by Robert Pobi
“He was a good boy. Funny. Thick brown hair, big brown eyes . . .”
Hemingway remembered the boy’s stare pointed up at the sky and the knot of hair on his forehead.
Mr. Rochester added, “He was gifted. Brilliant.”
His wife waved it away as if that didn’t matter. “He was the fastest runner in the hundred yard dash at the Randall’s Island track-and-field day.”
An image of the chop lines through his bones flickered in Hemingway’s head.
Mrs. Rochester continued talking as the medication and misery gave her a momentary reprieve. “Loved baseball and eggs Benedict. He was my gift. And now he’s gone.”
Hemingway folded up her three by five, pocketed it, and nodded for Phelps to do the same. These people weren’t going to be any help. Not yet. They were in the early stages of shock. Maybe tomorrow morning. Maybe tomorrow night. Maybe never. “We’ll need to speak to you sometime tomorrow. If you think of anything in the interim, please let us know.”
Mrs. Rochester repeated, “And now he’s gone,” then faded out again.
———
Benoit walked them to the door and Hemingway watched the way the rest of the people in the house shied away from him, the alpha among the omegas.
Benoit stopped in the foyer with them and asked, “What are the chances you’ll find the man who did this?” There was no hope in his voice, no false buoyancy.
Hemingway did her best to sound confident but Benoit looked like the kind of guy who had well-honed bullshit detecting skills. Besides, they hadn’t started to connect the dots yet. “We’ll pick up a lot of evidence as we move upstream with this. We’ll find this guy. I promise.”
Hemingway held out her hand.
Benoit stared at it for a second before nodding perfunctorily and saying, “I hope you catch this guy before he sets his sights on another child. Have a good night, detectives.”
Then he opened the door.
||| SIX
HEMINGWAY AND Phelps were in their booth at the back of Bernie’s again. It was late. Bernie had put on his monthly Fiesta Night, ramping up the décor with greasy Mexican souvenirs hung around the joint like props in a film. The place had been packed with Corona-drinking cops with red eyes for most of the night. Now only stragglers remained.
Hemingway had talked Bernie into warming a Tourista Trio up for her—a culinary sculpture consisting of three burritos and three tacos on a bed of nachos and cheese topped off with fist-sized scoops of guacamole and sour cream. It was past its prime, and the cheese tasted like electrical cord, but she was grateful for the meal. Phelps was finishing a diet soda and a single soft-shell chicken taco adorned with lettuce and a little salt. Alongside the food their improvised office was littered with notes, case jackets, and photographs.
Hemingway knew who would be sitting where without having to look. Most cops were superstitious about things that civilians took for granted, including where to sit in a restaurant. Some chose defensive positions against walls and in corners; some stayed close to the coffee machine so they could order as fresh pots came off the burner; some sat near the windows to watch the world outside. According to the unwritten schedule, this was Hemingway and Phelps’s booth every day from 6 a.m. until 3 p.m., from three to midnight it belonged to Donny Lincoln and Nick Papandreou, switching squatters’ rights to officers Diego and McManus from midnight to 6 a.m. In a life filled with uncertainty, it was nice to have a table you could depend on.
Hemingway spotted Lincoln and Papandreou ambling over.
Phelps pointed at Hemingway’s plate. “We’re almost done.”
Papandreou threw an orange file on the table, pulled up a chair, and nodded at Hemingway as she put a mouthful of nachos away. “You know, Hemi, for a woman you sure eat a lot of fuckin’ food.”
She wiped her mouth with a napkin and smiled. “I get that a lot.”
“How’s it going with your boat?”
The time Hemi spent out on the water was a rolling joke with some of the other cops. She smiled. “Still floating.”
“You got a fridge on board? You know, for snacks and shit?”
Hemingway stabbed at the guacamole with her fork. “Sure. I keep Pop Tarts on board, just in case.”
Papandreou tapped the orange folder. “Here’s the list you asked for.”
Phelps slurped the last of his soda out of the waxed paper cup, moving the straw around with his lips to vacuum the dregs, then reached for the file. “How many names you come up with?”
