Marked

TWO

She hears the voice, but it seems just a faint drone in the distance. She doesn’t catch the words.

She stares at the television, but the pictures make no sense. They are just blurs of color.

There’s a cup of tea on the table in front of her. It’s cold and untouched.

Her senses are almost closed. They will stay that way until things are right again.

Something touches her shoulder. The voice repeats, louder and more insistent this time. The words are forced into her head.

‘Nicole. Come to bed. You need to get some sleep.’

Sleep. What is that? Why is that important? Doesn’t he know? Doesn’t he understand?

She stays where she is. She would sit here for ever if she knew it could make a difference.

Detective Second Grade Callum Doyle is feeling good about this night. Even though he’s reaching the end of an October day that has been dismal and gray enough to thump misery and depression into the most optimistic of souls, Doyle has no complaints about it. To Doyle this could be the first day of spring. He could be witness to lambs gamboling and daffodils pushing their heads above the earth and the sun getting its ass into gear with some seriously overdue illumination. Doyle is so full of joy he could sing. And does, in fact. ‘Norwegian Wood’ by the Beatles, for some reason. It’s not exactly tuneful, but he belts it out anyway, ignoring the grimacing of his partner in the car passenger seat.

The reason Doyle is so buoyant tonight is that he has caught a homicide. Which is not to say he relishes the thought of staring death in the face, or of the consequences of death for the innocents who are left to deal with it. Far from it. What’s important here is the symbolism. The fact that the Police Department is willing to entrust its lowly detective with solving a crime of such enormity. Which might sound odd, given that’s exactly the kind of thing Doyle is paid to do.

It wasn’t so many months ago that the relationship between Doyle and his employers was less than amicable. He was being given all the shitty jobs — the cases nobody else wanted to handle. Cases that served to keep him occupied but out of the limelight and out of everybody’s hair. It got so bad that Doyle was seriously considering abandoning his police career.

And then he got a break. Second fiddle on the murder of a young girl in a bookstore. He was meant to be doing the menial stuff, freeing up the other detectives to do the real investigatory work. But it turned out to be a whole lot more than a simple homicide. It grew into something gargantuan that threatened to chew Doyle into tiny pieces and spit him out. It could have been the end for Doyle.

But he survived. He came through it, not exactly unaffected by his experience, but in the NYPD’s eyes something of a hero. And since that time he has become a cop again. A true detective rather than a helping hand. Back on the cases that matter.

Like this one, for example. A homicide. Handed straight to Doyle as soon as the call came in.

After what he’s been through, how tough can a case like this be?

Doyle practically jogs into the Chinese restaurant, he’s feeling that good. He doesn’t wait for his partner: he’s not even aware that the kid is struggling to keep up.

Doyle still doesn’t know what to make of LeBlanc. He’s probably a perfectly good cop, but he’s young and he’s inexperienced and he has this aura about him of not knowing what the hell he’s doing. He doesn’t even dress the part. He goes for trendy instead of functional. Skinny ties and pointy shoes and stupid designer spectacles. When you’re in need of an authority figure to follow in a moment of crisis, this kid with his waxed blond hair is almost certainly the last person you’d consider.

Inside the restaurant, Doyle’s ebullience subsides a little when the first person he sees there is a guy called Kravitz. It would have been difficult not to spot Kravitz, seeing as how he’s nearly six foot seven tall. He’s unnaturally thin too, which makes him appear even taller. Or his height emphasizes his lack of musculature. Either way, he’s a man of mismatched dimensions. He looks to Doyle like someone who should permanently have a basketball under his arm. ‘Ah,’ people would say, ‘you’re a basketball player.’ And they would no longer question his freakish frame.

Kravitz is a cop. More specifically, he’s a member of the Manhattan South Homicide Task Force — a mouthful that is usually condensed by his fellow cops to the more memorable Homicide South. Doyle bears no grudge against this cue-stick of a man; it’s his partner — a more meagerly proportioned individual called Folger — who is the one to watch. Doyle’s last run-in with the poison dwarf is still fresh in his mind.

