Lethal Legacy

SIXTEEN

Crowds lined the sidewalk at the intersection of Sixth Avenue and Forty-second Street, even though it was two o’clock in the morning. The uniformed cops who had picked me up at my apartment muscled through the onlookers and lifted the yellow police tape that kept them out of the park so we could duck under it.

Huge bright floodlights were mounted on a metal catwalk that framed an enormous JumboTron screen. Below the massive structure, dozens of NYPD men and women were still scrambling to secure the perimeter of the crime scene and push back the cameramen who were trying to climb the low wall to photograph the activity.

“Over here, Alex,” Mercer called out. “Watch your step.”

The old cobblestone-and-gravel path was littered with debris, and on both sides of it there were tall stacks of folding chairs and wheeled pallets loaded with objects covered with canvas and strapped in place. Fall plantings had been trampled and expensive landscaping would have to be restored.

“Tina?”

“Body’s there,” Mercer said, pointing to the far side of the plaza beyond the metal superstructure that framed the screen. “The ME got here fifteen minutes ago. She’ll finish up soon.”

“What’s all this?” I asked, looking around at the equipment that cluttered the twin promenades of the beautifully landscaped park that ran the length of a football field.

“There was an event here last evening. One of the mayor’s goodwill gestures,” Mercer said. “Had the JumboTron put up yesterday, and bused in Scout troops-a few thousand kids-from all over the city to see the game. Free. Everybody was pretty orderly when it broke up at the end, and then the workmen started to take the place apart.”

I followed him to the edge of the walkway, staring off at the group of cops who were standing shoulder to shoulder, holding up sheets around what was obviously the body of Tina Barr.

“That’s when someone found her?”

“Yeah. Her body was wrapped in one of these tarps, just like all the other gear they were about to load up and move out of here.”

“Do you think she was-?”

“Fully clothed. Doesn’t look like a sexual assault, Alex.”

I could see the medical examiner, a short, plump woman with dark skin, emerge from behind the sheeting that had given her some privacy to examine the body. Mercer led me in her direction.

“Detective Wallace, Ms. Cooper,” the doctor greeted us as she pulled off her gloves and handed them to her assistant. “Not exactly the best conditions for what I’ve had to do, but if you’d like to step into my temporary office, you can see what the young lady looks like for yourselves.”

Mike was kneeling beside the body of Tina Barr, studying her face. He didn’t move when Mercer and I came inside the makeshift morgue.

“As you can see, Ms. Cooper, the killer slit her throat.”

Dr. Assif delivered her preliminary clinical findings in a flat monotone. The detective standing behind Tina’s head shone his flashlight on the corpse as she spoke.

“Butchered her,” Mike said, without picking up his head. “Mercer, would you tell Hal Sherman I want some more photos?”

It was almost impossible to recognize the face of the woman I had talked with after the attack in her home a few nights ago. There was a long incision across her neck, and a deep wound that exposed layers of muscle beneath the skin. Her vacant eyes were open toward the night sky, and her mouth was agape.

“He’s working on the tarp now. Crime Scene’s trying to figure a way to move it downtown without losing anything,” Mercer said. “He’ll be right back.”

Barr’s body was resting on a clean sheet that the ME’s crew had brought with them. The tarp in which she’d been wrapped would be processed for clues.

“She must have bled buckets,” I said. There were dark stains all over the front of her short-sleeved V-neck sweater.

“Clothes are a mess,” Mike said. “But there’s nothing on the tarp.”

“Probably because she was killed a day or so before she was placed inside it,” Dr. Assif offered.

“Any other signs of a struggle?” I asked.

“I’ll know more, of course, when we get her clothes off,” the doctor said. “But it doesn’t appear to be the case now. No other bruising on her arms or chest. No defensive injuries. I want you guys to bag her hands before she’s moved, but I don’t see any broken fingernails either.”

“How is that possible?”

“Let me examine the wound margins and pattern on the neck, Ms. Cooper. I’ll have a better sense of whether I think she was attacked from behind, and what kind of weapon you’re looking for.”

“Let me know if it’s a small sharp blade, like an X-Acto knife,” Mike said.

I thought of Alger Herrick as he slit through the long page of the old book.

“Wouldn’t you expect her to have time to fight her attacker, or at least to scream?” I couldn’t think of a place in Manhattan so remote that no one would hear such a commotion.

“You’re thinking of exsanguination,” Assif said. “You’re assuming that your victim bled to death-slowly. But a postmortem X-ray will tell me if the injury caused a fatal air embolism.”

Mike stood up. “That would figure, Doc.”

“When one of the larger neck veins is penetrated,” the pathologist explained to me, “air is sucked into the vessels because of the negative pressure in the veins. That air mixes with blood and instantly forms a foam, causing a valve lock in the ventricular chamber of the heart.”

“Then Tina may have gotten off a gasp or two, but the embolism brings on an extremely rapid collapse,” Mike said.

