The Weeping Buddha
Page 22
“I think we can take our time calling this in, seeing as nothing is fresh.”
“Yeah, but the closer we stick to the truth, the better,” Devon reminded him.
“We’re cops. They’ll expect us to hide something,” he mumbled, more to himself than to Devon. “I wonder who’s on tonight.”
“Probably somebody you pissed off at one time or another.” She was trying to figure out which stroke came first but couldn’t tell. “I wish Jo could get a look at this body. I can tell that these marks were made postmortem, just like Gabe’s, but I can’t see how deep they are or if that matters.”
“If they let us join the autopsy we can find out soon enough, but you’re probably right, it’ll be somebody I’ve pissed off.” He bent over to see what she had sketched, then moved closer to observe Edilio’s chest wound.
“We’ve never worked a scene alone together before.” She pinched his butt.
“It’s good to see you back to your old tricks.” He grabbed her around her waist, squeezed her tightly to his chest, and kissed her in front of the sightless corpse.
“How romantic.” She kissed him back with a little laugh, then pushed him away.
A half an hour later, Devon was locking the art studio door behind her so as not to be disturbed by roving police officers eager to do more than the job upstairs. She popped another roll of film in the camera, walked over to her shoes, and put them back on. She was proud of her escape and considered removing her shoes an inspiration from Beka—the shoe-hating dancer herself. How many times had Devon and Beka watched horror films where the heroine tried to escape some monster or murdering menace in her high heels?
“Take off your goddamn shoes!” Beka would yell. “Kick him in the balls! One good pair of spikes can incapacitate any man!”
With her sneakers now on, she began to comb the area more carefully. There was a good footwear impression in the plaster around Beka’s now-shattered bust. The fact that there would be no more imitations of Beka in the world made Devon feel sad. She began snapping the footwear impression, but could tell that there was a bit of an imprint that wasn’t going to reproduce well because the dust was so fine and white. What about the Alginate? It copied bodies and teeth in perfect detail. What about a mold made out of dust? She’d used Alginate before in dirt and mud, but something as fine as this powdery plaster? She went over to the sink, took one of Gabe’s old mixing buckets, filled it a quarter full with water, then began to add Alginate until the mixture was just the right thickness. She took a metal ring from a container and placed it around the footprint, then poured the liquid on top. She stood up and glanced around the room; it would only take three minutes for the Alginate to set but she didn’t want to waste any time. Looking at the footprints across the studio floor, she could see the path her socks had made, as well as the soles of the shoes of the intruder following her. The prints went all the way up to the alley door, and from the placement of the last set it looked as if the person had been waiting inside the door. Hoping she would come back inside?
He or she—Devon could not tell gender by the foot size—must have been trying to make up his or her mind when the wind shut the door that Devon had then secured with the garbage can. That move must have sent the intruder bolting for the front door—where the prints she had found earlier headed back to the front of the building.She pushed against the alleyway door. The garbage can was still holding it fast. It had been a good move on her part; she pushed both of the interior bolts back into place—to secure the building from the inside. Loch could move the can tomorrow.
It was time for the Alginate to come up; it peeled easily off the cement floor. “Voila!” She was very happy with her work; the imprint was a clean copy of the sole of a boot and the trademark, “Dr. Martens Air Cushioned Sole,” encircling a cross, with the words: “Oil Fat Acid Petrol Alkali Resistant, Made in England.” “That narrows it down to 200,000 people in the village alone,” she scoffed at herself.
There was a clean set of left- and right-handed prints right around the seat of the stool—aluminum always took great prints.She started to place the Searchie down over the dusty swirls, then stopped herself. They looked familiar. They were so evenly placed, not at all like someone who had bumped into a chair. She held her hands over the stool and recalled how she had reached for it. They were her own prints. The remnants of Beka’s bust weren’t going to show any prints either, she concluded. The intruder had been pro enough to wear gloves. She sat on a box and began to ponder what had happened, tracing the intruder’s movements through the room. The first crunch of plaster she had heard was by the closet.
The Tyvek suits were still hanging by the sink in an open closet but they seemed looser than they had before, as if someone had rearranged them. She began to count: one, two, three, four, five … There had been six. “Damn!” She looked around the room, then closed her eyes and felt each suit, first with her gloved hands and then with her fingers. “You were here.” There was no way the intruder could have known which Tyvek suit to take by touch alone, because they all felt the same. Whoever had come into the building must have been after one thing, and Devon wasn’t it.
Her eyes blazed as she drew her gun and swept the room in one glance, looking for some kind of hiding place. It had not made sense at the time. She should have seen somebody running down the block—she’d known that on some level, but there had been the footprints outside.
She had turned on the studio lights and looked around the entrance of the room, but she had not gone back inside the studio, instead locking the door from the outside. The intruder had still been there, watching her. She scanned the space once more, gun aimed at empty space. It didn’t make sense. She didn’t feel another’s presence and she normally was very astute that way.
