“Ma’am?” The New York policeman called Elly’s attention back to him, leaning in close to say, “So yesterday, you borrowed Detective Wade’s car. Try to remember where you—”
“Don’t badger her!” Dr. Kray stood in the open doorway, his lower lip all pouted out, playing king of the hospital, though he was only her personal physician with a rather small practice in town. Damn bastard. So he had finally decided to grace her with a visit. With only a curt nod from on high, he marched to the foot of her bed and picked up the clipboard that dangled there. After flipping through a few pages, he gave the three detectives a withering glance, definitely overdoing it. “She’s still under the effect of the drugs. Now I want you people out of here.”
“What drugs?” Detective Riker appeared not to see the doctor in the room. He addressed his question to the local detective. “Something the hospital gave her?”
“No,” said Mazie. “Paramedics found an injection site on the back of Elly’s neck. There were drugs in her system when they brought her in.” She handed a sheet of paper to the tall blonde. “That’s bloodwork from the hospital lab. I had them load her tox screen with a few extras. They only found trace amounts, but it matches up with last year’s case. The first drug would’ve dropped her on the spot. That’s a mail-order item. I’m checking retailers for veterinary supplies. The next one’s Rohypnol, and way too many kids got access to that one.”
“A date-rape drug,” said Detective Mallory. “No wonder her memory’s shot.”
“There was no sexual assault!” The irate Dr. Kray turned to Elly, saying, “Calm down,” though she had yet to show a sign of being anything but calm. And now, turning on the trio of detectives, the doctor yelled, “Are you deaf! I told you to get out!”
They ignored the old blowhard. This won Elly’s heart.
The three detectives went on to discuss which areas of the mall’s parking lot had been covered by security cameras. But there were too many blind spots and no pictures to be had.
“So the car wasn’t stolen,” said Mazie. “You might say it was borrowed. No parts stripped, nothing missing. Just a damn joyride, and whoever did this couldn’t even hotwire a car. They needed the keys. Now, who has to drug an old lady to steal her keys? I’ll tell you! Goddamn rotten kids!”
—
RECENT MUGGING VICTIM and hospital escapee Albert Costello opened the mysteriously unlocked door to his apartment, a place of stingy, dirty windows, deep shadows and dust. A stranger was sitting on the couch. This man might be in his late thirties, a tough guy by the looks of his muscled arms and the way he filled out his T-shirt and jeans—and those eyes were definitely on the scary side.
Fear should have been Albert’s first response, but he took his cue from this uninvited guest, who removed his blue baseball cap to reveal the dark stubble of a shaved head and good manners. He rose from the couch to greet his host with a smile.
And Albert smiled.
The stranger was smoking a cigarette. No problem with that. Albert also had the habit. There were many ashtrays about the room, most of them full, all of them dirty.
Aw, the place was a mess. If only he had known that company was coming.
—
DETECTIVE RIKER could remember a time when a drive in New Jersey smelled worse. Now this road was just like any highway in America, that other nation outside of New York City. “I liked the old days better,” he said to his partner, “when car thieves just swapped out the damn license plates.” True, if there was no police report of a stolen car, there would be no search for a driver. But this car thief had gone to unusual lengths to avoid the scrutiny of highway patrolmen, cameras and high-tech plate scanners. “Drugging an old lady to steal her car—that’s just over the top.”
Their own car was approaching a scanner for their dashboard E-ZPass, and Mallory slowed down to avoid setting off the speeder alarm at the tollbooth. Once they were beyond the radar, Rocketgirl was back in form, flooring the accelerator.
Many a stout-hearted cop had turned down the opportunity to ride with her. On days like this one, Riker considered renewing his driver’s license, though driving would seriously interfere with his drinking, and he believed it was only the hankering for booze that reinforced his will to live.
The bridge back to the city was still miles down the highway, and he wondered how long it would be before they attracted the attention of a road-rage nut. The detective rolled down his passenger window to slap the portable siren on the roof of the car. The effect was immediate. The Jersey drivers became more complacent about his partner riding up behind them, too close to kissing their taillights, and they glided out of the lane—Mallory’s lane.
