A Clean Kill

by Glass, Leslie

  "I have trouble sitting still," he explained. "Why are there so many people here?" He indicated the voices upstairs, the number of detectives searching his house. They were all over the place. They wouldn't let him go into his own room. Crime Scene was still working it.

  "It's normal procedure for an unnatural death," Mike said.

  "But didn't you just tell me this was an accident, that she died in her sleep?" He looked alternately angry and dazed by it all.

  "I said she was found in bed. But we're not certain of anything yet."

  "Oh God." Perkins turned away for a moment as if the idea occurred to him for the first time that someone else might have caused his wife's death. "Not . . . ?" He didn't finish the question. His expression was one of complete horror, as if murder was the last thing he could have imagined happening to his wife.

  "Can you think of anyone who might want to kill your wife?" Mike asked.

  At that moment, Lynn returned through the front door, and Perkins's face paled. "Only her," he said slowly.

  Thirty-two

  After Eloise Gelo hung up with Lieutenant Woo, she called the unit meeting. Five people were on duty that day, including Hagedorn and a forlorn-looking Woody Baum.

  "Where's the boss?" Woody asked.

  "Still on the Wilson case," she lied.

  "I wrote up my canvass. What does she want me to do with it?" he asked.

  "I'm sure she'll want it," Eloise replied crisply.

  "Can I take over it to her? I could continue the house-to-house."

  "She may want you to do that. I'll let you know, Woody."

  She didn't want to inform them just yet that there was another death and investigation in progress. Instead, she assigned the sixty-ones (the complaints) that had come in during the night, reviewed the progress of ongoing cases, and looked over the written reports. A couple of them were incomprehensible as to what action had occurred, so she returned them to their authors for a rewrite. Everybody had to write in complete sentences, whether they wanted to or not, and she guessed the poor reports were a test to see what she'd do about it.

  She told them to fix the problems and ignored the grumbling that followed.

  Finally, when everybody was busy or had gone out, she went into the lieutenant's office to locate the tapes of Woo's interview with Alison Perkins. They were in her desk, carefully labeled, exactly where Woo had told her they'd be. Eloise knew that the existence of a record of the interview could be a bad thing, depending on what the dead woman had said; therefore she was a little disappointed to find them. If the tapes had been lost, they couldn't be delivered to the principal investigators, and no one could be held responsible for anything. The prospect of blame possibly accrued to her boss or herself down the road weighed heavily on Eloise's mind. A little edgy and not wanting to tell anyone else what was going on, she found the equipment she needed and set up the machine to copy the tapes in her own office. There wasn't time to listen to the interview now, but she thought she might sit down with it later. The boss hadn't told her not to.

  The second job Woo had given her was to do the background checks on the nannies who'd found the bodies of their two employers. This caused Eloise another twinge of anxiety. She left the reels . spinning in her office and headed to the computer where Charlie spent his time staring at a screen. Her opinion of him had undergone something of a sea change since he'd come through for her on the Peret case, and she actually smiled at him.

  "What's up?" He seemed surprised by both the smile and the visit.

  "You know that woman the boss brought in here yesterday? Alison Perkins?"

  "How could anyone forget that knockout?" he said.

  "She just turned up dead," Gelo replied sharply. She hated it when men referred to women as dogs or knockouts.

  Charlie's pale face sobered quickly. "No shit? When?"

  "Just now, a little while ago," she amended.

  "Wow. I didn't hear that." He seemed as shocked as she was. "Where is she?"

  "In her home."

  "I meant the boss," Charlie said.

  "She was on her way to the scene when she called in. It's like yesterday—the nanny found her."

  Charlie thought about it for a moment. "Looks like a little window of opportunity there," he said slowly.

  "What do you mean?"

  "In the morning the two husbands are gone; the nannies are out. You see the pattern. They're vulnerable then."

  "Yeah, she wants us to check out the nannies. Anderson Agency," Eloise told him.

  He nodded. "Okay, that's not a problem."

  "But won't there be a task force working on this?"

  "So?" Hagedorn raked a hand through his thinning hair and punched some keys on his keyboard.

  "We'd be doubling up on a key part of the investigation." As a newcomer in the precinct and a boss for the first time, Eloise needed some clarification. The lieutenant hadn't instructed her to coordinate with the task force, and they were supposed to work together on cases like this. Every interview

  had to be written up and handed in to the officer in charge. Lieutenant Woo might be the officer in charge of them at Midtown. North, but was she in charge of the task force putting together the file? Eloise had always been a team player and didn't like the idea of working out of the loop.

  "Don't make it a problem," Charlie advised her.

  "But how does this work?" Where Eloise came from, they didn't do things like this. There was one file in one place and everybody contributed to it.

  He shrugged. "She helps them out when they ask her to. We help her out. Everybody's happy."

  Eloise frowned. "But couldn't it bite us later?"

  "Well, sure, anything can bite back later, but I've worked all the big cases with her. They pull in people from other units to do stuff all the time. It may not be kosher, but the boss has a hundred percent solution record." He shrugged. "And she's very well connected."