Steeling himself, Doyle moves toward the center of the activity. Kravitz is the first to notice Doyle’s arrival, his eyes turning on him from his lofty position like a lighthouse scanning the seas.

‘Well, well. Hello again, Detective.’

Doyle looks around him. ‘Where’s Tom Thumb? I didn’t step on him, did I?’

Kravitz smiles. ‘You mean Detective Folger? We had a parting of the ways. We didn’t see eye to eye.’

‘More like eye to crotch, huh? You get sick of him poking his nose in your business?’

Still Kravitz smiles, and Doyle feels he’s doing so in apology for what has gone before. He decides he should stop being so hard on the guy. At least for now.

Kravitz gestures to the man standing next to him. ‘Meet my new partner. This is Detective Fenster.’

Fenster nods, but doesn’t proffer his hand. He seems to be studying Doyle intently. Probably wondering why Doyle is smiling.

The reason Doyle is smiling is not because of anything pertaining to Fenster’s physical appearance. Whereas the man’s predecessor was massively challenged in a vertical sense, and played an important part in amusing his fellow officers by merely standing next to his cloud-scraping partner, Fenster’s own build is unremarkable. In fact, aside from a slight reddish tinge to his hair that only the cruelest of jokesters would refer to as a disability, his looks present negligible entertainment value. No, Doyle is smiling because he knows that Kravitz is often given the nickname Lurch, after the ugly tall butler in The Addams Family. And because Doyle remembers that in that family was also an ugly bald guy called. .

‘Fester?’

So much for not giving the Homicide boys a hard time. Hey, how many opportunities get handed to you on a plate like this?

‘Fenster,’ says Kravitz sternly, obviously already acutely sensitive to the likelihood of this comparison.

‘Not Fester?’

‘No.’

‘Ah.’

Fenster continues to stare at Doyle. ‘Have we met before? You look awful familiar.’

Before Doyle can answer, Kravitz chips in again: ‘You’ve probably seen him over breakfast.’

‘Huh?’ says Fenster.

‘In your newspaper. Or on TV. This here is the famous Detective Callum Doyle of the Eighth Precinct. The Eighth Wonder, as I like to think of him. You remember that serial killer we had a few months back? Only nobody knew we even had a serial killer?’

‘Oh,’ says Fenster. ‘Yeah. Doyle. I remember that one.’

‘Of course you do. Doyle solved it all by himself. He was the only cop in the whole city who realized the murders were connected. It was uncanny. I still haven’t figured out how he did it.’

Doyle remains silent. It’s clear to everyone listening that Kravitz is suggesting that Doyle must have been privy to more information than he ever revealed at the time. And the reason Doyle fails to respond is because he accepts the accusation is true. He knew a lot more. And he still feels the pain every time he thinks back to that case. The guilt over deaths that should never have happened. Deaths he might have been able to prevent if only he’d acted differently. He has tried telling himself that he shouldn’t dwell on thoughts involving ‘should’ or ‘ought’. But still it hurts.

He says, ‘You’re right. It was a little weird. I guess I was just thinking outside the box. I mean, I’m just one cop in one small precinct. It’s not like I got a wider picture of things. Not like, say, the boys in Homicide. .’

Doyle’s targets glance at each other, and then Kravitz says to his partner, ‘You should know that Doyle here is not a man to be crossed. He’s upset a lot of cops in the past, not least my previous partner, with whom he had a little altercation.’

‘Is that so?’ says Fenster, and again he stares at Doyle.

Kravitz continues, ‘But then Doyle knows what it’s like to lose a partner. Ain’t that right, Detective?’

Same old same old, thinks Doyle. It always gets dredged up. I miss my partners more than anyone, yet still some people insist on trying to taint me with their deaths. How much longer am I going to be haunted by it?

For a few seconds the three men stand in strained silence. Then Kravitz says, ‘Speaking of partners, you wanna complete the introductions?’

Doyle suddenly remembers that LeBlanc is standing behind him.

‘Uh, this is Tommy LeBlanc. He’s gonna be working this with me.’

‘Pleasure, Detective,’ says LeBlanc, moving in front of Doyle and thrusting his hand out. Doyle rolls his eyes, while Fenster regards the younger man with disdain until he sheepishly drops his outstretched arm.

