Seven Ways to Die

  “Suicide?”

  “We’ll soon know. Cal and I will make the entry. I wanted to get her out of here before we go in.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “Stay with her, Frank. I don’t know what’s in there, but right now she’s the only witness we got. Might be a good idea to give her a sedative.”

  “Right. She married?”

  “Widow.”

  “Where’s she live?”

  “Avenue B.”

  “Here they are,” Rizzo said.

  “Have fun.”

  “Oh, sure. You know me, I love to baby sit hysterical widows.”

  Cody snapped the cell phone shut, looked over his shoulder and took a momentary sideways glance at apartment three, which was directly across the hall from Handley’s, and reached for his satchel.

  He knelt down and snapped open the bag. Arranged in the bag were latex gloves, surgeon’s scrubs, a Streamlight Stinger flashlight, a digital camera, laptop, note pads, several Post-it pads in different colors, lock needles, several vials of chemicals including one labeled “black moss,” needle nose pliers, wire cutters, a portable blue light blood scanner, a .25 caliber S&W—which he’d never used in the line of duty—a radio headset attached to a small tape recorder, and a myriad of other tools of his trade neatly arranged in specially made pockets.

  He took out the flashlight and bathed the lock to apartment four with light, checking it for telltale scratches, leaned closer and sniffed the area.

  Cal Bergman came up the stairs two at a time, carrying an aluminum case.

  “You get lost?” Cody said without looking at him.

  “Had to get my case from the car. I got the keys from Wilma.” He stooped over and whispered in Cody’s ear: “We got company in number three.”

  “Yeah. I noticed movement behind the peephole.”

  “Her name’s Amelie Cluett. Masseuse.”

  “Interesting. So you did get something out of Wilma,” Cody said with a smile.

  “I tried to keep her talking so she wouldn’t get too wacky before you got here.”

  “Very good. Let’s suit up.”

  “Aren’t we waiting for back-up?”

  “There’s nobody else in there. You got a cold?”

  Cal shook his head, looking at Cody with a question on his face.

  “Get close to the door and take a whiff.”

  Cal leaned close to the door jamb, sniffed hard and his head jerked back.

  “Handley’s been dead awhile,” Cody said. “I doubt anybody’s sitting shiva with him. We’ve got a virgin crime scene here, let’s work it before anybody else shows up and contaminates it.”

  “You got a nose like a bloodhound,” Cal said, opening his case and getting his scrubs and flashlight. “No normal human being can smell a thing.” They both put on scrub booties, caps and latex gloves. Bergman drew his .38 and held it against his leg as Cody put on his headset and recorder and unlocked the door. He slowly pushed it open about a foot. Cody’s nose wrinkled. Cal laughed.

  “Wilma left a light on,” said Cal.

  “Yeah, she was in one big hurry.”

  Cody looked down and smiled. He reached in and flicked off the light. While Bergman scanned the apartment with his flashlight, Cody squatted down, reached around the partially open door and studied the carpeting with his Stinger.

  “Well, look what we got,” he said with delight. He reached in with his free hand and lovingly stroked the top of the thick, plush floor covering. “Shag carpeting.”

  He edged the door open another six inches, got on his knees and held his light close to the floor letting the beam skim back and forth across the tufted floor.

  “You a hunter, Cal?”

  “Never could get into it.”

  “First thing a good hunter looks for is paw prints. And we got a lot of ‘em. Put your gun up, pal. The only thing living in here is probably flies.”

  Cody turned on the tape recorder and started dictating all his remarks into the headset mike.

  “This is Captain Micah Cody of the TAZ accompanied by detective Calvin Bergman. It is…8:01 a.m., October 26th, 2008…We are about to make entry into Apartment Four at 981 East 73rd Street which we have been informed is the residence of a Raymond Handley who has been reported DOA by his housekeeper, Wilma Kearney.” He pushed the pause button.

  “Cal, let’s see if we can run a timeline on all these prints. Remember what Wilma said about vacuuming?”

