Murder Among the Angels

by Stefanie Matteson

  “Fort Tryon Park,” Jerry replied, naming the park that fronted on the river just north of the George Washington Bridge. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the bodies weren’t dumped in the river at the same place.”

  Charlotte knew the Hudson was famous for its eccentric currents. A tidal river almost to Albany, the current could flow either north or south, depending on the tides. The Indians had called it “the river that flows both ways.”

  “How much did the butt weigh?” asked Lister.

  “About ten pounds,” Jerry answered.

  “Then it probably went in somewhere close to where it was found,” Lister said. “A body part weighing that much wouldn’t have traveled far.”

  As he spoke, a thought suddenly struck Charlotte. “I assume the butt, as you call it, must have had flesh on it to weigh that much,” she said.

  Jerry nodded.

  She looked down at the gleaming skull. “But the skull’s bare.”

  Jerry nodded again. “The killer must have macerated the skull.”

  “Macerated it?” she said.

  “Boiled it to remove the flesh,” Lister explained. “Usually you throw in a little detergent to help dissolve the fat and get rid of the smell,” he added with a little grin. “Tide is good; Fab, anything with enzymes.”

  “To get your wash whiter than white,” said Jerry.

  Charlotte shuddered.

  Lister was still bent over the skull. “I think your killer used something more than just detergent, though. This skull is like the other one in that it’s unnaturally white. I would bet that both of them were bleached.”

  “But why would somebody bother?” Charlotte asked. To say nothing of bothering to leave it in a cemetery with a bouquet of lilies of the valley, she thought.

  Lister shrugged. “That’s not my department. I leave that up to the shrinks. But skulls are my department, and I think we may be in luck here.”

  “What do you mean?” Jerry asked.

  “If you can’t match the skull to the body parts, the next best thing is to have a skull with some unique identifying feature,” he said. “I call your attention to the victim’s chin.”

  Charlotte and Jerry bent down to look at the skull.

  “The underside,” Lister added.

  At first Charlotte didn’t see anything, but as she tilted her head to get a better look at the underside of the chin, she noticed a faint rectangle etched into the bone. “I see some lines,” she said. “What are they from?”

  “A surgeon’s knife,” he replied. “She’s had plastic surgery. A complete facial reconstruction, I would venture to guess. The rectangle on her chin is from a chin reconstruction.”

  “No kidding!” Jerry exclaimed as he leaned over to take another look.

  “I’m guessing here—you’ll have to confirm this with Leonore—but it looks like a wedge-shaped section has been added to the chin, which would have had the effect of making it longer. But that’s not all.”

  “What else?” Jerry asked.

  “See this abraded area?” He pointed to an area under the eye socket where the surface of the bone was rougher than elsewhere. “Again, I’m guessing. But I think there was an implant here. To build up the zygomatic bone.”

  Jerry whistled softly.

  “It’s the prominence of the zygomatic bone, or cheekbone, that gives a woman that high-cheekboned look that is so desirable,” he said. Then he pointed to the ridges above the eye sockets. “Same thing here. Brow implants on the superorbital ridges.”

  “That would explain why the flesh was removed,” Charlotte observed. “The murderer may have been worried that the victims could be identified through the facial implants.”

  “Exactly,” said Lister. “Only a trained eye would notice that the implants had left their mark on the bone. Now for the most interesting part.” He slid the cast of the first victim’s skull over next to the skull that had just been found. “Look at this,” he said, pointing at the cheekbones.

  Charlotte and Jerry leaned over again to look at the first victim’s skull. The surface of the cheekbones was rough, exactly as with the second skull.

  “Same thing,” Jerry said.

  Lister nodded. “I had noticed the abrasions before, of course, but I wrote them off to some natural anomaly. You often find unusual surface patterns on skull bone. But to find it in a second skull can’t be dismissed so easily. Especially with the additional evidence of the chin implant.”