Riker studied prints of tollbooth photos that showed Elly Cathery’s car driving into Manhattan with only a man behind the wheel and then leaving with company in the front seat. The pictures were next to worthless, only revealing the brim of the driver’s baseball cap. The passenger was slumped over, face hidden, though the hair was dark, and this rider wore a red T-shirt to fit the bulletin line of Last Seen Wearing—
“That’s our perp and the kid,” said Mallory.
“If the ME can match the old lady’s drug combo to the bodies. That date-rape drug leaves the system real fast.”
“We might get lucky with the nun’s tox screen. She was the last one to die.”
Even if Dr. Slope had not volunteered that much at the scene, Riker would have deferred to his partner’s smell test for the freshest corpse. He tossed the photographs on the dashboard. “Worst case—we wasted some time.”
“No,” she said, just a bit testy. “That’s our perp. I say he lives in New Jersey.” She took one hand off the wheel to reach a back pocket, and now she laid a twenty-dollar bill on the console. “And I say he’s a pro.”
“No way.” He figured she had only pitched this bet to make him a little crazy. “So he’s a Jersey boy. Okay, maybe I’ll buy that part.” The perpetrator would most likely go shopping for a car to steal on his own side of the bridge. “But a hit man?” He snatched up one of the photographs. “It’s a bad shot, but pros never get this careless. If that’s Jonah Quill, he should’ve been out of sight in the back.”
Mallory shook her head. “Not today. Thanks to the mayor’s scam, there were cops parked on both sides of every bridge all morning. Homeland Security had them spot-checking cars for imaginary terrorists with chemical weapons. So the perp figures—better a doped-up kid in the front seat than a tied-up kid in the back. Dead or alive, a schoolboy would’ve kept the car outside the federal profile.”
Riker nodded. Now he knew why they had a photo for a car with no speeding violation to trigger a camera. And putting the boy in the front seat might suggest a cool head and good planning, but there was no proof of a hired killer. And so, in the vein of fishing for more, he said, “The old lady ties him to a stolen car. That’s way too sloppy for a hit man.”
“That was smart. Elly Cathery has no job. She lives alone. No one would’ve noticed she was missing if she hadn’t borrowed a cop’s personal car.”
“Not buyin’ it,” said Riker. “For a pro, our perp’s a real screwup. If the local cops are onto the—”
“The locals are nowhere,” said Mallory. “Mazie Wade thinks it’s happened once before. It could’ve happened a dozen times. I wonder how often a senior citizen wakes up behind the wheel of her own car . . . in a strange place. Is that ever a police matter?”
No. The victim might tell a doctor. More than likely, the average senior would be too embarrassed to tell anyone. And then there was the added fear of losing a driver’s license, a loss that would shrink the world to places that the elderly could walk to—until they could no longer walk.
So maybe one point for his partner. If the killer had driven his own car or a rental today, cops would be breaking down his door right now. But Riker could never go along with the theory of a hit ma
n. And yet he would not take Mallory’s wager—such easy money, too easy. She favored sure things, the bets that she could not lose. Riker called them setups for pratfalls.
—
ALBERT COSTELLO would not ask if a woman had made those scratches on the stranger’s face, and this was not a matter of manners. Of course a woman’s claws had done that, but Albert never asked stupid questions. Also, there was the matter of the guy’s eyes—scary-wide white saucers with little black holes dead center. Kind of intense. They said to him, Don’t move, without saying a word out loud. I got you in my sights, they said. But the old man did not take this personally. Naw, this was just luck of the draw—like a birth defect.
And so he continued to entertain the stranger with his best story, the mugging that had landed him in the hospital. Parting the grimy curtains of a window that overlooked St. Marks Place, he called the man’s attention to the sidewalk below. “That’s the spot.” That was where he had been standing before the assault. He had no memory of entering the empty store where he had been found unconscious. “See that lamppost? I kill an hour there every day.”
