The Squad Room (7 page)

“Why do you say there’s two?”

“Let me show you.”

They walked in carefully, through an eerily serene-looking living room. Doherty pointed into the kitchen, where a number of the linoleum floor tiles were missing.

“Our guys were able to take some impressions from over there, of bloody shoe prints. They wanted to preserve them, so they pulled the tiles too. The prints are from different shoes, so either we have one guy who changed his shoes while committing the crime, or at least two perps.”

“Got it. Hey—Williams!”

The Crime Scene officer stopped in the doorway. “Hey, Cap. You getting déjà vu around here too?”

“I was just going to ask you about that,” Morrison said. “Offhand, what do you think?”

“If I had to swear right now, I’d say it’s definitely the same guys from Sutton Place. The scenes are practically mirror images.”

“Yeah, I was thinking that too.” He turned back to Doherty and Medveded with a heavy sigh. “Well, whoever these animals are, you
can bet this isn’t their first time. They’re definitely enjoying themselves. We’re going to have to move quick, or the body count’s going to grow. Jim, I’m going to have to call the Chief of Detectives.”

Doherty rolled his eyes. “I should’ve called in sick,” he said. He looked around, then added more quietly, “How did that dick get so far up the ladder, is what I want to know? He’s inferior in every capacity, and his staff is no better.”

“Well, you know what they say about pets and their owners—after a while they start to look alike.”

“Right,” Doherty laughed. “Well, I guess we’d better start putting our heads together. How do you take your coffee, anyway? Let me guess—milk, sugar, no donuts.”

They both laughed. Damn the stereotype, but who didn’t love a donut?

“If you’re sending someone, I’ll take two Boston creams,” smiled Morrison. “That’s my standard price for calling Arndt.”

Doherty laughed again and wiped mock sweat from his brow. “Hey, thanks, man. I only have a year and a half left, and if I never talk to that guy again, it’ll be too soon.”

The two went over the scene in greater detail for a few minutes while Morrison took notes. Once he felt decently informed and knew the Boston creams were on their way, Morrison stepped off a little distance, took a deep breath, and dialed Arndt’s cell number.

Arndt picked up on the first ring, an irritable curtness to his voice.

“What is it, Captain?” he asked.

“Hey Chief,” Morrison said. “We’ve got a second body here that looks like it’s linked to our case on Sutton Place.”

The irritability fled from Arndt’s voice as panic took over. “What? Are you sure? Don’t jump to conclusions now.”

Morrison smiled in spite of himself. “Yeah, I’m sure. We have a couple of the same Crime Scene people here, and they agree.”

“Oh, Jesus. This is not good, not good.” Morrison could practically hear the man wringing his hands in the background. “We’ve got a real
problem now, don’t we? Okay, let’s see—Jesus—where is it, exactly?”

“I’m out in the 103, Chief—Jamaica Estates, Queens.”

“Another wealthy neighborhood, you mean? I wonder if—” Arndt trailed off.

“Yeah?”

“I mean, do you think it could be the Wall Street people, targeting one-percenters?”

Morrison stifled a scoff of disgust. It was incredible how quickly Arndt jumped to conclusions, and how badly. “Hey Chief, they cut the lips off this lady’s vagina, and left her with multiple bite marks. I don’t think they run with a protest crowd. It’s a violent sex crime, and we don’t even know the economic status of the victim yet. It’s a pretty good bet that she’s above middle income in this neighborhood, but still.”

“All right. What
do
we know about her, then?”

“She’s a 35-year-old female, Abigail Johnson. Looks like she lived with her husband, but he isn’t at home. We’re going to look for him next; apparently none of the neighbors they’ve canvassed have seen him for a while. Anyway, the victim’s blonde, like our first victim; attractive and fit, too, also like the first. Drives a Range Rover with a baby seat in it. The kid’s not in the house—”

“Jesus, you’d better do an AMBER Alert,” Arndt interrupted. “We can’t—”

“If you’d
wait
a second,” Morrison cut in, unable to keep the exasperation from his voice. “I was going to say, the child was with the victim’s ex-husband. She’s okay. Now as I mentioned, the victim has multiple bite wounds, primarily around the breast area, and the same vaginal condition that we saw yesterday. We’re still processing the scene, but we’ve already picked up footprints from at least two different types of shoe, suggesting multiple perps. I’ve got Lieutenant Jim Doherty with me here, and with your permission, he’s going to turn the case over to us as an extension of ours.”

