Killer Heat

FOUR

Iwalked Janet Bristol to the rest room to wash her face, then returned to wait for her in my office

You've got to give me a hand tonight," Mike said. "What am I missing?" I looked from him to Mercer.

"We're going to get a hit at the morgue," Mike said. "I can taste it.

I just look at that beauty mark on the side of this broad's neck and picture the one in the identical place on her sister. A patch of skin untouched by the bugs. We got hold of Amber's dentist an hour ago-she had sent Janet to him for an abscess last year. He's faxing over her records to Dr. Kestenbaum. "And if it's a match?"

"Janet tells me that if we're not the first ones to get hold of Amber's little black book, this case will rocket from oblivion to the headlines. Good morning, Idaho. This is your wake-up call."

"Does she know her sister's clientele?" Mercer's six-foot-six frame towered over Mike, and his ebony face was sweating heavily.

"Not specific guys, but according to Amber's stories, they're what the newspapers refer to as boldface names. Lawyers, businessmen, politicians. I want you to come uptown with us, Alex, if Janet makes an ID," Mike said. "You're the one who's going to have to run interference with Battaglia if this investigation takes a detour."

"Don't be luring Coop away from my case," Mercer said.

"You told me this trial would be over in two days."

"It should be," I said. The courtroom circus created by Floyd Warren's defense attorney had prolonged the proceedings for two weeks back in the seventies. Now, the powerful addition of DNA to the prosecution case would change the focus-and pace-radically.

"So by this time Thursday evening, Ms. Cooper, Floyd Warren will be one more notch on your belt and you'll be looking for something to take your mind off the much more important fact that you've got no social life. I can fill all those empty hours for you, kid," Mike added. "Me and my rapidly growing summer-in-the-city body count."

Mercer knew why Mike wanted my company. Mercer and I spent countless hours handholding survivors of violence who needed emotional support to get through the unfamiliar clinical steps that marked their introduction to the criminal justice system. It took as much time, sometimes more, than working the investigation.

Mike was impatient in that role. He was at his best when he set himself up against an unknown predator, teasing secrets from the dead to offer up cold, hard evidence that would lead him to the suspect.

"You want Alex to take charge of Janet Bristol tonight?" Mercer said. "And if the little black book has some dynamite in it, you want her to sit right on top of that keg?"

"Or stick it in her pocket. Give me a curfew, man. I'll have her tucked in. She's so overwired for this trial, you can't be worried about it."

"You want to go with them, Alex?" Mercer asked.

"Sure."

"See you here at seven thirty. You get some sleep."

I straightened up my desk and, when Janet Bristol returned, went with her and Mike to his car. The ride to the six-story blue brick building that housed the morgue took only fifteen minutes. The deputy medical examiner assigned to the case, Jeff Kestenbaum, met us at reception and took us into his office. A lanky man with the serious mien of a scholar, he was always gentle with family members, who usually came to his office for terrible news.

Kestenbaum explained to Janet how the viewing would occur. He tried to tell her, more graphically than Mike had done, how the skin and soft tissue of the woman he now believed to be Amber had been devoured by insects after her death. He confirmed that the dental records matched the work in those teeth that had not been kicked out of Amber's mouth by her killer.

"Do I-do I have to look?"

The office required that at least one person known to the deceased attempt a physical identification. Stories were legion about people with similar characteristics-build, coloring, crowned wisdom teeth or abdominal surgical scars-who were mistakenly identified because of confusion about these traits.

"Before we release the body to you, yes, you must."

We took the short walk to the window that separated Janet from the corpse. It would be cleaner now, after the autopsy, with some of the facial wounds stitched together, than when Mike had called me in the night before.

The green curtain was drawn back and Janet reacted immediately.

"Oh, my God," she said, pressing her face against the glass. "Yes, it's my sister. Oh, my God, yes."

Now the resemblance was even more obvious, with Janet's cheek in profile to us, matching the outline of the bone structure of Amber's face. Her knees buckled and Mike picked her up in his arms before she could hit the floor.

