She wondered if Spocatti had returned.
She got up, slipped into shorts and a T-shirt, and went into the flat’s only other room, which was small and dim in the shade-drawn light. There was a gas stove and a refrigerator here, a dirty metal sink with exposed pipes and a square metal table, on which sat Spocatti’s computer, printer, modem and a spray of red tulips arranged in a pale blue plastic water jug that hadn’t been there when she went to sleep.
She looked up and saw Spocatti hanging from the ceiling.
He’d screwed two U-shaped metal bars into one of the three exposed rotting beams and he was doing pull-ups. Save for the pair of black nylon shorts that hugged his ass, he was naked. His back was to her. Splinters of wood fell down on top of him, collecting in his hair and on the rounded curve of his shoulders. His muscles rippled with each pull and he did the exercise quickly, with absolute ease.
Carmen didn’t know what to say to him or where she stood with him. Last night, he’d been so furious with her, he’d sent her back here and left to take care of Martinez himself. In the time that had passed, she didn’t know what had happened or if he’d even found her. She’d waited until dawn for him to return before giving up and going to sleep.
She went to the refrigerator, pushed aside his clouded bag of vitamins and removed the carton of orange juice. She unscrewed the cap and drank, watched him go up, down, up. She wouldn’t be surprised if he asked her to leave.
He dropped from the ceiling, stretched, shook the splinters from his hair, twisted his back, cracked the spine. He turned, acknowledged her with a nod, came over to where she stood and took the carton of juice from her hands. As he drank, he looked at her over the dew-drop gleam of sweating cardboard. She was almost convinced she could feel the heat of his body pulsing straight through her own.
“What time did you get back?” she asked.
He emptied the carton and crushed it, raised his dark eyebrows and said nothing.
“Did you find Martinez?”
“I did more than just find her, Carmen. I killed her and her daughter.” He tossed the carton into the trash and nodded at the newspaper lying on top of the computer. “Take a look at the front page of the Times,” he said. “There’s a story that might interest you.”
She went over to the table, looked at the newspaper, saw Wood’s photograph in the lower left corner and skimmed the story that ran alongside it. Wood was dead. The details were sketchy. Carmen felt a sinking in her gut. Spocatti went ahead without her. “You killed Wood yourself? You did this without me?”
“I had nothing to do with her death. I assumed you did it.”
Wood was on their list. “I didn’t.”
“Then who?”
“I have no idea.”
“Well, that’s intriguing, isn’t it?” He dropped to the floor and started doing push-ups.
“Does Wolfhagen know she’s dead? Have you talked with him?”
“Oh, I’ve talked with him,” he said. “This morning and last night. We couldn’t reach him because he wasn’t in California. He’s here, in New York. Staying at The Plaza.” He put one arm behind his back and continued. “Wasn’t too happy with you, Carmen.”
“I’m sure he wasn’t.”
He switched arms. “You had an off night. You made a few bad decisions. We’ve all been there. I sympathize.”
He jumped to his feet and ran his hand down the length of his muscled torso, wiping away the sweat. “Anyway, things have changed. Wolfhagen wants to move on this. He wants us to get through the list by the end of the day. The police are already onto it. They’re making connections. They suspect Martinez saw something and they’re probably right.”
He paused, plucked a tulip from the arrangement, turned it over in his hands and lifted the delicate red cup to his nose. “But now, she’s dead and that’s going to be enough for the police. They’ll know Hayes was murdered and they’ll connect him to the rest. Before the others make that connection, Wolfhagen wants them dead. It’ll make for one hell of a day, but I’ve agreed.”
“But we’ve already discussed this,” Carmen said. “If we move too quickly, the police will suspect him. Wolfhagen’s got motive. They’ll know it’s him. They’ll burn his ass.”
Spocatti tossed her the tulip. Carmen snagged it with one hand and stared at him.
“Wolfhagen knows the risks, but he’s no fool. He’s willing to take them because he’s going to be everywhere when each murder happens. When they die, he’ll have alibis. He plans to be with this person, that person, at this public event, that restaurant. It’s not a bad plan. As long as he remains in public when we take out the others, he should be fine. And besides, after my last job here, I’m tired of New York. I’ve been here too long. I want this over with. It’s time for something new. He wants those people dead by the end of tonight? Fine. I’m all for it. You should be, too.”
“Tell me how we’re going to do this when we have to let everyone know why they’re being murdered and catch everything on film?”
“I mentioned that to him and he’s willing to be more lenient. If the situation allows for it, great. But if we need to take a rifle and shoot someone in the back of the head in an effort to be more efficient, that’s what we do.”
He stepped beneath the U-shaped bars, jumped and gripped them tightly. Up, down, up. “One other thing,” he said to her. “Maggie Cain? Wolfhagen wants us to kill her first, but not before we’ve found every trace of what she’s written about him and burned the manuscript.” Up, down, up. Eyes hard and narrowed and suddenly fixed on hers. “I’ll take care of Cain. In the meantime, I’ll need you to search her apartment for that manuscript.” Up, down, up. “Oh, and there’s one other thing. Just a small thing. I also need you to figure out how we finish off the rest by midnight tonight.”
