Most Wanted (3 page)

“What can you tell from the body about how the murder happened?” Melanie asked Kramer.

“Quite a lot, actually,” Kramer replied. “The Fire Department responded quickly. The fire was out in time to save most of the flesh, so there’s plenty left to work with. I’ve done a preliminary examination. Here, I’ll show you.”

Kramer walked up to the chair, extracted a collapsible metal pointer from his pocket, and opened it. He waved it over Benson’s corpse like a magic wand. “First of all, you see the way the body has contorted. That’s what we call pugilistic positioning. A natural contraction of the muscles that occurs when the body is burned. The fact that we see it indicates that rigor mortis hadn’t set in at the time of fire. That’s important, because we also see clear evidence of a gunshot wound to the head. Given lack of rigor, we can assume that the shooting and the burning of the body occurred within a relatively narrow time frame.”

“Can you tell which happened first?” Melanie asked.

“Not without completing the actual autopsy. Now, take a look right here,” Kramer said, directing his pointer at the large hole in Benson’s forehead. “A gunshot entry wound. We know it’s entry based on beveling we observe to the skull and the remaining flesh. The beveling points inward, indicating the bullet going in. The entry wound matches up to an exit wound right here.” He walked around and pointed to a hole in the back of Benson’s head, at about the point where the skull met the neck. “Again, we know it’s exit because of the direction of the beveling, which points outward, thus the bullet going out. And from the relative positions of the entry and exit wounds, we can conclude that the shooter stood above the victim and fired downward, at relatively close range. The handcuffs the victims is wearing also suggest he was shot while sitting right here in this chair.”

“Handcuffs? So that’s what’s holding him upright,” Melanie said, studying the plastic twist-tie handcuffs that slashed deep ligatures into Benson’s wrists. Chunks of flesh appeared to be missing from his hands. What remained was gouged in a familiar-looking way. “His hands. Are those—teeth marks?” she asked, gulping.

“Yes, not human, though,” Kramer replied. “Animal, probably dog bites. They’re all over the legs, too, and look. There’s a similar-looking deep puncture wound in the remaining flesh on the neck. See, right here,” he said, pointing to a deep gash in the charred skin of the corpse’s neck.

Melanie nursed her growing rage, using it to fight back a wave of nausea that threatened to overwhelm her.

“On the gunshot, Melanie, we bagged the spent round,” Butch said. “Nine-millimeter.”

“Wouldn’t common sense say the dog attack came first?” Melanie asked. “The gunshot to the head, at close range, finished him off? Then the fire was set to destroy evidence?”

“Makes sense,” Brennan agreed. Kramer nodded.

“Okay, so let’s talk motive,” she continued. “Why sic a dog on him?”

“So many bites,” Brennan said. “It’s almost like he was tortured.”

“Just what I was thinking. Lieutenant Ramirez said Benson’s daughter was maimed. Tell me about that.”

“Perp cut off some of her fingers. Fucking savage,” Butch said bitterly.

“Was she shot?” Melanie asked.

“No, thankfully. She’s in serious but stable condition,” Butch said.

“So Benson was tortured,” Melanie said, thinking aloud. “His daughter was tortured. Why do that? A grudge, maybe? The perp hated Benson so bad that he tortured his daughter in front of him, then tortured him before killing him?”

“The viciousness of the attack supports that,” Kramer said.

“Or maybe the perp wanted something,” she continued. “Money, information—who knows? Benson wouldn’t give it up.”

“Would you hold out if somebody was doing that kind of shit to you?” Butch said.

“Maybe Benson didn’t hold out in the end. When Castro finishes dusting for latents, he should look for evidence of robbery. Open safes, jewelry boxes, drawers that are normally kept locked—that sort of thing,” she said.

“You really think the motive could have been robbery?” Butch asked.

“Sure. You see carnage like this sometimes in a typical home invasion, where the perps force their way into a house to steal something they know is there. Whether it’s drugs or money or expensive jewelry. Then again, you wouldn’t expect something like that to happen in a neighborhood like this.”

“You wouldn’t expect the animal who did this to be walking around such a nice neighborhood in the first place,” Butch said, shaking his head in disbelief.

