feet from the top of the stairs to the body. It is understood that this may have obscured the path left by the killer, should this prove to be a homicide.
Because of this probability, the body has been left uncovered.
Scattered along the way from the top of the stairs to the body are various articles of clothing. A black T-shirt lying on a clump of daisy-like wildflowers, black pants and a stained white blazer closer to the body. A lacy black bra and black bikini panties, tossed to the right and to the left. Noriega marks each spot.
The vic is female, late twenties, early thirties, slim, long blond hair. Her eyes half-open slits, one side of her face obscured by dried brown blood, purple bruising. She is naked, brutally beaten. Rigor has set in.
Noriega snaps dozens of pictures of the vic from all angles, then circles around takin
g care where he steps, taking more photos of the area. He narrowly misses tripping over an empty wine bottle. ‘‘Wine bottle. Empty.’’
‘‘Mark it.’’
He drops a marker, slings his camera over his shoulder, and sketches out the scene in his notepad. The air reeks with decomposing body smells.
Molly Rosen steps aside so Larry Vander Roon can get to the body. She calls down to the patrol officers. ‘‘I want the body isolated and this whole area of the High Line around the body, a block both ways, uptown and downtown, cordoned off.’’
THE MEDICAL EXAMINER
‘‘She was spotted by Chopper 6 at nine twenty this morning,’’ Rosen says. ‘‘The fire marshal got here first, then the EMTs, who pronounced her. They flipped her over on her back.’’
‘‘I can see that. Lividity’s on her butt.’’ Vander Roon is old-school. Gloves on, he crouches beside the body, nostrils twitching. ‘‘Poor little thing.’’ He takes his thermometer from his bag, rolls the body onto her side.
‘‘We’ve got her clothes, tossed around like someone was having a good time.’’
Vander Roon grunts. ‘‘Value judgment?’’ He checks the vic’s eyes for hemorrhages.
‘‘Not me, Larry. Just an observation.’’
He squints up at her. ‘‘You look a little green around the gills, Rosen. You—?’’
‘‘Larry, just deal with the vic.’’ Regrets the snappish tone. ‘‘Sorry. Can you estimate time of death?’’
Vander Roon shifts his weight. His bad knees will have him limping when he gets up. ‘‘Some of this is old stuff.’’
‘‘Antemortem?’’
‘‘That and ante antemortem. I gotta get her on the table.’’ He checks the reading on the thermometer. ‘‘Given loss of body heat, even taking into account roasting up here, the stage of rigor, lividity, I’d say twelve to fourteen hours.’’
‘‘Gunshot wound? Asphyxial? What? Beating? That head wound looks bad.’’
‘‘Even minor head wounds bleed a lot. Like this one.’’
‘‘Can you tell if she died here or was dumped?’’
‘‘She died here.’’
‘‘Found something,’’ Noriega says. ‘‘Looks like what’s left of a pill. You want to see it up close?’’
‘‘Let’s have a look,’’ Vander Roon says. He removes his gloves and drops them into a container in his bag. ‘‘Give me a hand, will you, Rosen?’’
Molly takes his elbow and he leans into her. The old guy weighs a ton. Good thing she’s a big girl. ‘‘Mark the place and bring it here,’’ she tells Noriega. ‘‘Then see if anyone even vaguely of her description’s been reported missing.’’
Vander Roon looks at the mashed remains of a pill in Molly’s palm. ‘‘If it’s hers, and it’s important, we’ll find it in the tox screen.’’
Molly’s cell rings. ‘‘Rosen.’’ She sees Crime Scene unloading their gear in the parking lot. ‘‘Crime Scene just got here.’’
‘‘I’ll stick around,’’ Vander Roon says. ‘‘When they’re through, my people will take her away.’’
‘‘Noriega, you, too. When the body is removed, get pictures of the area around and under where she was.’’ Molly’s distracted, phone to her ear. ‘‘What? Where? Okay, I’m on my way.’’ She pockets the cell. ‘‘Patrol found two EDPs on 14th under the viaduct fighting over a woman’s purse.’’
THE FIRST BREAK
Emotionally Disturbed Persons.
Zachary lives in a cardboard box under the viaduct. He’s been on the street in New York since he left the VA hospital in Baltimore. Tossed the pills they gave him for the voices the minute he got out. Can’t rememberhow he ended up in New York, but what the fuck difference does it make anyway? He’s got a home here, fixed up real nice, with a mattress he found outside a brownstone on 20th. He sits all day in front of the Chelsea Hotel on 23rd. That’s his place. People put money in his bowl, which says Purina. He gets real mean if someone tries to move in on him.
Sometimes when it’s real hot, he climbs the fence to the High Line and sleeps in the grass. The grass is sweet. But then it’s not. He smells it. He goes looking for it, though he doesn’t want to. He never leaves his platoon, even when it’s real bad. He isn’t going to run now. It’s a girl. Not a gook neither. They took her out. She smells like Nam. Rotting dog meat. Nothing he can do. He backs away and falls on his ass. Lays still a long time, waiting for the blast. Nothing happens. He sits up and there it is. A purse. He grabs it up and takes off.
When he gets to his crib, there’s filthy bare feet sticking out of it, laying on his mattress. He goes nuts. It’s that acidhead been hanging out under the viaduct.