  “And especially in the case of a second skull that’s been found under identical circumstances,” Jerry said.

  Lister nodded. “Now it’s back to the drawing board. I’m going to have to do another reconstruction for our first young lady. Build up her cheekbones.” He looked over at Jerry. “Have I given you something to run with?”

  “I’ll say,” Jerry said.

  Lister had given them something to run with, all right. But where did they start? Having spent most of her life in Hollywood, Charlotte’s first thought was that the victims had undergone cosmetic surgery in order to alter their identities. She thought of it as the Dark Passage scenario, after the movie that had starred Humphrey Bogart. But Bogart had played a criminal who wanted to elude the law, which would hardly seem likely in the case of two young women in their twenties. The only reasonable explanation she could come up with was that the young women had been patients of the same plastic surgeon, and that he had killed them because he had botched their surgery: a homicidal variation on the old saw that doctors bury their mistakes. In her research on plastic surgeons, Charlotte had come across an interview with the angry patient of a California plastic surgeon who had used liquid silicone injections, which were now against the law, to reconstruct her face. The silicone had migrated from the places where it had been injected to other parts of her face, turning her into a hideous monster. Half a dozen corrective operations had not solved the problem, and she and the other patients whose surgery the plastic surgeon had botched were suing him for malpractice. She knew of several cases of botched plastic surgery herself. She remembered in particular a beautiful woman who thought her nose (which Charlotte considered flawless) needed to be more fashionably retroussé. As a result of her own vanity (or perhaps insecurity), she had ended up with a nose that squiggled down the front of her face, and through which she had trouble breathing. The botched nose job was a constant reminder to herself and others of the folly of tampering with nature, especially when nature had been more than generous to begin with.

  Her point to Jerry was that a few irate patients could jeopardize a plastic surgeon’s reputation. And any threat to a reputation that brought in an annual income that could run into seven figures would be motive enough for murdering one’s dissatisfied patients.

  Then there was the possibility that the dead young women hadn’t been mistakes, but experiments that hadn’t lived up to their creator’s expectations: the Mr. Hyde scenario. The converse of the premise that a plastic surgeon whose reputation was damaged would stand to lose millions was that a plastic surgeon with a reputation for working miracles could stand to gain millions. Charlotte knew for a fact that the California plastic surgeons, in particular, were on the cutting edge of the profession, so to speak, and had been known to employ techniques that were considered experimental by the more conservative element of their profession. Charlotte herself would have considered a botched experiment an argument for killing her plastic surgeon, but the argument was just as strong for having it the other way around.

  Although Charlotte and Jerry discussed all this on the drive back to the police station, they accomplished little else that day. More time than Charlotte had expected had been taken up by their visit with Lister, as a result of which she had to forego their lunch in order to make it back to the city in time for an afternoon appointment with her agent.

  But she promised Jerry that she would be back to take him up on his lunch invitation, and to do what she could to help him out.

  As she repeated
the drive up the Saw Mill River Parkway two days later, Charlotte found herself pondering the face-lift question once again. The reason she had even considered a face-lift in the first place was that she was worried that she wouldn’t get work if she looked too old. But if her meeting with her agent was any indicator, she needn’t have worried. The offers were pouring in: movie scripts, television specials, regional theater. She seemed to be in greater demand than ever before. It wasn’t youth that was the issue anyway, she decided. It was vitality. Women sought out that taut look because they wanted to convey the impression of energy, of being able to compete. It wasn’t the fact that their faces had aged that was the issue, but that they looked weary and careworn. And just as being told that she’s beautiful can make a woman feel beautiful, altering a woman’s appearance to make her look younger could no doubt help her feel more energetic. But not having enough energy had never been a problem for Charlotte. It was her energy that had propelled her to the top of her profession, and had kept her there for nearly fifty years. And it was her energy that would keep her going for another ten—would it be importunate of her to ask for another fifteen?—despite the crepy folds around her eyes, despite the fatty deposits under her chin, despite the scars that life had inflicted on her skin and on her psyche. As Francis Bacon had said: “There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.”

