Braun shot her an appraising look. “Ready to go in?”
“Any time.” April took out her notebook and shifted her bag from one shoulder to another.
“Clasp your hands behind your back,” Igor called over his shoulder.
“What a piece of work. How am I supposed to take notes with my hands behind my back?” she muttered.
“It’s the rules.” Braun laughed at his joke.
April moved inside the store. She would take notes of everything—the weather, the time, the placement of each article in the small store, the whole setup. She’d never forgotten the example given in a John Jay class of a cut-and-dried homicide that was lost in court because the two detectives on the case couldn’t agree whether an article of clothing, totally irrelevant to the case, had been on the bed or the floor of the room next to where the crime had been committed. The defense attorney convinced the jury if the police couldn’t be trusted to agree on what was at the scene of a crime, none of the rest of their “evidence” could be trusted either. The guy got off.
April moved toward the smell.
“You going to be okay, Detective?” Braun asked.
“Yessir,” April replied. Lot of them didn’t know it, but after about three minutes in a very bad smell the olfactory nerves went numb. All those people who kept running in and out of horrendous crime-scene stenches for fresh air got hit with the same blast of nausea each time they returned. Anybody who lived with the pungent pickling and drying rotting smells of the Orient knew that.
But when she looked through the open door, she could not control a spasm of revulsion. This was worse than Maggie Wheeler. Clearly, it had been hot in there. The girl’s body was not in good condition. It had already begun to swell from the gases forming inside. Decomposition works from the inside out.
Aware of Braun behind her, gauging her reaction, April pinched her nose and breathed through her mouth, her internal camera continuing to click. What was she seeing here? What was the story? On the grimy bathroom floor under the hanging body there appeared to be some congealed blood along with the other fluids that had leaked out of her orifices after death. April looked for an open wound that would have bled. She didn’t see one. Several two-to-three-inch patches of blistered skin were visible on the dead girl’s neck and shoulders, but April had seen that before and knew they were post-mortem artifacts. Bacteria was eating away the tissues under the skin.
April noted that the rope the girl was hanging by appeared to be the same kind used in the Wheeler murder. Obviously the huge black evening gown on the small body, and the tinges of blue and red makeup, partially dissolved and further distorted by feeding beetles, told the same twisted tale that was understood only by the teller. Little girl dressed up as a big girl. Strangled. But what if it were a little boy dressed up as a big girl?
She remembered Ducci’s suggestion that they were looking for a transvestite. But transvestites didn’t kill. So, who was it? Where did this put them with McLellan now? As April wondered if anyone had bothered to call Ducci, the cop pushed into the space, stomach first.
“Hello, pretty one. How’s it going?”
She shook her head, backing out so he could take her place.
“Clasp your hands behind your back,” Igor admonished from the front of the store, where he’d begun dusting for fingerprints.
“Oh, fuck off,” the Duke told him.
“Nice talk.” Braun turned to Sanchez, who was busy taking notes. “Well?”
“Looks similar. No marks on the door. No signs of struggle in the store. Similar rope, not tied correctly for a suicide. Although, if the other hadn’t come first, this might have the appearance of a suicide.”
“Yeah?” Braun moved toward the door, hot-footed it outside. Sanchez followed him.
“She could have jumped off the toilet,” Sanchez said.
“Sure, and dressed herself up like that first.”
“I wonder where McLellan was Saturday night.”
April watched Ducci take in the scene. They were honored. His workload was too heavy for him to get out much anymore. For a half hour he worked with Igor and Mako, collecting and labeling, putting items in paper bags and then cardboard boxes. Like April, Ducci seemed puzzled about the blood on the floor. But, not to worry, blood wasn’t his business.
After the body had been sketched and photographed, Ducci lifted the black silk skirt, looking for a wound. All he could see was an irregular semicircle of small marks on the corpse’s right ankle.
“Looks like a bite,” he remarked loud enough to be heard in Jersey.
April looked where he pointed. From the showroom she could hear the sound of Sanchez’s derisive laugh at this outrageous speculation. “Oh, sure, oh, sure. Four days later on a decomposed body he can identify a bite mark.”
“Looks like the work of insects,” April said.
Ducci straightened and pointed to the mottled hands. “That’s insects. Just a mess with no particular pattern wounds. Here, there’s a distinct pattern.”
April nodded, though she had her doubts. Ducci was a trace man. It was up to the M.E. to tell them what happened to the body. Where the blood on the floor came from and what made the marks on the hands, the shoulders, and the ankle.
Sanchez called her from the street. “The Lieutenant wants us to go home now.”
April took one last look around and closed her notebook.
41
Jason sat in his swivel desk chair. Milicia was opposite him in the chair he used with patients who liked to lie on his leather sofa. Her face was very pale. He could see a muscle twitch in her cheek. She was wearing a conservative suit and very little makeup. The sensitive skin under her eyes was dark and bruised-looking. She’d lost a few pounds. The stress in her face, and what appeared to be sleep deprivation, made her look vulnerable and seriously frightened. Jason could feel his body stiffen in defense against any sympathy that would work against his being able to help her.
“What is your real concern, Milicia?” he asked, getting to the core of the matter right at the start.
“I told you I was afraid Camille would hurt somebody, and now I know she has.” Her words were angry. She spat them out at him, showing him how furious she still was at his being out of town when she needed him. She regarded him accusingly, as if it were his fault that it had taken twenty-four hours to make contact. He knew it was the time lapse she would count, not the attempts he made to reach her when she was out.
Milicia had insisted that she needed to see him Tuesday, his first day back in the office. There was no putting her off. In order to work it out, he’d had to reschedule his appointment with Jenny, the woman who did his secretarial work and bookkeeping.
He was used to hearing his patients accuse him of everything under the sun. He was concerned by the way Milicia looked, but unmoved by her rage.
“You think … Camille … has hurt someone?” he said flatly, careful to keep the disbelief out of his voice.
“Killed someone, Jason. Don’t you listen to the news?”
He nodded. Of course he did. “So?”
She stared at him as if he were retarded, or worse. “There’s been another boutique murder.”
“Oh?” Her face was flushed. He could see she had begun to sweat.
“Just like the one last week,” she prompted. “Right here on Columbus. Don’t you remember?”
He nodded. “Salesgirl in a boutique, wasn’t it?” He’d read about it.
“I had a feeling then. I had this really creepy feeling.” Milicia covered her face with her fingers so he couldn’t see her. “I just had a feeling Camille had something to do with it. And now there’s been another one. The truth is, I’m terrified, and I feel responsible.”