‘You been on a homicide before?’ asks Fenster.

LeBlanc shrugs. ‘A couple. Nothing like this, though.’

It’s only then that the four men turn their collective gaze on the reason they are all here. The head is that of a blond girl. No more than twenty, and probably pretty too. Once. Devoid of blood, of life, of spirit, her wavy hair matted with food, her white skin blotted by injuries — it’s difficult to imagine how she appeared in life. Impossible to imagine how she ended up like this.

‘You think she’s dead?’ asks Kravitz.

‘Hard to say,’ answers Fenster, ‘us not being medical experts. I’d hate to make such a pronouncement and then be proved wrong when the ME gets here. What idiots we’d look then.’ He glances up at his partner. ‘You know about chickens, right?’

‘Chickens?’

‘Sure. Those bastards can live for some time even without a head. There was this one chicken, lived for months that way. Its owner would put food into its gullet with an eye-dropper.’

‘Really? Where’d you learn about such a thing?’

‘Ripleys. You know? The Believe-It-Or-Not people? ’Course, what we got here ain’t exactly the same. We got the head, and I don’t think the chicken’s head stayed alive.’

‘Maybe not. Although we humans are more highly evolved than poultry. I’ve yet to see a chicken program a computer or drive a racing car. Hell, those fat feathery fucks can’t even fly for shit. Who knows how long we could live without heads if we put our minds to it?’

‘We certainly are the master race, all right,’ says Fenster as he puts his finger up his nose.

Doyle is grateful when the door opens again and another figure breezes in. The man is Chinese, but he’s not here for a meal. He wears spectacles with lenses so thick they magnify his eyes to cartoon proportions. He is wearing an overcoat that looks several sizes too big, and he is carrying a large black bag.

Fenster nudges his partner in the ribs. Doyle recalls that the much tinier Folger used to do similar nudging, only it was much more painful.

‘Watch this,’ says Fenster.

He steps out in front of the Chinese man. ‘Hold on there, fella! Who let you in? This is a crime scene. The restaurant is closed. No more food. Savvy? You speakee English?’

Unfazed, the man blinks his saucer-sized eyes at the detective. ‘You’re an idiot,’ he says in perfect English, which gets a bigger laugh than Fenster’s own attempt at humor. ‘You’re an idiot if you believe your prejudicial — dare I say racist — comments were funny, which they weren’t, and you’re an idiot for calling this a crime scene, which it ain’t. Now get outta my way.’

Realizing that his stunt has backfired, a sheepish Fenster steps aside to admit the man, who marches straight past the four detectives and up to the focus of all the activity here. He stops, shakes his head and makes tutting noises.

‘What a waste,’ he says.

‘Yeah,’ says Doyle. ‘She looks so young.’

‘I’m talking about the food. This is so symptomatic of what’s wrong with society today, the amount of food we throw away. But yes, the girl too.’

That the girl seems almost an afterthought to this man says a lot about him. It is not that he is incapable of sympathy or sorrow. It is just that death in all its various guises is nothing new to him. He sees it regularly. He lives with it. He has become hardened to it, not out of choice but out of necessity. Norman Chin, MD, has lost count of the number of corpses he has examined over the years, many of them mutilated, decomposing or maggot-ridden. As one of the city’s Medical Examiners he views this as just another job, and the cops here understand that.

Chin checks with the crime-scene people that he can proceed, then he snaps on a pair of latex gloves and sets to work. He picks up the head, rolls it around in his hands for a while, then puts it down again.

‘Okay,’ he says. ‘I’ve seen it. Now I can go back to bed. Get it bagged, tagged and shipped, and I’ll get on it as soon as I’ve caught a few z’s.’

‘That’s it?’ says LeBlanc.

Doyle glances sharply at him, but it’s too late.

‘What do you want from me?’ says Chin. ‘Like I told your wisecracking bozo friend over there, this ain’t a crime scene. She wasn’t killed here, and aside from her head, she wasn’t even dumped here. That ain’t a lot to go on. You want me to do more, you need to find me more. So get out there and do your job before you start criticizing me over how I do mine.’

