The Deadhouse (40 page)

"She?"

"The source. My friend. She was called in to assist a partner who
had a business appointment with a client. Emergency meeting on a Sunday
evening because the client's a stock analyst, specializing in foreign
securities. He was supposed to be off to Europe in the morning. Very
well-known guy in the financial community."

"What's his name?"

Jake looked at me. "Can't do that."

He paused. "They sit through half an hour of the meeting, then the
senior partner takes a break to go to the men's room. Client follows
him in and, standing next to him at the urinal, tells him that he
killed his wife on Saturday and—"

Mike Chapman would have had an appropriate comment about the guy's
timing, but the moment and its humor were lost on me. "In Manhattan?"

"They live here, but this happened somewhere between New York City
and their beach home on Long Island. Nassau or Suffolk County, Madam
Prosecutor. Not your jurisdiction."

He couldn't possibly think that I would fail to be appalled about a
homicide that had occurred outside the confines of the city limits of
my legal responsibility. "And the kids? What's the part about children?"

Jake paused slightly before answering. "This guy actually put his
wife's remains in the trunk of his car. Then he got the two kids and
drove upstate to dump the body."

"Where?"

"Where what?"

"Where is that woman's body right at this very moment? And where the
hell are the children?"

"They're fine. She assures me that they're perfectly okay."

"And you're not going to tell me who this victim is and whether
she's lying out in the woods or dumped in a lake or—?"

"Look, my informant's in a tough position, Alex. This is their
client and the information he's giving them is privileged. They're
trying to do the right thing and deal with getting him surrendered
before he leaves the country, but right now he's resisting that idea.
When there's more that I can tell you—"

The phone rang again and Jake answered. "Hey, that's fine. No
problem. You can call me any hour of the night with a story like this.
In the meantime, why don't we plan on lunch tomorrow? You can give me
all the details then."

His caller clearly liked the idea.

"Michael's. Fifty-fifth Street between Fifth and Sixth, at
twelve-thirty. There's a great table in an alcove in the front. Very
private. No overheards. I'll call in the morning and reserve it."

She had a suggestion for Jake.

"No, you're not disturbing anything. Sure, if you get something
else, call right back." He hung up and turned back to me. "You can't
solve all the world's problems, Alex."

"I'd like to think that even if I were not a prosecutor, this story
would be so upsetting that it would make me get off my ass and do
something about it. I can't understand how you can sit there and
probably just think about whether you can scoop the other networks with
some lurid personal detail about this woman's murder. I can't
understand why calling the police isn't the first thing you do."

The phone rang again and this time, without asking my permission,
Jake held up a finger as if to suggest that I wait a few minutes till
he returned from the den to finish our conversation. He trotted off to
the other room to take his call alone.

I walked to the window and looked out at the murky night sky. Three
minutes of that did nothing to calm me. I picked up my cell phone,
Jake's spare set of keys, the forty-seven dollars cash I had left until
I hit the ATM in the morning, and I stuffed them in my shoulder bag. I
had to get out of the apartment before my temper exploded. And I needed
to find out who the dead woman might be.

Jake was still in the den when I put on my coat and walked out to
the elevator.

I pushed the revolving door open before the doorman could get to his
feet and reach out for it. A fine layer of sleet was falling as I
turned the corner and tried to find a coffee shop where I could make
some calls to local precincts to see whether any relatives or friends
had reported a missing female in the past twenty-four hours.

After going three blocks, it was apparent that nothing in the area
was open after eleven o'clock on a Sunday evening. Although I was less
than five minutes from my own apartment, I knew it was foolish to go
there. I did not want to risk an encounter with the unstable, stalking
complainant, Shirley Denzig, and I had not received word that the
window had been repaired.

I reached inside my coat and lifted my beeper when I felt it
vibrating on my waistband. I held it up under the streetlight and saw
it display Jake's number. I replaced it, tightened the collar of my
coat, raised it against the sleet, and crossed the street.

