A Clean Kill

by Glass, Leslie

  It was a June morning, weatherwise a perfect New York day—neither too hot nor too cold. The sun was on high. The squawk box was on low. Officers' conversations with the dispatcher were further muted by Woody's whistling through his teeth. It wasn't a real whistle, more like a tuneless little hiss. Usually it bothered her enough to tell him to shut up. Today she paid no attention to it. She was thinking about how every time she went downtown, the rules changed just a little, and change always caused chaos for somebody. In this case it was a big problem. It was a sad thing, but something she shouldn't be handling at all.

  Strictly speaking Vice should be in charge of the strip clubs. Vice or DEA. Her task should be limited to preparing her new second whip, Sergeant Eloise Gelo, for taking command while she was gone. The trouble with Eloise was she looked like a lap dancer with a badge. That gave the male officers who dominated in the caveman detective unit an excuse for staring at her with drool hanging out of their mouths rather than taking her seriously. A male problem in a circular kind of way that was not unlike what called her downtown to Chief Avise's office. Girls distracting boys caused disorder at every level of society.

  In this case the young son of a U.S. senator from another state had squandered his entire trust fund (she was surprised that this particular senator's son had a trust fund) in some local strip clubs, and he wasn't even twenty-one. So he shouldn't have been served the alcohol, much less the cocaine, that caused him to lose all sense of reason. On top of that, young Peret's cocaine overdose had landed him in a psych ward, where last night he'd been a raving psychotic. Chief Avise was taking the case personally as a serious embarrassment to New York City. He wanted war on the clubs that served underage customers, and the strippers who pushed two-hundred-dollar bottles of champagne, as well as ecstasy, methamphetamine, weed, and cocaine, on boys (and men) who wanted to touch their bodies.

  It was a tall order since strip clubs had gotten very popular again. This was a sad irony because free sex was available everywhere. Thousands of single women thronged to the bars. every night to drink themselves silly on exotic martinis and try to get laid. Free sex, though, posed the problem to men of having to relate. They had to make strangers like them and hope for a real connection when they had no interest in that at all. At the strip clubs, customers didn't have to make friends. The strippers came to them and would do anything—for a price. The oldest con in history was alive and well. Clientele seeking excitement mingled with naked lap dancers who primed them for bigger things. Sometimes, in the private rooms, the girls got the out-of-town customers wasted, then lifted money and other items from their wallets. At four in the morning a lot of things happened.

  The descent into hell was always worse for the kids. In three months Justin Peret had gotten addicted to thrills he couldn't get anywhere else. He'd squandered a hundred grand and was working on reducing his nostrils from two to one. Still, he was one of the lucky ones. ER rooms all over the tri-state were jammed with ODs every weekend, and sometimes they couldn't be revived.

  April brooded on the problem. Her unit didn't have the manpower (or womanpower for that matter) to do undercover work in the clubs. And the precinct captain, who was in charge of reducing crime in his area, should be relying on the Conditions Unit—the detectives in charge of monitoring unusual criminal activity in the precinct—to take care of these problems. Vice and DEA should also be involved. The captain should do the mopping up, not the detective unit that was responsible for all other crimes. April wondered what Avise was up to, asking her to go around the end zone on the precinct captain. In any case, the assignment was a threat to her honeymoon.

  She wished she didn't always have to pay such close attention to her boss. When she was little, her old-style Chinese mother had to yell to get her attention. "You stupid, ni? You blain go on vacation, Howaday Inn?"

  Before she was a cop, she didn't listen to anything she didn't want to hear, and she blew tasks off whenever she felt like it. For the police, however, every incident could have life-and-death consequences. Even though she wished her brain and her body could go on vacation to Holiday Inn, she couldn't ignore an order. The parent she called Skinny Dragon Mother still had a name for her: worm—triple stupid for being a cop, and a thousand times stupider than that for marrying another cop, who wasn't even Chinese. And ten thousand times stupider than all the previous stupids, for letting a bunch of white ghosts boss her around. Sometimes she was right.