“You don’t want to know.”
Hemingway’s fork stopped halfway to her mouth. She eyed the two cops, then put her fork down with a clang and wiped her mouth again. “Yes. I do.”
“In the past twelve months, there have been eleven hundred and thirty-one men paroled countrywide who have violent and predatory histories with children. One hundred and eleven women. We ran the MO through the system and came up empty. Lots of child predators out there but none that seem predisposed to this kind of pathology.” Papandreou jabbed a finger at the pile of files on the table. “A lot of bad people on the list but none of them seem right for the job.”
Desmond, the dispatcher, came running into the diner. He looked angry which, along with the wet crescents staining the underarms of his suit, was the usual state of affairs with the man: bad news personified. He spotted Hemingway and headed over, eyebrows knitted together in an indignant V.
“Here’s Desmond,” she said, and pushed her plate away—Desmond was also a spitter.
“Whyintya guys fuckin’ tell me you found them?” he snapped at Papandreou.
“We just got here.”
Desmond fastened his eyes on Hemingway.
“What’s up, Dezzy?”
Desmond’s eyes stayed on her face for a moment, then focused on her plate, then looked back up to her eyes. “Where’s your fuckin’ phone?”
“In my jacket. Right here.” She tapped the pile of linen beside her on the bench. She never carried a purse.
“You ain’t fuckin’ answerin’,” Desmond snapped.
She pulled the iPhone out and scanned the screen. “It was on vibrate. Thirty-one messages.”
Desmond turned to Phelps. “You, too, fat man?”
“This ain’t fat, it’s muscle,” Phelps said. He eased his mass back in the seat and his jacket fell open, exposing his substantial gut and an automatic in a shoulder holster. “My phone’s in the car.”
Hemingway’s eyes shifted from Desmond to Papandreou to Lincoln to Phelps then back to Desmond. “Will someone please tell us what’s going on,” she said.
Desmond held out a dispatch sheet. “The medical examiner’s office called. He wants to see you as soon as possible.”
Phelps started to slide out of the booth. “What gives?”
Desmond threw his arms up in the air. “You’d know if you had your fuckin’ phone with you.”
Hemingway pushed the table away and stood up. “You can stop with the histrionics and get to the point.”
“Marcus finished with the kid. The tox screens had a lot to say.”
Hemingway was up now. “Such as?”
“Tyler Rochester was alive when someone chopped off his feet.”
||| SEVEN
THE MEDICAL examiner’s office was unusually busy for 1:30 a.m. Hemingway nodded a few hellos to personnel as she and Phelps worked their way through the hallways on their way to the lab, a bright space where the white-coated acolytes pried secrets from the dead.
Dr. Marcus was in his usual lab—a meticulously appointed subway-tiled space that contained a dozen glass booths, each with a single stainless steel table over an eighteen-inch square grate in the floor. Several of the cubicles were occupied, the inhabitants covered by opaque plastic sheets. When they walked in, Marcus looked up from a cup of coffee he was examining as if it held great cosmic meaning.
“Hemi, Phelps,” he said.
No matter how many times Hemingway visited the morgue, it always seemed as
if its walls off-gassed disinfectant and death.
After a thorough cleanup that involved changing his lab coat and gloves, Marcus walked them to the far end of the lab where the Rochester boy was laid out.
The boy was pale and bloodless. There was a cut on his eyebrow that Hemingway hadn’t seen down by the water because it had been hidden by his hair—a white gash filled with pale pink flesh, like a third eye not yet formed. His mouth was slightly open, the almost white tip of his tongue protruding between perfect teeth.
Tyler Rochester did not look like he was sleeping. Or in a coma. Or in God’s arms. He looked like what he was: a dead child with no feet.
The sheet was folded down, covering him from mid-chest to where his legs stopped at the nub ends of bone. Hemingway took up position at the boy’s side. Phelps, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else, stood on the other side of the body. It was clear that no one wanted to be here. The job of examining the dead always held a certain intrinsic sadness but seeing a child lying on the slab was tough for everyone, even Dr. Marcus, a man who had spent his career examining tragedy.
