"Which one?" James asked.
The man with the knife understood.
"All of them."
James rose quickly and ran to the window. The limping man was ready. He cut him off. James Feldt would not cheat him by throwing himself out the window.
The limping man pushed Feldt with his free hand and slid the blade under his arm just below the left armpit. Feldt let out a sound like the air leaving a flat tire. He sank to the floor in a sitting position, trying to reach the wound.
He couldn't reach it. Not in time. He looked up. The sensation was strange, as if he had expected this or something very like it for some time.
James Feldt closed his eyes and prayed that the end would come quickly, but somehow he knew that it wouldn't.
3
"SMELL THAT?" DANNY MESSER SAID as he and Lindsay Monroe walked through the front door of the Wallen School.
In front of them, down the corridor, a uniformed policewoman motioned to them and pointed to a room to her left.
"Smell what?" asked Lindsay.
"Old wood," said Danny, adjusting his glasses. "Schools like this want that old wood atmosphere. Look at the walls. This place is maybe forty years old. Smells like it's a hundred and fifty. I think they spray that smell in here every morning. It's worth a couple of grand more on the tuition bill."
They were almost to the uniformed officer. Their footsteps echoed on the dark stained floor.
Danny reached over and opened the door the policewoman had indicated. Lindsay had her camera out. Both Danny and Lindsay were already gloved, ready and watching where they stepped.
They had driven, hubcap deep, from the lab. They considered taking the subway, but were told the trains weren't moving. Danny had done the driving. Neither Danny nor Lindsay had spoken to each other during the ride. Danny had talked to the other motorists, criticizing their slowdowns, critiquing their driving.
Lindsay was silent because she had gotten a call from her mother in Montana. Her mother was worried about her. Her mother was addicted to The Weather Channel. The call had not gone well.
Danny was not speaking, at least not to Lindsay, because he had been rained out of a date with Augusta Wallace for the last four days. He had been working on Augusta, a beautiful, slim, dark-haired detective, for months before she finally gave in, but the delays were clearly giving her second thoughts. He could tell by her few words, her passing smile in the halls.
Stepping into the murder scene, Danny Messer cursed the rain and turned his full attention to the dead man on the desk with the pencils protruding from his left eye and neck.
* * *
"We're still digging out bodies," the fireman said, leaning back against the red truck.
He wiped his face with the heavy gray glove on his hand and took off his helmet. His last name was Devlin. Stella could see that from the name on his raincoat.
Devlin was young, tall, handsome and weary. That was as clear as the name on his coat. Behind him lay what little remained of Doohan's. It wasn't much, a fragment of the bar, an edge now tilted to create a waterfall of seemingly endless rain. The leg of a chair stuck straight up as if someone had planted it in the rubble to mark the location of a buried body. A frying pan lay upside down on top of a torn scrap of checkered cloth. The cloth lay limp, beaten down by the rain and clinging to jagged bits of plaster and debris. At Stella Bonasera's feet was an unbroken and unopened bottle of Dewar's Scotch.
"Not too much of a fire," said Devlin. "Happened quickly. Place collapsed. We're getting a lot of that. Roofs mostly. The rain knocks it down. But in this case it wasn't the rain that knocked it down."
"What makes you think that?" said Sheldon Hawkes, standing at Stella's side.
"The end posts on the bearing walls," Devlin said, nodding toward where the walls had been. "Three of them collapsed at the same time and they didn't just collapse on their own. You can still smell the dynamite, that liquidy sweet smell."
"I know the smell," said Stella.
"Official report'll come from an arson investigator," Devlin said. "We can call in the dogs to track it, but I'm sure."
"The dead?" asked Hawkes.
"Left where we found them," said Devlin. "That's what you want, that's what you get."
"It's what we need," said Stella.
"I'll lead the way," said Devlin, pushing himself away from the truck. "We're shorthanded. Half of the crew is on another call. You'd think rain would keep fires from breaking out, not cause them."
