"I'm Marc Popescu," he said. "Sorry about my cousin, Ivan," Marc went on. "He's upset. We're under a lot of stress here." Marc used the rejected hand to pat Ivan's shoulder. "Calm down, kiddo."
Ivan shook him off. "Don't kiddo me, you asshole." The two men blocked the doorway to the office, bickering.
Mike chewed on the ends of his mustache for a moment and watched them argue, wondering if this was collusion, or a party act, or both. The one called Marc rubbed and patted the one called Ivan, and the one called Ivan punched him back, insisting he wasn't a kiddo. It was diverting for exactly thirty seconds.
"Let's get started here." Mike pushed them aside and went into the office. The remains of pizza and deli, Cokes and Bud Lights on the coffee table indicated that the two men had been ensconced in the office for many hours. They broke apart and followed him into the room.
"What are you here for?" Ivan demanded.
"I just want to ask you a few questions."
"They already did that."
"We do it more than once."
"What are you talking about, you do it more than once? Get outta here."
"We still have a few things to clear up." Mike glanced around the room. At the front stood a sofa, and a table with fashion magazines and food on it; about a third of the way back were matching rolltop desks, one on each side of the room, one with a laptop on it. And finally, all the way at the end of the building-deep room, were the office computer, filing cabinets, and back door. It was the back door that interested Mike.
"It
is
cleared up. I don't want anyone else in here."
"It won't take too long," Mike said mildly.
"Shit, you're not listening to me. We already did this last night."
"There's been a little upgrade in the case since then."
"You in there, Mike?" Bernheim and Cartuso came through the front door, then sloped into the office with their open knapsacks slung over their shoulders.
Marc Popescu's jaw dropped at the sight of them. "Who the hell is this?"
"What are you talking about, 'upgrade'?" Ivan broke in.
"This is the Crime Scene Unit, Officers Bernheim and Cartuso. Messieurs Popescu, Marc and Ivan."
Marc's eyes popped. "Crime scene! She jumped out of a window!"
"No. She was murdered." Mike watched their reactions.
"Murdered! No way. We have someone who saw her jump out of a window."
"The witness is at the station now. She's changed her story."
"What?" Marc was shocked. Ivan didn't seem surprised.
"Maybe she jumped to escape her attacker." Ivan glanced at his cousin.
Bernheim and Cartuso ignored them both. "We're going up now. You want to clear out of here so we can get to work?"
"Fine, I'll take care of it and be right with you." Mike punched out some numbers on his cell phone, then turned around and spoke into it softly, requesting backup from the 5th.
"This is very puzzling. How could she have been murdered . . . ? Maybe the medical examiner is wrong." Marc seemed at a loss. He looked helplessly at the garbage.
"Well, Annie is nuts. She'll say anything for a buck," Ivan threw in.
"How can you say that?" Marc cried. He dragged the garbage can over to the coffee table. In the crisis he'd decided to clean up.
"Leave everything the way it is, please." Mike put the phone away and jumped on the bribery angle. "How much did you give her to say the girl jumped?"
"Hey, now. Watch your mouth." Ivan's voice cracked like a whip.
"Look, I'm not going to beat around the bush. We know everything that happened here. We know the girl had a baby—"
"Hey, that's no crime," Ivan said quickly.
"The baby was given away or sold or stolen; his mother was murdered. And the woman who had the baby was also assaulted.
Those
are crimes. So is bribery."
Three uniforms and Bernheim entered the room. Saul looked the room over, giving particular attention to the back door. Mike nodded at him. "Mike, you want to come upstairs with me for a minute?" Bern-heim said.
"Sure." Mike turned to the Popescus. "Gentlemen, would you take a seat for a few moments?"
"What are you looking for?" Marc asked, almost tearful now.
"Can I sit at my desk?" Ivan said sarcastically.
Mike glanced at the desk, then jerked his chin at the three uniforms, noting their name tags. He didn't want the Popescus leaving or touching anything. "Officer Lapinsky here will take your fingerprints."
Ivan's face reddened. "Hey, it's our building. Our prints are everywhere."
"It's routine. We'll do them for everyone who works here. Would you sit on the sofa, please?" Mike stepped out without waiting for an answer. "What do you have?"
Bernheim walked him through the place. On the second floor he demonstrated how easily the windows opened and closed and showed him the wooden props used to hold the windows open when the weather was warm. He also pointed out that the outside screens hadn't been disturbed, nor had the large fans placed in front of the windows. Even on a bright day, the room looked ghostly and dark, filled with stilled sewing machines and overhead wires. Under one window a sticky glue trap had recently claimed two mice and a cockroach almost as big as the mice.
Then they climbed a more primitive staircase to what looked like a messy storeroom. Up there Cartuso was busy taking photos of the layout.
"Pay dirt," he murmured.
Two of the windows in the back wall had been painted shut a long time ago, and the skylight was padlocked.
"Take a look over there," Bernheim ordered. "See how the paint has been chipped all around the frame of the third window, and it was jimmied open?" There were smudges in the dust that highlighted the activity. Mike moved in to get a closer look.
"I picked up some prints here." Bernheim pointed. "Two thumbs and the bottom half of one palm. Someone opened the window, leaned out, then closed it again. Now look out there."
Mike nodded. "Okay, I see it." The dirt on the outside of the sill had not been disturbed.
"If he had picked the body up, he would have rested it on the sill before pushing it out. The dirt would be disturbed on both sides. It's unlikely that he would have picked the body up, held it over his head, or even in his arms and then thrown it without touching the outside of the window, or dusting off the whole of the front side. You with me?"
Mike nodded.
"You can see he thought about it but decided against it. Check out the view."
Mike took in the view. Across the way was an apartment building. Two floors above them, a man wearing an undershirt sat in the window, holding up a newspaper, but watching them, not reading it. The ME's report said the skull had been fractured, but didn't mention broken bones. Now they had confirmation that the body hadn't gone out the window at all.
Saul let the window come down with a bang. "Now look at this."
Mike looked around at the abandoned furniture and sewing machine parts, and a folded mattress tied with rope. The floor had been swept recently, and parts of it had been washed. Cartuso flashed one more photo and put the camera away.
"Any sign of the mop that washed the floor? Any idea where she died?" Mike could feel the dead air crackle with the criminologists' excitement. The body was gone; to anybody else, this space might look like an unused attic. To them, it was a treasure trove.
"You're getting ahead of me. Look at this." Bernheim popped on a plastic glove and pointed out a line of ants emerging from the corner of the window and marching along the floor and up the tilt of the wall, where it slanted in to meet the roof. The ants disappeared into a straight crack in the wall. Bernheim prodded the crack with the business end of a chisel. As it shifted, the rounded side of two hinges came into view.