En route to the morgue, Cody phoned Amelie to tell her that he was okay, but he had lost Charley.
“I am so sorry,” she stammered, knowing that anything she could say would be inadequate. “I know you loved him.”
And Cody realized he loved this woman too.
Bergman, Wolfsheim, and Annie were waiting for him, along with the corpses of the Androg duo that had just been positioned on the examining tables.
Ward Hamilton’s badly bruised body was further distinguished only by its enormous post-mortem erection.
Later, Wolfsheim would confirm that the writer’s brain was indeed riddled with cancer. “I’d have given him no more than two months to live, at most,” he judged.
Bergman had immediately identified Victoria’s perfume as the one worn by the woman in red who’d passed his table Friday night at La Venezia-two hours before Uncle Tony’s murder. He’d verified from an eyewitness that the heartless bitch had a limousine wait for her in the parking lot while she did her work inside.
Calling for a check on Jake Sallinger’s whereabouts, Larry reported that NYPD responded to an anonymous 9-1-1 call and discovered the editor’s body a few hours ago. TAZ had been informed immediately, and Rizzo and DeMarco were at the scene at Sallinger’s apartment.
An hour after the autopsies were concluded the hastily-assembled TAZ staff tried to make sense of the matrix of deaths caused by the autoerotic duo, as projected on the wall by Larry Simon:
MELINDA CRAMER Victim: 0(?) — practice run? Appearance: blunt trauma/suicide — fall from balcony Mechanism: asphyxiation Cause Of Death: suffocation — plastic bag over head
RAYMOND HANDLEY Victim: 1 Appearance: slashed throat/alcohol amp; drugs — throat slashed after death Mechanism: brain damageaheart attack — blood drained, blood pressure drop combined with Yohimbe/nitro and oral sex Cause Of Death: puncture wound — to insert I.V. for exsanguination
UNCLE TONY Victim: 2 Appearance: thermal-freezing to death — wine bottle amp; glass at foot of chair Mechanism: asphyxiation Cause Of Death: drowning — in red wine and water
STEAMROLLER JACKSON Victim: 3 Appearance: heart attack caused by drugs/alcohol overdose — empty bottle of Chivas nearby Mechanism: arrhythmia from electrical shocks, leading to heart arrest — Taser pressed against his side until heart arrest Cause Of Death: electrical/thermal — Taser caused fatal ventricular tachyarrhythmia
SONG Victim: 4 Appearance: poison — cyanide found on lips from contaminated Excedrin Mechanism: massive brain damage — gunshot entry wound discovered on back of skull Cause Of Death: gunshot wound — with ice bullet
JAKE SALLINGER Victim: 5 Appearance: asphyxiation — inhaling powder led to paroxysm after which death came from hitting head against towel rack as he fell. Mechanism: massive brain damage — inhaling veratrum album (sneezing powder) led to paroxysm during which he was bludgeoned repeatedly against the towel rack Cause Of Death: blunt trauma — found in pool of blood where he died from massive hemorrhaging as his head repeatedly hit against towel rack
VICTORIA MANSFIELD Victim: 6 Appearance: cutting/stabbing puncture wound in spinal column Mechanism: arrow severs spinal cord — leads to paralysis, but heart attack caused by poison Cause Of Death: poison on tip of arrow — led to heart attack in about ten seconds
WARD HAMILTON Victim: 7 (?) Appearance: arrow through heart Mechanism: massive heart damage Cause Of Death: stabbing and poison — sucked on arrow head before stabbing himself with it
Next to this chart was juxtaposed “Wolf’s Seven Ways,” the simpler list made previously by Vinnie. Simon had scrawled, “7 Ways in 7 Days?” sideways across the new chart.
But Cody was frowning. Something was wrong with this picture, and at first he couldn’t put his finger on it. Hamilton was a perfectionist, and Cody’s instinct told him he wasn’t through with him yet.?
Wolfsheim came in from the morgue, grabbed the cup of coffee DeMarco handed him, then sat down to quietly contemplate the charts and the list, mentally checking off the orchestrated murders one by one.
Then he frowned too. “You’d think someone might have considered checking this list with the coroner on call,” he gruffly remarked.
Cody suddenly recognized what was wrong. Simon listed “suffocation” and “drowning.” But, Wolfie pointed out, they were one and the same “way,” known generically as “asphyxiation.” And Hamilton was playing word games with “Number Six” back in the cave, something about a “backup.”
Wolfsheim took another sip of coffee, then reached into his grip and held it up: “the Murder Book,” as he called it, the dog-eared and ragged handbook used by every coroner worth his salt. He lost no time beginning his lecture.
The missing “seventh way” was one that all the pathology books, including this one, argued over. It was generally called “catastrophic” or “mass disaster”-an event involving multiple victims whose wounds were so massive and varied that it was difficult to separate them; an event like an airplane or train crash, or an explosion, in which death occurred by fire, blunt trauma, and/or piercing from flying debris.
The category had been overlooked by Vinnie and Simon because TAZ normally focused on singular acts of violence, not on disastrous events of that scale.
Cody flashed to the doorman’s gesture as Hamilton exited his co-op building last night at 11:45.
He exchanged glances with Wolfsheim. Then he thought of something else. “Where was I last night?” Cody asked.
“You were out dancing, Captain,” Vinnie answered immediately, keeping a straight face.
Cody rummaged through his wallet, and pulled out Patricia Roberts’ business card and handed it to Vinnie. “Find out where this woman is right now.”
Only a few minutes passed before Vinnie returned from his desk to report that Roberts hadn’t shown up for work at her P.R. firm yesterday morning. Her employees said it wasn’t “like her” not to even let them know she wasn’t coming in. They’d been unable to reach her by phone all day.?
Calling in advance to warn the Seventh Precinct, within minutes TAZ had descended in full force on Hamilton’s E. 59 ^ th Street residence. The Precinct had already staked out the perimeter; it was, fortunately, headquartered on the very next block. This time Cody saw the yellow ribbons with approval, and was also pleased to see that the Special Demolition Unit had just arrived on the scene, its Mark V, an 800-pound robot the size of a riding lawn mower, being rolled down its ramp from the armored truck.
“Who’s in the apartment?” Cody asked the Precinct officer in charge.
“We don’t know,” the officer replied. “When we picked up the clicking sound from the hall, we waited for you as you requested.”
“Yeah,” Cody said. “That was a trick question.”
The officer stared at him without comment.
Another officer escorted the super to Cody, and Cody reassured the nervous Russian that they needed his immediate action and cooperation. “This is an emergency. You have three minutes to get all the residents out of the building and onto the street.”
The man’s shocked look quickly gave way to the New York sangfroid and suspicion. “What is-“
“You’ll need to open up the penthouse for us,” Cody interrupted.
“Do you have a warrant?” the super ventured.
“No, but we do have a battering ram,” Cody said. “Your choice.”
“Just had to ask,” the super shrugged. “Give me a minute to find a key.”
“We don’t have a minute to spare,” Cody retorted.
As the man walked away, the Transit Bureau K-9 detail showed up with a sniffer.
Seeing the jet black German shepherd straining at his leash, Cody had to look away.
“His name is Nero,” the K-9 officer said.
Vinnie took out Patricia’s card, and handed it to the officer.
“Here, boy,” the dog officer said, offering the business card to the eager canine’s nose. “Here’s your target.”?