Dead of Winter (CSI: NY)

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  “He wasn’t killed here,” Stella said.

  Mac nodded.

  “No footprints in the snow behind the body,” she said. “If he was killed and pushed over, he’d have to be turned around. No sign of that.”

  “No signs of struggle,” said Mac.

  “That too,” said Stella.

  “We’ve got footprints,” said Danny.

  It was Stella’s turn to nod. There was nothing more for them to do here. The rest would be done in the lab.

  Each of them had a theory, one they were ready to give up or modify with the next piece of evidence.

  Flack’s first thought was that Collier had found a lead to Alberta Spanio’s murderer, followed it and got spotted by the killer.

  Danny considered that Collier may have seen or remembered something about the murder and either told the wrong person, or the killer figured out that Collier knew something that might reveal who he was.

  Stella considered that Collier might have been involved in the murder of Alberta Spanio and had been killed to protect the killer or killers.

  “Ed Taxx,” Mac said. “Bring him in. He may be on the killer’s list. If Collier saw or knew something that got him killed, Taxx might know the same thing.”

  Flack nodded.

  “And let’s find Stevie Guista,” Mac added, glancing at the body and nodding at the paramedics who had just arrived.

  Mac checked his watch.

  “Anyone hungry?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” said Danny, rubbing his hands together and shifting his feet which were beginning to feel numb.

  “I’ll pass,” said Stella.

  Don shook his head and watched the paramedics move the Dumpster and zip the dead man into a black bag.

  The quartet didn’t move. They watched silently until the body was well down the alley. Mac noticed a trio of wrapped fortune cookies lying in the snow where the Dumpster had been. He knelt and picked them up.

  Mac and his wife had been to Ming Lo’s once. They’d had fortune cookies that night. He didn’t remember what they said.

  After a few seconds, he dropped the unopened fortune cookies in the Dumpster and turned to the others, saying, “Dim sum?”

  Big Stevie knocked at the door and waited while Lilly said, “Who is it?”

  “Me, Stevie,” he said.

  When she opened the door, he handed her the shopping bag from Zabar’s. It weighed her down and touched the floor.

  “It’s my birthday,” he said. “How about a birthday party?”

  He stepped in and closed the door behind him.

  “I knew it was your birthday,” she said, moving to the small kitchen and starting to lift out each of the goodies, pausing to savor the touch and smell of what was to come. “I made you a present.”

  Stevie was caught off guard, touched. It must have shown on his face.

  “It’s nothing much,” Lilly said. “I’ll give it to you after we eat.”

  He took off his coat and removed his shoes, placing the coat on the chair near the door and the shoes on a mat next to the chair.

  “How about before we eat,” he said, trying to remember the last time he had been given a birthday present. Not since he was a young boy. He had never been a “little” boy.

  “Okay,” Lilly said, removing the last package from the shopping bag.

  She moved to the bedroom on the left, went in, and came back seconds later with a small package awkwardly wrapped in wrinkled red paper with a pink ribbon. She placed the small package in his huge hand.

  “Open it,” she said.

  He did, carefully, not tearing paper or ribbon. It was a small, pocket-sized animal. Lilly had made it from clay or something and painted it white.

  “It’s a dog,” she said. “I was going to make a horse but it was too hard. You like it?”

  “Yes,” he said, putting the dog on the table.

  It wobbled but didn’t fall.

  “Can I name him?” Lilly asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Rolf, like the dog on Sesame Street.”

  “Rolf,” he said. “Sounds like a bark.”

  “I think it’s supposed to.”

  “So,” he said. “Should we eat?”

  Lilly got plates, knives, forks, paper towels, and glasses.

  “Did those people find you?” she, asked unwrapping a package of sausage.

  “People?” Stevie asked.

  “A man and a woman, when Mom left for work.”

  “Who did they say they were?” he asked as Lilly carefully placed a slice of sausage on a roll she cut in half.

  “I think they were the police,” she said, handing him the sandwich she had made and then the card her mother had given her before she left.

