“Very true,” McCabe said. She reached for her ORB.
She never liked to rely on her intuition. But there it was again. The twinge of uncertainty she’d had about her partner when they were first assigned to work together.
True, Assistant Chief Danvers was Baxter’s godfather, and word had it that Baxter had used that connection to get himself transferred out of Vice and into their squad. But Baxter had more than pulled his weight during the serial killer investigation. And he’d had her back, including suggesting her car might have a tracker.
The argument he was making now about leaving Lisa Nichols’s death alone was reasonable. One complaint from Ted Thornton to the mayor about how he was being hounded by APD detectives when he was about to return to Albany …
Except, McCabe thought, there were those moments when her partner’s easygoing grin and wisecracks seemed to be a cover for whatever was going on beneath the surface. Too bad she couldn’t connect him to a brain scanner and ask him a few questions—an unacceptable intrusion as a part of a criminal investigation, according to the courts, but they’d said nothing about doing a mind probe on your partner.
18
On her way home after her shift, McCabe remembered that she needed to pick up the takeout dinner for two that she had ordered from Chelsea and Stan. The restaurant was taking part in another community fund-raiser. This one was to send a local children’s choir to a festival in Washington, D.C.
The cross street to Chelsea’s Place was blocked off. An ancient water pipe—one of the first installed in the city—had burst, spewing water down the street. The water in the restaurant had been off for two days after it happened. Now the water was back on, but the cross street was blocked. McCabe parked and sloshed her way back to the restaurant through the melting snow.
She greeted the hostess as she passed the reception desk in the foyer and made her way to the dining room.
The back region of the restaurant was in full dinnertime bustle.
“Hi, you two,” she called to Chelsea and Stan from the kitchen doorway.
“Come on in, slugger,” Stan said, waving her in with the knife in his hand.
McCabe glanced at the two huge glass water bottles in a rack beside the counter. “Is your water out again?”
“No,” Chelsea said, taking a container from one of the smaller cooling units. “But we’ve been getting questions from customers about whether the city water’s safe. Since we can’t swear that it is, we’re using bottled water for the food prep.”
“Isn’t that kind of expensive?”
“Yes,” Stan said.
“We don’t have any choice,” Chelsea said.
“The mayor says the water’s safe if it’s boiled,” McCabe pointed out.
Stan dumped the garlic cloves he had minced into a sauté pan. “She does, but Chelsea doesn’t believe her or the health department.”
“Didn’t you hear what they said about the girl who died of cholera?” Chelsea asked. “They don’t know how she picked up the bacteria, but they’re confident it wasn’t the water. If they don’t know, how can they be confident?”
McCabe said, “The other space zombies in the house said that she had only arrived in town two or three months ago. She was away for a couple of days before she became ill. As the mayor said, she could have picked the cholera bacteria up someplace else.”
“But they don’t know yet,” Chelsea said. She finished wrapping McCabe’s entrée, a tofu and walnut casserole with a butternut squash sauce, and put it into a carrier. “This is great with an endive salad.”
“I’ll tell Pop that. Good luck with the water situation.”
“Good luck?” Chelsea glared at her from her five foot four. “Right, that’s what we need, Hannah. People are dying of cholera … the world’s a mess. We could use some luck.”
“Chelsea,” Stan said. “What—”
“I’m pregnant. I’m going to have a baby. And we can’t even drink the water.”
“Pregnant?” Stan’s smile lit up his face. “You’re sure?”
Chelsea nodded. “I had a doctor’s appointment this morning.”
“When you said you were going shopping for herbs?” Stan sobered. “Is everything okay?”
“Fine. She said last time doesn’t count. There isn’t any reason this baby shouldn’t be healthy.”
McCabe laughed. “Chels, this is great.” She hugged Chelsea, then Stan. “This is wonderful.”
She watched as Stan, laughing, swept Chelsea up and kissed her.
“I’m going now,” McCabe said, “and letting the two of you have some time alone to celebrate.”
