Dead of Winter (CSI: NY)

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

They all knew that samples would have to be taken from Louisa Cormier’s skin and then examined in the lab for atomic absorption under a scanning electron microscope.

  “Maybe she doesn’t know she can’t get it all off,” said Mac. “She checks the Internet and then starts scrubbing, probably burns whatever clothing she was wearing.”

  “So?” asked Danny. “Can we force her to use a GSR kit on her hands?”

  “Not with the evidence we have,” said Aiden, “but maybe we can worry her into making a mistake.”

  “How?” asked Danny.

  “We lie to her,” said Aiden. “And Mac’s the best liar I know.”

  “Thanks,” said Mac. “First thing in the morning then. Anything new on Guista?”

  “Nothing yet,” said Stella.

  “How’s Don?” asked Danny.

  “Out of the hospital,” said Mac. “Doctor told him to go home, gave him pain pills. He’s probably in bed by now.”

  Mac was wrong.

  Don Flack, trying not to shiver, stood in front of the small house in Flushing, Queens and rang the bell. It was after nine. Night had dropped the temperature to just below zero degrees and that wasn’t counting the wind chill.

  There were lights on inside the house. He rang again, trying not to breathe deeply. The doctor who taped his ribs, Dr. Singh, had told him to take one of the hydrocodine tablets and go to bed. Don had taken half his advice. He had downed one tablet before he left the hospital.

  The door opened. The warmth of the house greeted him and he found himself facing a pretty brunette teenage girl holding a book.

  “Yes?” she asked.

  “Is Mr. Taxx home?” he asked.

  “Yes,” the girl said. “I’ll get him. Come in.”

  Flack stepped in, closing the door behind him.

  “Are you all right?” the girl asked.

  “I’m fine,” he said.

  She nodded and strode away into a room on the right calling, “Dad, there’s someone here to see you.”

  The girl returned almost immediately to face Flack.

  The warmth of the house, the stab of pain, and the hydrocodine got to the detective. He must have swayed slightly.

  “Are you sick?” the girl asked.

  “I’m fine,” he lied.

  Ed Taxx came out of the room the girl had gone into seconds earlier. He wore jeans with the cuffs rolled up and a New York Jets sweat shirt.

  “Flack,” he said, “you all right?”

  “Fine, can we talk?”

  “Sure,” said Taxx. “Come on in. You want some coffee, tea, a shot of something?”

  “Coffee,” said Flack, following him, controlling a need to wince.

  “Could you get a cup of coffee for Detective Flack?” Taxx asked the girl.

  The girl nodded.

  “Cream, sugar, Equal?” she asked.

  “Black,” said Flack as Taxx went one way and his daughter the other.

  They were in a small, clean living room. The furniture wasn’t new but it was bright, flowery, clean, a woman’s room. Two sofas, almost matching, sat across from each other with a low gray table between them and copies of the latest Entertainment Weekly and Smithsonian Magazine next to each other.

  Taxx sat on one sofa. Flack sat across from him.

  “Cliff Collier’s dead,” Flack said.

  “I got a call,” Taxx said, shaking his head. “Any leads on the killer?”

  “I shot the killer,” said Flack straight-faced. “But he’s out there someplace. He got away.”

  “I didn’t know Collier well,” said Taxx. “Just duty those two nights. You were a friend of his?”

  “Went through the Academy together,” said Flack, trying not to move, knowing it would result in a silent stab in his chest.

  The girl came back with identical yellow mugs and cork coasters in each hand. She placed the drinks down in front of the two men.

  “Thanks honey,” said Taxx, smiling at his daughter.

  “I’m going back to my room,” she said, “unless…”

  “Go ahead,” said Taxx.

  The girl looked back once and exited slowly, probably, Don thought, hoping to pick up a bit of the conversation between her father and the unexpected visitor.

  “Wife’s down the street playing bridge,” said Taxx.

  They went silent, drank their coffee.