  "Homicide in the Seventeenth," Woody -said, breaking into her reverie.

  "What?" Reluctantly, April tuned in.

  "Female, Fifty-second Street, town house, four hundred block. That's way east."

  "Shit," April muttered. The Seventeenth was Mike's precinct. The last thing they needed was a homicide now. Her cell phone began to ring in her purse. She plucked it out and saw that caller ID was blocked. That meant it could be anybody in the Department, or even her Skinny Dragon Mother.

  "Lieutenant Woo Sanchez." Sometimes she called herself Woo and sometimes Woo Sanchez to distinguish herself from her husband, the former Lieutenant Sanchez.

  "Querida, where are you?" As usual Mike's voice was calm in the eye of a storm. But she could feel his tension just the same.

  "Just heading up the West Side Drive, mi amor. What's up?" April already knew what was up, the new homicide. She glanced at Woody.

  "I want you to take a look at a body," he said quietly, then gave her the address.

  She heard the name. It was familiar, but she couldn't quite place it. Didn't matter. Someone was murdered. That always changed everything. "I'm on my way," she told him.

  Five

  Homicides always caused a peculiar vibration in April's body. She could feel it start as the car changed direction and they headed east to look at the victim, instead of uptown to deal with drug-dealing strippers. April had been planning to put Sergeant Gelo, who'd fit right into the club scene, on the Justin Peret case. In the old days she used to drop her vacation plans and take care of everything herself, shut down whoever needed to be shut down. But now she had to get used to being a boss, and was trying to learn to delegate responsibility. She couldn't personally take on every single problem that came her way. Still, it didn't matter whose problem rogue strippers should be; when Avise told her to jump, she asked how high. She was a loyal officer, who always did what she was told. Almost always.

  Murder was the ultimate crime that pushed everything else onto the back burner. Each time it happened April was jolted into high gear. The harmony of life was shattered, and she wanted to jump out of the car, race after the perpetrator, and catch him quickly before he had a chance to escape. Or she did—whoever it was. Each time she was overwhelmed by rage at the wrong that had been done and felt an urgency to correct it. But this wasn't her case. She shouldn't be thinking about this. She didn't want to be involved. She just wanted the world to be safe for once so she could go on her honeymoon.

  And something else bothered her. She and Mike hadn't worked a homicide together in almost a year, not since she and her parents had been attacked by a murder suspect in their home in Astoria, Queens. After that case, they'd moved on in separate jobs; and they had an unspoken rule to keep it that way. Mike's call both surprised'her and made her anxious. She had other plans. She had to get Sergeant Gelo on track. Then they were taking a plane to paradise. She didn't want anything to interfere with that. Even as she was thinking this, she knew her feelings were entirely selfish and felt bad about them.

  "What's up, boss?" Woody tried to make conversation, but she wasn't in the mood.

  Her mood darkened even more when they got there. Two Hispanic male uniforms manned the blue barricade that partially blocked Fifty-second Street on the east side of First Avenue. As Woody drove across the street, the taller one tried to wave them north. Woody kept going until the uniform could see the ID clipped to April's new purple spring jacket.

  "All right. You can put it there." He pointed to the last open slot in a long line of blue-and
whites and unmarked Department vehicles that reached down practically to the river.

  Woody pulled into the spot, and April was out of the car before he'd even killed the engine. "Boss?" he called after her. Don't I get a look?

  No.

  He didn't have to say it, and neither did she. Like old partners who'd been through it all dozens of times, they communicated in shorthand. She patted the air over her shoulder as she walked away. Stay here. Make friends with the neighbors; start asking questions. Shoot some candids with your little digital camera. Figure it out.

  "Whatever you say, boss." The preppy-looking cop who didn't always get things right had his uses.

