Written on the stomach of the victim was a message traced in blood. It read:
Proud of me?
D’Agosta looked at the guy from latents. What was his name? It was now his turn, and D’Agosta could tell from the gleam in his eye that he had something to say.
“Yeah, ah, Mr.—”
“Kugelmeyer,” came the quick, eager response. “Thank you. Well. We got practically a full series off the body. Right and left thumb, right and left index, right ring, some partial palms. And we got two beauties right from that message there, in the victim’s blood, no less, written with the left index finger.”
“Very good,” said D’Agosta. This was more than good. The killer had been shockingly careless, allowing himself to be recorded by half a dozen security cameras, leaving his prints all over the crime scene. On the other hand, the crime-scene unit hadn’t been able to recover much from the scene itself: no saliva, semen, sweat, no blood or other bodily fluids from the perp. Naturally they had a lot of hair and fiber—it was a hotel room—but nothing that looked promising. No bite marks on the body, no scratches, nothing yet that would yield the killer’s DNA. They had swabbed many of the latents, however, hoping to pick up some stray DNA, and they were confident the lab would succeed in this.
Pizzetti went on. “There was no sign of sexual activity, penetration, sexual violence, or molestation. The victim had just taken a shower, which made recovery of potential evidence from the body easier.”
D’Agosta was about to ask a question when he heard, behind him, a familiar voice.
“Well, well, if it isn’t Lieutenant D’Agosta himself. How are you, Vinnie?”
D’Agosta turned to see the hugely imposing figure of Dr. Matilda Ziewicz herself, chief medical examiner for New York City. She stood there like a linebacker, a cynical smile on her red-lipsticked mouth, her bouffant blond hair covered by an oversize cap, her specially sized smock bulging. She was brilliant, imposing, physically repellent, sarcastic, feared by all, and extremely effective. New York had never had a more competent chief M.E.
Dr. Pizzetti tensed up even more.
Ziewicz flapped a hand. “Carry on, carry on, don’t mind me.”
It was impossible not to mind her, but Pizzetti made an effort, resuming her rundown of all the preliminary results, relevant or not. Ziewicz listened with great attention and then, as Pizzetti continued, clasped her hands behind her back and made an excruciatingly slow turn around the two gurneys, the one holding the body and the other all the parts, examining them with redly pursed lips.
After several minutes, she issued a low hmmmm. And then another, with a nod, a grunt, a mumble.
Pizzetti fell silent.
Ziewicz straightened up, turned to D’Agosta. “Lieutenant, do you recall, these many years ago, the museum murders?”
“How could I forget?” It was the first time he had encountered the formidable woman, back in the days before she’d been appointed chief M.E.
“I never thought I’d live to see a case as unusual as that one. Until now.” She turned to Pizzetti and said, “You’ve missed something.”
D’Agosta could see Pizzetti freeze. “Missed… something?”
A nod. “Something crucial. Indeed, the very thing that lifts this case into…” She gestured toward the sky with a plump hand. “The stratosphere.”
A long, panicked silence followed. Ziewicz turned to D’Agosta. “Lieutenant, I’m surprised at you.”
D’Agosta found himself more amused than challenged. “What, you glimpse a claw in there somewhere?”
Ziewicz tilted her head back and issued a musical laugh. “You are very funny.” She turned back to Pizzetti while everyone else in the room exchanged puzzled glances. “A good forensic pathologist goes into an autopsy with no preconceptions whatsoever.”
“Yes,” said Pizzetti.
“But you did come in here with a preconception.”
Pizzetti’s visible panic mounted. “I don’t believe I did. I had an open mind.”
“You tried, but you did not succeed. You see, Doctor, you assumed you were dealing with something—a single corpse.”
“Respectfully, Dr. Ziewicz, I did not. I’ve examined each wound and I specifically looked for substituted body parts. But each part goes with the others. They all match up. None were switched with any other corpse.”
“Or so it seems. But you did not do a complete inventory.”
“An inventory?”
Ziewicz moved her ponderous bulk over to the second gurney, where pieces of the face had been rinsed and laid out. She pointed to a small piece of flesh. “What’s this?”
