Wicked Obsessions (15 page)

But grief was not what she felt—only relief that her being in a state of limbo had come to an end. And regret that Rico had destroyed what feelings she had once had for him. And anger that he had been so irresponsible as to get himself killed and leave her to deal with the morbid details. But not grief.

For another moment she considered what she had to do that day. When thoughts of Detective Kidder and his endless questions entered her mind, she picked up the phone and dialed Selena's number. Having a friend, even one who occasionally made her uneasy, was better than going it alone. She only hoped Selena would leave her newly developed sense of humor at home.

* * *

The overweight woman behind the scarred, wooden desk glanced at her calendar and back at Teri. "Detective Kidder said he would be here at two and you were to wait for him. It's only a quarter of. You can have a seat over there." She pointed to a row of bright orange molded plastic chairs against the wall, then resumed her typing.

Teri figured working in a morgue probably didn't nourish friendliness. She and Selena sat down. The chairs were the only spot of color in the beige reception area, but at least it wasn't the sterile white with metal fixtures she had expected.

Selena patted Teri's hand and Teri smiled her thanks. She shouldn't have worried about Selena's behavior. Except for her nonsensical explanation about why she was wearing the red wig, Selena was back to being her usual caring self, wanting to do whatever she could to make this easier on Teri. She had offered to view the body for her, but Teri knew that was something she had to do herself to put her uncertainty to rest.

With each minute that ticked by, Teri's nervousness increased. Kidder had warned her that the body had begun to decompose and, if she preferred not to look at it, they should be able to confirm the victim's identity by his dental records and medical history. She recalled him saying something about not having fingerprints to work with and supposed that was because of the decomposition he had referred to. When she'd asked about that, he had insisted he would fill her in on everything else at the morgue.

* * *

Before bringing Mrs. Gambini back to the autopsy room, Detective Kidder checked to make sure the body was ready for viewing. He was glad she had insisted on personally identifying her husband, since it was what he wanted as well. This way he would be able to put a little more pressure on her and, at the same time, he'd be able to observe her reaction to the butchering the man had suffered.

One look at the body had told him she probably didn't do the damage herself. Unless it turned out there were drugs in his system, it would have taken someone much bigger and stronger, both physically and emotionally. But that didn't mean she wasn't aware of who that someone was. Faced with the grotesque evidence, she might be so horrified by what her lover was capable of that she'd point her finger at the perpetrator and throw herself on Kidder's mercy. He smiled at the thought.

He had been having his morning coffee and splash of whiskey when dispatch alerted him to a call about a dead body. When he was given the location, he'd nearly jumped out of his skin. It had to be Gambini!

By seven he was at the apartment complex and the slovenly manager took him to see the vic. Interestingly, it wasn't a bad smell that had alerted the man to a problem but the fact that the air conditioning unit had been running non-stop, which was only a concern because it was connected to the building's power.

It immediately occurred to Kidder that this might mean it wasn't a crime of passion but suggested planning. The frigid temperature and massive loss of blood had slowed decomp and the spread of odor despite the corpse being a week old. The killer obviously hadn't want the body found too quickly, possibly to make an untraceable escape or simply to confuse the time of death.

The cold also kept the maggots from appearing, much to Kidder's relief. The only aspect of working homicides that his stomach had never become accustomed to was those repulsive, squirming worms that fed on death. For that small bit of unintended thoughtfulness, he thanked Gambini's killer.

As the body was hauled away, he had the manager take him to the occupied apartments to do some preliminary questioning. He struck gold on the second interview. An elderly woman had spoken to Gambini as he was putting last Saturday's mail into the appropriate boxes. She referred to him as a handsome young man, always so polite. She had gone for her "constitutional" and was surprised to see her mailman only just leaving the building when she returned over an hour later. As he walked to his truck, she realized it wasn't Rico after all—another mailman must have been making a "special delivery".

Her memory wasn't the best but the few characteristics she recalled included a thick black moustache and a silver charm of some sort hanging from his ear.

That description, plus how the hands had been chopped off in what had to be a premeditated manner, seemed to strongly suggest the murder was done by the man who'd threatened Mrs. Gambini and that it was possibly Irish mob-related.

He had heard of cases where a mob hit included cutting off a dead man's hand to use the fingerprints on a future crime. But when they started hacking up a body, there was seldom much left to be identified. But why else would the hands have been taken? Another attempt to slow down identification? Why?

It would wreak havoc with his life if this actually turned out to be a mob hit, but it looked like he was going to have to get Mrs. Gambini to look at the mug shots after all. If the perp was in there, and connected, there was not much Kidder could do about it. If she failed to find the man, however, the window was still open to the possibility that she had hired someone to play the part.

Thinking along those lines, he realized there could be a plausible answer for the hands also. Mrs. Gambini had pushed him to look toward the Irish mob for answers to her husband's disappearance. What better way to pin it on that group than to leave a calling card like the missing hands?

This case was simply too neat, too tied up with a pretty bow.

Overkill.
That was one of the problems when human emotion came into play.

* * *

"Good afternoon, Mrs. Gambini."

Kidder's voice startled Teri out of her contemplations.

He nodded to Selena. "How nice of you to keep your boss company. This is such a difficult thing for the loved ones to go through." He pulled a chair away from the wall and sat down across from Teri. "I didn't want to give you the details over the phone, but before we go inside, I want to let you know what to expect."

Teri nodded and felt her stomach clench with dread.

"Have you ever seen a dead body?"

Teri nodded again, picturing how her father had looked after his fatal heart attack. "In a funeral home."

