Dance Of Death

ELEVEN

Detective Captain Laura Hayward walked across the living room and glanced out the window, careful not to brush against the table that had been placed beneath it. Through the shattered hole, she could see that, far below, Broadway was finally quiet. She'd given her men strict orders to seal off the scene, and they'd done a good job: the injured had been quickly removed by ambulance, the gawkers and rubberneckers had eventually grown tired and cold and had drifted away. The press had been more tenacious, but they, too, had eventually settled for the terse statement she'd given late in the afternoon. It had proved a complicated, messy crime scene, involving the apartment and the restaurant below, but she'd coordinated all the investigative teams personally and now-at last-the on-site forensic work was wrapping up. The fingerprint examiners, photo technicians, and crime scene analysts had already left. Only the evidence custodian remained, and she would be gone within the hour.

Laura Hayward derived immense satisfaction from a well-worked homicide. Violent death was a disorderly affair. But as a scene was analyzed-as wave after wave of forensic investigators, medical examiners, technicians, and criminalists went about their jobs in the scripted fashion-the chaos and horror were compartmentalized, ordered, and labeled. It was as if the investigation itself restored some of the natural order that the act of murder had overturned.

And yet, as she looked over this scene, Hayward felt no satisfaction. She felt instead an inexplicable sense of unease.

She shivered, blew on her hands, buttoned the top button of her coat. What with the broken window, and her instructions to touch nothing (not even the heat), the room was only a few degrees warmer than outside. For a moment, she found herself wishing D'Agosta were there. No matter: she'd tell him about the case when she got home. He'd be interested, she knew, and he often surprised her with practical, creative suggestions. Maybe it would get his mind off his unhealthy obsession with Pendergast's brother. Just when he'd gotten over Pendergast's death, just when his sense of guilt had seemed to ease, he'd been summoned by that damned chauffeur…

"Ma'am?" a sergeant said, popping his head into the living room. "Captain Singleton is here."

"Show him in, please." Singleton was the local precinct captain, and Hayward expected he would show up personally. He was one of those old-fashioned captains who felt their place was with their men, working cases, on the street or at the scene of a crime. Hayward had worked with Singleton before and found him one of the best captains in the city when it came to working with Homicide-cooperative, deferring when it came to forensics, but involving himself usefully in every step of the investigation.

And now in the doorway the man himself appeared, natty in a long camel's-hair coat, his carefully trimmed hair impeccable as always. He paused, eyes moving about restlessly, taking in the scene. Then he smiled, stepped forward, and offered his hand. "Laura."

"Glen. Nice to see you." The handshake was brief and businesslike. She wondered if Singleton knew about her and D'Agosta, decided immediately that he didn't: they had both been careful to keep their relationship out of the NYPD rumor mill.

Singleton waved his hand around the room. "Beautiful work, as usual. Hope you don't mind my sticking my nose in."

"Not at all. We're just about squared away."

"How's it going?"

"Just fine." She hesitated. No reason not to tell Singleton: unlike most police brass, he got no joy out of backstabbing potential rivals for advancement-nor was he threatened by being upstaged by Homicide. Besides, he was a captain, too-she could rely on his discretion.

"Actually, I'm not so sure," she said in a quieter tone.

Singleton glanced over at the evidence custodian, who was standing in a far corner of the room jotting some notations on a clipboard. "Want to tell me about it?"

"The lock on the front door was expertly picked. It's a small apartment, just two bedrooms, one converted into an artist's studio. The perpetrator entered the apartment undetected and apparently hid here-" She pointed to a dark corner near the doorway. "He jumped the victim as he entered the living room, probably hit him over the head. Unfortunately, the body was so badly damaged by the fall that it might be difficult to determine the weapon the attacker used." She pointed to the adjoining wall, where a spray of blood defaced a painting of Central Park's boat pond. "Take a look at that impact splatter."

Singleton examined. "Fairly small, medium-velocity drops. A blunt instrument of some kind?"

"That's our take. The cast-off patterns, here and here, back up the assumption. And the height of the spray relative to the wall is what indicates a blow to the head. Judging by the pattern of travel-note the crown droplets moving across the rug-the victim staggered a few feet, then collapsed where that ponding stain has been marked. The amount of blood is also suggestive of a head wound-you know how much they bleed."

"I take it no weapon was recovered?"

"None. Whatever was used, the perp took it with him."

Singleton nodded slowly. "Go on."

"It appears that the attacker then dragged the stunned victim to the sofa, where-and this is strange-he tended the wound he'd just inflicted."

"Tended?"

"Dabbed at it with gauze pads from the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. Several empty packages were found next to the sofa, some bloody pads tossed in the trash."

"Any prints?"

"The guys from Latents lifted about fifty from all over the apartment. Even took a few from the blood of the victim, Duchamp, with an amido black methanol solution. All the prints matched Duchamp, his help, or known acquaintances. There were no others: not on the medicine cabinet, not on the doorknob, not on the packets of gauze."

"The murderer wore gloves."

"Surgical rubber, based on trace residues. The lab will be able to confirm by morning." Hayward gestured at the sofa. "Next the victim was bound, arms tied behind his back in a series of elaborate knots. The same heavy cordage was used to fashion the hangman's noose. I had forensics remove the ropes from the body and bag them. The knots are like nothing I've ever seen before." She nodded to a series of oversize plastic bags which lay, tagged and sealed, atop a blue evidence locker.