Pizzetti leaned forward, peering. “A piece of… the lip, is what I assumed.”
“Assumed.” Ziewicz reached out, selected a set of long tweezers from a tray, and picked up the piece with great delicacy. She placed it on the stage of a stereo zoom microscope, switched on the light, and stepped back, inviting Pizzetti to look.
“What do you see?” Ziewicz asked.
Pizzetti looked into the scope. “Again, it seems like a bit of lip.”
“Do you see cartilage?”
A pause. Pizzetti poked at the bit of flesh with the tweezers. “Yes, a tiny fragment.”
“So I ask again: what is it?”
“Not a lip then, but… an earlobe. It’s an earlobe.”
“Very good.”
Pizzetti straightened up, her face a mask of tension. Ziewicz seemed to expect more, however, and so after a moment Pizzetti stepped over to the gurney and examined the two ears lying like pale shells on the stainless steel.
“Um, I note that the ears are both present and undamaged. The lobes are not missing.” Pizzetti paused. After a moment, she went back to the stereo zoom and stared once more into the eyepieces, poking and prodding the earlobe with the tip of the tweezers. “I’m not sure this belonged to the perpetrator.”
“No?”
“This earlobe,” said Pizzetti, speaking carefully, “does not appear to have been torn or cut off in the process of struggle. Rather, it appears to have been removed surgically, with care, using a scalpel.”
D’Agosta remembered a small detail from the surveillance tapes he had spent hours watching, and it sent a shock through his system. He cleared his throat. “I will note for the record that the surveillance tapes indicate the perp had a small bandage over his left earlobe.”
“Oh, my God,” Pizzetti blurted into the stunned silence that followed this announcement. “You don’t think he cut off his own earlobe and left it at the scene of the crime?”
Ziewicz gave a wry smile. “An excellent question, Doctor.”
A long silence developed in the room, and finally Pizzetti said: “I’ll order up a full analysis on this earlobe, microscopics, tox tests, DNA, the works.”
Her smile broadening, Dr. Ziewicz peeled off her gloves and pulled down her mask, tossing them in the waste. “Very good, Dr. Pizzetti. You have redeemed yourself. A good day to you all, ladies and gentlemen.”
And she left.
4
DR. JOHN FELDER WALKED UP THE FRONT STEPS OF THE rambling gothic mansion. It was a brilliant late-autumn morning, the air crisp, the sky a cloudless blue. The mansion’s exterior had recently been given a thorough cleaning, and the aged bricks fairly shone in the sunlight. Even the black bars on the ornate windows had been polished. The only thing, it seemed, that had not been cleaned was a bronze plaque, screwed into the front façade: MOUNT MERCY HOSPITAL FOR THE CRIMINALLY INSANE.
Felder buzzed the front door and waited while it was unlocked from within. The door was opened by Dr. Ostrom himself—director of Mount Mercy. Felder ignored the chilly frown that gathered on Ostrom’s face. The man was not happy to see him.
Ostrom took a step back, allowing Felder to slip inside the building. Then he nodded to a waiting guard, who immediately relocked the door.
“Dr. Ostrom,” Felder said. “Thank you for allowing this visitation.”
“I did try t
o reach Pendergast in order to secure his approval,” Ostrom told him. “However, I’ve been unable to contact the man, and I could think of no sound reason to deny your request any longer, given your position—technically, anyway—as court-appointed psychiatrist.” He led Felder to a far side of the waiting area and lowered his voice. “However, there are some ground rules you must agree to abide by.”
“Of course.”
“You must limit your visit, and any future visits, to ten minutes.”
Felder nodded.
“You must not unduly excite the patient.”
“No, certainly not.”
“And there is to be no further talk of any extracurricular—”
“Doctor, please,” Felder interrupted, as if even the mention of such a subject was painful.
At this, Ostrom looked satisfied. “In that case, come with me. You’ll find that she occupies the same room as before, although we have elevated the level of security.”