Marcus indicated Tyler Rochester’s left eye. It looked like a dried-out cocktail onion pushed into his socket with a little too much force. “The boy had an anesthetic injected into his left eye. Downward trajectory—right-handed. Barbiturate-grade anesthetic. It will take another week for the lab to match the compound but I’d say something like thiopental. And at this point there is no indication of an analgesic, so he would have felt what happened to him.” Marcus dictated from memory, ignoring the notes on the trolley.
“How long would it take for something like that to take effect?” Phelps’s face was in work mode, an expressionless blend of angles.
Marcus’s head bobbed back and forth as he calculated. “On a body mass like his? Twenty-five, maybe thirty seconds.”
“Was he restrained?”
“No bruising under his throat, so he wasn’t held from behind. No ligature marks on his wrists or ankles, so he wasn’t cuffed or strapped down.”
“And the kid would have felt this?” Phelps waved a hand over the space where the boy’s feet should have been.
Dr. Marcus nodded. “Yes.”
Hemingway ran a hand through her hair. “Have you figured out what he used to do this?”
“It was a hacksaw.”
Hemingway took in a lungful of disinfectant-tainted air and tried to focus on the notes she was taking in her three-by-five. “You still think the killer lacks practical anatomical knowledge?”
Marcus nodded. “Like I said at the river, both feet were taken off too far above the ankle. Anyone with practice would know that half an inch down—between the tibia and talar head—is a lot easier to saw through because it’s mostly cartilage and tendon. And if you look here, at the right ankle, you can see that he doesn’t get the hang of the saw until an inch or so in.”
Hemingway looked up from her three-by-five. She wanted to say that this didn’t feel like the work of a first timer but kept it to herself. “He jabbed the kid in the eye, waited for him to drop, then went to work on his right foot?”
Marcus nodded. “The boy would have screamed, doubled over holding his eye. As long as the killer left him alone for thirty seconds, he probably wouldn’t have run. He’d have wasted the last half minute of his life.
“The work was done on a smooth surface. The body was dumped in the water as soon as his feet were removed. There are some abrasions on the epidermal layer on the back of the ankles, near the cut line—the boy was dragged after his feet were taken off, dumped in the water while he was still alive.”
“How long until he bled to death?”
Marcus shook his head. “The anesthetic slowed his heart rate, ergo his pulse. He didn’t die of exsanguination. He drowned.”
Hemingway looked down at the boy; he looked absolutely horrifying now. “How hard would it be to get a hundred-pound kid to a secluded spot by the river? An industrial lot, abandominium, grass yard? Go at sundown. Inject him. After he’s out, place him on a wooden door or old tabletop. Maybe a sheet of plywood. Saw his feet off. Four minutes goes fast. Unless you’re the one being sawed up.” She stared down at the body for a few beats of her heart as the flowchart slowly came together. “If he had a lair, a place where he had taken the boy, there’d be tether marks on his hands. He would have a table for this—a surgeon’s gurney or workbench. Something tailored to his needs.”
“Maybe it’s not part of his fantasy,” Phelps suggested. “Maybe he’s a sporting man. Maybe he gets his jollies from their helplessness—so helpless that they don’t need restraints.”
Hemingway nodded at that. “Maybe.”
Dr. Marcus eyed her over the frames of his glasses. “There are no signs of a struggle. No defensive wounds. No ripped fingernails. There are a few cuts and contusions, most notably the one on his eyebrow, but that is postmortem, probably thumped his head on a rock in the river.” He took his glasses off once again and went through the same ritual of cleaning his lenses with a static-free wipe, no doubt a nervous habit.
Hemingway wanted to tell the boy that she would find his killer but she settled on reaching out and touching his hair, as if contact with him would somehow let him know what she was thinking. “What kind of a human being does this to a little boy?”
