Four Walls

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  Letting the camera rest against her stomach, Lindsay slipped on her own rubber gloves and started taking a closer look at the body. Gently touching the neck and chest, she could feel that the hyoid bone felt out of place, which, along with the hemorrhaging, indicated strangulation. It could have happened right there-the position the victim was in was one she could have easily fallen into if she died standing up behind the counter.

  She also saw a stray fiber on the victim's neck. Picking up the camera, Lindsay zoomed in and took a picture of that before pulling out her own set of tweezers and grabbing one of Stella's evidence bags. "It's a black fiber," she said to Stella as she plucked it off the victim's neck. "Doesn't match anything she's wearing."

  "Any hand or finger indentations?"

  Lindsay shook her head. "It was chilly last night-the killer could've been wearing long sleeves and wrapped his arm around her neck."

  Stella nodded as she got down on all fours and pulled something out from under the display unit. Lindsay didn't want to know what it was. "When the ME gets her on the table, we'll have a better idea how it was done. Just keep collecting for now."

  "Right." She checked the victim's arms and hands, hoping to find evidence of defensive wounds of some sort.

  Sure enough, one of her fingernails was missing. The right forefinger's nail had been half ripped off, possibly while trying to grab at the arm around her neck. To Stella, she said, "If you see a fingernail with purple nail polish on it, let me know."

  "Okay."

  Lindsay looked more closely at the victim's fingers. There was material of some sort under the fingernails she had left. If she had scratched her attacker, the attacker's DNA might still be under her nails, so Lindsay grabbed another envelope and used one of the tweezer prongs to scrape it all out.

  Then she turned the hands over and found abrasions on the victim's knuckles. They were only slightly discolored, and the blood was not completely dry. If she had been killed around closing time last night, eight hours earlier, this bruising was consistent with her putting up a fight.

  Lindsay wasn't completely sure, though, so she took several pictures of the bruises. The ME would be able to determine whether Lindsay's suspicions were correct.

  Lindsay checked over the rest of the body and found only two other abrasions of any sort: a cut on one arm that was too far along in the healing process to have happened eight hours earlier, and a minor bit of abrasion on the back of the neck that was indicative of something rubbing against the skin. She shot them both in close-up, as they could have been involved in the murder somehow. The cut could have been from some previous incident that had only now escalated into murder, and Lindsay had seen similar neck abrasions before on murder victims who wore necklaces. The abrasion came from the clasp being pushed against the neck. Robberies often went hand in hand with murder, which was why the LAPD, for example, had merged their robbery and homicide divisions into a single unit. The fact that Maria had worn a necklace long enough to form that abrasion but didn't have it on her body now meant that the theft of that necklace might have had something to do with her murder.

  If it was a murder. You weren't supposed to jump to conclusions. Until the manner of death was pronounced by the medical examiner, it wasn't officially a homicide. Not that it was easy for someone to strangle herself, but it was within the realm of possibility.

  Pursuant to that, Lindsay, having satisfied herself that she'd checked as much of the body as she could at the scene and recorded everything she'd need, started searching near the body for evidence of anything that could've been used for self-strangulation-or, for that matter, as a murder weapon. Of course, even the most brain-dead murderer was unlikely to leave behind the murder weapon, but it didn't hurt to look. Some murderers really were that stupid, especially if murder hadn't been the intent. She had seen it before: a fight would get out of hand, one person wound up dead, and when the adrenaline wore off, the perp ran like hell, leaving all kinds of evidence behind.

  She didn't find anything, though-nothing except that single black fiber.

  "Wanna give me a hand down here in the ick?" Stella asked from the floor.

  Lindsay turned and smiled down at her. "Sure, why not?"

  * * *

  "I cannot believe this. You know, they shut us down two weeks ago? I remember, you people came and you did your inspection, and the man, he was very rude to my Maria."

  Angell pursed her lips, her patience thinning with each digression Salvatore Belluso made. "Actually, the health inspectors aren't 'my' people, Mr. Belluso. Completely different department."