He turned to face his mystery guest. The man had not yet offered up a name, but that long upper lip reminded Albert of a mug from the old Irish clans. And this guy had a way of talking that would have said homeboy back in the day. He asked more questions than cops did, but he was no cop. He had more the look of a mob enforcer, a bone breaker.
Was that worrisome?
Naw, the Irish gangs were history, and the Italian mob was dying off, the old dons gone to jail. These days, Gangland was Russian, Chinese and Dominican. Yeah, the good old days had gone to the dogs. And he said to the stranger, “So . . . you grew up around here. Am I right?”
Ma-a-a-n, what a cold one you are. And the guy got that way all of a sudden, losing his smile, going all stiff and strange-like.
Albert shuffled off to the kitchen. “I’m gonna getcha a cold beer.” This promised to be a most interesting day. Life was looking up.
—
DETECTIVE RIKER’S PARTNER pulled up in front of an innocuous building two blocks from the train station in the town of Jamaica, the borough of Queens. This was the address of the Crime Scene Unit. He had just put both feet on the sidewalk, and—ZAP—the street was clear, the car was gone, like maybe Mallory had taught it how to fly.
The captain in command of the CSU was standing in the open doorway, caught in the act of coming or going. Heller’s other name was The Bear, for he clearly did not belong in that suit and tie, nor did he walk about like other men, but lumbered everywhere, taking his own time. His slow-rolling brown eyes took in every detail, noting Riker’s loosened tie and the swipe of wet palms on the suit jacket.
This captain was not the first man or the tenth one to ask, “Why do you let Mallory drive?”
Riker shrugged and waved off the question without tipping his hand to a long flirtation with suicide.
When they had climbed the stairs to Heller’s private office, the commander sat down at his desk and laid out the evidence gathered by his team. “Nothin’ to do with black-market organs, and that comes straight from the ME’s Office. Dr. Slope says the stabs run deep. So your perp damn sure nicked the hearts before he removed ’em.”
“He took their hearts?” Riker slumped low in his chair. “Hell of a trophy collection.” And this lunatic act killed Mallory’s theory of a professional hit man. Good. He rooted for the psycho option. Pros were hell-to-impossible to catch, and, in this case, hired killings had never made sense.
Heller picked up a roll of silver duct tape. “No tape was found on the vics, but this brand matches adhesive residue on their skin. It’s sold in every hardware store in America. No shot at tracing it.”
“Any ideas about where the bodies were kept? We figure they died at different—”
“No freezer burns, but I know it was air-conditioned storage. Dr. Slope says the nun’s rigor won’t square with a likely time of death.” Heller moved on to the small evidence bags and sheets of text from the Police Lab. “We got debris from the clothing. To me, it all says warehouse. Mice droppings, pieces of roaches, fibers from cardboard cartons. . . . One pinfeather. The lab tech says it comes off a gull. That might steer us to a crime scene by the water.” He held up two fingers for “Two rivers—miles of waterfront property.” Or, more briefly put, Kiss that lead goodbye.
“Got anything that might give up the transport vehicle?”
“You mean fibers? No, nothing that links to floor mats or trunks. But he dumped four bodies. I’d bet on a van.”
So far, not one leg of his partner’s impossible theory was panning out. What was she up to? Had she known about the trophy hearts, maybe talked to the ME? Yeah, he would bet the rent money on it. And now he had the hang of Mallory’s setup: Could she get him to ask Heller the granddaddy of stupid questions? He did have to ask, but he couched it in disbelief when he said, “Well, could’ve been worse. At least we’re not lookin’ at murder for hire.”
The CSU commander relied on the science of physical evidence and a history of violence dating back to a time when New York City was the country’s murder capital—before that title was lost to Chicago. This man could be trusted to know a lunatic from a pro by the tracks and traces left behind. And so Riker had not anticipated Heller’s look of serious consideration for the insane theory of a hit man.