  “You in trouble?” asked Flack.

  Taxx shrugged.

  “DA’s office is investigating,” he said. “I’ll probably get a reprimand and since I’ll be retiring in about a year, I won’t go back in the field again. Can’t say it bothers me all that much. Someone has to take the blame for losing a star witness.”

  Flack drank. The coffee was hot but not steamy hot.

  “My guess is the papers and television people will say Cliff’s murder suggests that he was involved in the killing of Alberta Spanio, that he was killed to shut him up,” said Don.

  “I don’t believe that,” said Taxx, working on his own coffee. “I didn’t know him well, but I was there. He didn’t have anything to do with killing her.”

  “Then whoever did it thought Cliff saw something or knew something,” said Flack. “Or figured something out. My best guess is Cliff was following a lead on his own and got spotted.”

  “Makes sense to me,” Taxx said.

  “Whoever did it may be after you next.”

  Taxx nodded and said, “I’ve been thinking about that. I can’t come up with any reason.”

  Flack asked Taxx to go over what had happened at the hotel.

  “Told you already,” said Taxx. “We knocked on her door.”

  “We?”

  “I think it was Collier who knocked. I called her name. No answer. Collier put his hand on the door and looked at me. Signaled for me to do the same. I did. The door was cold.”

  “Whose idea was it to break down the door?”

  “We didn’t discuss it,” said Taxx. “We just did it. When we got in, Collier ran to the bathroom and I went to the bed to check on Alberta.”

  “Why did he go to the bathroom?”

  “Wind was blowing in from there,” said Taxx. “We just agreed, nodded, something. You know how it is when something happens fast in the field.”

  “Yeah,” said Flack. “Why did he go to the bathroom and you to the body?”

  Taxx was holding the coffee cup in his hand.

  “I don’t know. It just happened. I saw him run for the bathroom. That left the bed.”

  “How long was he in there?”

  “Five, ten seconds,” said Taxx. “Flack, what’s going on with you? You look…”

  “Guy who killed Cliff sat on my chest before I shot him. Broken ribs.”

  “You have far to drive to get here?”

  “It wasn’t bad.”

  “Want to spend the night here?” asked Taxx. “We’ve got an extra room.”

  “No, thanks,” he said. “I’ll be all right. When Alberta Spanio went to bed, what was the drill the last night?”

  “Same as the first three nights,” said Taxx. “We checked the windows to be sure they were locked.”

  “Who checked?”

  “We both did,” said Taxx.

  “Who checked the bathroom window?”

  “Collier. Then we left, and Alberta locked the door behind us. We heard the bolt slide and lock.”

  “And no sounds during the night?” asked Flack.

  “From her room? No.”

  “From anywhere?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe you should have someone watching your house till we pick up the guy who killed Cliff?”

  “I’m well armed,” said Taxx. “I know how to use my weapon.”

  “You might want to wear it and have it at your bedside.”

  Taxx pulled up his Jets sweat shirt to reveal a small holster and gun on his belt. Then he pulled the sweat shirt down.

  “I got the same idea when I heard what happened to Collier,
but for the life of me, I don’t know what Collier and I might have heard or seen that would make Marco send out a hit on us. He’s got to know the morning news will be all over this and he’ll be crucified if something happens to me. More coffee?”

  “No, thanks,” said Flack, rising carefully.

  “Sure you don’t want to spend the night?”

  “No, thanks,” he said.

  “Suit yourself,” said Taxx, leading him back to the front door.

  “Try to think of something you might have forgotten, missed,” said Flack.

  “I’ve been trying, going over everything, but…I’ll keep trying,” said Taxx. “Be careful out there tonight.”

  Flack went out the door and into the frigid night. The door closed behind him cutting off the last of the warmth. He was missing something. He knew it, felt it.

  He would drive home now, carefully, knowing that the pain was winning, at least for now, at least until he got home and took another hydrocodine tablet. In the morning, he’d check in with Stella to see if she had come up with anything. Whatever else he did in the morning would depend on whether Stevie Guista had been caught.

