The Squad Room (13 page)

“That’s good, too. If we get any prints that match theirs, they’ll have a lot of explaining to do.”

Two Crime Scene officials walked out of the apartment, carrying large paper bags. Not Williams and his partner this time, Morrison noted, but these guys were no less capable. “Hey, fellas,” he said to them as they passed. “Give me the rundown, will you?”

“Well, boss, we have one female, white, late forties. Not a bad-looking woman, judging by the photos in the apartment; though it’s tough to tell otherwise, at this point. Seems to have been bound and tortured. Massive bite marks on her body, and missing the lips from her vaginal area. Looks like the sick fuck bit them off.”

Morrison nodded grimly. This was getting to be too familiar. “How much longer do you guys need before we can get in?” he asked.

“Give us another half hour, and we should have everything we need.”

“All right. Does it look like they tried to cover their tracks in any way?”

“Yeah. The shower was still dripping, and her hair was wet—it looks like they took her in there to get rid of some trace evidence. Stupid fucks left towels in the bathroom, though—we bagged them. There should be some good hair and fiber evidence on them.”

“Okay, thanks,” Morrison said. “Let me know if you guys find anything else unusual before you wrap up.”

“Will do, Cap.”

Morrison turned back to his sergeants. “Well,” he sighed, “this is our third now. People are going to lose their minds when this hits the press.” A weary thought crossed his mind of the additional pressure on its way from downtown. His task force was already stretched, and pulling double shifts tracking these psychos; he was going to need more help. He shook the thought away for the moment. “What are we doing here so far?”

Rivera reviewed his notes. “We have a canvas of the building done, Cap. Seems this one is at least somewhat different from our other victims: she’s a social worker. According to Crime Scene, she’s got a Master’s degree hanging on the wall in there. Her name’s Jennifer Burnett—48 years old, according to paperwork in the management office. They have no emergency contact listed, and the doorman says she lived alone. She kept to herself for the most part, though every now and then she went out to one of the local bars. No forced entry, so either she knew her attacker, or they pushed in behind her. Based on the call from her job and what Crime Scene sees inside, it looks like she’s been dead a couple of days.”

“All right. We’re going to need to interview all of the doormen—who knows what the other shifts might have seen.”

“Bad news, boss,” Rivera answered. “Seems they only have a doorman until 2300 hours. The building cut back just before the holidays, to save some money.”

“Jesus,” Morrison muttered.

“The good news is, we have video of the lobby area,” Simmons said quickly. “One of the guys is downstairs now trying to secure a copy, so we can go through the last week to see what our victim’s habits were. Hopefully these guys were stupid enough to come through the front door.”

Morrison smiled. “Well, let’s hope; we definitely need a break here. Do we have anyone checking the surrounding area for cameras? Are there any parking garages in the area where they might have parked?”

“The Coke Brothers are checking that out now,” Rivera told him.

“Okay. It’s a new timeline; let’s get on it. If you gentlemen will excuse me, I’m going to have to call the Chief and let him know about all this—I’m sure this’ll be interesting.”

The call with Chief Arndt was mercifully brief. The Chief’s concern, as always, lay more with his career than with the victims; but tonight, fortunately for Bill Morrison, there was a major political benefit that
Arndt apparently couldn’t afford to miss.
One night to come up with a game plan,
Morrison thought.

The press was already out in front of the building when he walked back up the block. One of the reporters, recognizing him, ran up to stick a microphone in his face. Before the reporter could get a word out, Morrison pushed the microphone away with a terse “No comment,” grabbing one of the uniformed officers to stand watch over the entrance.

Back on the fourth floor, Morrison’s people were huddled in the hallway. Rivera seemed excited.

“Boss, hey, glad you’re back,” he said. “Listen to what Kasak and Marchioni got.”

He looked toward the back of the group, where the Coke Brothers invariably settled. True to form, there they were, trench coats and all. Both of them always wore trench coats with belts, no matter what was happening; it was a common joke that if they had to get to their guns it would take ten minutes just to untie the belts.

“What’s up?” Morrison asked.

