Nearby in the lab, Wolf had moved the thawed corpse to the stainless steel table and was dictating his findings into an overhead mike.
Only Wolf, Rizzo and Bergman were absent. Rizzo was a few blocks away preparing to interview anyone who might have seen the killer. He was at a distinct disadvantage. Anyone working in the restaurants or on the street within view of the Venezia during the crucial hours between one and three a.m. would not be showing up for work until late afternoon. Bergman, meanwhile, had returned to the scene to go over Tony Crosetti’s receipts from Friday night, hoping something familiar might turn up since he was the last customer to leave the place. It was a long shot but at this point everything was.
But Larry Simon had some surprises for the crew and had provided Hue with several photographs and some documents for a presentation he would make following Cody’s briefing.
Simon sat back in his chair, patiently watching the panorama of death flick across the big screen as an obviously edgy Cody described in detail how Charley had led Cody and Jim Farrell to the freezer and thus to the harrowing discovery.
There was a murmur of discomfort as the first grotesque photo of Uncle Tony’s frozen corpse flashed six-feet high on the board. The entire crew was aware of the murder by then, but since they all knew the victim, the bizarre scene conveyed to each an ineffable sense of melancholy, of sorrow, despair, and, ultimately, anger. Nor did anyone in the room doubt for a moment that this was the work of the psychopath they knew only as Androg.
Cody gave them a moment to compose themselves before continuing, playing Annie Rothschild’s description of the entire scene.
“I think it’s safe to say we won’t be finding any DNA except perhaps Crosetti’s,” she said. “There’s no blood anywhere. We dusted the office and freezer and picked up some prints but I’m guessing they’re either Tony’s or the nephew’s. We’ll be checking his clothes for fibers, prints, anything that might give us a lead but the team agrees that our killer undressed him in the office, not at the freezer as I originally thought. The killer had more room and could stack the clothes in the closet where we found them and get them out of the way. This was a very carefully planned and executed homicide, just like Handley’s.”
“Rizzo and Bergman are canvassing the area with a team of Farrell’s best detectives,” Cody said. “Hopefully he’ll find someone who saw Androg or his car in the lot. And we’re waiting for Wolf to complete the autopsy. I’m sure he’ll have something to add.”
“Is there any possible connection between Crosetti and Handley?” Kate Winters said.
“Well, we’re pretty sure the killer was in the place at least once before this morning.”
“Not much help there,” Ryan said. “The place is crowded every night.”
“Typical,” said Simon. “Our killer’s hiding in plain sight.”
Before he could continue Wolf and Annie entered the room. He was still wearing blue scrubs and booties but had removed the blouse. The sleeves of his plaid shirt were rolled up to the elbows and he was drying off his hands with paper towels Annie was handing him one at a time from the roll she carried.
“Well,” he said, tossing a used towel into a waste basket, “we haven’t done the toxicology reports yet, but I can tell you how Tony Crosetti was killed.”
The entire crew turned their attention to Wolfsheim, which is how he liked it.
“He was drugged with a dose of chloral hydrate. He was nearly comatose when he died but he was dead before the freezer door was closed.”
“Okay,” Cody said, “what’s the kicker?”
“He was drowned,” Wolfsheim answered.
“We found diatoms, a form of plant life that lives in water,” Annie nodded. “When a person drowns, their lungs fill with water and the microscopic diatoms burst through the lungs and enter the blood stream. They move rapidly through the blood stream and throughout the body and ultimately settle in the bone marrow. Cut a bone and if it contains diatoms, it is a drowning.”
“In short,” Wolfsheim theorized, “the killer slipped Crosetti a mickey in his wine to knock him out. Then held his nose, opened his mouth, and forced enough water down his throat to drown him. That’s why the water glass was empty.”
32
Although he could have knocked off for what was left of the weekend—Uncle Tony certainly wasn’t going anywhere—Wolf spent the afternoon writing up his autopsy report.
