“Who is she?” I said.
“No ID yet. You’ve asked me that three times. Impatience isn’t your best feature.”
“How about the suite? Who’s it registered to?”
“Nobody. That’s the thing. It’s been empty for four days. Housekeeper came in around five P.M. to ready it for an arrival tomorrow.”
“You thinking inside job? Hotel employee?”
“Start there. Management made an effort to shut down the place-well, slow it down anyway-as soon as the 911 call went in.”
“How is it possible to function if they do that? How many rooms have they got?”
“One thousand five hundred and seven, including these suites in the Towers.”
The Waldorf Astoria occupied an entire square block, with a grand entrance fronting on Park Avenue, and rear doors-several of them-facing Lexington. Over time it had been home to Cole Porter, Bugsy Siegel, Marilyn Monroe, and General Douglas MacArthur. Its large ballroom was nightly the site of black-tie dinners for every New York City charity, national political fund-raiser, and rubber-chicken corporate event.
“So it’s impossible to close the place off, Loo.”
“They’ve been extremely cooperative. The night manager has called in all his supervisory staff, and they’re trying to account for everyone’s whereabouts the last three days. The entire employee list is online, so we’ll be doing background checks throughout the night.”
“How long has she been dead?”
It wouldn’t matter how intently I stared at the body. I couldn’t help the woman, nor did I have Rocco’s expertise in estimating things like time of death.
“I’m thinking day and a half, maybe more.”
“No medical examiner?”
“Johnny Mayes. I thought he’d beat you here.”
“Mercer caught me on my way home. I wasn’t far from the hotel.” The District Attorney’s Office was in Lower Manhattan, just north of City Hall. My apartment was in a high-rise only twenty blocks north of the Waldorf. Most days I drove downtown to work, parking on the street, with the laminated plaque that identified me as a prosecutor. I was only five minutes from the hotel when Mercer reached me at 7:20 this evening. “I’ll wait for him.”
Mayes was one of the best forensic pathologists in the country. I learned something every time he examined a body, explaining the damage each weapon had caused or the kind of force necessary to result in death. It was extremely comfortable to work with him, to know the deceased was in his capable hands, to witness how he teased so much information from a silent, often reluctant corpse.
“Take your last look, Alex.” The lieutenant was fidgety, anxious to get me out of the way.
“The marks on her thighs, you make anything of them?”
“Leave it to the doc. They seem sort of superficial to me.”
“I get that. I mean the cuts, you think they form any kind of design?”
“Hal made photos,” Rocco said, taking his gloved hands out of his pockets to lean in, his head directly over the girl’s flat abdomen, peering down at her scarred legs. “Two parallel lines, kind of even, inch and a half long. With short strips going crosswise, like the rungs of a ladder.”
“I mean they’re really even. They look so deliberately drawn.”
“Carved, not drawn. You’ve seen that before?”
“I told you no, Rocco. I’m just thinking that here comes this killer who gets into the hotel, maybe he encounters his victim here-in the hallway or even the bar-entirely by chance.”
The Bull and Bear was a fixture in the New York scene, regularly crowded with businessmen and lawyers, conventioneers and tourists, highbrows and hookers.
“Maybe she works here,” Pug said.
“They’re scoping that out. There are thousands of staffers here. Must be ten at the front desk alone,” Rocco said. The check-in area was so large it took up half the length of the lobby. “You got housekeeping, kitchen and room service, engineering, reservations, maintenance, security, administration, a beauty parlor, a barber shop, a jewelry store that sells diamonds as big as the Ritz. Who’d even miss one girl?”
“I tell you what,” Pug said, with a sideways glance at the bed. “That particular one I’d be missing.”
“What I was saying is that somehow the killer gets in. Like he just walks in off the street. He meets the girl, Rocco.”
“Or he comes in off Park Avenue with her,” Pug said, interrupting again.
“That should show on the surveillance tapes. But it’s a crime of impulse, don’t you think?”
“Why’s that?” Rocco said, pointing the way back to the living room.
“Because he didn’t stop to take a room, did he? He never checked in.”
“Nope. But how would he have known this suite was empty?”
“Easy to get that information if he works here,” I said. “Or maybe he just got lucky trying doors. Could be he’s a scam artist, burglarizing rooms with a master key card. My point is that if this was a rape-an impulsive act-and the girl resisted, the perp might have gone berserk and slit her throat to shut her up.”
I turned back to look at the body again, but Rocco made it clear he wanted me out. “If you’re waiting for her to wake up, Alex, you’re out of luck. Move on, now.”
“But what doesn’t fit with that kind of crime of opportunity are the marks he etched on her thighs,” I said. “Too neat. Way too carefully drawn.”
“You can’t have it both ways, Alex,” Pug said.
“I’m just saying it’s odd. The fatal wounds are inconsistent with the careful markings on her thighs. Disorganized killer versus very meticulous artist.”
“Maybe he did the legs first,” Rocco said. “Maybe he tortured her.”
You couldn’t look at the young woman’s body and not think torture.
I crossed the threshold into the living room. Rocco directed me through the door and across the hallway, into another suite that management had given him to use as a mini command center. Several uniformed cops nodded at me when I entered. Before too long it would be swarming with detectives from the local precinct and Major Case.
“Want some coffee?” Rocco said.
“Sure.”
He poured us each a cup, then proceeded to tell me what his men would spend the night doing.
“Have you put out a photo of her yet?”
“No way, Alex. Her clothes are gone, there’s no form of ID around, and I can’t release a picture until Johnny Mayes cleans her up.”
“Are they doing a vertical search of the hotel?”
“Waiting on Commissioner Scully to give me a platoon of guys to do that. There must be thirty elevator banks, staircases everywhere, and all those thousands of doors to knock on.”
“It’s Pug’s case?”
Rocco Correlli took a sip of the hot coffee, scowling as he put it to his lips. “Scully wants someone with more polish as the front man. Pug’s too likely to step on his own dick when the first reporter goes after some off-the-record lead. Mercer’s on loan till we come up with a better idea.”
“That makes it easy for me.” Mercer and I had partnered more times than I could count.
“The word ‘easy’ isn’t in the mix, Alex. I’ve got to put a face and name to the body, quell the public hysteria about a murder in a Midtown landmark, and figure out who this madman is and where he came from.”
“Not to mention where he went.” I thought of the images of the two ladderlike designs on the victim’s long legs. “And who’s at risk going forward.”
“I’ve got less than a week to deliver.”
“Scully understands what a massive job this will be. It will take that long to study the hotel’s surveillance tapes, top to bottom of the building. He can’t be serious about a deadline.”
Rocco Correlli rested his mug on the silver tray the manager had sent to the room. “It has nothing to do with the commissioner, Alex. In less than a week, three floors of suites in the Waldorf Towers will be filled to capacity. The president of the United States will take up residence here for an emergency special session at the United Nations.”