It Happens in the Dark (7 page)

The lieutenant waited until the detectives sat down at their facing desks by the bank of windows. Strolling up to them, he said, “Good morning. Did you guys have a nice
leisurely
breakfast?” There would be no yelling. Too much pain. He rolled his newspaper tight to the width of a beat cop’s baton. “I wanna see your reports on my desk in—”

Mallory handed him a short stack of paper, and he leafed through it. She had typed up their reports and all the interviews. When did she sleep? Did she even
need
sleep?

Jack Coffey unrolled his newspaper and opened it to the entertainment section. “Let me read you a few lines from
The Herald
’s second review of the play. ‘A death in the audience every night. It’s a play
and
a lottery. Buy a ticket and take your chances, but get your will in order before you go.’” He crushed the paper into an unwieldy ball. “Commissioner Beale didn’t bother with chain of command today. He called to ask if there was a problem with letting the play go on. CSU released your crime scene. So, unless you two have a—”

“Hey, no problem,” said Riker. “Of course, if somebody dies tonight, that’s gonna make us look stupid.”

“Ain’t gonna happen,” said the lieutenant. “I called the ME. That woman who kicked off two nights ago? Dr. Slope says she had a heart attack. And the playwright’s death was suicide.” Jack Coffey sent his copy of
The
Herald
flying ten feet to land in a corner wastebasket, a perfect shot. He was much practiced in disposing of bad press this way. And now a civilian clerk stepped up to him and handed over the preliminary autopsy reports still warm from the printer.
Nice timing
.

“Hold on,” said Riker. “Even Harry Deberman knew that guy was murdered. He tried to hijack our case.”

“Then I may personally hand it over to that worthless asshole.” The lieutenant held up the two sheets of paper. “Prelims on your vics.” He slapped them down, one on Riker’s desk, “Heart attack!” and one for Mallory, “Suicide!” Softer now, he said, “Wrap it up. Make it go away.”

•   •   •

The room temperature was chilly, the better to keep the meat from spoiling. A morgue attendant walked up to the wall of stainless steel lockers and pulled out two cold-storage drawers for the theater fatalities, Mrs. McCormick and Mr. Beck, who had died on successive evenings.

Tallest among the living and the dead was Dr. Edward Slope, a man with the ramrod posture of a general and gray hair that fit well with a countenance of unyielding stone. The wave of his hand was sufficient to send the attendant scuttling away. The doctor consulted his clipboard, scanning the autopsy findings, and—contrary to the complaint—he found nothing amiss with the work of his pathologists. Turning a cold eye on the two visitors from Special Crimes, he showed them a smile that said,
I’m going to eat you alive.

Not every detective in the NYPD warranted a personal audience with the chief medical examiner, but he had a history with Kathy Mallory, an infrequent player in the Louis Markowitz Floating Poker Game. He had lost many a hand of cards to his old friend’s foster child before the little shark was out of grade school. All these years later, he was still looking for ways to get even—and ways to keep her engaged in what passed for a relationship with another human being. Toward these ends, he employed more sophisticated challenges than cards, each encounter ending in a bloody face-off across a dead body. He did this for Louis. He did it for love.

So this was their game now. They both called it war. However, he was a gentleman, and the first strike would always be hers.

The young detective pulled the sheet back from the face of the woman’s corpse. “You ruled her death as natural causes.” This was said in the tone of talking down to imbeciles.

“Daring of me, wasn’t it? My pathologist saw two heart valves that should’ve been replaced ten years ago. Then he leapt to the rash conclusion that it was heart failure, a
natural
death. And I signed off on it.
What
was I thinking?”

“There are other ways to bring on a heart attack.”

“Yes, Kathy . . . there are.” Oh, did that sound condescending?

“Mallory,” she said—she
insisted—
so unforgiving in his use of her given name. Upon graduation from the Police Academy, she had granted him only the options of her rank or surname.

Tough.

