Cold Blooded (Dennis McQueen 02)

by Randisi, Robert J.

  “So the body wasn’t dumped on the beach?”

  “No,” Cahill said. “And another thing. I took a piece of ice from the body’s, uh, genitals. It was stuck to his pubic hair.”

  “Freshwater?” Sommers asked.

  He looked at her and asked, “How did you know?”

  “The M.E. found freshwater ice in his lungs,” McQueen said.

  “Well,” Cahill said, “I’ll tell you what I think it means. I think the body was encased in a block of ice and dropped into the sea.”

  “Doctor G says he thinks the man died in a fire,” McQueen said.

  “Then somebody must have frozen the body after it was dead.”

  “Tell me something, Cahill.”

  “My name’s Marty.”

  “Okay, Marty,” McQueen said. “Answer me this. A block of ice like that would float, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So if somebody, say, dumped it off a boat and watched, they’d see that it was floating.”

  “You’d think so.”

  “Wait a minute,” Sommers said. “Then whoever put it in the water knew it would float.”

  “Right,” Cahill said.

  “And knew it would eventually wash ashore.”

  “Maybe not,” Cahill said. “Maybe whoever did it figured the ice would melt and then the body would sink.”

  “Then why freeze it in the first place?” she asked. “Why not just dump it in the water, weigh it down, make sure it’d sink?”

  Cahill closed the folder.

  “That’s your job to find out,” he said.

  “He wanted us to find it,” McQueen said.

  “What?” Sommers asked.

  “He wanted the body found,” McQueen said. “Why?”

  “It’s the only thing that makes sense,” he said. “Like you said, Bailey, if he didn’t he would have weighed it down.”

  “Scott Peterson weighed Laci down and she still washed ashore,” Cahill pointed out. “Most bodies do. They deteriorate, pieces fall off, and they bob to the surface. Or bottom feeders get to them and nibble at them until they come to the surface.”

  “So why don’t we just have a dumb killer,” she asked, “who doesn’t know any of this?”

  “The body died in a fire, then was frozen and finally dropped in the ocean,” McQueen said. “There’s too much going on here for us to be dealing with a stupid killer. No, somebody wanted this body found. They’re proud of what they did.” He looked at Cahill. “What about prints?”

  “Apparently, this young fella was never arrested,” he said. “We’re running the prints through AFIS now. We’ll let you know if and when we come up with a hit.”

  “What about putting his picture in the papers?” Sommers asked. “Asking people to ID him?”

  “We don’t want his family finding out that way if we can help it,” McQueen said. “We’ll hold off that way for a while. Meanwhile, we’ll call Missing Persons and give them the description. Maybe they can match it up.”

  “Sorry we couldn’t give you more to go on,” Cahill said.

  “You did your job,” McQueen said, standing up. “That’s all I could ask.”

  Sommers stood up and came around Cahill’s desk. The tech got up at the same time and McQueen couldn’t tell if it was by accident or the man’s design that Sommers had to brush up against him to get out.

  “It was nice meeting you,” Cahill said when he and Sommers were chest to chest.

  “Yeah, me too,” she said.

  Outside McQueen said, “You drive.”

  “Me?”

  “You can drive, can’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then do it.”

  In the car she asked, “Back to the house?”

  “Yeah,” McQueen said. “When we get there you can call the kid’s description in to Missing Persons.” She sat behind the wheel for a few minutes. “It helps if you turn the key,” he said.

  “I’m just getting the route right in my head.”

  “Want me to give you directions?”

  “No,” she said. “I paid attention while you were driving.”

  He decided to go ahead and give her the chance to find her way back.

  After a few minutes she said, “Sergeant?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You buy what Cahill said? I mean, about the body being encased in a block of ice?”

  “Far-fetched,” McQueen said. “I’ll go with the M.E.’s findings. The body was frozen, but not encased in a block of ice. The logistics of that—of transporting something like that—makes it too unlikely.”