“Well, we found a few cameras on the block,” said Marchioni. “Most of them aren’t much use—old systems, grainy footage, you know the drill. But one of the buildings just had a new system put in, and the building manager really knows how to operate it. We took a look at the footage for the last four days, and we have what looks like a similar car to the one on Sutton Place, with a partial plate.”

“Terrific,” said Morrison. “Anything of our perps?”

“Yeah. They’re two white guys, or maybe the second guy is light-skinned Hispanic, both well dressed, like in the first video. We don’t have them with our victim, but they exit the car around 2325 hours two days ago.”

Morrison clapped his hands together. “Okay, now we’re making progress! What’s the car?”

“BMW, looks like; with Connecticut plates we’re thinking.”

“Anything else?”

Kasak spoke up. “Well, similar to the first video we had, we got
them hustling back to their car about three hours later. Their clothes are definitely messed up—not the way they were when they got out.”

Morrison turned to Rivera. “Okay, make sure someone does a lawman search on that partial plate. Tell whoever does it that it’s possibly a BMW—that ought to help limit the vehicles that come back. This could be the break we’re looking for, boys.”

Not long thereafter, Crime Scene wrapped up, and Morrison and his people entered the apartment. The body would be present, under guard as usual, until the Medical Examiner’s morgue wagon showed up for it. Back in the day, that would have meant hours, due to the number of homicides; these days, the detectives sometimes ran into them on their way out.

“Cap,” Rivera pointed out, gesturing at the livid bite marks around the corpse, “these guys, they’re big biters, huh? Look, it’s the same as the last one—bit her vaginal lips clean off.”

“Yeah,” Morrison agreed. “They really upgraded the torture on this one, though.”

“We’re a lot better on the forensics this time, I think,” Rivera went on. “Crime Scene said they think we have some good DNA on the carpet. She has drag marks, too, look—they gave her a bath before they dragged her in here.”

“Yeah, Crime Scene mentioned that,” Morrison said.

“Well, they’re smart, but not real smart. They took care to wash her off, but they just dropped more transfer evidence by moving the body around. Crime Scene’s taken multiple prints off the floor and bathroom walls.”

“Good.”

“Look at the rug burns—the small stab wounds—the lips,” said Simmons with a grimace. “That’s some real heavy-duty suffering. Man, I want to get these guys.”

“Yeah, they’re animals all right,” Rivera agreed.

Morrison noticed something. “Hey guys, any of you seeing what I’m seeing with these bite marks?”

The others all looked closely. Leo Kasak was the first to see it.

“Looks like two different people did the biting this time,” he said.

“Exactly. The one guy, our original biter, had a smaller mouth. These other marks definitely show a wider spacing between the teeth, no? I mean, I’m no dental expert, but they’re clearly different sizes.”

The others agreed. It looked like the second guy was getting more and more into participating in the torture.

Morrison’s stomach growled. For the first time, he realized none of them had eaten all day; they’d all been too absorbed in gathering information from the crime scene and its surrounds. He told the team to meet up at Luigi’s—a favorite hole-in-the-wall Italian joint, with a room in back where they could talk about the new developments—and stepped out to call Claudia.

“Hey, handsome,” she said. “How’s your day going?”

“That’s a long story,” he chuckled. “Are you still coming to the city tonight?”

“Yeah, just got a little tied up today—no pun intended!” They both laughed. “Honestly, I can’t wait. I’ve already booked my room for two nights. Are you okay with staying over tonight?”

“Of course. I should be by around eight—or actually, better make that ten,” he added, glancing at his watch. “We’ve actually just had a new homicide in our series.”

“Oh, shit. Are you sure you don’t need to stay there? We can make it another time, if you want.”

“No no, I need to see you,” he said. “Even for a few hours. As long as you don’t mind coming in.”

“All right,” she said. He could hear the smile on her face. “Get there when you can—I’m walking out the door now. Can’t wait to see you!”

13

Luigi’s was a fixture for Morrison and his team. They’d come here for years, and nothing had changed. The décor was nothing to write home about, but the food was great, and it was always private enough to talk there. Morrison and Francis Donohue had spent many a night here, talking over cases in the back room; Donohue had always stressed the importance of breaking bread with his team, of making them feel like family.

