Postmortem

by Patricia Cornwell

  “What are you reading?”

  “I see, you’re testing me, as if I’m making this up. Ian Mc-Ewan’s Chesil Beach. It’s the third time I’ve read it. I keep hoping they’ll find each other again in the end. Have you ever done that? Read a book or watched a movie again, thinking it will end the way you wish?”

  “Unless it’s reality TV, they end the way they end. A lot like crime and tragedy. You can keep talking about it for a hundred years, and people are still mugged, killed in a terrible accident, or, worst of all, murdered.”

  Shrew got up from the sofa.

  “I’m topping it off. You sure?” As she headed to her tiny kitchen that hadn’t been updated in forty years.

  “Just so you’re aware,” his voice followed her, “no one else was home last night, not in your building or the one across the street. All the residents, except you, are gone for the holiday and have been since before Christmas.”

  He’d run background checks. He knew all about everyone, including her, she thought, splashing more Maker’s Mark into her glass, the hell with ice. Well, so what? Her husband was a well-respected accountant, and neither of them had ever gotten into any kind of trouble or associated with unsavory people. Other than her secret professional life, which not even a police investigator could possibly know about, Shrew had nothing to hide.

  “It’s very important you think hard,” he said as she returned to the couch. “Was there anything at all you saw or heard at any point yesterday that might be of interest? Maybe somebody in the area who caught your attention? What about in recent days or weeks? Anybody around here who might have raised your suspicions? Or just given you one of those feelings. You know what I’m saying? A feeling right here.”

  He pointed at his gut, which she suspected used to be much more formidable than it was now. She based this on the sagging skin along his jaw. He used to be heavier.

  “No,” she said. “This is a quiet street. Certain types don’t frequent this neighborhood. Now, the young man in the other apartment on my floor, he’s a doctor at Bellevue. He smokes pot and must get it from somewhere, but I don’t for a moment think he buys it right around here. More likely in the vicinity of the hospital, which isn’t the nicest area. The woman in the apartment directly under this one, which, of course, faces the street just like mine. . . .”

  “Neither one of them were here last night.”

  “She’s not friendly, and I started to say that she has a boyfriend she fights with a lot. But he’s been coming around for over a year, so I doubt he’s a criminal.”

  “What about workmen, servicemen, anybody like that?”

  “Now and then the cable company.” She looked at the window behind her computer. “There’s a satellite dish on top of the roof, which I have a good view of, and on occasion I’ve seen someone up there doing whatever it is they do.”

  He got up and looked out the window at the flat roof of the building where the police car was parked. His suit jacket was taut across his shoulders in back, and it wasn’t even buttoned.

  Without turning around, he said, “I see an old fire escape. Wonder if that’s how the servicemen get up there? You ever seen anybody climbing up the fire escape? Don’t know how you’d get a satellite dish up that ladder. Jeez. Not a job for me. Couldn’t pay me enough.”

  He looked out the window, at the darkness. This time of year, daylight was gone by four.

  “I don’t know about the ladder,” she said. “Can’t think of a time I’ve seen anybody climbing it, and I suspect there’s some other access to the roof. You’re thinking the burglar got in through a roof access? If so, that’s of great concern. Makes me worry about this building.”

  She looked up at her plaster ceiling, wondering what might be on the other side of it.

  “I’m on the second floor, and that certainly would make me vulnerable to an intruder, I should think. They must lock access doors.”

  She was working herself into quite a state over it.

  “This building has an old fire escape, too, you know,” she said.

  “Tell me about the lady who gave you the puppy.”

  He sat down heavily, and the chair creaked as if it might snap in half.

  “I know only her first name, Terri. She’s very easy to describe because, and the proper way to say it is, she’s a little person. Not the dwarf word. I’ve learned never to use that. There are a number of shows about little people, which I watch with great interest since I live across the street from one. And her boyfriend is a little person as well. Blond, handsome, a well-built man, although extremely short, of course. I happened to be returning from the market not so long ago, and saw him up close as he got out of his SUV, and I said hello and he said hello back. He was carrying a single long-stem yellow rose. I remember that vividly. Do you know why?”

