Hell Gate

by Linda A. Fairstein

  “A knife did that?” I asked.

  “Not likely. Something pointed and very sharp. Something with a fine, thin tip.”

  Homicidal stab wounds usually involved some cutting as well as thrusting, the knife pulled down or up, twisted during its insertion or removal. The injury was usually longer than the widest part of the blade.

  “What then?”

  “A sharp pair of scissors, maybe. A pick of some sort.”

  “Crime Scene take any weapons off the ship?” I asked Mike.

  “Control your control freak instincts, Coop. That sloop crossed the ocean. There’s a galley with kitchen equipment to prepare food for hundreds of people and a boiler room with enough tools to keep the damn thing afloat. That’s not to mention that half the men on board had homemade shivs and all kinds of metal to protect themselves. And don’t ask me to start dragging the ocean bottom tonight, okay?”

  “We will need to see every sharp object you find,” Pomeroy said.

  “Yeah, Doc,” Mike said. “What kind of public statement will you make about her death?”

  “That’s up to the chief. To my view, Jane here was stabbed to death and disposed of to simulate drowning. Something we don’t see very often.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because, Alex, it would be fairly easy to discover the bullet hole or track the internal hemorrhaging of a stab wound at autopsy. Your killer must have counted on this body not being found for days, if at all.”

  “The vicious riptide,” Mike said. “We’re not done waiting for bodies to wash up.”

  “Far likelier for this girl to have been dragged out in the ocean. If and when she came ashore, the odds are pretty good that she would have been skeletonized. All those marine creatures would have gotten to work on her. You’ll see, if there are more deaths in the next few days.”

  “So almost the perfect crime, Doc, right? One well-placed thrust between the ribs and overboard with the mutineers. Jane just surfed the wrong way.”

  “Possibly.”

  “So I’m looking for someone who heard her squealing like a stuck pig just before the other desperate souls decided to jump.”

  “Those bruises,” I said, pointing to the marks on the young woman’s forehead, “are those—and her hands—signs of a struggle?”

  Pomeroy lifted the girl’s left hand to point out the abrasions on the wrinkled skin of her knuckles. “They’re not defensive wounds, Alex. Nothing to suggest that she struggled. She was dragged by the tide along the shallow bottom of the ocean, drifting below the water’s surface. Those scrapes here, on her forehead, and her knees are all postmortem, all superficial.”

  “I’m just thinking about Mike’s comment about her squealing. Someone certainly took advantage of all the commotion if she was killed after the ship beached itself on the reef. That should help us once we get to talk to these people.”

  “I’ll bet half the boatload was wailing and screaming,” Mike said. “You know how long she was dead before she was tossed in?”

  “The waterlogging makes it hard to determine lividity,” Pomeroy said. “There’s a loss of translucency of the upper layers of the skin, can you see? The internal organs display lividity normally, though. I’d say she wasn’t dead many hours before she was found.”

  “We’re not talking about Jane being on ice since she left home?”

  “No, we’re not.”

  “How about her clothing?” I asked. “There must have been blood all over it.”

  On a workbench in a far corner of the room, Jane Doe’s clothes had been laid out to dry. “I’m afraid they won’t be all that much help. Yes, exsanguination was the cause of death, Alex, but most of the bleeding went into the body cavities.”

  I knew that was common in stabbings that didn’t involve the head or neck. Often, the track of the wound closed up after the weapon that pierced the flesh was withdrawn.

  “This was on Jane’s upper body, more or less,” Pomeroy said, pointing at a black fleece jacket with a zippered front and a hood. “Those tears in it may well have been caused by the ocean floor. They’re too ragged, too uneven, to have been cut.”

  Mike pulled a pair of latex gloves from his rear pants pocket and lifted the jacket to examine it. “Still damp. Looks pretty chewed up.”

  “That hole in the chest area is a spot we cut out for the lab. I assume it’s blood, but it’s a pretty discreet little stain. Easy to miss in light of all the action.”