We followed Kestenbaum down the hall and Mike rested Janet on the sofa in the small lounge that was set aside for grieving families. She was alert almost at once, and the men left the room while I sat beside her, stroking her hand and trying to calm her for the tasks ahead.

"Is there someone you'd like to have here with you?"

"No. There's no one. It's my mother I've got to call." She took a deep breath and leaned her head back against the arm of the sofa.

"Any friends who can keep you company?"

"I don't want anyone to know, don't you see?"

"To know that Amber's been killed?"

"That'll be news soon enough. I don't need them to find out how she lived."

"Anything I can do to-?"

"Would you please step out for a few minutes? I'd like to be alone here for a while. To think about Amber, if you don't mind."

I closed the door behind me and walked to Kestenbaum's office. The doctor was standing at his desk, organizing autopsy photographs- a male victim of a gunshot wound-probably for a court appearance. Mike had his feet up on the side of the desk, surfing channels on the small TV.

"Janet ready to go?" he asked.

"Wants a few minutes to collect herself."

"I'm itching to get my hands on Amber's client files."

"You'll have a laundry list of some of her johns, a married lover, the disgruntled landlord, an ex-employer, and maybe a random stranger who carries the tools of torture with him," I said, counting on my fingers the directions Mike's investigation might now take. "Where to begin?"

Mike raised the volume and Alex Trebek announced the Final Jeopardy category. " 'Famous Americans,' folks. Let's see what you're willing to wager."

"I'm in, Coop. Twenty bucks."

Not a gruesome crime scene nor the solemnity of a morgue could keep Mike from watching the last minutes of Jeopardy. He had majored in history at Fordham and he loved to show off his extensive knowledge of a variety of trivia subjects.

"I know, you're about to tell me it's inappropriate," he said. "You're about to tell me even hookers got sisters with feelings. I'll have your money before Janet powders her nose."

"Twenty for me."

"Doc?"

"Got to concentrate, Mike. I'm working on an exit wound," he said, making notes as he held one of the enlarged photos.

'Taceant colloquia. Effugiat risus.' Mike's Latin was better than mine, from years of parochial school. He, too, recognized the translation of the words posted over the entrance to the medical examiner's office.

"Let conversation cease. Laughter, take flight. This place is where death delights to aid the living.

"You're just taking a pass 'cause the question isn't some brainiac scientific thing, Doc. You blew us out of here with that one about injuries to the fifth metatarsal. A Monto fracture or whatever it was.

Trebek was back on cue. "He was only the sixth foreign-born individual to be declared an honorary citizen of the United States by the president, pursuant to an act of Congress. Two of the three studio guests eagerly scrawled questions on their screens. One cocked his head and stared blankly at the camera.

"I'm sorry, sir," Trebek told the kayak instructor from Indianapolis. "Winston Churchill was the first to receive the honor. In his lifetime, actually, in 1963. We're looking for the sixth person. No guesses?"

The bank teller from Long Island had also guessed incorrectly, and the beekeeper from Dallas didn't bother to take a stab at the answer. Neither did Kestenbaum or I.

"Who is the Marquis de Lafayette?" Mike said. "Major General Marie Joseph de Lafayette, hero of the American Revolution. Valley Forge. The Yorktown campaign."

Trebek nodded at the camera as the board behind him revealed the answer. "Yes, indeed. George Washington's great friend, only the sixth foreigner so honored. Churchill, Mother Teresa, Raoul Wallenberg, William Penn-and his wife, Hannah-and then the young French nobleman who came to America's aid. Not chronological, obviously, folks."

Mike shut off the television to continue our history lesson. "Yeah, if Cornwallis hadn't surrendered at Yorktown-"

"Excuse me," Janet Bristol said, pushing open the door to Kestenbaum's small office. "Would you mind telling me exactly-well, exactly how my sister died?"

Mike took his feet down from the desk and held back a chair for Janet.

"Not at all," Dr. Kestenbaum said, stacking the photos he'd been working on into a pile.

"Did you reach your parents?" I asked. She was pale white and still sniffling, and even more agitated than when I had left her minutes ago. Her cell phone was clasped tightly in her hand.