  She still hadn’t made up her mind. The jury on the “to lift or not to lift” question was still out. But the scales were no longer as balanced as they were when she’d first reconsidered the question.

  4

  Charlotte arrived at the Zion Hill police station at eleven-thirty, ready for Jerry to put her to work (to say nothing of being ready for a good meal). She found Jerry on the verge of calling Leonore Herman, the state forensic anthropologist, whose offices were located in Albany. Jerry had asked Lister to send her the skull of the second victim via Emergency Medical Services after he had finished making his cast. Lister was an experienced student of the configuration of skulls, but he wasn’t a forensic anthropologist, and Jerry wanted to confirm Lister’s conclusions about the cosmetic surgery before going any further with that aspect of the investigation. In his telephone conversation with Dr. Herman, Jerry had also suggested that she take another look at the skull of the first victim, which was stored with the remains of other unidentified murder victims at the offices of the state medical examiner.

  “She should have had enough time to look at them by now,” Jerry had said impatiently shortly after Charlotte’s arrival. The fact that he was willing to postpone a meal to call someone who probably would have called him as soon as she had finished her report was a sign that the case had gotten hold of Jerry. After two years of stolen bicycles and speeding tickets, he was a man with a mission.

  He got through to Dr. Herman right away, and Charlotte could tell from the expression on his face, as well as from the general drift of his side of the conversation, which was liberally sprinkled with words like “rhinoplasty,” that he’d struck pay dirt.

  “Lister was right,” he said after hanging up. “Both victims had had plastic surgery. Leonore had noticed the abrasions on the cheekbones of the first skull, just as Lister had, but she also wrote them off to a natural anomaly. But the evidence of plastic surgery on the second skull is clear-cut.”

  “So,” said Charlotte. “Cheek implants for the first victim …”

  “And a chin implant, posterior mandible implants, cheek implants, and brow implants for the second victim. Leonore said that one, if not both, had probably had nose jobs too, given the extensive nature of the other surgery, but without the nasal cartilage, there was no way to tell that for sure.”

  Charlotte sat pensively for a moment in the chair facing Jerry’s desk, and then said: “I’ve had a night to sleep on this.”

  “And?”

  “I see two problems with the plastic surgeon scenario. First, why would a plastic surgeon have used a meat cleaver to dismember the bodies? You said it was a meat cleaver, right?”

  Jerry nodded. “No question about that, according to Leonore.”

  “It seems to me that a plastic surgeon would have much more sophisticated and efficient instruments—surgical saws and the like—at his disposal.”

  “Good point,” said Jerry. “Unless he didn’t want to draw attention to himself as a member of the surgical profession. What’s number two?”

  “Wouldn’t a plastic surgeon have been aware that the skulls would reveal that the victims had undergone plastic surgery? Especially the skull with the chin implant. And if that were the case, why would he have deposited the skulls in cemeteries for anyone to find?”

  “Why kill his patients in the first place? If criminals were rational, they wouldn’t be criminals,” Jerry said. He went on: “Maybe he thought nobody would notice. Or maybe he didn’t care. The fact that we suspect a plastic surgeon of being the murderer doesn’t make us that much the wiser.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I did some calling around this morning. There are over five thousand plastic surgeons in the United States, and nearly three hundred in the greater New York metropolitan area alone.” He picked up an accordion-folded computer printout that was four inches thick. “Here are their names and addresses.”

  Charlotte picked up the stack of papers. “Do you want me to start calling?” she asked, eager to make herself useful.

  Jerry threw up his hands. “What would you ask them?”

  Their dilemma about what to do next was alleviated, for the moment at any rate, by the buzzing of Jerry’s intercom. The dispatcher was on the line. “There’s a woman down here who insists that she has to see you,” the dispatcher said. “I’m sorry, Chief,” she added. “She won’t take no for an answer.”