  "Apf," Belluso said with a wave of his hand. "It's all the government. He was rude to my Maria, and she was rude right back to him like he deserves. Ask anybody, he deserved it, but then he shut my store down. Next day a different inspector come, and he says we pass with flying colors. I bet it was that rude man who did it."

  Maybe not a digression, then. Angell made notes accordingly, though the health inspectors she knew weren't really the murdering type-unless the ability to bore you to death counted as a lethal weapon. "I'll need a copy of both inspections." He obviously had copies, as there was a photocopy of the thing on the front window, with the relevant parts of the inspection form circled with a Sharpie. Angell had thought that odd at first, but at least now it made sense. And it was a lead, however flimsy.

  "When was the last time you saw Ms. Campagna, Mr. Belluso?"

  "I was not here yesterday," he said. "I was at the Arthur Avenue store, making sure my girls there are okay. There were some robberies over the weekend, and I wanted to make sure all security was good." He shook his head and started twisting the wedding ring on his left hand. "Is crazy, no? So last time I see my Maria was Saturday when I brought by my wife to check on her and my Jeanie."

  Idly, as she took notes, Angell wondered how the young women who worked here felt about being referred to as his all the time. She also wondered about an old man who only hired attractive young women. He had already provided a full list of his employees and, except for the man he hired to clean the place, they were all women between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five.

  Belluso waved his hand again. "Apf, it had to be the inspector. He was very very rude to my Maria!"

  "Thank you, Mr. Belluso, we'll look into that." She nodded to O'Malley. "Officer O'Malley will take you upstairs now. I may have more questions later. Officer, could you bring Ms. Wolfowitz down?"

  Smirking obnoxiously, O'Malley said, "Sure thing, Detective."

  Vowing to kill him later, she waited while he followed her instructions. As often happened when she was left alone, her brain started pinballing. If she mouthed off enough at a health inspector to get them shut down, she must've really sucked at customer service. My range scores are fine, and I can shoot that smirk right off Deej's face. Dealt with four older brothers, I can deal with him. Nothing was stolen, so not a robbery of the store. Gotta ask Stella whether anything was stolen off Campagna. Looks like I'll be doing OT on this one, so no going to the Raccoon Lodge for me tonight. Christ, I hope I can get OT, they're getting all budget-conscious again, and right in time for the heat wave that always means a bump in violent crimes. Wonder why Wolfowitz didn't close with her. I really need to get my bangs trimmed.

  O'Malley brought Wolfowitz down. Her cheeks were puffy and her eyes were still bloodshot. A tear streaked down her face as she sat at the table with Angell. Her blond hair was a rat's nest. When she'd arrived, Wayne had told her that she'd been woken out of a sound sleep by Rodriguez when they'd found the body, and she'd come straight to the bakery. She was wearing a plain white T-shirt, black sweats, and sandals with little red hearts on them.

  "Ms. Wolfowitz, I'm Detective Angell. I just need to ask you a few questions, okay?"

  "Sure," the young woman said in a very small voice.

  "You and Ms. Campagna were both working until eleven last night, right?"

  She nodded.

  "Then you both closed?"


  "She did-she told me to go ahead, and she said she'd take care of it. I was really wrecked, y'know? I had crew, then a whole day of classes, and then work, and I just needed to crash, y'know?"

  "Where do you go to school?"

  "Mount St. Vincent."

  "And you're on crew?"

  She nodded again. "I was at Spuyten Duyvil at six this morning. We go around Manhattan, like the Circle Line, y'know? Then I had four classes, then I came here." She sniffled. "I should've stayed."

  "What happened at eleven?"

  "I actually left at a quarter of. I was just so messed up, y'know?" She palmed a tear off her cheek. "Maria said not to worry about it, she'd take care of it."

  "What's the usual closing procedure?"

