Our Honored Dead (Stephanie Chalice Thrillers Book 4) (18 page)

The receptionist reviewed the paperwork and then checked her watch. “It’s lunchtime. I don’t know if anyone’s back there to help you.”

Of course it’s lunchtime. That’s why I’m here.
“There’s always someone on the floor. They never leave the morgue unattended.”

The receptionist smiled. “I guess this isn’t your first trip to the rodeo.”

“Nope. I know the ropes,” Tillerman said with a smile.

She picked up the phone. “Let’s just see if I can get one of the technicians to help you. I think Jeffrey might still be here.” She checked the directory, hit the speaker setting, and then punched in an extension number.

“Morgue.” The voice at the other end of the line sounded young to Tillerman. He smiled again.

“Jeffrey, it’s Claire. Sclafani is here for a pickup. Can you come out and help?”

Jeffrey burped on the other end of the line. “Oops, sorry, Claire. I’m eating at my desk.”

“Taco Bell?”

“No, Mickey D’s. I’ll be right there.”

Claire hung up the phone. “Nice young man, but he eats the most god-awful stuff.

“Fast food,” Tillerman said. “We’re all guilty.” He was doing a great job of being congenial, despite the fact that his stomach was churning with anxiety. His hand trembled and then locked in spasm momentarily. He began to rub the area between the palm and thumb.

Claire noticed the tremor. “Are you all right, dear? It looks like you’re in pain.”

“It’s nothing,” Tillerman said. “Occupational hazard.”

“Oh, just like me—I’ve got carpal tunnel. Do you do a lot of typing?”

“The paperwork is endless,” Tillerman replied. “The state drives us crazy with red tape.”

“I know, it’s awful, isn’t it?”

Tillerman nodded. He turned when he heard the release of an electric door lock. A man who looked to be in his twenties approached the reception counter. He held his security tag in one hand and a milkshake in the other. Tillerman grinned when he saw him. The position of morgue technician was an entry-level job. No experience was needed, just a high-school diploma.
Perfect. Absolutely perfect.

Claire waved an admonishing finger at him. “Jeffrey, you’ll get fat.”

“No worries, Claire,” he replied. He picked up the paperwork and began to look through it. He glanced up at Tillerman. “Four bodies—I’m glad they sent someone big. I hope you didn’t bring a hearse.”

Tillerman shook his head. “No. I’ve got a van with slide out trays. I can fit them all.”

“Great,” Jeffrey said. “Let’s do it.”

Gus
had a bellyful of pasta and his foot on the gas. We were once again on our way to Staten Island, and Gus was happy as hell to have gotten out of Ma’s apartment with just a light beating. “What the hell was that?” he said. “You couldn’t have given me a head’s-up?”

I began to laugh. “I’m sorry. I know it’s not funny. It was all happening right there and then. You walked through the door and got it right between the eyes.” I continued to laugh. “I’m really sorry.”

“Jesus, I thought she was going to disembowel me.”

“Well what do you want, hot stuff? You got her sweet, innocent daughter in a family way. That can’t go unpunished.”

“You’re nuts, do you know that?” The Verrazano Bridge was coming into view. “So tell me about you and this Frankie guy.” Gus gave me a probing stare. “You were doing him in high school?”

“No. It was just adolescent stuff: making out, petting, groping—you’ve been there. We’d watch TV, he’d cop a feel, and so on and so on. He never got past second base. Ma knows it too or she would have shut it down in a heartbeat. She trusted me and I would never let her down.”

“The poor guy must have had a serious case of blue balls.”

“Hey, I was brought up as a good Catholic girl. If Frankie had to go home and do a load by hand . . . well, so be it. Believe me, there were lots of guys who wanted to slide their hands up my blouse. Frankie was the envy of all his friends—he told me so.”

The thump of the tires on the Verrazano’s approach grid cued me to focus my attention back onto the case. Our records search had turned up a match. It was well after hours, and it took me several calls to track down the suspect’s employer and get the address reported on his employment records. We were on our way to that address. “How long did this guy Tillerman work for Sclafani?”