  The investigator’s big face and glasses waited.

  “Yellow suggests sensitivity. Not the same old red, red rose. It was sweet. It was the same yellow as his hair, almost. As if he were saying he was also her friend, not just her boyfriend, if you see what I mean. I remember it touched my heart. I’ve never had a yellow rose in my life. Not once. I would have liked yellow ones so much better than red on Valentine’s Day. Not pink, mind you. Pink is anemic. Yellow is strong. It fills my heart with sunlight to see a yellow rose.”

  “When exactly was this?”

  She thought hard. “I’d bought a half-pound of sliced honey-glazed turkey breast. Would you like me to dig up the receipt? Old habits die hard. My husband was an accountant.”

  “How ’bout a guess.”

  “Well, of course. He comes to see her on Saturdays, that I’m sure of. So it must have been this past Saturday, late afternoon. Although there are other times when I think I’ve spotted him in the area.”

  “You mean driving around? Walking around? Alone?”

  “Alone. I’ve seen him drive by. A couple times in the last month. I go out at least once a day to get a little exercise, run errands. Unless the weather is impossible, I have to get out. Are you sure I can’t get you anything?”

  Both of them looked at her drink at the same time.

  “Do you remember the last time you saw him in this area?” he asked.

  “Christmas was on a Tuesday. I believe I actually saw him that day. And then a few days before that. Now that I’m thinking about it, I’ve spotted him three or four times over the past month, just driving by. So he’s likely done it more than that, you know, when I didn’t see him. Well, that was poorly worded. What I’m trying to . . .”

  “Was he staring at her building? Was he going slow? Did he pull over at any point? And yeah, I get it. If you saw him once, he might have been here twenty other times when you didn’t see him.”

  “He was driving slowly. And yes.” She sipped. “You said it exactly the way I meant.”

  This investigator was far more intelligent than he looked and sounded. She wouldn’t want trouble from him. He was the sort who caught people without them ever having the slightest premonition, and it entered her mind again. What if he were an agent investigating terrorist funding or who knows what? And that’s why he was here?

  “What time of day?” he asked her.

  “Different times.”

  “You’ve been home throughout the holidays. What about your family?”

  The way he said it made her suspect he already knew she had two daughters who lived in the Midwest, both of them very busy and disingenuous when they were attentive.

  Shrew replied, “My two children prefer I go see them, and I don’t like to travel, certainly not this time of year. They don’t like to spend the money to visit New York. Certainly not these days. I never thought I’d live to see the Canadian dollar worth more than ours. We used to make jokes about the Canadians. Now I suspect they’re making a few jokes about us. As I believe I mentioned, my husband was an accountant. I’m glad he’s not one anymore. It would break his heart.”

  “You’re saying you never see
your daughters.”

  He’d yet to pick up on any comments about her husband and respond. But she felt sure the investigator knew about him, too. It was a matter of public record.

  “I’m saying I don’t travel,” she said. “I see them now and again. Every few years, they come here for several days. In the summer. They stay at the Shelburne.”

  “The place near the Empire State Building.”

  “Yes. That lovely European-looking hotel on Thirty-seventh Street. Within walking distance of here. I’ve never stayed there.”

  “Why don’t you travel?”

  “I just don’t.”

  “No big loss. Expensive as hell these days, the planes always late or canceled. Not to mention getting trapped in one on the runway and the toilet overflows. That ever happen to you? Because it happened to me.”

  She had completely shredded the tissue and felt foolish as she thought about the Shelburne and imagined times in her life when it would have been wonderful to stay there. Not now. She couldn’t possibly get away from her work. And why bother?

  “I just don’t travel,” she said.

  “So you keep telling me.”