They followed him, walking carefully over a fun-house floor of pieces, bits, chips and jagged metal. Devlin stopped and pointed to a tarp.
"Didn't know whether to leave them in the rain or cover them and maybe preserve evidence," said Devlin.
"It's a toss-up," said Stella.
She had thrown back the hood of her raincoat to give herself a better view of the scene and whatever bodies she might find. Her hair tumbled in front of her eyes. She ran her fingers through it to keep it back. She pulled a thick rubber band from her pocket and awkwardly, the arms of her raincoat swishing heavily together, tied her hair back. Devlin smiled in appreciation of Stella's high forehead and Grecian features. Stella was aware of the fireman's appreciation. This wasn't the time or place. Stella knew it. Devlin knew it. They also knew from their jobs that feeling guilty about small natural reactions wasn't worthwhile.
"We pulled ID on all four of the dead men. They all had wallets," said Devlin.
He took a notebook from an inner pocket and shielded it with his jacket to read the names.
"This one is Frank Zvitch," said Devlin. "One next to him is Anthony DeLuca."
Stella pulled back the nearby tarp to reveal the headless body of DeLuca.
"Back there"- Devlin pointed- "Malcom Cheswith. Looks like he was the cook."
Stella raised an eyebrow.
"He's wearing an apron, has a grease burn on his palm. We found him just outside the kitchen."
Stella nodded.
"There, where the front door used to be." Devlin pointed to a tarp covering an inflated shape. "Henry Doohan, owner. Papers in his pocket."
"He's carrying ownership papers in his pocket?" asked Stella.
"Ownership, licenses, insurance, inspection sheets," said Devlin.
"Odd," said Stella.
"Odd," Devlin agreed. "Why would he be carrying them?"
Stella wished she could tent all four dead men, but they only had one tent in the trunk, just a small one that could handle one body, not big enough to stand in.
"We'll take it from here, Lieutenant," she said, removing her camera from the kit she put down.
Devlin nodded and moved away, wiping his face with his gloved hand.
"One more thing," he said. "Again, we have to wait for an arson investigator and I may be wrong, but it looks to me like the charges went off before they were supposed to."
"Could be," Stella agreed. "Dry dynamite is relatively safe to handle, but when it gets wet, it's highly unstable and volatile. It doesn't take much to set it off."
"That's what I was thinking," Devlin said. "You're Greek, right?"
"Right."
"Thought so," he said with a smile and walked away.
She shook rain from her face and eyes and started to take pictures. She was about to suggest that Hawkes examine the bodies, but when she looked over her shoulder she saw that he was already squatting next to the body of Henry Doohan.
Hawkes, kit on the ground beside him, leaned over the corpse, wiped rain from his eyes and looked at Doohan's bruised and dirty face. He turned the body on its side. He was sure.
Stella had just taken her last photograph when she heard Hawkes call out, "This one was shot."
She put the camera away and was about to step toward the kneeling Hawkes when he said, "I think I hear something."
He pointed down a few feet from Doohan's body.
Stella backhanded rain from her face and looked in the direction Hawkes indicated. It was time to change g
loves, but it wouldn't be easy taking off and putting on wet ones.
A sound. A crack. A deep breath from the earth.
Stella looked toward Hawkes to see if he had heard the sound. But Sheldon Hawkes had disappeared.
* * *
"What've we got, Montana?" Danny asked Lindsay after they had photographed the scene. "Make what's left of my morning interesting."
He looked toward the front of the room, where the dead teacher lay over his desk.
"Testing me again?" Lindsay asked, crossing her arms.
"Would I do that?" he asked with a grin.
"Whenever you can."
She smiled.
They were standing in the back of the chemistry lab against a whiteboard with a list of chemicals carefully written on it in black marker. Three slate-topped lab tables were lined up in front of them. On each tabletop were burners, retorts, test tubes and a built-in sink. The room smelled of sulfur and a blend of chemicals not unlike those in the crime scene lab. The difference was that the Wallen School lab looked out of date by a century. But that, both Danny and Lindsay could tell, was an affectation like the hallways. The equipment was new, clean, modern. The cabinets were stocked with hundreds of neatly labeled bottles and jars, and two computers with high-speed Internet connections sat on each lab table.
