The cold room

SEVEN

I began my work day in the early afternoon at One Police Plaza, NYPD headquarters, arriving at two o’clock for a meeting with the NYPD’s criminal profiler, John Roach, a meeting arranged by Adele. Roach was in his mid-fifties, a detective first grade who’d been at the business of detecting for thirty years. His thinning hair was too gray even to be called salt-and-pepper, his jowls and forehead deeply creased. His nose was pinched at the end — it dropped almost to his upper lip when he smiled to reveal a half-inch gap between his front teeth. Academic might be a charitable way to describe his overall appearance, though goofy also came to mind as I returned his smile and shook his hand.

Roach gestured to a chair, then took a seat on the opposite side of his cluttered desk. ‘Show me what you’ve got.’ His voice was hoarse, barely above a whisper, and I had to actively resist the urge to lean forward, to be drawn into his orbit. ‘CSU was otherwise occupied,’ I told him. ‘This was the best I could do.’ I passed over the crime scene photos I’d taken with the Polaroid on Sunday morning, as well as the autopsy report.

Roach got up at that point and began to pin the photographs to a cork board, one of a series of bulletin boards that ran along the wall behind his desk. He arranged the photos in three groups, the general scene first, then the trace evidence with the tire impressions and the cut fence-link. The victim came last, prone and supine, up close and from a distance.

For the next fifteen minutes, while he examined the photos, then the autopsy report, Roach spoke not a word. Lost as he was in the puzzle, I simply became irrelevant. And the puzzle was what Roach lived for — the puzzle was all he had. Profilers act as consultants, studying the evidence, offering advice, but they neither investigate, nor interrogate. They’re coaches, not players.

When Roach finally turned to face me, he was smiling again. ‘Tell me about your witness.’

‘His name is Clyde Kelly. On Sunday, he went out for a morning stroll, down to the waterfront in Williamsburg. Purely by accident, he witnessed a fat man with narrow eyes pull a woman’s body from the back of a van, then drag her across a dirt mound to a chain-link fence. The fat man severed one link of the fence before spotting Kelly, who took off. That’s the end of the story, unless you want Kelly’s impressions.’

‘I do.’

‘According to Kelly, the man could’ve been “dumping a barrel of motor oil down a storm drain.” It was just a job to him.’

At that point, Roach picked up the phone and called the ME’s office. Five minutes later, he was speaking to Dr Kim Hyong who’d conducted the autopsy. I’d called Hyong three times before leaving my apartment without getting past his voice mail.

Of course, Roach was a bit of a celebrity. If not with rank and file detectives, at least with Hyong, who also liked puzzles. But if the snub was humiliating, the new elements Hyong added to the mix captured my full attention. Tests for carbon monoxide and cyanide had found no trace of either in the victim’s blood, while a third test proved that she had, in fact, been pregnant.

Roach re-examined the photos pinned to the cork board after hanging up, taking his time about it. ‘What do you want to know?’ he finally asked.

‘How about the name and address of her killer?’

‘Sorry.’

‘Then tell me how many hands played a part in her death and her disposal.’

‘More than one. Perhaps as many as three or four.’

‘Does that eliminate a serial killer?’

‘That’s my opinion.’ Roach took a bottle of lemonade-flavored ice tea from the bottom drawer of his desk and drank. ‘The exposure to cold, the head trauma, the pregnancy — they’re real. The rest is staged.’

‘Does that mean you think her killing was unpremeditated, that her killer was enraged?’

‘Or panicked, which sometimes amounts to the same thing.’

‘Then maybe you should rearrange those elements. First the pregnancy, then the cold, then the death blow.’

Roach smiled as he rose from his chair. My time was up. ‘One other thing, detective. There’s a sadist in the mix somewhere, an actor who, at the very least, shaped events.’

I took those thoughts with me to Missing Persons where I reviewed eighteen files, all of young white females reported missing in the last three months. Unlike the list faxed to me on the prior night, most of the case files included photographs, which allowed me to quickly determine that my victim was not among them. Still, I took careful notes as I went along. Millard wanted his ass covered and my intention was to generate as much paper as possible, to stuff the case file until it overflowed.

When I finished, I turned to the six files that lacked a photo. Five were either too young or too old to be my victim, while the sixth was of Nina Klaipeda, an eighteen-year-old Lithuanian immigrant. Nina had been reported missing by her mother, Jolanta, five weeks before, and that made her unlikely to be my victim. Nevertheless, I’d have to pay her mother a visit, assuming Nina hadn’t returned home. According to the description in the case file, Nina Klaipeda’s hair was light, her complexion fair. Weight and height were in the ballpark as well.

I stopped for a coffee break around three o’clock, just before I left for Brooklyn, and took the opportunity to call Adele. I knew she’d be happy to learn that she was right about the pregnancy, a possibility I’d never considered. I also knew that if I waited until I got home, she’d probably be asleep.

‘From the beginning, we suspected that the post-mortem activity was purposeful,’ she told me upon hearing the news, ‘and now we know why. Did you meet with John Roach?’

‘Yeah. An interesting guy.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He said we can pretty much dismiss the psychosexual killer thing.’

‘Did he say why?’

‘Too many people involved. But he was only giving me a rough impression, not an official profile. By the way, the tests came in for cyanide and carbon monoxide. Both negative.’

Adele paused for a moment. ‘So, where are you going with the case?’