  She hurried down the tree-lined street past the clots of dog-walkers and gawkers. Like an old beat cop, she found herself sniffing the air. After another long frigid winter, the sun had finally returned to warm the city. Trees dressed in lush new leaves lined both sides of the street. Greening ivy trailed out of the square tree plots, which were enclosed by little iron fences with spokes to keep the dogs out. Details like this made the difference in a neighborhood.

  This wasn't a commercial area like Midtown North. This was a high-priced residential East Side neighborhood where order was required. When violence shattered that order, the status of the residents alone demanded something be done about it. April didn't want to get entangled in the kind of politics she knew would be involved in a case like this. Mike was not asking her to take a look, then walk out like the other brass, who left the job of investigation to others. She'd never been able to do it anyway. Like a reporter or a first responder to a catastrophic event, once she showed up at the party she had to stay to the end. She was thinking, Be smart this time. Walk in and walk out.

  She saw two reporters talking earnestly into video cams outside the yellow police lines that roped off the sidewalk. They were on opposite sides of the street, and their mouths were moving before they even had a story. She crossed the street, praying for a reprieve.

  "Captain Sanchez," she told the sandy-haired officer at the door. He glanced down at April's ID. LT. APRIL WOO SANCHEZ.

  "Yes, ma'am. He's waiting for you in the kitchen, first left."

  "Thanks."

  She went in and started mapping the place immediately. An old habit. The place was an elegant brick house, four windows wide across the front. The foyer was all marble with a circular staircase hugging the wall around it, except in the middle where it made a bridge into the sleek modern living room behind it. The living room was decorated in shimmering silver and black. And behind that, all the way through, the back wall was a bank of French doors that opened on a garden. A blond girl wearing jeans and a sweatshirt leaned against a huge grand piano, talking with a detective April immediately recognized from Mike's description of the CO of his bureau. The detective was called Sergeant Ed Minnow, and everyone called him Fish. As directed, she turned left at the first door and went in. Oops.

  A surprised Chief Avise broke off a conversation to stare at her. What the hell are you doing here?

  She shook her head. He'd given her an assignment less than an hour ago and didn't expect to see her again so soon. But news of homicide traveled fast, and April had a long history of serving on homicide task forces outside her own precinct. He shouldn't be surprised that Mike would call her in for a look-see.

  As he turned away, she was distracted by the splendor of the kitchen. The place had more stainless steel appliances and sinks than she'd ever seen outside a restaurant kitchen. Three sinks, three dishwashers, a huge restaurant stove, a wine refrigerator, two other refrigerators—wow. Pots, pans, and bunches of dried herbs hung from beams in the ceiling. What kind of private home was this? A large glass dining table was surrounded by modern tub chairs. And there was a high chair. She stared at the high chair with dismay. Children always changed the story.

  And then she was aware of Chief Avise moving purposefully in her direction and braced herself for a chewing out.

  "She's with me." Mike said, cutting him off before the tirade began.

  Saved by the cavalry. Her lips curved in a tiny smile. She couldn't help being impressed by her . husband in uniform. No longer the swaggering detective with the flashy mustache and slicked-back hair who'd worn cowboy boots and cologne stronger than any tart's perfume, Mike Sanchez had cleaned up amazingly well. His black hair was short now, his mustache clipped, his aftershave subtle. He'd always been a handsome man, but in uniform he ruled. Next to him, the chief of detectives with his large belly and wrinkled brown suit looked downright sloppy and peevish.

  "Don't push, Mike," the chief threatened, making it clear that April was his detective, not Mike's, so he was the one who decided where she worked.

  "You want a quick resolution to a homicide, you know where to go," Mike replied. He smiled at his gorgeous wife, and she knew he was appreciating her new short haircut and stylish spring suit. She was a willowy five feet five, had delicate features in a classic oval face. Mike's smile told her that she was caught in the political web again, and she knew why.

