Just outside the bathroom’s open door, he and Mishkin looked at each other. Then Vitali stepped closer to the doorway and leaned forward so he could see into the bathroom.
No, no, no, no, no…
“Sweet Jesus!” he muttered.
He felt Mishkin move up to stand alongside him.
“Awww,” was all Mishkin said, as if he was terribly disappointed in someone or something.
The plastic shower curtain had been flung aside, maybe by the super, to reveal what was left of the woman. She was hanging upside down from some kind of metal contraption set up over the tub, covered with flies. They swarmed over her like a moving blue-black carpet, and their buzzing roared through Vitali’s consciousness. There was something fierce and frightening in the sheer volume of their collective, constant drone. They were in charge now. It was their turn.
The woman had been slit open wide from pubis to throat. Her internal organs had been removed. Through the undulating carpet of flies Vitali could see her spine and the backside of her rib cage.
Bile rose in his throat. He made himself move closer on numbed legs and peer into the bathtub.
Her entrails were there in a bloody pile. More flies, so many the mass of them flexed and shifted like one huge creature intent on its feast.
Vitali jerked back away from the tub, bumping into Mishkin, who stared at him in surprise. Fear glittered in Mishkin’s mild blue eyes.
“You don’t have to look at that, Harold.”
But Mishkin did, edging closer to the tub. When he turned back toward Vitali there was an expression of horror on his pasty face that Vitali would remember on his deathbed.
A fly bounced against Vitali’s cheek, found its way back, and crawled into his ear. He slapped at it and felt it fall out. He was sure he felt it fall out.
“Let’s get outta here, Sal,” Mishkin said calmly.
Vitali backed out first, then turned and almost ran toward the living room and the door to the hall. Mishkin was behind him at a fast walk.
Back out in the hall, they closed the door tightly so none of the flies, none of the horror, would follow them out.
Young Henderson was leaning against the opposite wall, looking somberly at them with his old eyes. You’ve seen it, too, the eyes said. Welcome to the club. There’s no way to resign. There went the Adam’s apple.
“Call for a CSU, Harold,” Vitali said. “Tell them about the flies. They’ll need to get rid of the damned things before they can get her out.”
Mishkin didn’t answer, but pulled his cell phone from his pocket and walked down to the end of the hall. He tried to open the window there, but it was jammed tightly closed, so he contented himself with standing, staring outside, as he made his call. Considering his own reaction, Vitali was surprised that Mishkin had managed to keep down his breakfast.
“Stick here,” Vitali told Henderson. “Keep the scene frozen. That means you don’t go in there, either.”
“I was just about to go check out that bathroom again,” Henderson said.
Vitali had to smile. Humor, no less. The kid with the old eyes was going to be okay. For a second Vitali considered explaining to Henderson how they were going to have to put what they’d seen somewhere in the dark cellars of their minds and not look at it or think about it, never let it escape back into the light. It wasn’t exactly forgetting, but it passed. Then he realized none of this would be news to the young cop. Besides, it wasn’t the kind of thing easily put into words.
“Don’t you even think of going back in there,” he growled at the kid, shaking a finger at him.
Then he went to get Mishkin so they could talk to some of the neighbors before the crime scene unit showed up.
“They’re on the way,” Mishkin said, still staring out the window at the end of the hall. “I was thinking, Sal, how this one looks like it could be habitual.”
Mishkin knew what he meant. A murder like this one, committed in such a brutal and bloody ritualistic manner, might not be the first such crime.
And it might not be the last.
28
“Here!” Fedderman said.
At first Quinn wondered where Fedderman had gotten the white board he was holding. Then he realized it was one of the bottom shelves of the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. They were searching the Galin house’s den, or family room, wherein was a large red leather sofa and matching recliner, as well as the oversized oak desk where all the family’s bills were paid and correspondence was written.
Fedderman and Nancy Weaver had removed almost everything from the shelves, even the large encyclopedia set and coffee table art books on the bottom ones. One of the end-bottom shelves had a hole about half an inch in diameter drilled through it at a sharp angle toward the room, so that it was barely noticeable when the white enameled shelf was viewed by anyone facing it. But if it happened to be noticed, you could insert a finger at the angle of the hole, crook it, and easily lift out the shelf. The bottom shelves were set on a baseboard about five inches above the dark brown carpet, and in the space between this shelf and the floor had been hidden stacks of rubberbanded bills of large denominations. Along with the money were several large, plain brown envelopes.
Pearl had also heard Fedderman and came over with Quinn to see what he’d found.
“Neat little hidey-hole,” Fedderman said, nodding toward the space beneath the removed shelf.
“There’s a small fortune there,” Weaver said.
“Large fortune for a cop,” Pearl said. She glanced over at Weaver’s trancelike stare at the money. “Is it giving you ideas?” She and Weaver had never gotten along for more than minutes at a time.
Weaver’s face reddened, but she said nothing and moved away.
“Don’t start, Pearl,” Quinn said softly.
She didn’t bother to look at him.
Fedderman began opening the envelopes. Some of them contained more money, stacks of hundred-dollar bills. Others contained gold and silver jewelry. Even some gold coins.
“Looks like pirate treasure,” Pearl said.
Still miffed at Pearl and feigning disinterest, Weaver had gone into another room where her partner Vern Shults was working. Quinn saw movement near the door and thought she might have calmed down and was returning, but June Galin entered the den.
She stared at the books stacked on the floor, then at the white shelf, which was now leaning against the wall. Then she saw what was going on, and her eyes widened. Quinn watched her closely. She really did seem surprised.
When she got closer and saw what had been hidden beneath the removed shelf, she seemed genuinely shocked. Quinn was afraid her legs might buckle and braced himself to be ready to catch her if she fell.
But she managed to maintain her equilibrium.
“I don’t understand…” she said. But Quinn knew she did. The knowledge had come suddenly, and at a cost.
“Your husband never told you about this?” he asked.
She began to stammer and then clamped her lips shut. Obviously holding back tears, she looked bitterly up at him. “Who do you think he was hiding all this from?”
Quinn understood how she must feel, betrayed by her husband even after his death. Their relationship hadn’t been as loving and trusting as she’d imagined. It had to be difficult for her.
“I don’t know what to believe now,” she said, rubbing the heel of a hand into her eye. “What else might not be true?”
“We’re going to try to find out,” Quinn said, as gently as he could. He believed-his years of experience and his gut told him-this woman was an innocent caught up in her dead husband’s game.
