Spectrum (The Karen Vail Series) (2 page)

3

>230 EAST 21st STREET

Manhattan

Wednesday, July 5, 1995

Karen Vail could not get comfortable. Her stiff new uniform was not tailored to fit a female body, or at least not
her
body. But she could stand some discomfort because Vail had graduated from the police academy at the top of her class.

Although some of the guys had a problem with that, she did her best to shrug it off.
It’s 1995, assholes. Get over it. This isn’t your grandfather’s NYPD. A woman can be smarter than a man.

Seated next to her in the Ford was a seasoned homicide detective, Sergeant Carmine Russo. It was unusual, if not unheard of, for such an assignment, but Vail had remarked to one of her instructors, Deputy Inspector Isidore Proschetta, that it was her career goal to become a homicide detective, and it’d be really great if she could find a detective who’d take her under his wing, show her how things worked. Proschetta liked her—he told her to call him by the nickname his best friend had given him during his academy days: Protch. Her instincts told her that Protch wanted her to get on top of his
crotch
, but she kept him at a safe distance, so it hadn’t become an issue. Yet.

Regardless, she figured Proschetta said something to someone, pulled a few strings, hummed a few bars, played his organ or someone else’s—she didn’t care—because he somehow got her this gig with Russo. In department parlance, she had a “rabbi,” someone who looked after her interests and helped advance her career. She wasn’t complaining; she wasn’t even planning to bring it up. In essence, she was not going to look under the gift rabbi’s yarmulke.

“Your uniform,” Russo said. “It looks very crisp. Very new.”

“Thank-you, sir.”

“Yeah, don’t thank me. You shouldn’t be wearing it. You should be in plainclothes.”

Vail swung her gaze toward Russo. “Plain—uh, no one said any—”

“It’s okay,” Russo said. “Tomorrow, no uniform. Got it?”

“Got it. Sorry.”

Russo turned right onto 30th Street and glanced over at Vail. “You know how this works, right?”

How what works? Policework?
“Uh, I’m not sure.”

“You finished at the top of your class so they gave you a temp assignment as part of your field training. Deputy Inspector Proschetta did you a huge favor and put you in homicide. That’s a big deal, okay? Don’t screw it up.”

“Yes sir. I won’t.”

“So what do you think?”

Vail sat up straight in her seat. “I think I’m excited. First day on the job. Dream come true.”

“Dream, huh? Don’t examine that fantasy too closely, Vail. This isn’t a walk in Central Park. It’s tough work. A thousand decisions a day. You try to do the right thing but sometimes it’s not totally clear what the ‘right thing’ is. Things are muddy, the law is muddy, and sometimes you end up knee deep in a pile of horseshit. You follow?”

“Yes sir. I do.”
I’m not sure, but I think I get the idea.

Russo glanced over at her and then nodded. “Good. You know where we’re headed?”

“No idea, sir.”

“Crime scene. Homicide.”

Homicide. Holy shit. My first homicide? First day on the job?

Vail lifted the mic off its mounting bracket and fumbled with the handset. It dropped in her lap but she recovered it by the coiled cord. “Should I call it in?”

Russo shifted his gaze between the road and Vail’s escapades with the radio. “First of all, you push the button on the side. Don’t release it till you’re done talking.”

Jesus Christ. This is embarrassing. Maybe it would’ve been better to ride with a patrol cop. He’d be more forgiving.

“Second of all, no, you don’t need to call it in. Central knows where we’re going. I told them before we left. You wanna hit the siren, or should I?”

Vail gave him a look.
I may be grateful for this assignment, but I’m not going to act like a kid.
“Sirens don’t excite me, sir. Have at it.”

He reached down to a small box between the seats and flipped a switch. The whoop whoop sounded and, damn, if it wasn’t a rush.
Hell with what I just said. Sirens do excite me.

“And don’t call me sir,” he said above the wailing din. “I’m not your grandfather. Call me Russo. Or sergeant.”

“Call me Karen.”

“Yeah, well, we’ll see about that. For now, you’re Vail. Or officer.”

So much for being friendly.

Russo navigated through a congested area of the city where construction had brought the flow of cars to a near standstill. Blasting their siren had little effect; there were limits on how fast you could move in a traffic jam. There was simply no place for anyone to get out of the way. Finally they pulled up to a fire hydrant and shoved the gearshift into park.