~~~~
CHAPTER TWELVE
Even before Marty reached the cutting room, he could smell the stench of formaldehyde and human decay. When he entered the building, he swiped Vicks beneath his nose, which helped to a point, but as he approached the room, there was nothing he could do about the eerie scream of a Stryker saw as it bit down into bone just beyond the closed doors.
He was at the Chief Medical Examiner’s office on First Avenue. It was hot outside, but here the circulation of refrigerated air wasn’t as welcome as one might expect. It cooled the area, sure, but it also got the stink of death so far up into your nose, it was enough to make your stomach clench.
He pushed through the doors and looked across the room at Carlo Skeen, the chief medical examiner whose gloved hands were buried deep in the chest of an elderly man. He was pulling on something that wouldn’t come loose.
This was a breeding ground for bacteria and as they feasted on the dead flesh of the several other bodies in the room, the gasses they emitted were as cutting as anything Marty had experienced. It was a smell he’d never get used to. Just being here made him want to vomit.
And it got worse.
In the far corner of the room, a male intern started humming as he hunched over the head of a middle-aged woman. He started the Stryker saw again and appeared oblivious as the saw’s note deepened and sometimes caught as it glided across her milky white skull.
On the four other necropsy tables, those who were next in line were being drained of what had once kept them alive.
Marty focused on Skeen and moved toward him. He tapped him on the shoulder just as the man wrenched free one of the elderly man’s lungs. Typical of Skeen, he never flinched. He’d been aware of Marty’s presence the entire time.
“Are you never late?” Skeen asked.
Marty glanced down at the lung clutched in Skeen’s hands--black, pockmarked, cobwebbed with tar, it literally smelled of nicotine. His stomach tightened. “Nope.”
“Gloria ever slow you down?”
Marty watched him turn the lung over in his hands. Each time he did so, it stirred the air. “Yup.”
“Then you must have been late at some po
int in your life.”
“I drive fast, walk fast. Look,” he said above the whining saw. “Thanks for seeing me. Can we talk?”
“Sure.” Carlo placed the lung onto a scale spattered with blood and peeled off the heavy latex gloves. Marty decided he couldn’t look at the lung any longer. He glanced down and, with a jolt, found himself looking into the body’s cavity, which was peeled open and exposing the man’s organs. He turned away and focused on Skeen’s hands. Large, pink and smooth, the nails clipped close.
“So, what’s up?” Carlo asked.
“I need a favor.”
“Name it.”
“Maria Martinez and her daughter? They here yet?”
“Came in this morning.”
“I don’t suppose you’ve done them yet?”
Skeen laughed. “You’re funny, Marty. Really. You’re a scream.”
“It was worth a try.”
“Not really,” he said. “But I can give you a preliminary. The mother was shot twice in the back of the head at close range. The child’s neck was broken. That’s all I’ve got.”
“What about Judge Wood and Gerald Hayes?”
“They’re different,” Skeen said. “They came in last night and they’ve got priority. Ain’t power and position grand? We’re working on them now.”
“What’ve you found?”
“Nothing on Hayes,” Carlo said. “He’s still being drained. But Wood’s almost finished, except for some lab work. Want to take a look?”
They moved across the room to the table where Judge Kendra Wood lay beneath a shimmering white sheet, her legs lifted and parted in stirrups. With a flick of Skeen’s wrist, the sheet was gone, exposing what was left of Wood’s headless body. Marty looked at the “Y” sliced into her chest and asked himself that very question.
“It’ll take some time to know for sure, but it appears that she died from an overdose of methamphetamines and alcohol. Time of death occurred between three and four yesterday afternoon. Decapitation approximately nine hours later.”
Surprised, Marty looked at his friend. “Someone cut her head off after she was dead?”
“Hours after she was dead.”
“Why?”
Skeen shrugged. “That’s for you and the police to figure out. I can only tell you how she died and what happened to her after death.”
Though the story in the Times didn’t say so, Marty assumed from his conversations with Maggie and Jennifer that Wood had been murdered. “Did she kill herself?”
“Maybe. But if she did, she probably didn’t do so intentionally. See these marks on her arm? And these here on her left ankle? She’s been shooting up something for the past year and a half. Had quite a little habit too. It’s a wonder she didn’t die sooner.”
“What was she was using?”
“Not sure yet, but probably heroin.”
Heroin--the ultimate cure for someone with low self-esteem. Just one shot could make you feel invulnerable, beautiful, godlike. But why would someone in Wood’s position need it? She had looks, power, celebrity. She was respected, even feared. Marty thought of the few times they had met and remembered a confident woman, comfortable and serious. Had she been high then? Worse, had she been high while handing out sentences on the bench?
“There’s more,” Skeen said, reaching for the box of latex gloves on the table beside him. He removed a pair, slipped them on and said while glancing at Marty: “I’ll apologize for this now.”
His hands went between Wood’s legs to the freshly shaved area of unyielding flesh above her vagina. His fingers fanned out and parted her labia, exposing the gray, sunken clitoris between the drained web of waxy flesh.
“Come closer,” he said to Marty.