“Do it,” said Arndt. “As much as it pains me to say yes, it sounds like that makes sense here.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Chief.”

“Anything else?”

“No, that’s it for now. I’ll have Doherty get me the paperwork as soon as he—”

But Arndt had already hung up.

7

Day four, and Chief of Detectives Arndt was knocking at Morrison’s door.

The door was closed because it had been a late night, and Morrison was drinking a hefty dose of Jameson in his coffee to put himself right. Morrison ignored him until he went away, finished off his coffee, gave the room a hit of Ozium, and took a swig of mouth-wash before heading out.

He found Arndt wandering around the squad room like a lost child, the rest of the detectives hard at work making themselves unavailable to talk to him. As Morrison approached him, he gestured toward an unfamiliar face.

“I don’t recognize her,” Arndt said. “Who is she?”

“I’ll introduce you,” said Morrison, uninterested in starting a têtea-tête with Arndt this early in the morning.
And of course you don’t recognize her, you idiot,
he thought.
She’s never kissed your ass before.

He walked Arndt over to the redheaded woman he’d pointed to. “Chief of Detectives Arndt,” Morrison said, “I want you to meet Detective Tina Koreski. She’s on loan from Gangs, along with two others we pulled from Robbery and Special Victims to bolster our manpower on this case.”

“Nice to meet you,” Tina said.

“Likewise,” Arndt said with an oily smile; then abruptly asked, “How old are you?”

Morrison cringed at the inappropriate question. But Tina, young as she may have looked, was ready for it.

“I’m nine years old,” she said seriously.

Arndt was visibly annoyed; as with many of their bosses, he didn’t like it when the funny stuff came from inferiors. But he pushed ahead.

“So you come from Gangs, eh?” he asked.

“Yes—I’ve been on the job ten years,” Tina said pointedly, clearly uninterested in pursuing the conversation further.

“Why don’t we head into my office,” Morrison suggested, holding back a laugh. Arndt agreed, and followed him in. Arndt made a face when they went in.

“Have you been drinking in here, Captain?” he asked. Apparently the Ozium hadn’t quite done the trick.

“I don’t drink anymore,” Morrison answered. Which wasn’t entirely untrue—as he liked to say, he didn’t drink any more, nor any less.

“Well, in any event, we need to talk,” Arndt said. “We’ve decided to go public with what we have.”

“That’s good—it’s time,” said Morrison.

“What should we give out, then? Did you check for other possible cases, or talk to the Bureau, or anything of that kind?”

“Of course,” said Morrison. “We’ve done all of that, and we have some video footage. There isn’t anything similar in Westchester, Rockland, Nassau, or Suffolk; but I can give you a summary on the two cases and you can decide what to give out that won’t hurt the case. Remember, though, we need to hold some things back, for when we catch these guys. There’s a lot of crazies out there willing to confess to something like this just to get famous.”

“I’m aware of that, Captain,” Arndt said tersely.

“All right,” said Morrison. “I’ll give you a summary in a few hours.” Whatever he gave Arndt was guaranteed to be front-page material the
next day, so he knew he’d have to be careful in hedging his bets. Giving up the fact that they were looking for two suspects, for instance, could be catastrophic to the case.

“Very good,” Arndt said, straightening his tie. “I’ll be looking for that before end-of-day.”

Morrison saw him to the door and walked out to the squad room. Once the door had closed behind Arndt, the room erupted into a ripple of laughter. Medveded threw a notebook toward the door with a gesture of contempt. Even the Coke boys stood in their doorway, smiling to see Arndt gone. Morrison walked up to Tina Koreski.

“Welcome to the squad, Koreski,” he said. “That was a good start.”

“Yeah, I bet. I’ll be in Staten Island tomorrow,” she laughed.

“Maybe once all this is done,” Morrison smiled back. “Now, look. I’m sure you know I pulled you from Gangs for a reason. I’ve actually wanted to get you on the team for a while, but didn’t have an opportunity before these two homicides came along. We’re lucky to have you.”

“Thanks, Captain.”

“Do you mind if we have a word in my office?”

“Of course.”

When they’d shut the door and seated themselves, Tina spoke up. “It’s been a long time, eh, Cap?” she said.