Wolf was intent on comparing Uncle Tony’s murder to Handley’s point by point. Both occurred approximately the same time of night. Both victims were naked, both sitting. Both had no obvious motive. Both killings went out of their way to confuse the cause of death, as though intentionally playing games with the investigators. In both cases, fiber evidence that Androg was wearing surgical booties seemed all too easily discovered, as though the clue had been left on purpose to perplex. The vague imprints were approximately the same in size.
Rizzo and Bergman, for their part, were making plans to interview anyone who might have seen the killer at La Venezia Friday night and planned to sit down with Ricky both to go over his unprompted recollections of the crowd and to jog his memory with the Venezia’s credit card slips—though they found it hard to accept that this particular killer would have used a credit card.
Bergman kept thinking about the woman in red, who looked somehow vaguely familiar as she passed his table leaving in her wake an unforgettably sensual and expensive scent. He made a note to pay a visit to the perfume boutiques at Saks when he had finished the interviews.
“Is there any possible connection between Crosetti and Handley? Could Handley have been a customer at La Venezia?” Kate Winter asked Cody.
“That’s what Larry’s trying to determine,” Cody said. “Right now their only obvious connection is that they’re both dead.”
“I don’t understand why we’ve come up so short on physical evidence,” she said. “Nobody’s that good.”
“I don’t think we’ve come up short at all,” Cody replied. “What I think is that we just don’t understand what we have yet. But we will. Leave that to the gang.”
“I don’t know,” Kate said. “Androg may just be the exception to the rules.”
Cody nodded. “Sure looks like he’s trying to be.”
Their conversation was interrupted by a call from Stinelli. “What’s the latest?” the Chief demanded. “I’m starting to get calls from The Daily News. It’s ruined my Sunday. Even that son of a bitch Hamilton’s on my ass already.”
“How the hell did they get onto this?” Cody wanted to know.
“They have eyes and ears everywhere, even more than we do I sometimes think.” Before hanging up, as though to vent his irritation, Stinelli reminded Cody that his captain’s ass was expected at the Ladies’ Auxiliary Ball Tuesday night come hell or high water.
“I’d hate to have your job,” Cody said, then registered what he’d just heard and tried to slough it off as though it were a casual invitation. “I’ve got my hands full here, Chief. Give me a break. You gotta let me off this friggin’ hook!”
But Stinelli wasn’t having it. It wasn’t an invitation, he pointed out; it was a command performance. Cody better be there, and in proper formal wear, with a proper escort. The idea was a show of force to show the Ladies the brass appreciated their charitable commitment to the general well-being of New York’s Finest.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Cody said. But he was listening to a dial tone.
Who the hell am I going to drag to this circle jerk? he thought. Suddenly a not-altogether-unpleasant thought crossed his mind. He reached for the card still in his pocket, and punched in the numbers.
Amelie Cluett answered immediately, as though she were expecting his call. “I’m fine, Captain. Thanks for checking in on me.”
“Do you think I can ask you to do me an enormous favor?”
When she heard what he was asking she said, “Sounds to me more like a date than a favor.”
“Is t
hat a yes?” he asked.
33
Monday, October 29
Before he could make it to breakfast, Cody got a call from Kate Winters. She was in a panic.
“I’m sorry, Captain,” she started. “I may not make it in this morning.”
“What’s wrong, Kate? Pressure getting to you already? It’s a little early to be claiming a mental health day…”
“Song didn’t come home from the E.R. this morning. She didn’t even call. It’s not like her to disappear. In all these years it hasn’t happened once. I just—”
He and Charley changed directions and headed for the Loft. “Kate, it’s all right. You stay put. I’m sure there’s a simple explanation.”
“She always comes straight home from her E.R. shift. I’m usually sound asleep,” Kate said, her voice on the point of breaking. “When I called them, no one had seen her this morning—but they’re the day shift. I finally got someone to tell me she hadn’t timed out yet. That makes no sense at all.” She was making a heroic effort to keep her voice steady.