"Not yet. I'm not ready to do that," she said, looking at her watch. "I decided to wait another hour, till my father gets home from work. I want them to be together when they get the news."

The cell phone in her hand rang. She flipped it open and looked at the incoming caller's number. "It's Jim Dylan. I don't need to take it. He can just rot in hell," Janet said, dropping the phone into her tote.

"Why do you think he's calling you now?" Mike asked.

"Oh-well, I just left him a message about Amber. About her murder."

Mike grimaced and tried to hide his displeasure. "From here on, Janet, I don't want you talking to him, or to any other people who might be witnesses, okay? I need to know exactly what you said to Dylan, and then I'll take it over now."

She pointed at me. "Ms. Cooper didn't tell me I couldn't speak to people about Amber."

"I'm sorry. It didn't occur to me that you would try to reach anyone but your family."

Janet's red-rimmed eyes were more focused now. "That prick has some answering to do, Mr. Chapman. For more than a year he'd been promising Amber he was going to leave his wife. We talked about it- we drank to it-on her last birthday. On Sunday, Jim told me he didn't want me to mention her name, that she wasn't welcome in his bar anymore. Well, let him come down here and take a look at what he drove her to."

I doubted it would be as simple as the formula to which Janet seemed to reduce Amber's fate.

"Does Dylan have a key to her place?" Mike asked.

"I don't know. I doubt she gave keys to a living soul. She didn't even give one to me," Janet said. "Not exactly the kind of habits you'd want someone to walk in on."

Mike was eager to get to Amber's apartment before anyone else tried to enter. "Why don't we start on up there."

"I want to know how she died, Doctor." Janet's hand trembled as she brushed a lock of hair out of her eyes and lowered her voice. "Do you think she suffered much?"

There was no way to soften the blow. The best that forensics could do was to explain the manner of death, the mechanism that had cut short Amber's life. But the length of time Amber Bristol was in the company of her killer and what had happened to her while she was still conscious-the answers Mike Chapman wanted-would undoubtedly prove even uglier.

"It's quite possible that she did suffer," Kestenbaum said. "Your sister was-badly bruised, Ms. Bristol. Most of the injuries occurred before she died."

Janet winced and breathed in deeply.

"The newspapers-will there have to be stories about this? About Janet and her, uh, her lifestyle?"

"Hard to know," Mike said, pacing behind Kestenbaum's back in the narrow room. "Right now, there's no reason for any sensational press."

"Is there DNA?"

"It's unlikely that anything Dr. Kestenbaum recovered will identify the killer."

"Then at least she wasn't raped."

A little bit of television forensics was a dangerous thing. Maggots had done their work well, moving into body openings and cavities, destroying what the killer might have left behind.

"Do you have more, well-something else to go on?"

"Look, Janet," Mike said, leaning his strong forearms on the desk. He was impatient to get on his way, to get to work before the next shift brought him more cases. "We don't know the first thing about Amber. Till you walked in the station house today, we didn't have a clue to connect her to a name. There wasn't a shred of identification, not a piece of clothing, not a blessed thing-"

"There was the whip, wasn't there?" Janet said.

Mike lifted his head to glare at me. I shook mine back at him.

"What whip?" There was no sure way to link it to Amber's death at this point, and it was the kind of detail that investigators would withhold from the public for as long as possible-something about which only the killer might know.

"The sergeant," Janet said, "the man at the desk in the station house. He told me the cops fished a whip out of the river. He was trying to calm me down, telling me he hoped it wasn't the killer's."

Mike put his hand on the doorknob and held Janet's chair as she stood up.

"Be sure and look over Jimmy Dylan when you talk to him, Mr. Chapman. He's not what he appears to be-just a charming barkeep," Janet said. "He knew all about Amber, and he did nothing to stop it, nothing to help her. Jimmy knows that's what people paid Amber to do."

"What do you mean?"

"My sister's a dominatrix, Detective. She liked to hurt people- took pleasure in it. I'll bet if that whip had anything to do with Amber's murder, it belonged to her and not the killer.