He pulled the sheet down farther to expose crude autopsy stitches. “If you wanted to induce
this
heart attack, you’d have to cut her open, crack the rib cage, stick your hand into her chest cavity and shred two heart valves. . . . But my pathologist would’ve noticed that in the postmortem.” He covered the late Mrs. McCormick. “The valves failed the heart. That’s fact, not opinion. And the heart failed the woman.” He turned to the neighboring drawer’s steel bed with the draped corpse of the playwright, Mr. Beck. “And that one’s a suicide. Exsanguination, to be precise. He bled out. I don’t plan to change the cause of his death, either,
Kathy
.”

This time she only glared at him for failing to address her in a more professional manner. She
had
warned him. There was always a warning before—

Riker stepped between them. “Here’s the catch, Doc. These two people died in the same place, the exact same time on
two
different nights.”

“I see. . . . So you assumed my staff must’ve missed something.”
Not likely.
“Obviously, Mr. Beck
selected
the time of his death. A pity we can’t ask him why he matched it to Mrs. McCormick’s heart attack, but that’s what happened. And
that
supports suicide.”

Kathy Mallory drew back the sheet to expose the dead man’s neck wound. “Very neat stitches. Dr. Pool did this one, right?”

“So he did.” Eyes on the first page of the preliminary report, he paraphrased Dr. Pool’s opinion. “No bruising, no defensive wounds. The
only
wound is consistent with suicide.” He looked up from his reading. “So, before you ask, Mr. Beck isn’t getting a broad-base tox scan, either.” Slope handed his clipboard to the more reasonable detective, Riker, and pointed to a line on the top sheet. “Check out his alcohol level.”

Riker donned a pair of bifocals and said, “Holy crap!”

Edward Slope nodded to second this opinion. “Rather admirable that he managed to remain upright long enough to get to the theater. Most men his size would’ve passed out on less alcohol. Our Mr. Beck seems to have had lots of practice.” Retrieving the paperwork from Riker’s hand, the doctor flipped to the next page. “Now here’s an odd note—”

“He didn’t have an alcoholic’s liver,” said Detective Mallory.

The medical examiner paused for a count of three. “Kathy, why don’t we bypass the silly autopsies. Waste of my time. Just type up your own damn—”

“Hey,” said Riker, “is she right?”

“No signs of long-term alcohol abuse, and Mr. Beck has indicators for a vegetarian. Stomach contents, skin coloring. High carotene levels—apparently he favored carrots. Very health-conscious diet. So the drinking jag indicates a recent change in his state of mind, but not for the better. And that
also
supports a finding of suicide. Dr. Pool’s logic is flawless.”

“The man’s throat was
slashed
,” said Kathy Mallory. “And a witness sitting next to him never noticed. Not a sound. Even if he was drunk, that wound had to—”

“There were no painkillers or sedatives—if that’s where you’re heading. Drugs like that would’ve shown up in our
standard
tox screen.”

“There are drugs that don’t—”

“He didn’t
need
to be drugged!” Was this frustrating? Hell,
yes.
Tightening every muscle of his face, Edward Slope looked down at his clipboard. “It appears that Dr. Pool was very thorough. He had CSU send over the weapon for wound comparison. A very sharp razor. The throat was slashed in a single stroke.” He looked up at her. “It would take a while for pain to kick in . . . but he only had sixty seconds to live.
Possibly
ninety.”

“Depending on the drug,” she said. “There are rare—”

“Stop with the damn drugs! If we add something exotic to the alcohol in his system, he would’ve died before he could whip out the razor. Mr. Beck was losing a lot of blood very quickly. He was in
shock
—best painkiller known to God and man. So we’re
done
with the bloodwork!”

The young detective inclined her head a bare inch, acknowledging his win—with a smile that so clearly said he had lost. And now he realized that she had never given a damn about the bloodwork. What did she—

Oh, bloody hell!

Dr. Slope stared at the final page of the report, a diagram of the wound, and then he walked around to the other side of the corpse for his first hard look at the actual trauma—and a flaw in Pool’s logic.

The wound was not horizontal, not typical. It began below the right ear, angling down from there to divide the carotid artery, then crossing over to partially sever the windpipe. A half-cut throat was also atypical, but not the troublesome point. Once the body had been washed clean of blood, a more experienced pathologist would have understood the secondary injury, a minor one that had not bled, but only roughed the skin. This long abrasion ran parallel to the fatal cut.