By this time Cody was at his desk. “Look, I’m sending Ansa and DeMarco right away,” he said. “Ansa can stay at your place waiting, and DeMarco can go with you to the hospital to check it out.”
“Thanks,” Kate said.
Cody’s intercom buzzed. “Got a visitor, Cap,” Rizzo said. It was seven fifteen.
“Who the hell is it at this hour? I haven’t even poured my coffee yet, for chrissakes.”
“Says he has an appointment with you. To talk about the Melinda Cramer case.” He hung up before Cody’s swearing burst his eardrum.
34
Like a referee gingerly dancing around a ring at the start of a fight, Frank Rizzo escorted Ward Hamilton into Cody’s office. “Captain, this is Ward Hamilton,” he said, “who’s working on a story for Metro Magazine. Says the Chief told him you’d cooperate.” He turned to leave without waiting for Cody’s response.
“I’ve heard of him,” Cody said to Hamilton as though Wow were still there. He recognized the crime writer from the newspapers and the Internet, and wasn’t the least bit surprised to see that he looked like as big a prick in person as he did on YouTube.
It was hate at first sight.
Hamilton didn’t offer his hand, and Cody didn’t offer his either.
“How the hell do you come off waltzing in here at this hour of the day?” was Cody’s greeting.
“I find surprise can be quite revealing,” Hamilton answered. “Happy to see you’re already at it this morning, Captain.” He said the last word as though it were a taunt.
Cody had little use for writers in general. They were always sticking their noses in other people’s business, clogging up the machinery of life. On top of that, this one was a snob, smug, condescending, and arrogant. And it didn’t help that he was working on a magazine expose on cold cases, beginning with the only case in Cody’s twelve-year record as a homicide detective that went cold on him: the murder of Melinda Cramer.
“If you turn over your files,” Hamilton was saying, “we can make this painless for you. I won’t have to interview you here and tape it.”
“You won’t interview me because I don’t have time.”
“Yes,” Hamilton said coyly, “I do understand you have your hands full right now.”
Cody stared the man down, refusing to take the bait he was so subtly being offered.
“Don’t worry, Captain Cody, I won’t be too hard on you. I know you weren’t at the crime scene, and that the coroner put her down as a suicide.”
“That’s correct,” Cody said. “It was four days later that I had her exhumed, and re-autopsied. It was determined that she was dead before she hit the ground.”
“And that the cause of death was suffocation,” Hamilton chimed in, “not blunt trauma.”
Cody nodded. “Manual strangulation was indicated by fine pin point hemorrhages in the eyes.”
“Also hairline fractures of the larynx and hydroid bone,” Ward added, “that had been completely overlooked at the first autopsy.”
“The case was cold before I got it,” Cody finished, trying to keep any defensiveness out of his voice. “Since you seem to know so much about it, why do you need the files?”
“I like to investigate fuck-ups.” Hamilton’s smile was warm as a viper’s. “The public gets plenty of exposure to investigatory brilliance on television. I pride myself on giving them the other side of the coin—especially if it takes the hottest detective on the force down a notch or two. If I can slow your rise to power by just a little, I’ll consider my job well done.”
It was all Cody could do not to punch the guy in the face. But he hadn’t had his coffee yet, and he had better things to do this morning. The sooner Hamilton was out of here, the better. He couldn’t resist. “Didn’t you finally receive an award some people say was twenty years overdue?”
“Don’t even think of jousting with me, dear boy.” Hamilton absent-mindedly brushed off the lapel of his signature white suit. “We can’t have our police thinking cold cases will go away just because they’re being ignored. If you don’t give me the file, I’ve already had my attorney fill out the Freedom of Information forms. He just has to pull the trigger.”
Cody was seething. But for now Raymond Handley and Uncle Tony—and now Dr. Song Wiley—were his priorities.
Ward Hamilton was not.