How had this Houdini escaped?
She looked at the loading-dock door. It had a bolt that could be opened from the inside that would automatically lock again as soon as the door was shut. She twisted the chain and pushed it up with a clatter. There was a smudge under the grate where someone had rolled, and sock foot impressions on the metal dock platform where he had stood up and made his way off the dock.
She looked at her own feet. The intruder must have tripped over Devon’s shoes in the dark, realized what she had done, then turned around and used her own trick against her. The footprints leading outside were a decoy—the intruder had backtracked into the studio in stocking feet, taken one of the Tyvek suits, and escaped after Devon had gone upstairs.
It had been stupid of her not to go back inside the studio and make sure no one was really there. Under normal circumstances, she would have acted with more sense. So much had happened lately, and now she had screwed up and possibly let a murderer get away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Dancing and singing are the voice of the Dharma.
—HAKUIN ZENJI
There was a knock at the art studio door. “It’s me,” Loch said. Devon unlocked the door and let him in. “The M.E. just arrived. You almost done in here?”
“Just finished.”
“Let’s leave the door open so they can look around. Our lead guy is Marders and I just informed him of the BE. He doesn’t think it’s related and since nothing was taken, I’m letting him think that way.”
“Good, only something was taken.” She headed toward the stairs.
“Where you going?” Loch stopped at the elevator.
“That thing is too small to trust.”
“But it’s four flights.”
“I guess with half of NYPD here I can take it up, but the last place you’ll find me is on that elevator when this building is empty. You could be stuck in there for days and nobody would find you.”
“Such a morbid mind.” He held the door open for her, and kissed her on the cheek as she pressed four. The doors clanged shut and the wheels above them began to grind. “Whose idea was it to paint the walls red? They vibrate.”
“Stop complaining. This was your id
ea,” she told him.
He closed his eyes and steadied himself on the side of the cadmium-
red walls. “So, what’s missing?”
“A Tyvek suit.” The metal doors clanged open and they were suddenly amid a flurry of cops and detectives. “Later,” she whispered, and stepped off of the contraption she had only ridden a few times before.
The floor was bustling with activity, although inside the one-time dance studio they were holding traffic to a minimum. Loch showed Devon through the small, professional crowd. “Detective Marders, this is Detective Halsey of Suffolk County Crime Scene.” She noticed immediately that Marders was wearing his Crime Scene’s gloves and did not stick her hand out to shake his.
“Halsey, I understand you know the owners of this building.”
“Knew, detective, they’re both dead.”
“The New Year’s Eve murders, Detective Brennen told me. What were you doing here?”
“I have a key and stay here whenever I’m in the city. I was meeting friends who knew the deceased and thought I’d spend the night.”
“And snoop around to see if there was anything to help explain your friends’ deaths?”
“That was a possibility.”
“And does this body help explain things?”
“Not so much.”
He smiled wryly. “Well, the M.E.’s about to give us his prelim. If these cases are linked we’ll have to work with you, so you two might as well come on in.” She signed the crime scene sheet just under Lochwood’s name and reentered the room. It was well marked with number tags in all the areas where she would have put them, and a few where she wouldn’t have; all in all, it looked as if the city Crime Scene Unit was doing a thorough job.
The M.E. wore a mask over his mouth and nose and circled the corpse with ease and familiarity, then moved in to examine it while he spoke to the detectives. “There’s no bruising under the legs and no abrasion around the ankles. Fixed lividity is in the hands, feet, and legs, consistent with the body being strung up after death. He was not strangled; the ligature marks are not deep enough to have accomplished anything but surface bruising.” He felt around the throat. “And the hyoid bone is intact. Good thing it was cold this week or this would be really nasty.”
“How was he killed?”
“We’ll have to get him down to find out for sure. From the eyes …” he pulled up the lids of each eye, “popped blood vessels and severe dilation, I’d say cardiac arrest. There are eighteen stab wounds, all superficial.”
“None of these wounds was fatal?” Detective Marders reiterated.
“They were all inflicted postmortem.”
“The carving as well?” Devon asked.
“The carving as well,” the M.E. affirmed.
She turned and whispered to Loch, “Overkill.” He nodded imperceptibly.
“Would you say the body was posed, Tom?” Detective Marders asked.
“Like the Lambroski case?” the M.E. replied.
“Yeah.”
“Possibly. It certainly is a strange way to leave somebody.”
“Isn’t it usually serial killers who pose bodies?” a younger detective asked Detective Marders; Marders did not answer. “Would this be an m.o. or a signature?”
“I’d say a signature,” Marders answered gruffly, “if we were looking at a serial, which we’re not.” He turned his back on the younger cop.
“You see any similarities between your cases and this one, Brennen?”
“We had one body, fatally stabbed to death, with some carving in the same area of the chest. The other body appeared to be a suicide.We found the knife that did the carving in him, next to her. She had slit her wrists with it.”
Devon moved around the body to watch the M.E. work and shot a look to Loch across the room. “Did you measure the chest wounds?”