“It has,” Morrison said. “How has it been going over there for you? I haven’t had a chance to check in on the Gangs squad recently.”

“I can’t complain—the lieutenant there takes good care of us. Still, when I heard you’d reached out for me, I couldn’t have been happier.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Morrison said. He’d hoped as much. “So where are you living these days?”

“I got a nice place up in the north Bronx.”

“The Bronx! Weren’t you in Queens before?”

“Yeah, I moved up there because of a woman I was seeing. A really good one, for a change. She works at the Northern Westchester Medical Center in Mount Kisco, in the E.R. there. She used to work at Bellevue—I met her there when I was admitted.”

“So you moved up there to be closer to her?”

“Yeah.” A dark look came over Tina’s face. “It didn’t work out, though—we were doing pretty well for a while and she took really good care of me, but you know me, I can’t keep relationships.”

“I’m sorry to hear it,” Morrison said, knowing the feeling well.

“It’s all right, shit happens.”

“That it does.” Morrison nodded. “Well, look, let’s talk frankly here. First off, I want you to know that I’m looking out for you, and I want to make sure this goes all right for you. This is a seriously demented caseload so far, and I don’t want what happened to you at the Port Authority to hurt you here.”

“That’s really good of you, Cap. But believe me, nothing can hurt me anymore.”

“I get that,” Morrison pursued, “I just want to know if you’d be all right with talking to me about that. I only heard the basics at the time; and you and I didn’t really talk about it. Primarily I need to know that these cases aren’t going to push you over the edge, or take you anywhere bad, but if you can talk about it, I’d appreciate that. You and I go way back, and you’ve been there for me in some dark times in my life. I want to be there for you too.”

Koreski took a breath. “I really appreciate it, Cap. I’ve heard these cases are worst than most on the repulsive scale, but I’m sure I’ll be okay. I wouldn’t wish what happened to me on anyone; but I’ve carved out a little life for myself since then, and I’m better now—a lot better. As for talking to you about it, I’ve always known I could talk to you. I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone treat me better than you have, and I certainly don’t have any issue with telling you about it now. Maybe it’d even help me for you to hear it all.”

“All right.” Morrison gestured toward his cabinet. “Can I get you a drink?”

Tina laughed. “No, thanks. It’s too early.”

“Oh, it’s never too early, kid. Remember, we have no clock around here. That’s why you can get out of the job in twenty—though I hear
now it’s twenty-two.”

“Yeah,” Tina said. “I don’t mind it, though; I’m really in no rush to retire. You know I had a good life after my incident. I think I’m just not that good at being happy. This girl, Cap—she was really beautiful.” She smiled. “You remember when I first worked for you, and I told you I had a housemate? I think you said,
What’s that?”

“I remember,” Morrison smiled.

“You were the first person on the PD that I told, and you made me feel very comfortable about it. I’ll never forget that. But yeah, these days I’m thinking I’m meant to be alone. I had, and have, a need for life on the edge. Adrenaline’s definitely my drug of choice, and it’s the worst. Nothing is lonelier than being with someone when they aren’t with you, and I don’t wish that on anyone with me. But I’ll bet you know about that too.” She looked down at her hands. “You know, I never thought you would come back after—after your son.”

“I never did.” Morrison stood up, opened the cabinet, and poured a healthy two fingers of Jameson. “Here, come on. It’s never too early.”

“I appreciate it, Cap, but no.”

“All right, then. I can’t let it go to waste, though.” He took a sip and sat back down. “Go ahead, Tina—whatever you can tell me.”

Koreski sat back with a sigh. “So, as you know, I was assigned to the Pimp Squad when I got off probation, right after I left patrol. It seemed like I’d be a perfect fit there, at least for the short term; they wanted to grab this pimp that owned midtown Manhattan, and figured I’d be the right girl for the job.

“Well, the first time out is my only time out. I’ve got Sergeant Veda—holy roller on the surface, always talking about God. Turns out he was a really disturbed guy, a complete phony. Anyway, we have three two-man teams working the job. I’ve got a kel on, and it’s tested before we go out—I’m reading five-by-five going out the door, and you can clearly hear me. So the setup is, I’m supposed to get on a Greyhound bus on 11
^th
Avenue, pull into the Port Authority, and sit down in the terminal like I’m lost. It’s like fishing for flounder in Quincy, Mass—
or in a fish tank, for that matter.