Marty hesitated, then took a step forward and leaned into the light shining above them. The smell of death and rot and formaldehyde were stronger here, only slightly masked by the citrus scent of Skeen’s cologne, which made it somehow worse. Marty held his breath and watched Skeen press the clitoris down and to the left, exposing a deep green tattoo half the size of a dime.
“It’s an animal of some sort,” Skeen said. “Here. Take a look.”
He lowered the lighted magnifying glass above them and positioned it so Marty could view the tattoo, which looked like a blob with two points on top of it. He was about to step back when he noticed the tiny puncture wound in the tattoo’s center. “What’s that?”
Skeen moved the magnifying glass aside. “Her clitoris was pierced,” he said. “Earlier, I removed a tiny gold hoop from it. That’s when I noticed the tattoo.” He looked at Marty. “The hole and the tattoo are at least ten years old. She had her nipples pierced around the same time, but she let them heal.” He paused. “And it gets worse. Her rectum was torn. Ripped. Last night, after Judge Kendra Wood had been lying dead in bed for nine hours, somebody had anal intercourse with her.”
It was too much. Marty had to leave. Skeen saw it and followed him to the door. “Why don’t we have coffee,” he said. “My office.”
“I have a better idea,” Marty said, stepping into the hallway. “Why don’t we get out of here? I need some air.”
* * *
When they left the building, a band of clouds--thick, dark and as high as the buildings in Midtown--had stretched across Manhattan, swallowing the sun and giving needed relief from the heat. Carlo looked at Marty, moved to speak, but hesitated. “There’s more on Wood,” he said. “Want to hear it?”
Marty nodded.
“Her PERK was a disappointment,” Carlo said, referring to her Physical Evidence Recovery Kit. “I swabbed, but found nothing, no residue of semen. Whoever had intercourse with her used a lubricated condom.”
“Wouldn’t you on a corpse?”
“Bad joke.”
“What about hair?”
Carlo shook his head. “We found only a few that were consistent with hers. My guess is that we’re dealing with someone who’s familiar with the system, somebody who shaved himself beforehand, knowing that any stray hairs could lead to a positive DNA match.”
“What about the tattoo and the piercing? Have you done a search?”
“NCIC’s computers are down,” Carlo said. “They’ll be up soon. But Jimmy contacted VICAP this morning. We should be hearing from them by tomorrow afternoon at the latest.”
He looked at Marty. “I wouldn’t get my hopes up, though. Body piercing is bigger than ever. I can’t tell you how many young men and women I’ve come across in the past few months with rings through their nipples and gold rods through their genitalia.”
“I get the twentysomethings,” Marty said. “But on an adult judge? And the tattoo on her clitoris? It sets her apart from the rest.”
“Not really. You don’t see what I see on a daily basis. The poorest person can be wheeled in and they have none of that shit. The wealthiest person can be wheeled in and they have all of that shit. Kink doesn’t differentiate between social boundaries, Marty. People lead secret lives, which you likely see in each case you take. Until we know what that tattoo is supposed to be, you’re out of luck. We’ve sent photos to VICAP hoping they can match it to something in their files. But if they can’t, I don’t know what to tell you.”
“You were there last night, weren’t you?”
“I was.”
“What did you see?”
It began to sprinkle, the light breeze driving the rain against their backs, the cars parked at the curbside, the trees dotting the sidewalk. “I could tell you, but I won’t because it wouldn’t do you any good. I was there for three hours last night. If you can swing it, this one you need to see for yourself.”
~~~~
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
At first glance, the townhouse on East 75th Street was as elegant as its counterparts--narrow casement windows shielded by heavy lace curtains, leaded glass windows in the carved mahogany door, a gleaming brass knocker above the brass nameplate, which read, rather simply, K. Wood.
But upon closer
examination, cracks could be seen in the bricks and the foundation, the black iron bars that protected the windows from possible intruders were beginning to rust, and high above on the roof, birds were nesting in the white eaves.
Marty stood in front of the house and wondered about the secret lives of Judge Kendra Wood. She’d been a respected judge, she’d amassed enough power and wealth to live just off Central Park, and she had risked it all for a world darker than most could comprehend.
He looked up at the birds circling above him, watched them hover and peck insects from the side of Wood’s house, and wondered when it was that she let them roost on the roof. When had she ceased to care?
A door clicked shut behind him.
Marty turned and saw a woman leaving the house opposite Wood’s. She looked at him, then at Wood’s house, then slowly back at him, her eyes narrowing.
Marty nodded at her. The woman’s lips formed a tight line that dropped the temperature in Midtown fifty degrees as she walked away. Tall and diet-slim, her silver hair framing an oval face that would defy age as long as medically possible, she moved with all the grace and cool aloofness of a woman who only had known privilege.
She was everything his ex-wife wanted to become.
A car horn sounded beside him. Marty turned just as a black Dodge Charger pulled to the curb, music pumping, bass thumping, low fans of water rising at the wheels as the driver parked in a Tow Away Zone. Earlier, it had stopped raining. Detective Mike Hines, his angular face chiseled and tanned, looked through the open passenger window.
“Jesus, Spellman. Don’t you eat?”
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