Skin Deep

55

Shortly after the discovery of Terry Farina’s murder, Steve had submitted a report to the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, or ViCAP, a nationwide data information center designed to collect, collate, and analyze data on crimes of violence—specifically murder—which is available only to law enforcement personnel. Steve had given all the data including date, time, location, environment, demographics, how the crime scene looked, and a description of the deceased’s condition with salient particulars, forensic evidence, lab analyses, et cetera. That report went into the online database shared by state and local law enforcement agencies throughout the country.

Steve was at his desk when a call came in from the Cobbsville, New Hampshire, police department. A Sergeant Detective Edmund Pyle said that he had picked up Steve’s broadcast last week about the Farina murder, and last night while loading old data from 2003 into the system he noticed some elements in a cold case file. The death had been ruled suspicious although the evidence pointed to suicide. The victim was a white, forty-two-year-old female who was found in a kneeling position, hanging naked from a black lace-top stocking.

It took Steve less than an hour to reach the Cobbsville P.D. And all the way up he kept telling himself this was a coincidence. Not related. And as far as he could recall, he had never been to Cobbsville, New Hampshire, before in his life.

Sure, just like you didn’t recall being in 123 Payson Road.

The building looked more like a 1930s town library than a police department—a two-story yellow brick-and-concrete structure with large casement windows, an apron of plantings around the front, and a flagpole.

He showed his badge to the desk sergeant. A minute later Sergeant Edmund Pyle came down. He said that he had made a copy of the report for him, and led him upstairs to the office of Captain Ralph Modesky, who had been lead detective on the case.

Modesky was at his desk, dressed in his white shirt uniform and black tie. About sixty years of age, he had closely cropped gray hair, a long fleshy face, and baggy gray eyes that looked like shucked oysters. Steve thanked him for his time and took a seat across the desk. In front of Modesky was a photocopy of the Boston Globe story about Pendergast’s suicide and Steve’s ViCAP report on Terry Farina. “Maybe it’s a big day for both of us.”

“We can only hope,” Steve said.

“I’ve got a meeting in twenty minutes on the other side of town, so let’s get right to it. Her name was Corrine Novak, but everybody knew her as Corry.” He put his hand on a black three-ringed binder about three inches thick—the Corrine “Corry” Novak death book.

Corrine Corry Novak. Steve tested the name and, with relief, nothing in his memory banks lit up.

Modesky summarized the case: she had been found naked in her open closet with the stocking knotted around her neck. Investigators detected no signs of forced entry, no struggle, and no evidence that she had been sexually molested. Also no traces of alcohol or drugs in her system.

“And no suicide note,” Modesky said. “This is not a woman who remotely wanted to die.”

He removed three crime scene photographs of the woman taken from different angles. She was kneeling on a small shelved space in a closet, her body held upright by the stocking, a hand towel stuffed under the noose, presumably to prevent bruising. Her neck was grossly stretched, making Steve think of poultry in a butcher’s window. Although her face was discolored and distorted, there was nothing familiar about the woman’s appearance or the scene.

But what sent a small jag through his midsection was the woman’s hair. It was full and flaming red. “What’s the official cause of death?”

“The official was ‘accidental sexual asphyxiation.’”

“But you didn’t buy it.”

“I still don’t. And now more than ever.”

“Why do you suspect murder?”

“Why? I can give you about thirty reasons.” Modesky counted on his fingers. “One, sexual scarfing is practiced mostly by males, often wearing women’s underwear or bondage apparel. Two, there’s nothing in Corry Novak’s psychological profile or her history that indicated she was into sexual experimentation, especially this terminal sex shit. Three, she had everything going for her: a great job, great friends, money, good looks. All her relatives and friends said she was a happy, upbeat person with no history of depression or any other mental problems or any alcohol or drug abuse. She had bought a new car, and she was planning a trip to Cancún two weeks before she died. She was living a good life.”

“What about forensic evidence?”

He tapped the folder. “You can see for yourself. No evidence of foul play. No sign of entry. Nothing missing, including jewelry.”

“Does the report happen to say what brand stocking she was killed with?”

“Not that I remember. Is that important?”

“It may be.”

“You can check for yourself.”

“What about suspects?”

“There was a landscape guy who’d been working on the complex grounds the week before. He had a conviction three years earlier for lewd behavior, drug possession charges, and one arrest for solicitation of prostitution—small stuff, no time served. But he checked out.”

“Any boyfriends, past or present?”

“Nothing. She was recently divorced and the ex checked out. So did her friends, colleagues, and acquaintances. You name it. Everybody checked out. Whoever did it didn’t leave a friggin’ trace.”

Steve looked at the death photo again. “Who found her?”

“Her fourteen-year-old sister.”

“Jesus.”

In her death photo the woman’s face was eggplant-purple and bloated, her neck obscenely stretched, her tongue hungout, and thick white mucus frothed at her mouth and nostrils.

“She’s still on a pile of medications and seeing a counselor. It’s been over five years. She’ll be screwed up the rest of her life.”

“How did the rest of the family deal with it?”

Modesky shook his head. “Drove her father to his grave. He fell into severe depression and drank himself to death. Not only could he not take the grief, but he had to deal with the possibility his daughter was into that kind of lifestyle or, worse, that she wanted to kill herself.”

“Nice options.”

“Yeah, but to the very end he was convinced it was homicide. The mother eventually accepted the coroner’s conclusions, maybe even the sister. But they also have to live with the stigma that Corry was some kind of sexual weirdo—that she’d recklessly thrown away her life for an orgasm.” He shook his head. “A goddamn mess.”

He slid the folder to Steve. “We never produced the evidence, but my every instinct tells me that someone had done this to her. And it kept me awake for months. This was no low-life broad. She was a smart, professional young woman who was going places.”

Steve nodded. “What line of work was she in?”

“A buyer for Ann Taylor, the woman’s fashion chain, making six figures. And that’s the thing of it. According to friends and family, she was starting over. She’d gotten divorced a few months before, bought herself a new convertible, moved into a big new condo. It was like she was reborn. If it’s your guy, I hope the son of a bitch is burning in hell.”

Modesky checked his watch and pushed the file folder toward Steve. He got up to leave. “One more thing. She withdrew some money—thirty-three hundred dollars—a few weeks before her death, but we could not find a trace of where it went.”

“You think that might have been part of why she died?”

“I’m saying it’s a detail that never was explained.”

Steve thanked Modesky and left.

His stomach was growling since he hadn’t eaten for hours, so he drove to a nearby restaurant to go through the file. He took a booth in a far corner, ordered a tuna steak with rice and vegetables and an iced coffee, and went through Corry Novak’s murder book, which contained pages and pages of forensic material, police reports, and interview summaries. The label of the black stocking was not given.

The few photographs of her showed a pleasant-looking woman with a warm, engaging smile and bright, clear hazel eyes, and features that competed with each other. She had a heart-shaped face with high cheekbones and a tightly set mouth with thin lips. Her shoulder-length hair was brown with blond streaks and parted in the middle. Steve thought she was attractive though not pretty. But from the gleam in her eyes and bearing he could imagine her making major decisions that affected the fashion choices of thousands of women.

And she was someone who did not register a flicker of familiarity.

(Thank you.)

The file also included the last known photo taken of her. It was a group shot at a luncheon in New York City with other buyers after a fashion show. Because she was a face in a larger crowd, he had to use a magnifying glass.

It was probably because the photo was a blowup of a smaller original, but he could barely recognize her as the same woman in the earlier pictures. Her features were slightly blurred and her hair was full and colored an auburn red. If he didn’t know better, he could swear it was Terry Farina.