“He was there almost three years. According to Sclafani, he didn’t operate the furnace, but he spent enough time in the basement to pick up on how to operate it.”

“And he’s been working security ever since?”

“No. He was off the grid for a while. He’s only been with the security company for about six months.”

“Hard to believe a big company like Vicor doesn’t have its own security team. I mean it’s the pharmaceuticals industry. I’m sure they spend a fortune to prevent industrial espionage.”

“Oh, they have corporate security up the yin-yang, but they hire Beacon to do the nuts and bolts stuff,” Gus said. “You know, they sit at the reception area after hours and monitor the closed-circuit TV. They patrol the parking lot . . . They can’t actually enter the facility. They’re strictly outsiders.”

Something Gus said struck me. It took a moment for it to sink in. “Did you say Beacon Security?”

“Yeah, why?”

An image flashed in my head. I pictured a security guard asleep at his post. The emblem on his jacket read Beacon Security. “You didn’t happen to ask Beacon where else Tillerman has been assigned, did you?”

“No.”

“Beacon Security covers the pumping station we visited at Kowsky Plaza in Lower Manhattan. I remember seeing the name on the security guard’s jacket.” My skin began to tingle. “My God, we’re so close.”

It must have been the close proximity to Sonellio’s home that made me think of him. He was a cop to the very end. He was staring at the grave and yet wanted nothing more than justice for his neighbors. I ached for him and planned to phone him first thing in the morning to brief him on Tillerman, our new suspect. I wondered if we’d be able to give him closure before . . . I sighed.

We were off the boulevard. Gus directed the car down a narrow side street. He checked the address he had written on his notepad. “There it is, on the right.”

I looked up at the sky through the windshield. It was the most beautiful shade of navy blue. Puffs of clouds like dabs of white paint obscured my view of the moon. An old street light sputtered on and off. There was little light, but it wasn’t hard to tell that the house we had come to visit had been boarded up. I felt my heart sink. “Damn.”

Gus pulled up in front of the small home and turned off the engine. We each grabbed a Maglite and got out of the car to take a look.

Tatiana
was
the
place to go on a Saturday night if you were a Russian living in Brooklyn. The supper club featured fine dining, dancing, and a show. The patrons dressed to the nines. Vodka flowed like water. Russians are always thirsty.

Anya Kozakova sat at a table for ten, but she was the only one not up on the dance floor. She lifted a bottle of vodka out of a block of ice and poured the last of it into her glass. “Here’s to me,” she said sadly. “At least I’m out of the apartment.” The house band was loud. The vocalist had dark hair, a widow’s peak, and a groomed beard. He wore a bright blue taffeta tuxedo jacket. He sang in Russian while the band covered a popular tune, “
япоцеловалдевочкаиялюбилего
,”
which loosely translated into “I kissed a girl and I liked it.”

Kozakova hummed the song, accompanying the vocalist. The fresh hit of vodka topped off her buzz. Her mind was numb and quiet. It was the first time in days that she was not thinking in computer code.

Her friend Olga saw her and walked off the dance floor. Olga was a tall blond. She had legs like Cameron Diaz and wore a dress short enough to show off every inch of them. She plopped down in the chair next to Kozakova and began to massage her feet. “These shoes are killing me,” she said. “That’s what I get for buying cheap knockoffs.”

“Cheap knockoffs maybe, but every man out there wants to dance with you,” Kozakova said. “You have gorgeous legs.”

“Thank you,” she said. “Where is your big, fuzzy friend, Marat? He’s usually here.”

“I thought he was coming but . . . you know men. He’s probably passed out drunk somewhere. I can only count on seeing him when he’s horny.”

“Speaking of horny, why don’t you dance with that single guy over there. He’s dancing with a couple. Open your top button and shove your big breasts in his face.”

“Which one?” Kozakova said as she turned toward the dance floor.

Olga pointed to a tall, thin man with wire-rimmed glasses and a mustache.

“Him? The one who looks like Nietzsche? You must be joking.”