  Stevie was silent. He looked at the CSI card with Mac Taylor’s name and number on it and handed it back to the girl. Then he took the sandwich and looked at it as if it were an unfamiliar object.

  “I think one of them is in your apartment waiting for you,” she said, working on her own sandwich.

  Stevie pocketed the clay dog and turned in his chair to look at the door as if he could, with enough effort, see through it into his own apartment.

  Stevie had to think. It would take time. Thinking was not one of his strong points. He took a large bite of the dry sandwich. The texture was dry, but the taste was satisfying, familiar.

  Jacob Laudano was seriously starting to worry. It had all been too easy, and now he had a phone call telling him what to say if and when the police came looking for him.

  Why the hell should the police be looking for him? Okay, so they had a reason to look for him, but he could get around that unless they were out to nail him. They didn’t have evidence against him. They couldn’t.

  Jacob “The Jockey” Laudano stood four foot ten and weighed ninety-four pounds, five pounds more than his racing weight. Considering that the last time he had been on a horse was eight years ago, he had done a good job of keeping the weight off, putting food on the table, paying the rent for his one-bedroom East Side apartment, and having enough left over for clothes and drinks.

  He didn’t need money to get women, not like Big Stevie. Not many wanted to be crushed by Steve’s bulk or look up and see Steve’s face. Jake, on the other hand, held an appeal for some reason that was hard for him to understand, but which he accepted without question. He knew it had something to do with his size. He wasn’t a bad looking guy, but the face that looked back at him in the morning mirror or the mirror at the back of Denny Kahn’s Bar was no Tom Cruise. Jake was pale, nose a little sharp, eyes narrow. He was nearing fifty but could pass for younger. His size again.

  He had never liked the horses except to bet, and that’s what had gotten him into trouble. For awhile it had been good. He had bet on his own races and played all the tricks to see to it that the favorite didn’t win. It was a little-appreciated skill, even less appreciated by the other jockeys who eventually turned him in.

  Jake was through in the business by the time he was twenty-six, at which time he had put his agility and lack of regard for the law into the traditional family business, breaking and entering.

  He had done fine at that for more then ten years and then, dumb luck, he was delving into the lower drawer of a dresser where people often hid something small and worth taking when the apartment door opened suddenly.

  Dumb luck. Jake had gone for the window. The guy had beat him to it, blocked his way, and punched him in the chest harder than he had ever been punched before or than he would be while doing two years upstate.

  The guy turned out to be a third baseman for the Mets. Dumb luck again.

  Jake made contacts while on the inside, which led to connections when he got out, connections that got him work because he was still damned good at getting in and out of places the big, fat, and often old people who hired him could not fit into. The first time he had been offered a hit for ten thousand he had said, “Sure.”

  He had killed three othe
rs since then, all for the standard fee of $10,000. Jake the Jockey had a reputation. He didn’t try to hold out for a bigger payoff no matter who he was hired to kill.

  Jake’s preferred tool was a long, sharp knife to the neck while the mark was asleep.

  He was straightening his tie in the mirror and pulling the knot just right. Someone had once called him a “natty dresser.” He had looked it up and liked it.

  The phone rang. Jake kept working on his tie as he came out of the bathroom and picked it up.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  And then he listened.

  “Went just fine,” Jake said. “Like I told you. In, out. No questions…Yeah, they saw me, not my face…. If he does, I will, but he won’t come here…Okay, okay, I’ll call.”

  The phone went dead. He put it back down and looked at it for a few seconds. Had something gone wrong?

  It was dark in the elevator shaft, but Aiden had a large lamp flashlight on its highest setting sitting in a corner on a metal beam.

  She wore gloves and had a package of evidence bags atop her kit next to the flashlight. There wasn’t as much garbage as she had expected, but there was still enough to make the job formidable.

  It was a challenge.

