Kate stopped screaming. She was staring at her lover as though a huge practical joke was being perpetrated on her and, if she just waited, Song would wink and say, “Gotcha!”
Rizzo studied the rigid corpse. Song’s body was perfect, not an ounce of fat anywhere, he noticed. Her breasts were perfectly formed, the nipples hard with the caress of rigor mortis. No visible signs of trauma-only the look of surprise on the good doctor’s face seemed out of kilter with what otherwise could have been mistaken for a model posing nude for a painter.
The sonofabitch who had done this to her was painting with human lives.
Kate hadn’t moved, not backwards, not forwards. Rizzo could see she was in shock. “Let me handle this,” he said, taking her by the elbow and backing her toward the door.
With a wrenching effort, Kate snapped out of it and turned her head toward him. “Take your hand off me,” she said. “I’m fine.”
“If you’re fine,” he said. “You’re superhuman.”
“Why her? Who would do this to Song?” Kate sobbed. “She never hurt a fly in her life.”
“My guess is that it had nothing to do with her at all,” Rizzo said, reaching for his cell phone. His nose wrinkled at a familiar scent.
Kate detected it too.
“Burnt almonds,” Rizzo said.
“Cyanide?” Kate guessed.
Rizzo nodded as he speed-dialed.
Then Kate pointed to something else, the shelf to the right of Song’s body.
It was filled with boxes and boxes of blue and green surgical booties.?
For the rest of the day, the entire squad was turned on its ear. Kate’s devastation ignited a slow burn that would not cool until Androg was brought to justice. Cody had tried to send her home, to get her a prescription for valium. She’d refused both.
“Don’t you realize I’d go crazy if I went home?” she said. “Don’t do that to me. I’m staying here. I’m working the case.”
“You know you can’t work the case, Kate. It’s not in your job description. It’d be counterproductive, to say the least. You observe cases, remember?”
“I’m staying here and doing my job,” Kate insisted.
While they awaited Wolfsheim’s autopsy results, no one doubted for an instant Larry Simon’s preliminary analysis that they were dealing with the same psychotic killer who had offed Raymond Handley and Uncle Tony: all three victims ended their lives in a sitting position, all were in their death seats between twelve and one o’clock a.m., none of them seemed to have any connection to the others. “And I’m betting that the cause of death will not be the obvious one,” Larry added. “It won’t be ‘Excedrin laced with cyanide.’”
Simon’s head was focused on the photo showing Song’s thumb taped under her four fingers. “It’s a message from the perp,” he concluded firmly. “He’s warning us that Number Four is about to happen. Maybe even giving us a hint about how it will happen or who it will happen to. If anyone can figure it out, you can,” Simon said. “What are your thoughts?”
“What I think is that it may be something else,” Cody said. “Maybe it’s already happened.”
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe she was Number Four.”
36
Tuesday, October 30
The call to Stinelli had not gone well, and Cody threw his empty coffee cup against the wall. Even with three investigations going, his attempt to beg off the Ball tonight had been stonewalled.
“Sometimes politics takes precedence over procedure,” Lou asserted. “I know you’re up to your eyeballs, but believe me it’ll be a much bigger problem if you don’t show up.”
“Why?” Cody wanted to know.
“Because, for one thing Goddamit, your pal Ward Hamilton is going to be there, and that damned Clue prize he received has gotten the whole town talking about his next project, which is you! If you don’t show, he’ll smell fear. And blood-yours. There’ll be no hope of containing the meltdown, and holding him back till you’ve caught this maniac Androg. ”
Cody knew his goose was cooked. He had no choice but to join those who were fiddling while Rome was burning.
“In that case, Chief,” Cody said, “I guess I’d better take a nap. I haven’t been home for forty-eight hours.”
Stinelli’s grunt was how he terminated the call.?
Feeling way more uncomfortable in a tuxedo than Bruce Wayne could ever imagine, Cody walked up the stairs to Amelie Cluett’s apartment. A glance at Handley’s door made him even more uncomfortable. He’d spent the afternoon listening to TAZ report that nothing new had been found to throw light on Raymond’s death and Bergman was getting nowhere with the Venezia interviews.
Instead of riding whip on the group, Cody was dressed in a monkey suit and going to the fairytale ball as though the grim realities of his day to day job had been whistled irrelevant.
But there she was, opening the door before he could knock or ring: tastefully stunning in a midnight blue silk dress, faux diamonds around the hem, excited to see him looking ruggedly dashing.
Amelie did a little girl’s twirl, to show off the dress-and to waft a delicately tantalizing perfume in his direction. “How do I look?”
“You look…” Cody took the time for a full detective’s perusal. “Edible.”
“A man of many words,” Amelie giggled. “You don’t look too bad yourself. Please come in for an aperitif.” Then she caught herself. “I’m sorry. I forgot you don’t drink. Haven’t gotten around to it, I mean.” She confused herself into a blush that only accented her finely-chiseled features.
“That’s not it,” he said. “It’s just that this is an official function.”
“You can’t be going to a ball ‘on duty,’” she replied, disappointed.
“Believe me, I can,” he said. “It’s about the only way you could drag me there.”
“So that makes me, what, official volunteer arm candy?” she asked with a twinkle in her eye. She reached for her clutch. “Okay, officer, lead the way.” She offered her hand.
And Cody took her hand as though it was the most natural thing in the world to do.?
En route to Gracie Mansion, Amelie quickly realized small talk wasn’t happening. “Spill the beans,” she said. “What’s on your mind? Or are you always this silent on a second date.”
Cody laughed. Is that what this was? Well, if so it didn’t feel that bad.
But she was insistent, and somehow he wanted this one to start out differently. So he swore her to secrecy and told her about Uncle Tony and Song Wiley and TAZ’s belief that they were both murdered by the same killer who ended her neighbor Raymond’s life. How there was no logical sequence, no geographical location in common-other than they were all in Manhattan. The victims weren’t connected in any obvious way and there were no definitive clues.
“There’s something all these killings have in common besides the confusing ways of death and we’re missing it,” Wolf had said. Either something the killer left behind or something the perp took from each of the victims.
“And he’s right,” Cody told her. “Androg is screwing with us. All we have to go on is the Number Four.”
“Four?” she asked. “I thought you had three victims.”
“Yeah, unless there’s one we haven’t heard from yet. That’s what I think.” At the mention of each name he had to stop and parse the list of players for her. He was impressed that she could follow his report at all, but it seemed to come easily to her.
“I’m a good listener,” she said, as though reading his mind. “The better my hands work, the more I hear,” she added in a teasing tone of voice.?
The chemistry with Amelie was on fast track, and Cody found himself surprised that he was doing nothing to curtail it. He couldn’t afford this distraction right now, could he? Nonetheless he couldn’t take his eyes off her and noticed with satisfaction and-was it pride? — that other men in the mayor’s crowded ballroom couldn’t either.
At one point the electricity arcing between them got so intense that Amelie grabbed his drink, set it down, then took his hand and dragged him onto the dance floor just as the band struck up a sentimental version of “My Funny Valentine.”