“You’re blocking a hydrant?”

Russo turned to her, his face contorted with disappointment. “Don’t tell me you’re one of these newbies who does everything by the book. Are you? Tell me now, because you can wait in the car and I’ll arrange for a fuckin’ patrol cop to come by and pick you up.”

Well shoot me now and put me out of my misery. I just spent a couple of months memorizing all the rules—for what? So that I know which ones I’m breaking when I’m out in the field?

“I’m fine. If you wanna block a hydrant, not for me to say. You’re the boss.”

“Yeah, remember that the next time you try to bust my balls.”

Keep your mouth shut, Karen. Just get out of the car.

They met the first-on-scene officer.

Russo nodded toward an area behind the cop. “What do we got?”

“Young woman. ID’s missing but she matches the description the landlord gave us.”

“Detective Thorne get here yet?”

“Nope. Only the medical examiner and Crime Scene Unit.” He turned to face a CSU detective wearing gloves, booties, and white coveralls coming toward them.

“How’s it going in there?” Russo asked as he approached.

“It’s goin’. Still processing but you can go in.”

“Borelli, right?” Russo asked.

The detective’s face brightened. “Me in the flesh.”

“Good to see you again.” Russo and Vail stepped into the brownstone, Russo talking ahead of him even though Vail was behind him. “There are never any curb spaces around here. Which means I gotta double-park. And if I do that, on that narrow side street, no one can get around me. So I block the hydrant. An FD engine needs to hook up, he can hook up. It ain’t ideal, but it is what it is. Got it?”

“Got it. You’re the boss.”

“Don’t keep saying that. You can think it, but I don’t want to hear it.”

“Whatever you say, sir.”

He stopped and turned to face Vail.

“Sorry.
Russo
. You’re not my grandfather.”

Russo frowned, then continued on down the hall to another officer, who was standing outside a bedroom. They walked in just as a photographer’s flash illuminated the area.

“Oh, wow.” Vail hadn’t meant to say it; the words just kind of tumbled out of her mouth. Gotta watch that.
Think before you speak, Karen. You’re already on his shit list.

The murder scene was not like anything she ever imagined. Actually, she hadn’t imagined anything—she had only viewed slides the instructors projected during class. Ahead of her was a dead body—a “DOA” they called it in class. A
real
DOA.

It was chalky white, the facial expression frozen in time.
I shouldn’t think of her as “it.” Doesn’t seem right. She’s a person, not some inanimate object.
“Does she have a name?”

The ME’s assistant consulted his notes. “Carole Manos.”

Vail knelt in front of the woman, who was sitting up in the bed, back resting against the headboard. Legs spread, dress drawn up and exposing her underwear. Her face was slashed and gashed, deep folds of flesh folded back at the margins. A chunk of jagged glass was sticking out of the right side of her neck. “Why did this happen to you, Carole?”

“You’re not expecting her to answer you,” Russo said. “Are you?”

Vail tilted her head. “I—I don’t know. I mean, the body can kind of like talk to us, right? Tell us a story.”

“When she tells you who the villain is—or better yet, how that story ends—let me know.”

Another man in the room, broad in the shoulders, back to them, laughed heartily. He turned around and winked at Russo.

Vail gave the guy a disdainful look as she felt her face flush, then turned to Russo. “Well, I mean, we gotta start somewhere.”

“We’ve already started. This here’s the medical examiner. Max Finkelstein.”

What’s protocol? Shake his hand?
She opted for a safer nod of acknowledgment. Cool. Detached. Like a seasoned cop.
Right? How am I supposed to know?
Best to just nod. No one could fault her for that approach.
Besides, I already got off on the wrong foot with him.

Finkelstein tilted his head and looked at Vail over his reading glasses. “First day on the job?”

Shit. Is it that obvious?

“Indeed it is,” Russo said, turning to Vail. “Guess we should turn this into a little learning experience. First-on-scene secured the area, deter-mined the pretty friggin’ obvious that it was not a death by natural causes. I was called, then the medical examiner and the Crime Scene Unit. So what are you thinking?”

Vail bit her lip.
What am I supposed to be thinking? I just got here. And—oh, yeah. It’s my first day on the job.

“I’m thinking that this isn’t gonna be a walk in Central Park.” She smiled.