  “Any labels?” I asked. I wanted to know where the clothing had been manufactured and, if very lucky, where in the Ukraine it had been sold.

  “Nada,” Mike said. “Your generic sweat jacket.”

  “And the pants?”

  “Kinda look like pajama bottoms, don’t they?” he said, holding up a pair of thin cotton pants with a drawstring waist. They had also been shredded, presumably, while being tossed around in the sea. “Brrrrrrrrrr. Guess she didn’t mind the cold very much.”

  Mike looked in the waistband and along the interior seam of each leg but shook his head to indicate he had found no markings.

  “Underwear?” I asked.

  “It’s a sports bra, right?” Mike said. He hoisted it up with his fingertip. It appeared to be some sort of Lycra stretch material, again with no label.

  “No panties,” Pomeroy said. “Probably set to bunk down for the night.”

  “That’s odd. I’d have thought they’d all be warmly dressed and ready to be unloaded for their arrival in America,” I said.

  “Maybe she was offed while she was suiting up,” Mike said. “It doesn’t take every broad in the world as long to get herself presentable as it does you.”

  Pomeroy looked at me for a response or change of expression. People who had worked with Mike and me for years tried to guess at whether his personal jabs reflected an intimacy that meant we had crossed professional lines. I sometimes wondered the same, but had put up with them for so long that now they rarely distracted me.

  “How about the two drowning victims?” I asked.

  “The young man was wearing a sweatshirt and jeans. Very American style,” Pomeroy said. “I think my assistant said they were made in China.”

  “And Jane Doe Number Two?”

  “Her things are spread out across the hall, if you’d like to see them. A coarse sweater that looks homemade.”

  “Intact?” I asked.

  “Practically unraveled,” Pomeroy said, screwing up his face as he searched for words to describe the items. “Her underwear was in tatters. Sort of dingy-looking stuff. And both girls had tattoos.”

  “Did you know that?” Mike asked me.

  “No. Are they the same?”

  Pomeroy covered the victim’s head—as though he didn’t want her watching while he exposed her lower torso to us—and folded back the sheet from her feet up to her waist. “The other girl has a small flag.”

  “Blue on top, yellow below?”

  “Yes, Mike.”

  “The Ukrainian flag—they were all over the ship too.”

  “Where? I mean, on what part of her body?”

  “On her shoulder blade, Alex. The right one.”

  “But this girl—Jane Doe Number One—where is hers?”

  Pomeroy moved his gloved hand along Jane Doe #1’s thigh. “It’s a flower of some sort. Looks to me like a—I don’t know. I’m not into gardening.”

  The small tattoo—bloodred ink within a black outline—sat almost at the crease in the skin where her inner thigh joined her body.

  I bent over to study the image.

  “Do you recognize the design?” Pomeroy asked.

  “No, Doctor. It’s the placement of the tattoo that’s significant to me.”

  Mike cocked his head and stepped in closer. “Talk, Coop.”

  “When victims are trafficked into this country, they’re often tattooed by someone who works for the snakehead. Stakes her out as his property. The girls being sold for prostitution—the better ones, the younger
ones—are often marked right here, close to the opening of the vaginal vault. It’s a symbol of their pimp’s control.”

  “So we know what kind of work she was destined for,” Mike said. “Now we’ve just got to identify the bastard who set her up.”

  “Jane Doe Number One,” I said. “Personal property of . . . the rose.”

  EIGHT

  It was almost nine P.M. when Mercer walked into Dr. Pomeroy’s office, where Mike and I were waiting for two of the shipmates who’d been treated and released from the hospital to be brought into the viewing room to try to identify the deceased.

  “Got anything for a headache, Alex?” he asked.

  “My tote’s on the floor in the corner. Open the cosmetics bag.”

  “Don’t take the ones that make Coop hallucinate that she’s going to solve this mother anytime soon,” Mike said. “You know any bad guys use the nickname ‘The Rose’?”

  I handed Mercer my bottle of water and he downed the tablets, shaking his head.

