41
Traffic on Broadway slowed Pearl, but she cut over to Second Avenue, imperiled the lives of a few pedestrians, and reached Lower Manhattan in good time.
The address Quinn had given her was an old brick building with a red granite facade. There was the usual assortment of unmarked and radio cars pulled in at odd angles to the curb in front of the building, along with an ambulance. Two paramedics sat inside the ambulance with the engine running to keep the air-conditioning going. The vehicles' emergency lights were still flashing, along with the roof bar lights of one of the radio cars.
Three uniforms were standing at the wide concrete steps leading to the entrance, two with their feet propped on the first step. Pearl flashed her shield and one of them, a young guy with a nose like de Bergerac's, told her the floor and apartment numbers.
The victim's apartment was close enough to the elevator that as soon as Pearl stepped out of it she was there. Fedderman and Harold Mishkin were standing in the hall outside the open apartment door. Fedderman acknowledged Pearl with a nod. Mishkin smiled wanly at her. He had the mentholated goo he used at murder scenes rubbed into his mustache beneath his nose. It was almost enough to make her eyes water.
'Quinn and Sal are inside,' Mishkin said.
So were the techs from the CSU, dusting and plucking, picking and bagging. The ballet of the white gloves. Careful where she stepped and what she touched, Pearl made her way through the apartment living room and down the hall, glancing in the bathroom to make sure that wasn't where the body was.
Quinn and Sal Vitali were in the bedroom, standing at the foot of the bed and watching Nift, the repugnant little M.E., examining the victim. The smells of blood, feces, and the beginnings of decay were strong. Pearl understood why Mishkin had used his mentholated cream.
The victim was lying on her back nude, blood on her chest and caked black beneath her on the sheets. Her throat had been sliced almost ear to ear. Even through the blood, it was obvious that her nipples had been removed and a large X was carved on her body so that the intersection of its straight lines was between her breasts. The breasts themselves were undamaged by the X.
Pearl wondered what the bloody X could mean. X marks the spot? The victim has been canceled? Or was it an initial? Xavier?
It might be none or all those things.
Probably they would never know until they had the killer.
'Meet Joyce House,' Sal said in his deep, gravel voice. 'She was a waitress at a place called the Nickel Diner. Thirty-two years old, unmarried, lived alone.'
The victim was the Carver's type. Between twenty and forty, brown hair, attractive. Her brown eyes were fixed as a doll's eyes. They were widened in horror though she was grinning. Her throat was grinning, anyway, where it had been slashed. Her mouth-
'What's that in her mouth?' Pearl asked.
'A gag,' Nift said, without looking up at Pearl. Then he did look up and grin, nothing like the victim's ghastly grin but in its way almost as ugly. 'Her wadded-up panties.'
Pearl looked over at Quinn and Sal. The Carver had used his victims' wadded panties to silence them.
'Look over on the dresser,' Nift said.
They did, and saw a simple house of cards. Quinn went over and looked closely at it. The card house was made of face cards, all of them turned out so the fragile structure was colorful. The rest of the deck was stacked neatly next to it, a popular brand of playing card that would be impossible to trace. Quinn knew it was a given that there would be no fingerprints on the cards.
'Get it?' Nift asked. 'House of cards…Joyce House…another gag, like the one in her mouth.'
'I'd like to stuff something in your mouth,' Pearl said.
'I'm always available,' Nift said, laughing.
'He's returned to form,' Quinn said.
'He was always a jerk-off,' Pearl said.
'I meant the Carver, with the panties gag,' Quinn said. 'Stay on point, Pearl.'
Sal said, 'He was rusty with the Sanders woman.'
'He's getting back in the groove,' Nift said, tapping the slashed throat with a pointed silver instrument.
Pearl instinctively winced. Don't hurt her!
'His taste is improving, too,' Nift said. 'This one was a honey when she was alive. Look at that set on her. She was built like you, Pearl.'
'How would you like to be dead like her?' Pearl said.
Nift smiled.
'What about those bruises on her arms?' Quinn asked.
'Something pressed down hard there, pinning her to the mattress,' Nift said. 'Probably the killer's knees. My guess is he straddled her and placed her arms like that so she couldn't interfere with what he was doing to her.'
'You mean that happened while she was alive?' Sal asked.
Nift looked at Pearl when he answered. 'Oh, yeah, she felt everything. He probably took his time with her. She must've been scared shitless.' He nodded toward the victim's lower body and the stain where her bowels had released after death. 'In fact-'
'Shut your goddamned mouth!' Pearl said.
Quinn looked over at Pearl and then stared hard at Nift.
'I would do that,' Quinn said.
Nift shrugged and continued his work on the body. He was obviously amused at having made Pearl lose her cool.
'Got an approximate time of death?' Vitali asked, keeping his voice calm and trying to put a damper on everyone's emotions. Keep the focus of the conversation on business. He knew about Pearl. Unstable dynamite.
'She's been dead at least twelve hours,' Nift said. 'So she's slightly ripe. That's why your partner Mishkin isn't in here.'
'Only one of us needs to be here,' Sal said.
'I can get closer on the time of death after I get her to the morgue,' Nift said. He'd seemed to have caught something in Sal's voice that suggested he'd better back off. 'It won't be long. There's a rush on this one, and I'm squeezing her into my busy schedule.'
'Who found her?' Pearl asked.
'Neighbors complained about the smell coming from the apartment, through the vents,' Sal said. 'The super let himself in, then saw her and let himself out in a hurry. Harold went downstairs and got his statement.'
'Any signs of rape?' Quinn asked.
'No signs of penetration, but this might have started out as rough sex and got out of control.' Nift straightened up, gave his nasty little grin, and touched his crotch. 'One thing's for sure: this one got it rougher than she wanted.'
Pearl took a step toward the bed where Nift was again bending over the victim. Quinn extended an arm, and she stopped, knowing he wouldn't let her get any closer to Nift. He'd grab and restrain her. She didn't want Quinn's hands on her. Right now, not any man's hands. She wanted her hands on Nift.
'Haven't seen her nipples anywhere,' Nift said. 'Our guy took his usual souvenirs. He's building quite a collection.'
Nift straightened back up and stepped away from the bed. He dropped the steel instrument he'd been probing with into a container with the others that he'd used and then peeled off his latex gloves. 'I'm finished playing with the young lady until the postmortem. You can have her removed anytime you want. Do what you will with her.' He stuffed the inside-out gloves into the container with the instruments and closed it. 'Just remember her last date's with me.'
'Necrophiliac prick,' Pearl said.
Nift seemed unperturbed. 'Well, I enjoy my work.' He smiled at Pearl. 'You might enjoy my work, too.'
