tonight? What kind of monster am I looking for? I can't even think straight it's so hot.'
'No other missing-person reports?' I pressed the damp cloth to the back of my neck.
'Nothing that fits. Two African-American women-one from the Bronx and the other a chronic runaway from Queens-an Asian tourist, an old lady with dementia who hasn't come home in a week, but definitely a blue-rinse dye job. Your case is the only one that seemed a possible match.'
As the assistant district attorney who supervised sex crimes, I had partnered with Mike for more than a decade. I was at my desk in the criminal courthouse when he called me several hours earlier, asking for more details about the physical description of the twenty-two-year-old woman-Elise Huff-who had gone missing more than a week earlier. The investigation had been handed to me two days after her disappearance by my boss, Paul Battaglia, now in his fifth term as Manhattan's district attorney.
'Elise is a redhead. Natural.'
She had disappeared after a night of barhopping with a girlfriend, who split from her at 3:00 a.m. when she had been unable to convince Elise to go home. Elise's parents had pressed their congressman, in Tennessee, to lean on Battaglia to ramp up the search for their daughter, assuming that she might have been the target of a sexual predator.
'That's why I called you out. This one,' Mike said, pointing at the taillights of the van that carried the woman away, 'was a redhead when I showed up, till the medical examiner rolled her face to the side and the damn wig fell off.'
The synthetic auburn mane had been straight, lustrous, and obviously expensive when I looked at it earlier with the aid of Mike's flashlight. It had covered a shock of short curly hair-dark brown-the only distinguishable feature still visible on the head and body.
Mike took the cigar from me as we walked under the archway and back into the terminal, toward the staircase. His cheeks hollowed as he sucked in several deep breaths before handing it back. 'Inhale once more, Coop.'
Climbing the steps behind Mike, I smiled at his constant attempts to protect me from the more horrific parts of our job. Hal Sherman was setting up the battery-run lighting system that would allow him to take dozens more photographs of the grim room from which the body had been removed. Within the confines of this space-no more than thirty feet long and twenty wide-the Crime Scene Unit investigators would look for any speck of evidence that might lead to an identification of the victim, her killer, and whatever connection linked them to each other.
'So what's the weapon?' Mike asked.
'Maybe the butt of a gun caused the fracture. Maybe a hammer. The autopsy'll tell you more than I can.' Hal put a ruler on the floor, next to what looked like a bloodstain, before he leaned over to snap his picture.
The young ME was certain that the woman had died from a blunt force injury, an impact that had depressed a portion of her skull on the left temple and caused the fatal damage to her brain.
'You make anything of the marks on her face?'
'Yeah. Scope the personals for a guy who likes to dance. Too bad there wasn't much skin left. The bastard must have stomped on her face after he whacked her. I don't know if there's enough of a pattern to get a shoe print, but I shot it from every angle.'
I stood still while Mike geared up again-rubber gloves and booties-to go back over every crevice of the dusty room.
'And when uniform arrived?'
'Obliterated everything on the stairs,' Hal said, sweeping his arm around the room, then wiping his moustache with his sleeve, 'and all over the place.'
The glass in each of the five windows that faced the river was shattered, much like the bones of the dead woman's face.
'You guys find anything?' Mike asked the two cops who had been assisting Hal.
'Double-checking. Nothing so far except this-I don't know-looks like a knotted strip of leather. Like the end of a key chain or something.' One of them held up a two-inch piece of rawhide.
'This guy was good,' the other said. 'Must have had lots of time. Maybe even got away clean.'
Each man had examined half of the room, and now they switched positions to go over the other's territory. Mike stepped around Hal and stood behind an old wooden desk. He opened the four drawers, flashing his light into them and slamming them shut.
'Government offices. Seems like whoever winds up designing stuff for the city has to take a course in how to make it look dismal.'
'What agency was this?' I asked.
'Ports and Terminals.'
Three chairs with broken backs lined the far wall. Mike lifted each one and replaced it. He moved toward several crates piled in a corner.
'Don't bother, Chapman. They're as empty as your pockets.'
'What did you think about those lines on her wrists?' Mike was crouched on the floor now, measuring the coating of dust with a gloved finger.
'Some kind of ligature. Maybe even cuffs. Hey, Alexandra, you want to wave that cigar around. Where did you get such a good one, Mike?' Hal asked, sniffing the air.
'Coop's boss. All his friends stockpile him with the best Cubans. Only the feds prosecute for trading with the enemy. Not Battaglia. He just lets the evidence go up in smoke.'
'You think she was killed here?' I asked. 'Nah. She's a dump job.'
'No signs of any struggle, but then that's pretty tough to do when you're bound,' Mike said, agreeing with Hal. 'Maybe still alive when he brought her up and left her to die. That's why there's blood.'
I looked through what was left of the window. The river was dark, a slight chop from the current kicking up an occasional whitecap. A few small boats criss-crossed the harbor, illuminating narrow lines over the water with their headlights.
'Not a trace of her clothing anywhere?' I asked.
'Zip. Looks like we're dealing with a pro, Coop. Felony frequent flier miles. C'mon, I'll put you in a cab. You've got court in the morning.'
I said good night to Hal and his crew and went downstairs, careful to avoid the powder on the banister where crime scene cops had dusted for prints.
As we emerged from the mouth of the archway, under the faded print of the sign that said BATTERY MARITIME BUILDING, one of the crime scene cops was waiting for Mike.
'There's something snagged in one of the long wooden splinters of the pilings, Detective. Take a look. I've photographed it there, so let me know if you want me to fish it out.'
I followed Mike to the north side of the old structure. He leaned over the wire fencing and his hair gleamed as the officer held a flashlight above his head. I could see an object floating on the surface of the water, its many thick strands splayed like the tentacles of a sea creature.
'Bring it up, Jenks. You got something to hook it with?'
The eager kid ran to the department station wagon and brought out a long metal pole. He disappeared inside the bay of the old terminal and reappeared on the far side of the fence. He walked along the edge of the building, carefully stepping down and out onto the planks between the tall pilings.
After several attempts to snag the mysterious object, Willy Jenks triumphantly lifted it out of the river, swung the pole over the fence, and dumped it at Mike's feet.
I kneeled beside him and tried to figure out what I was staring at. Mike removed another rubber glove from his pants pocket and slipped it on before he began to separate the tangled strands.
With his index finger, Mike found what looked like a handle, pulling on it to stretch it out toward my foot. Then he started to count the strips as he spread them apart on the ground. 'One, two, three…'
I could see that they, too, were made of leather, knotted like the piece the cops had found upstairs. 'What do you-?'
Mike held his finger to his lips to quiet me as he continued to count. 'Six, seven, eight.'
The ninth length of rope was missing its knot.
'What is it?'
'Guess you never saw a cat-o'-nine-tails before.'