Mindful of Stinelli’s pleas, Cody reached across the desk and handed over the green file containing a Xeroxed copy of the Cramer file he’d ordered Kate to check over before she left the Loft yesterday evening.
Hamilton accepted the file without bothering even to glance at it, much less open it. “Remember, detective, the race goes to the swiftest.”
“Not always,” Cody replied evenly.
“And I do understand you’re busy adding a few more unsolveds to your list,” Hamilton concluded as he stood up.
This time Cody took the bait. “What the hell are you referring to?” At his orders, TAZ had bent over double to cloak the events of the last few days in secrecy.
Hamilton’s shit-eating grin said it all, but that didn’t stop him from adding: “I have my sources.”
Δ
Kate and Rizzo were at Bellevue E.R. retracing Song’s movements last night. So far they’d come up empty-handed. No one on the day shift was the least bit useful; they might as well have been working on another planet. Kate had led Rizzo to the office Song used, but today it was occupied by a Pakistani whose English was so thickly accented that they could barely make out a word. But the gist was clear. The man hadn’t seen Dr. Wiley. When he’d started his shift, he’d gone straight to the O.R. and only just occupied the physicians’ office a half an hour ago.
Finally, a minimally-helpful desk clerk suggested they visit Human Resources. A flash of badge at the African-American who manned the reception desk was enough to get the list of everyone who worked the E.R. shift with Dr. Wiley last night. Phone numbers were another matter, however. It was an hour before they’d gone through the personnel files and created a complete roster.
“We’re losing precious time,” Kate said, berating herself for not staying awake last night for Song.
Rizzo heard the edge in her voice, and nodded. “I’m going to fax this over to TAZ,” he said. “Five people manning the phones should get the speed we need.”
And, in fact, it was only twenty minutes later that they got their first lead.
“She was heading for the pharmacy when she left here,” one of the nurses, an Hispanic named Ivonne Leonel, reported.
“What time was that?” Kate asked.
“Ten—maybe fifteen—after twelve,” Leonel said. “Why are you asking about Dr. Wiley? Is she okay?”
“Do you know why she was heading there?” Rizzo pressed, ignoring the question.
“One of my patients was complaining that we were bringing his medication too late,” Leonel explained. “Dr. Wiley said she was going to up the medication
and prescribe that we bring it to him every three hours so we wouldn’t always be chasing the pain, she said.”
The pharmacy was in the basement, and they got lucky. The very weary pharmacist was doing a double shift.
He remembered Dr. Wiley had come in on her way out last night. Ruffling around in an untidy spindle, he pulled out the prescription she’d ask him to fill. He waved it toward them, as though to show off his organizational skills.
“What time was that?” Rizzo asked.
The pharmacist thought for a moment, then typed a few strokes into his computer. “Twelve-twenty,” he said. “Have to record the time for billing purposes.”
“Did Dr. Wiley wait for you to fill it?” Kate asked.
The pharmacist nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I offered to take it up myself, but she insisted. It only took me a few minutes. I handed it to her, and she thanked me and left.”
Kate brushed at her eye, as though something other than a tear was bothering it.
Rizzo noticed the thoughtful look on the pharmacist’s countenance. “Anything else you can tell us?” he asked.
“Yes,” he said. “The elevator wasn’t working. She walked back and asked me where the steps were. ‘It was working a minute ago,’ she said. I pointed down the hall and she left again.”
Kate and Rizzo shared an uneasy glance as they walked down the same hall Song had walked nine hours ago, toward the “Exit” sign that indicated the doorway to the staircase.
Δ
They never made it to the stairs.
A few feet before the exit, a door marked “Pharmaceutical Storeroom—Authorized Personnel Only” caught Kate’s attention. The door was ajar.
“That’s odd,” she said, stopping in front of the door. Her hand extended to push it open when Rizzo intervened.
“Let me,” he said, reaching inside his jacket for his piece. “Stand behind me.”
Kate wasn’t budging. “I can handle myself,” she said.