A few steps beyond the entranceway was the kitchen. A two-burner stove, a refrigerator, a single sink, three cabinets, two drawers, everything white. On the counter was a stack of mail, none of it opened, as if she’d walked in with it and set it down and got busy with other things or just wasn’t interested. Marino looked through several catalogs and circulars with coupons, what he called junk mail, and a flyer on bright pink paper alerting residents in the building that the water would be shut off tomorrow, December 19, from eight a.m. until noon.
Nearby was a stainless-steel drain rack, and in it a butter knife, a fork, a spoon, a plate, a bowl, a coffee mug with a Far Side cartoon on it, the kid at “Midvale School for the Gifted” pushing on a door that reads “PULL.” The sink was empty and clean, a sponge and bottle of Dawn liquid detergent, no crumbs on the counter, no food stains, the hardwood floor spotless. Marino opened the cabinet under the sink, finding a small garbage can lined with a white plastic bag. Inside were a banana peel that was brown and smelled pungent, a few withered blueberries, a soy milk carton, coffee grounds, a lot of paper towels.
He shook open a few of them, detecting what smelled like honey and citrus, like lemon-scented ammonia, maybe furniture and glass cleaners. He noticed a spray bottle of lemon-scented Windex, a bottle of a wood preserver containing beeswax and orange oil. It seemed Toni was very industrious, maybe obsessive, and had been cleaning and straightening up when she was home last. What did she use the Windex on? Marino didn’t see anything glass. He walked to the far wall, peeked behind the shades, wiped his gloved finger over a pane of glass. The windows weren’t filthy, but they also didn’t appear to have been recently cleaned. Maybe she’d used the Windex to clean a mirror or something, or maybe somebody else had been cleaning in here, getting rid of fingerprints and DNA or thinking he was. Marino returned to the kitchen, which took him fewer than ten steps. The paper towels from the trash went into an evidence bag. Check them for DNA.
Toni had kept her cereal in the refrigerator, several boxes of whole-grain Kashi, more soy milk, blueberries, cheeses, yogurt, romaine lettuce, cherry tomatoes, a plastic container of pasta with what looked like a Parmesan sauce, maybe takeout, or maybe she’d eaten dinner somewhere and had carried the leftovers home. When? Last night? Or was the last meal she’d eaten inside her apartment a bowl of cereal with a banana and blueberries, and a pot of coffee-breakfast? She didn’t eat breakfast this morning, that was for damn sure. Did she eat breakfast here yesterday morning, then was gone all day and maybe ate dinner out, some Italian place? Then what? Came home, put her leftover pasta in the refrigerator, and at some point during the rainy night went jogging? He thought about her stomach contents, was curious what Scarpetta had found during the autopsy. He’d tried to reach her a couple of times this afternoon, had left her several messages.
The hardwood floor creaked under Marino’s big booted feet as he moved around, stepping back into the living area. Traffic on Second Avenue was loud, car engines and honking and people on the sidewalk. The constant noise and activity could have given Toni a false sense of security. It was unlikely she would have felt isolated here, one level above the street, but she probably kept her shades down after dark so no one could see in. Mellnik claimed the shades were down when Bonnell and the crime scene guys got here, suggesting the shades had been closed by Toni. When? If her last meal here had been yesterday morning, she didn’t bother opening her shades when she got up? She obviously liked to look out the windows, because she’d set a small table and two chairs between them. The table was clean, a single straw place mat on it, and Marino imagined her sitting there yesterday morning, eating her cereal. But with the shades down?
Between the windows was a flat-screen TV on a single-arm wall mount, a thirty-two-inch Samsung, the remote control on the coffee table near a love seat. Marino picked up the remote, pushed the power button to see what she’d been watching last. The TV blinked on to Headline News, one of the anchors talking about the murder of “a Central Park jogger whose name has not yet been released by the authorities,” cutting over to Mayor Bloomberg making a statement about it, then Police Commissioner Kelly, the usual things the politicians and people in charge said to reassure the public. Marino listened until the subject turned to the latest outrage over the bailout of AIG.
He set the remote back on the coffee table, exactly where he’d found it, pulled his notepad out of a pocket, wrote down the channel the TV had been on, wondering if the crime scene guys or Bonnell had noticed. Probably not. He wondered when Toni had been watching the news. Was that the first thing she did when she got up in the morning? Did she turn on the news during the day or watch it before she went to sleep? When she’d been watching the news last, where had she been sitting? The way the wall-mounted arm was tilted, the TV was facing the double bed. It was covered with a light-blue satin spread, three stuffed animals on the pillows: a raccoon, a penguin, and an ostrich. Marino wondered if someone had given them to her, maybe her mother, not likely from a boyfriend. They didn’t look like something a guy would give as a gift, unless maybe he was gay. Marino nudged the penguin with a glove-sheathed finger, looking at the tag, then checked the other two. Gund. He wrote it down.
Next to the bed was a table with a drawer. Inside were a nail file, a few double-A batteries, a small bottle of Motrin, a couple of old paperbacks, true crime: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story: An American Nightmare and Ed Gein-Psycho. Marino wrote down the titles, flipped through each paperback, looking to see if Toni might have made notes, not finding any. Tucked between the pages of The Jeffrey Dahmer Story was a receipt dated November 18, 2006, when the paperback apparently had been purchased secondhand from Moe’s Books in Berkeley, California. A woman living alone reading scary shit like this? Maybe someone had given them to her. He put them in an evidence bag. They’d go to the labs, check them for prints, for DNA. Just a feeling he had.
To the left of the bed was the closet, the clothing inside it hip, sexy: leggings, tunic sweaters with bright designs, low-cut screen-print tops, spandex, a couple of sleek dresses. Marino didn’t recognize the labels, not that he was an expert in fashion design. Baby Phat, Coogi, Kensie Girl. On the floor were ten pairs of shoes, including Asics running shoes like she’d been wearing when she was murdered, and a pair of sheepskin Uggs for winter weather.
Linens were folded and stacked on an overhead shelf, next to a cardboard box, which he pulled down, looked inside it. DVDs, movies, mostly comedies and action, the Ocean’s Eleven series, another gambling theme. She liked George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Ben Stiller. Nothing very violent, nothing scary like the paperbacks by her bed. Maybe she didn’t buy DVDs anymore, watched movies, including horror if that was what she was into, on cable, had Pay-Per-View. Maybe she watched movies on her laptop. Where the hell was her laptop? Marino took photographs and more notes.
It had entered his mind that so far he hadn’t seen a winter coat. A few Windbreakers and a long red wool coat that looked out of style, maybe from high school, maybe a hand-me-down from her mother or someone, but what about a serious winter coat for when she walked around the city on a day like today? A parka, a ski jacket, something down-filled. There was plenty of casual wear, plenty of running clothes, including fleeces and shells, but what about when she went to work? What about when she went out on errands or to dinner or ran in really cold weather? No heavy winter coat had been found on or near her body, just a fleece, which struck Marino as incongruous with the miserable weather last night.