  Jerry pressed the intercom button. “Who is she?” he asked.

  “Lothian Archibald,” she replied.

  At the mention of the name, Jerry looked exasperated. “Okay,” he said resignedly. “Send her up.” He looked at Charlotte. “Edward Archibald was the founder of Zion Hill,” he said.

  “I remember Lister saying that,” Charlotte said. “He commissioned the angel statues for the church.”

  “He also built the church and virtually every other public building in town. The Archibald name still carries a lot of weight around here. To a certain extent, this place is still an Archibald fiefdom.”

  “And you’re one of the serfs?”

  “You’ve got it. She’s one of Edward Archibald’s daughters.” There was a knock at the door, and Jerry rose to answer it. A moment later, he admitted a woman in her sixties with a round, pleasant-looking face, and close-cropped gray hair going to white.

  “I’m very sorry to interrupt you, Chief D’Angelo, but this will only take a minute. It’s very important.”

  Jerry made a point of looking at his watch, and then invited her to sit down next to Charlotte, whom he introduced as his old friend, Mrs. Lundstrom. “Let me guess,” he said. “You’ve seen her again.”

  “How did you know?” she said, oblivious to the sarcasm in Jerry’s voice. “I know you didn’t believe me before,” she went on. “To tell you the truth, I wasn’t sure I believed myself. I could have been making a mistake; it was from such a distance. But this time I’m absolutely sure.”

  “Where?” Jerry asked.

  “It was at the drugstore—the one on the corner of Main Street and the Albany Post Road in Tarrytown. Last Tuesday.”

  “If you were so sure, why didn’t you say anything to her?”

  She stammered. “I was so shocked, I guess; the idea didn’t even occur to me. Also, I wondered if she would respond. If it really was her, why hasn’t she come forward? It’s been nine months since the first time I saw her. But I did speak to her later. After I bought the camera.”

  “After you what?”

  “I was worried that you wouldn’t believe me. So I bought one of those disposable cameras and took a picture of her. S
he was browsing in the hair products aisle. She didn’t even notice. Then I went up to her and asked her if she knew someone named Lily Louria.”

  “Any relation to the cosmetic surgeon?” Charlotte interjected.

  “His late wife,” Jerry responded. “She died two and a half years ago in a drowning accident in Cozumel, Mexico. Her body was never recovered.”

  Charlotte was beginning to get the picture. This woman apparently thought the cosmetic surgeon’s wife had come back from the dead. Judging from Jerry’s attitude, he thought she was a nut case.

  “Why?” he asked. “Do you know him?”

  Charlotte nodded.

  Jerry gave her an appraising look, and then turned back to the Archibald woman. “And?” he prompted.

  “When I got up closer to her, I could smell her perfume,” Miss Archibald continued. “Then I was absolutely sure. She always wore the same perfume: Muguet. She ordered it from Grasse, France. Her mother always wore that scent too.”

  “What did she say?” Jerry asked.

  “It was very odd.” A puzzled look came over the woman’s face. “I’m positive she recognized her name. But she pretended not to. Or maybe it wasn’t a conscious recognition.” She paused for a moment, and then announced: “I think she’s a victim of amnesia.”

  Jerry completed her thought: “Who was miraculously washed ashore in some Mexican seacoast village, and then lost her memory. Miss Archibald, this is real life, not the movies.”

  “It would explain why she hasn’t identified herself,” she said. “It would also explain why she seemed to only vaguely recognize the name.”

  “If she were a victim of amnesia, why would she be here?” Jerry asked.

  “Maybe she was subconsciously drawn back here by some kind of homing instinct, but couldn’t remember enough to know why. I have the photograph here,” the woman continued. Reaching into her handbag, she pulled out an envelope, and passed it across the desk to Jerry.

  Jerry pulled the photo out of the envelope and studied it for a moment. “This woman has brown hair. Your niece had red hair.”