artist to produce a sketch.
I continued to photograph the body, to record the victim’s injuries, including deep abrasions on the point of her chin and the tip of her nose. The abrasions were fresh and flecked with bits of dirt and particles of vegetation. I collected samples of each, placing them in evidence bags, then took more samples from the area surrounding the body. As I continued, the process became mechanical and my thoughts began to focus on an obvious question. Why was the victim.?.?.?
I considered this much for a moment before settling on the word eviscerated. I liked the clinical sound of its five syllables. I liked the distance it placed between me and the event.
So, why was the victim eviscerated? The first explanation that sprang to mind, the most obvious, was that she was a dope mule, that she’d swallowed condoms filled with heroin or cocaine, and that her killer had refused to wait for nature to take its course. Perhaps she’d been the target of a drug rip-off, or perhaps she’d been unable to pass the condoms through some abnormality in her bowels. Either way, the product was retrieved.
But that led to another question. If you were only after a few stuffed condoms, why would you remove all her organs, including the lungs and the heart which are tucked up under the rib-cage? To throw me off?
I tried to imagine the dope dealers I’d busted having the imagination or the knowledge to attempt that kind of deception. Most of them, I was sure, would have dumped her in some alley, or tossed her from a roof into a garbage-strewn backyard. Proud as battle-scarred pitbulls, they would have displayed her as evidence of their ferocity.
Of course, there was also a Jack the Ripper scenario out there. But the blunt-force trauma to her head didn’t fit. Slow strangulation would have been far more appropriate to a sadistic murderer. Plus, the killer hadn’t been fishing for souvenirs like Jack the Ripper. He’d taken everything.
That last word — everything — triggered another thought. Some ten years before, a homeless man had turned up with a missing kidney and a fresh surgical incision. The man remembered nothing of the experience and the case was never cleared, but except for the obvious, there didn’t seem to be any other explanation for his injuries. Somebody had needed that kidney.
There’s no lack of human beings who need organs. A kidney, a liver, a lung, a heart, a pancreas; recipients far outnumber donors. But gall bladders, colons, spleens? And what about her pink lividity? Where did that fit in? If she’d inhaled enough carbon monoxide to change the chemistry of her blood, why was she struck on the head?
I walked back to the Crown Vic, retrieved a pad and a jug of water from the trunk. A moment later, I was seated in a patch of shade, with my back to the wall, simply enjoying the contrast between shade and sun as I raised the water jug to my lips. The water inside wasn’t more than a degree lower than my internal body temperature. Nevertheless, it might have been drawn from an icy stream in the Rocky Mountains. I felt instantly revived.
I had a number of tasks ahead of me, but I was in no hurry. The ME would be a long time coming. I sat where I was for a good fifteen minutes, until I finally stopped sweating, and I might have stayed longer if Clyde Kelly hadn’t chosen that moment to make his presence felt. I didn’t see him at first, but I heard him coming, heard a steady clunk, clunk, clunk, despite the din up on the bridge. The clunking was due to a prosthesis attached to the stump of his right leg, a fact made apparent by his short pants when he finally appeared. Almost the color of tea, the prosthesis was twice as thick as his left leg, which happened to be fish-belly white.
Short and thin, and well past middle-age, Kelly limped to the center of the intersection, then peered over the crime scene tape at the dirt mound and the body behind it. After a moment, he moved on, crossing to the north side of South Fifth Street where he hesitated before making his way back to where he’d originally stopped. Finally, he shaded his eyes before again looking out toward the body and the water beyond.
At no time, despite the sirens and the choppers and the saw blades, did he so much as glance at the activity on the bridge. I got to my feet, imagining the effect my unkempt self would have on the little man standing on the far side of Kent Avenue. My shirt was out, my hair plastered across my forehead, my pants drawn skin-tight across my thighs. Worst of all, from his point of view, at six-three, I towered over him.