  Wolfowitz took a deep breath, then started counting off on her fingers. "We wipe down all the tables and straighten the chairs. We sweep and mop the floors-that's usually done about an hour before closing, actually. We take all the money out of the register and put it in the safe. We turn off the cappuccino maker and the coffeemaker. We turn out all the lights, and in the summer, we turn off the AC. And then we close and lock the front door."

  From what O'Malley and Wayne had said, Campagna had done everything except for the last two-and possibly even that, as Rodriguez and Rosengaus could've turned the lights and AC on when they came in before they found the body. She'd check on that when she talked to them.

  "Did anybody come in after you left?"

  "One guy, yeah, he came in just as I was walking out. I don't remember his name, but he's a regular." She gave a quick smile. "He's sweet, he tips well, and he's always flirting with us. But especially with Maria."

  "Do you remember what he looks like?"

  "Oh, sure. He's got long brown hair-he had it tied back in a ponytail. And a beard. And glasses. He had on a black sweatshirt and jeans, and he was carrying a gym bag-like usual, really. He goes to the karate school around the corner, and he usually comes in on his way home from class to get a bottle of water."

  "So it wasn't unusual to see him?"

  "God, no, he's always here."

  Angell asked a few more questions, then asked Rodriguez to come down. Again, she asked about the closing-down procedure, and Rodriguez's description matched the one Wolfowitz gave, though Rodriguez felt the need to number the steps as she described them.

  "When you got here this morning, was anything else unusual besides the unlocked door?"

  Rodriguez shook her head. "The lights and AC were off, the tables were all neat, and the chairs were tidy. She must've just been ready to close up when-" Her voice caught.

  "It's okay."

  "Oh, one other thing I noticed-I didn't really see it until the two officers got here? But Maria wasn't wearing her necklace."

  "She usually wore a necklace?"

  Nodding, Rodriguez said, "Yeah, her boyfriend gave it to her. She wore it all the time. It was eighteen-karat gold, too."

  Angell noted that down, as it constituted motive, although she'd learned quickly in this part of the job that motive was the least important thing in a murder investigation. For one thing, motives were usually mundane and common: jealousy, greed, or some other deadly sin. For another, learning the motive almost never actually led to an arrest. It was always a combination of the detective asking the right questions and the crime lab folks finding the right evidence.

  "What's the boyfriend's name?"

  "Bobby-Bobby DelVecchio."

  "Don't suppose you know where he lives?"

  Rodriguez shook her head again. "He came in a few times to see Maria."

  She made a few more notes, including a reminder to find DelVecchio. That also added to the list of condolence calls she was going to have to make. It was her least favorite part of the job. According to Belluso, Maria's father had died a year earlier, and she lived with her mother. Historically, the two people who reacted worst to death notices were mothers and boyfriends, so of course that was what she had with this one.

  Putting it in the back of her mind for now, she said, "Ms. Wolfowitz said that she saw someone come in with long hair, a beard, glasses, and a gym bag-goes to the karate school?"

  "Jack," Rodriguez said without hesitating. "Dunno his last name, but he's in here all the time with his laptop. Always drinks iced coffee in the summer and hot chocolate in the winter, and usually gets a cannoli or two. He's a great guy. He really liked Maria, too."

  "Did anybody else really like Maria?"

  "Well, sure, lotsa people. I mean, Jack talked to her a lot, and there's this one lady who knows her mother who comes in a lot-oh, and there's Marty. He's a tech from Feldstein's, the vet across the street. He's always hitting on her, too."

  She asked Rodriguez more questions, mostly relating to what happened that morning, then called Rosengaus down. She told much the same story as Rodriguez did. What she said was different enough to show that they hadn't rehearsed it, but similar enough to indicate that it was probably the truth.

  "Did you notice whether or not Ms. Campagna was wearing her necklace when you found the body?"

  "I do not remember," Rosengaus said in her heavily accented voice. "I just saw the dead body and I remember nothing else. I am sorry. I do remember it was very nice necklace."

  "It's okay." Angell made a few notes, then asked, "Do you know a regular customer here named Jack?"

