Anatomy of Fear

20

Terri was going through what seemed like endless microfiche provided by Hate Crimes, active files of individuals and organizations.

The phone rang and it was O’Connell. He’d just heard from his brother-in-law in the Twenty-third, who had just heard from someone who worked in the Fifth.

A body. Down by the old Hudson piers. And a drawing.

The PD had erected a ten-by-twelve tent between the river and the West Side Highway, a hundred yards north of the Chelsea Piers sports complex where a new building had been going up. Outside the tent, there were pilings driven into the earth where they were still clearing out boulders and flattening the ground. All work had stopped, derricks idling, a string of workmen sitting on their hard hats. There were a dozen police vehicles, an EMT, and a Crime Scene van. Cars were slowing on the highway to see what was going on, though uniforms waved to keep them moving.

Terri had called and asked me to meet her here. I showed my temporary badge to a uniform at the entrance to the tent. A CS tech handed me gloves, mask, and disposable bootees.

Inside, Crime Scene was combing every inch of ground like ants at a picnic. The terrain looked as if a minor earthquake had struck, slabs of concrete from the original pier upended by the construction. There was a smell of newly uncovered dirt spiked with something rotten. Behind my mask I was trying not to breathe. The same CS tech who’d given me the paraphernalia at the entrance offered up a Vicks. I lifted my mask and rubbed it below my nose.

I spotted Terri and the ME huddled with her men and some cops I didn’t know across the tent peering over a concrete slab about eight feet long and three feet wide. It was doing a Titanic impersonation, jutting out of the ground at an acute angle.

At first it looked as if the girl were alive, though I knew it couldn’t be possible from the condition of her body. But her face seemed to be moving, eyes blinking. I looked close, immediately sorry. It was maggots. Crawling in and around her eye sockets.

I closed my eyes too late, the image already imprinting on my retina.

“Body must have rolled under the rock after the attack,” said one of the detectives.

“Or the slab was used to hide her,” said another.

“It kept her nice and cool,” said the ME. “That, and being so close to the river.”

“How long has she been here?” Terri asked.

The ME leaned in, kissing distance from the corpse. “I’d guess weeks, maybe even a month or two. Hard to say, the way the body’s been sheltered. It’s all ice under the concrete, like she was in cold storage.” He plucked up a squiggling maggot with a pair of tweezers and dropped it in a bag. “Lab will tell you more once these babies are tested.”

The photographer’s strobe flashed, illuminating the girl’s hair like a halo.

The ME lifted her mini with a pencil. “Doesn’t appear to be a sexual attack. Underwear’s intact, and there’s no bruising on the inner thighs.” He moved to the torn fabric of her tank top. “Can’t tell how many stab wounds until we get her back and hose her down.” He indicated slight bruising on her inner arm. “And she’s a user.”

“Probably a pros,” said Perez. “In this neck of the woods.”

“Any ID?” Perez asked CS.

“Nada. Just some cash, which her attacker didn’t bother to take.”

Terri caught my eye and nodded toward a makeshift evidence table. I knew what she wanted me to see.

“It was beside the body, half under her,” she said. “And you hear what the ME said? Could be weeks, maybe a month; it’s an old kill.”

“Yeah, I heard. And this sort of wrecks your moral-standards theory.”

Her eyes, above the mask, looked puzzled for a moment.

“You know, the part about him not killing girls.”

Monica Collins arrived at the scene just as the NYPD Crime Scene van pulled out. She had her shield out in front of her, field agents flanking her like sentinels, and enough attitude to fill the tent.

“Why wasn’t I informed about this?” She snapped on a pair of gloves.

One of the detectives from the local Fifth Precinct who had never met her must have missed her FBI shield because he said, “Sorry, but I don’t got your number. Is it listed?”

Collins asked for his name and badge number.

Terri stepped in. “No one knew if this is related to the case yet, Agent Collins.”

Collins wheeled around. “What part of ‘full cooperation’ do you not understand, Detective Russo?”

“No one wanted to waste your time if it wasn’t related.”

Collins didn’t respond. She headed toward the concrete slab that hid the body. She hadn’t put on her mask yet and I was sure she’d be sorry.

Everyone stopped to watch as she reeled back from the corpse, hand across her nose and mouth.

“Hope she chokes,” O’Connell whispered.

Collins tried to look cool though her face was a bit green. “Where’s the drawing?”

“Lab took it for testing,” said Terri.

“Already?”

“They’re efficient.”

Collins’s eyes narrowed above the mask she had finally gotten in place. “Did the sketch look like the others?”

“Not my area of expertise,” said Terri. “Plus, it was a mess. Torn up and stained. Hard to tell if it had anything to do with the vic. Could be a coincidence that it was found near the body. Might have blown onto her or been dug up by the construction.”

I wasn’t sure if Terri was trying intentionally to piss off the agent or not. Everything she said was true, but Collins was steaming. She looked past Terri and caught my eye. “You,” she said. “Sketch artist. Did it look like the vic?”

“You saw the vic’s face, Agent Collins. Nothing much left to compare it to.” I was pretty proud of my answer and could see by the slight smile in Terri’s eyes that she was too.

Collins’s eyes narrowed to slits. “I’ll be speaking with Quantico officials, bringing them up to speed on these events.” She looked over at Terri, then turned and left.

“You’re going to have to play ball with them eventually,” I said to Terri.

“Gee, thanks for telling me that, Rodriguez.” She turned to her men. “You hear that, guys? Rodriguez here says we are going to have to play ball with G.”

I put up my hands in defense. It just seemed to me that she was asking for trouble, and maybe I had been too.

“Hey, I know,” said Perez. “Why don’t you draw a picture of ‘Lewinsky’ and we can frame it for her, like a gift.”

“I’d make a drawing of you, Perez, but I draw faces, not assholes.”

Perez’s arm snapped back, ready to let me have it, but O’Connell grabbed him. “Easy there, Pretzel. Rocky here didn’t mean no harm, did you, Rocky?”

Rocky?

“It was a joke,” I said to Perez.

“Pendejo,” said Perez.

I was ready to call him a fool too, plus a few other choice names, but Terri told everyone to relax. Then she looked up at me, a smile ticking at the corners of her lips. “Rocky?” she said. “Hmmm…don’t know about that.”