“Tell me about it. I live a few blocks from here,” Melanie said, going cold at the thought. A few blocks from this carnage, her daughter was sleeping.

“But he
was
here,” she said. “We know that. And we know something else, something even worse. He’s still out there.”

THE SEVEN BLOCKS BETWEEN THE BENSONS’ TOWN house and Melanie Vargas’s apartment were long and desperate ones for Sophie Cho. She trudged, hunched over, clutching the stroller handles for comfort, trying to keep visions of the Bensons’ faces at bay. She had the baby to think of. She was very conscientious with Maya. She forced herself to pay careful attention to the traffic lights.

Guilt and anxiety were familiar emotions to Sophie, like old friends, but she’d never experienced them with this paralyzing intensity. She was first generation, grappling with the restrictions of her old culture, fighting to adjust to the new. Life wasn’t easy. But still, she’d always done her best. She could look herself in the eye as she put up her hair every morning. She’d never had this feeling before, like she’d done something wrong, like it had terrible consequences.

She paused at the corner of Melanie’s block. The doorman, Hector, stood under the long green awning leading to the curb, fanning himself with his cap in the wet heat. She thought he noticed her, but then he turned away to watch two small dogs yap wildly at each other, their owners yanking on their leashes to pull them apart. Hector was a nice man, with a jolly laugh and a paunch, always offering to fix her up with his accountant son. Would he read her guilt in her eyes now? Would he turn away in disappointment, in disgust?

“Hey, Miss Cho! How’d you get the little one?” Hector called, spotting her with the stroller.

She managed a demure smile as she approached him, always the polite daughter, even under stress.

“Melanie had to work. She asked me to bring Maya home and baby-sit.”

“So late? Too much working for a mommy. Not good.”

Normally she would’ve sparred with him gently about the importance of women working, but tonight every word of normal conversation felt forced. She couldn’t do it. She stood there numbly, unable to muster any chat, choking on the humid air. Beneath her shirt, rivulets of perspiration slid down her back. The silence lengthened.

“I have keys,” she blurted suddenly, her tone uncharacteristically sharp. Hector looked at her curiously.

“Sure, honey, it’s late. You must be tired. Go on up.”

At Melanie’s floor Sophie stepped off the elevator onto the small landing and worked the keys in the lock easily. She should—she’d chosen the door hardware herself. She struggled into the brightly lit foyer, heaving the stroller over the threshold with one hand while holding the door open with her shoulder. Once inside, she couldn’t help smiling despite her unhappiness. Melanie had left all the lights on, something Sophie herself was much too compulsive to do. She felt a great surge of affection for her friend, this baby, this apartment she’d renovated and then spent happy hours hanging out in.

Melanie’s apartment had been one of Sophie’s first architecture jobs after going out on her own, a vote of confidence, an early bankroll that set her on her way. She looked around the foyer now, eyes smarting with unshed tears, remembering how happily the three of them had worked together, how proud they’d been of the results. With a little taste, you could make your money go far. Elegant but not showy, still nice and homey. Sophie looked up at the ceiling, praying that nothing would have to change, that Melanie would never need to know what she’d done, that she’d still be welcomed here with open arms. But she was fooling herself. Things had changed already. Hadn’t they, after what she’d seen tonight?

A sigh caught in her throat, threatening to become a sob. She dropped the keys on a small wooden table, next to a tall stack of unopened mail addressed to Steve, and picked up a silver-framed photograph of Melanie, Steve, and Maya. The picture had been taken about six months ago, shortly after Maya came home from the hospital. In it she had the red, scrunchy face of an infant, so unlike her yummy plumpness now. Sophie lifted the stroller hood and gazed down at that sweet face, crescents of dark lashes resting against fat cheeks. She could almost be a Korean baby with all that black hair. She could almost be Sophie’s own.

This child, this and no other, not even her own many nieces and nephews, had awakened the baby hunger she’d only read about in magazines. Now, when it seemed less and less likely she’d ever have one of her own. She’d been raised in a schizoid way, an American girl at school, a proper Korean girl at home, expected to steer clear of any entanglement with boys until an appropriate marriage was arranged with some son of her parents’ friends. When the time came, she was in architecture school, having succeeded beyond her own wildest dreams, but poised to shatter her parents’. The few young Korean men who would look at a girl with her résumé dutifully paraded through, took tea, and went on their way, immediately seeing her lack of interest in them, in bearing their sons, in working at their grocery stores and manicure salons. By now they’d found other, more suitable wives, and Sophie had aged well beyond marriageability. As for Anglo men…well, she’d never connected with them. Besides, they didn’t chase her the way they did some Korean girls of her acquaintance. She was too round, her short stature suggesting not the petite exoticism she privately accused them of seeking but rather a tendency to fat in later life.