“Wait, slugger, don’t go.” Stan lowered his wife to her feet. “Stay and have a glass of champagne. Champagne for us. Sparkling cider for Chelsea.”
“Love to, but I really have to get home. We’ll celebrate with dinner at someone else’s restaurant when your anniversary gift finally arrives.”
As she passed through the dining room, McCabe wondered if Chelsea was right about the bottled water. On a Tuesday evening, most of the tables were filled. If people were feeling anxious about the water breaks, then accommodating their concerns might be good business, even if it was expensive in the short term.
But if Chelsea, who was pregnant again after a miscarriage, was feeling anxious when she should have been joyful because a girl she had never met had died of cholera, then that—
McCabe’s foot slipped on an icy patch on the sidewalk. She managed to stay upright and hold on to the bag in her hand.
“That was close. You okay?”
“Fine, thanks,” McCabe said to the man who had seen her near-pratfall. “Fine and dandy.”
In her car, McCabe sat remembering last Friday evening. She and Pettigrew had gone downtown to attend an award ceremony for a patrol officer. It had been their turn to go. After the ceremony, she had followed Pettigrew into a pharmacy on North Pearl Street. He needed to pick up his prescription for acid reflux; she wanted to send a holographic anniversary card to Chelsea and Stan. She had been finishing her transmission when the ruckus broke out.…
The man, a muscle-bound gladiator in a cheap brown suit, whirled and threw a roundhouse kick. The kick demolished a display of cleaning products before connecting with the security guard’s jaw. The guard went down hard, out cold. The man straightened, his ripped pant leg dangling around his calf. “Better not mess with me,” he advised the several people who had stopped to stare. They scattered into the aisles.
“I’m sorry, I still don’t understand your request,” Suzy, the automated shopper’s aide, told him. “Why don’t I ask a staff person to help? Please wait.”
“Shut up!” the man yelled. “I told you I don’t need no help!”
McCabe measured her five-eight height and one hundred thirty-eight pounds against his bulk. Her hand moved toward her holstered weapon beneath her thermo jacket. “Sir, I’m an Albany PD detective. I can see you’re upset. But you need to calm down.”
The man turned to have a look at her. His gaze dropped to the weapon she was pointing at him. He grunted and his nostrils flared.
“That was a really nice kick,” McCabe said. “Like something out of one of those old martial arts movies. But you just committed an assault in front of a cop.”
“He shouldn’t have messed with me,” the man said.
“It’s in his job description,” McCabe said. “He’s paid to mess with people. It was your mistake to respond by knocking him out.”
“Don’t nobody mess with me,” the man said. “I’m bad. Bad as Leroy Brown and Stagolee.”
“I don’t doubt it,” McCabe said. “But as you can see, I have a weapon. And even when it’s set to stun, getting zapped with it isn’t pleasant. I should also tell you that there’s another cop here in the pharmacy, and we should have backup in a matter of minutes. I know you’re aware of the fact you’re on store surveillance cameras. The cam on my weapon is also recording this. So what it comes down to is that if you break mean
and bad on me, either I will take you down or another cop will. Am I making myself clear?”
They stared at each other. McCabe wondered who would blink first.
To her relief, Pettigrew spoke from her left, “She’s telling you the truth, buddy. I’m the other cop. Better just let it go.”
Pettigrew had his weapon trained on the man, too.
The man returned his attention to McCabe. “You’re a woman. My mama made me promise to never hurt a woman.”
“I’m glad your mother made you promise that,” McCabe said, giving him his way out. “So let’s do this the easy way. You won’t hurt me, and I won’t hurt you.”
The man licked his lips and nodded.
McCabe reached for her handcuffs. “Detective Pettigrew is going to pat you down for weapons. Then I’m going to put these on you, and you’re going to sit down on the floor. Understand?”
“Yeah. I can’t hurt no woman.”
McCabe sent her silent thanks to his mother.
The man’s gaze met hers. “What your mama make you promise?”
