An aria from “Tosca” blared into the room. Cody jumped a foot off the floor. Charley’s ears stood straight up and almost spun around as the sound blasted them. Cody quickly flicked the switch off and tried the other one.
The room lit up like Times Square.
“Sorry about that, pal, didn’t mean to break your ear drums.”
Charley shook his head and yawned.
Uncle Tony’s penchant for cleanliness was obvious. The big kitchen glowed; grills and stoves lining the island in the middle glittered as if new; sinks and ovens were greaseless; the white tile floor was radiant.
Except…
Cody knelt down and gently flicked a tiny thread of cloth stuck in slender black grout between the tiles. He leaned forward and squinted down a straight line ahead of Charley’s intended path. More specks. Some streaks adjoining them. He looked over at Charley who was staring impatiently at him.
“Okay, swifty, so far, so good. You’re in such a hurry, show me how good you really are.”
Charley walked straight ahead. To his left was the kitchen, to his right a wall. Ahead of him was the back door. A long counter and stainless steel sinks ran the length of the wall to the left of the door and curved back along the opposite wall. A narrow hallway ran to their right at the end of the wall beside them.
Charley, his nose roaming left and right, walked straight ahead and stopped at the hallway. Cody joined him. The hallway to their right ended at the restaurant’s private dining room and another hallway stretched back toward the main dining room from its entrance.
They were in a small alcove formed by the rear entrance, the hallway, and a heavy steel door to their right. Charley followed his nose to the rear door, sniffed around, came back, still working the floor. He stopped at the heavy steel door, sniffed along its bottom edge.
He sat down and looked up at Cody.
“Annie?”
“Right here.”
“I’m gonna open the back door. Hand me the two kits and then hop inside. I’m gonna close the door behind you and lock it. Frank, pull down beside the dumpster.”
“Right.”
“Here we go.”
He opened the door. Annie handed him the two kits which he put behind him. He grabbed her hand as she hopped inside, slammed the door and locked it.
“What have we got?” Annie asked.
Cody nodded toward Charley who had not moved.
“I’m guessing that’s the door to a walk-in meat freezer.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. Your headset hooked up?”
She nodded. Cody hooked his up.
“Copy me, Hue?”
“Yep.”
“How about me?” Annie asked.
“Yep.”
“We are about to open the door to what I assume to be a large walk-in meat freezer near the rear entrance of the restaurant. Dr. Rothschild is the forensic pathologist on the scene. She will take it from here.”
Cody moved Charley to one side and opened the hatch of the door. As he pulled it open there was a hurricane of frigid air which turned immediately to a thick mist as it rushed into the hot air in the kitchen. Annie and Cody tried to flap the swirling fog out of the way. Then, as it began to dissipate, a human being took form.
They saw his face first.
His skin was blue, his eyes partially open, his mouth agape. Frost covered his hair and head. Small icicles hung from his eyelids and nostrils. A thin film of frost started in his mouth, coated the side of his face and ended in a large icicle which hung from his jaw.
The rest of his body quickly became visible as the steam vanished. He was naked, seated on a dining room chair. His fragile body emerged, blue and rigid, hands in his lap, feet flat on the floor. A partially filled bottle of wine and an empty glass sat beside the body. The floor was covered with a thin sheet of ice.
Annie’s expression did not change.
“Is it Crosetti?” she asked.
Cody nodded.
She stepped carefully into the doorway and leaned forward, wrapping her left hand around Crosetti’s throat for a second or two and pulled it back.
“Not anymore,” she said. “We’ve got us an iceberg that used to be Mister Crosetti.”
Cody sighed and leaned against a counter. “Annie, I think what we’ve got is Androg 2.”
26
The first person he called was Jimmy Farrell. He deserved that. Annie was doing her thing, working the crime scene, which meant working in the Frigidaire-tiptoeing around the eggs, stepping over the leftover potato salad, looking for needles among the ice cubes. Hue was directing traffic, keeping everybody in the right square on the chessboard, waiting patiently for things to go a little haywire, which they usually did. Rizzo was standing by-waiting to catch the leftovers and no complaints. The crew had one thing in common: The rush.
Ricky had the nastiest job of all. He had to tell his godmother that her husband of fifty years was never coming home again. Not that he was naked in the freezer, not that some nut job had killed him for reasons her imagination would never comprehend. For now, he was just dead. And she would know that the minute Farrell walked in the door. Before he said a word, she would know. Women know those kinds of things.?
“He’s dead, Jimmy, and it’s not pretty,” Cody told Farrell.
“Oh Christ.” He paused and Cody could hear him swallowing. “Aw, Jesus, Micah, what happened?”
“Charley led me to him. He was in the freezer. Been in there-I’m guessing-four or five hours.”
“I told him he had to put a two way opener on that goddamned thing. I warned…”
“It wasn’t an accident.”
Farrell did not immediately answer. His hung over brain was slow processing the information.
“He’s stark naked, sitting on a chair.”
“Whaaat? Maybe he, uh, maybe…”
“It wasn’t robbery or suicide, his clothes aren’t here. But it may tie in with something we’re working on.”
“You mean some sicko…”
“That’s a substantial guess, Jimmy.”
“The kid’ll be here in about five minutes.”
“We need to get a statement from him. He’s the last one to see Tony alive. He doesn’t have to see him now, I think it best to wait until after the autopsy. Maybe late this afternoon. But you’re gonna have to tell Mama Crosetti so maybe you could come to the rear door and take a look.”
“Of course. Sure.”
Annie was shooting pictures when Farrell tapped on the door. He stood in the doorway for a full minute or so and then turned his back on the corpse.
“I been a cop for thirty goddamned years and I’ve never, ever seen anything like that before. I thought maybe he had a heart attack or fell down the stairs to the wine cellar or something. Christ, what’ll I tell Ricky? Shit, what’ll I tell Mama?”
“You can buy us both some time. Tell them he doesn’t have a mark on him and we won’t know exactly what killed him until after the autopsy. It’s not a lie.”
“What if Ricky wants to see him?”
“It’s just grotesque, the way he’s…positioned. Distract Ricky. Tell him we need to talk to him in Rizzo’s car down by the dumpster. Make him comfortable. Go with him. Make sure he understands he’s not a suspect, that we need his help.”
“Yeah, that’s good. That’ll work.”
Farrell returned to his car and Cody joined Annie who was shooting a picture of Tony’s feet. She was using her kit to prop open the door of the freezer.
“We have some impressions here in the frost in front of the corpse,” she said.
“Sole prints?”
“No. My guess is surgeon’s booties.”
“Like on Handley’s carpet?”
“Uh huh.” She handed the camera to Cody and leaned closer, took a pair of tweezers and a small test tube from her kit and plucked a small fiber from the side of the one of the impressions and put it in the tube. She held it up so they both could get a better look.
“Light blue. Probably cotton. You’re right, the killer was suited out, just like at Handley’s. Roughly the same size feet. So far no fibers, no semen, no prints, and I’m guessing the only DNA will be Crosetti’s.”