The Fifth Avenue Series Boxed Set (101 page)

“Tell me how we’re going to do this when we have to let everyone know why they’re being murdered and catch everything on film?”

“I mentioned that to him and he’s willing to be more lenient.
 
If the situation allows for it, great.
 
But if we need to take a rifle and shoot someone in the back of the head in an effort to be more efficient, that’s what we do.”

He stepped beneath the U-shaped bars, jumped and gripped them tightly.
 
Up, down, up.
 
“One other thing,” he said to her.
 
“Maggie Cain?
 
Wolfhagen wants us to kill her first, but not before we’ve found every trace of what she’s written about him and burned the manuscript.”
 
Up, down, up.
 
Eyes hard and narrowed and suddenly fixed on hers.
 
“I’ll take care of Cain.
 
In the meantime, I’ll need you to search her apartment for that manuscript.”
 
Up, down, up.
 
“Oh, and there’s one other thing.
 
Just a small thing.
 
I also need you to figure out how we finish off the rest by midnight tonight.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Even before Marty reached the cutting room, he could smell the stench of formaldehyde and human decay.
 
When he entered the building, he swiped Vicks beneath his nose, which helped to a point, but as he approached the room, there was nothing he could do about the eerie scream of a Stryker saw as it bit down into bone just beyond the closed doors.

He was at the Chief Medical Examiner’s office on First Avenue.
 
It was hot outside, but here the circulation of refrigerated air wasn’t as welcome as one might expect.
 
It cooled the area, sure, but it also got the stink of death so far up into your nose, it was enough to make your stomach clench.

He pushed through the doors and looked across the room at Carlo Skeen, the chief medical examiner whose gloved hands were buried deep in the chest of an elderly man.
 
He was pulling on something that wouldn’t come loose.
 

This was a breeding ground for bacteria and as they feasted on the dead flesh of the several other bodies in the room, the gasses they emitted were as cutting as anything Marty had experienced.
 
It was a smell he’d never get used to.
 
Just being here made him want to vomit.

And it got worse.

In the far corner of the room, a male intern started humming as he hunched over the head of a middle-aged woman.
 
He started the Stryker saw again and appeared oblivious as the saw’s note deepened and sometimes caught as it glided across her milky white skull.
 

On the four other necropsy tables, those who were next in line were being drained of what had once kept them alive.

Marty focused on Skeen and moved toward him.
 
He tapped him on the shoulder just as the man wrenched free one of the elderly man’s lungs.
 
Typical of Skeen, he never flinched.
 
He’d been aware of Marty’s presence the entire time.
 

“Are you never late?” Skeen asked.

Marty glanced down at the lung clutched in Skeen’s hands—black, pockmarked, cobwebbed with tar, it literally smelled of nicotine.
 
His stomach tightened.
 
“Nope.”

“Gloria ever slow you down?”

Marty watched him turn the lung over in his hands.
 
Each time he did so, it stirred the air.
 
“Yup.”

“Then you must have been late at some point in your life.”

“I drive fast, walk fast.
 
Look,” he said above the whining saw.
 
“Thanks for seeing me.
 
Can we talk?”

“Sure.”
 
Carlo placed the lung onto a scale spattered with blood and peeled off the heavy latex gloves.
 
Marty decided he couldn’t look at the lung any longer.
 
He glanced down and, with a jolt, found himself looking into the body’s cavity, which was peeled open and exposing the man’s organs.
 
He turned away and focused on Skeen’s hands.
 
Large, pink and smooth, the nails clipped close.
 

“So, what’s up?” Carlo asked.

“I need a favor.”

“Name it.”

“Maria Martinez and her daughter?
 
They here yet?”

“Came in this morning.”

“I don’t suppose you’ve done them yet?”

Skeen laughed.
 
“You’re funny, Marty.
 
Really.
 
You’re a scream.”

“It was worth a try.”

“Not really,” he said.
 
“But I can give you a preliminary.
 
The mother was shot twice in the back of the head at close range.
 
The child’s neck was broken.
 
That’s all I’ve got.”

“What about Judge Wood and Gerald Hayes?”

“They’re different,” Skeen said.
 
“They came in last night and they’ve got priority.
 
Ain’t power and position grand?
 
We’re working on them now.”

“What’ve you found?”

“Nothing on Hayes,” Carlo said.
 
“He’s still being drained.
 
But Wood’s almost finished, except for some lab work.
 
Want to take a look?”

They moved across the room to the table where Judge Kendra Wood lay beneath a shimmering white sheet, her legs lifted and parted in stirrups.
 
