Diagnosis: Danger (9 page)

“You had an interesting theory,” Mike reminded her.

Natalya could feel the excitement taking hold, pouring through her veins. “And?”

But Mike was already shaking his head. “So far, Tolliver’s books are above reproach. He’s filed his taxes on time and we’ve checked out all the grave sites that were mentioned.” An utterly ghoulish thing to do, he thought. “There are graves for every single body Ellis Brothers charged the city for.”

There had to be something. She couldn’t shake the feeling that Tolliver was behind all this. “How deep did you dig?”

“Deep.” He saw disappointment warring with eternal optimism in her eyes. He supposed she needed that to be a successful doctor, a way to battle the hopelessness. He smiled at her. “Don’t worry, if Tolliver is responsible, we’ll get him.”

Was he just patronizing her? “How?”

That was the million-dollar question. One for which he had no answer. But he would. “The law moves in mysterious ways, Doc.”

“That’s the Lord,” she corrected. “The
Lord
moves in mysterious ways.” For a second, he’d actually had her going.

About to say something, she stopped. The look in
his eyes was impossible to fathom. All she knew was that he wasn’t putting her on. Or putting her off, either. Maybe there was reason to hope.

Running into her like this had his hormones revving up. If he didn’t know better, he would have said he was fifteen. What he did know was that he didn’t want to just walk away from her now that fate had thrown them together again.

“Can I give you a lift somewhere? I still owe you dinner.”

Could he do that, just pick up and do what he wanted? “Aren’t you on duty?”

He shook his head. “I’ve been off duty for the last hour.”

She was confused. Natalya looked over her shoulder at the awning of the building they had just left. “But you were in there, questioning Tolliver.” She stopped, the answer dawning on her. “You were questioning him on your own time?”

The other case was taking priority, but he felt he owed it to her. Bottom line was that he hated letting anyone get away with murder. “City’s cutting back on overtime and there is only so much I can do during regular hours.”

“That homicide you were called away takes precedence?” she guessed.

He wanted her to understand that it just wasn’t a whim. “Third homeless person slaughtered in two months. The captain put a priority on it.”

Homeless people. Obviously no rich, fat-cat relatives with political clout were putting the screws to the department to solve the crimes. It heartened her to know that about the city she lived in. Despite what this meant to Clancy’s unsolved murder, she smiled, nodding. “Sounds like a nice man, your captain.”

Mike laughed to himself. “You’d be the first to think so. Captain Sorenson’s a tough son of a bitch. I don’t think he ever goes home except to change clothes. Otherwise, he lives in the office.”

They were walking around to the back of the building, where the mortuary had its small parking lot. More parking was provided two blocks down but Mike’s motorcycle required a minimum of space.

“I take it he’s not married,” Natalya guessed.

“Not anymore. Marriage and the department is a tough combination.”

“Don’t say that.” The request was only half-teasing. “My sister’s marrying one of your own next month.”

“There’re exceptions,” Mike allowed. He knew, if he ever finally settled down, nothing that crossed his path would be allowed to come home with him. The kinds of things he saw on the job had no place in his private life. He stopped by his motorcycle. “So, how about it? Are you up for dinner?”

She wanted to. God, but she wanted to. Wanted to spend some time with this good-looking detective that God and, indirectly, Clancy, kept throwing her
way. But not tonight. Not unless she was completely irresponsible. And those days were behind her.

With deep regret, Natalya looked at her watch, hoping against hope that time had somehow magically stood still and was affording her an island upon which to indulge herself.

No such luck. She was already running late. Sasha was going to have her head on a platter—not to mention what Mama would say.

She looked up at him ruefully. “Only if it comes in a bag to go.”

He was trying to read between the lines. “You’re in the mood for a picnic?”

She laughed. “Not in November. I’m late for my fitting. It’s the maid-of-honor dress,” she explained. “My sister Sasha’s wedding.”

The ob-gyn, he remembered. “Right, to the police detective.”

“Right.” The impulse came out of nowhere, roaring down the middle of her life. Why not? “Would you like to come?”

She certainly wasn’t the easiest woman to follow, he decided. “To the fitting?”

He’d be bored out of his mind. And Mama would pounce on him. “No, to the wedding.”

Was she asking him as her date? Or just throwing the doors open to a big family celebration as her way of thanking him for his interest in her friend? He knew it was the kind of thing his family would
do, but Italians didn’t have a lock on rampaging hospitality.

He considered refusing for a second. After all, he wouldn’t know anyone but her and he normally steered clear of weddings unless he was roped into standing up for the groom.

