Lethal Legacy

SIX

I left the courtroom with my two witnesses and went back to the office to drop off my papers, eat the sandwich that Laura had ordered in, and explain to her that Mike and I were going to pay a visit to Tina Barr.

There was no traffic on the northbound FDR Drive, so Mike had us on the Upper East Side in twenty minutes, shortly before two o’clock in the afternoon.

Mercer was waiting in an unmarked car almost directly across the street from Barr’s brownstone, and Mike continued on until he found a place to park closer to the corner of Lexington Avenue.

“How long have you been here?” I asked when Mercer came up to talk.

“A little over an hour. Have you tried calling her today?”

“Couldn’t get a number. She hasn’t got a phone-listed or unlisted-and it’s a sublet, so if there’s a hard line in there, we need to know who the landlord is to get it.”

“Reverse directory?”

“Nothing.” More and more young people were using their cell phones and BlackBerrys in place of a traditional phone.

“Knock on the door, Coop,” Mike said. “It worked for you last night.”

Mercer walked me down the block to Barr’s building. The vestibule door was locked, so I rang the buzzer next to her name several times, getting no response. Then I started pressing other doorbells until the man in 4E responded on the intercom by asking who was there.

“Police,” Mercer said. “I’m trying to get in to speak with Tina Barr.”

“Who?”

“The woman who lives in the basement.”

The man didn’t seem to care much about our visit. He buzzed us in and I followed Mercer down to the basement. I knocked but heard nothing from within.

“Ms. Barr? It’s Alexandra Cooper. If you’re there, I’d like to talk to you.”

We waited a couple of minutes and then I asked Mercer for a scrap of paper from his memo pad. I wrote a note on it, with my cell phone number, and slipped it under the apartment door.

“Let’s get comfortable, Alex. We have some time to kill.”

The three of us went up to the corner together to buy coffee. “I’ll sit at this end of the street,” Mike said. “Better chance she’d be coming from Lex than Third, either by bus or subway. You and Mercer should be right in front of the building, so you can run interference before she gets inside.”

It was a beautiful fall afternoon, crisp and clear, and we leaned against the hood of Mercer’s car, talking about the events of the last month, catching up on Vickee and their young son, Logan.

“Now you see why stakeouts are so tedious,” Mercer said, stretching his arms and straightening his back. “Give it another hour and then go on home. I’ll call you when we see Tina.”

“I can’t take the chance she’ll batten down the hatches again. Battaglia’s ripped.”

We took turns walking up and down the street just to stay alert. I checked with Laura for my messages and made calls on several of my cases. The air chilled a bit as the sun slipped behind the tall apartments that lined Central Park West, and I bought another round of coffee before settling in to the front seat of Mercer’s car.

“What have you got?” Mercer said, flipping open his cell phone. He listened and then answered. “I see him coming.”

It was after six o’clock when Tina Barr’s neighbor, Billy Schultz, approached the building from Lexington Avenue. He jogged up the front steps, unlocked the door, and went in. Within the hour, an older couple got out of a taxicab and made their way inside, too. A minute later, a light went on in the third-floor window facing the street.

I heard the sirens before I saw the flashing strobes of the patrol cars that raced into the narrow one-way block from each direction, coming to a stop nose to nose with each other in front of Barr’s building.

The passenger in each RMP dashed out of his car and bolted up the steps. Someone-it looked like Schultz’s head framed in the narrow space-opened the door, and they disappeared inside.

Mercer was running across the street as I opened my car door, shouting at me. “Stay put!”

Mike raced downhill from the corner, then took the steps two at a time and pushed through the door that had been propped open by one of the cops. I could see the glimmer of the gold detective shield he had palmed.

A crowd began to collect around the front of the building-people on their way home, going out for dinner, heading for a run in the park, or walking dogs.

I tried to get past the driver of the patrol car who had stationed himself at the building’s entrance, but he didn’t know me and refused to let me in. I showed him my ID, but he wasn’t interested in admitting me without orders from a higher-ranking officer.

“You trolling for bodies, Alex?” I turned at the sound of Ray Peterson’s voice.

