Cold Hit

2

A cold blast hit me as I opened my apartment door. Thank God I had forgotten to turn down the air conditioner. The coolness felt good as I moved into the bedroom to take off my wilted suit.

The green light flashed on my answering machine. I smiled at the thought of hearing a friendly voice or two, someone who would ease my transition from a scene of violence to the peace of my home, secure and comforting, on the twentieth floor of a high-rise apartment. I pressed the playback button as I began to undress.

I was on my way to the shower when I heard the voice that I had been waiting for, so I walked back and sat on the side of my bed. “Alex?… Alex?… It’s Jake…” The telephone connection sizzled and faded. Before I could move, it started again. “Don’t know if you can hear me… still in China… and… must be about nine o’clock your time. Sorry I missed you… I’ll see you… and just wanted to tell you that…” I pushed the replay button. The machine hadn’t captured any more words than I had heard, but it was Jacob Tyler’s voice that I wanted to listen to over and over. We had been dating for only a couple of months and the newness of the relationship still got me tingling when I heard him speak. I pushed the save button and went in to shower.

I lifted my face up to the steaming water that poured out at me and drizzled down the length of my legs. I reached for the bar of soap and stared at my fingernail, noticing the chip of polish at its tip. My eyes closed and all I could see was the bright red on the nails of the dead woman’s hand. I opened my eyes and shook my head, willing myself not to call up other memories of that body on the ladder. There would be all night for such visions, as I knew too well from past experience. I scrubbed the day’s grime off my face and body, then dried and wrapped myself tightly in a warm, thick terry robe.

I toweled my hair as I played Jake’s message once more. I was smiling again, imagining what he might have said in between the snatches of words that were actually recorded and not gobbled up by the satellites. I’d have to phone my best friend, Nina, and tell her about Jake’s call. I could guess what her response would be: “What good is it to have a guy half a world away when you need him to put his arms around you right now?”

Maybe I’d wait and call her tomorrow. She wasn’t wrong about my needing Jake, but I had been dealing with images of victims for more than ten years. Most of the time, my work was with women who survived their assailants and who would triumph in the courtroom. But very little could soften the shock of seeing firsthand the destruction of a human life-a life as young as my own, as full of promise and hope as I dreamed mine would be.

I shook the dampness off my hair and looked at my watch. It would be morning in China. I had no idea where Jake was at the moment and no office number abroad at which to call him back. I wished he were here with me now. This was not a night to be alone.

My head ached and my stomach was making noises, demanding to be fed. I pressed the telephone button to speeddial the deli on the next corner and order a turkey sandwich. I could nourish the body if not the soul.

“Sorry, Alex. It’s almost ten o’clock,” said Clare at P. J. Bernstein’s delicatessen. “We’re just closing up.”

I never cooked at home, so I knew there would be nothing in the refrigerator. I had cans of soup in the cabinet, but it was too warm out to entertain the thought of hot soup. I put some ice cubes in a glass, moving on to the den to fix myself a stiff Dewar’s. A mystery novel waited for me next to my bed, but there was nothing like the sight of a real corpse to alienate me from the genre for a couple of weeks. Jake had left a dog-eared Henry James on my dresser. Perhaps I’d start that instead of trying to go to sleep.

I hadn’t bothered to turn on the lights before I sat on the sofa, drink in hand, and gazed out over the city. Soft music from my CD system distracted me until Linda Ronstadt began to sing about the hungry women down on Rue Morgue Avenue. I flashed again to the body on the ladder and visualized the setting where it rested tonight.

The sharp buzz of the phone startled me. I caught it on the third ring.

“You almost sound happy to hear from me for a change.”

“Mike?” I asked, having hoped it would be Jake.

“Wrong voice, huh? Don’t go getting dejected ’cause it’s me. It’s not like I’m the Unabomber or Ted Bundy calling you for a quick squeeze. The lieutenant asked me to get hold of you. Says he’d really like you to be at Compstat in the morning.”

Compstat-comparative computer statistics-the NYPD’s hot new demonstration for leadership accountability. Meetings held at headquarters several times a month, in the War Room, to show off the commissioner’s ability to identify and solve the city’s crime problems.

“What time do I have to be there?”

“Seven o’clock sharp. Seems the brass went berserk over this one tonight-it screws up all the mayor’s statistics for the month. The commish may even call on you if he gets frisky and wants answers for all his questions, or wants to blame your boss for refusing to prosecute some of the quality-of-life cases.”

“Thanks for the warning.”

“You sound really flat, kid. You okay?”

“My head’s still back at Spuyten Duyvil, if you know what I mean. Want to grab a pizza and come on up here for supper?”

“Sorry, Coop. It’s almost eleven o’clock. We’ll be working most of the night, trying to figure out who this broad is and when she got popped in the river. See you at reveille. Better sleep with the night-light on.”

It wasn’t the dark that frightened me. It was the fact that moving around out there, below my window, were creatures capable of splitting open the head of a young woman and throwing her body into the water. I stared out at the lights of Manhattan for the next hour, watching them gradually go off as people went to sleep. And all the time, as I sat awake, I thought about the monsters who walk among us.