I reached for a legal pad in my tote bag. Anything to avoid playing out this stilted reunion in front of the Manhattan South Homicide Squad.
“Am I interrupting something here, Alex?” the lieutenant asked. “Or is this just the usual Chapman foreplay?”
“Sorry, Rocco. I’ve been waiting for Mike to get home so we could tie up some loose ends on a pending case.”
“She hates to be the last to know, Loo. Bad habit of hers.”
I turned to Fareed Azeem. “I understand you’re going to help Dr. Mayes establish our victim’s time of death, Doctor.”
“I don’t want to get in the way, Ms. Cooper,” he said, nodding his head in my direction. “But I believe I can assist with that.”
“It could be critical in this case, if we can limit the window in which the perp committed the crime and escaped from this-this fortress. It would save the detectives days of wasted hours canvassing or sitting in front of video screens.”
“Yes, ma’am. It’s rather a mammoth hotel.”
“Dr. Mayes is across the hallway. Let me take you over to him,” Hal said.
He motioned to Azeem to follow as Rocco Correlli charged ahead. Mike moved back to let them through, while I tried to stay close on the heels of the highly touted forensic guru. I didn’t see any point in being alone with Mike.
“So really, Coop, did you miss me?” he said, playfully poking me in the side as I passed him.
“Any day now I might have started to.”
“You look skinny, kid. How much weight did you lose pining away for me?” Mike grabbed my arm to try to hold me in place.
“Neither weight nor sleep.” I broke loose and kept walking.
“Hey, Coop. Turn around a minute.”
“What is it, Detective?” I worried my annoyance-and hurt-were palpable.
“Death becomes you, Ms. Cooper,” Mike said. “It brings color to your cheeks.”
THREE
Johnny Mayes sipped a glass of wine as the rest of us settled into place in the mini command center on the Waldorf’s forty-fifth floor. Mercer was beside me on the love seat, while Mike leaned on the mantel over the gas fireplace. Hal and Pug pulled up armchairs near the coffee table, and Rocco and Azeem were on opposite ends of the long sofa. It was nine fifteen and there was no sign that the business portion of the evening would end soon.
“It will come as no surprise to any of you that this young lady died as a result of exsanguination,” Johnny said. “The instrument of causation-the knife or other cutting tool-had an extremely sharp tip. A needle point, I might say, which perforated the skin quite easily behind the right ear. There is a very regular and steady path sliced across her neck, which severed the jugular vein and occasioned the outpouring of blood onto her body and the bedsheets.”
I swallowed hard and stared at a spot on the wall above Johnny Mayes’s head.
“I say regular because it is so even, so unfluctuating, that it would appear that this victim offered no resistance to the assailant. She seems not to have struggled or moved during the time of the cutting, nor are there any defensive wounds on her hands or lower arms. Her fingernails are all intact. Polished a pale pink and not even chipped.”
“But it’s the neck wound that killed her,” Pug said, “or the blood flow wouldn’t have been so dramatic.”
“She was alive when he slit her throat, Pug. Drugged, perhaps, but alive.”
“Why do you say drugged?” I asked. “You think she’s a junkie? Any marks on her body?”
“Nothing to suggest that, Alex. Several things make me think you won’t find any photographs of her on the hotel videos. I don’t think she came in here under her own steam.”
“How then?” Mercer said.
“It’s her back, my friends. Her back and the skin on the rear of her thighs and legs. Two things of note,” Johnny said, stopping to sip his wine. “There are more of those so-called ladders you saw on her thigh, Alex. All on her lower back. Four of them.”
“I’ll have a set of photos to you tomorrow,” Hal said to me.
“Did they cause any injury?”
“None at all. I see you’re wincing, Alex. I’m sure the young lady was too intoxicated-involuntarily-to know. There is also a pattern-not in high definition-but sort of vaguely apparent on her skin. Especially her shoulders, her buttocks, and the rear of her legs. You want a guess about why I think she didn’t walk in through the lobby? All I can give you is my hunch.”
Mike started to pace. He rarely stood still when his mind was in gear. “Shoot.”
“There’s a faint imprint-it’s actually on her forearms, too. Just on the surface of her skin, not dug into it,” Johnny turned to me as he spoke. “It looks like a lining of some kind, a motif from the interior of a box or container. Imagine a wallpaper design in a faded red pattern that stamped onto her skin because it was wet. In this heat, enclosed in some kind of container, moisture from her sweat would have collected quickly.”
“Any ideas?” I asked.
“I’m thinking of something large enough, obviously, to conceal a body. Something used to transport or move an object or a piece of furniture.”
“You’re supposed to be helping us, Johnny,” Mike said, one hand in the pocket of his jeans and the other waving in a circle over his head. “You got an enormous square block of Manhattan real estate with exits and entrances on all sides and its own parking garage underneath. Deliveries are made every hour, day and night. Enough food to stock all the restaurants and room service, pallets filled with linens and laundry, boxes full of flower arrangements the size of small trees, and musicians hauling instruments of every conceivable size and shape up to the ballroom.”
Johnny Mayes tried to get a word in. “But there is-”
“That’s before you start with the guests and the transients. D’you ever get held up in Park Avenue traffic by a minivan unloading a family of five with suitcases and backpacks and duffel bags that look like they could hold Mercer’s six foot four inches? I did a security detail two years back-”
“Should have been your last one, Chapman,” Pug said, enjoying the chance to lob a crack at Mike. “You could have saved yourself some embarrassment.”
None of the rest of us laughed with him.
“Nice having you at my back, Pug. Like I was saying, I had this detail with one of the Saudi princes. Picked him up at JFK in an SUV and we needed a caravan to get his luggage here. Right to the Waldorf. Could have had a camel, a two-humper even, in one of the trunks he was carting around.”
“Stick with the idea of trunks for a minute,” Johnny Mayes said, placing his glass on the tray. “I’m quite sure we’re not dealing with something commercial, like a wooden packing crate. The markings would have been entirely different-strips of wood several inches thick, and certainly unlined. I would have expected to find shavings or splinters in the girl’s hair or on her body. A cardboard one, perhaps, but that wouldn’t be likely to have any design on the inside, would it? It would be a far cheaper product than wood.”
“You’re saying she might have been carried into the Waldorf inside a trunk?” Mercer asked. “You’re all so quick to buy into this.”
“She didn’t walk,” Johnny said. “I’m betting good money on that.”
“Wheeled,” Pug said. “Wheeled in, not carried. Fits with Crime Scene findings. They think there were indentations in the carpet. We actually disregarded them, figuring it was a room service cart from a few days ago.”
Mike slapped his palm against his forehead, but Pug was oblivious to the gesture.
“Not all the way into the bedroom, but in the entryway to the suite. That’s where they picked up some of the trace evidence. Dirt and debris.”
“It’s not the wheeled versus carried that stops your heart,” Mercer said. “This girl was alive, then stuffed inside a-a box or container of some kind for the purpose of getting her in here? To die in a suite in one of the most luxurious hotels in the world?”