A Killing Gift

'Asphyxia. Not strangled. Looks like he was yoked, probably by a forearm. He couldn't breathe, but the spinal cord was…' Gloss paused to slurp up some drink out of a straw.

'Yeah, yeah, yeah. Spare me the medical terms. I saw him. His neck was broken.' Mike inhaled and exhaled to let out some tension.

'By you, his neck was broken,' Gloss agreed. 'Bernardino was a hefty guy. He weighed one ninety-eight,' Gloss went on. 'It's not so easy to yoke someone his size. Forty-eight inches around. He was like a tank, not tall but big. You're looking for someone with arms like a gorilla. I'll have the preliminary by tomorrow, maybe the next day.'

'Thanks. We'll talk again.'

'One other thing.' Gloss hesitated.

'Yeah?'

'Did Bernardino chew gum?'

Mike drew a blank on that. 'I have no idea. Did you find gum on him, or in him?'

'Well, he'd eaten within the last two hours. Must have been some party. Lasagne, ziti, eggplant, baked clams. Cannolis. He'd pretty much stuffed himself. And he'd probably had quite a bit to drink, too.'

'I'm sure. A couple of beers, maybe some wine. Where are you going with this?' Mike asked.

'I don't have his alcohol levels yet so I don't have that piece…'

'But you're suggesting Bernardino was impaired at the time of his death.' Mike tried to remember how intoxicated Bernardino had been. He certainly hadn't had that manic affect, talking too much or too loudly. He hadn't looked or sounded drunk. He hadn't stumbled around or anything like that. But Mike didn't know how much he could hold. Maybe April or Marcus Beame would know. They'd both worked with him.

'Maybe drunk. He'd reeked of garlic, of course,' Gloss went on, unperturbed in his musings.

'I'm sure he did, but how does it play?'

'You know, we smell them first.'

The corpses. Yes, Mike knew the medical examiner sniffed his customers like a dog for the presence of drugs and poison and powder in the case of gunshot wounds.

'Yes, and?'

'He smelled of spearmint.'

'As in spearmint gum?'

'Yes.'

'The body or his clothes?'

'Both.'

Mike pulled on his mustache. Hmmm. 'Gum wouldn't make his clothes smell,' he murmured.

'Well, it would if there was an open packet in his pocket. I just didn't see one. Did you find any gum or gum wrappers at the scene or remove them from his pockets?'

'Not that I know of. But I'll check. Any other ideas about what might have caused the odor?' Mike asked.

'Well, it might be nothing. Did they have those puffy mints at the restaurant, you know, by the entrance?'

'No. Wrapped M-and-M kind of things. Chocolate mint.' Mike had left with a handful.

'Well, no then. Chocolate was the one thing Bernardino hadn't eaten.'

'Well, maybe he was a gum freak and had it in his pockets, his car. I'll check it out.'

'Well, let me know.'

'Anything else?' Mike asked. He had a feeling there might be.

'Not at the moment.'

Mike hung up. The case was being handled downtown. It was time for him to join the party.

Twelve

'Jesus, April. I'm sorry about the mess.' Kathy Bernardino was an attractive woman about April's age and size who didn't look her best as she confronted the chaos in the house where she'd grown up.

She was wearing jeans and a black turtleneck speckled with what appeared to be white towel lint. It was clear she'd made no effort to dress for the trip east, just grabbed her purse and come as she'd been when she heard the bad news. Her thick dark hair looked as if she'd pulled it back into a ponytail without brushing it first. Her nose and eyes were red.

April knew that Kathy had returned to New York several times during the year her mother had fought her cancer, and had been with her during the last week of her life. Now, only a few months later, she was back for another death, this one a total surprise. The chaos was unexpected, too. Kathy seemed mortified that she couldn't find a sofa or a chair to offer April that wasn't covered with the detritus of her late father's and mother's lives.

'What a fucking mess.' She shook her head, the tears coming at the way her father had left the world and his house.

'He told me he was getting someone to help him. God knows, he could afford it. His sister, I don't know…' Her sentence trailed off.

April touched her shoulder. Don't worry about it.

'Fucking mess,' Kathy repeated. She dragged a box filled with a hodgepodge of books and papers to the edge of the sofa and let it drop to the floor, then shoved it out of the way.

April scanned the living room that Lorna had decorated with such loving care. It truly was a mess, but not the kind of mess a burglar would leave, things tipped over and flung in all directions. Here it looked as if Bernardino had begun the process of moving but hadn't known how to go about it in an orderly fashion. The house seemed to be disgorging its contents from the inside, as if the disparate items had just tumbled from their cupboards, dressers, and closets all at once.

A whole lifetime's collection of stuff was out of the hiding places, covering every surface. Clothes, books, photos from every stage of their lives, a jumble of female house accessories in every category-statues, vases, needlepoint pillows with cute sayings on them. Kathy and Bill's artwork from years ago. Porcelain, colored glass, mugs. Decorative watering cans in graduated sizes. Linens. Artificial flower arrangements, dead and dying plants, housewares, lamps, long-ago-abandoned sports equipment. Maybe Bernardino had just begun the sorting process prior to packing and giving away. Maybe he'd just given up. It was hard to tell.

Kathy, it doesn't matter, April beamed at her. They could go outside into the backyard. The patio furniture was still covered from winter, but April could see a stone bench out there in the green lawn that needed cutting. She pointed at the bench. It was just six. The dense fog of yesterday had departed with the morning sun. At six p.m. it was still light and pretty out there, the sun dappling through the new leaves on the trees. An unseasonably warm evening.

Kathy followed her gaze. 'No, I used to read there when I was little. My escape. I don't ever want to sit there again. We'll stay here.' Kathy pointed to the space on the sofa she'd made, then pushed some more stuff onto the floor. The pile hit the rug with a muffled thump. 'Sit here, okay?'

April nodded. Whatever. This was tough. The fact that Bernardino was gone was bad. Kathy's seeing her parents' house like this was bad. Bill lived in Brooklyn and was coming over to get Kathy in an hour or so. That was bad, too. April thought it through. The whole situation was rough.

Four hours ago she'd decided to leave Mike to his thing and obey his order to go home. She'd accepted a ride out to Queens from a uniform, but had stayed only long enough to get a neighbor who was always home with her baby to make a few calls for her.

Missy Yu had called Kathy Bernardino to tell her that Sergeant Woo was suffering from laryngitis, but wanted to offer her condolences today. At that time Kathy must not have heard Bill's suspicion. Her reply had been to come as soon as possible. So April had grabbed her laptop and zip drive, settled her bruised body into her car, and driven from Queens to Westchester.

Now she sat down on the red-and-blue flower-print sofa and looked around for a plug. Before she could locate one Kathy threw off her mantle of grief and went professional on her. She gave April the shrewd look of an FBI special agent, and April knew right away what was coming.

'I heard you got hurt. Is that why you can't talk?' Kathy asked.