“Nift says she was alive and what was done to her took hours,” Renz said. “The stomach was done first.” His voice broke slightly. Not like him.
For the first time Quinn noticed the usually loquacious and obnoxious little medical examiner, Dr. Julius Nift. He was standing alongside a wall with a uniformed cop and a plainclothes detective with his badge dangling in its leather folder from a suit coat pocket. A crime scene tech wearing a white jumpsuit and gloves was over near the door. Everyone seemed to be standing as far away as possible from Renz.
“That’s why there’s so much blood,” Nift said. “A stomach wound like that looks horrible, but the victim doesn’t necessarily die right away. Whatever her condition, he somehow managed to keep her heart pumping for quite a while. There’s a slight ammonia smell around her head, too. Could be he used ammonia like smelling salts, to jolt her around whenever she lost consciousness. So she’d feel everything.”
Quinn could hear a slight hissing and realized it was his own breathing. Being here with the dead woman, where there had been so much agony, was like being in a catacomb with a saint. Then he understood why he’d made the comparison. Clutched tightly in the victim’s pale right hand like a rosary was a silver letter S on a thin chain that was wrapped around her neck. Careful not to step in any of the darkening puddles of blood, Quinn leaned forward to more closely examine the necklace.
“Kinda crap you find in a Times Square souvenir shop.” Renz said.
“That’s where it might have come from,” Quinn said. “It says ‘New York’ in tiny letters on the back.”
“I noticed,” Renz said, probably lying.
Quinn straightened up and looked around. The living room was tastefully decorated, with wicker furniture and a large wicker mask on one wall. On the opposite wall was a framed Degas ballerina print with “MoMA” printed on the matting. Not expensive furnishings, but not cheap. The apartment was cramped, and the block in this neighborhood in the East Village wasn’t a good one.
Quinn wondered what made this a big case for Renz. Major money didn’t seem to be involved. This woman appeared to have lived well but modestly. Politics might be at play here. Maybe the victim had been somebody’s secret lover. Somebody important.
No. If that were true Renz would be using it for leverage. He seemed emotionally involved here. It wouldn’t be because of the goriness of the crime. He’d seen plenty of gore in his long career. He-
Nift was saying, “You wouldn’t know it to look at her now…”
Careful, Quinn thought, knowing how Nift was prone to make salacious remarks about dead female victims.
“… but she was kind of athletic, especially for her age,” Nift finished, avoiding an explosion from Renz.
“I wanna show you something else,” Renz said, ignoring Nift. He led Quinn from the bedroom and into a small bathroom.
There was a claw-footed porcelain tub there, and a washbasin without a vanity attached to the wall. Everything was tiled either gray or blue. White towels stained red with diluted blood were jumbled on the floor and in the tub. The tub, as well as the washbasin, had red stains that looked like patterns of paint applied by a madman.
“Bastard washed up in here after he killed her,” Renz said, “But more than that.” He pointed at the medicine chest mirror, on which someone, presumably the killer, had scrawled in blood the name Philip Wharkin.
“The killer?” Quinn asked.
“Maybe. The kind of asshole who’s daring us to catch him. It’s happened before. They’re out there.”
“Don’t we know it.”
Quinn moved closer to the mirror and leaned in to study the crudely printed red letters. “I don’t think he’s one of those. He was careful. This was written with a finger dabbed in blood, and it looks like he had on rubber gloves.” He backed away from the mirror. “If nothing else, this is a passion crime. Maybe the victim had a thing with Philip Wharkin and it went seriously bad.”
“That’s how I figure it,” Renz said. “If she did, we’ll sure as hell find out.”
Quinn could see Renz’s jaw muscles flex even through the flab. This one was important to him, all right. Maybe, for some reason, his ill-gained position as commissioner depended on it.
They left the stifling bathroom and returned to the living room. The techs were still busy, having taken advantage of the extra space created when Renz and Quinn had left. Nift was down on one knee packing his black bag, finished with the body until it was transported to the morgue.
The corpse was unaffected by any of it. Its pale blue eyes, widened in horror, gazed off at some far horizon they would all at some time see. Quinn felt a chill race up his spine. Hours ago this bloody, discarded thing on the floor had been a vital and perhaps beautiful woman.
“How old do you estimate she was?” Quinn asked Nift.
It was Renz who answered. “Twenty-three. And it’s not an estimate.”
“You got a positive ID?” Quinn asked.
“Yeah,” Renz said.
He leaned over the corpse and lifted it slightly off the carpet, turning it so Quinn could see the victim’s back.
Her shoulders and the backs of both arms were covered with old burn scars. Quinn had similar scars on his right shoulder and upper arms.
“The killer didn’t do that to her back,” Renz said, returning the body to its original position.
Quinn looked again at the victim’s features, trying to imagine them without the distortion of horror and the scarlet stains.
He felt the blood recede from his face. Then he began to tremble. He tried but couldn’t stop the tremors.
“It’s Millie Graff,” Renz said.
3
After the body of Millie Graff had been removed, Quinn walked with Renz through a fine summer drizzle to a diner a few blocks away that was still open despite the late hour. They were in a back-corner booth and were the only customers. The old guy who’d come out from behind the counter to bring their coffee was now at the other end of the place, near the door and the cash register. He was hunched over as if he had a bent spine, reading a newspaper through glasses with heavy black frames.
Renz looked miserable, obviously loathing his role as bearer of bad news. Quinn was surprised to find himself feeling sorry for him. Though they held a mutual respect for each other’s capabilities, the two men weren’t exactly friends. Renz was an unabashed bureaucratic crawler fueled by ambition and unencumbered by any sort of empathy or decency. He’d stepped on plenty of necks to get where he was, and he still wasn’t satisfied. Never would be. Quinn considered Renz to be an insatiable sociopath who would say anything, do anything, or use anyone in order to get what he wanted. Renz considered Quinn to be simply unrealistic.
“I haven’t seen Millie in almost fifteen years,” Quinn said.
“She healed up, grew up, and became a dancer,” Renz said. “Saved her money so she could leave New Jersey and live here in New York. She was gonna break into theater.” He sipped his coffee and made a face as if he’d imbibed poison. “I got all this from her neighbors. She worked in the Theater District, but was waiting tables in a restaurant.” He shrugged. “Show biz.”
“How long’s she been in the city?” Quinn asked.
“Five months.”
Quinn gazed out the window and thought back to when he’d first seen Millie Graff. She’d had metal braces on her teeth and was screaming with her mouth wide open and mashed against the closed window of a burning car.
He’d simply been driving along on Tenth Avenue in his private car, off duty, when traffic had come to a stop and he’d seen smoke up ahead. Quinn had gotten out of his car and jogged toward the smoke. When he got closer to the gathering mass of onlookers he saw that a small SUV was upside down, propped at an angle with its roof against the curb. It was on fire.