“Your perp has an untraceable murder kit.” The captain picked up a long blade, serrated on one side. “It’ll fit with the wounds. I bought this one down the street. You can buy ’em anywhere. A carving knife’s not your typical weapon for a pro, but they don’t all use twenty-twos. A bullet to the back of the head says assassination. That sends a message. It’s cold. It’s all business . . . but so’s this.” He laid out a photo of one victim, whose shirt was open to expose a wound where a stolen organ used to be. “Cutting out the heart—that’s got some hate to it. It’s personal . . . but not to your killer. He cuts ’em open. Only one wound—a stab sawed out to a long, straight cut. Not a rage attack.” He held up a hammer. “This’ll match tool marks we found on the broken ribs, the one’s that would’ve been in his way. So . . . a slice, a few whacks, then snip, snip and done—like it’s just stuff on a checklist. No passion, not even close. That says hate at one remove. He could be a real cold whack job . . . but I’d say he’s getting paid for this.”
And that would be Mallory’s punch line.
—
ALBERT COSTELLO and his no-name guest smoked cigarettes companionably as they discussed the mugging on St. Marks place. “He didn’t get my wallet. The coward must’ve been scared off. I can’t remember much. The doc said I should expect that with a cracked skull.”
The stranger drained his beer. “I heard a blind kid went missin’ that day.”
“No shit? I ain’t seen TV or a newspaper in days. What else did I miss?”
“The cops think the kid was on this street around the time you got mugged. You never saw him?”
Albert shook his head. And then, pressed to recall one more detail, he said, “A nun? Oh, yeah. I do remember her. I saw her comin’ from half a block away, even with my bad eyes. Not often you see that kind of outfit these days—like a black sailboat floatin’ down the sidewalk. So the nun stops at the bodega on the corner. She’s lookin’ at flowers, fixin’ to buy some, I guess. She must’ve been at it for a while before I got hit. The doc said I could count on losin’ maybe ten minutes or so. What’s your interest in a—”
The stranger closed one hand on his beer can and crushed it.
4
In this place of white tiles and stainless steel, sharp-pointed weapons were on display alongside the home-repair tools of saws and drills, all put to the service of mutilating the dead—the pathologist’s art. The most recently violated bodies were lined up in a row of four dissection tables. The autopsies had been completed, and the corpses only awa
ited removal to the morgue’s cold-storage drawers.
Chief Medical Examiner Edward Slope said to the young detective, “As you can see . . . you’re late.”
Kathy Mallory had come without her partner, the peacekeeper. And so Dr. Slope braced himself for warfare. He welcomed it. What fun.
The gun in her holster was a jump up from the razorblades confiscated in her childhood, but not much else had changed. She was still cold of heart, assuming she had one. Edward Slope felt honor bound to love the child that his old friend had left behind. However, the doctor took pains to make it known that he had to work at this obligation. And, in that spirit—on with the fight; he anticipated knives and guns, trip wires and torture. At times like this, he always felt nostalgia for their first battle when she was only a baby card shark in the Louis Markowitz Floating Poker Game. The little girl had insisted that, if he could not prove cheating, she must be innocent. And her foster father, the cop of cops, had backed her up on this rule of evidence. That may have been the start of the bond between Lou and Kathy—that assist in stealing the doctor’s money. And years later, Edward Slope saw payback when Lou got the heart-attack news that his little felon, a born thief, was quitting college to join the NYPD.
It was a balanced universe.
Today, doctor and cop squared off across the first dead body. Out of respect for the calling of Sister Michael, hers was the only corpse to lay under the protection of a sheet. He had arranged the cloth to cover all but the nun’s wound, though every inch of her had been photographed for the police. But the detective had not yet seen those pictures, and it should have been predictable that Kathy Mallory would sense something hidden and—
She whipped off the dead woman’s sheet to expose the snow-white skin—and a colorful aspect of Sister Michael. Inked red roses encircled her thighs in a spiral climb to the hips. “These cloistered nuns . . . they just get more interesting all the time.”
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