  Gelo wasn't ready to let it go so easily. She put a hand on her hip. "Do you guys work this way often?"

  "Don't worry about it. They have hundreds of people working a case like this."

  But all in one location, not all over the place, Gelo wanted to say. When people worked independently, things got passed over that shouldn't be, or not included at all. Other agencies around the country made these kinds of mistakes, not them. She didn't say anything for a moment, wondering again what was on the tapes being copied in her office. Well, Woo was turning them over, wasn't she? Charlie interrupted her internal debate.

  "Here we go. Look at this."

  Eloise was amazed by how quickly he'd jumped from one case to the other. They'd been out until late. She'd had to sack out on a cot in the female uniformed officers' room because there was no special place for ranking female officers. A lot of other things were vying for her attention, including the stripper they were interviewing at two p.m. for the Peret case. Charlie, however, had moved on. He was already working the East Side homicides.

  "Anderson is the premier employment agency for domestic positions in the U.S.," he said. He clicked on PRINT, and the pages started spewing out. "Okay, what we have here are domestic positions for the very rich—cooks, laundresses, butlers, chauffeurs, nannies, bodyguards, nurse-companions, caretakers, baby nurses."

  Eloise leaned over his shoulder to see the screen.

  "Mmm, you smell good," he said.

  "Fuck off," she shot back, but not as angrily as she might have last week. She looked at the application page. "Wow." Salaries ranged from 32,000 to 120,000 dollars a year for bodyguards and cooks. "Call them and find out what you can. I have a tape to review."

  Thirty-three

  Lnn studied the disturbing scene in the bedroom where Alison was still swaddled in her quilt. Two men completely covered in white, right down to their shoes, were measuring and going over the room as if the body weren't there.

  "What do you want me to do?" she asked Lieutenant Woo Sanchez.

  "You said earlier that the roo
m didn't look like this when you left to take the girls to play school. Tell me how it looked then."

  Lynn sniffed back her tears. "It's always a mess in here in the morning. Andrew's underwear and socks are on the floor on his side of the bed." She pointed to where that was. "He never picks up in the morning. Alison dropped her clothes on the floor, too—whatever she was wearing. I think she just threw the decorative pillows off the bed. They never landed on the bench."

  The bench at the bottom of the bed had nothing on it now.

  "And there's almost always an empty wineglass on the bedside table. She prefers white wine," Lynn added.

  "What else?" The Chinese detective followed her gaze as it traveled around the room.

  "That's about it in here, except for her magazines. She read them in bed. I don't see them now."

  Woo consulted her notes. "Earlier you said that when the children came up to say good-bye in the morning, she was often in bed."

  Lynn made a face. "They have sex in the morning."

  "How do you know?"

  "The spots are still wet when I make the bed at noon," she said simply.

  "They had an active sex life. Okay. What else?"

  Lynn looked past the bed toward the bathroom. "There's always water on the floor in the bathroom. Maybe they showered together. I don't know." She closed her eyes. "Two wet towels on the floor, her jewelry on the vanity. He's meticulous about his toiletries. She's messy with hers. They have two sinks. She leaves her rings on the side of the sink, and never wears them to sleep. She doesn't like them to get oily from body lotion or soap."

  "Do you know all her jewelry?" the Chinese detective asked.

  "Only . what she's worn. There may be some pieces I haven't seen. She keeps the box locked."

  "Do you know where it is?"

  "Yes, it's on a shelf in her closet."

  "What are your duties? Do you do the cleaning?" The detective moved away from the bedroom door, down the hall to the front of the house.

  "I do light housekeeping." Lynn followed her into the sitting-room side of the master suite that took up the whole third floor.

  "What would that consist of?"

  "I pick up, and make things look neat. I have to put the towels and the kids' clothes in the washing machine and dryer, but I don't iron or do the sheets. A cleaning lady comes in twice a week to do the heavy work."

  "What days does she come in?"

  "Monday and Thursday."

  "That would be yesterday."

  "Yes."

  "What about this room?" April asked.

  Lynn noticed that the coffee table in front of the love seat was piled with Alison's fashion magazines and recent issues of People. Two armchairs with a reading light between them. Plasma "TV on the wall near the fake wall with the powder room behind it.

  "Looks the same, except her magazines are il here."

  "They weren't in here this morning?"

  Lynn shook her head.

  "Was this room cleaned yesterday as usual?"

  "Yes."

  "What about the bathroom?"

  She nodded. "Top to bottom, everything's cleaned. No exceptions. That's the rule."

  "Who uses the bathroom?"

  "Nobody."

  "Are you sure?" the detective asked.

  "People have their habits. I use my own. The girl use theirs. Andrew and Alison each have their own toilets. They don't use this one. It's really small," she added.

  "Just look at it for me."

  Lynn shrugged and punched the wall so that it popped open.

  "Anything different about this?"

  "Well, the sink's wet . . . and somebody's used the hand towel."

  "Anything else? Look carefully."

  "No."

  "Thank you." April said, shutting the door.

