The tall man took another step away into the torrent. Doohan again pulled at the tall man's sleeve. The tall man tried to get away but he slipped on the sidewalk. Both men tripped through the front door of the bar, Doohan still holding on to the sleeve of the tall man. What Malcom and the regulars at the bar saw next was incredible, unbelievable and also the last thing they ever saw.
The world ended.
The explosion came from Malcom's right. The wall began to crumble and squeal. Frank and Anthony just managed to get off their bar stools as the ceiling groaned and began to fall slowly like an elevator in slow motion. There was a second explosion and Malcom was thrown back against the grill. He put a hand behind him to steady himself as the building screeched. His hand rested on the searing grill. He smelled burning flesh but knew that he had a far bigger problem than a scorched palm.
Pots, pans toppled. Sauce spilled. Artichokes flew. Malcom tried to remain standing, tried to make his way to the narrow kitchen door without falling. He failed.
The building was imploding. He could no longer see Frank or Anthony nor the bar or the window or Doohan or the tall man. Malcom went down when the refrigerator rose toward him and the floor came up at a rollercoaster angle.
Then there was an instant of silence.
Then there was a settling groan of walls, ceiling, tilted furniture and a section of the bar falling with a delayed thud.
Then there was a voice.
Then there was the rain.
2
IT WAS THE SIXTH DAY of rain. Ten people had been reported electrocuted by fallen power lines. Flooding in some subway lines had stopped trains. An Indonesian cab driver driven mad by the inching traffic on Second Avenue shot a Jamaican cabbie who had stalled out in front of him. Trash cans and dumpsters were turned over and garbage cascaded down streets. Rats scurried up from the sewers, running for the nearest building.
"Alf the sacred river is running amok," shouted one of Manhattan's army of mad street corner and subway prophets. He was a gangly creature with obligatory scraggly beard. He called out calmly, loudly over the beat, beat, beat of the rain. He would have been completely ignored if it weren't for the fact that he was completely nude. As it was, almost everyone passing by either ignored him or pretended to.
New Yorkers had seen it all. Well, almost all. There was still plenty to behold.
Under the crime scene tent on the rooftop above the Brilliance Deli, Detective Mac Taylor snapped photographs of the mutilated corpse, the few faint traces of blood that hadn't been washed away, the potted plants along the walls, the runoff holes and funnels. The dead woman whose skirt was pushed up was about fifty years old, slightly heavy-set, short dark hair with visible graying at the roots.
Mac had already taken dozens of photographs of the roof before he even entered the tent.
At Mac's side, Officer George Weathers, young, stone faced, shrouded in his dark raincoat, looked at Mac. Weathers had seen enough of the corpse.
"Call came at two minutes after nine," said Weathers over the beating sound of the rain on the tent. "Deli owner downstairs. Said blood was pouring on his awning. I got here just before ten. I was over on Lex helping an old man with a heart attack."
Weathers was talking to avoid looking at the corpse, thinking about it, being haunted by it. Mac understood. "Who is she?" he asked.
"Patricia Mycrant, resident in this building, apartment sixteen. Lives…lived with her mother, Gladys Mycrant."
Mac nodded again. The scene had been badly compromised by rain and the delay in his getting here. It had taken him and Detective Donald Flack forty minutes. Normally, it would have taken ten minutes from the forensics lab. If it hadn't been for Flack's stock car driving, it would have taken at least twenty minutes longer.
Water dribbled down Mac's neck under his raincoat. He ignored it.
"Search the roof for a weapon. Then search the ground on all sides of the building. After that, the hallways and the rooftop next door. Talk to the deli owner, anyone else, customers, waiters, cooks," said Mac. "Ask if they saw anyone going into the building before nine or coming out after they saw the bloody rain."
He and Flack would go over the rooftops and hallways and check on every tenant in the building. It didn't hurt to keep Weathers busy and he might turn something up.
"Right," said Weathers, who quickly left the tent.
Mac knelt next to the dead woman, took a dozen more photographs and then placed the waterproof camera in his kit. Then he examined the corpse of Patricia Mycrant.
There was a blood-tinged slit next to her left breast, just under her arm. Mac carefully unbuttoned her rain-drenched shirt and examined the neat wound. With latex gloves on his hands he gently touched the flesh around the wound. No ribs were broken. Whoever struck this blow either knew what he or she was doing or got very lucky.
It was very possible, even likely, given the look on the dead woman's face, that she had been alive while the mutilation occurred.
Mac removed small glass vials from his kit a few feet away and took samples from the wounds. Mac didn't use plastic containers. The possibility of the plastic contaminating a sample was a chance he was unwilling to take. His team had been stung at trial once because of possible contamination of evidence in a plastic vial. It wouldn't happen again.
The body would have to be taken to the lab where an autopsy would determine how many times the woman had been stabbed, how deep the wounds had been. If they were lucky and thorough, the autopsy would also provide some information about the weapon including its length, thickness, width and, if the weapon chipped off or hit bone or hard tissue, there might be enough evidence to identify the knife if it was found. If the weapon was found in the possession of the killer, residue- blood, shards of metal- could also identify it as the murder weapon.
The attack appeared to be sexual, but that could be a cover-up. An examination would determine if there had been penetration. If there had, there might be semen, which meant there might be DNA.
He moved the body slightly to check lividity and determined from the dark layer on the corpse's back that the woman had probably died where she lay. Beneath the body was a crumpled Starbucks coffee cup.
Mac took a photograph of the cup, then carefully deposited the cup in an evidence bag. Mac checked the dead woman's hands, scraped under her fingernails and deposited the residue in a tube.
After bagging her hands, Mac examined the pebbled rooftop around the body. He used a compact Alternate Light Source to look at and around the body again. The ALS was made up of a powerful lamp containing the ultraviolet visible and infrared components of light. The unit then filtered down the light into individual color bands or wavelengths that enhanced the visibility of evidence by the glow or fluorescence of evidence, the darkness of the evidence and small particles revealed by the light.
Although invisible to the naked eye, the ALS revealed a faint trail of blood that led beyond the tent. Mac followed the trail. It led him to the edge of the roof and to one of the drain funnels, the one through which the torrent of blood and rain had cascaded down to the awning below. Without touching the tile rim, Mac examined it. In the oily dirt there was a handprint the rain had not washed away.
Mac thought he could make out the hint of blood in the print. A scan of the print proved him right. There were no visible ridges in the print. The killer had probably worn gloves very much like the ones Mac was wearing. The prints would yield nothing, but the fact that the killer had stood at the edge of the roof might. Someone could have looked up, seen the killer. Not an outlandish possibility. Blood had cascaded down to the awning below. People had seen it. Someone might reasonably be curious enough to step out in the street and look up to see the killer with blood on his hands looking down.