Beyond these tables lay Alvin Havel, chemistry teacher, soccer coach and winner of Teacher of the Year for the past four years according to the plaques placed tastefully on the wall next to the only door to the room.
"Someone strong or very angry or both," said Lindsay. "Both wounds. I'll get a package of pencils on the way back to the lab."
"Two packages," said Danny.
"Right," agreed Lindsay.
Two different kinds of red pencil had been plunged into Alvin Havel. One, a normal #2 into his eye, the other an extra thick #4 into his neck.
She didn't have to say more on this issue. She would take the pencils, get a dead pig from the refrigerator and determine exactly how much pressure it had taken to plunge the pencils in as deeply as they had gone. The body density of a pig was remarkably close to that of a human.
"What else?" Danny asked, arms folded.
"Wound to the neck was first. That's what killed him. He was standing. The blow is straight across. If he were sitting, it would be downward. To strike straight across while he was sitting would mean the killer would have to be on his- "
"Or her- "
"Knees or squatting. Not much leverage and judging by the depth of the pencil, the blow was hard."
"That it?" asked Danny, looking at the dead man.
"Blood splatter from the neck wound supports what I just said."
"And the pencil in the eye?"
"Not as deep," she said. "We've got a puzzle with that wound. He was already dead when the eye trauma happened. No blood splatter. No beating heart."
"Someone stabbed a dead man?" asked Danny.
"Maybe they didn't know he was dead?"
"Pencil plunged into his neck, eyes open. Hard to miss."
"Puzzle," Lindsay agreed. "Two different attackers?"
"Maybe."
"The killer had blood, lots of it, on him- "
"Or her."
"Security tapes," she said.
The security cameras in the Wallen School halls were not concealed, nor were they obvious. Their purpose was to let students know they were being watched at all times. Danny knew schools all over the city that had dummy cameras mounted on the walls. Real working ones were too expensive. Wallen School, however, would have the money to have working surveillance.
"None in this room," said Lindsay.
"Teachers don't like them in the classrooms," said Danny.
"Academic freedom," she said.
"Something like that. We look at the tape, but first we talk to the teacher who discovered the body and the students who were in the class when Havel was killed. Maybe we get lucky and get a Perry Mason."
A Perry Mason was a confession out of the blue by a distraught, angry or vindictive killer. Perry seldom relied on forensics. He counted on courtroom confessions and he was inevitably rewarded. No mess. Danny wondered what it would be like with no mess. He wouldn't like it. No challenge. He loved his job.
"We wish," Lindsay said.
"He was a popular guy," said Danny.
"Not with everyone," said Lindsay.
4
DR. SID HAMMERBECK PURSED out his lower lip and looked over the top of his glasses at the corpse of Patricia Mycrant on the autopsy table. Mac stood at his side as the medical examiner probed with gloved hands and tools.
"Interesting," he said, pausing to bite his lower lip.
"What?" asked Mac.
"Eleven discernible wounds and some vaginal damage so extensive that I'm not sure yet how many cuts and tears there are. Your killer was very angry or very crazy or both. Blade of the knife is three inches. Fold up. Carry it in a pocket. It's sharp. Very sharp. As sharp as one of my scalpels. The owner of this knife has treated it lovingly."
Sid washed down the naked body with a stream of water from the hose next to the table.
There are generally three types of wounds caused by a knife: a beveled wound made by a blade entering the flesh at less than a right angle; a scrimmage wound caused by a twisting motion of the blade after it is in the flesh; and an oval-shaped wound made by a blade entering the flesh at a right angle. Patricia Mycrant's body bore all three types of wounds.
"What else can you tell me about the knife?" Mac asked.
