The Kills

8

There is a cruel invasion of privacy that attends a death by violence.

Mercer and I sat in a small cubicle adjacent to the autopsy theater in the office of the chief medical examiner, Chet Kirschner. The brilliant pathologist had finished his work for the day, and was taking us through the Queenie Ransome homicide findings.

The strong odor of formalin was exaggerated by the closeness of the room. I coughed to clear my dry throat, listening to Kirschner's voice, which was so oddly comforting in these starkly clinical circumstances.

I stared at close-ups of the nude corpse, taken in her home by a Crime Scene Unit detective, shuffling them around on the table in front of me.

"There are two different scenarios you want to think about here," he told us, after describing what McQueen Ransome's body had revealed to him. "You remember the old Park Plaza cases?"

Both Mercer and I recognized the name. The building had been a flophouse on the West Side of Manhattan, a dilapidated single-room-occupancy hotel that was home to dozens of senior citizens living on welfare. Throughout a two-year period, several of the octogenarians had died without any suspicion of foul play.

"The first five women had no relatives in the city to raise any concerns, no property of any value, and histories of illness that allowed their physicians to certify their deaths as occurring from natural causes."

"They weren't even autopsied?" I asked.

Kirschner shook his head. "The sixth one was slightly different. Mildred Vargas. She owned a television set, and it was missing from her room when her body was found. We did a postmortem, even though there were no signs of a struggle, and we wound up with unexpected evidence that there had been a sexual assault."

"What killed her?" Mercer wanted to know.

"She was suffocated. Smothered with a pillow."

Exactly what Mike said had happened to Queenie.

"I got an order to exhume the other bodies and autopsy them," Kirschner said.

Mercer remembered the outcome. "All five had been raped."

"And smothered. No external signs of injury. Just the internal bruising, and the minute petechial hemorrhages in their eyes that the physicians missed in each case."

Hallmarks of an asphyxial death, the tiny red pinpoint markers were quiet indicators of strangulation and suffocation, blood vessels bursting in eyes as they were deprived of oxygen.

Kirschner straightened his lean body and rested an elbow atop a file cabinet. "That killer made a specialty of getting in and out of apartments with no visible signs of forced entry. He even took the time to re-dress three of his victims, so the sexual assault was not the least bit obvious. Chapman's looking to link McQueen Ransome's death to those cases."

"Do you have DNA in any of those?"

"In all of them, actually. Our own databank linked them to each other after the exhumation and examination."

"Has the profile been uploaded to Albany and CODIS?"

The medical examiner's local databank could match unsolved cases to each other because of evidence taken from a crime scene or victim's body. The profile would be sent on to Albany, and a computer would scan the results against convicted offenders in the New York State databank, who were mandated, according to category of criminal offense, to submit blood or saliva samples for the profiling of their DNA. CODIS, the Combined DNA Identification System, was capable of linking unsolved cases in one jurisdiction to a burglar, rapist, or killer anywhere in the entire country.

"Four months ago. We're still waiting for a cold hit."

"But there's no DNA in this case?"

"Not on the body. I told Chapman to go back and swab the doorknobs and some of the surfaces the killer may have touched."

The technology of this science had become so sophisticated that a serologist could develop a genetic fingerprint from the mere sloughing off of skin cells onto most objects that had been handled during the crime, called touch evidence.

"But you don't think this is your senior citizen serial killer?"

"Too many distinctions, Alex. The pillow was undoubtedly the weapon. That's certainly a similarity. We'll work it up for amylase," Kirschner said, referring to an enzyme found in saliva that might tell us whether the fabric had been held over Ransome's mouth to kill her.

"You're bothered by the fact there's no sexual assault, I guess," Mercer said. "What if he was interrupted? What if he meant to do that, but got distracted because, unlike the others, there really were so many possessions here that he ransacked the place. Maybe he thought someone heard noise and was coming to check on Queenie."

Kirschner removed a pipe from his rear pants pocket and raised it to his mouth.

He tamped tobacco in, lit the match, and filled the tiny room with the welcome aroma of a sweet, smooth blend that temporarily masked the smell of death.

"Possible, of course," he said. "But all the other crime scenes were in such perfect order. Chapman left these here for you two to study. Look again. Take your time."

The eight-by-ten color crime scene shots of the Ransome apartment had been developed immediately and hand-delivered to Kirschner.

"You've really got juice," I said. "I'd be lucky to get these in a week."

"Don't be jealous. It's not a full set. I just get a few body shots to get me started."