The question caught McCabe by surprise. “Nothing,” she said.
“Mamas always make you promise something,” the man said. “What your mama make you promise?”
“That she’d be the first woman on Mars,” Pettigrew said. “Nice suit, but you should have gone with a larger size.”
The man edged his feet apart for Pettigrew’s pat down. “Got it at the mission,” he said, staring down at his ripped pant leg. “They gave me the biggest size they had.”
Twenty minutes later, McCabe and Pettigrew walked out of the pharmacy, bringing up the rear, behind the paramedics carrying the stretcher with the sedated guard and the uniforms leading away the gladiator. McCabe took shallow breaths of the stagnant air. “The wind’s shifted,” she said.
“Essence of stale beer and sweaty gym socks this evening,” Pettigrew observed.
Across the street, the readout on the bank building registered seventy-three degrees Fahrenheit, air quality poor. McCabe glanced up at the bulletin board streaming Channel 4 “breaking news”—war news about the casualties in the latest offensive.
Lightning flickered in the silver-tinged clouds looming behind the bulletin board. A rumble of thunder followed. “We’d better get moving or we’re going to get rained on,” she said. “See you tomorrow.”
“Weekend duty,” Pettigrew said. “I can’t wait.”
“Speaking of the weekend, are we still on for next Saturday? The classic crime film festival at the Palace?”
“Front and center for Dog Day Afternoon.” Pettigrew shot his arm in the air, doing his imitation of Al Pacino. “‘Attica! Attica!’”
McCabe laughed. It was good to see Pettigrew kidding around. “And as my mother would have said, ‘Power to the people!’”
She waved and pivoted toward her car, parked halfway down the street.
Another flash of lightning, the first fat drops of rain. Then the sky opened up.
Drenched, McCabe sprinted the last few feet and tumbled into her car.
On the way up the State Street hill, the car in front of her stopped without warning. A second later McCabe saw why. With the white paint on their faces dissolving in the downpour, wet T-shirts and tattered blue jeans clinging to their shuffling bodies, a line of space zombies were following their leader across the street.
A girl in the middle of the line stumbled and fell. The red scarf around her neck stood out like a slash on her throat.
The last two zombies in the line reached down and hoisted the girl to her feet instead of stepping over her. The girl staggered on, held up between them. A burst of wind shook McCabe’s car door. She got back in and pulled the door closed. A horn blared behind her.
McCabe cast a parting glance at the girl and her two companions as they shuffled toward the Plaza. “Not your job,” she told herself. “You’re a cop, not a drug counselor.”
And she had gone home.
That was what she was going to do now. Go home.
* * *
Pettigrew couldn’t decide whether he was angry or relieved when his ex-wife didn’t keep their appointment. He was calling it an appointment in his mind, not a date. That was what he had intended to make clear to her. In spite of what had happened between them a couple of months ago when she had been in the City and taken the fast trip up to Albany, they were not dating. They were not considering a reconciliation. They’d had sex. That was all. It was still over between them.
But he didn’t get to give his speech because she stood him up.
“So sorry, but something came up,” her tag said. “I’m stuck in Philadelphia. Let’s reschedule.”
“Not likely,” he mumbled as he closed his ORB.
He got up and started to remove the plates and glasses from the table.
Elaine had always liked playing mind games. She liked to have him dangling on her hook. Liked to think that if she wanted him back she could have him.
Not this time. She was not going to sink her fangs into him again.
He reached for his goggles and settled with his feet up into his favorite armchair. A moment later, he was in his avatar body, Mr. Parker, strolling through the doors of the Key Club.
A hostess dressed as a flapper greeted him. “Welcome back, Mr. Parker. It’s good to see you again.”
“Thank you, Lola. What’s on the program this evening?”
“I’ll let you guess. Like my outfit?”
“Very nice. Nineteen twenties?”
“The Roaring Twenties. Tonight we have three fun locations to choose from: Hollywood party, Los Angeles, 1921; Mardi Gras, New Orleans, 1925; Speakeasy, Harlem, New York, 1927.”