Morrison grabbed a table in the back and ordered food for everyone, along with a Miller Lite and a shot of Jameson for himself—he’d have to keep it on the lighter side for Claudia later. Like modern-day Knights of the Round Table, his team filed in and found seats: three of his sergeants and most of his detectives.

Morrison started in. “Okay, people. We have three homicides now: all women by themselves. From what you’ve seen, do you think these guys stalk their victims, or are they randomly selecting them?”

Everyone began to bandy around their various opinions on the matter, but when Alex Medveded spoke up, the rest of the table went silent.

“These guys have hit twice in the 19
^th
, and once in Jamaica Estates,” he said. “I think they’re familiar with these rich neighborhoods, but
not with the victims themselves. Based on this, and on the car we think they’re driving, I believe they come from affluence themselves—children of privilege, if you will. As to whether it’s random or stalk-based, I think it’s both. I think they have
territories
they’re stalking, like a shark does. It doesn’t matter what fish they find in that territory, but once they find it, they do their homework.”

As he finished, the rest of the table nodded in agreement. He’d put it very succinctly.

Morrison held off his response. A few dishes were being brought to the table—Morrison had ordered family-style—and the Captain raised his beer for a toast.

“To Chief Francis Donohue: may he rest in peace,” he said. “If he were still alive, he’d be sitting here with us.”

They toasted, and for a moment the conversation passed into fond reminiscence. Rivera talked about how the Chief had once spent three hours with him after the end of a case, just talking to him about his family life and the struggles he was going through at the time.

“At some point I’d asked him,
Chief, don’t you need to go home?
and he just smiled at me and said,
Frankie, I’ve got Louise, the best woman in the world, and she’ll have dinner on for me at 0300 if that’s when I get there.
Man, he really loved her.”

“He was no one to fuck with, either,” Sergeant Simmons added. “He was a tough man, nerves of steel. He used to buy dope from anyone and everyone in the street. He was such a white boy, freckles all over his face—they called him Pinky, you remember that? He was a great undercover.”

“And a serious Irishman,” McNamara threw in. “I never saw the man miss a St. Paddy’s Day parade. He held on a long time with that cancer, too—you know what happened to his kids, Cap?”

“They’re all doing pretty good,” Morrison said. “I actually just spoke with Louise; she says they’re well.”

“You guys keep in touch?”

“Oh, regularly. You know I promised Francis I would, when he went
into hospice care; I would’ve done it anyway, though. She’s a good friend, a real sweet woman. Pretty much Francis in another body. You can really trust her.”

“Nothing like our new chief, huh, boss?” Rivera said with a smile.

Morrison laughed. “Yeah, nothing like him.” He finished off the Jameson. “You know, just between you all and me, Francis and I had a lot of talks about that. He really hated Arndt—had no respect for him.”

“That makes more than a few of us,” Rivera said, and the table laughed in agreement.

McNamara raised his glass again. “Well, let’s drink to getting this collar while he’s on vacation,” he said.

Everyone laughed and raised their glasses, but Morrison demurred. “We shouldn’t get to talking about collars just yet,” he said, “but here’s to a successful outcome soon, anyway.”

They toasted again. Detective Jeffrey O’Dell, a tall, tough-framed Vietnam vet who’d joined the force just today, returned the talk to the case.

“I know we have a partial plate from the street cameras but it doesn’t appear to be a New York plate,” he said. “Based on what I was told, it might be Connecticut; but there are several other states whose plates look like that. I’ve got a book of plates back in my office; if I can’t figure it out from that, I’ll go to Arty Annouer over in Auto Crime—best motor vehicle guy in the history of the department. I’d bet he knows more about cars than the rest of us put together. He can probably lock us in on a make and model too, if you’ll let me show him the video.”

Morrison nodded his approval as O’Dell went on.

“And I know I’m new to the group, but I just wanted to say thanks to you, Captain Morrison, for bringing me on this case. I’ll give you a hundred and ten percent until this thing is solved.”

“We’re glad to have you,” Morrison answered, “especially now that we’ve got three on the books. We’re going to need all the help we can get on this one.” He turned to Tina. “Koreski, any thoughts?”