  “I hate to ask what took you so long,” Mike said, “but what took you so long? I thought you were coming through the tunnel when you called.”

  “Detour to East End Avenue,” Mercer said, turning to me. “Salma’s goin’ all crazy on us. Or on Leighton.”

  “What now?” I asked.

  “Another nine-one-one call. Screaming for help.”

  I leaned back in Pomeroy’s desk chair and rested my head. “About what? That Leighton was threatening her, while he was sitting in the courthouse with Lem?”

  “Worse than that. She said that the congressman was actually in the apartment, trying to take the baby away from her.”

  “You’re sure that’s what she said? There goes her credibility.”

  “Wait a minute. Exactly what time?” Mike asked. “Tell Mercer about tonight.”

  “I’m too embarrassed. You tell him.”

  Mike and Mercer tried to construct a time line, based on my estimate of when I left the office. “Entirely possible,” Mike said.

  “The nine-one-one operator who got the call speaks Spanish. That’s what Salma said.”

  “They responded, right?”

  “And so did I.”

  “Well?”

  “No sign of Leighton. The doorman said nobody except Salma’s sister showed up for her today. Left with the baby around six o’clock.”

  “You talk to her yourself?”

  “Salma wouldn’t let the uniformed guys in at first. She thought they were just harassing her again. “

  “How’s her English?” Mike asked.

  “Good. Perfectly good. The doorman confirmed that when she gets excited or upset, she’s pretty shrill in both languages, but Spanish first.”

  “So she understood why you were there?”

  “You bet she did. Denies making the calls, denies having heard anything from Leighton since he left the apartment early this morning. Says one of his aides called her several times to tell her what happened to him and that she should avoid the reporters. Lem phoned too.”

  I grimaced. “Thank goodness he hasn’t had time to meet with her yet.”

  “First thing tomorrow morning,” Mercer said. “I’ll tell you, Salma makes no effort to keep her temper in check. She started chewing out the cops for disturbing her. Told them they better not come back ’cause she’d been up all night and wanted to get some sleep. She doesn’t care how many nine-one-one calls they claim to get, she’s not the one making them.”

  “You checked to see if there’s anyone else in the apartment? A nanny, another relative with a screw loose who could be calling nine-one-one while Salma doesn’t even know?”

  “All clear, Mike.”

  “And the basement? No one tinkering with the phone lines there?”

  “I went down myself to double-check the techs who came over. Nothing touched.”

  “The baby was well enough to send to her sister?” I asked. “When you checked the place out, did anything look amiss?”

  “Now, you know how I am about kids, Alex. I got the sister’s info and called over to her. She confirmed that Salma told her she needed to get herself some sleep and the baby is fine. Has two of her own, so she seems to know what she’s doing.”

  “And the apartment?”

  “Leighton set her up nice. Neat and clean, everything in place. Great river view, by the way. It overlooks Gracie Mansion—maybe Leighton has her keeping an eye on the mayor,” Mercer said with a smile. “You can practically see out to the Montauk lighthouse.”

  “Did she let you poke around?” I asked.

  “Salma got into such a spitting match with the cops, I just helped myself into her bedroom and the nursery. No signs of a struggle, nothing out of place anywhere.”

  “Tell me about her,” Mike said. “What makes a guy with such promise throw it all out the window? Salma must be really hot—some kind of fox. What does she look like?”

  “Could we stay on point here? Why was she fighting with the cops?”

  “I told you, Alex. She was yelling at the rookie in Spanish, telling him—like he told me—that if they came back and bothered her again, she’d get Leighton to have them fired. That kind of thing. Seems pretty clear she’s used to throwing his name around.”

  “Might have had some value until a few hours ago. Ethan Leighton’s name will get her squat now,” Mike said.

  “Officer Guerrero tried to make that clear,” Mercer said, chuck-ling about the encounter. “I didn’t get the exact translation, but she blasted him after that. He told her she could call nine-one-one as often as she wanted, but nobody was going to show up again. Told her they’d had enough craziness for one day.”