‘‘Hey!’’ He kicks the feet hard. ‘‘Get the fuck outa my crib.’’
The feet pull back. Otherwise, nothing. Zachary reaches into his box and grabs one skinny ankle and pulls the piece of shit outa his crib. ‘‘What the fuck you doing?’’
‘‘You wasn’t using it,’’ the acidhead screams, scrambles to his feet. He calls himself Shane. Mooches from the moochers. He’s twelve when his mother remarries. Every time his stepfather gets him alone, the slug sucks his dick and more. First chance Shane gets, he cleans out all the cash in the house and leaves. He hangs in the Port Authority the first winter turning tricks. Hash, acid, even coke, easy to come by. A rap-per faggot drops some acid on him once outside a Village club. The AIDS killed that life, but he’s managing. Finds plenty to eat out of the trash baskets, still turns a trick now and then.
‘‘You come back and I’ll throw you in the river,’’ Zachary screams, laying punches on Shane. He drops the purse.
Shane covers it with his mangy body. ‘‘I got it, I got it. Finders keepers.’’
‘‘Get up. Let’s see what you got there.’’ Patrol Officer Gary Ponzecki pokes Shane with his baton.
‘‘Fuck!’’ Zachary screams. ‘‘It’s mine. He’s stealing it.’’
Shane gets up, smirking, swings his scrawny hips. ‘‘Oh, so Mister Tough Nuts is carrying a purse now. Everybody knows it’s my purse.’’
‘‘Back off,’’ Ponzecki says. He’s testy, having had a fight with Ellie again this morning. Her asshole father’s forever with the negative comments about the Job. And he can see Ellie’s beginning to go along. Ponzecki always wanted to be a cop. Loves the patrol. Really loves it. He’s not going to give it up and work for the old fart in his grocery store. He sees Rosen coming fast down 10th Avenue. ‘‘You heard me. Both of you. Back off. Don’t touch the purse.’’
‘‘I’ll take it from here,’’ Molly Rosen says. She points to the purse. ‘‘Bag it.’’
‘‘Not fair! Not fair. I found it.’’ Zachary is dancing around, fists clenched, like he’s prizefighting. ‘‘She don’t need it no more.’’
‘‘No! No! It’s mine.’’
Ponzecki says, ‘‘This one calls himself Shane. The ballet dancer is Zachary.’’
‘‘I ain’t no faggot,’’ Zachary screams. ‘‘I was in the ring.’’
‘‘This purse is evidence in a murder investigation. Maybe you both want to go to Rikers for a little vacation.’’ Molly flips through pages in her notepad till she finds a clean one.
THE WITNESS
‘‘She stepped on a mine,’’ Zachary says. ‘‘She don’t need it no more.’’ He’s got the shakes, doesn’t like that they brought him into the precinct house and he’s not sitting in front of the Chelsea in his place. Though the lady cop in the Mets cap promised they’d drive him there if he told them everything he knew. Even though he don’t know nothing. And they let that prick-face liar Shane go and he’s probably on his mattress again.
‘‘What time was it?’’ Rosen puts a cardboard container of coffee on the table in front of Zachary.
‘‘I don’t got a watch.’’ He likes the smell of coffee, but not the taste. At least there’s plenty of milk. ‘‘You put five sugars in like I told you?’’
‘‘Yes. Drink up. The
sooner you tell me everything you know, the sooner you’ll get back to your place in front of the Chelsea. What time did you go up on the High Line?’’
‘‘It was dark. That’s all I know. I sleep up there when it’s hot. The grass smells good. But not last night.’’
‘‘What was different?’’
‘‘Smelled like in-country. She was took out. Almost got me.’’ He grimaces, takes a big gulp of coffee.
‘‘Whoever killed her tried to kill you?’’
‘‘Yeah. Whole place was mined.’’
‘‘Did you see anyone besides the dead woman?’’
‘‘No.’’
‘‘Where did you find the purse?’’
‘‘Fell on it.’’
THE IDENTIFICATION
‘‘They took her away. Crime Scene is finished,’’ Greg Noriega says, coming into the interview room. ‘‘Jeez, what a stink.’’
‘‘The EDP.’’ Rosen comes up behind him with a spray can and sprays the room. There’s an intense flowery smell. She looks at the label. ‘‘Magnolia is better than EDP.’’ She puts on gloves and removes the purse that Ponzecki bagged. It is peach nylon fabric with leather handles, zipper closure. She empties its contents on the scarred and dented table. ‘‘Let’s see what we got.’’
Noriega, gloves on, begins separating the items. He takes out his notepad and writes each item down. ‘‘Black wallet. Lipstick.’’ With the back of his pen, he pushes the cylinder to Rosen. ‘‘Glasses case. No glasses. Kleenex. Cell phone. Postal receipt: priority mail, twenty-one dollars and fifteen cents. Five thirty p.m. yesterday.’’
‘‘Francine Gold,’’ Rosen says. She holds up a driver’s license. ‘‘Thirty-one. Five two, blue eyes. Could be our vic. Address: 400 West 12th Street.’’
‘‘Those new loft conversions.’’
‘‘See if anyone reported her missing.’’
Noriega takes a printout from his back pocket. ‘‘Manhattan missing persons. No one fitting her description. No one named Francine Gold.’’
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