The cop from hell. An amusing image, no doubt, but not the one I wanted to project. When he finally became aware of my approach, pivoting on his artificial leg, I displayed my badge, shot him my friendliest smile and gave a little salute. A pure waste of time. His eyes widened in panic and he turned to run.
‘Wait a second,’ I said, ‘I’m not gonna hurt you.’
Clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk.
I caught up with him before he reached the sidewalk, then gently took his arm. ‘Slow down, partner. I just want to talk to you.’
He raised a hand as if to shield his head, revealing a prison tattoo on the web between his thumb and forefinger, an uneven black cross. For a moment, I was tempted to excuse his paranoia as the natural reflex of an ex-con, but I finally decided that no matter how many years he’d spent in the joint, his reaction to my appearance was extreme. I took a moment to examine the man before breaking the silence that followed. His shorts and t-shirt were well worn, though clean, his hair recently cut, his face recently shaved. Deep grooves marked the side of his face, running from the inside corners of his eyes down into the soft flesh of his throat. They made his long face seem even longer, an effect enhanced by the sagging skin at his jaw line. His broad nose was also long, while his dark eyes, beneath a pair of brows shaggy enough to cast a veil over his upper lids, betrayed his fear.
‘What’s your name, partner?’ I asked.
‘Clyde Kelly,’ he responded, his tone hoarse. ‘I ain’t done nothin’.’
‘I’m Detective Corbin. You have to excuse my appearance. I been workin’ out in the sun.’ I put my shield away. ‘You got ID, Clyde?’
He looked up at me, his expression tracing a line midway between pleading and resigned. Returning his gaze, I realized that however bad he might have been in years gone by, whatever awful deeds he may have performed, time had taken its toll. He was an old man now, living an old man’s fearful life.
‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘I got a card.’
He retrieved that card without my asking, pulling a photo ID issued by the Human Resources Administration from a leather wallet as creased and wrinkled as the skin beneath his arms. The HRA card revealed an address on Wythe Avenue, one block east of Kent, and his date of birth. Clyde Kelly was seventy-three.
‘You live by yourself?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘Senior housing,’ he explained. ‘Everything’s like shared. The bathrooms, the kitchen, like that.’
I think he was proud to have a fixed address, not to be among New York’s large population of homeless ex- cons. For my part, I was content to know that I could find him again if I needed him.
‘Look, Clyde,’ I said after a moment, ‘I got a little problem and I think you can help me.’ I took out my wallet, withdrew a clammy ten-dollar bill, and pushed it into his hand. ‘I don’t expect you to work for nothing, of course.’
He stared down at the bill without closing his fingers. ‘What do I gotta do?’
‘Well, see, this is a crime scene — which I think you already figured out for yourself — and I have to process it all alone.’ I gestured up toward the bridge. ‘Everybody else is busy.’
Clyde nodded once, the gesture slow and steady. ‘I hear what you’re sayin’,’ he said, ‘and I’m not disrespectin’ you or nothin’, but what exactly do I have to do?’
I smiled. An innocent bystander would have already inquired into the nature of the crime. ‘You have to help me, Clyde. It’s as simple as that. Now wait here a minute while I get my flashlight. I’ll be right back.’ I took a step, then halted. ‘You’re not gonna run, are ya?’
‘No,’ he replied, tapping his artificial leg, ‘my runnin’ days are over.’
I led him down the block, in twenty-five-foot increments, until I was standing with my heels on the edge of the mound. Clyde became more and more upset as we advanced. With his eyes riveted to the ground, he grew increasingly clumsy, stumbling toward me each time I retracted the tape. His fingers were trembling noticeably by the time we completed the last segment.
‘What’s up, Clyde? You feel okay?’
He stood where he was, his eyes on his feet, until I repeated his name. ‘Clyde?’
After another long hesitation, his head finally came up. Though he took a quick swipe at his eyes, it was evident that he’d been crying.
‘I can’t make it in jail,’ he said. ‘I just can’t do it no more.’