Kathy Mallory was also staring at the corpse and leaning down close to it—kissing distance.
Such
an evil smile. The late Louis Markowitz would have been so proud of her today.

“What’s this?” She touched the abrasion line below the cut. “Your pathologist missed a hesitation mark?”

She was enjoying this too much.

“No, wait,” she said. “That
can’t
be a hesitation mark. Even
Dr. Pool
knew the razor would’ve broken the skin. I say that’s the drag line of a fingernail . . . on the hand that held the razor.” She lifted the left hand of the corpse. Every nail had been chewed to the quick. “But I suppose suicide is . . .
possible.
”

Could she be more sarcastic? He thought not.

When the detectives finally took their leave, they were carrying the chief medical examiner’s
amended
report. Dr. Slope had split the difference between suicide and homicide with a call of “suspicious death.”

SUSAN:
They murdered all those people? Women? Children?

ROLLO:
Oh, never mind all that. Do you like ballet?

—
The Brass Bed
, Act I

A cloudless sky. Damn sun. Come to melt the snow?

Axel Clayborne stood by the low brick wall that lined the roof, and he looked down at the street, lamenting the changes that he could see from his sky-high perch. Once, this part of town had been an enclave of entertainers who ran the gamut of broke to breakthrough money. But now the sidewalks were overrun with nannies pushing babies around in thousand-dollar strollers. Oh, TriBeCa was definitely a neighborhood in decline.

“We’re sold out for tonight’s performance,” he said to the man who slept on his rooftop. The death was still too raw to call it anything but sleep. He knelt down to clear the snow from Dickie Wyatt’s face. “You’re looking well.” Though the flesh was white beyond pale. And the eyes—a bit sunken? Perhaps.

The actor reached up to the parapet, where he had placed his newspapers alongside a steaming mug of coffee for himself and one for his friend, who was beyond thirst, but every good illusion required props. First, he opened
The Herald
, and when he was done reading aloud from Leonard Crippen’s second review, he moved on to the next newspaper, which had sent an intrepid critic into the storm to review last night’s performance. Though this woman’s praise was not quite so lavish, she
had
been entertained, and, in a read with a bit of squint, it was a fairly good review. Tonight’s weather forecast was free of snow, and the rest of the drama critics would certainly show up. “Dickie, the play’s a hit, and no one’s even seen the second act.”

He looked down at his friend, who showed no joy in this.

Axel gulped the dregs of his coffee. “Sorry. Have to run. Reporters are waiting at the theater. Oh, and I promised Cyril I’d shake hands with a few politicians. He thinks that’ll give us a shot at going on tonight—in case the police have other ideas.”

The actor covered the sleeper’s face with snow, the better to keep him fresh and fragrant, though he could not keep him for long. “What will I do when you’re gone?”

Dickie Wyatt could not say.

•   •   •

Jack Coffey tried to concentrate on paperwork for the playwright’s death, though it was hard to ignore the fact that a large bear was standing in the open doorway. He looked up to meet the slow brown eyes of his unannounced visitor, who wore a suit that fit tight across the broad shoulders. And he said to the bear, “What’s up?”

Heller, the man in command of Crime Scene Unit, lumbered into the lieutenant’s private office, held a small carton over the desk blotter—and dropped it.

That must be a clue.

“You caught a lucky break, Jack. All the evidence is useless. If the case ever makes it to trial, your guys won’t need Clara Loman on their side in court. She hates their guts.”

Now it was Jack Coffey’s turn to shoot. “Yeah, I heard Loman came out of her bat cave last night. When’s the last time she worked in the field? Five, six years ago?” That woman was the sacred cow of CSU, the one who had hired Heller back in his rookie days. But now this man was in charge of the whole department, and he ran errands for no one—not even her.

So what was Heller doing here?

“Your detectives had her team crawling all over that theater, looking for damn pieces of chalk. You know how many hours of overtime—”

“When did Clara Loman
ever
take orders from detectives?” That prima donna had been chained to a desk for good reason. “Did she
find
the chalk?”

