exercise. Their small breasts looked flat and hard, their nails were square and deeply lacquered. They were often rude, crass, wearing their slim bodies like some passport for poor behavior. But despite all the deprivation, the starvation, the overexertion, they were still unattractive to the point of being repellent, with nasty sneers and cutting comments. They were still lonely, unhappy, unsatisfied-and hence bitter and mean.
Grady Crowe thought that American women had been sold a concept that failed them miserably. Spend every free moment of your time fretting about your body, the media urged, exercise, buy diet books, primp, preen, pluck, wax, and a man will find you attractive and love you forever. Don’t ever for one second worry about being loving or lovable, about kindness or finding fulfillment on some spiritual level. Just try to take up as little space as possible, be as small as possible, or you will be reviled and ridiculed by every industry posed to make a dime off of you-the fitness and publishing industries, even the medical industry. They’ll steal your money and your self-esteem. You’ll give it all and still be unhappy. In spite of all evidence to the contrary, they bought these ideas, believed whole- heartedly, built lives and lifestyles around them.
The cackling continued; Grady couldn’t hear himself think. He stared at Camilla Novak’s body and wanted to feel the scene, wanted to take in all the details, but he couldn’t. Erik Book sat head in hands on the sofa, trying to call out on his cell phone and finally giving up. He looked miserable. Grady wondered what it would be like to have five hundred grand to lose; he couldn’t muster too much sympathy for the loss of funds. But he wondered if the guy knew his wife was cheating on him. He could see it in her, something restless, something deeply unsatisfied.
He recognized it in hindsight in Clara, the way she had stopped looking at him in the same way. How she almost imperceptibly didn’t want to be held, how she slipped her hand from his grasp when they were out. He thought it was just the normal cooling of their years together. Yet another error in judgment. Like the one that caused them to go to Charlie Shane’s dump of a studio rather than to seek out Camilla Novak as Jez suggested. If they’d come here, maybe she’d still be alive. Shouldn’t he have better instincts than this? Lately it was just one mistake after another.
He took Camilla’s hand in his, feeling its weight, the delicacy of her bones through his gloves. He peered at a faint blue mark, a club stamp. He could just barely make it out:
More cackling, louder, more grating. He walked over to the CSI team; they all turned to look at him.
“There’s a dead woman here, show a little respect.” The cackler twisted her dried-up face at him.
“She can’t hear us, Detective,” she said nastily.
“But I can. So how about you keep your voice down?”
It wasn’t uncommon for a crime scene to be a place where people laughed and made jokes, disrespecting the victim with nasty remarks. It was the general understanding that this was how cops coped with the horror of it all. But Grady didn’t like it, especially in a nice girl’s apartment. It was one thing in the Bronx, where a bunch of perps had shot one another up. But a girl like Camilla, living alone in the city, working, like any of his sisters. She deserved more respect. He’d make sure she got it.
“I can’t think,” he said to Jez.
“Let’s go out in the hall for a second.”
He followed her out and she leaned against the gray wall. She fished a pack of Chiclets out of her purse, shook some into his hand, and popped a few in her mouth. She used to smoke a bit, not all the time. Just when she was really stressed. Now she chewed gum.
“She was kind of our only lead,” said Jez after a minute of chewing.
“There’s still Charlie Shane.”
“Shane, who is missing, whose apartment yielded nothing.”
Grady leaned against the wall, so they were shoulder to shoulder. Well-shoulder to arm; he was a full head taller than his partner. He wondered if he should acknowledge that she had been right, that because they did what he’d suggested, they were screwed. He just couldn’t. It lodged in his throat.
“Okay, so according to Book,” he said instead. “He came here looking for Isabel to convince her to turn herself in. He found her here with the body. She told him that Marcus Raine had killed Camilla, that she’d just seen him.”
“How’d Book get in?”
“He said the street door was ajar. He walked right in, came up the stairs.”
Jez took a few thoughtful chews, pulled a pen from her pocket and started that tapping thing she did. “But Book didn’t pass Raine on the way out,” she said, tap, tap, tapping the pen on her thigh. “And the only other exits-on the roof and in the back-are fire doors that would have set off alarms.”
Grady started picking at the scab on his knuckles. It wasn’t quite ready to be removed, stung a bit; a little drop of blood sprang from the wound. “So he heard Book on the stairs and hid until he’d passed.”
“Or Raine was never here.” Jez hadn’t looked at him, but she fished a small packet of tissues from her other pocket and held it out to him.
He took one and dabbed gingerly at his hand. The pattern of blood on the tissue brought to his mind blooming poppies in driven snow. “I don’t see Isabel Raine as a killer.”
Jez lifted and dropped her shoulders quickly, started tapping again. “Anyone can become a killer if the motivations are there.”
Grady knew her theory on this, but he disagreed. He thought it required a special kind of ego-sickness to take a life, a core belief that your needs, your survival took precedence over all others. Unless it was a question of self- defense or to protect another, he believed you had to be at least a borderline sociopath to kill another person. Even if someone is overcome with rage, it takes amazing arrogance to kill. He didn’t see that in Isabel. He saw arrogance, but not that particular brand.
“Camilla Novak was the last link to the original crime,” Jez said. “Without her we don’t have any live leads. Only the cold-case file. Someone knew that.”
“There might be something in her apartment,” said Grady. “We don’t know.”
“We won’t find anything there,” she said quickly. He knew she was thinking of the Raines’ apartment and the office where every scrap of important paper and data had been removed. “If there was anything, one of the Raines took it.”
“One of the Raines? You really think she could be a part of this.”
Jez snapped the gum in her mouth, looked up and down the hallway. “Where would Marcus Raine hide? If he heard Book coming?”
Grady glanced around. A typical downtown building with old tile floors and high ceilings, gray walls, hard stone stairs. “He could have gone up a flight,” he said. “Come back down when Book entered the apartment.”
Jez tilted her head to the side, walked over to the banister and gazed up the stairwell. She gave a reluctant nod.
“After Book came inside, Isabel Raine left,” Grady said, “claiming she’d find her husband and make things right for her sister’s family.”
“And he just let her go?”
“What was he going to do? Physically restrain her?”
“It wouldn’t have been a bad idea. She’d look less guilty if she stuck around. Did she take anything with her?”
“Erik Book says no.” Grady was skeptical. He felt that Book was holding back, wanting to protect his sister-in- law-or maybe his own interests. At the moment, people who looked like victims yesterday weren’t looking as innocent today.
“But where’s Novak’s purse? Coat’s on the couch, like she was getting ready to leave,” Jez asked.
Grady shook his head slowly. “No purse, no cell phone, no keys, no wallet in the residence.”
“Someone took her bag.”
“Seems so,” he said. “Did you see the stamp on her hand?”
“She’s a hot, single woman living in New York City. Of course she has a club stamp on her hand.”
“Yeah, but the club’s in Queens.”
Jez wrinkled her nose. “Queens? That’s weird. No self-respecting Manhattanite goes to Queens to party.”
More laughter wafted out the apartment door, and Grady felt a fresh wave of annoyance and frustration. He tried to tamp it down, didn’t want to lose his temper. He was already getting a reputation.