LeBlanc looks helplessly at Doyle. ‘I wasn’t criticizing. I was just saying-’

‘You know there’s another body part, don’t you?’ says Fenster.

‘Yes, I do know that,’ Chin snaps. ‘Because, unlike you guys, I have already visited the site where the other part was found. And what I also know, with all my years of expensive and intense medical training, is that a head and a pelvis are not the sole components of the human body. There are other pieces out there, gentlemen, and finding them is your job, not mine.’

He starts to move toward the door, pausing only when Doyle says to him, ‘Norm? Anything you can give us to go on right now?’

Chin turns to him. ‘Now that’s more like it. A civilized intelligent question. Okay, a coupla things. There are cuts, abrasions and burn marks on both body parts. Looks like this girl was tortured before she was killed.’

‘And the other thing?’

‘It may be nothing, but the girl had a tattoo at the base of her spine. Picture of an angel.’

‘Lots of girls get tattoos done there,’ says Fenster.

‘That’s true. Like I say, it may mean zilch. But this tattoo looks fresh to me. Like it was done in the past few days.’

He heads toward the door again. ‘Happy hunting, guys!’

LeBlanc mutters something, but Doyle doesn’t hear it. He’s too busy thinking about something Chin just said.

Something that summons up dark memories and an unquenchable thirst for justice.

A second after midnight. It’s now my birthday. Happy birthday, Nicole.

She says nothing out loud, and the voice in her head is a dull monotone. She doesn’t even smile. Last year, at this exact time, she started bouncing up and down on the bed and singing birthday wishes to herself like an over-excited child, waking Steve so she could demand to know what presents he’d bought for her.

Not this year. This year she remains motionless in the bed. Stares at the illuminated face of the alarm clock and counts the seconds as they eat into what should be a special day.

When the digits blur, she doesn’t dab at her eyes. Just lets the tears come. Lets them roll down her cheek and slide over her nose and pat softly onto the pillow.

This is not a day for celebration. Never will be again unless things change. Birthdays, Christmas, Thanksgiving — how will she ever be able to enjoy them in the same way again?

But I should be positive, she thinks. This being my birthday, maybe I’ll receive the only gift I really want.

And then I can sleep again.

It becomes a long, dirty night. Long because Doyle was supposed to have gone home when his shift finished at one o’clock in the morning, and now he can’t. Dirty because of what he has to spend his sleepless hours doing instead. Which is submerging his arms elbow deep in piles of crap.

He’s not the only one, of course. Every available cop in this and the neighboring precincts, uniformed or not, has been called in to help out on the search, and the Department of Sanitation has been told not to do any collections in the area while it proceeds. The cops move from building to building, opening up trashcans and dumpsters, shining their flashlights into them while they sift and root and examine.

It’s not something that can be done furtively. An army of cops on the prowl like this attracts attention, and it’s too big an area to cordon off. Passers-by stop to ask questions. Vehicles slow to a crawl so that the drivers can lower their windows and yell questions. Residents leave the warmth and safety of their buildings just so that they can put their damn questions. To each and every one of them Doyle and the other cops say the same thing, which is basically nothing.

The task has its lighter moments. One woman asks Doyle to let her know if he manages to locate her missing dentures. Another tells him that she has just thrown away the last of her apple pie, but that he can have it if he finds it. One bedbug warns him that the trashcans are really the pods of alien visitors, and that he should leave well alone. In response, Doyle assures him that his flashlight is equipped with the latest extraterrestrial threat alert systems.

The media are less easy to shrug off. Who would have guessed that lifting the lid from a trashcan would make such a newsworthy photograph? Or that the sight of a patrol officer poking his nightstick into a garbage bag would make for footage so exciting that it would be replayed endlessly on the news channels?

Eight hours later, when daylight returns almost grudgingly, and the streets start to overflow again with people and cars and noise and the hustle and bustle of life, it is time to take stock. Time to assess the results of the exercise. To wit, a bunch of exhausted cops who smell like they haven’t bathed in years.

Oh, and one other thing.

A human arm.