Russo looked long and hard at her before a grin cracked his face. “Fast learner. Good, I like that.”

Borelli walked in, a kit in his hand.

“Any latents?” Russo asked.

“Lots,” he said. “Problem is, are any of them our killer? It’s gonna take awhile to print the deceased’s family and friends, match ’em up against what we’ve got in the apartment.”

“Elimination prints,” Vail said.

“Listen to the rookie,” Russo said. “You’re good at regurgitating the textbook, aren’t you?”

Borelli chuckled. Finkelstein appeared to ignore them and go about his business, recording his findings on a form attached to his clipboard.

Vail felt her face flush in embarrassment. She tucked her chin down and knelt beside the body. Hiding.

“Cause of death?” Russo asked.

“COD looks to be suffocation,” Finkelstein said. “Strangulation, to be precise. Can’t evaluate the ocular capillaries for microbleeding because the eyeballs are, well, destroyed. But the marks on her neck are quite severe and traumatic. Excuse me.” With a gloved hand he pushed aside Manos’s auburn hair, revealing red abrasions and purple bruises.

A low groan emerged from Russo’s throat. “Yes, indeed. And the cut marks?”

“Sharp object. What kind, I don’t know yet. The hunk of glass protruding from her carotid is an obvious possibility, but I can’t say at the moment.”

“Stray hairs or fibers?”

“None,” Borelli said. “At least, none we found. So far.”

“What do you make of the way she’s posed?” Vail asked. She gestured at the woman’s left hand, which was palm up and fisted, with the index finger curled slightly.

Russo pursed his lips. “No idea. Never seen anything like that before.”

“Looks like she’s saying, ‘Come here.’” Vail stood, then leaned in a bit while maintaining a careful distance from the body. “How’d the killer make the hand stay like that?”

“You’re just chock full of questions,” Finkelstein said, not bothering to take his gaze off his work. “What we need are answers.”

“Questions are good,” Russo said. “Sometimes you gotta ask the questions to know what you need to know. You know?”

Finkelstein looked up. He squinted at Russo and said, “Yeah. I think.”

“What about the time line?” Vail asked. “When was she last seen?”

“Now
that
ain’t my job,” Finkelstein said.

Russo pulled out his pad. “That’s for us to put together. You, Vail, will help talk to neighbors, do a canvass, write up a background on who Carole Manos was. Did anyone have a beef with her? Was she dating anyone? Is there an angry boyfriend? Who was the last person to see her alive? Did she owe anyone money? Was she involved in any shady stuff that made her path cross known criminals? Ask around, see if the neighbors saw anything.”

“Should I do that now?”

“Not just yet,” Russo said. “Tox screen?”

Finkelstein readjusted his glasses. “I’ll get you the results ASAP.”

“Was she raped?” Vail asked.

“Good question,” Finkelstein said, pointing an index finger at her. “We’ll know more once we get her on the table, get a good look. But there doesn’t appear to be any bruising.”

“Not much to go on,” Russo said.

Vail nodded slowly. “I told you it wouldn’t be a walk in the park.”

VAIL STEPPED INTO her rented “apartment,” the basement of a house in Rosedale, Queens. Rosedale had been marsh and farmland before the area was developed with basic duplex houses that shared a common wall. For some three decades, it was an Italian and Jewish middle-class, blue-collar neighborhood that bordered Long Island’s higher income Valley Stream on one end and the racially depressed Laurelton and Springfield Gardens on the other.

Vail was aware that during the past dozen years Rosedale had been experiencing white flight; once blacks began buying in the neighborhood, whites started selling—all out of fear that their home values would drop precipitously.

It now had a large Jamaican population. A friend had recommended the area, and as long as it was safe and uneventful, it would serve as an address where she could throw her stuff, a short-term, very affordable arrangement until she made enough money to get her own place, even buy something. Doing it this way, she would be able to put cash in the bank and have a cushion if the need arose. A rookie New York City cop’s salary barely covered the bills.

Her basement home was a modification that many homeowners made to bring in a little extra revenue. By installing an unpermitted exterior door, a few cement steps, and a bathroom, the subterranean floor became an apartment with its own separate entrance. For Vail, it suited her needs. Except for the persistent smell of mildew that irritated her nose every time she came home. The owner had told her he would take care of it. That was three months ago.