Detective Feller whisper-sang the chorus of “YMCA” until Nikki scalded him with a glance. Chastened, he folded his arms and looked away at his partner, who shrugged.
“What have we got, Rales?” said Heat to her detective.
Raley consulted a single page of notes. “Not much, as of yet. Check it out.” He swept the room with his arm. “No clothes anywhere, no ID, no nothing. After-hours cleaning crew made the discovery. They’re not English speakers, so Ochoa’s doing the honors in the office getting their statement. Prelim, though, is they say the place closes about one, sometimes two, that’s when they come in. They were doing their usual janitor stuff, figuring they were all alone, and came in here, to the, ah...”
“Torture chamber,” said Nikki. “The rooms are themed. This one’s for torture and humiliation.” She read his look and said, “I worked vice once.”
“So did I,” said Raley.
“I worked it harder.” Heat arched a brow and watched him blush. “So nobody else was here at the discovery. Did they see anyone leaving?”
“Negative.”
“There’s a bubble for a surveillance cam in the lobby,” said Van Meter.
Raley nodded. “On it.” And then he turned to Nikki. “There’s a locked closet in the manager’s office where the cleaners say she keeps the recorder.”
“Wake up the manager,” said Heat. “Tell her to bring in the key, but don’t tell her about the body. Just say there was an attempted break-in. I don’t want her making calls on the way here, and I want to see her reaction when she finds out.”
When Raley stepped out to make the call, Heat asked the CSU technician and the police photographer if they had looked for any clothing or a wallet or ID anywhere else on the premises. She knew what the answer would be — these were professionals — but the bases had to be covered. The obvious, if thought to be too obvious, was what got overlooked and left holes in an investigation if you started assuming and stopped checking. They confirmed no clothing, ID, or other personal effects on their initial sweep.
Detective Feller said, “How about Dutch and I cruise the neighboring blocks, see if anyone who’s up saw anything?”
Van Meter nodded. “At this hour not many people around, but we can hit the diners, garbage collectors, delivery trucks, whatever.”
“Sure,” said Detective Heat. “Appreciate the assist.”
Feller gave her the puppy eyes again. “For you, Nikki? C’mon.” He took out his cell phone and knelt to get an angle of the dead man’s face with its camera. “Won’t hurt to show this around to see if anyone knows him.”
“Good thinking,” she said.
On his way out Detective Feller paused. “Listen, sorry if I was out of line with the Village People thing. Just breaking the tension, you know?”
As much as she couldn’t abide disrespecting a victim, she looked at him and read his embarrassment. As a veteran NYPD detective, she knew it was just misplaced cop humor and not meant to be callous. “I don’t even remember it,” said Heat. He smiled, gave her a head nod, and left.
Lauren Parry knelt on the floor beside the victim, and as she filled in each box in her report, the medical examiner recited to Nikki, “OK, so we have a John Doe, late forties, approximately two-fifty to two-fifty-five.” The ME pointed to her nostrils. “Obvious smoker, definite drinker.”
It was always tough with the Does, thought Nikki. Without a name to go on, you were hobbled at the starting gate. Precious time in the investigation would be spent just figuring out who he was.
“Preliminary TOD... ,” Lauren Parry read the thermometer and continued, “. . . eight to ten P.M.”
“That long ago? You sure?” Heat’s friend looked up at her from the clipboard and stared. The detective said, “OK, so you’re sure.”
“Preliminarily, Nik. I’ll run the usual tests when we get him down to Thirtieth Street, but for now that’s a good window for you.”
“Cause of death?”
“Well, you just want every little thing, don’t you?” said the ME with a twinkle behind her deadpan. Then she grew pensive and turned to consider the corpse. “COD could be asphyxiation.”
“The collar?”
“That’s my best first guess.” Lauren stood and indicated the posture collar biting into the man’s neck, drawn so tight by the strapping at the back it caused his flesh to roll over its edges. “Certainly enough to restrict the windpipe. Plus the broken blood vessels in the eyeballs are consistent with choking.”
“Let’s rewind. Best first guess?’ ” asked Heat.
“Come on, Nikki, you know I always tell you first shot is preliminary.” Then Lauren Parry looked back at the body, pondering again.
“What?”
“Let’s just mark it ‘choking’ as a prelim until I do my autopsy.”
Nikki knew better than to press Lauren for conjecture, just as her friend knew not to push her for speculation. “That’s fine,” she said, all the while knowing that her pal from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner was mulling something.
Lauren opened a plastic drawer in her kit for some swabs and resumed her testing while Nikki did what she always did at a death scene. She clasped her hands behind her and slowly walked the room, occasionally squatting or bending, eyeing the corpse from all angles. This wasn’t just a ritual, it was a fundamental procedure to clear her head of all conclusions and projections. The idea was to open her mind to impressions, to just let in whatever came in and, most of all, simply to notice what she was noticing.
Her sense of the victim was that he wasn’t a physically active person. The sizable roll of soft fat around his midsection suggested a lot of sitting, or at least an occupation that didn’t involve movement or strength like sports, construction, or other manual labor. As with most people, the skin on his upper arms was pale compared to his forearms, but the contrast wasn’t great; no farmer’s tan. That told her not only that he was indoors a lot, but that he either wore long sleeves most of the time or didn’t likely tend a garden or play golf at a club. Even this long after summer there would be more residual tanning. She stepped close to examine his hands, being careful not to breathe on them. They were clean and soft, underscoring her feeling about his indoor life. The nails were neat but not manicured; she usually saw that among middle-aged men who were wealthy or young urban groomers who were more fit. The hair was sparse up top, befitting the age Lauren had fixed, as were the strands of white mixed in with its dull, iron filings color. The brows were wildly bushy, sometimes an indicator of a bachelor or widower, and his salt-and-pepper goatee gave him an air of academia or arts and letters. Nikki looked again at his fingertips and made note of a bluish tinge that looked to be within the skin itself and not topical like from oil paint or ink stains.
Bruises, welts, and abrasions were everywhere, front, back, and sides. Torso, legs, and arms. In keeping with her open-mind approach, the detective tried not to ascribe the marks to a night of sadomasochism. Possible, even likely, given the setting, but not for certain. There were no obvious cuts, punctures, bullet holes, or bleeding she could see.
The rest of the room was immaculate, at least for a torture dungeon. The CSU vacuuming and print dusting might yield some forensic evidence, but there was no visible trash, cigarette butts, or any clues such as a conveniently dropped hotel matchbook with a killer’s room number on it, like you saw in old movies on TCM.
Again, keeping an open mind, Nikki refused to conclude there even was a killer in the classic sense. A homicide? Possibly. Murder? Still just possibly. The door had to be left open for an accidental death from a consensual torture session gone too far, resulting in a panic flight from the dom in the relationship.