  There were crumbling sheets from newspapers dating back to the 1950s. One of them held the word “Ike” in what was left of the headline. She plowed through envelopes, all old, none from or to anyone whose name she recognized. She found a Baby Ruth candy bar wrapper, an assortment of screws, thumb tacks, and other pieces of metal. She found two dead rats under an unidentifiable moist mess in one corner. One of the rats was long dead and mostly skeletal. The other was still damp and all too fragrant.

  She rummaged for forty-five minutes, finishing her search with a dried out condom wrapped in aluminum foil. So much for a high-class Manhattan apartment building.

  There was no bullet at the bottom of the shaft. She was as sure of that as the fact that she needed a shower.

  She started to climb out of the shaft into the basement. With one knee on the concrete floor, she took a last look back, shining her flashlight into corners and up at the stopped elevator, which she’d turned off before coming down here. It was then that she saw it. The bullet, what was left of it, lay dark and leaden, on a metal structural beam. It hadn’t fallen all the way to the floor of the shaft.

  Aiden scrambled down into the shaft with tweezers and a plastic bag, took three photographs, and retrieved the bullet.

  9

  HAWKES LOOKED DOWN AT COLLIER’S BODY, Mac and Stella at his side.

  “The killer was taller than the victim,” Hawkes said. “Look at the bruises.”

  He pointed to the dead man’s neck.

  “Pulled back and up to get leverage. Bruises start at the Adam’s apple and work upwards. Like this.”

  Hawkes got behind Mac and demonstrated. Mac could feel Hawkes’s loose grip moving upward.

  “Probably lifted our victim right off the ground.”

  Hawkes stepped back and looked down at the corpse again.

  “Dead man weighs two hundred and ten pounds and is six one and a half,” Hawkes said. “Your killer is at least six five, maybe as tall as six six or even six seven and very strong. No fumbling around here, just one clean arm around the neck from behind and a powerful sudden pull. No struggle.”

  “And?” asked Stella.

  “Killer’s right-handed,” said Hawkes. “Principal bruising and crushing of the esophagus is on the victim’s right side.”

  “So if we find a left-handed giant, he’s innocent?” asked Mac straight faced.

  “Thus eliminating left-handed giants,” Hawkes agreed.

  “He’s done this before,” said Stella.

  “He knew what he was doing,” said Hawkes. “You like opera?”

  “Never saw one,” said Stella.

  Mac had seen them. His wife had loved opera. And Mac had gotten used to the artificial, inane stories, the overacting, and the semi-pomp of dressing up. He had especially liked watching Claire dress for a big night out. She always smiled in anticipation. And Mac had gradually grown to appreciate the music and the singing.

  “I’ve got two tickets for Don Giovanni tomorrow,” Hawkes said. “Donatelli in Homicide gave them to me. He’s got a cousin in the chorus. Donatelli’s wife has the flu, which, he said, was one he owed God.”

  “You’re not going?” asked Stella.

  “I prefer CDs,” said Hawkes. “You want to try?”

  “No, thanks,” said Stella.

  “Mac?” asked Hawkes.

  Mac considered and looked at Stella.

  Her cheeks were pink, but it was difficult to tell how pink under the surgical lights. Her eyes were moist and he thought she looked a little unsteady.

  “Take them,” she said.

  “You all right?” he asked.

  “A cold,” she said.

  Mac held out his hand and Hawkes produced two tickets from his pocket. Mac glanced at them. They were good seats, orchestra.

  “Thanks,” he said, pocketing them.

  On the way down the corridor, with gray frigid light coming through the windows, Stella asked, “You really like opera?”

  He almost said, “We did,” but stopped himself and instead said, “Depends on the opera.”

  In the lab, Danny Messer stood in front of a large table on which lay a two-foot length of steel chain.

  “Where do we start?” he said, looking at Stella and Mac.

  Mac jerked his chin at the chain.

  “Right,” said Danny. “Standard stuff. Some of the links have tiny numbers indicating their manufacturer. One thing’s for sure. This chain matches the fragments we got in that hotel room. I called the manufacturer. They guarantee the chain will hold a hundred pounds. The woman I talked to said that holding more than a hundred pounds on the chain out the window would probably result in one or more of the links opening.”