"Well, this is nothing like that, I assure you. Even though this corpse isn't nearly as bad as some I've dealt with, it's still rather gruesome."

"It doesn't matter. I need to know for sure. You said on the phone you'd fill me in on how and where you found him."

Kidder gave her a brief summary of what had led to the discovery. Then his flat expression changed to what Teri thought might have passed for sympathy, but she didn't buy it.

"Believe me, Mrs. Gambini, if I could spare you the details of how I found him I would, but you should be aware of exactly what happened to him. Mind you, the medical examiner and forensics haven't begun their part yet but I can tell you my initial impressions."

She could not find the courage to do more than silently wait for him to go on. The truth was that she really didn't want to hear any more.

"When I found him he was naked, stretched out on his back on a bed. He had lost a great deal of blood—the entire sheet beneath him was black with it, but I doubt if he suffered overmuch. His throat had been sliced from one side to the other."

Teri's hand flew over her mouth, muffling the whimper she made. Immediately Selena's arm was around her.

Kidder cleared his throat. "I'm afraid that's not all of it. Both his hands were cut off."

"Oh, my God," she cried. "I thought they only did that to thieves in the Middle East! Rico told me those people would make him disappear in pieces if he didn't pay up, but I didn't believe him." She took a ragged breath. "I gave him the money. When no one came back to hurt me or the house, I assumed it was because he paid them."

Selena's arm twitched and Teri glanced at her.

"Maybe, he did pay them," Selena said in her "dumb blonde" voice. "But maybe it wasn't enough and they were so mad they killed him anyway."

Why she was using that voice or wearing the red wig made no sense to Teri, but her supposition seemed reasonable.

Kidder looked at her curiously. "So you think they made an example of him? Interesting. But why do you suppose they would take the hands with them?"

"You mean..." Teri gulped down the bile rising in her throat. "You mean his hands weren't with the body? Why would anyone take them?"

Selena tightened her hold a little, as if she were afraid Teri would collapse without her support. In an uncertain, childish voice, Selena answered the question both of them had asked. "Somebody told me about a scary story they'd read not too long ago about the Irish mob cutting off a man's hands. I don't remember why, though."

Teri was bewildered, not only by the wig and the voice, but if there was one thing she knew about Selena, she had a steel trap sort of memory. If someone told her about a story, it was more likely she remembered every word that person had said.

Kidder seemed to be considering Selena's suggestion, but he made no comment on it.

"Well," he said as he stood up and adjusted the waist of his slacks beneath his paunch, "if you're sure you're up to this, I'll take you back to the autopsy room."

Teri and Selena rose and followed him down a long corridor. Selena took two white handkerchiefs out of her purse and handed one to Teri. "Here. Use this to cover your nose and mouth."

Teri had noticed the faint aroma of formaldehyde in the reception area and wrinkled her nose as it grew stronger in the hallway. But she hadn't been prepared for the chemical blast that hit her as they entered the autopsy room. She covered her lower face as Selena suggested and blinked away the moisture that protectively filled her eyes. To her surprise, the hanky smelled strongly of Vicks salve. It helped a lot but she couldn't help but wonder how Selena would have thought of such a thing.

Kidder bobbed his head in understanding. "Believe it or not, this is a lot better than the apartment where I found him."

She shivered against the cold as he led her across the concrete floor to the only metal examining table with anything on it. A large green sheet hid the body from Teri's immediate view. Her breathing slowed then halted completely when he drew back the cloth.

Teri's eyes slammed shut against the unholy sight he revealed. Her senses screamed at her to run away. Her mind demanded she not be a coward about this.

"Mrs. Gambini? Are you going to be all right?"

She took a small breath through the hanky and the stench rising from the body overpowered the camphor. But if she didn't breathe, she was going to faint. And if she fainted, she was just going to have to do this all over again. She drew a deeper breath into her mouth, then forced her eyes open.

The curly black hair was Rico's. The rest of the head on the table was a monstrous distortion of her husband's—swollen out of its usual shape with skin that looked as though a mad artist had painted it. A sickly yellow colored the center, with some plum blotches on the sides of the face. The rims of the ears and the skin along the sides of the neck were dark purple.

And beneath the chin, a hideous black slash gaped at her like a misplaced, mutilated mouth.

"It's him," she heard herself say. "It's Rico. Can I go now?"

Until she turned to leave, she hadn't realized Selena had been holding her up the whole time. Her legs were so weak, they almost gave out with her first step, but soon, with Selena's help, she made it back to the reception area to sit in one of the orange chairs.

She knew she must have looked pretty bad when the unfriendly receptionist rushed off to fetch her a cup of water. It was minutes after her body stopped vibrating before she could speak.

"What now, Detective?"

"I'll let you know the M.E.'s findings or anything of importance that comes back from forensics after they scour the apartment where he was found. In the meantime, as soon as you're up to it, I'd like you to come into the station and look at some pictures. It's time to look for your thug."

* * *

"Since when do we take people into the autopsy room to view a mutilated corpse of a family member? Damn it, Kidder, you
know
that's not the procedure in a case like this! It was completely unnecessary to put the wife through that."

Kidder bowed his head while his captain vented his spleen. It was best to let the man get it all out of his system before defending himself. As precarious as his current position was, he didn't need to cause any more waves by being argumentative.

For a terrifying moment when he had first returned to the station from the morgue and was told Captain Hart wanted him in his office pronto, he had thought his transfer had come through. A little verbal reprimand was nothing compared to that.