Felder and Ostrom followed an orderly down a long corridor, lined on both sides by unmarked doors. As he walked, Felder felt a shiver run down his spine. Barely two weeks had passed since this very building had witnessed the greatest shame and humiliation of his professional life. Because of him, a patient had been allowed to escape Mount Mercy. No, not to escape, he reminded himself: to be kidnapped, by a man posing as a fellow psychiatrist. At the thought, Felder’s cheeks flamed afresh. He himself had bought the whole deception, hook, line, and sinker. If it hadn’t been for the patient’s quick restoration to Mount Mercy, his career would have been jeopardized. As it was, he’d been given a one-month mandatory leave of absence. It had been a near miss, an extremely near miss. Yet here he was, back again. What drew him to this patient like a moth to a flame?
They waited while the orderly unlocked a heavy steel door, then they proceeded down another endless, echoing passage, stopping finally before a door identical to all the others, save that a guard stood before it. Ostrom turned to Felder.
“Do you wish me to be in attendance?” he asked.
“Thank you, that won’t be necessary.”
“Very well. Remember: ten minutes.” Ostrom unlocked the door from a key on a heavy chain, then opened it.
Felder stepped inside, then waited as the door was shut and locked behind him, letting his eyes grow accustomed to the dim light. Slowly, the features of the room grew sharper: the bed, table, and chair, all bolted to the floor; the bookcase, now stuffed with old volumes, many leather-bound; the plastic flowerpot. And there, behind the table, sat Constance Greene. There was no book or notepaper before her; she was sitting up quite straight, composed and erect. Felder suspected she had perhaps been meditating. Whatever the case, there was no idle, daydreamy quality in the deep, cold eyes that met his gaze. Unconsciously, Felder caught his breath.
“Constance,” he said, standing before the table, hands clasped together like a schoolboy’s.
For a moment, the woman did not answer. Then she nodded slightly, her bobbed hair swaying. “Dr. Felder.”
Felder had been thinking about this moment for two weeks now. And yet just hearing that low, antique voice seemed to scatter his carefully prepared thoughts. “Listen, Constance. I just wanted to say… well, that I’m so very sorry. Sorry for everything.”
Constance looked at him with her disquieting eyes but did not reply.
“I know what pain and suffering—and mortification—I must have caused you, and I need you to understand something: that is the last thing, the very last, I would ever want to inflict on a patient.” Especially a patient as unique as yourself, he thought.
“Your apology is accepted,” she said.
“In my eagerness to help you, I let down my guard. I allowed myself to be deceived. As, in fact, we all allowed ourselves to be deceived.”
This last bit of face-saving elicited no response.
He added a solicitous note to his voice. “Are you feeling well, Constance?”
“As well as could be expected.”
Felder winced inwardly. For a moment, silence settled over the small room as he considered what to say next.
“I made a mistake,” he said at last. “But I’ve learned from that mistake. Remembered something, actually. It’s a maxim we were taught in medical school: there are no shortcuts to effective treatment.”
Constance shifted slightly in the chair, moved her hands. For the first time, Felder noticed the bandage on her right thumb.
“It’s no secret that I’ve taken a particular interest in your case,” he went on. “In fact, I think I can safely say that no one is more sympathetic to or understanding of your condition than I am.”
At this, a brief, cold smile appeared. “Condition,” she repeated.
“What I am asking you is whether we can pick up the treatment where we left off, start work again in the spirit of—”
“No,” Constance interrupted. Her voice was muted, but there was nevertheless such a ring of iron to it that Felder was immediately chilled.
He swallowed. “I’m sorry?”
She spoke quietly but firmly, without once taking her eyes from his. “How could you even think of continuing your so-called treatment? Because of your lack of judgment, I was abducted and assaulted. Because of your overwhelming eagerness to involve yourself professionally with a patient you perceived as exotic, I was held captive and nearly perished. Do not insult my intelligence by making me complicit in your failure. How could you expect me to ever trust you again—and isn’t trust the fundamental requirement for therapeutic treatment? That is, of course, assuming I need therapeutic treatment—an offensive presumption on your part.”
As quickly as the passion had come, it was gone. Felder opened his mouth, then closed it. There was nothing to be said.