The lieutenant in charge of the homicide squad had pulled in behind one of the RMPs. He had been at too many crime scenes in his career to feel the need to rush, taking his time for a last drag on his cigarette before nodding at the uniformed cop.

“What do you know, Loo?” I was already feeling guilty about not having pushed Tina to talk to me, and now I was panicked at the thought that her attacker had returned. “Is it Tina Barr?”

“That your vic from last night?” Peterson said, patting my back. “We got a corpse, but she doesn’t fit that ’scrip. Mike’s in there now.”

“Yes, we were waiting together for Barr to get home.”

“What’s he doing leaving you outside with the riffraff? C’mon in. I’m sure you’ve seen worse.”

The officer stepped aside as Peterson guided me up the steps. The commotion was downstairs, and the door to Barr’s apartment was open. Peterson led me in, through the little room where I had talked with the distraught woman. Tables and bookcases were overturned, as though the apartment had been ransacked.

Peterson continued down the narrow hallway. I glanced into the bedroom as we passed it, noting the disarray, including empty dresser drawers dumped on the floor.

“Chapman?” Peterson called out as he approached the kitchen.

“Come ahead. I’m out back, in the garden,” Mike said. He must have seen me when he looked up to answer the lieutenant. “For Chrissakes, Loo, what’d you bring Coop in for? It looks like a slaughterhouse.”

Mercer tried to intercept us before I saw the body, but he was too late. The dead woman was lying facedown, spread-eagled on the wide wooden planks of the kitchen floor, her head split open like a ripe melon. Blood spatter streaked the refrigerator and dotted the ceiling, and what hadn’t spurted upward was pooled around her head.

I closed my eyes as Mercer pressed me against his chest. “The lady’s too tall to be Barr.”

“Who is she?” I asked.

“Don’t know yet. Mike’s talking to Billy Schultz.”

No matter how many crime scenes, autopsies, or morgue visits came up in the course of my work, the individual horror of each circumstance never lost its impact. Peterson liked to tell his men it was time to hang up the job the moment that happened.

I looked again, taking deep breaths to calm myself. There would be a wait for the medical examiner on call, and for CSU to process the apartment and photograph the body. All necessary, but it seemed so cruel to leave her in that position, as a deadly exhibit for the trail of investigators who would be summoned to ferret out clues.

“When do you figure she died, Mercer?”

“It’s not what you’re thinking, Alex. It didn’t happen on your watch. There’s rigor, and she’s been cooling down. Maybe late morning.”

It didn’t help to know the body had been there while we had been sitting outside, across the street, for close to five hours.

“Do you remember seeing anyone leave the building?”

“Not a soul,” Mercer said. “You okay, Alex? Let’s go. C’mon, now-you can’t help the lady.”

I wondered who the woman was and what connected her to Tina Barr. She looked seven or eight years older than I-in her mid-forties, perhaps-and almost as tall as my five foot ten. She was dressed in a well-tailored black wool suit, an expensive one, if I was not mistaken. While one shoe was still in place, the other appeared to have come off as the blow to the back of the head knocked her to the floor.

“I’m coming,” I said softly, putting my hands in my pants pocket so that Mike and Mercer, always trying to protect me from the atrocities of our chosen jobs, couldn’t see them shaking.

Mike and the lieutenant were huddled in the small backyard behind Barr’s apartment, talking with Billy Schultz. He was explaining to Peterson what he must have told Mike minutes ago.

“No, it’s not usual for me, if that’s where you’re going. I’m not a peeper,” Schultz said, sort of bobbing in place while he responded to questions. “I poured myself a drink when I got home, came to sit here for a while-won’t be many more nights so mild I can do that.”

There was a wooden staircase leading down from his first-floor apartment, and two folding beach chairs with a table between them. There was an empty tumbler and an iPod resting beside it.

“Ms. Barr’s rear door was open?” Peterson asked.

“Not wide open. It was ajar, which was strange, considering there were no lights on in the kitchen. After what happened here the other night, I didn’t want to take any chances.”

I was standing behind Mike as he asked the questions. “Tell the lieutenant exactly what you did.”

