Hell Gate

SIXTEEN

“Nice diversionary tactic you worked for us,” Mike said, as he opened the passenger door of Mercer’s car to help me out. “Keep your head down and walk as fast as you can on the paved path around the side of the house.”

“What tactic? What’s all the action on East End Avenue?”

East End was one of the shortest avenues in Manhattan, a mix of small, elegant town houses, two of the city’s finest private schools for girls, a quiet park, and some fancy apartments. It started at Seventy-ninth Street and ran just twelve blocks north. Mercer had driven as close as he could to the entrance-the rear door, actually-of Gracie Mansion, past the small guardhouse on Eighty-eighth Street that was a fixed post for an NYPD cop. It was just after three in the afternoon.

“Your pal Lem Howell let out the news that Salma went missing from her apartment last night and how worried the congressman is about her. The press hounds have staked out her building, which required Scully to send a few uniformed teams for crowd control.”

“Nobody’s noticed yet that right across the street we’re in the process of recovering her body.”

“You mean-?”

“She’s still in the well.”

There were dark clouds overhead and a raw chill in the air.

“But you’re sure it’s Salma?”

“Yeah.”

“How?”

I was trying to keep up with Mike as he walked off the path to the north of the handsome old building on the lawn that sloped away toward a long wrought-iron fence.

“We lowered Katie Cion down to take some photos. That’s one tough broad,” Mike said. “Good thing the department bought out all the Polaroid film on the market when they stopped producing it. I don’t know what CSU will do when they run out of it. The super across the street made the ID from one of those.”

Katie Cion was one of the few women assigned to the Homicide Squad. She had earned the gold shield with some clever and courageous detective work on a gang initiation slaying in the Bronx a year ago. Petite and agile-maybe five three when she drew herself full up to salute Scully at her promotion-she was as fearless as she was smart.

I stepped between a stand of trees and around some neatly trimmed hedges. I was just ten feet from the wide esplanade that formed a sinuous border along the water’s edge, staring at the churning gray river.

“Welcome to Hell Gate,” Mike said.

I had been to the mansion before, for receptions and ceremonies, but had never been out on the lawn to see the dramatic vista.

“Seems like the right name for it today.”

Mike pointed straight out across the river. “It’s been the right name for it for four centuries. That’s what the Dutch called this narrow strait in the sixteen hundreds. Treacherous tides and a watery grave for more ships than we’ll ever know.”

He pulled aside more branches and I could see the setup for the recovery operation. Most of the blue-and-white police vehicles had been left on East End Avenue, where they would be presumed to be part of the security detail. Four green Parks Department vans ringed a small area of the drive, and one NYPD Emergency Services truck was wedged against the fence on top of a flower bed that had been put to sleep for the winter.

Mike led me between the vans, into the circle of police officers and park employees who were gathered around the gaping hole in the ground. The chief medical examiner himself-Chet Kirschner-was overseeing the procedure.

“Hello, Alex,” he said, greeting me with a handshake and an explanation. He was a quiet man, well-respected for his medical brilliance and his dignity with the dead. “We’re about to bring the woman up now. I want to do this without causing any more postmortem artifacts than are inevitable in this kind of situation.”

Kirschner would need to establish a cause of death, complicated by the disposal of the body in such an unusual location and the injuries that might have been sustained in the dumping.

“Who found her?” I asked.

“Three kids from the projects. Taft Houses over on a Hundred and twelfth Street. Lieutenant Peterson has them up in the squad right now,” Mike said. “They weren’t supposed to be playing around here, of course, so when the Parks Department cleanup crew came to get them out, they were already screaming about the lady upside down in the hole.”

“Was the well covered?”

“Apparently it’s been covered for as long as anyone can remember. There’s the lid.”

A four-foot-square plank of plywood pieces stood against the side of one of the vans. Some of the boards were warped and appeared to have rotted on the sides.

“How old are the kids you’re talking about?”

“Fourteen, fifteen.”

“By any chance, are they Mexican? Could they have known Salma through the immigrant community?”

“Not that easy, Coop. African American.”

Three of the powerfully built men from the NYPD’s Emergency Services Unit were maneuvering around the opening of the well. They had an empty gurney standing ready, and they were talking to someone who was out of my sight within their truck.

“Anybody think they had something to do with Salma’s death?”

Mike shook his head. “Too early to know what we’ve got. They were probably just hanging out on their way home from the playground.”

Fifteen-acre Carl Schurz Park, directly adjacent to the mansion, was one of the most family-friendly places in the city. A beautifully landscaped oasis, its playground, dog run, and hockey court were a Mecca for children. Although I had grown up in the suburbs and attended a public high school in Harrison, I had visited often with friends who’d gone to elite schools like Brearley and Chapin, right next door to the park.

“What are they saying?”

“The ringleader-Jalil-he says they were just fooling around, trying to go down by the fence to see whether they could climb over it to get on the esplanade. Got curious because the ground was covered with snow, but the board on top of the well wasn’t. They didn’t know it was a well, of course. Just wanted to see what was there.”

“You mean in all these years, the cover wasn’t-I don’t know how you’d keep it on-but it wasn’t nailed down?”