  “Yeah. She vacuumed the carpet yesterday afternoon.”

  “Where is the vacuum cleaner stored?”

  “In a closet to the left of the front door.”

  “Remember what kind of shoes she was wearing today?”

  “Nikes.

  “Good, we’ll label these Subject A and we will mark them with Post-its and arrows indicating the direction in which they are going.”

  Cody swept the light beam across the floor, leaned around the front door and flashed it at the foot of the closet door.

  “We got a pair of Nikes going from the closet door out the front door. Partially obliterated by the arc the closet door and front door made opening and closing but still visible. So we can assume these were made yesterday afternoon after Subject A vacuumed and put the cleaner back in the closet and left. You buy that?”

  “Reasonable.”

  He swung the beam to his left.

  “And here they are again, going in the front door,” he swung the beam into the room, “toward the entranceway to the library, stopping, and then coming back out. That would have been Subject A coming in this morning, seeing Handley, and splitting in one helluva hurry.”

  “How about these others?”

  “We’ll get to those. Right now we have Wilma coming out yesterday and going in and out this morning.”

  Cody reached into his satchel and took out three different colored pads of Post-its. He pointed to another set of footprints in the soft shag carpet. They led into the entranceway to the library. “Subject A is labeled in red.

  “There is a second set of prints which we will mark Subject B. These prints partly overlay those made yesterday afternoon by Subject A which indicates that these were made after the housekeeper left yesterday. What d’they look like to you, Cal?”

  The young cop looked down at his own feet.

  “Surgical booties?”

  “Could be.” He moved the light beam to a similar set a few inches away. “These same prints also were made coming back from the library entranceway to the front door. Subject B’s prints seem to be partially obliterated by the prints made this morning by Subject A. They are a man’s size eight and a half, indicating a relatively diminutive stature. Our assumption is that whoever made these prints arrived after Mrs. Kearney vacuumed yesterday afternoon and left before she came in this morning. Anything to add, Cal?”

  “There’s a third set of prints.”

  “Correct. These appear to be made by a man’s shoes and we’ll label them Subject C. Subject B will be labeled in white. And C’s prints partly obscure the prints of Subject A made yesterday afternoon and the entry prints made by Subject B late yesterday. These prints also were made after Wilma Kearney left yesterday and the entry prints made by Subject B but not the exit prints made by Subject B.

  “Conclusion: Wilma Kearney vacuumed this area about three p.m., Thursday, the 25th. Sometime after that, Subject B entered the apartment and went into the library. Then they were followed by Subject C, whom we will assume for the moment was Raymond Handley, who went toward the bedroom. Subject B then left the library and exited the apartment before Mrs. Kearney arrived this morning. Subject C, we are assuming, is still in the apartment.”

  Cody marked the various sets of footprints with different colored Post-its and Bergman took pictures of them.

  “Okay,” Cody said to Bergman, “let’s get to the main event.”

  They entered the apartment and switched on the lights. As they entered the small foyer leading into the library Ber
gman fell back two or three steps, looking like he had been slapped in the face. “Oh my God!” he gasped.

  Cody’s expression never changed. He squatted down Indian-style, resting one arm across his knees.

  “Hello, Raymond,” he said quietly, reaching for his cell phone. “I have a feeling we’re going to get to know you real well.”

  4

  As was his custom, Max Wolfsheim sat in his favorite easy chair sipping his morning cup of coffee. The New York Times was spread out on the ottoman in front of him and he leaned forward, his glasses perched on the end of his nose, his pudgy fingers scanning each page as he speed-read every article. Heavy-set and bald, he was huddled in an old bathrobe, his feet stuffed into a pair of fleece-lined slippers, waiting for the place to heat up.

  It was a comfortable though sparsely furnished room. The furniture was old and worn. A large Peruvian rug covered the hardwood floors. A waist high bookcase ran the length of one wall, stuffed haphazardly with books and magazines. Except for a 42-inch flat-screen TV in one corner, it was the kind of room one might expect of an old bachelor: small, utile, and unimpressive.