  “Sounded far-fetched to me, too.”

  “And yet, lots of murders are far-fetched,” McQueen said.

  “I’d sure like to catch this guy and find out the whole story.”

  “We’ll catch him,” McQueen said, “but I wouldn’t count on getting the whole story.”

  “Why not?”

  “Doesn’t always happen that way,” McQueen said. “Even when we have the killer, we don’t always get all the answers.”

  “Must be frustrating.”

  “Stay in homicide long enough,” he said, “and you’ll find out.”

  Chapter 9

  Back at the office McQueen put Sommers to work calling Missing Persons and having them check the description of the dead man against some of their reports. Both Velez and Cataldo were out, presumably after catching a case. Homicide was called in on any case involving a death, and given the sheer volume of callouts, the number of cases that actually turned out to be homicides was small. In fact, the number of actual homicides that needed to be investigated had dropped in Brooklyn from about 247 in 1993 to just under 100. New York City itself—once considered crime-riddled—was now ranked 211 out of 230 cities nationwide. McQueen almost expected the department to disband the unit at any time and give homicides back to the precinct squads.

  For the time being, though, it was still his job to investigate murders in the Brooklyn South, and according to the M.E., he now had one.

  Lt. Jessup was in his office, so McQueen stuck his head in.

  “Back, boss.”

  “Close the door,” Jessup said.

  McQueen obeyed, stood in front of the man’s desk. “How’d she do?”

  “She was fine at the morgue,” McQueen said. “Came up with some good questions at the lab.”

  “Good, good,” Jessup said. “What about the Coney Island thing?”

  “Murder, according to the M.E.”

  “All right, then it’s yours and your new partner’s,” Jessup said. “Frankie and Ray went out on a call, but it sounds like a suicide.”

  “We’re checking with Missing Persons now, to see if they have any reports on someone matching our dead guy’s description.”

  “Nothing on his prints?”

  “We do have prints?”

  “Yeah,” McQueen said. “Apparently he wasn’t in the water long enough for them to be ruined.”

  “How long was he in the water?”

  “That’ll be in the written report,” McQueen said. “I should have it before I go home.”

  “Okay,” Jessup said. “Copy me, as usual.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That’s all. You can close the door on your way out.”

  “Close it?”

  “Yeah, Dennis,” Jessup said, “close it.”

  McQueen almost asked him if everything was all right, but they didn’t have that kind of relationship. He didn’t think he had that kind of relationship—or friendship—with anyone but Ray Velez.

  “Yes, sir,” he said, and closed the door behind him.

  “Sarge?” Sommers said, approaching him as he exited the office.

  “Sommers,” he said, “just call me Dennis.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said. “Dennis. . . Missing Persons is going through their reports. They’ll get back to us if and when they find anything.”

  McQueen felt foolish, as he had felt when t
he lieutenant had asked how long the body had been in the water. That was something he should have gotten from Dr. Bannerjee. Instead, he’d have to wait for the written report.

  “All right,” he said. “When the doctor’s report comes in you can call them back and tell them how long the man’s been dead. Might give them a ballpark figure of how far back to look.”

  “Yes, si—Dennis. I, uh, also put in a call to the Arson Squad to see what fires they’ve had in the past week.”

  “That was good thinking, Bailey,” he said, wishing he’d thought of it. The body had obviously died in a fire, although there were no burns on the body. Checking with the Arson Squad was a smart thing to do.

  “Meanwhile,” he said, “all we have are the names and addresses of the men who found the body. We can go out and question some of them again, now that they’re home, and warm. Maybe one of them will remember something he saw.”

  “All right.”

  “We’ve only got half a day left, so we might be able to get half of them done.”

  It would give McQueen a chance to see how she interacted with the people she was interviewing. At some later date he’d find out how good she was at actual interrogation.

  “Get your coat,” McQueen said. “We might as well start now.”