There was McQueen Ransome, lying on her back on the bed. Her housecoat was pulled up to expose her genitals, with panties and what appeared to be thick support hose rolled up in a ball beside her. Her head was turned to the side, faded hazel eyes fixed in a vacant gaze.

"Somebody sure wants to make the point about the sexual aspect of this," Mercer said. "Nothing like this in the Park Plaza cases?"

Kirschner shook his head. "No. Unless your killer read about the exhumations in the tabloids and decided to change his signature."

Queenie's legs were spread apart, twisted slightly, with one knee bent beneath the other in what seemed to be almost an obscene pose.

Next to the bed was a metal walker, and I remembered Mike telling me the woman had suffered a stroke several years ago.

I strained to study her head and hands more closely.

"Are those scratches on her face?"

"Yes, Alex. By her own hand. Typical in asphyxia. She was trying to clear the airways of the obstruction, so she could breathe. Free her mouth from whatever was covering it. Probably the pillow."

"And the killer?" I asked.

"Several of her nails are broken. We might get lucky and come up with something other than her own blood in the cuttings. He might have some marks on his face or hands, if she had the strength to swipe at him."

The six photographs Kirschner had were all of Queenie's body, taken from every position in the room. I thought of the indignity of this kind of death, in which dozens of strangers had entered her home to catalog and ferret through her meager accumulation of possessions. A young medical examiner on duty and his assistant, cops in uniform to secure the scene, a crew from the Crime Scene Unit to take photographs and dust for fingerprints, and a team of detectives who would try to find a motive for this murder-and a killer.

I thought ahead to the scores more who would pore over these photographs in the months to come. Colleagues of mine would study them as they worked up the case for trial, forensic consultants would enlarge them to look again for any kind of trace material or significant detail, and psychologists would struggle with them as they searched for an understanding of the murderer's mind. Eventually, when Chapman and his team caught the man-and I needed, now, to believe that they would-a defense attorney would be entitled to a complete set of pictures, too, and even the killer himself could revisit the scene of his pathetic triumph in the privacy of his jail cell.

"The person who did this wants you to think 'sadistic sex murderer,' Alex," Kirschner said to me. "I suggest you broaden the search. Some other motive."

Mercer and I had handled cases in which the appearance of a rape had been staged. Once we'd recognized that fact we'd had to find another reason-the real reason-for the crime to have occurred. Here was an elderly woman, partially disabled, living on welfare in a Harlem tenement. Her death was not a matter of academic rivalry, professional jealousy, domestic rage, or a fancy jewel heist gone violent.

"It'll be interesting to see what the rest of the photos show," said Mercer. "Everything within sight has been turned topsy-turvy."

On the side of the bed was a nightstand. The shallow bowl with the victim's dental plate had been overturned. Both shelves had been emptied and their contents spilled on the floor. The edge of the dresser was in view, and each of the three drawers had been dumped out and spread across the floor.

"Is she wearing any rings or bracelets?" I picked up another photo and looked again at McQueen Ransome's wrinkled hands.

"She wasn't admitted with anything," Kirschner said.

Mercer checked the pictures taken from other angles and agreed there was not even a wedding band on her finger.

"I'll have to ask Mike whether she had any items of value in the apartment, but it sure doesn't look like it, from these shots," I said.

"Dr. K, have you got a magnifying glass?" Mercer asked.

Kirschner left the room for thirty seconds and returned with one.

"Looks like we have some homework to do. She doesn't seem to have much here except junk, but maybe some of her acquaintances know things about her background that can help us," Mercer said.

"What do you see?" I asked.

"Ever hear of James Van Derzee?"

Both Kirschner and I nodded. "Harlem Renaissance," the medical examiner said. "One of the great African-American photographers."

"Look at that," Mercer said, passing the magnifier over to me. "Check out the photograph over the headboard of the bed, the words at the bottom."

I picked up the glossy image that Mercer had been studying. The photo had been taken by a cop standing at the foot of the bed, so it provided a lengthwise view of the victim's body. Directly above her head was a black-and-white portrait that hung on the wall. Only two-thirds of it was captured in the crime scene shot. The model's head was out of range.

In the lower right corner was an inscription, which I squinted to read: For Queenie-from her royal subject, James Van Derzee. 1938.

"Now look up," Mercer said.

I didn't need the magnifying glass to see the chilling irony. The exquisitely voluptuous nude body of the young McQueen Ransome was hanging above her corpse, which had been positioned to mimic an identical pose.