“I’ll tell them to finish their doughnuts quickly.”
“Thank you.”
“And you and Joan go upstairs.”
“Okay.”
“Right now.”
“All right!” He hung up. “We’re going upstairs,” he said to Joan, but she was already headed that way. Then, as he started up the stairs, he had an awful thought.
Dino sat with them, sipping his coffee. Nobody was saying much. “You don’t think it’s a bomb, do you?” he asked.
“Probably not,” Stone replied. “I think murder by car or hunting knife is more his style.”
A heavily equipped cop appeared in the doorway. “It’s not a bomb,” he said.
“Dino,” Stone said, “I think you’d better get a forensics team over here.”
“What’s in the box?” Dino asked the man.
“An aluminum case,” the man said, “the kind you carry camera equipment in.”
“How do you know it doesn’t contain a bomb?”
“I X-rayed it, then I opened it.”
“What did the case contain?”
“I think you’d better get a forensics team over here,” the cop said, then he left the room.
Dino opened his cell phone and pressed a button. “This is Bacchetti; it’s not a bomb. I want a forensics team and the medical examiner over here pronto.” He closed the phone. “You want to go see it?”
“I’ve already seen it,” Stone said. “I liked it where it was before.”
They all got up and went downstairs. The bomb squad had moved the box and the aluminum case into Stone’s office hallway. The cop stood in the door. “I don’t think we’re needed here anymore. Good luck.” He closed the door, and a moment later, the squad’s truck pulled away from its position in front of a fire plug.
The three of them stood and gazed at the aluminum case.
“There’s got to be fingerprints on that, right?” Joan asked.
“I wouldn’t count on it,” Stone said. “I wouldn’t expect fibers or DNA, either.”
Dino shook his head. “Right. At least, no DNA that would be of any use to us.”
“I need a drink,” Joan said.
“It’s eleven thirty in the morning,” Stone pointed out.
“If I don’t have a drink, I’ll faint,” she said.
“You know where the bar is.”
Joan disappeared upstairs.
“Funny thing is, I feel pretty much the same way,” Stone said.
“Me, too,” Dino echoed.
“I’m not going to have one, though.”
“Me, neither.”
“And I’m not going to faint.”
“Me, neither.”
“I may throw up, though,” Stone added.
“It’s your rug.”
Stone sat down in one of the waiting-room chairs and put his head between his legs.
A moment later, the doorbell rang, and Dino went to answer it. He came back with four people wearing latex gloves.
“This it?” a man in a green lab coat asked.
“Yeah. You other guys start with the box outside.”
“You stay,” the M.E. said to the one who had cameras.
“Don’t touch the case any more than you have to,” Dino said.
“No kidding?” the M.E. said sarcastically.
“Sorry.”
The M.E. took out a pocket dictator and switched it on. He knelt beside the aluminum case and used a tape measure. “The object is inside an aluminum camera case with the trade name Halliburton affixed to it.” He recited the measurements of the container, then he flipped open the securing catches and opened the case. A small cloud of some sort was released.
He continued to dictate. “The case contains the human head of a female Caucasian; the hair is dark brown. The head is frozen and is packed in dry ice.” There was a rattling noise. “On lifting the head from the case I observe that it is wearing cosmetic makeup and the hair is neatly coiffed.” There was the rattling noise again. “I am returning the head to the case and closing it,” he said, snapping the case shut.
The M.E. stood up. “As soon as they’ve processed the exterior of the case I’ll take it to the morgue, and we’ll try to get a cause of death for you.”
“I think you’ll find,” Stone said, “that the cause of death is exsanguination as the result of a severed carotid artery and jugular vein, and that the implement used was a large, partly serrated hunting knife wielded by an enraged male unsub.”
“That’s pretty good,” the M.E. said.
“I’m quoting another doctor,” Stone replied. “The rest of her is in the custody of the M.E. of Morris County, New Jersey. The detective in charge is Lieutenant Charles Sample of Morristown.”
A tech came in and went to work on the aluminum case.
“Come on,” Dino said to Stone, “I’ll buy you some lunch.”
Stone stood up. “I’ll watch you eat,” he said.
47
Stone sat at a table in the back room of P. J. Clarke’s and watched Dino devour a steak. His own lunch was a single beer, which he sipped occasionally. “I don’t know how you can eat that,” he said.
Dino carved a chunk off the steak and stuffed it in his mouth. “Why? It’s a decent piece of meat. Not as good as the strip steak they used to serve, though; I don’t know why they took that off the menu.”
“I’m not talking about the quality of the steak.”
“Oh, come on, Stone. You and I have attended a passel of corpses and autopsies over the years; what’s the big deal with a head in a box?”
“I knew her, that’s the big deal. You knew her, too.”
“You’re like most people, I guess: You confuse the remains with the person. A corpse-or part of a corpse-is a shell, a husk that once contained a human being. It deserves respect but not sentimentality.”
“You’re getting awfully philosophical in your old age,” Stone said.
“That’s always been my philosophy. Haven’t we talked about this before?”
“No.”
“I’m sorry it took so long; you need this information.”
“Now that I have it I don’t feel any better.”
“That’s because you haven’t eaten anything. Have a bacon cheeseburger; that always improves your morale.” Dino waved at a waiter. “Bring my friend a bacon cheeseburger, medium, and tell the chef if it arrives well done I’ll take it back there and make
“I had a thought,” Stone said.
“Well, that’s an improvement.”
“I thought I might go and see Eduardo.” Eduardo Bianco was Dino’s former father-in-law, before his divorce