But there was something about her eyes…

Hell, why not? “Sure. When is it?” She gave him the date, which was a little over three weeks away. He never scheduled things that far in advance. “Barring another homicide, I’m free.”

“Good, I’ll call and give you details later.”

“Details?” Was this going to get complicated? He wasn’t sure if he wanted it to or not. Wasn’t sure of anything, really, except that he could have stood and basked in her pleased expression all night.

“Where, when, things like that.” She looked at him intently, raising the collar of her coat again. The cold was beginning to get to her. “But right now, I’m going to have to get going.”

“Where is this maid-of-honor dress place?”

His phrasing had her smile widening. She liked him. Liked him a lot. Natalya rattled off an address in Queens. The woman who ran the shop had come over on the boat with her parents and they had struck up a friendship, giving each other support during the very lean years. Periodically Mama had tried to match each one of them up with the woman’s less than cheerful son, Peter. Mercifully, Papa had finally
made her see that Peter would
not
have been a good addition to the family.

Mike straddled his bike, then held out a helmet for her. “Hop on.”

She took the helmet and slipped it on, fastening the strap. Her skirt had to be hiked up somewhat before she could get on the bike behind him. She caught him watching appreciatively.

“Fringe benefit,” he told her before he turned to face forward.

She slipped her arms around his waist. It occurred to her that she liked the sensation that passed through her. “Let’s go.”

The words were barely out of her mouth before they were flying down the street.

“
A
nd who was that?”

Natalya nearly jumped out of her skin. She hadn’t realized that her mother was anywhere in the vicinity when Mike dropped her off at the bridal shop entrance. Looking back, she should have known better. Her mother
always
managed to materialize out of thin air. When they were little girls, she and Sasha had been convinced that Magda Pulaski had magical powers.

Turning around, she realized too late that she was still smiling as she looked at the petite woman standing with the door half-ajar. “That was the police detective investigating Clancy’s murder.”

Magda Pulaski came forward and squinted as
she focused intently on the figure that was becoming little more than a dark silhouette as he disappeared down the street.

“Do all investigating police detectives giving rides to the friends of the dead person?” she asked her daughter innocently.

“‘Give,’ Mama, do all investigating police detectives ‘give’ rides to the friends of—” With a sigh, Natalya gave up trying to fix the sentence. “The answer is no, Mama. They don’t.”

A knowing expression feathered across her face. “Ah.”

Natalya held the door open for her mother as she entered the building. “No ‘ah’.”

Magda spread her hands, looking mystified at the rejoinder. “What no ‘ah?’ ‘Ah’ is ‘ah,’” she said simply. “Nothing more.”

If only that were true, Natalya thought. “That’s right, Mama,
nothing more,”
she emphasized.

Magda’s expression was just this side of smug. “He is not looking like nothing more. He is looking like ‘something’ more. His eyes—”

Okay, now she had her. Her mother was making this up as she went along. “You couldn’t possibly see his eyes from where you were standing, Mama.”

Magda took offense. “I could seeing everything from where I was standing. My eyes, they are seeing like when I was a young girl.”

Natalya sighed. She scanned the small, crowded
store for her sisters, hoping one of them would come to her rescue. They had to be in the back, she decided. It figured. “Go, turn those sharp eyes on Papa, Mama,” Natalya half pleaded.

Magda gave a delicate but dismissive snort. “Your father, he is home, hiding. All things female make him nervous.”

She had a feeling that it was her mother that made her father nervous. Her mother was unpredictable. At a time in life where most people settled into a pattern, her mother was like a firecracker, set to go off. “Then he certainly got into the wrong family, didn’t he, Mama?”

“Yes, poor man.” Magda chuckled. Slipping her arm around her daughter’s waist, she beamed at her second born. She was enjoying herself immensely. One of her girls was getting married. Only four more to go. “Come, your sisters, they are in the back. Should we telling them about your investigating detective?”

Natalya prayed for patience and wished she’d taken the subway instead of letting Mike bring her. “There’s nothing to tell.”

An expression most recently seen on a cat after swallowing a mouse visited her mother’s face. “Of course there is not.”

Her mother was the only woman she knew who let you know she was disagreeing with you while she was agreeing.

Natalya gave up.

“God bless technology and nosy citizens,” Louis cried with feeling, the words erupting from his mouth like a victorious war cry.

Mike looked up from the pile of notes that he’d been drowning in, his interest immediately piqued. At this point, diversion for any reason was more than welcomed. He and Louis had been fielding phone calls from people all morning. The calls poured in immediately following the captain’s appearance on the six o’clock news. After a brief prepared statement, Sorenson had asked for the public’s help in regards to the mysterious deaths of homeless men.