  "Yes. He is sweet. Sometimes he compliments me. It is nice. He likes all the girls."

  "Did you notice that he liked Maria more than the others?"

  "Not that I noticed, no. Besides, Maria has boyfriend."

  "Bobby DelVecchio? The one who gave her the necklace?"

  "Yes. I think he came into store a few times."

  "You think?"

  Rosengaus shrugged. "She never introduced me. We were not very close."

  "What about a man named Marty?"

  "I know Marty, yes. He works in the vet across the street."

  Once she was done with Rosengaus, she turned to see Bonasera and Monroe come out from behind the counter. Monroe looked a bit disheveled, but Bonasera still looked bright and shiny after poking around behind a bakery counter for an hour. It was a skill Angell envied. After just being at a crime scene, Angell wanted nothing more than to shower for a week, but Bonasera-who dug much deeper into a crime scene than she did-always stayed pristine.

  Plus, she had that fifty-megawatt smile. Angell had never been able to make her smiles seem like anything but smirks-which was handy when she was being hit on by the less civilized members of humanity, a number that included most of her suspects and her coworkers.

  As the two crime scene techs came over, Angell got up and said, "Let's step outside." She didn't particularly want to go out into the heat and humidity, but she also didn't want the foursome upstairs to hear their conversation about the crime scene.

  They quickly filled each other in. Palming sweat from her forehead, Angell said, "Last person to see our vic was a guy named Jack something."

  Monroe's eyes widened. "Do we know what he was wearing?"

  Angell double-checked her notes. "Black sweatshirt and jeans. Why?"

  "We found a black fiber on the vic's neck," Bonasera said. "We need to find this guy."

  "Need a last name first. Also, apparently our vic had an eighteen-karat necklace that was missing."

  "We found a small abrasion that's consistent with a necklace," Monroe said, "but the necklace is gone. We checked all around the body-plenty of garbage and crumbs and hairs, but no jewelry."

  "There's one possible motive," Bonasera said.

  Nodding, Angell said, "We also only have Wolfowitz's word for the fact that she left early-and, for that matter, that this Jack guy came in at all."

  Bonasera folded her arms. "We'll get reference samples from everyone upstairs. And we should get ones from everyone else who works here. This way if any of the hairs we found don't match someone who's supposed to be there, we've got a lead."

  "Want me to do it?" Monroe asked.


  Shaking her head, Bonasera said, "Nah, you should get our big pile of trace back to the lab. It'll take ages to process it. Get Adam to help out." She grinned. "Besides, if I stick around, I can have one of those cannoli."

  Monroe laughed. "You'll be okay getting back?"

  "I'll give you a ride," Angell said.

  O'Malley opened the door, holding a piece of paper. "Hey, angel face, Sal said to give this to you." He held out the sheet.

  Taking it, Angell saw a copy of the inspection form, which matched the one hanging in the window, except without anything circled with a Sharpie. "Here's another potential motive. Our vic apparently got into a shouting match with"-she peered at the sheet-"Gomer Wilson from the Health Department."

  "His name's really Gomer?" Bonasera asked.

  O'Malley shrugged. "Don't look at me, I busted a guy last week whose name is George Washington. People don't think when they name their kids, I'm telling you." Then his face lit up. "Oh, hey, almost forgot, that hippie guy the girls were talking about? I know him."

  "Who, Jack?" Bonasera asked.

  "Yeah." O'Malley started digging around in his pockets. Finally he found what he was looking for-a pile of business cards and receipts. He liberated one of the former. "Here it is-Jack Morgenstern. He's a web designer. Gave me his card a while back. I'm thinking about making me a website."

  "For what?"

  "Never mind," O'Malley said quickly.

  Angell smirked, making a mental note to find out what kind of plans O'Malley had for a website. She suspected that information would be enough to get him to stop calling her "angel face." "Anyhow, here's his address," O'Malley said. He handed Bonasera the card. "He's freelance, so he's probably home now."