“That’s the thing. Sure it was. There were large nails in each corner,” Mike said, pointing to the areas of deterioration. “But it looks like you just had to pull on them to lift them up.”

I walked over and touched one end with the leather glove on my hand.

“Watch the nails. You could get a mean case of tetanus scratching up against one of them.”

“Ready for me?” I recognized Katie Cion’s voice and turned to the rear of the EMS truck. She was inside, trying to keep warm. “Hey, Alex. Not exactly the job description I got with the shield, is it?”

Katie’s jacket was off-probably to make it easy for her to get in and out of the well. She was dressed in loose-fitting jeans and a thermal sweater, no shoes and thick socks on her feet, wearing latex gloves with a mask over her nose and mouth.

The hefty sergeant in charge had helped his men jerry-rig a series of ropes, attached on one end to the bumper of the EMS truck. Katie climbed down and let him fit her into a harness that the trio would lower into the well. It would be her responsibility to hold on to and guide Salma Zunega’s body while the team hoisting the ropes brought them both to the surface.

Dr. Kirschner was giving her instructions, explaining how best to grab the dead woman around the waist, if at all possible, and attach a similar harness to her corpse. She would position Salma’s back to herself, and try to do a reverse rappel with her feet braced against the old well walls.

“Why are they sending Katie down?” I asked.

“A few too many donuts in the bellies of those boys, Coop. Katie’s the only one who fits. She’s been in twice to scope it out and take photos. Came up with this blanket-we’re thinking it was covering Salma’s body when she was brought out of her apartment. Katie’ll do fine.”

Mercer tried to steer me away. “We can wait on the porch.”

“No, thanks.” I was looking at the pulls in the yarn on the lush off-white blanket that had been Salma’s body bag. “What about rigor? How can Katie move her?”

We knew that Mercer had seen Salma alive at eight o’clock last evening. By eleven, she was missing from her home and, if the blood on the corkscrew opener was hers, may have already suffered a mortal wound.

“Kirschner doesn’t think it will be a problem,” Mike said. “Dropping the body in here last night was like putting her in a freezer. Unlikely there was any onset of rigor mortis yet because of that. And they’ve dropped some Styrofoam panels in to line the walls, to lessen the chance of any postmortem bruising.”

Katie checked her harness, stood on the lip of the well, and gave the men the signal to begin. They first had to lift her several inches above the ground so that she didn’t drop off the side, and I watched with great admiration as she slipped down out of view, where she got to work strapping the body to her own.

Within minutes, Katie called to the men to pull her out. The sergeant and another man dropped to the ground beside the opening and the two larger detectives steadily worked the ropes, handover-hand.

The bare feet of the dead woman came into view before the top of Katie’s head, as she twisted herself to stay centered.

“Got it!” the sergeant shouted. “Hang on, Katie. Great job.”

Chet Kirschner stepped forward to put his gloved hands on the legs of Salma Zunega. “Gently, men.”

The crumpled and broken body of the woman came into full view. Her mouth was wide-open and it appeared her skull had split practically in half. Stones and small rocks were embedded in her face and on her shoulders, and when her head swung around in my direction, I could see a hole in the front of her neck that was caked with dried blood.

She was clad only in a teddy-a pale yellow piece of lingerie that was encrusted with snow. Her upper back and places on her legs and arms were imprinted with even lines that formed rectangles on her skin, as though she had been pressed against the bars of a cage.

I didn’t move. I was fixated on the face of the young mother who had died so violently. Why had she denied her earlier calls to 911, and then failed to make the last one in time to save her life? And after the odd back-and-forth about those calls, would anyone have responded if she had managed to press Send?

The ESU men followed Kirschner’s directions, while Mike and Mercer held on to Katie Cion until the body was removed from her grasp and lowered onto the gurney.

“It looks like she was tortured,” I said softly. It would be Kirschner’s job to sort out which of the injuries had been fatal. “Why is her skin so pink?”

“It’s the lividity, Alex,” Kirschner said.

I knew that the blood settled into the skin’s capillaries as they dilated after circulation ceased-usually causing a purple discoloration in the dependent parts of the body.

“It’s often this light pink,” he went on, “when a body has been recovered in icy conditions.”

“Let’s get her out of here before the vultures across the street smell blood,” Mike said. “Can we transport her in the EMS vehicle so we don’t have to bring a marked morgue bus in here?”

“That’s fine,” Kirschner said.

Two of the ESU guys raised the gurney up from the ground and I heard it lock into place. Katie Cion had already gotten into the rear of the truck to put on her jacket and boots. The men draped a sheet over the twisted form of Salma Zunega.

The four ESU men surrounded the gurney and started to wheel it down the slight incline. The ground was uneven, and as they moved ahead Salma’s body shifted on its temporary bed and her leg dropped over the side of the gurney.

“Hold it a minute,” I said, from a step or two behind the group. “Could you just stop while I take a quick look? I think I saw something on her leg.”

The sergeant who was trying to bring this difficult operation to a successful close rolled his eyes at Mike as I moved in next to the body.

Chet Kirschner was there before me. With his latex glove, he moved the left leg of the mangled corpse a bit farther apart from the right and brushed some dirt away from the exposed skin. On the upper left thigh was a familiar marking.

“It’s a rose, Alex. There’s a tattoo here of a small rose.”