  Getting out of the office would also accomplish leaving the lieutenant alone, to deal with whatever he was dealing with. He rarely, if ever, closed the door while he was in the office.

  By the time they returned to the office again, a half hour before their tour was to be up, McQueen was impressed with the way Sommers had handled the interviews. Of course, they had talked to four men and no women, and all of the men—even the eighty-four-year-old Mr. Dunham—had been smitten with her. They hadn’t found Bobby Kelly home, so she hadn’t had a chance to speak with the man who actually found the body.

  “Should I do my D.D. Five before I leave, Dennis?” she asked. This was the detective’s follow-up report.

  “How good a typist are you?”

  “Good, and fast,” she said.

  “All right, then. Get to it.”

  She turned to go to one of the desks, then stopped, as she hadn’t really been assigned one yet. She’d made the phone call to Missing Persons from a handy phone, earlier, as no one else had been present, but now Cataldo and Velez were back at their desks.

  “Use that one,” McQueen said, pointing to the desk that had been used by Jackson. “And here.” He plucked a yellow sheet of paper from his in-box. “Here’s the original report from the 60th Precinct. You’ll have to reference the 61 number.” The report was referred to by its form number, UF 61. Each report, as it came in, was given a number on the precinct level. Copies were then sent out to the borough office, the squad involved, and to police headquarters.

  “Thanks,” she said, taking it from him. “Um, did you ask me if I could type so I could do your report, also?”

  McQueen bristled.

  “I do my own reports, Detective.”

  “I—I’m sorry” she said hurriedly. “I didn’t mean to offend you. It’s just that, in the last squad I worked, they usually had me do the typ—”

  “You’re a detective, not a secretary,” he said, cutting her off. “Just take care of your own reports.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  As she walked away he said, “Bailey?”

  “Sir?” she turned.

  “I’m not offended.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  She went to her new desk and started going through the drawers to familiarize herself with it. “Dennis?”

  McQueen turned to face Velez.

  “What’ve you got, Ray?”

  “That’s up to the M.E. but it looks like a suicide to me,” Velez said. “Old fella with cancer swallowed a shotgun. Wife said he’d been talkin’ about it ever since he got home from the hospital.”

  “Not much of the head left, then,” McQueen said, wincing. “You’ll have to spend a few days on it, talk to his friends and relatives. The M.E.’s not gonna be able to tell much.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Velez said, “we’ll put in some hours. What about the Coney Island thing?”

  “Dr. G says it’s murder,” McQueen said, and quickly outlined the doctor’s findings. “In fact, his report is supposed to be here . . .” He scanned his desk and found an intra-office envelope from the M.E.’s office. “Here it is. He messengered it over. I’ll have to give it a read before I leave, and do my report.”

  “Well, have fun,” Velez said. “I’m headin’ out.”

  “How are you getting along with Frank?”

  “If we don’t talk,” Velez said, “we get along just fine.”

  “Okay,” McQueen said, “it won’t be for long, Ray. I promise.”

  “I’m gonna hold you to that, Dennis. Good night.”

  “Good night.”

  Velez headed for the door, but stopped short, turned his head and said, to Sommers, “Night, Detective.”

  She looked up, smiled at him and said, “Good night.”

  As Velez left he had to slide by to let Diver and Dolan enter. McQueen stood up to introduce Sommers to the Double D boys before one of them said something stupid.

  Chapter 10

  After Sommers finished her report she gave it to McQueen, who told her to go on home. While he was finishing up his own report the lieutenant came out and said good night to them all. That left McQueen in the squad room with Diver and Dolan, until they were called out. Alone, he read through Sommers’s report and his own before he tore the copies apart and sent the yellows and whites on their way. He was about to leave when the phone on his desk rang. It was the direct line to the squad, and not the line from the switchboard downstairs.

  “McQueen, Homicide,” he answered it.

  “This is Detective Jack Orson from the Arson Task Force,” a voice said. “I’m returning a call we got from a . . . Detective Sommers?”