  “I like to stay put. And you’re starting to make me uncomfortable, as if you’re accusing me of something. And then being friendly to break me down, as if I have information. I don’t. I don’t have any. I shouldn’t talk to you while I’m drinking.”

  “If I accused you of something, what might it be?” he said in that rough New Jersey accent of his, his glasses looking right at her.

  “Ask my husband.” Nodding at the recliner chair, as if her husband were in the room. “He’d look you squarely in the eye and with all seriousness want to know if nagging is a crime. If so, he’d tell you to lock me up and throw away the key.”

  “Well, now.” The chair creaked as he leaned forward a little. “You don’t seem like the nagging type. You seem like a nice lady who shouldn’t be all alone over the holidays. Someone smart who doesn’t miss a trick.”

  For some reason, she felt like crying, and she remembered the little blond man with the single long-stemmed yellow rose. But thinking about that made her feel worse.

  “I don’t know his name,” she said. “Her boyfriend. But he must be pretty crazy about her. He’s the one who gave her the puppy that she in turn gave to me. Apparently, he surprised her with it, and she couldn’t possibly have one and the store wouldn’t take it back. An odd thing to do, as I reflect on it. Someone you talk to now and then on the sidewalk, and out of the blue one day she appears at my door with a basket covered with a towel, as if bringing me something she’d just baked, which wouldn’t have made sense, either, since, as I said, I didn’t know her and she never made overtures like that to me. She said she had to find a home for a puppy, and wondered if I’d please take it. She knew I lived alone and didn’t work outside of the apartment, and she didn’t know where else to turn.”

  “When was this?”

  “Around Thanksgiving. I told her it died. This was a week or so later, when I happened to bump into her on the street. She was upset about it and apologetic, and insisted on buying me another one as long as I picked it out myself. She said she’d give me the money, which I found rather impersonal. I can see the wheels turning in your head. You’re wondering if I was ever inside her apartment, and I never was. I’ve never even been inside her building, and wouldn’t have the foggiest notion as to what she owned that a burglar might have been after. Like jewelry, for example. I don’t recall her wearing expensive-looking jewelry. Indeed, I don’t recall her wearing any jewelry. I asked her why in the world I would want another puppy, warranty or not, from that same shop where her boyfriend got Ivy. She said there was no warranty and she had no intention of getting anything from that shop, but I shouldn’t be judgmental. Not every place is as bad as that horrid Puppingham Palace. For example, she said the Tell-Tail Hearts chain of shops is wonderful, and she’d happily give me money if I wanted to get a puppy from there, from one of the shops here in New York or in New Jersey. I have read nice things about Tell-Tail Hearts, and I have been thinking seriously about trying again. Honestly, I just might in light of what’s happened. Anything that barks or growls. Burglars don’t break in if there’s a dog.”

  “Except you have to take it out,” Investigator Marino said. “Including in the middle of the night. Which leaves you wide open for getting mugged or having someone force his way inside your building and right into your apartment.”

  “I’m not naïve about security,” Shrew said. “You don’t have to take a dog out if it’s small enough. Wee Wee Pads work fine. I had a Yorkie quite a long time ago and taught it to use the litter box. I could fit him in the palm of one hand, but talk about a bark. He would go for the ankles. I had to pick him up whenever we were on an elevator or when people would come over. Until he got used to them. Obviously, I didn’t take Ivy out. Not something that young and sickly on these filthy sidewalks. I’ve no doubt she already had the parvovirus when the boyfriend bought her at that dreadful Puppingham Palace.”

  “What makes you so certain her boyfriend bought the puppy?”

  “Goodness,” Shrew said.

  She held her drink in both hands and contemplated what he was implying.

  The recliner creaked as he waited.

  “I’m jumping to conclusions,” she said. “You’re absolutely right.”

  “Here’s what you do. What I tell every witness I talk to.”

  “Witness?”

  “You knew her. You live across the street.”

