Though none of it was relevant to the case, Ari explained all this to the two officers from the 17th Precinct who responded to the call at nine-seventeen. Bald as an egg, with nearly forty extra pounds on his five-foot-seven-inch frame, Ari wore a shiny silver-gray suit, a heavy gold watch, and a large diamond ring on his right pinky finger. Right from the start he wanted it known that he was a conscientious, hardworking person whose appetite and ability to sleep would be affected for some time to come and whose confidence in New York and all things American was badly shaken.
He told the officers he had served in the Israeli Army during the Yom Kippur War and had seen a few things in his time. But nothing he had ever seen shocked him as much as the sight of his former employee hanging from an exposed pipe in his bathroom.
Over the weekend Rachel’s head and neck had turned a greenish red under the makeup. After twelve hours, maggots had already emerged from the fly larvae laid in her eyes and nose within ten minutes of her death. By Monday afternoon beetles could be seen working at the dry skin of her arms and shoulders not hidden by the expensive size-fourteen evening gown she was wearing.
The smell of rotting meat had drawn Ari to the bathroom. Her body, blocking access to the toilet, forced him outside to the street, where he vomited loudly in the gutter next to his van before pulling himself together enough to call the police.
It took only twenty minutes for the commanding officer at the 17th Precinct to connect this homicide with the boutique murder at the Two-O. There are twenty-two thousand law enforcement agencies and no centralized homicide reporting in the United States. If the second case had been in Staten Island or New Jersey, or Long Island, or indeed nearly anyplace else, the authorities might not have put them together. Since the first was just across town, Lieutenant Braun, the officer in charge, was located within minutes and called in his troops.
April worked the eight-to-four shift on Monday. She had spent most of those hours interviewing a dozen reasonable-sounding, wholesome-looking right-to-lifers who claimed Roger McLellan was in Albany the weekend Maggie died. Several of them had sheets a mile long for cutting phone and power lines, spray-painting and stink-bombing abortion clinics, threatening doctors and clients. Even though no demonstration had occurred at the State House, or anywhere else in Albany, during the crucial time in question, April had not been able to shake their story that McLellan had been there.
On Tuesday her hours were four in the afternoon to twelve at night. She’d started studying for her Sergeant’s exam at five A.M., her hundreds of pages of notes and exercises laid out all over the bed and floor. The phone rang at two minutes to ten.
“April?”
“Yeah?” she confirmed without enthusiasm.
“Mike. There’s been another one.”
The adrenaline kicked in like a shot, instantly filling her with energy. With just those words she knew what he meant. “Where?”
“Little boutique on Second Avenue. Fifty-fifth Street.”
“I’m on my way.” The location rang a bell. It was where the other friend of Maggie’s lived, the one who didn’t get out of bed.
40
By the time April got there, over fifteen vehicles and thirty cops jammed the area that was already roped off with sticky crime-scene tape. The two beat officers from the 17th Precinct who got there first and were responsible for securing the scene were still fighting a losing battle trying to keep interested colleagues out of European Imports. At least a dozen people had marched into the store to have a look. All had come out in a hurry, green as the corpse.
The ABC news van that April had seen the week before outside the bagel store on Fifty-sixth Street must have picked up the police call while they were getting breakfast. They were already setting up for a special broadcast.
“Get them out of here!” Lieutenant Braun barked at the beat officers, pointing to the news team.
Two other officers from the 17th were trying to direct the traffic. The street was a mess. Vehicles, including half a dozen blue-and-whites from each precinct, the news van, an EMS ambulance, and a crime-scene station wagon were all triple-parked on Second Avenue, slowing the traffic to a frustrated trickle.
April had double-parked her white Le Baron a block down and walked back. She heard Braun barking orders before she could see him. The first person she saw was Igor unloading his equipment—the cameras, evidence boxes, kits, and the vacuum. Good, they called for the same team that worked the other case. She waved.
Lieutenant Braun and Sergeant Sanchez were deep in conversation on the sidewalk in front of the store.
“Ah so, Detective Woo, thanks for joining us,” Braun said without turning his head in her direction.
April nodded at him, brushing off the sarcasm with a smile. She figured him for a heart attack in the not too distant future and comforted herself with the thought that someday she’d be the Lieutenant and he’d be dead.
“Morning, sir,” she murmured. From downcast eyes she noted that Braun’s stringy hair was thinning fast. He was wearing the same powder-blue jacket he’d worn the week before. It still looked clean. Maybe he had more than one.
“How ya doing, Mike?”
He looked at his watch, then at her. “You made good time.”
“Yeah, I took the tunnel.”
She didn’t have to ask why they were hanging around on the street. The air conditioner was on, and the unmistakable odor of a not-so-recent death pumped out to the sidewalk like the frying garlic from Chinese restaurants.
“Nobody reported this all weekend?” she asked, wrinkling her nose.
“Nope. Apparently the owner turned on the air conditioner when he got here. He said he wanted to air out the store, didn’t want to lose his merchandise,” Mike told her.
“Oh.” They’d all been contaminated often enough to know how persistently this odor lingered in the nostrils, on the skin, in whatever clothes they were wearing. It would cling to the walls and carpets of the store itself, like smoke after a fire.
“Did he touch anything else?” Igor, loaded down with cardboard evidence boxes, stopped beside them for a second.
“Igor, do you know Lieutenant Braun?” April asked.
“We’re old friends,” Braun said. “Keep-your-fucking-hands-behind-your-back Stan, we call him.”
Igor looked offended. “It’s the rules,” he muttered. “Some of you people can’t keep your hands to yourself. Mess up the whole thing. It’s not a hard one to keep your hands in your pockets.”
He jerked his head at Ari Vittleman, standing at a safe distance down the block, surrounded by officers physically preventing ABC from attempting to get their story.
“Did he touch anything else? I got to know.”
“He says no.” Braun turned to April. “He says they close at seven on Saturdays. He figures it happened about then.”
“Why? That was the storm day, wasn’t it? She could have closed earlier.” April looked around at the proximity of other stores. Who could have seen what in that rain? She saw the boutique had the kind of metal barricade that pulled down. Had it been down when the owner came? Would the neighbors have noticed anyone going in, coming out at closing time? From here she could see the plumbing supply store and the apartment above, where Maggie’s friend lived. The guy who claimed he hadn’t seen her in years but whose name and number were in her phone book. Her mind whirled with questions.
“That’s what your pal here said. What are you, hotshots or something?” Braun demanded.
“Yeah. Or something.” Sanchez smiled at April.