“I told you, Alex. She was yelling at the rookie in Spanish, telling him-like he told me-that if they came back and bothered her again, she’d get Leighton to have them fired. That kind of thing. Seems pretty clear she’s used to throwing his name around.”
“Might have had some value until a few hours ago. Ethan Leighton’s name will get her squat now,” Mike said.
“Officer Guerrero tried to make that clear,” Mercer said, chuck-ling about the encounter. “I didn’t get the exact translation, but she blasted him after that. He told her she could call nine-one-one as often as she wanted, but nobody was going to show up again. Told her they’d had enough craziness for one day.”
“The fox who cried wolf,” Mike said. “Not to worry. I’m assuming the congressman’s wife will have him securely tied to the mattress tonight. By his balls. And in their spare bedroom, I’m sure.”
“I’d really like to talk to Salma before Lem sits her down,” I said. “We’ll never get the true story once he starts spinning her.”
“And I’m gonna pass out if I don’t put some dinner in my stomach soon.”
“I’m right behind you,” Mercer said.
Pomeroy’s assistant reappeared in the doorway. “Dr. P is ready for you, Mike. The men are here.”
I followed Mike and Mercer down the corridor to the family reception room. I wasn’t usually involved in this painful stage of the process, but I had been to the morgue often enough to observe the anxious loved ones of homicide victims waiting among strangers to confirm the news that no one wanted to get.
“I’ll stay outside the viewing room. Let’s not overwhelm them,” I said.
“Neither one of these guys is missing a relative or close friend, Coop. They’re just shipmates. They volunteered to try to give us names, if they recognize these first three victims.”
Mercer and I listened as Mike introduced himself, explained the process to the Ukrainian interpreter the cops had found during the day, and then separated the two men so that neither could hear what the other one told us.
He led the first guy-Pavlo-who appeared to be in his twenties, into the cubicle adjacent to the reception area with the interpreter. When Mike had positioned him in front of the glass partition, he pulled back the short blue curtains that covered the space. In the old days, when I first came on the job, the viewers were in the same room as the deceased. Now there was the small extra comfort of being on the far side of a piece of glass-unable to smell death, not tempted to touch the corpse one last time.
I could see the side of Pavlo’s face when he looked at the body of the young man the city had named John Doe #1. His expression didn’t change, but he swallowed hard and the lump of his Adam’s apple protruded farther before resting back in his neck as he pursed his lips and gulped in a breath of air.
He spoke in a whisper to the interpreter. “The boy is from his hometown,” the interpreter said. “Doesn’t know his name, but he has a brother on the ship, who made it off safely. Is maybe seventeen, eighteen years old, this one. Brother is Viktor. You will find him, please?”
Pavlo put his head down and stepped back.
“How do you say ‘I’m sorry’?” Mike asked the interpreter, who repeated the sentiment to the young man. “Tell him we’ve got to do it again, understand?”
The young man nodded his head.
“Jane Doe Number One,” Mike turned and said to me, since I couldn’t see the body that had been placed on the elevated lift for display.
Pavlo looked at the murdered girl on the gurney and seemed to be studying her face.
The interpreter gave us the English version of the phrases he had heard. “Says the girl looks familiar to him, but he doesn’t know anything about her. Doesn’t remember seeing her, speaking to her, on the crossing. But most of the girls kept to themselves, unless they were married or they had brothers and cousins on board.”
“Would you ask him,” I said, speaking softly, “if there is even a single thing about her that he remembers?”
The interpreter put his head closer to Pavlo, then turned back to us.
“Is pretty girl, no?”
“That’s what he said?”
“No, no. Is what I am saying. Pavlo says nothing. Tells me there were three hundred people on this ship, maybe more. Can’t remember meeting this girl. Me, I think you wouldn’t forget her. Is very pretty.”
“If I wanted to solicit the opinions of the Little Odessa Senior Citizens Lonely Hearts Club, I wouldn’t have started with an evening outing at the morgue,” Mike said to me under his breath as he closed the curtains.
When they opened again three minutes later, Jane Doe #2, one of the drowning victims, was displayed to Pavlo. I couldn’t see her, but knew that she had been cleaned up-her skin washed, all the grit from the beach gone, and her gnarled hair untangled by Pomeroy’s assistants after he had finished his meticulous dissection of her body.
The young man picked his head up and again, there was very little reaction. He talked to the interpreter, who turned to Mike to fill him in.
“This one he doesn’t know either. He and a friend tried to talk to her once, because she was very sick-how you say stomach sick?”
“Nauseous?” Mike said. “Seasick?”
“Yes, is that. Was very sick one day when sea is rough and being thrown up. But she seemed very shy and didn’t want their help.”
“But does he know even her first name? What city she’s from?”
The interpreter asked but drew a blank. “Pavlo says the young women slept in different part of boat, ate apart from guys, hardly no mix at all. Doesn’t know.”
Pavlo was sent back to reception and Mike guided in a second youth named Taras. Like Pavlo, he had been dressed in ill-fitting clothes that the NYPD must have picked up at the nearest thrift shop in Queens. This one was nervous and appeared to be frightened.
“What’s going to happen to him?” the interpreter asked Mike. “Is all he wants to know. What you going to do with him?”
“Coop, how do we tell the kid it’s going to get worse before it gets better?” Mike scratched his head.
“You tell him,” Mercer said, “that the first thing he has to do is help with this. Then I’ll take Pavlo and him inside and explain where they’re going tonight. There’s a facility in Nassau County that’s got beds. It’s actually not too bad.”
“C’mon, Taras,” Mike said. “Pick up your head.”
At the sound of the curtains rustling, Taras looked up at his shipmate. Immediately, startled and shaken, he stepped back, bumping into the interpreter and crying as he blurted out what he knew.
“The boy’s name is Gregor, he is telling me. They went to school together. Yes, he is Viktor’s brother and, yes, is he seventeen. They were very good friends.”
Mercer stepped over and encircled the young man’s slim shoulders in his strong embrace. “Thank him for us. Thank him for doing this. We know how hard it is.”
The interpreter conveyed the message, which was merely Mercer’s introduction to a further probe.