I listened to them talk about the sudden death that might have resulted from this slice across the victim’s neck, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the gruesome sight of her discolored, distorted face.

“The body’s very well preserved,” Assif said. “She must have been in a cool place, not exposed to the elements. No small animals or even insects.”

Hal Sherman, a longtime crime scene investigator, pulled back one of the sheets and stuck his head in. “I thought I gave you everything you need, Chapman. Hey, Alex-that’s a pretty mean cut, isn’t it?”

“Take a few straight over her head, will you?” Mike asked. “I want to check her pockets, so stand by.”

Hal was ready with his camera and flash. He moved in over Tina Barr’s body and focused his lens on her face and neck while Dr. Assif backed out of the way.

“Did the guys in the office check the weather service for you, Mercer?” Mike asked. “What time is sunrise?”

“Six-thirteen.”

“Then tell the lieutenant we need sixty, maybe eighty uniformed guys here at six-eleven this morning to walk a grid,” Mike said. “I don’t care where the commissioner pulls them from. They’re going to have to eyeball every piece of equipment that moves out of here, talk to every single stagehand who set up this gig. Maybe looking in the grass for a knife or blade-anything sharp that could have done the job. Probably a complete waste of time, but it’s got to be done.”

“You think Tina was dumped here before the game?” I asked.

“Hard to know. The outside of the tarp was a mess. Footprints all over it. Could have been dumped here-wheeled over on one of these dollies-while the crew was busy unloading everything. The park must have looked like an anthill on fire, getting stuff in place for the game.”

Mike lifted the edge of Tina Barr’s sweater and reached into her right pants pocket. There was nothing in his gloved hand when he removed it.

I kneeled down beside him.

“Jeez, Coop. What the hell did you do? Put a clove of garlic in your Chanel bottle?”

I covered my mouth with my hand. “Sorry.”

“Something I don’t know? You’re being stalked by a vampire? At least you and Joanie had time for a good dinner,” Mike said, reaching across Tina’s body into her other pocket. “Here’s something.”

He sat back on his heels and held up a small laminated tag on a long chain. “It’s her library ID-the original one,” Mike said. “She must have been dying to get back in there to get a book.”

I stood up and turned away from the body. There was no point in trying to change Mike’s ways, to discourage the black humor that got him through the relentlessly dark territory of his work.

“Maybe she was dying to get out,” I said.

He turned to look at me for the first time since I had arrived at the scene. “Not a bad thought. Wouldn’t have been a long haul to get her here, but where the hell could she have been inside that place that was so isolated? It’s for scholars and students, for Chrissakes. Me, I think there’s just some kind of symbolism in this. Somebody making a statement by dumping her right at the back door of the library.”

Hal snapped close-ups of the tag, front and back, and Mike placed it in a paper bag to send to the lab. He went back into the woman’s pocket, withdrew a folded slip of paper, and opened it to read.

“Hey, Coop. Isn’t this a call slip?”

He lifted the small rectangular piece so that I could see it. “Yes,” I said. “It’s got Tina’s name on it and Tuesday’s date.”

Mike lifted the corner and below it was a pink slip, then a yellow one, both attached at the end to the top paper. “It’s still in triplicate. Looks like she didn’t submit it.”

“What book was she asking for?”

“Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, an 1866 edition. Mercer, you got a bag for this?” Mike asked. “Maybe she realized her landlady, Minerva Hunt, really is a Mad Hatter.”

“Just a minute, Mike,” Hal Sherman said. “There’s some writing on the back.”

He took a photograph of the front of the slip, then Mike turned it over.

“What does it say?” I asked.

Hal bent over and started to read. “‘The evil that men do…’”

“That’s all?” Mike said.

“Why? There should be more?”

“‘The evil that men do lives after them,’” Mike said, picking up the paper after Hal took a picture of it, and getting to his feet. “Finish it off, Coop.”

“‘The good are oft interred with their bones.’”

Mike winked at Hal. “Julius Caesar, Detective Sherman.”

“Quite the poet, Mikey,” Hal said, backing away from Tina Barr. “I’m impressed.”

“Coop knows her Shakespeare. I know my Roman generals.”

One of the cops holding up the sheets lowered a corner to tell Mike that the men were ready to put Tina Barr in a body bag and get her into the ambulance.

We all stood still, silent for a moment, saying our own goodbyes to the slain woman. Then Mike nodded at one of the officers, signaling for the morgue attendants to take her away.

As I moved to make room for the men, the quiet within our space was broken by the shrill ring of a cell phone. A second ring, and I realized the sound was coming from somewhere on Tina’s body.

Mike kneeled again and slid his hand beneath her, pulling something from her rear pants pocket. “You answer it, Coop. It’s a woman they’re expecting to hear,” he said, passing me the razorthin phone eerily buzzing for its dead owner.

I flipped it open and muffled my voice with my hand, saying, “Hello.”

The caller waited a few seconds, then disconnected. I could have sworn I heard him laugh before he did.