  “Yeah, she’s assigned here,” McQueen said. “I’m her sergeant. What have you got, Detective?”

  “Hey, Sarge, how ya doin’? We got a call askin’ about a body . . .” he went on to give McQueen the description that Sommers had sent out to Missing Persons and the Arson Squad.

  “Are you lookin’ for somebody like that?” McQueen asked.

  “Well, we had a fire in Red Hook a couple of weeks ago,” the detective said, “and after it was put out a body came up missing. A fella named . . . Wingate, Thomas Wingate.”

  “Tell me about the fire, and the man.”

  “I can do better than that,” Orson said. “I can fax you the report, complete with a photo.”

  “Photo?”

  “Yeah, we got it from Wingate’s mother.”

  “His mother? How old was he?”

  “We got him as twenty-two, still living at home,”

  Orson said. “You got a fax number?”

  McQueen gave him the number of the precinct downstairs. He’d pick it up on his way out and take it home with him.

  “After you read it, gimme a call back if you think it’s him,” Orson said. “I’m goin’ off duty now, but I’ll be back tomorrow at noon.”

  “Noon?”

  “Yeah, I’m doin’ noon by eights this week,” Orson said.

  “I’m doin’ a ten by tomorrow,” McQueen said. “I’ll get back to you then.”

  “Okay,” Orson said. “We been workin’ this case a week, one more night ain’t gonna hurt.”

  “Thanks, Detective. I appreciate the call.”

  “Hey, if this is the same guy I’ll thank you. It’ll be your case, or Brooklyn North Homicide’s, however you guys wanna work it. ‘Night, Sarge.”

  “ ‘Night.”

  McQueen hung up, couldn’t help but feel some admiration for Detective Bailey Sommers. She had not only taken it upon herself to call the Arson/Explosion Squad, but the Arson Task Force, as well. The task force worked commercial arsons that were committed for profit. It was good thinking on her part.

>   Detective Orson was right. If it turned out to be the same guy Brooklyn North Homicide probably would claim it. At the moment, he wasn’t sure how he’d feel about that. Might as well wait and see.

  He went downstairs to pick up the fax.

  McQueen drove to his apartment on the corner of Nostrand Avenue and Avenue S, and stopped into the Italian restaurant for an order of baked ziti. He took it upstairs, got situated in the kitchen with a beer and started reading the faxed file. When he’d finished eating, he made some coffee and carried a cup and the file to the desk in the front room.

  The apartment was only three rooms, the eat-in kitchen, the bedroom and a front room he used as a combination living room and office.

  According to the faxed photo the dead body did seem to be Thomas Wingate. The only way to make sure, though, was to have the mother identify the body. That was not something he looked forward to, but it was going to have to be done.

  The thing that puzzled him was the fact that the body was supposed to be two weeks old. He’d checked with the M.E., but it was likely that freezing the body had preserved it. The question was, why? Why preserve it, and why dump it in or near the ocean two weeks later, knowing it would be found?

  He turned his attention to the property that had burned. It was a commercial building, and the fire was deemed suspicious by the fire marshal. It was then assigned to the Arson Task Force, since it investigated fires that appeared to have been set for profit. Even if the murder went to the Brooklyn North Homicide Squad, or stayed with McQueen, the Arson investigators would continue to run a parallel investigation.

  McQueen left the file on the desk and went back to the kitchen for more coffee. Under normal circumstances he might have called Ray Velez to talk some of this out, but for the time being Velez wasn’t his partner. And he couldn’t call Bailey Sommers because he didn’t have her phone number with him. He was going to have to make a point of copying it down when he got back to the office in the morning.

  Armed with a second cup he went back to the living room but didn’t make it to the desk. He plopped down on the sofa and turned on the TV. There was no point in thinking about the case anymore tonight. There would be time enough to work on it in the morning. Besides, there was the possibility that it would be taken away from them.