33
Sal Vitali knew this was going to be one of his worst days.
“I wanted to look the place over before my company seriously considered leasing it,” Arnold Penington said. He gulped. “That’s when I found it. Her, I mean.”
It, Vitali thought, as he looked at what was left of the woman. She was hanging upside down from her bound ankles attached by rope to a beam, a long incision made from her pubis to her throat. She was opened up and hollowed out like Hettie Davis, only the long period of time had…Vitali, stared slack-mouthed at the dried, leathery state of her body. He could only think of it as cured meat.
The hardened mass on the concrete floor, beneath and alongside the woman’s upside-down head and gracefully draped arms, was what was left of her internal organs. Her eyes were missing-thanks to the rats that lived in the long-abandoned warehouse-and three of her fingers on the dried hand that lay partly on the concrete floor had been nibbled to bare bone.
Vitali heard the warehouse’s steel overhead door clatter and clank up, then lower. His partner, Harold Mishkin, he of the turbulent stomach, had just entered the warehouse after talking to the uniforms outside who’d secured the scene.
Vitali considered telling Mishkin not to look at the dead woman, then thought better of it. Mishkin took pride in the fact that he could screw his courage tight and look at what homicide detectives too often saw without losing his lunch. Occasionally his stomach had its way.
Arnold Penington had moved well back and stood silently, not looking in the direction of the dangling body. Mishkin continued to advance. He was about twenty feet away, waving at the dirty, narrow windows lining the east wall of the building. “We oughta get more light in here, Sal.”
“Maybe not, Harold,” Vitali said in his gravel-box voice.
Mishkin stopped cold and stared at what was left of the woman dangling upside down from the warehouse beam. His hand floated up to his mustached mouth.
Almost immediately he gained control of himself and pretended he’d raised his hand to stroke his mustache.
He said “Jesus, Sal.”
“Him and his dad,” Vitali, the lapsed Catholic, said. “I don’t see how they could let something like this happen.”
“Just like the other one,” Mishkin said. “Hettie Davis.”
Vitali could smell the menthol cream Mishkin always dabbed beneath his nostrils to help keep his food down at violent crime scenes.
“Gotta be the same guy,” Vitali said. “She’s been gutted and cleaned like some kinda game animal.”
“Yeah, but…what else happened to her? I mean, her eyes and all…”
“Rats,” Vitali said.
Mishkin turned away and bent over. He still didn’t lose it, though. He turned back, straightened up slowly as if in pain, and wiped his forearm across his mouth.
Vitali was proud of him. Mishkin should have been in another business, or riding a desk at some precinct house in a gentler part of town. It was where he’d be if he weren’t so damned good at his job.
Whatever the physical impact of what he saw, Mishkin’s mind was still working, along with his commitment to the job. He paced off a slow circle around the upside-down, dangling body. There was a floor drain nearby, down which most of her blood must have flowed. It was obvious, too, that her throat had been slashed, probably while she was alive and hanging there. The things people did…
“First Hettie Davis, now this one,” Vitali said. “We’ve got a set.”
“Judging by the condition of the body, this one was killed way before Davis,” Mishkin said.
“Yeah, but either way…”
“I know what you mean, Sal. We’ve got us a serial killer.” He finished his slow circle and wound up standing near Vitali. After another glance at the dead woman, he shivered. “What’s wrong with people, Sal?”
“Some people, you mean,” Vitali said.
“Yeah. Thank God only some.”
“I don’t know what’s wrong with them, Harold. Maybe that’s why we do what we do, trying to figure it out.”
“That and we like to get paid,” Mishkin said, playing hard.
Sirens sounded outside.
“Reinforcements,” Mishkin said, figuring more radio cars and a crime scene unit. Maybe an ambulance. More than once somebody assumed to be dead turned out to be alive. It wouldn’t happen this time, though.
Neither Vitali nor Mishkin said anything for several minutes. Penington, even farther away now, remained silent. Then the steel overhead door at the other end of the warehouse rattled open again and let in a blast of bright light. Silhouetted against the afternoon brilliance, half a dozen figures entered the warehouse. Among them, Vitali recognized the short, chesty form of Dr. Julius Nift, the obnoxious little medical examiner.
“The little prick’s here,” Mishkin said.
“We’ve seen enough of the victim,” Vitali said. He nodded toward the advancing figures. “She belongs to them now.”
“No,” Mishkin said, “she belongs to us.”
34
Hobbs would kill her if he knew she was doing this, stopping for a drink at Melody’s on her way home from the doctor. But she felt she had the right to stop, to steady her nerves and to celebrate her relief.
Though Lavern Neeson hadn’t really expected a problem, she was nonetheless relieved. Her mammogram had turned out negative. Dr. Chivas hadn’t seemed to notice any injury to her internally bruised torso, which she had held as stiff and still as possible. She did sense that he’d noticed the makeup covering her facial bruises, but he didn’t say anything. There were all kinds of ways she might have gotten those marks, from a fall down the stairs to a quarrel with a neighbor. Anyway, Dr. Chivas wasn’t the sort who pried. If his patients wanted him to know something, they’d tell him. Then he would act. He would do what he could to heal.
Lavern had left the medical clinic and walked only a few blocks toward her subway stop before spotting Melody’s Lounge. She’d noticed it before, but had never gone inside. This afternoon, with something to drink to, and the city so hot, she did go in.
She was soon situated on a bar stool near the door. The lounge was dim, and there was a blues tune playing so you could barely hear it. Peggy Lee, one of her all-time favorite singers. There was a woman who’d overcome a rough youth, who’d had to cover her bruises with makeup. What a career Peggy Lee had enjoyed. What a life she’d led, after a stumbling start. Listening to her always made Lavern feel better.
Aside from a woman behind the bar, there were only three other people in Melody’s. A couple sat at one of the tables along the wall, lost in the promise of each other’s eyes. Halfway down the bar from Lavern a guy sat staring straight ahead maybe at himself, in the back bar mirror, sipping something amber from an on-the-rocks glass. There were two identical empty glasses in front of him.
Kind of early for that kind of drinking, Lavern thought. Though the way Peggy was slowly meting out the blues, it might have been a gloomy two in the morning. The woman behind the bar, tall and with a top-bun hairdo that upped her to over six feet, approached and smiled a hello. Lavern ordered a Bloody Mary. Almost a health beverage.
Of course Hobbs would still object to it, as he objected to almost everything she did. He’d made her promise him she’d stop drinking, trying to get her to pretend along with him that she was developing a problem.
The tall woman-maybe Melody-had the drink before Lavern within a few minutes, then withdrew to the far end of the bar, where she’d been working on what looked like a crossword puzzle. Peggy Lee launched into a song warning her lover not to smoke in bed. Other than that it was quiet, with only soft traffic noises filtering in from