“I’ll go to the speakeasy in Harlem.”
“An excellent choice. Twelve of our members are already there. You’ll be lucky number thirteen.”
“My favorite number,” Pettigrew said. “I always play the lottery—uh, the horses—on Friday the thirteenth.”
“Please stop by the men’s changing room, Mr. Parker, and choose what you’d like to wear. Then go down the hall to the third door on the left. Just knock and say, ‘Joe sent me.’”
“Thank you, Lola.”
“My pleasure. And don’t forget we have some private entertainment planned for later this evening back here in our own club lounge.”
“I’ll be here. Will you?”
Lola winked. “You bet. See you later.”
Settling into his avatar body, Pettigrew strolled down the hall toward that evening’s adventure.
* * *
Mike Baxter was sitting in a tavern down the street from his condo. Since he usually went to cop hangouts, he was in no danger of having the regulars in the tavern recognize him and want to talk.
He sat on a stool at the end of the bar sipping his beer and pondering his problem. His problem was named Hannah McCabe. If he couldn’t get McCabe to leave Lisa Nichols’s death alone, she might bring them both down.
What he didn’t know was what he was going to do about her.
He drained his mug. “Hey, could I get another beer down here?” he called out to the bartender. “Make that bourbon on the rocks.”
“Put some hair on your chest, Mike boy,” his godfather would have said if he’d been there.
Right now, Baxter would settle for blurring the edges of his reality.
19
Wednesday, January 22, 2020
1:00 P.M.
Located in the basement of the medical center, the morgue was clean, well-lit, and cold. Or at least it always seemed cold to McCabe. She braced herself against the chill as she and Baxter stepped out of the elevator. She hoped Dr. Singh, the medical examiner, would be able to tell them something that would send them in the right direction. They’d spent the morning going through statements from the people they had interviewed about Kevin Novak. They’d also gone through the crime scene report from FIU and learned Novak had lied to his wife about his reason for staying at the f
uneral home overnight. FIU had found no sign of a broken or patched pipe in the basement.
The residue in the basement sink had turned out to be unrelated to Novak’s murder. The part-time staffer who came in to do the corpses’ hair and makeup had poured some leftover dye in the sink after doing a touch-up.
Neither the crime-scene report nor the interviews had given the detectives a solid lead.
“You are on time,” Dr. Singh said as McCabe and Baxter walked in. He turned back to his examination of the scans and X-rays of Novak’s body. They donned surgical gowns and plastic protective masks and took their positions on the other side of the autopsy table.
Singh pointed at the entry wound in Novak’s chest. “If the arrow had struck his heart, he might have died instantly. Instead the arrow pierced his lung.” Singh swung back around and pointed at the wall where the images were displayed. “Look at this scan. You can see the bruising to the injured lung. He was bleeding internally, drowning in his own blood.”
“But according to our forensic techs, he was able to move around,” McCabe said.
“Yes, he would have been able to move,” Singh said. “But breathing would have been painful. He would have been coughing a bit.”
Singh reached for his scalpel. “Let’s open him up.”
McCabe couldn’t see Baxter’s expression behind his mask, but he hadn’t moved back from the table. This was his fourth autopsy; maybe he was getting used to the process.
After spreading the chest cavity, Singh said, “You can see how the puncture wound extends through the chest wall, and the damage track in the lung. See the bleeding into the surrounding tissue.… Look here. You can see how the blood has clotted in the lung tissues, small airways, trachea, throat, and mouth.… He has a little blood in the stomach, too. He must have swallowed some blood when he was trying to breathe.”
They watched as Singh completed the autopsy, removing the organs.
“Well, what’s your verdict, Doc?” Baxter asked.
“Injuries consistent with the weapon used. Definitely not self-inflicted. A homicide. Sorry I can’t be more helpful. This one is rather straightforward.”
“Could you give us a time of death?” McCabe asked.
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