case—without letting it get to her. But she honestly didn’t know whether she’d still be the same person when that day came.
For now, she did her best to hide her emotions from Berry and gave a silent nod to the girl in the bag. Now it was time to take a more analytical look at the body.
What had been the girl’s bright white T-shirt was soaked through with near-black blood. Beneath slashes in the cotton fabric, Ellie saw several deep gashes in the abdomen, sides, and chest. She counted at least six. Some of them appeared to be long but shallow slices, perhaps inflicted in a struggle. But one wound in her chest and another near her liver evidenced deep, forceful, and, most likely, the fatal stabs.
Ellie’s inspection was interrupted by the cheerful
“You were gonna let them cart away our body before Double J got here?”
“Christ,” the technician said. “Let me guess. This is your partner?”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
11:00 A.M.
Inside Apartment 4C, Ellie counted three officers from the crime scene unit. One was photographing copious blood patterns—a combination of spatter, drips, and pools—on the bleached bamboo floors in a small dining area just inside the apartment’s entrance. Another stood in the galley kitchen, carefully placing a drinking glass inside a plastic evidence bag. A final CSU officer was on her knees, dusting a door leading from the right side of the living room for fingerprints.
The apartment itself was luxurious—floor-to-ceiling glass windows, high ceilings, stainless steel kitchen appliances—but its furnishings were not much different than what one would expect for a college student, or at least one who could afford new purchases instead of the Goodwill merchandise that Ellie still depended on. Past the dining table, the main living area was just large enough to house a brown upholstered sectional sofa, a glass coffee table, and a television stand. Ellie was fairly certain that she recognized at least some of the furniture from an IKEA catalog she had browsed the previous week before throwing it into the recycling bin.
The patrol officer who had held the door for Berry and his gurney stood awkwardly near the dining table, on the opposite side of the blood. He had dark, wavy hair and a prominent nose. The sleeves of his uniform pulled against biceps that had clearly seen some time at the gym. According to a nameplate on the left side of his chest, his name was A. Colombo.
“Did he finally manage to get the meat cart into the elevator? I thought that dude was going to stroke out from the physical exertion. Geez, jog a mile or something, dude.”
Ellie gave him her best deadpan look. Rogan wasn’t going to let it go with just a look.
“Did someone ask you for your stand-up routine, Bob Saget?”
“Just offering some levity, Detectives. You know, comic relief. They say it helps with, you know, the morbidity.”
“Laughter cures diseases, does it?” Rogan asked.
“Huh?”
“You said it helps with the morbidity, which refers to the rate of a disease or illness. It does not mean a mood that is morbid, which is the concept I believe you intended to convey, Officer.”
“I’m sorry. Huh?”
“Forget it. You know the backstory here or not, Colombo?”
“The victim’s parents called the precinct this morning wanting us to check in on her.”
“They’re sisters?” Rogan asked.
“Who?”
“The victims. You said the victims’ parents. Are you saying they were sisters?”
“No, sorry. At least, I don’t think so. The one victim’s parents—the one who died—”
“She have a name?”
“Um, yeah.” He stole a glance at his notebook and then tucked it back into his chest pocket. “Megan Gunther, according to the super. Anyway, that vic’s parents were trying to call her, and she wasn’t answering the phone. They got the brush-off from the dispatcher, so then they called the condo’s super. He used the building’s keys to enter and found…well, you can get the picture. Turns out the other vic had crawled her way to the phone to call 911 after the bad guy left, and paramedics showed up right behind him. Me and my partner responded, too.”
Ellie jumped in before Rogan could correct Colombo’s grammar. “Your partner’s posted downstairs?”
Rogan wasn’t usually so critical. Either this officer had done something to earn a place on Rogan’s shit list, or something else was bothering her partner. She had a bad feeling his mood might be related to his trip to the courthouse that morning to brief Judge Bandon on the Mancini case.
“Yeah. Making sure no one’s coming up except authorized personnel.”
“And you’re keeping a log of who’s going in and out of here?” she verified.
He patted the pocket that held his notebook. “Just need to add the two of you.”
“Good man,” she said. “Got to keep track of the crime scene.”
“Hey, you look pretty young. How long’d it take you to make it to Homicide? Cuz, you know, that’s basically my dream. I mean, with a name like Colombo, you just got to go for it. I’d get the tan trench coat and everything.”
“Just keep the log. Detectives Hatcher and Rogan. Manhattan South Homicide. In at eleven-oh-two a.m. Write it down.”
Maintaining the crime scene log was not the only thing that Officer Colombo had done right that morning. He had also instructed the building’s superintendent to return to his office on the building’s second floor.
Ellie knocked on the office door. She detected a European accent in the voice that instructed her to come in.
“You’re Gorsky?”
“Yes. People around here call me Andrei.” The man’s eyes were red-rimmed.
“Ellie Hatcher. I’m a detective with the NYPD’s homicide unit. It’s not easy walking into a scene like that upstairs.”
“No. It was not easy.”
“My understanding is that one of the girls’ parents asked you to check up on her? Megan Gunther?”
“Yes, that is right. The tenant’s name was Megan. My phone was already ringing when I walked into the office this morning. It was Megan’s mother saying her daughter was not answering her telephone. She wanted me to check on her.”
Ellie glanced at her watch. “So this was what time?”
Gorsky stared at the black cordless phone on his desk. “The first time, it was probably just before nine o’clock in the a.m.”
Ellie let silence fill the room, knowing that the superintendent would eventually explain what he meant by the first time.
“I try to tell her that it is not up to me to check on the residents. This is not a college dormitory, you know. If they want someone to be the guardian to their children, they shouldn’t buy them their own apartments.”
“All right, Mr. Gorsky. I think I understand. But you went upstairs to check on Megan?”
“Eventually, yes, I said I would do it. But I have workers here this morning to install a new cooling system. I have another resident locked out of her storage unit crying in the lobby that she will lose her job if she doesn’t get it open and find a very important file of some kind that she is missing. I have to find another resident’s keys for a realtor who is coming but I cannot find them. And at first, you know, Mrs. Gunther wanting me to check on her daughter did not seem so important.”
“So she called more than once.”
“Four times she called me in twenty minutes before I went upstairs. We are not even supposed to go in. The