“What’s wrong with him?” Olga protested defensively. “Better you should sit here alone?” She picked up the closest glass of vodka and toasted Kozakova. “Go, Anya, the night is long—better to go home with a homely man than to go home alone.” She whispered in her ear, “A vibrator may get you off, but it won’t keep you warm.” Olga laughed and then stood up. “Come on, the singer has a great voice. I love Nicki Minaj.” She quickly walked back to the dance floor.

Kozakova swallowed the rest of her vodka and stood up without thinking about a plan or consequences. She undid the top button of her blouse as Olga had instructed and made her way over to the dance floor. She arrived just a few seconds too late. By the time she located the Nietzsche look-alike, he was dancing with someone else.

The club’s main entrance was located on the Riegelmann Boardwalk at Brighton Beach. Kozakova walked out onto the boardwalk, leaned against the railing, and looked out at the Atlantic. Wind rushed north, and she was only able to take the chill for a few minutes before she headed home. She was mildly disappointed with the evening, but the vodka was doing its job, and there was more of it waiting for her at home. She had just turned onto Brightwater Court when Tillerman came up behind her and pounded down on her skull with his massive fist. She collapsed, and he dragged her into his van.

I
called for assistance. The entrances and first-floor windows were boarded up. We would need a tactical team to gain access to Tillerman’s home. It didn’t stop us from taking a look around—if there was a quick way in, we’d find it. I walked around the side of the house to the back. The entrance to the cellar was a sloped wooden door. It had been boarded up as well, but I pulled on one of the boards and was able to yank it free. With the board out of the way, I could see the padlock that secured the door.
Piece of cake.
“Gus,” I called out.

It took a second for Gus to emerge out of the shadows. “Find something?”

I illuminated the exposed padlock with my searchlight beam. “We’ve got a bolt cutter in the trunk, don’t we?”

Gus smiled. “You bet.” He walked off and returned a minute later with a large bolt cutter. I focused the searchlight beam on the padlock while he cut the shackle. Boards were nailed over the door. They gave way when Gus pulled on it.

“Great, nothing like crawling around a creepy, dark basement. Can’t think of anything I’d rather do.” I focused the searchlight beam on the steps and descended. I walked right into a huge spider web. As soon as I cleared the web away, I noticed a light switch and tried it, but the power was off. The basement was pitch black. I explored the darkness. The basement was unfinished, cinderblock walls and a concrete floor. I saw a large, steel cart at the far end of the basement. I walked closer and saw that it was a necropsy table, a table designed for working on cadavers. Like most, this one had a plastic runoff tube through which the cadaver’s blood could drain. It ran a few feet to a slop sink, which was stained red.

Gus walked over to the sink and examined it with his searchlight. “I’ll get a crime scene team down here. It looks like there’s some dried blood around the drain.”

“Good deal.” I continued to look around and saw a wooden cabinet. I opened the doors and found a clean set of necropsy instruments and several jugs of embalming fluid. Gus walked over to show me a handful of small, white, conical objects that he was holding. “Trocar buttons?”

“I found a bag of them under the necropsy table.”

Trocar buttons are threaded plugs an ME uses to seal the wound he’s made to fill the internal cavity with embalming fluid. “Why is he embalming them?” I asked. “It’s not consistent with his MO. We’re not sure what really happened to the first victim, but we know that Tillerman ground up his bones to make a medallion. The second victim was found intact but frozen, and Tillerman tried to incinerate the third victim. I’m confused.”

Gus seemed equally perplexed. He bit off a hangnail and then shrugged.

I heard the sound of a car pulling to a stop outside the house. “Sounds like reinforcements are here. I can’t wait to explore the rest of this dirty old sarcophagus.”

Herbert Ambler came down the basement stairs a moment later. Marjorie Banks followed him. I mused that they were out on a date when they got the call to head over our way. I took one look at Ambler’s face and knew better. The four of us were holding searchlights—they threw off enough light for Ambler to take in the scene before him. He looked down at the trocar buttons in Gus’ hand and looked up with an expression of puzzlement on his face. “What the hell?”