Into the silence came a knock. “Dr. Felder?” Ostrom’s voice sounded from the other side of the door. “Your ten minutes is up.”
Felder tried to say good-bye but found he couldn’t even manage that. He inclined his head slightly, then turned toward the door.
“Dr. Felder,” came Constance’s quiet voice.
Felder turned back.
“It is possible I have spoken too harshly with you. You may visit me from time to time, if you wish. But you must come as an acquaintance only—not as a doctor.”
Felder felt a sudden, overwhelming relief—and gratitude. “Thank you,” he said, wondering at his own rush of feeling as he stepped out into the relative brightness of the hall.
5
D’AGOSTA HAD COMMANDEERED THE MAIN CONFERENCE room of the Detective Bureau at One Police Plaza. After the autopsy, he made the mistake of drinking three doppios and downing two crumb cakes at the Starbucks in the lobby, and now something was going on in his stomach that did not seem related to normal digestion.
Twelve fifty-five PM. Christ, it was going to be a long day. The problem was, despite the progress they’d made, he had a bad feeling about this case. A very bad feeling. Once again, he wondered where the hell Pendergast was. He’d love to just run the evidence by him, for an informal opinion. This case was right up his alley. Proctor, fresh out of the hospital and back at the Riverside Drive mansion, had heard nothing. Constance knew nothing. No one answered the phone at the Dakota apartment, and Pendergast’s cell phone was apparently still dead.
D’Agosta shook his head. No point in worrying—Pendergast often disappeared without notice.
Time to go. D’Agosta gathered up his file and laptop, rose from his desk, and left the office, heading for the conference room. Over thirty officers had been assigned to the case, which put it in the middling range of importance. The highest-profile cases might have more than double that number. But it was still a lot of damn people, many of whom would have something to say. So much for his afternoon. Still, such meetings had to happen: Everyone had to know what everyone else knew. And it was a fact of life that, no matter how much you cajoled or threatened, you just couldn’t make a cop sit down and read a report. It had to be
a meeting.
He arrived at a few minutes past one and was glad to see everyone was already there. The room was restless, with a palpable sense of anticipation. As the rustling died away, D’Agosta heard an ominous growl in his gut. He strode up to the podium that stood on the stage beside a projection screen. They were flanked by wheeled whiteboards. As his eyes swept the room, he noticed Captain Singleton, the chief of detectives. He was sitting in the front row, next to the assistant chief for Manhattan and several other top brass.
His stomach lurched again. Laying his file on the podium, he waited a moment for silence, and then spoke the words he’d been rehearsing.
“As most of you know, I’m Lieutenant D’Agosta, squad commander.” He gave the group the briefest rundown on the homicide, then consulted the list of names he’d drawn up. “Kugelmeyer, Latents.”
Kugelmeyer strode to the podium, buttoning his hideous brown Walmart suit as he did so. D’Agosta placed a finger on his watch, gave it a subtle tap. He had threatened everyone with serious harm, even death, if they went over five minutes.
“We got an excellent series of latents from the corpse and the room,” Kugelmeyer said quickly. “Fulls and partials, right and left, and palms. We ran them through all the databases. Negative. The perp, it seems, has never been printed.”
That was it. Kugelmeyer sat down.
D’Agosta glanced around the room again. “Forman, hair and fiber?”
Another quick report. This was followed by a dozen others—blood spatter, footwear, microscopics, victimology—each following the other with military precision, much to D’Agosta’s satisfaction. He tried to avoid glancing at Singleton, despite being eager to gauge the man’s reaction.
One thing D’Agosta had learned about meetings like this was to create a little bit of drama by saving the best for last, knowing this would keep everyone awake and paying attention. And in this case, the best was Warsaw, the video geek from the forensic investigation division who specialized in analyzing security videos. While he was officially a detective, Warsaw looked more like a scruffy teenager, with his slept-on hair and pimples. Unlike the others, he didn’t wear a suit, even a bad one, but rather skinny black jeans and T-shirts with heavy-metal logos. He got away with it because he was so good.
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