"The blade nicked the pelvic bone three times," said Hammerbeck. "Punctured the spleen and liver. Impressions taken from the bones and organs should help identify the size and shape of the blade. I think I can give you enough to identify the specific knife from small indentations on the blade. Almost as good as a fingerprint."
"You've got something else," said Mac.
The ME looked down at the body and said, "Residue in the wounds, not much, but enough. I've bagged and sealed it for you. What it is I do not know."
Mac had already taken blood samples and the Starbucks cup to Jane Parsons in the DNA lab. The lab had been busy. It was always busy. The lab and the City of New York had resisted what so many other crime scene units across the country had done, sending their evidence to private labs. Time was a factor, but so was money.
Jane had promised to do the DNA testing as soon as possible and to run it through CODIS, the national DNA matching system, but first the DNA had to be extracted and analyzed. Television had created the illusion that testing could be done in a few hours or overnight. The truth was that even three days on a high-profile case was pushing the clock, depending on how many tests were scheduled and the availability of scientists. Mac also knew that it was possible, just possible and seldom done, to do a DNA test in as little as three or four hours. The use of a genetic analyzer had sped up the actual DNA test time.
But before the DNA is run through the analyzer, it has to be extracted by placing the evidence material in a vial and adding a chemical to separate the DNA from the surrounding material. Then the DNA is replicated so the scientist has more than one piece to test. The DNA is then placed into the genetic analyzer, which has ninety-six tiny wells into which scientists inject the DNA. The wells are in a rectangular block of plastic, twelve rows of eight wells. Positioned just above the wells is a row of needle-size capillaries. When the wells are filled, the scientist closes the machine and turns it on. The capillaries are then dipped into the first row of wells, where they draw up the DNA and send it into the machine. A laser light then picks out the different-size DNA particles as they pass by. The smaller pieces shoot by first, followed by the heavier, larger pieces. The result, an electropherogram, is recorded in a series of peaks, or alleles, which look like the readout on an electrocardiogram.
Jane had a lot of work to do before Mac could get any DNA results.
"Lunch in my office?" Jane had asked.
"If I can get away," he sai
d.
"Can I lure you with pastrami on a kaiser with mustard and a pickle? On me?"
"Who could resist," he had said with a smile.
But now Mac watched Patricia Mycrant's blood wash away on the autopsy table in front of the medical examiner. Stubborn clots clung to the steel.
"Have you ever eaten Festivo Pollo Con Carne Dolce?" asked Sid.
Sid had been a successful chef for years after giving up his medical practice. No one, perhaps not even Dr. Sid Hammerbeck, knew why he had returned to medicine, why he had chosen to become a medical examiner.
"Can't say that I have," said Mac.
"I'll be happy to prepare it for you sometime," said Sid, carefully eyeing the pale corpse as he continued to wash it down.
"Thanks," said Mac.
"The trick is in the marinade," said Sid. "Marinate it too briefly and it fails to penetrate the flesh. Marinate too long and the spices overwhelm the texture of the bird."
"Fascinating," said Mac.
Sid reached down and moved Patricia Mycrant's left arm to expose the single wound in her armpit.
"This wound, almost surgically placed," he said, "dropped and nearly paralyzed her."
Mac looked at the medical examiner and said, "He knew what he was doing."
Sid nodded and continued hosing down the body.
"Ah, what have we here," he said, aiming the water at a clot along the left thigh.
Remnants of blood peeled away to reveal something deep red carved into the flesh.
"One more mystery," said Sid.
Mac leaned in closer.
"Or a clue," said Mac.
Cut into the dead woman's inner thigh was a distinct letter D.
* * *
In the small basement of the Wallen School, Bill Hexton sat in front of a black-and-white screen. Danny and Lindsay stood behind him.
Hexton looked less like a security guard than a student playing dress-up in tan slacks, a blue blazer and a loose-fitting blue and brown Wallen School tie.
"Been here long?" asked Danny.
"Not counting the six years I was a student at Wallen," Hexton said, "it's been three years. After I graduated, three years in the army, military police and then a little time in intelligence. Then right back here."
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