  The last two murders in this precinct had been solved by Mike and detectives under his old command at the Homicide Task Force. Now that he was no longer in the Detective Bureau, he couldn't call on Homicide Task Force detectives without messing up protocol. If he didn't trust the detectives in' his own precinct to get the job done, he couldn't disrespect them by bringing in his old people. Furthermore he couldn't take on the task himself. Precinct captains did not investigate homicides. They were supposed to walk in, look around, and walk out just like the other brass.

  Good going, Mike—just call in the little woman to take care of things. April kept a straight face and let the former boss and his underling figure it out. Mike and Chief Avise were pack leaders with the same goal but different teams and agendas. One of them had to back down. Finally the chief shrugged. "Fine, let her take a look. Then she goes home." He moved away.

  That's how it was done. Although it didn't appear as if the chief had given in, Mike clearly thought she was in on the case. "Sorry, querida," he mumbled.

  "Who's the victim?" she asked, getting to the point.

  "Madeleine Wilson, wife of Wayne Wilson. Remember him?"

  Oh, God. Suddenly it all clicked. That explained the kitchen and Mike calling her. "Oh, that's terrible. Where is she?" April felt bad for Wayne Wilson. He was such a nice guy and had a great young family. And, it was going to be a big circus.

  "We better go this way."

  Mike opened a door that led into an exceptionally neat garage, where no fancy car was parked at the moment. Right away April noticed the little blue bicycle and the even smaller tricycle up against the back wall. Two expensive mountain bikes hung on a hook above them. Leaning against the far wall was an assortment of skis in various sizes. Oh, God, these were rich people. Really rich people who had a house in the middle of Manhattan with a garage all its own, and they skied down mountains. She hated this already. Not that rich made any difference to her at all. Any family with little kids mattered. But it always bothered her that money never saved anybody. It never really helped, and surprisingly often money made things worse.

  Holding her breath, April followed him into a gym that looked new. The floor was polished wood, a light color. Exercise machines filled the space. She didn't recognize some of them. Pilates was the brand on the side. She looked up. This room was obviously an addition. The ceiling was made of slanted glass. Billows of white linen, like upside-down umbrellas, shielded the room from the sun and people looking in from the windows in the apartments above.

  "She's in there." Mike stopped short at the door to the shower and moved aside.

  April looked in, and her eyes flickered as she adjusted to a horrific scene. Even after years of experience, she never expected to see a mutilated person in a serene setting, a rich setting like this. Or indeed any setting at all. Violent death was always a surprise, but the remains of Madeleine Wilson were particularly shocking. April had seen her photo in the socia
l columns of the newspapers, in an oil painting on the wall in the living room. She knew the woman had been beautiful and those were the images she held in her mind. Mrs. Wilson had been the American ideal, tall, blond, well built. The machines in the gym indicated that she cared about her body.

  That was what made it so difficult to look at her now. Naked and sitting on the teak bench of her shower, Madeleine Wilson was as spooky a ghost as April had ever seen. Her long hair was plastered on her neck and shoulders, darker than in her photos and soaking wet. Her skin looked waxy and gray, and was just beginning to pucker. One of her eyes was open, the other a pulpy mess. A gash had opened her forehead, and there were stab wounds all over her chest. It wasn't clear whether she had been sexually assaulted or not. The ME would have to determine that.

  And there was more. The perpetrator hadn't just run amok and then split. He'd handled the body. From the number of wounds, it didn't seem likely that the victim had died sitting up. The killer must have picked her up, arranged her on the bench, and then turned on the shower to wash all the blood down the drain. The lack of blood was the eeriest thing. Not a drop was visible in the shower, on the victim's body, or on the floor of the gym. Mrs. Wilson had defense wounds on her arms and face and hands, even on her feet. She'd fought for her life. April guessed she might have kicked at the knife, but all traces of the fight had been washed away. The bathroom floor was clean. The sink was clean. The blond wood floor in the gym seemed unmarked. Crime Scene was going to have a lot of work to do. They'd have to take the place apart, open up the drains, to find anything.