  “Collier’s clothes?” asked Mac.

  Danny smiled and walked over to a microscope. Alongside the microscope were slides neatly numbered. Danny put one of the slides in the microscope, focused, and stepped back.

  “Tested the brown-white flecks,” Danny said. “Flour. On the back of his jacket only.”

  Stella examined the slide.

  “Collier’s body was moved in a vehicle containing flour,” said Mac.

  “Almost coated in a thin layer,” said Danny.

  “Insect pieces in the flour,” Stella said. “In the other samples too?”

  “Yep,” said Danny.

  “Federal Drug Administration allows a low level of insect content in flour used in bakeries,” said Mac.

  “I’ll remember that when I order a sub for dinner tonight,” said Danny.

  Stella moved aside and Mac gazed into the microscope saying, “Insects are different for each bakery.”

  “And,” added Danny, “there are different kinds of flour, different additives. I’m tracing the producer of this flour. I’ll get a list of their customers. Then we can match the flour and insect particles to a particular bakery.”

  “Maybe,” said Stella, arms folded.

  “Maybe,” Danny agreed.

  “Start with Marco’s Bakery,” said Stella.

  They all knew why. The fingerprint in the hotel room above Alberta Spanio’s bedroom had been left by Steven Guista, a man with an arrest record, a big man who drove a truck for Marco’s Bakery, which was owned by Dario Marco, the brother of the man Alberta Spanio was supposed to testify against.

  “Nothing from Flack?” asked Mac.

  “Nothing yet,” said Danny. “He’s waiting at Guista’s apartment. Judge Familia issued the warrant.”

  Mac looked at Stella, who held back a sniffle.

  “I’ll get my kit,” she said.

  It would take them twenty minutes to get to Guista’s apartment. A lot would happen in those twenty minutes.

  Don Flack carefully examined Guista’s small apartment, l
istening for footsteps in the hall. A monk could have lived there.

  There was a stained green recliner in the small living room just inside the door to the hall. The stained recliner had a hollowed-out indentation where Guista probably spent most of his time. A small color Zenith television sat on top of an old three-drawer dresser directly in front of the recliner. A remote sat on the arm of the recliner.

  There was a Formica-covered table in the kitchen with aluminum legs and three matching chairs with blue plastic seats and backs. A refrigerator with little in it, a cupboard with three coffee cups, four dinner plates, a pair of heavy glasses. Under the sink were one pot and one chipped Teflon-covered pan.

  The bedroom was tiny. A big neatly made bed with a green blanket and four pillows took up most of the bedroom space. There were no books or magazines on the night table. On the wall at the foot of the bed was a print of three horses eating grass in a broad rolling pasture.

  The small bathroom had an oversized old tub with clawed feet and old porcelain handles.

  What struck Flack most about the apartment was that it appeared to be immaculately clean, almost antiseptic, barely lived in. There weren’t many clothes in the drawers or closet. Guista did seem partial to green in his socks, shirts, and few pieces of furniture.

  Don went back in the living room/kitchen area and sat in one of the chairs at the Formica-covered table. The chair faced the door.

  Don was prepared to spend the rest of the day and all night in the small apartment.

  Across the hall, Big Stevie and Lilly partied, ate, and began to watch a rerun of a Gunsmoke episode, one of the ones in black and white with Dennis Weaver as Chester.

  Stevie wanted to stay there. He had done enough for one day, more than enough. He hoped it would be appreciated. He didn’t expect a bonus. A small sign of appreciation would do. And it was his birthday.

  But right now he had to think. There was someone in his apartment, a man, waiting for him, going through his neatly stacked clothing, his evenly spaced pants, shirts, and jackets, his coffee cups and cereal jars.

  Big Stevie knew he had to get away, but it felt right sitting with Lilly, eating the last of the cake, drinking orange-tangerine juice.