  Except for the wall behind him. A wall that changed the character of the room.

  Instead of paintings or artwork, the wall was decorated with framed objects, all different sizes, carefully mounted, each with a small label in the right hand corner describing the object and a date. All were morbid trophies Max Wolfsheim had gathered in his forty years as an internationally known forensic pathologist. They helped abolish the nightmares that sometimes accompanied the most heinous of the crimes he had investigated. He rarely looked at them but each was peculiarly personal. Like panaceas for a bad disease, each was a reminder that there are human beings among us who are capable of the most malevolent acts against humanity:

  A clod of soil from the unearthed grave of a nun in Central America who had been buried alive. May 12, 1992.

  The gas mask he had worn while investigating a sabotage gas leak in Bhopal, India, which had unleashed a deadly cloud of methyl isocyonate gas that killed more than 4,000 people as they slept. December 2, 1984.

  Part of a note written by a madman who had started a club called “Cannibals Anonymous,” had killed more than a dozen youngsters, sodomized and dismembered them, pickled their flesh, and later had eaten them. 1984-1992.

  A hat abandoned in the chaotic aftermath of a gas attack in a Tokyo subway that killed a dozen and left thousands to suffer permanent flashbacks. March 20, 1995.

  One of eighteen Barbie dolls with their heads twisted backwards and left in the arms of the victims of a predator who called himself “Freaky Freddie.” 1982-1996.

  These were just a few of the displays that had earned a place on Max Wolfsheim’s wall of shame, having pierced his calm, normally impenetrable, exterior and struck a blow to his heart.

  In the center of the display was a framed motto printed on rice paper by a calligrapher:

  A cop needs a good pathologist to do his job, just as a pathologist needs a good cop to complete his.

  Max Wolfsheim

  It was the only place his name appeared. There were no references to the work he had done on these cases, no scrapbooks filled with articles about him, not a single photograph of him anywhere in the apartment. The furniture, such as it was, faced away from the wall.

  The adjoining room, his bedroom, was as modest: a bed, a night table and reading lamp, and a desk in one corner with a laptop computer and a 120 gigabyte external hard drive on which was stored all the research materials and photos he had gathered through the years.

  At 8:20 Max’s phone rang. He looked up and scowled, then went back to his reading. On the fourth ring the answering machine clicked on. It was Cody’s voice.

  “Answer the phone, Old Man. I need you.”

  He reached over to an end table and snatched up the phone.

  “This better be good, Kid,” he growled. “I got a nine-thirty lecture at NYU.”

  “Reschedule.”

  Cody was still squatting as he described the scene:

  Raymond Handley was seated in an antique chair which was in the center of the room. There was a table next to the chair with an old-fashioned glass half full of an amber-colored liquid. Cody judged him to be between five-nine and six-feet, his body well-toned. He had once been handsome. Now his body was gray and his head was leaning slightly forward and cocked to one side. His eyes were slits, staring sightlessly at some fixed point on the floor.

  He was stark naked.

  There was a deep, open gash running from under his right jaw to just under his left ear and a towel tied around his neck hanging loosely under the wound. There was also a small rubber handball stuffed in his mouth, tightly tied in place with a white cloth.

  Each of his hands was handcuffed at the wrists to separate arms of the chair. And each of his legs was cuffed to separate legs of the chair.

  “And here’s the kicker,” Cody said.

  “There’s a kicker?” Wolfsheim said with surprise.

  “Except for a couple of spots on the towel under his chin, there’s no blood.”

  “No blood?”

  A few moments of silence.

  “Okay, Kid, we’re in business.”

  “I just saved myself a grand,” Cody said with a laugh.

  “And cost me one,” Wolfsheim answered and hung up.

  From the bedroom door, Bergman said, “Cap? I think you ought to take a look at this before you go.”