‘Tonight, I’m heading up to the Bronx, to check out a missing Lithuanian. Tomorrow, it’s Greenpoint.’

‘Why Greenpoint?’

‘Greenpoint has a large population of Polish immigrants and it borders Williamsburg, the neighborhood where the victim’s body was dumped. Somehow, I don’t think your average, everyday killer would just stumble onto South Fifth Street. You can’t even see the pier from the street. At the least, he’d have to be familiar with the neighborhood.’

‘True enough, but he might simply work in the area and live somewhere else. Or he might live in the neighborhood, but the victim lived somewhere else. And another thing. Even if the victim grew up behind the Iron Curtain, she doesn’t have to be Polish just because she’s blond. She might be an East German, a Russian, a Ukrainian, a Czech, or come from the borderlands between Austria and Hungary.’

I found myself smiling. Adele’s tone was upbeat and engaged. In this matter, at least, there was no distance between us. ‘The dump site is obscure and Poles have been living within a few miles of it for a century. I’m gonna start with the obvious and see how it goes. Unless you have a better idea.’

‘Well, there is one thing. If you want, I’m pretty sure I can arrange a meeting with an INS Agent named Dominick Capra. You’ll have to spring for lunch and put up with his anti-immigrant rants, but Capra’s been around for a long time. If you run into a wall, he could point you in the right direction.’

A good detective will take help from anyone. And then there was the matter of Adele’s continuing involvement in the case. To which I had absolutely no objection. ‘Why don’t you give him a call, see if he’s willing? If the victim’s prints aren’t on file and I don’t have any luck in Greenpoint, lunch is on me.’

‘Done.’

At that point, I turned the conversation to Adele’s sister and parents. I was hoping she’d tell me how uncomfortable she felt in their presence, but her tone became wistful, as though she were describing some distant memory.

Adele told me that her mother had lost weight, that she’d be visiting a gastroenterologist on the following afternoon, that the fear — unspoken in Leya Bentibi’s presence — was stomach cancer. A lifelong smoker, Leya still consumed two packs a day.

There was nothing I could say to any of this. A sick mother cannot be challenged. Nor could I challenge Adele’s obligation to comfort her sister. Jovianna had always been close to her mother. She, too, was frightened.

‘What are your mother’s symptoms?’

‘Pain, acid reflux, gas. And there are traces of blood in her stool.’

‘But she hasn’t been diagnosed, right?’

‘Corbin, what can I say? I’m dealing with the realities at hand.’

At eight thirty, after a long drive in heavy traffic, I knocked on the door of Jolanta Klaipeda’s Westchester Avenue apartment. She opened a moment later, then led me to a cracked leather couch draped with a red and green Christmas blanket. The couch was occupied by two elderly men, brothers by the look of them. When Jolanta addressed them in what I assumed to be Lithuanian, they struggled to their feet and shuffled toward one of the bedrooms. Only after the door closed behind their backs did Jolanta turn to face me. Her eyes met mine for a moment, then darted away, then returned. I could see the fear in those eyes, fear dancing in the amber motes flecking her brown irises, and fear in her raised and reddened lids, in the tight line of her mouth, in the flare of her nostrils. On the phone, I’d attempted to reassure the woman. My visit, I’d explained, was routine. I had no reason to believe that the photo I intended to show her was of her daughter. But that strategy backfired when Jolanta, in halting English, told me that she’d provided a photo of Nina to the officers who’d interviewed her five weeks before. Clearly, she didn’t believe me when I explained that Nina’s photo had somehow been misplaced. Clearly, she thought I was coming to the Bronx only to confirm what I already knew, that her daughter was dead.

I reached into my pocket for the computer-enhanced photo I intended to show her, but Jolanta stopped me. ‘Please,’ she said, ‘for a moment.’ Then she followed the two men into the bedroom, leaving me to my own devices.

I can’t say for sure how many people lived in the Klaipeda household, but there were two single beds and a cradle in the living room. Half hidden by an upright piano, cradle and beds were lined up against the wall opposite the windows. A young girl, maybe ten years old, sat at the piano. She was playing scales, her touch light and delicate, even in the lower registers. An older man sat on a kitchen chair beside her, nodding from time to time, while a metronome ticked away a few inches from her face.

Jolanta returned a moment later with a child in tow, a boy wearing the blue, polyester pants and white shirt of a Catholic school student. Eight or nine years old, his blond hair was cropped to within a few millimeters of his scalp.

‘My aunt don’t speak English too good,’ he explained. ‘She wants me to translate.’

Across the room, the girl finally broke free of the relentless scales she’d been playing, her right hand dropping to her side while her left pounded out an equally relentless boogie-woogie.

‘That’s my sister, Alena,’ the boy explained. ‘She’s getting ready for a talent contest. Little Miss New York. At Madison Square Garden.’

I acknowledged his sister’s ambitions and talents with a short smile, then handed my victim’s photo to Jolanta Klaipeda. Almost without transition, her face brightened. This was not her dead daughter, not the baby she’d raised. It was someone else’s dead baby. I saw her look up at a crucifix on the wall to her right, watched her bless herself. Then she laughed, once, a bark of defiance, before addressing her nephew in Lithuanian. He listened attentively until she finished, then nodded.

‘She says to tell you that this girl is not her daughter. She says that Nina is beautiful. She says that Nina is a rose and this is a cabbage.’