Schultz took a handkerchief out and blew his nose. “Sorry. I’ve never seen anything like this before. I-uh-I called out Tina’s name. Two, maybe three times. When she didn’t answer, I pushed the door in a bit more and said her name again. There was no answer, so I turned on the light-and, well, that’s when I saw the body.”

“Then?”

“I took a few steps in. I was-um-you guys do this every day, but I was pretty overwhelmed.”

“Is that blood on your pant leg?” Peterson asked.

“I guess it is. I kneeled down. I wanted to be sure there was nothing I could do for her before I got on the phone.”

I had seen that expression on the lieutenant’s face before. Like what the hell did you think you could do for the broad? is what he wanted to say. But I understood how Schultz felt. I had wanted to touch her, too. I had wanted to cradle her broken head and body and get her off the kitchen floor to a more dignified resting place.

“Did you touch her?”

“Yeah. I tried to find a pulse.”

“Make sure you swab him, Mike,” Peterson said. “Get his clothes, too.”

Schultz’s eyes opened wide.

“It’s routine, Billy,” Mike said. “We need your DNA for elimination purposes. You put yourself in the crime scene. It was the right thing to do, but we just got to account for it, in case you left any trace of yourself there.”

“Do you know who she is, Mike?” I asked.

“If you don’t mind, try being the silent partner tonight, Coop. You’re here by the grace of God and your good friend Mercer Wallace.” He was probably rolling his eyes, too. “How long were you in the kitchen, Billy?”

“Less than three minutes,” he said, taking his razorthin cell phone out of his pocket. “I couldn’t stay in there. I came back out and called 911. I mean right away.”

Peterson lit another cigarette and inhaled, pocketing his lighter, then bent down to examine a large garden ornament that had toppled over on its side, resting next to Barr’s back door. Light from within the kitchen reflected on the decorative brass object and its thick wrought-iron base.

That must have been the murder weapon. There was a dark stain covering a dented portion of the brass design, clumped with hair and probably brain tissue, too.

“But you knew who she was,” Mike said.

“Minerva Hunt.”

“You’ve met her before?”

“I’ve seen her in the building occasionally. She’s Tina’s landlady, if I’m not mistaken. Her name was on the buzzer before Tina moved in. I mean, I’ve never been introduced to her.”

“Did you touch the handbag, Billy?”

“No way.”

“How about the tote?”

Schultz hesitated a second too long before answering. “Maybe.”

“Whaddaya mean, ‘maybe’?” Peterson asked.

“Well, I saw the initials on it. M.H. I just turned it around-it was upside down-to make sure I was reading them right.”

“You tell the 911 operator-?”

“That I thought it was Minerva Hunt? Yes, I did.”

I took a few steps backward to the door and glanced toward the body. The shoulder strap of the python-skin bag still hung on the woman’s shoulder, but the contents had been strewn on the floor. Next to her was a large vinyl tote, the maker’s logo-now drenched in blood-garishly stamped all over it. The gold monogrammed initials of its owner-M.H.-were hard to miss.

“Just a minute, Billy,” Mike said, brushing past me to walk into the kitchen. His cell phone was ringing, and he answered it out of the presence of his witness. “Hello?”

The caller spoke to him and he held up a finger to me. “DCPI.”

The deputy commissioner of public information had gotten word of a murder on Manhattan ’s Upper East Side. Mike would have to keep that office up to speed on every development, no matter how minor, because newshounds would be on the scene in minutes.

“Only a tentative so far. We haven’t even started to look for next of kin,” Mike said. “No driver’s license. Nothing confirmed. Peterson’s got a couple of guys back at the office trying to run it down.”

I heard the front door of the apartment slam shut and footsteps-it sounded like a woman in spike heels-coming down the hallway. I was hoping to see Tina Barr, thinking she might shed some light on this.

“Give me a break, Guido, we just got here. We’re waiting for the ME now,” Mike said. “The broad was DOA, yeah. Don’t go with it yet, but it could be Hunt. Minerva Hunt, okay?”

The Chandleresque brunette-tall, lean, and tough looking-struck a pose in the doorway of the kitchen, dressed also in a well-tailored and probably expensive black suit. She looked through me as though I were invisible, tossed back her hair, and smiled at Mike.

“Now what kind of detective work is that?” she asked him. “Do I look dead to you?”