  They moved into the dressing room, where all the clothes were in careful order except for Andrew's and Alison's clothes from the night before, which looked as if they'd been hurriedly dumped in a heap. Lynn commented on that, then pointed out the jewelry box. In the bathroom a diamond watch was on the vanity right where she'd said it would be, but no rings.

  "Anything missing here?" the detective asked.

  A lump rose in Lynn's throat. "Her rings. She had three—a big diamond engagement ring, and two diamond bands that she wore on either side of it. Maybe she forgot to take them off last night," she said uneasily.

  "Maybe."

  They came back into the hall, where a number of people had gathered.

  "We're ready for you now," someone said, and Lynn knew that it was Andrew's tum to look at the body.

  "Lynn, could you wait downstairs? I'll be back with you later." The detective gave her a reassuring smile. "Thanks."

  Lynn didn't want to see Andrew again, so she ducked through the door to the narrow back stairs and ran down to hide in her room two floors down.

  Thirty-four

  April reached Woody at Midtown .North at eleven fifteen. "Where are you?" he asked.

  "Alison Perkins is dead. Didn't anybody tell you?"

  "Yeah, Sergeant Gelo just told me a little while ago. How can I help, boss?" he asked.

  "Did you take photos of the people present in the crowd yesterday at the Wilson house?"

  "Yes, ma'am, I did."

  "Have you had them developed yet?"

  "Yup, I've got them here. Are we looking for anybody in particular?" he asked.

  "Not yet. You have notes from everyone you talked to yesterday?"

  "Yes, you want me to come over?"

  "Please, and bring your camera. I want you to take more pictures at the Perkins house. Let's see if there are any overlaps on the people hanging around today. Also, make copies of your report and bring it."

  "Address?" he asked.

  She gave him the address and dialed the medical examiner's office. It took a long time to get Dr.Gloss on the line. She refused to talk to anybody else.

  "I guess I have to call you April Sanchez now. How's the bride doing?" he said when he finally answered the call.

  "Great until yesterday," April said. "How about you?"

  "Same." He sighed. "What's going on up there? I was working on the Wilson woman's brain and somebody comes in and tells me her friend is dead."

  "It's a sad thing. Another young mother. About the same age as the Wilson woman. Also killed in her home—different COD here, but there are some similarities in the MO. We have to nail this one quickly."

  "Well, naturally. Is that why no one's here?" he asked.

  "Yeah, that's the reason," April said, even though she would have avoided the autopsy anyway. She was the opposite of her mother, who liked nothing more than watching surgery all day long. "What do you have to tell me about it?" She didn't want to fuss, but she was in kind of a hurry.

  "Mrs. Wilson was a generally healthy, well-nourished woman . . ." he said slowly. "But it's taking time. There are a lot of things to consider here. I'm not nearly finished with everything yet. It's going to take a week or ten days for a full report."

  "How about a few generalities, like your gross impression of the case—the COD, the weapon or weapons we should be looking for?"

  "There are a few things that stand out. . . ." he said slowly. Then, after his initial reluctance, he went into great length about bones and ligaments— healed traverse fractures on Maddy's left radioulnar, something about the long external lateral ligaments of the right knee, and the something-something tendon of the popliteus muscle as well as calcareous material that was apparently forming on synovial fringes.

  "What are they?" April interrupted finally. It was always difficult to contain a pathologist once he got going.

  "I gather she was a skier," he said obliquely.

  "Yes, she was a skier," April confirmed. It had been in all the news stories.

  "Right. She had healed fractures in her left arm. Tom ligaments in both knees, as well as the beginnings of osteoarthritis in her knees and elbows. She would have been a candidate for
knee replacements sometime down the line." He went on to comment on Maddy's teeth, which had been capped; her eyes, which had the benefit of fairly recent plastic surgery; and her nasal passages, which showed signs of disintegration, probably from frequent cocaine use.

  "She must have been getting fairly regular nosebleeds," he finished.

  "You're doing toxicology tests to determine alcohol and possible drug levels." It wasn't a question.

  "Of course," he replied.

  "Would any of the above bear any relation to her cause of death?" That wasn't really a question, either.

  "No, not the cause of death. The presence of cocaine could have heightened her excitability, raised her blood pressure, done a lot of things that might have helped—or hindered—her defense against her attacker."

  "What about COD?"

  "She sustained multiple stab wounds to the chest, neck, eye. Deep gashes in her palms and the under-surface of her fingers indicate that she tried to grab a knife, and it was pulled away from her. She also has cuts on her right foot and leg, indicating she also attempted to kick a knife out of the attacker's hand."

  "You said a knife. Can you tell what kind of knife was used, or if there was more than one?"

  "April," he said sternly. "You know how difficult incised wounds are to analyze. A lot of things come into play—whether the cutting is done parallel to the lines of cleavage or across the lines of cleavage."

  She was an experienced detective, but she did not know what cleavage he meant. "It looked like some of the cuts were made postmortem."

  He snickered. "See, that's the mistake a lot of people make. I guess you don't know much about incised wounds."

  "No, not like this, where there's no blood spatter. I've read some articles, but I'm not an expert," April said.