If I walked another few blocks north, I would reach the Nineteenth
Precinct station house on Sixty-seventh Street. If I went east instead,
I could get to Mike's building just as quickly. He knew every homicide
detective in a fifty-mile radius of the city. We could sit in his tiny
studio apartment, which he had long ago nicknamed The Coffin, making
calls all night if need be until we figured out who this killer was and
locked him up before he fled the country.

I picked up my pace as I headed east to York Avenue. A coat of ice
was forming on the sidewalks and streets and I took care not to slip as
I walked briskly along. The only people outside were those who needed
to be there. Dog walkers out for the last effort of the evening,
hospital workers heading for the midnight shift at Cornell Medical
Center, and the occasional homeless person huddled in a storefront or
alleyway.

When I reached the entrance to the old tenement that stood dwarfed
amid the surrounding high-rise condos and upscale restaurants, I opened
the outer door, shook the drops off my sleeves, and looked for the
buzzer to Mike's apartment. It was marked with the number of his gold
detective's shield rather than his name. As the beeper on my waistband
went off a second time, I continued to ignore it and pressed the
doorbell.

The several seconds it took for Mike's voice to come over the
intercom seemed like an hour.

"Yeah?"

"I've got a problem. It's Alex. Buzz me in?"

The brass handle yielded to my grip as the signal to unlock it
sounded in the small lobby. I grabbed at the banister in the dingy
hallway and jogged up the staircase, flight after flight, to the fifth
floor of the narrow building. I was huffing and puffing when I got to
the landing and stopped to catch my breath.

I could hear Mike unlatch the dead bolt. He cracked the door about a
foot wide and stood in the opening, his chest bare and a towel wrapped
around him and knotted at his waist.

"Sorry, it never occurred to me you'd be asleep at this hour." I
walked toward the door, expecting him to let me in. "Don't be modest,
Mikey. I won't rip it off you. That could be the first thing I've had
to laugh about all evening."

I reached my arm out to push at the door. I assumed he thought I'd
want him to get dressed before I came into the small room. He held his
ground as he gave me a once-over, as though looking from head to toe
for an injury. "You okay?"

"Cold and wet. And furious. You've got to help me."

I brushed past him and stepped over the threshold as he started to
speak. "Alex, just give me a minute to—"

I gasped as I stood beside him. There was a woman asleep in his bed,
and I cringed as I realized how rude I had been to burst in and impose
on his friendship so abruptly.

I put my right hand up in front of my face and tried to whisper an
apology. "I'm mortified," I said, fighting off tears and backing out of
the doorway. "It was so inconsiderate of me to rush up here without
calling."

He grabbed for my wrist as I pulled away and turned toward the
staircase. "Alex, don't be ridiculous. I just want to—"

"I'll call you in the morning," I said over my shoulder. "Don't
worry. I'm on my way to Jake's. I'm fine." I was flying down the steps,
calling up to him from two flights below. There was no way I'd go back
to Jake's apartment now, but I didn't want Mike to worry about me
heading for my own place. I ignored Mike's shouts to me to slow down
and stop, and instead was planning the most direct route to the station
house to get someone in the squad to help me.

There was very little traffic on the slick street so I dismissed the
traffic light and dashed across York Avenue, moving west. If Mike had
been dressed, I knew he would have been chasing me by now, so I broke
into a trot and started running, in case he even thought about putting
clothes on to follow me.

My mind was short-circuiting with irrelevancies. What would he do
when he called Jake's apartment in five minutes and learned that I
hadn't returned there? Maybe I should just suck up what had happened
and go back to confront Jake, call the police in his presence. But if
he objected to my doing so, I would be forced to walk out on him again
anyway. Who was the woman in Mike's apartment, I wondered, and why had
he been so closemouthed about her? And how sorry I felt for her to have
this madwoman burst in on her in her boyfriend’s home at a most
unsuitable time for a house call.