  “The fox who cried wolf,” Mike said. “Not to worry. I’m assuming the congressman’s wife will have him securely tied to the mattress tonight. By his balls. And in their spare bedroom, I’m sure.”

  “I’d really like to talk to Salma before Lem sits her down,” I said. “We’ll never get the true story once he starts spinning her.”

  “And I’m gonna pass out if I don’t put some dinner in my stomach soon.”

  “I’m right behind you,” Mercer said.

  Pomeroy’s assistant reappeared in the doorway. “Dr. P is ready for you, Mike. The men are here.”

  I followed Mike and Mercer down the corridor to the family reception room. I wasn’t usually involved in this painful stage of the process, but I had been to the morgue often enough to observe the anxious loved ones of homicide victims waiting among strangers to confirm the news that no one wanted to get.

  “I’ll stay outside the viewing room. Let’s not overwhelm them,” I said.

  “Neither one of these guys is missing a relative or close friend, Coop. They’re just shipmates. They volunteered to try to give us names, if they recognize these first three victims.”

  Mercer and I listened as Mike introduced himself, explained the process to the Ukrainian interpreter the cops had found during the day, and then separated the two men so that neither could hear what the other one told us.

  He led the first guy—Pavlo—who appeared to be in his twenties, into the cubicle adjacent to the reception area with the interpreter. When Mike had positioned him in front of the glass partition, he pulled back the short blue curtains that covered the space. In the old days, when I first came on the job, the viewers were in the same room as the deceased. Now there was the small extra comfort of being on the far side of a piece of glass—unable to smell death, not tempted to touch the corpse one last time.

  I could see the side of Pavlo’s face when he looked at the body of the young man the city had named John Doe #1. His expression didn’t change, but he swallowed hard and the lump of his Adam’s apple protruded farther before resting back in his neck as he pursed his lips and gulped in a breath of air.

  He spoke in a whisper to the interpreter. “The boy is from his hometown,” the interpreter said. “Doesn’t know his name, but he has a brother on the ship, who made it off saf
ely. Is maybe seventeen, eighteen years old, this one. Brother is Viktor. You will find him, please?”

  Pavlo put his head down and stepped back.

  “How do you say ‘I’m sorry’?” Mike asked the interpreter, who repeated the sentiment to the young man. “Tell him we’ve got to do it again, understand?”

  The young man nodded his head.

  “Jane Doe Number One,” Mike turned and said to me, since I couldn’t see the body that had been placed on the elevated lift for display.

  Pavlo looked at the murdered girl on the gurney and seemed to be studying her face.

  The interpreter gave us the English version of the phrases he had heard. “Says the girl looks familiar to him, but he doesn’t know anything about her. Doesn’t remember seeing her, speaking to her, on the crossing. But most of the girls kept to themselves, unless they were married or they had brothers and cousins on board.”

  “Would you ask him,” I said, speaking softly, “if there is even a single thing about her that he remembers?”

  The interpreter put his head closer to Pavlo, then turned back to us.

  “Is pretty girl, no?”

  “That’s what he said?”

  “No, no. Is what I am saying. Pavlo says nothing. Tells me there were three hundred people on this ship, maybe more. Can’t remember meeting this girl. Me, I think you wouldn’t forget her. Is very pretty.”

  “If I wanted to solicit the opinions of the Little Odessa Senior Citizens Lonely Hearts Club, I wouldn’t have started with an evening outing at the morgue,” Mike said to me under his breath as he closed the curtains.

  When they opened again three minutes later, Jane Doe #2, one of the drowning victims, was displayed to Pavlo. I couldn’t see her, but knew that she had been cleaned up—her skin washed, all the grit from the beach gone, and her gnarled hair untangled by Pomeroy’s assistants after he had finished his meticulous dissection of her body.

  The young man picked his head up and again, there was very little reaction. He talked to the interpreter, who turned to Mike to fill him in.

  “This one he doesn’t know either. He and a friend tried to talk to her once, because she was very sick—how you say stomach sick?”