Maya shifted in her stroller and gurgled breathily, sending a rush of pure love through Sophie’s heart. She wheeled the stroller carefully down the hall to the smaller of the two bedrooms, glowing with golden light from the night-light, and stood reverently in the center of the room, breathing deep. It smelled of baby—the powdery smell from the changing table, the faint whiff of ammonia from the Diaper Genie. A happy nursery for a special little girl, with white furniture and a parade of pink wallpaper bunny rabbits marching around the top of the room.

Maya looked so comfortable that Sophie decided to let her sleep in the stroller until Melanie got home, rather than risk waking her by transferring her to the crib. She picked up a fluffy pink blanket that was folded neatly over the back of a white glider rocker. But as she bent to tuck it around Maya, a great wave of despair washed over her. She sat down heavily in the rocker, clutching the soft fabric to her chest, stifling her sobs as best she could to preserve Maya’s tranquil sleep. Her vision blurring, she saw not Maya but Jed Benson’s handsome face. What must it look like now?

THE MORNING SUN BOTHERING HIS EYES. HE SITTING in a diner across from where he follow that Chinese bitch with the baby to last night, smoking a cigarette and watching. Watching and waiting, long as it took. With the look he give the waitress when she refill his coffee cup, she ain’t hassling him about no cigarette. She know he hurt people, he hurt her if she give him an excuse. She look in his eyes and see that. He love the second when they figure it out.

But it piss him off when they think he stupid. Muscle and no brains. Now, how you gonna think that, with how small he was? How somebody his size get to be the most fearsome killer in five boroughs? Brains, that’s how. Brains and planning. But people never see the work he put in, never give him credit. They think he just show up and do the drama, shooting and cutting. Killing is a tough game, takes mad planning. You need to scope your marks. You got to know when they come and when they go. Who else live in the house. What kind of firepower they got. When they sleeping and when they awake listening, waiting on you. You need the careful work first—
then
you do the drama.

Okay, the drama the best part. The look on their face when they beg for mercy. The noises they make when he slice through their flesh with his knife. He saw shit nobody else ever saw, felt like God with life in his hand. Life and death. Death with a capital
D
. But that the payoff, and you only get paid after hard work. He do the hard work alone. He case and he plan. The only one he ever brang was the dog, No Joke. So when it came to the killing, even if four or five shorties be on the job with him, he do it himself. He do the work, so he deserve the payoff.

The coffee taste like shit. The diner next to a bus stop. The exhaust fumes coming in the front door hurt his head. The morning after, he always fucked up, though. Crashing from the high. He spend days getting ready for last night’s job, sitting quiet, nerves mad twitching. Watching the mark walk around like he all that, like he different than anybody else. Fucking joke. The only difference is, he overconfident. He stupid as a pig to know what he know and not see it coming. Most marks got the sense to know you coming, but not him. The connect at Queens Auto fix up the van to look like it from a flower shop. He sit on that house three days running, and still this motherfucker ain’t catch on. A nigga in a flower truck sitting on your house for three days, you better fucking notice. If you don’t, you see what happen.

He slam his cup down and laugh. A woman at the next table look up, snap him back to reality. Fuck, he so busy patting himself on the back, he forget to case. The building on a side street, diagonal-like from where he sitting. He pick this diner so he can watch the door, see if he spot that Chinese bitch again. The architect.

He don’t like sitting here in the open, but he don’t wanna bring the van too close to last night’s job. This diner just a few blocks north from that house. Not that he listen to shit about don’t return to the scene of the crime. Show you what TV know about the street. He always go back. It never give him trouble. He check out the scene the next day, see what the police up to, watch them looking for him. Get right up in their face, they don’t even pay no attention. But they stop him last night, him and No Joke, so today he being careful.