  What was she a witness to? she asked herself as she shredded bits of tissue and stared up at the ceiling, hoping there was no access door beyond it.

  “Pretend you’re writing a movie,” he said. “You got a pen and paper? Terri gives you little Ivy. Write me the scene. I’m going to sit right here while you write it up, then you’re going to read it to me.”

  7

  After Nine-Eleven, the city decided to build the Chief Medical Examiner’s Office a fifteen-story DNA building that looked like a blue-glass office high-rise.

  Technology, including STRs and SNPs and low-copy-number profiling, was so advanced, scientists could analyze a sample as small as seventeen human cells. There was no backlog. If Berger wanted DNA testing in a high-priority case, theoretically she could get results in a matter of hours.

  “No smoking gun,” Berger said.

  She handed Benton a copy of the report as the waitress refilled their coffees.

  “Just a hell of a lot of smoke,” she said. “In fact, Terri Bridges’s vaginal swabs are as confusing as I’ve seen in any case that comes to mind. No seminal fluid, and DNA from multiple donors. I spoke to Dr. Lester about it, which wasn’t helpful. I can’t wait to hear what Kay has to say about this.”

  “Have all the profiles been run through CODIS?” Benton asked.

  “One hit. It gets weirder. A woman.”

  “In the database for what reason?” Benton scanned the report.

  It didn’t tell him much—just that Dr. Lester had submitted swabs, and then the results that Berger was discussing.

  “Vehicular manslaughter in 2002,” Berger said. “Fell asleep at the wheel and hit a kid on a bicycle, convicted, sentence suspended. Not here, where we wouldn’t be so nice, even if she is elderly and was stone-cold sober at the time of the accident. This was in Palm Beach, Florida, although she does have a Park Avenue apartment and is here, actually, even as we speak. But she was attending a New Year’s Eve party last night at the time Terri Bridges was murdered, not that I have any reason to suspect for a nanosecond she had anything to do with it. Another reason the judge in Palm Beach was so forgiving? She broke her back when she hit the kid on the bike. So you got any brilliant ideas why a seventy-eight-year-old female paraplegic’s DNA was in Terri Bridges’s vagina along with a host of other people’s?”

  “Not unless there’s some bizarre error in the sample or the analysis?”

  “I’m told th
ere’s not a chance. In fact, to be on the safe side, since all of us have such deep respect for Dr. Lester’s competence, God, why did she have to be the one who did the damn autopsy? You are aware of that.”

  “Morales gave me a few things. I’ve seen her preliminary report. You know how I feel about her.”

  “And you know how she feels about me. Is it possible for a woman to be a misogynist? Because I believe she truly hates women.”

  “Envy or a feeling that other women might lower the person’s status. In other words, sure. Women can be women-haters. We’ve seen plenty of that this political season.”

  “The labs went ahead and began running the DNA on every case autopsied in the morgue this morning, on the off chance Terri’s swabs got contaminated or mislabeled somehow,” Berger said. “Even gone so far as to make comparisons with everybody who works at the ME’s office, including the chief, and, of course, all the cops who were at the scene last night—all of whom are already in the database for exclusionary reasons, obviously. Negative for the people in the morgue except for the ME who responded, which wasn’t Dr. Lester. And for Morales, and both guys who transported the body to the morgue. DNA testing is so sensitive these days, you breathe at a scene and good chance your DNA turns up. Which is as bad as it’s good.”

  “Has someone asked this Palm Beach lady if she knows Oscar Bane or has any connection with him?” Benton asked.

  “I did the unpleasant deed and called her myself,” Berger said. “Never heard of him before reading the Post. To put it diplomatically, she was indignant and unhappy at the implication she might somehow be connected to him. She said, and I’m only loosely paraphrasing, that even if she’s sitting in the same waiting room with a dwarf, she doesn’t speak or look at him for fear she might make him self-conscious.”

  “Does she know why it would enter our minds to link her to Oscar? Did you mention her DNA?”