Marcus shrugged. “If I knew that, you’d be out of a job.”
||| EIGHT
HEMINGWAY PARKED in the garage and turned off the engine. The tired rattle of the big V-8 mimicked her own exhaustion and she sat there for a few seconds, trying to build up the steam she’d need to make it inside. After a few moments of nothing but the ticking of her motor offset by her own breathing, she grabbed the plastic bag off the passenger seat, checked both mirrors, and stepped out into the dark. She closed the door, leaving the truck with the kayak still strapped to the roof in the cool confines of the little garage behind her building.
She had owned this place for fifteen years. There was a bakery downstairs—one of those Italian bread places that had been there since the heyday of Ellis Island and was now in the hands of the fourth generation. Like everything else that the American Dream had changed, the children of the Arigo brothers didn’t see their future in flour and eggs. When Joe and Sal eventually retired or died, a McDonald’s or some other soulless corporate sound bite would move in and another piece of what had built America would be lost in the name of progress.
She walked out of the alley, around the building, her jeans sticking to her thighs with the humidity that had gotten worse in the past few hours. Tomorrow—today, technically—was going to be a stinker. One of those days where you wouldn’t be able to tell if you were sweating or if you had pissed yourself. She couldn’t remember it ever being so damp and wondered if this was one of those fabled hormone-fueled sixth-sense abilities that came along with her special condition.
No, special condition was a misnomer.
Life changer was more fitting.
Holy fuck. How had this happened?
At six weeks, her body had not yet changed, not outwardly. But the clockworks hadn’t felt right for a week or two. There were no monster cravings—at least not yet—and she wasn’t depressed or impatient or any of the other emotions she had seen chew her sister’s pregnancies into nine-month bouts of hysterics. But the humidity was bothering her, and it never had before—Mother Nature was finally fucking with her.
She passed the antique store on the corner, then the bakery, and came to her door. She paused for a moment, her forehead on the painted surface. The day had been one of the toughest she had experienced in a while. The discovery she was pregnant, a carjacking, and a boy with no feet seemed like a triple play dreamed up by an epic sadist.
She reached into her pocket for her keys and touched the stone she had picked up on the esplanade near the dead child. She pulled out her keys, unlocked the door, and pushed it open. Her hair blew back in a gush of air-conditioning. She stepped inside and headed up the wide w
ooden staircase in the dark, her shoes clacking on the hardwood.
Hemingway dropped the plastic bag containing her breakfast onto the island, pulled a carton of whole milk out of the fridge, and poured a glass. She walked over to the wall of arched windows that framed a wedge-shaped view of the West Side Highway to her left, a broad swatch of the Hudson beyond to the right, and Jersey in the distance. The sight of the river brought her back to standing over the Rochester boy. The awkward way his arm had reached out for the river, as if he were pointing at the secrets they would find out there. His bloodless complexion, punctured eyeball and legs that terminated in lopped-off bone only hinted at the madness he had endured.
Her damp clothes were getting cold and the milk almost cracked her teeth but she stood there, looking out at the world. She had been a cop long enough to know they might never know who had killed the little boy. The stars just wouldn’t align and they’d end up with a shelf full of boxes moldering away in the Pearson Place Warehouse Facility in Queens. Another cold case. Another child who would stay frozen in time forever. Another statistic.
The sound of footsteps echoed somewhere behind her in the vast space of the loft and she turned. Daniel came at her out of the dark, tired but smiling. “Hey, babe. Helluva day, huh?” He came over and kissed her. He tasted of toothpaste and smelled good.
“You have no idea.”
He put his arms around her and she buried herself in his shoulder. “I saw you on the news. The carjackers this afternoon. And I assume the kid they found on the East Side was yours, too.”
“Okay, so you have some idea.”
He squeezed her for a minute; she knew she could fall asleep leaning against him. “I picked up some shumai and a six of Sapporo. It’s in the fridge. Want me to heat up the dumplings and pour you a cold one?”
She thought about the baby inside her, about Tyler Rochester lying under the Queensboro Bridge, arm pointed out at the current, and decided that it was time to talk to Daniel. “Heat the dumplings but the beer can wait.” She held up the milk.
