“I’d like to try a homicide with just a straightforward cause of death for a change. And a blood-soaked perp fleeing the scene who’s in custody before he hits the pavement.”
“Come ahead then, girl. I might be able to give you the former.”
“What’s the adventure?” I asked as he tapped on the door of the victim’s suite.
“A hyperspectral imaging device that can date blood samples, perhaps to within an hour of the time they were deposited,” Mayes said, as Rocco opened the door. “The holy grail of forensic technology.”
“Hey, Johnny,” Rocco said, “how’ve you been?”
Hal Sherman and Pug McBride came out of the bedroom.
“Hot. How about you, Lieutenant?”
“Just got orders to cancel my vacation. Hot and bothered is how I am. The dead girl’s in the other room.”
“Anybody move her? Turn her over?” Mayes pointed a gloved finger at Rocco Correlli, then Pug and Hal.
“You crazy? Of course not,” Pug said. “Scout’s honor.”
“I know how it is when you’re looking to identify a body, gentlemen. Objects have a tendency to shift in flight.”
An impetuous detective had screwed up a homicide of mine by rolling the body over before the medical examiner arrived, hoping to find a driver’s license or wallet in her jeans pocket, making it impossible for the pathologists to know the exact pattern of the bloodstains.
“I didn’t think she’d be lying naked on top of her library card, Doc. No problem waiting for you.”
“May I-?”
“Stay out here, Alexandra, will you?” Mayes said. “Let me do this with Pug. I expect Dr. Azeem will be here shortly. He can explain to Rocco and you what our experiment will be.”
“Don’t be experimenting on my scorecard, Johnny,” the lieutenant said.
Dr. Mayes walked to the threshold and peered into the room. “I’m going to guess that someone sliced this young woman’s jugular vein. I will trust your most excellent men,” he said, with the formality of speech that characterized his style, “to find the executioner as quickly as possible. The more difficult issue will be figuring how this victim was led to slaughter, and precisely when it happened.”
“Azeem?”
“I heard him lecture in England in the spring. Teesside University. He happens to be here this week presenting his findings at Columbia. He offered the opportunity to give me a firsthand sampling of the prototype.”
“What does the device do, exactly?” I asked.
“She means what’s so frigging holy about it,” Rocco said.
“The imaging scans for the visible spectrum of hemoglobin with extraordinary levels of laboratory accuracy. The only effective way of dating blood currently is centuries old, my friends,” Mayes said, his gloved hands clasped together on the bulge above his waist. “Dr. Azeem may be able to tell us, right here in this room-within the hour-what the time of death was. I assume if we pinpoint that, it might save your men a huge amount of time.”
Rocco whistled. “And spare them endless hours of looking at videotapes of revolving doors and cement staircases.”
“Let me get to work. And you might tell the manager that when I’m done, I would prefer a fine glass of Montepulciano to chase down this lukewarm coffee on his hospitality cart.” Johnny Mayes disappeared into the bedroom.
“Go figure,” Rocco said, leading me back to the suite across the hall. “Come out of there and drink a glass of bloodred wine? I’ll stick to my vodka, and it can’t come soon enough.”
I walked to the window and stared out at the dusky sky, at the last bit of light from behind the tall buildings to the west. I looked down at the tiny figures on the sidewalk so far below-pedestrians, making their way to trains or subways or restaurants nearby. Even though the rush hour traffic had abated, the strip fronting the Waldorf, Park Avenue between 49th and 50th Streets, was one of the busiest crossroads in Manhattan.
“Missing Persons have anything to say?”
“Give it a break, Alex. She might not be missing all that long yet. Dr. Shazam-”
“Azeem.”
“Whatever. He and his amazing machine are supposed to solve that piece of the puzzle, aren’t they?”
I sat back down on the couch and put my feet up on the coffee table, checking my BlackBerry for e-mails and texts.
Blood expert on the way, I texted to Mercer. You might want to be here.
Pug crossed over to stand in the doorway. “Confirmation on the seminal fluid in the pubic area, Alex. Mayes asked me to tell you.”
The doctor had used a blue LED to fluoresce the dried fluid on the victim’s skin and matted in her hair.
District Attorney Battaglia wasn’t into electronic communication. He wanted to hear the news the old-fashioned way-catching hesitation in his lawyers’ answers if they were uncertain of facts, picking up on the tonality of the voice of the reporter, allowing him to cross-examine before you had time to think of a response that could be abbreviated by a few keystrokes.
I called Paul Battaglia to tell him that I was at the Waldorf and that initial observations supported the view that this was a rape-homicide of an unidentified woman, probably in her late twenties, whose jugular vein had been severed by the sharp blade of a knife.
He had the usual concerns. Not the condition of the woman’s body or the quality of our investigative work, but how this murder would impact his political standing. He’d want to know what church her mother attended so he could plan to be at Sunday’s service, and whether there would be any victims’ group rallies that might disrupt his schedule, requiring his attendance at a candlelight vigil, or something that might deprive him of a chance to golf with his son-in-law on Sunday morning.
Hal Sherman joined Pug McBride in the corridor. His voice boomed and I whipped around, ending my phone call as Hal shouted, “Look who’s back from the dead.”
I knew he wasn’t talking about the body on the bed.
“Who is?” I asked.
Hal backed up and a short gentleman with dark skin, straight black hair, and wire-rimmed glasses entered the room.
As he stepped toward me with an extended hand, introducing himself as Fareed Azeem, Mike Chapman came into view, slapping Hal’s back as his old friend embraced him.
Then Mike led the others into the suite where Rocco and I were working. “Hey, Loo. Here’s the magician Johnny Mayes has been talking about.”
Azeem smiled and greeted Rocco Correlli.
“Nobody said Chapman was dead,” Rocco said as he shook hands with Dr. Azeem. “He just needed an attitude adjustment. And a lock for the zipper on his private parts.”
There was no mistaking my full-on blush for the warmth of the August night now.
“What about you, Coop?” Mike asked, running his fingers through his thick black hair, flashing his best grin. “Miss me?”
“Once a week at least, Mike. Maybe twice. Whenever I thought it had been too long since anyone had taken a jab at me. I-uh-I hadn’t realized you’d come home.”
I didn’t want to squirm in front of this crew of professionals, but I was steaming because Mike hadn’t called me to say he had returned a few days earlier than expected.
“Need-to-know basis only. I told you that, kid. Taking it slow.”
That last phrase was Mike’s, the one he had used when he kissed me on the rooftop of the Arsenal on a pitch-perfect June night.
“Taking what slow?” Rocco asked.