She nodded and leaned down, nose to nose with the white face of the corpse, her hands working at the dead flesh which was deceptively warm in the August heat. When she was done, she looked up to the boy who nodded.
Slope was checking Mallory's pretty face for signs of traumatic shock, and he was disconcerted at not finding any. She was all business, lining up the dark blood pools on the white left hand now, and looking back to the boy again. The boy nodded once more. Satisfied, she stood up and crossed the room to stand over the corpse of the old woman.
The woman's throat bore a wound resembling a second mouth. The front of the blood-crusted dress had been cut away, and the brassiere as well. One breast hung deflated against the ribcage. The other had been laid open by the knife and was covered with flies. The buzzing was nearly a roar, and the medical examiner regarded the black cluster of insects as a single feeding organism. The corpse's ancient face was a study in horror as the flies crawled in and out of the open mouths of her face and throat.
Mallory stared at the old woman with as much compassion as she would give to furniture. She looked back to the boy.
"And now this one," she said.
"No," said the boy. "She was that way when I got here."
"Anything else? Did you touch anything, move anything?"
"No. I went through the dead guy's pockets and ran. I threw the wallet back there." He pointed to a loose pile of bricks and garbage in one corner of the room. The wallet lay on a torn, green garbage bag.
Slope caught the eye of a forensic technician. He nodded at the bag and then made a few jots in his notebook.
"You!" said Mallory, calling the man over. "You got the kid's prints?"
The technician held up the card with the splotches of ink in neat squares which identified each printed digit.
She turned to Martin, the uniformed officer who held the handcuffed boy by one bone-thin arm.
"I don't need him anymore. Kick him loose."
Slope stopped his medical examination and watched Martin's young face and saw the patrolman's mistake in the making.
"Mallory, he robbed a corpse," said Martin. "Markowitz's corpse, for Christ's sake. You're gonna let him walk?"
"A deal is a deal. Now kick him loose," said Mallory in a voice, low and even, that said with restrained, under-the-surface violence, "Don't you push your luck with me, not ever." As she walked towards Martin, she seemed to grow in size and power. It was an unsettling illusion, and Slope wondered if she was even aware of it. He thought she might be.
Martin was quick to fish out the cuff key. His reddening face was turned down to the work of unlocking the irons. A moment later, the junkie was gone.
Very practical, Kathy. Why waste time on a trial?
He guessed she hadn't wasted much time on the boy's constitutional right to a lawyer, and he knew she had wasted no time at all in discouraging his right to remain silent.
Now she turned on the photographer. "Okay, it's in prime condition. Shoot."
The peripheral brightness of repeating flashes made spots in Slope's vision as he moved to the second body. He slipped plastic bags over the hands of the woman's corpse, and then, looked up to Mallory. "I'll get to work on it as soon as you release them."
"The old woman's the same pattern as the other two?"
"The same."
"Do Markowitz first," she said. "I'm not gonna learn anything new from her."
"You got it."
"What can you give me now? How long have they been dead?"
Like father, like daughter. He knew there was no tie of blood between them, but there was much of Louis in her.
"Two days, give or take. With the heat and the decomposition, I won't be able to pin it to within five or six hours. But, I can fix a few hours of daylight on either side. Same pattern there."
"How long did Markowitz live?"
"Maybe thirty minutes to an hour. I'm guessing by the blood loss. I'd say the wound was enough to kill him without medical attention, but he died of a massive coronary." Markowitz had had some practice surviving mild attacks. This one must have had the force and effect of a slow train wreck.
"So he knew he was dying."
"Yes." And that hurt her, he knew. He discerned it in the slow deadening of her eyes. So Louis Markowitz had spent his last hour in pain and fear.
Wasn't life crappy that way, Kathy?
"The killer didn't take much time with him," he said. "He was more interested in the woman. Markowitz has defensive wounds on his arms. By the position of the first blood splatter, he put himself between her and the killer." And now he detected the first signs of mild shock with the slight loss of focus in her eyes. "Can I do anything for you, Kathy?"
His first error was using her Christian name on the job, and his second gross presumption was kindness. He was rewarded with universal contempt throughout the crowded tenement room. He should've known better, said the frozen silence of the uniforms, the technicians and the photographer.
"You're done with the body?" she asked, focussed again, all cold to him now, all business.
He nodded.
"Okay," she said, turning to the medical examiner's men. "Bag him and take him out." Now she looked to the far corner where the old woman's body was. "And that one? How long?"
"She only lived a few minutes."
"Bag her."
Her next order cleared out all the unnecessary personnel and that included old friends of the family. Dr Slope left in advance of his team. The way out of the building and into the light was much longer than the way in had been.
Sergeant Kathleen Mallory sat on the only chair in the room while the forensic team crawled on hands and knees, looking for fibers and hairs, the minutiae of evidence. She traced the pattern of blood. He fell there, near the door.
How could you be dead?
And he had gotten up and dragged himself along that blood-smeared wall to the window.
Did you scream for help in this neighborhood of "I didn't see nothin', I didn't hear nothin'."
And there by the window, where the blood had spread around his body in a wide stain in the dust, he had collapsed and died. But it had taken some time. He'd had time to think.
What did you do with the time? What did you leave behind?… Nothing?
She looked up as they were carrying him out in a black plastic body bag.
A small notebook lay open on her lap. She drew a quick slash through the notes on Markowitz's car. It must have been stolen. Nothing had turned up on the impound lots in the two days she'd been hunting for him. It was probably in Jersey by now and painted a different color.
Why did you go in alone?
"Defensive wounds", she wrote on a clean page. So he had tailed the perp to the crime scene and gone in without backup. Why? "Because the woman was about to die", she wrote in a clear neat hand. She could assume he was on foot – no car radio, or he would have called for backup. That was something. So the perp was also on foot.
Her pen scratched across the paper again. "No drive-by snatch". She was certain of that much. The killer had arranged to meet the old woman well away from Gramercy Park – a break in the pattern of the other two murders. There had to be a record on some cabby's log. A rich old woman doesn't ride the subway or the bus. And she wouldn't have come here alone to meet a stranger. She knew her killer.
So, she could also assume that Markowitz had figured out how the park murder was done. Smart old bastard. But if he was so smart, why did he keep it to himself? And since when did a cop with Markowitz's rank do surveillance detail?
One of the forensic techs looked her way and then nervously looked everywhere else.
Was he checking for tears, she wondered, for signs of dissembling? No way. No compassionate leave for Mallory. But Commissioner Beale was such a twit, he might order it. Then what?
The worst of the stench from the old woman's corpse still lingered. Pearl Whitman had not been such a neat kill as Markowitz. The butcher had punctured the intestine. In the absence of food, the cloud of flies was dwindling to a few annoying strafers. There were no windows that were not broken, no barriers to contain them. They whined past her ear, buzzing and black, fat with blood. Gone. All quiet now, only the sound of the brush in the hand of the man at her feet who was looking for omens in the dust and the dried blood.