Who said New Yorkers were disinterested and cold? Mike thought. It seemed as if half the population had called in, saying they “thought” they might have seen something out of the ordinary. That, he mused, pretty much described life in the city on a day-to-day basis.

About to pick up the receiver to take yet another call, Mike replaced it in its cradle and rubbed the shell of his ear. Right now, it felt as if he’d had both ears glued to the receiver for an entire decade instead of the last four hours.

“What?” he demanded, hoping it was something they could work with and not just Louis making a random comment about the country’s state of affairs.

If the smile on Louis’s face were any wider, it
would have cracked his lips. “Seems a passerby got a home movie of the last murder.”

It sounded as if they were finally catching a break, but Mike knew not to get too excited until he heard everything. Louis tended to get carried away. He was the optimist in their partnership. As for Mike, he’d always been a realist. In addition, the job had taught him that nothing was ever what it seemed.

“So how much does he or she want for this home movie?”

If he detected Mike’s skepticism, Louis gave no indication. This was the first real break that they’d caught in relation to the three senseless murders. “That’s just it. It’s a tourist—some guy here for the first time with his wife—and they want to, quote—” he paused dramatically “—‘do the right thing.’”

Mike frowned. “What’s that mean? They’re willing to charge us the going rate for film instead of selling the video to the highest bidder?”

Louis shook his head so hard, the ends of his unruly hair swung back and forth. “No, he and his wife are
giving
it to us.”

Mike stared at his partner in disbelief. Even so, he was on his feet, slipping on his leather jacket. “You’re kidding.”

Louis got up, taking his jacket off the back of his chair, never breaking eye contact. Mike found himself thinking that if his partner were any happier, he would have been levitating an inch off the ground.

“Never on an empty stomach.” He tugged his jacket on, falling into step beside Mike. “Which reminds me, I haven’t had lunch yet.”

“It’s eleven o’clock,” Mike pointed out, nodding at the clock on the wall as they passed it.

“Exactly.” Louis went out the door first, then turned to look at him. “You buying?”

Mike laughed shortly. He wasn’t ready to start celebrating just yet. Louis was older by half a decade, but Mike was the more jaded of the two. He’d stopped believing in Santa Claus at five, much to his mother’s dismay. “If this film turns out to be the real thing, I’ll buy you a steak, Louis.”

“Don’t toy with me like that, DiPalma.” Louis’s voice echoed down the stairwell. “You know how that kind of talk gets my gastric juices flowing.”

Mike shook his head. “You’re a walking stomach, Louis. Your gastric juices are
always
flowing. Let’s go get us a video.”

The video turned out to be genuine, as was the couple. Visiting New York to celebrate their twenty-fifth anniversary, Mae and Raymond Applegate, from Grand Forks, North Dakota, were only too happy to help in the investigation.

“Will there be a commendation? Ray deserves a commendation,” his wife, a slightly heavyset woman, said with zeal. Her husband tried to hush her.

“I’ll take it up with the captain,” Mike promised.
“Just give my partner your address. And we’ll be returning the tape when we’re finished with it.”

“Keep it as long as you need,” Raymond urged. “I’m just happy to help.”

Didn’t meet people like that every day, Mike thought as they left the hotel room.

Didn’t meet women like Natalya, either.

The thought had just popped up and he buried it the moment it did. He had a tape to authenticate. There was no time to think about a woman who took his breath away.

Later at the precinct, the computer wizard that the department retained verified that the video surrendered by the Applegates hadn’t been doctored in any way.

“Can you see anything?” was Mike’s next question to the technician, since the videos most amateur filmmakers made tended to be shots of their feet and out-of-range tourist attractions.

“Well, it was pretty grainy,” Leonard said, pushing his hair out of his eyes. “So it took a little doing to enhance it.”

“Enhance it?” Louis echoed.

“In this case, make it clearer. It was shot in the evening, with pretty poor lighting. The streetlamp in the area appeared to be out, so at first, all you see is shadows.”

“And at second?” Mike wanted to know.

“Well, you be the judge,” Leonard urged. Louis and Mike flanked him on either side as he struck
several keys on the keyboard. The tape began to play on the wide-screen monitor.

There were three men in the grainy footage, two assailants and their victim. Only one of the assailants could be marginally identified. Atypical of other cases around the country, the two men who were attacking the homeless man didn’t seem to be doing it for the thrill of the kill. Nor were they doing it to rob a person who owned nothing but the shoes on his feet.