Heller pretended not to hear this. “Peter Beck’s fingerprints are the only ones on that razor. Some prints are smudged, but not the way I’d expect, one print layered over another.”

“So you’re thinking—gloves.” Coffey picked up the sheet that detailed his detectives’ pub crawl last night. Peter Beck had lost his own gloves long before his throat was cut. But no one from CSU would know that.

“Yeah, gloves,” said Heller. “That’s what makes the razor useless. And most of the night-vision goggles had prints from the whole cast and crew. Everybody played with those things.” He tapped the carton on the desk. “I can’t cut ’em loose from evidence, but I bought these replacements at a toy store. Councilman Perry’s been ragging my office all morning. He says the theater needs these goggles today.” Heller nudged the box across the desk blotter. “Call it a present, Jack—if you wanna score a few points with the guy. He tells me he’s real tight with Commissioner Beale.”

Politicians had no influence on Heller, and yet here he was—playing politics.

Coffey drummed his fingers on the desk. “So . . . what about the chalk?”

Heller, the very busy man of few words, now sat down to chat for a while. “Blue chalk was found in a desk drawer. The theater people used it to mark up the stage during rehearsals. But the chalk on the blackboard was white, and it was old. Powdery, no modern binder.”

“Sounds messy,” said Coffey. “So Loman’s crew found it.”

“No, not a stick. They took samples from the writing on the blackboard. And none of the CSIs noticed chalk residue on anybody’s hands. Maybe your perp wore gloves for the razor
and
the chalk. And now you got a pile of overtime on the books, all for nothing.”

“But they found the gloves? Loman never said anything to my—”

“Naw, no latex, nothin’ like that.”

“It’s winter,” said Coffey. “Everybody’s wearing gloves.”

Oh,
crap
and
aha
!

Now he knew why Heller had come. This visit was all about damage control—Clara Loman’s damage. “Let me guess. The CSIs only collected what people were wearing during the blackout. Am I right? Yeah, all they’d care about is bloodfly. Well, too bad our suspects’ gloves never got tested for blood . . . or chalk residue. I suppose the killer’s pair walked out the door with him—before Loman even got around to hunting for the chalk. And
she’s
pissed off at
my
guys?”

Heller shrugged, and this was tantamount to waving a flag of surrender. “Clara’s off your case. She’s taking some sick days . . . and I owe you one.”

Jack Coffey smiled and bit back his favorite adage for dealings with this man:
Some days the bear gets you. And some days you get that bear—by the balls.

•   •   •

The Herald
’s drama critic was still not at home to the police, nor was he responding to messages left on his answering machine. The newspaper’s editor had sympathized with Riker and explained that, on principle, Leonard Crippen never opened his eyes before noon.

The detective had concluded one more follow-up call, this one to the stage manager, and then he slammed down the receiver of his desk phone and said to his partner, “Bugsy hasn’t turned up yet.”

Mallory’s attention was focused on some point behind him, and he turned to see Clara Loman, queen of the CSU night shift
.
When the lady stepped up to the demarcation line between their two desks, she was missing her attitude of one who owns the earth beneath her feet. This morning, her place in the world seemed more tenuous.

And Loman’s voice cracked when she said, “I’m not working your case anymore. Nothing personal. I’ll be taking some time off.” She stared at Mallory, maybe looking for some sign that the young detective had heard the other version, the rumor that Heller had removed her from the case because she had botched the job.

And yes, twenty minutes ago, that rumor had been phoned in by a snitch at CSU, and Heller’s visit to Coffey’s office had given it some weight. But Mallory gave away nothing. Her face was a mask.

“I don’t like loose ends,” said Loman. “Now . . . about the night-vision goggles. They’re kids’ toys, but old models, discontinued years ago. So you can scratch the toy stores, and I’ve already checked eBay. But the boxes were in a manufacturer’s carton, and the shipping label should lead to a liquidator or a stolen-goods report.” Now she laid down a thick sheaf of paper bound with a rubber band, and she did it with something approaching ceremony. “
This
is a copy of the play.”

What were they supposed to do with that?
Read
it?