"Strange-looking ropes, too."

"It's about the only evidence the perp left behind. That, and a few fibers from his clothing." It's the only bit of good news in the whole case, Hayward thought to herself. Rope had almost as many characteristics as fingerprints: type of twist, turns per inch, number of plies, filament attributes. That, along with the particular type and style of knot, could speak volumes.

"By the time Duchamp came to again, he was probably already bound. The murderer shoved that long desk into position there beneath the window. Then-somehow-he forced Duchamp to climb onto the desk and, in effect, walk the plank. Or, I should say, run the plank. The man basically leaped out through the window, hanging himself."

Singleton frowned. "You sure about that?"

"Take a look at the desk." Hayward showed him a series of bloody footprints across the desktop, each flagged and labeled.

"Duchamp walked through his own blood on the way to the desk. See how, in the first set of prints, he's standing at rest? As the others lead toward the window, the distance between them grows larger. And look how, in this last print before the window, only the ball of the shoe hit the desk. These are acceleration marks."

Singleton stared at the desk for at least a minute. Then he glanced over at Hayward. "They couldn't have been faked? The murderer couldn't, say, have taken off Duchamp's shoes, made the marks, then replaced them on his feet?"

"I wondered about that, too. But the forensics boys said that would have been impossible. You can't fake prints like that. Besides, the pattern of breakage of the window frame is consistent with somebody leaping through it, rather than somebody being manhandled, or pushed, out of it."

"Holy crap." Singleton stepped forward. The shattered window was like a jagged eye staring out into the Manhattan night. "Imagine Duchamp standing there, arms tied behind his back, a hangman's noose hanging from his neck. What could somebody say that would induce him to take a running leap out his own window?"

He turned back again. "Unless it was voluntary. Assisted suicide. After all, there was no sign of struggle-was there?"

"None. But then, what are we to make of the perp picking the lock? Wearing gloves? Assaulting Duchamp before tying him up? The footprints on the desk show none of the false starts, the hesitation, you usually see in suicide attempts. Besides, we've done preliminary interviews of Duchamp's neighbors, some friends, a few clients. Everybody said he was the sweetest, gentlest man they'd ever met. Always a kind word for everyone, always smiling. His doctor backed that up as well. No psychological troubles. Unmarried, but no signs of any recent breakup. Financially stable. Made plenty of money from his paintings." Hayward shrugged. "No stressors of any kind that we know about."

"Any of the neighbors see anything?"

"Nobody. We've impounded the videotapes from building security. They're being gone over now."

Singleton pursed his lips, nodding. Then, putting his hands behind his back, he strolled slowly around the room, looking carefully at the traces of fingerprint powder, the labeled pins, and the evidence markers. At last, he stopped beside the locker. Hayward came over and together they stared at the heavy length of rope within the sealed bag. It was a very unusual material, glossy rather than rough, and the color was equally strange: dark purple verging on black, the color of eggplant. The hangman's noose was wrapped in the requisite thirteen loops, but they were the strangest loops Hayward had ever seen: thick and complex, like a mass of knotted intestine. In another, smaller bag lay the cord used to bind Duchamp's wrists. Hayward had instructed the workers to cut the cord, not the knot, which was almost as exotic and serpentine as the hangman's noose.

"Look at those," Singleton said, whistling. "Big, fat idiot knots."

"I'm not sure about that," Hayward replied. "I'll have the ligature specialist run them through the FBI's knot database." She hesitated. "Here's something unusual. The rope he was hung from was cut partway through with a sharp knife, maybe a razor, at the center of its length."

"You mean-" Singleton stopped.

"Right. The rope was supposed to break the way it did."

They stared a moment longer at the strange coils of rope, shimmering faintly in the incandescent light.

From behind, the evidence custodian cleared her throat. "Excuse me, Captain," she said. "Can I remove that now?"

"Sure." Hayward stepped back as the woman carefully placed the bags into the evidence locker, sealed it, then began wheeling the locker toward the front door.

Singleton watched her go. "Anything taken? Valuables, money, paintings?"

"Not a thing. Duchamp had close to three hundred dollars in his wallet and some really valuable old jewelry on his dresser. Not to mention a studio full of expensive paintings. Nothing was touched."

Singleton's eyes were on her. "And this feeling of uneasiness you spoke about?"

She turned to face him. "I can't really put a finger on it. On the one hand, the whole scene feels a little too clear and cold-almost like it's a setup. This was certainly a carefully, almost masterfully executed crime. And yet nothing makes any sense. Why knock the guy over the head, then doctor the wound? Why tie him up, put a noose around his neck, force him to jump out a window, but then deliberately weaken the rope so he falls to his death after a brief struggle? What could Duchamp possibly have been told that would make him leap to his own death like that? And above all: why go to all this trouble to kill a harmless watercolor artist who never hurt a fly? I get the sense that there's a deep and subtle motive for this crime, and so far we haven't even begun to guess at it. I've already got Psych working on a profile. I can only hope we'll learn what makes him tick. Because unless we find the motive, how the hell are we supposed to find the killer?"