With a flick of Skeen’s wrist, the sheet was gone, exposing what was left of Wood’s headless body.
 
Marty looked at the “Y” sliced into her chest and asked himself that very question.

“It’ll take some time to know for sure, but it appears that she died from an overdose of methamphetamines and alcohol.
 
Time of death occurred between three and four yesterday afternoon.
 
Decapitation approximately nine hours later.”

Surprised, Marty looked at his friend.
 
“Someone cut her head off after she was dead?”

“Hours after she was dead.”

“Why?”

Skeen shrugged.
 
“That’s for you and the police to figure out.
 
I can only tell you how she died and what happened to her after death.”

Though the story in the Times didn’t say so, Marty assumed from his conversations with Maggie and Jennifer that Wood had been murdered.
 
“Did she kill herself?”

“Maybe.
 
But if she did, she probably didn’t do so intentionally.
 
See these marks on her arm?
 
And these here on her left ankle?
 
She’s been shooting up something for the past year and a half.
 
Had quite a little habit too.
 
It’s a wonder she didn’t die sooner.”
 

“What was she was using?”

“Not sure yet, but probably heroin.”

Heroin—the ultimate cure for someone with low self-esteem.
 
Just one shot could make you feel invulnerable, beautiful, godlike.
 
But why would someone in Wood’s position need it?
 
She had looks, power, celebrity.
 
She was respected, even feared.
 
Marty thought of the few times they had met and remembered a confident woman, comfortable and serious.
 
Had she been high then?
 
Worse, had she been high while handing out sentences on the bench?

“There’s more,” Skeen said, reaching for the box of latex gloves on the table beside him.
 
He removed a pair, slipped them on and said while glancing at Marty:
 
“I’ll apologize for this now.”

His hands went between Wood’s legs to the freshly shaved area of unyielding flesh above her vagina.
 
His fingers fanned out and parted her labia, exposing the gray, sunken clitoris between the drained web of waxy flesh.

 
“Come closer,” he said to Marty.

Marty hesitated, then took a step forward and leaned into the light shining above them.
 
The smell of death and rot and formaldehyde were stronger here, only slightly masked by the citrus scent of Skeen’s cologne, which made it somehow worse.
 
Marty held his breath and watched Skeen press the clitoris down and to the left, exposing a deep green tattoo half the size of a dime.

“It’s an animal of some sort,” Skeen said.
 
“Here.
 
Take a look.”

He lowered the lighted magnifying glass above them and positioned it so Marty could view the tattoo, which looked like a blob with two points on top of it.
 
He was about to step back when he noticed the tiny puncture wound in the tattoo’s center.
 
“What’s that?”

Skeen moved the magnifying glass aside.
 
“Her clitoris was pierced,” he said.
 
“Earlier, I removed a tiny gold hoop from it.
 
That’s when I noticed the tattoo.”
 
He looked at Marty.
 
“The hole and the tattoo are at least ten years old.
 
She had her nipples pierced around the same time, but she let them heal.”
 
He paused.
 
“And it gets worse.
 
Her rectum was torn.
 
Ripped.
 
Last night, after Judge Kendra Wood had been lying dead in bed for nine hours, somebody had anal intercourse with her.”

It was too much.
 
Marty had to leave.
 
Skeen saw it and followed him to the door.
 
“Why don’t we have coffee,” he said.
 
“My office.”

“I have a better idea,” Marty said, stepping into the hallway.
 
“Why don’t we get out of here?
 
I need some air.”

*
  
*
  
*

When they left the building, a band of clouds—thick, dark and as high as the buildings in Midtown—had stretched across Manhattan, swallowing the sun and giving needed relief from the heat.
 
Carlo looked at Marty, moved to speak, but hesitated.
 
“There’s more on Wood,” he said.
 
“Want to hear it?”

Marty nodded.

“Her PERK was a disappointment,” Carlo said, referring to her Physical Evidence Recovery Kit.
 
“I swabbed, but found nothing, no residue of semen.
 
Whoever had intercourse with her used a lubricated condom.”

“Wouldn’t you on a corpse?”

“Bad joke.”

“What about hair?”

Carlo shook his head.
 
“We found only a few that were consistent with hers.
 
My guess is that we’re dealing with someone who’s familiar with the system, somebody who shaved himself beforehand, knowing that any stray hairs could lead to a positive DNA match.”

“What about the tattoo and the piercing?
 
Have you done a search?”

“NCIC’s computers are down,” Carlo said.
 
“They’ll be up soon.
 
But Jimmy contacted VICAP this morning.
 
We should be hearing from them by tomorrow afternoon at the latest.”