Anatomy of Fear

11

Terri Russo had called. She wanted me on the case. Just like that.

My grandmother would not agree that the call had come out of nowhere. She believed that everything happened for a reason. She would say that the spirit of the dead had brought Russo to me; that I had been beckoned by someone’s ori.

I looked around, a bit sorry it had beckoned me here of all places, to the morgue.

The smell of formaldehyde was leeching through my mask, the Vicks VapoRub smeared on my nostrils not quite doing the job. If I’m smelling death, am I also breathing it in? I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer to that.

The coroner, a tired-looking guy with streaks of blood and viscera across his smock, said, “Vic never knew what hit him. Bullet went straight into the medulla oblongata and came out the other side.”

Russo was beside me. “Thought it would be good for you to see the real thing to compare it to the drawing,” she said.

I looked at the victim, a Latino man between thirty-five and forty. She handed me a bagged drawing.

“Can you confirm this was made by the same guy?”

“It looks it, but I’d like to see the others along with it to be sure.”

“Right,” she said. “I’ve got copies of everything in my office.”

I looked from the drawing to the corpse. “It’s a decent likeness, which means the unsub stalked him, earmarked him for death. But why?”

“Well, that’s the big question,” said Russo.

“Any witnesses?”

“Not that we know of. But I’d like you to talk to all the people who last saw any of the vics, or had contact with them. Maybe they saw something and didn’t realize it.”

“And you want me to draw a sketch from their descriptions, that it?”

“You think you can?”

“I can try.”

I could see Terri smile even behind her mask. She checked her watch. “I’ve got a meeting, but you can start with this vic’s wife.” She handed me an address and phone number.

“The guy’s hardly cold.”

“That’s why I want you to speak to her now-while everything is still fresh in her mind.”

The woman who opened the door was probably in her mid-thirties, but at the moment it was hard to tell, her face strained and pale, eyes red-rimmed.

I showed her my temporary shield. She sighed deeply and let me in. She lived only a few blocks south of Julio and Jess, Eighty-sixth and Park, primo Manhattan real estate.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” I said. “I’d like to help.”

She looked up at me, incredulous. “And how are you going to do that?”

“By finding the man who did this.”

She led me into an art-filled living room, Warhol Brillo Box on the floor, cool minimal Robert Mangold painting on one wall, Catherine Murphy landscape, Chuck Close portrait on another. An eclectic, expensive mix.

“Amazing art collection,” I said.

“That was Roberto’s realm, but I enjoyed it.” She managed a slight smile. “He started collecting in the eighties, after the Wall Street boom.”

“He was a trader?”

“Oh, no,” she said, as if insulted. “He had his own fund.”

“He obviously did well.

She sighed again. “Yes.”

I got her talking about the art, and she said her husband had recently bought the Warhol at auction, which I knew meant he’d paid well over a million. After a while I asked, “Tell me what happened the night he was killed.”

“You mean last night?”

I said I was sorry again, but the sooner we knew, the faster we could do something about it.

“There’s not much to tell. Roberto was keyed up, so he decided to go out for the paper. I told him it was silly. We get the Times and the Journal delivered every morning, but when Roberto has his mind set, it’s useless to fight him.” She welled up with tears. “If only he’d listened to me.”

“Don’t blame yourself for something that isn’t your fault, Mrs. Acosta.”

“Cambell. I use my maiden name.”

“Sorry, Ms. Cambell. But you need to put the blame where it belongs, on the man who did this.”

“That’s very kind,” she said, and seemed more eager to talk. We went through the events of the past night: Her husband had gone to a store on Lex for the Wall Street Journal and hadn’t made it back; she hadn’t seen the shooting and couldn’t imagine there was a reason for anyone to kill him. “I’ve been through this with the police. Roberto had no enemies.”

I opened my pad and explained what I did. That same look of incredulity passed over her features, but I convinced her to sit down and close her eyes. Then I asked her to think back over the past week.

“Has there been anyone hanging around that looked suspicious? Anyone. A delivery boy who seemed weird?”

“No, I, I don’t think so, but…” A moment passed. “There was this one man; I saw him twice. He wasn’t doing anything, just standing on the corner of Park Avenue, which was odd, just standing there and looking over at the building.”

“Was he black or white?”

“He was definitely white, but he was across the street, so I didn’t see him close up. He was staring at the lobby entrance when Roberto and I came out. I mentioned him to Roberto, but he didn’t pay attention. I kissed my husband good-bye and…” She stopped and dabbed her eyes with a tissue. “I’m sorry.”

“What happened after that?”

“Nothing. Roberto left for work, and when I looked across the street, the man was gone.”

“And that was it?”

“Well, no. I wouldn’t have thought about him again except he was there the next day. And it’s Park Avenue. People just don’t hang out on Park Avenue. I wondered if he was a Realtor scouting our building. But he didn’t look like a Realtor.”

“Why is that?”

“I don’t know. It was just…a feeling. Maybe it was the baseball cap.”

“Anything else you noticed about him?”

“He had on a long coat. But the impression I have of him is from the back. He turned away after I looked over at him, and the coat sort of billowed out at the bottom, from the wind.”

I started drawing.

“Oh, God.” She put a hand to her mouth. “Do you think I actually saw the man who-”

I didn’t let her go there. “What else did you see?” I asked, and went back to the drawing.

She looked at my sketch. “Yes. That’s it, the general impression I got.”

“What about his face?”

She shook her head. “It’s a blank. He was across the street, and I didn’t really see it.”

“But you said he was white.”

“Yes. I’m pretty sure about that. Though…his face was in shadow.”

“Was he tall or short?”

“He might have been tall, it’s hard to say.”

“Was there anything you can compare him to, something in the street that might tell you more about him physically, why you thought he was tall?”

She closed her eyes again. “Well…he was leaning against a street lamp and his head was not that far from the plaque that tells you when you can and can’t park. That was it! Why he seemed tall.”

“That’s great.”

“If only-” She broke off and started crying.

I tried to console her, to get her back into the drawing, but her housekeeper came in and gave me a dirty look, and that was it.