“Hey, freeze that,” Louis ordered. He leaned in closer, examining what was on the monitor. One of the men was kneeling over the homeless victim. “Is he stabbing that guy in slow motion?”

Leonard adjusted his rimless glasses, moving the video frame by frame. “Sure looks that way.” A few more strokes of the keys brought the picture even more into focus. Not satisfied, Leonard enlarged it to the next level.

Mike stood behind Louis, his arms crossed as he studied the footage intently. “Wait, freeze it again.” Leonard did as he asked. “That’s not a stab.” Excitement finally began to bubble in his veins. Mike pointed at the screen. “That’s an incision.”

“An incision?” Louis squinted despite being a foot away from the monitor. Confusion creased his rounded face and he looked at Mike over Leonard’s head. “He practicing to be a doctor?”

Leonard had resumed playing the video. Mike watched intently. There were only a few seconds left.
“Whatever he was doing, they were scared away by our tourist with the camera.” He nodded at the tech. “Thanks, Leo. Print up a couple of copies.”

“Will do,” Leonard agreed, as Mike began to walk out of the darkened room.

“Where are you going?” Louis wanted to know as he hurried after him, lengthening his strides in order to catch up.

Watching the video had made him think of something. It was a long shot, but this was a job based on long shots. “Back to the M.E.”

Donald Ruiz, the medical examiner, was far from happy to see the two detectives return since he knew it meant reopening a case. He greeted their appearance with a sigh that seemed to come from the bottom of his size twelve feet.

“To what do I owe this visit?” the older man asked sarcastically.

Mike got right to it. “We need you to dig up the reports on those three homeless victims that were killed in the last four months.”

“I sent out copies,” Ruiz said stubbornly. But the staring contest between Mike and the M.E. was short-lived. The man threw up his hands. “And you’d be looking for what?”

Mike believed in having a decent working relationship with everyone, but he and the M.E. had never hit it off. “Something missing.”

“You mean like personal items?” It was obvious that the M.E. was thinking the police helped themselves to whatever might have been found on the men’s bodies before they were brought to his table.

“More like bodily effects,” Louis corrected.

“Or body parts,” Mike added.

The M.E.’s jaw slackened slightly as he abandoned his initial resistance. “Now that you mention it, the first guy came in with only one kidney and the second didn’t have his spleen.”

“And you didn’t think this was anything unusual?” Mike asked, incredulously.

Ruiz immediately became defensive. “You can lose a spleen in an auto accident. I figured the other guy maybe sold his kidney to get some money to buy his booze. Black market, that sort of thing.”

“And the third victim?” Mike pressed.

The medial examiner smirked, vindicated. “Everything was there. Liver was shot, but everything else looked to be in working order.” Shaggy eyebrows drew together in a scowl. “It’s all there in the report I dictated,” he grounded out.

Mike wasn’t ready to give up just yet. “How about an incision?”

Ruiz looked at the two men as if they’d just suggested going on a weekend trip to the Arctic. “What?”

“A fresh incision,” Mike specified. “Some tourist gave up a video he took. He caught the last murder on tape.”

Ruiz looked duly impressed. Eighty percent of the department’s cases were solved because of luck but coming up against it was always a bit numbing. “Damn.”

“Yeah, our sentiments exactly,” Mike agreed. “It looked as if one of the murderers was making an incision when our amateur Steven Spielberg caught him in the act and he and his partner fled.”

Curiosity got the best of him. The M.E. temporarily abandoned his belligerent attitude. “What are you thinking?”

Mike threw out one viable theory. “Could be cannibalism.”

Louis’s eyes widened so far it looked as if they were in danger of falling out of his head. “You mean like in
Silence of the Lambs?”

He was thinking more along the lines of a Jeffery Dahmer kind of spree, which chilled his heart a great deal more than any movie plot conceived in Hollywood. But he knew that Louis liked to separate himself from his work through the magic of movies.

“Yeah.” He advanced a second, possibly more likely theory. “Or body parts for sale. There’s good money in that.”

“I vote for the second,” Louis said, just barely stifling the shiver that coursed down his broad, square back.

Mike nodded. He was leaning toward that himself. “Either way, there’re going to be more homeless peo
ple in jeopardy with more to worry about than just the coming winter.”

Ruiz shook his head. “That’s why I like working with the dead,” he confided. “The living are too complicated. Wait here. I’ll get the reports,” he promised. He was back in less than five minutes. “I made copies,” he volunteered, indicating the pages he handed over.

Mike nodded as he took them. “Thanks.”

As they left the building, he glanced at his watch. “Damn.”

“Battery die?” Louis wanted to know.