  He got into his car and reached into his jacket pocket. The move sent a shock of pain across his chest. He pulled out the bottle of pills, started to open it, and changed his mind.

  It took him almost two hours to get home.

  The woman on the uptown intersection video monitor was Molly Ives. She was stubby, black, studying law at night, and wide awake. Her shift, the night shift, had begun fifteen minutes earlier.

  She spotted the bread truck at a red light at 96th and Third. She wasn’t sure it was the one she had a note to look for on the clipboard next to her. She became sure when the light turned green and she could make out the words MARCO’S BAKERY on the side of the truck as it passed.

  Molly Ives called it in to the NYPD dispatcher who contacted a patrol car in the area. Five minutes later, the patrol car cut off the bakery truck, and the two policemen inside got out.

  They approached the small truck, weapons in hand, one officer on each side of the vehicle.

  “Come out,” called one of the officers. “Hands up.”

  The bakery truck door opened, and the driver climbed out slowly.

  Big Stevie had stopped the bleeding. He had sat in the back of his bread truck with the heat on, took off his T-shirt and pressed it against the wound in his right leg, the thick fleshy part above the knee. When he reached back he felt the exit wound. That was bleeding less but the hole was bigger. No bones were broken. He wrapped the T-shirt tightly.

  He would have to abandon the truck. He would have to see a doctor or a nurse or something. Who knows what’s going on inside? Could be internal bleeding, one of those embolisms, something. And he would need money to get out of town. Steven Guista’s needs were great and he had only one place to go with them.

  He drove, thought about taking the bridge to Manhattan, changed his mind, and headed to the neighborhood he knew best. The makeshift bandage was holding reasonably well but some blood was seeping through. He drove to an outdoor phone, in front of a twenty-four-hour grocery where he had stopped a few dozen times before. He parked and hobbled out of the truck.

  “It’s me,” he said when the woman answered. He gave her the number of the phone he was calling from. She hung up. He stood, shivering, light-headed, waiting, the lights of the grocery giving off no heat. She called back in ten minutes.

  “Where are you?” she asked.

  “Brooklyn,” he said. “Went back to my place. Cop shot me.”

  The pause was so long that Stevie asked, “You there?”

  “I’m here,” she said. “How badly hurt are you?”

  “Leg,” he said. “I need a doctor.”

  “I’ll give you an address,” she said. “Can you remember it?”

  “I don’t have a pencil, paper, anything,” he said.

  “Then just keep saying it to yourself. Get rid of the truck. Take a cab.”

  She gave him the name of a woman, Lynn Contranos, and an address. He repeated them to her.

  “I’ll call her and tell her you’re coming.”

  The woman hung up. Stevie pulled change out of his pocket, dialed information for a car service number, made the call, and waited. While he waited he almost sang the name of the woman he was supposed to see, Lynn Contranos.

  His birthday was only a few hours from ending. He didn’t want to think about it. His pants were sticking to his leg now, the blood freezing.

  He kept repeating the mantra as he waited, didn’t think beyond going to that address. One thing at a time and maybe he would come out of this.

  There was no car fifteen minutes later, and Big Stevie got back in the bread truck, turned on the heat and waited, watching the curb for the arrival of the car.

  If it doesn’t get here in ten more minutes, I’m driving. He was having trouble remembering the name and address he was supposed to go to, but he kept repeating them as he waited for the car that might never come.

  Mac sat in his living room in the worn brown chair with the matching ottoman. His wife had indulged him. He had loved the chair, was still drawn to it, but the love was gone. It was just a place to sit and work or watch a ball game or a dog show or an old movie.

  Tonight, clad in a clean gray sweat suit, it was work. On the slightly scratched, inlaid wooden table by his side stood two piles of books, new, fresh smelling, and twenty-seven neatly typed pages of paper clipped together. On a small cutting board no larger than one of the books rested a mug of coffee he had just microwaved.