The M.E. looked up at her. “We did that and took the photos already.”
“If you don’t mind, could you tell me the diameter of the carving area?”
He looked at his notes. “Six by eight.”
She wrote down the dimensions for later use, although what she really wanted was a paintbrush, tracing paper, and a Kinko’s to enlarge it.
“Any idea where your victims were last Tuesday?”
Marders’s question arrested her line of thinking and made her thoughts flash to Detective Carol Freesia and the call she’d had from Beka. “You’re going to find out sooner or later, and sooner’s always better …” She started to speak, then paused; she hadn’t even been able to tell Loch about stopping by Missing Persons yet. “Ms. Imamura was in the city last Tuesday, and one of your own can verify that she saw Detective Carol Freesia.”
“What!” Loch almost bellowed at her.
“Why the hell did she do that?” Marders sounded stymied, too.
“I haven’t had time to update you on everything, Detective Brennen.” Devon gave Loch her sternest look. “But I did stop at Missing Persons. Detective Freesia headed up an unsolved Missing Persons case back in the ’80s that Beka Imamura was evidently trying to get information on. She asked Detective Freesia to show her the case file last Tuesday afternoon.”
“Interesting, Detective Halsey. Is there anything else you’re keeping back from us?”
“Of course not, Detective Marders. Although I must say that this looks almost like a practice run for what happened on New Year’s Eve. The same number of stab wounds, the carving, but all inflicted on a corpse. It’s as if the murderer was preparing for the crime to be committed. What will be most interesting is if your Toxicology and ours match.”
“What’s in your Toxicology report?”
Brennen coughed uncomfortably. “We don’t have those back yet.But from what our M.E. tells us, Imamura died of cardiac arrest, possibly due to a drug overdose. Montebello died from stab wounds.”
“Were there drugs in his system?”
“We’ll know tomorrow.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t know last night,” Marders criticized.
“Precisely what my sergeant’s thinking right about now.” Brennen smiled at him.
“What do you bet it’s the same m.o. as here,” Devon piped in, hoping to save Suffolk County’s face. “If you can get Toxicology back by tomorrow we’ll all know at the same time.”
The M.E. stepped back from the corpse. “Bag him.” He packed up his things and followed his assistants downstairs.
The police from more than one precinct, as well as captains, sergeants, and lieutenants, milled around the building for a few more hours until there was nothing else they could do but go home. Then, as reluctant to leave the scene of the crime as the paparazzi are a Broadway opening, they began to filter through all four levels of the building until they were finally on Mercer Street and out the door.
Loch and Devon, no better than the rest, hung out in the hallway with police personnel and watched as others worked until about threethirty in the morning, when the last of the detectives made their way downstairs.
“Where you folks staying tonight?” Detective Marders asked.
“On the third floor,” Devon told him.
“Make sure you don’t cross the line upstairs.”
“Of course.” She handed him her card as the elevator took them down to the bottom floor.
“I had my guys go over the art studio just in case something is consistent between the two scenes. I have a feeling you did the same.” He looked at her but Devon did not blink. “I hope you’ll keep us up to date.”
“Of course, detective.” Devon offered her most disarming smile. It didn’t work on Marders; he grunted and looked at Lochwood.
“What time’s the autopsy?” Lochwood asked.
“The M.E. said he’d squeeze it in early, about noon.” They shook hands for the first time as Detective Marders headed out into the street. Devon locked the door behind him.
“We’d better get there at eleven. No one does an autopsy at noon,” Loch grumbled.
“I know it. He doesn’t want to work with us. He doesn’t think we can handle the case.”
“How can you say that?”
“I know how he thinks. I’m the same way.”
She started up the stairs without even looking at the elevator. He followed her, willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.
“So now that we’re alone, are you going to tell me about the Tyvek suit?”
“I’m almost embarrassed to.” She paused. “I fouled up big-time.”
“I doubt that.”
“No, I did. Whoever was in there with me made it look like they had escaped, and then hid inside. I should have gone back in and made a thorough inspection of the floor.”
“Alone? Right. What do you want, a bullet in your back?”
“That would not have happened.” She would have caught the intruder; she knew it.
He stopped on the stairs and looked at her. “So, if you had gone into the art studio rather than locking the door and going upstairs to call for backup, where would you have looked first? The truth, don’t edit your answer. Your heart is pounding and you’re out of breath.Where would you have gone first?”
“Cautiously toward the back.”
“The lights were on?” She nodded. “And this person was hiding where?
“Under the loading dock.”
“Behind you.” She nodded again. “And this person may be a murderer and not just a thief. You really think this person would have let you look around?”
“I would have heard him move and popped him off in one shot.”
“Or you’d be wrong and I’d be really pissed off.” He took her hand. “We already have three bodies; let’s not make it four. You did the right thing.” He kissed her forehead.
“Don’t patronize me.”
“I’m not!”
“Oh yeah? What would you have done?”