As for the goggles, it had taken his partner ten minutes to match the carton to a robbery for the year when the goggles were brand-new. Mallory could even name the day when the box was boosted off the back of a delivery truck. Yet Loman stood there waiting for their thanks—thanks for nothing. However, never one to keep a lady waiting, Riker was prepared to do the gallant thing.

Mallory beat him to it. She rose from her desk and extended her hand to the older woman, saying, “Thanks.”

When Clara Loman shook hands, she did not smile. No one had ever seen her do that. But she squared her shoulders and made a curt nod before marching away.

Riker watched the woman’s retreating back, which was straighter now, as she passed through the stairwell door with her dignity restored—by Mallory of all people. His partner could still surprise him, and he toyed with the idea that she might have a heart.

Now you see it—now you don’t.

He snapped back to reality when he saw Heller standing outside of Coffey’s office—
watching.
So Mallory had only been building up currency in the CSU favor bank. That unit’s commander had always looked out for Clara Loman, who, by temperament, by age and grating personality, would never find another job.

Mallory was running a game on
Heller’s
heart.

•   •   •

Axel Clayborne saw the ground floor of the SoHo station house as a landmark from the era of Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall.
Marvelous.
Century-old molding and hardwood floors remained intact. Civilians and police walked to and fro, paying the film star no attention until he removed his dark glasses and muffler. A policewoman stopped to gape at him, and another officer thrust a pen and paper into his hand, saying, “You mind? The wife’s a big fan.”

Axel smiled as he personalized his autograph with the name of the officer’s spouse. Then he handed the man two complimentary theater tickets. “They’re for the end of the week. Tonight’s performance sold out in six minutes.”

After enduring profuse thanks, the actor explained the errand that had brought him here, and the officer called out to a man behind a tall desk. “Sarge? Mr. Clayborne’s here for the goggles.”

A visitor’s card on a chain was strung around Axel’s neck, and he was escorted up the staircase to Special Crimes. The stairwell door opened into a large, bleak room that smelled like a breakfast menu of various foods, though the aroma of coffee prevailed. There were cups and deli bags on every abandoned desk. The sole occupant of this space was a hulking brute in street clothes. He had the low brow of a great ape and the face of menace incarnate, yet he introduced himself in a voice of surprising softness. “I’m Detective Janos. . . . We’ve been
waiting
for you.”

Did that sound just a bit ominous? Oh, yes. Good touch.

The actor followed the large detective to the end of a hallway, where a door was opened. With a gentle wave that was almost dainty, Axel was ushered inside a small room. The promised box of night-vision goggles sat on a small square table ringed with chairs. As he picked up the carton, the door closed behind him. His guide was gone, and a metallic click told him the door had been locked. He turned around to see his reflection in a framed mirror. All the cop roles played in his formative years had not been for naught, though it
was
clever to disguise an interrogation room with a vending machine, a refrigerator and a coffeemaker. He bowed to the audience he could only imagine on the other side of that one-way glass. And now, with no stage direction necessary, he sat down to wait for the priceless opportunity to be grilled by actual police.

And he waited.

Every few minutes, he stole glances at the clock on the wall. A half hour passed before the door opened.
At last.

When Detectives Mallory and Riker entered the room, he had the sense that they were somehow displeased with him. The tall blonde folded her arms, and her voice was a bit testy when she said, “We were expecting Bugsy.”

“And you wound up with me, the star . . . instead of the gopher. Well,
now
I understand your disappointment.” Collecting the box had been a ruse. He had been asked to come here—to charm the police and sleep with whomever he must so that the play could go on. But his own incentive was purely to see her again. She had seduced him with indifference. And the gun had also made her wildly attractive.

The less lovely Detective Riker flopped down in a chair. His hooded eyes presupposed a lie before he asked the first question. “The stage manager told us he’d send Bugsy over to pick up the goggles. So where
is
the little guy?”

Axel Clayborne splayed his hands to ask,
Who knows or cares?
“He’s an errand boy. He comes and goes. Everyone else is still at the press conference. The stagehands, too. So I was—”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Riker. “How well do you know him?”