  Cody walked carefully on an angle to the bedroom door, putting one foot in front of the other beside Bergman’s tracks. The room was painted pale blue and everything in the room was expensive, from the teak frame and headboard of the king sized bed, to the matching end tables beside it, to the large dresser and armoire. The doors to the closet were mirrored and one was half open. Handley’s clothes were meticulously lined up. Suits, then sports jackets, slacks, and shirts, each an inch apart. A shirt, underwear, and socks were in a laundry basket in one corner of the closet.

  There was a wooden valet near the bed with a cashmere jacket, dark gray slacks, and a red tie hanging on it. His alligator wallet, Rolex watch, some coins, keys, and a gold chain with a St. Christopher pendant on it were lined up in the tray. A pair of expensive black shoes were under it, also neatly placed side by side.

  “Well, Wilma did say he was neat,” Cody commented.

  “That’s an understatement. I checked the wallet. Hundreds, fifties, twenties, tens, fives, ones, all in descending order. Nine hundred and twenty-eight bucks.”

  “We could retire on what one of those suits goes for,” Cody said.

  “Here’s what’s really interesting. There’s a used bath towel on the bathroom floor.”

  “So he took a shower when he got in last night.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “A very patient killer,” Cody said.

  “And not greedy. Passed up the wallet, watch. But check this out.”

  Bergman skimmed the carpeting with his flashlight, aiming it toward the library door nearest the kitchen. Naked footprints.

  “He knew the killer was waiting for him. He was naked when he went into the library and…” they followed Handley’s footprints to the library entrance near the kitchen where the pair of booties was awaiting for him. “The killer met him at the door.”

  “I was thinking,” said Bergman, “maybe this was an S&M thing gone sour. Or maybe he was killed somewhere else which would account for the absence of blood.”

  “Not a chance,” Cody answered. “This was a set-up hit from the go and he knowingly walked right into it.”

  “I was also thinking maybe I ought to get into his briefcase. Remember what the maid said about his little black book?”

  “Good. Take it out to that little sitting room in the hall. Nobody, nobody, goes in or out until Wolf and his team gets here.”

  “No problem.”

  As Cody headed for the apartment door, he muttered half-aloud: “I can’t wait for Wolf t
o tell us what happened to all five liters of Mister Handley’s blood.”

  5

  At the same time Micah Cody and Cal Bergman were preparing to enter Raymond Handley’s apartment, crime writer Ward Lee Hamilton was seated in the Eames chair of his 59th Street penthouse apartment overlooking south Manhattan. It was a breathtaking view. The corner room had two floor-to-ceiling windows from which he could see five bridges, the spires of the city, and the heart-breaking emptiness where the Twin Towers once stood.

  As always, and regardless of the season, he was dressed in his three-piece white linen suit. It was his trademark. With a lavender shirt and a dazzling yellow tie to complete the ensemble, he was aware that his exaggerated appearance attracted attention, that there were some who looked at him as a foppish popinjay.

  He couldn’t care less. He had earned the right to set his own unique standards of dress and attitude. He marked his detractors off as silly, untalented, jealous fools. Ward Lee Hamilton was a snob in the truest sense of the word.

  Hamilton had authored more than a dozen true crime narratives in twenty years, most considered the best of their kind in literary history. His first book, written when he was nineteen, had leapt to the top of the bestselling lists in its first week of publication. It had been followed by fifteen scrupulously researched books, flawlessly detailed examinations into the malicious minds of killers whose sexual, avaricious, and otherwise depraved cravings had resulted in some of the most grisly crimes in history. He was relentless in his search for facts, always digging for that one last clue to justify every word, as tenacious as a hungry-eyed hyena stalking another animal’s kill.

  The room was filled with memorials to his success: Plaques, proclamations, awards, framed letters, all tributes to his achievements. Plus, an old-fashioned barber’s chair, complete with adjustable foot rests, anchored to the floor of the apartment. Ward sat in the chair for his weekly manicure, with the manicurist kneeling before him to finish his nails—and sometimes providing further service as well, whether he needed it or not. Yes, he was smug with success.