  There was also a stack of book reviews, old and new, he had printed from the Internet.

  It was just before ten.

  He had the books by Louisa Cormier arranged in chronological order. Her first book was titled Genesis Standing. The reviews had been mildly good, but the sales had been phenomenal. By the fourth book, reviews said Louisa Cormier had turned a corner and belonged among the upper echelon of mystery writers. Now she was always compared, favorably, with women writers like Sue Grafton, Mary Higgins Clark, Marcia Muller, Faye Kellerman, and Sara Paretsky.

  Mac took a sip of coffee. It wasn’t hot enough, but he didn’t want to get up, go to the kitchen and go through the microwaving process again. He drank a little deeper and hoped he found the work of Louisa Cormier interesting.

  Before he could open the first book, the phone rang.

  It was a little after ten at night. Stella was looking over Danny’s shoulder as he constructed the image on the computer screen in the lab.

  Stella’s eyes burned. She no longer doubted that she was coming down with something. Something was definitely causing her sinuses to fill, her eyes to water, and her throat to tickle. She tried to ignore it.

  The image on the screen looked like something out of one of those computer generated games advertised on television, the ones in which people, who didn’t look all that much like people, slaughtered each other with noisy weapons, vicious kicks, and painful sounds.

  On the screen was a computer-generated brick wall. There was a single window in the wall.

  “How high above the bathroom window was the window to Guista’s hotel room?” he asked.

  “Twelve feet,” Stella answered.

  Danny’s fingers played the keys and moved the mouse until the image scrolled down. A second window suddenly appeared.

  “Reduce it so we can see both windows,” Stella said.

  Danny did it. One window was now directly above the other.

  “It was night,” she reminded him.

  Danny created night.

  “Was the bathroom light on?” he asked.

  Stella pulled out her notes and a small packet of tissues. She flipped through the notes and said, “She slept with the bathroom light on.”

  “Bathroom light on,” Danny said.

  And a light yellow glow appeared in the lower window.

  “Now the chain from Guista’s room to the bat
hroom,” Stella said wiping her nose.

  “Chains, chains, chains, chains,” Danny said pushing his glasses back on his nose and searching. “Here. Pick a chain.”

  He scrolled down.

  “This one’s close to the one he used,” Danny said.

  “Can you make it hang from Guista’s window down to the bathroom?” Stella asked.

  “You are definitely coming down with something,” he said.

  “If he used the chain to lower someone,” she said, instead of responding to his comment, “the person would have to be small, brave, and hope that the bathroom window was open.”

  “Or know that it was open,” Danny said.

  “Can you put a person at the end of the chain?”

  A figure, male, dressed like a ninja, appeared.

  “Make him smaller,” she said.

  Danny made the figure smaller.

  “Can you open the window?” she asked.

  “How wide was it open?”

  She consulted her notes again and came up with, “A little under fourteen inches.”

  Danny opened the window to scale.

  “Narrow,” he said. “Should I make our ninja smaller?”

  “Sure,” she said.

  Done.

  “By scale, how much would you say he or she weighs now?” asked Stella.

  Danny sat back, thought, and said, “Maybe one hundred,” he said. “Maximum one hundred and ten.”

  “And he had to open the window and swing through it,” Stella said.

  “And he had to get back out through the window with that clearance,” said Danny. “An acrobat? Maybe we should be checking on gymnasts and circus acrobats?”

  Stella thought and said, “Can you put something into the lower part of the window, where we found the screw hole?”

  “Something?”

  “A circular piece of metal?”

  “How big a circle?”

  “Start big, five inch diameter.”

  Danny searched. An image appeared at the bottom of the bathroom window. A circle.

  “Can you make it stand out, perpendicular to the window?” she asked.

  “I can try.”

  He manipulated the circle, give it a three-dimensional hoop look.

  They both looked at the chain, the hoop, and the window and came to the same conclusion.