I stood on the corner of First Avenue to wait for a bus to pass,
panting as I came to a halt. Maybe she slept through the whole thing, I
thought to myself. And what would he say to explain the situation to
her if she had not?

I reached the curb on the far side of the street and practically
lost my balance as I stepped on a slippery patch of black ice. Calm
down, I tried to urge myself. Just a few blocks more and I could sit in
the detectives' squad room making my calls, warm and secure.

Footsteps smacked at the pavement off in the distance behind me.
Some other fool was out on this miserable night. I spun around to make
sure that it was not Chapman coming after me, but saw only the dark
figure of a man crossing the avenue against the traffic. If it were
Mike, he would have called out to me by this point, and I assured
myself that I would have stopped and explained to him the reason for my
untimely visit.

I started loping along again, wiping the freezing rain from my
eyelids and ducking my head to avoid the wind.

The running steps grew closer to me now and I turned again. This
time the man was almost upon me and I could see him clearly. His face
resembled the sketch of the young assailant who had been attacking
women in this neighborhood for the past two months. My heart beat
wildly as I tried to think of a way to get out of his path. Second
Avenue was a long sprint from the middle of the block, but the
brownstone buildings on either side of the quiet street required keys
to get inside their front doors.

I accelerated and ran into the middle of the roadway, racing toward
the busier thoroughfare ahead that would be bound to have taxi and bus
traffic. Before I could reach the corner, the man had lapped me from
the back. His muscular arms stabbed my shoulder blades and he tried to
clutch at my mouth, muttering at me in a soft accented voice,
repeatedly telling me to shut up.

I fell to the ground and my knees smashed against the concrete. My
gloved hands flapped out in front of me and broke my fall. In a flash,
my attacker ripped the strap of my bag off my arm and ran toward the
avenue as I lay sprawled on the icy street.

28

"Hey, Quick Draw, wanna put out an APB for me?"

I was sitting inside the Nineteenth Precinct squad commander's
office, shielded from the detectives' desks by the clouded glass window
on the door, when I heard Chapman's voice, at top volume, calling
across the room to Walter DeGraw.

"I'm looking for a dumb blonde. Big-time bad judgment written all
over her. Put it out on the wires in case any of your guys see her
skating around the city streets on the midnight tour. About five feet
ten inches, too skinny for my taste, too stubborn to ask a cop for
help, too vain to shed tears and run her mascara, too stupid to put a
hat on her head in a snowstorm so her blonde hair's looking a little
bedraggled from the sleet. But great wheels. And well dressed. They
find her alive, she's likely to kill me if I didn't add those things.
You seen her around or I oughtta try the psych ward down at Bellevue?"

DeGraw pushed open the door and Chapman reached out his arm to
balance himself against the frame of it and stare down at me. I was
sitting in the lieutenant's armchair, holding a steaming mug of coffee
in both hands to warm them up, and wearing a turtleneck sweater that
one of the guys had taken from his locker to put over my wet clothes.

"For a smart broad, sometimes you got the brains of a pigeon."

DeGraw started to excuse himself and get out of the room.

"Don't go, Walter," I implored him. He had begun to type the
complaint report and the sooner I finished giving him the details, the
faster I could get out of the cold station house.

Chapman stepped into the room and squatted in front of me. He placed
his palms against my knees and realized when I jerked reflexively away
from him that I had hurt them in my fall. He pried the coffee cup away
from my clutches and pressed my hands between his own, rubbing them
together gently but firmly.

"What's this all about, kid?"

I shook my head, not wanting to tell the whole story here and now,
and DeGraw shuffled nervously, knowing that he was in the middle of
something more personal. A uniformed cop knocked on the door, which was
still ajar.

"Excuse me, Detective DeGraw? The desk sergeant sent me up." He was
clutching my shoulder bag. "My partner found this on the sidewalk,
about two blocks south of where she was hit. Nothing in it. Sarge wants
to know if you can identify it, Counselor."

"There wasn't much in it anyway. Yes, it's mine."