The Prince of Risk

30

The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner was located in a six-story government building on the corner of First Avenue and 30th Street adjacent to NYU Langone Medical Center, where Alex had given birth to Katie and, in the years after, had recovered from two miscarriages. She parked in the red zone across the street, throwing her law enforcement shield on the dashboard.

Inside the building, the air conditioning was fighting a losing battle against the heat of the day. Alex crossed to the security desk, upset that the morgue assistant hadn’t come up to meet her as promised. She badged the young woman and waited as she called down to the body shop-the refrigerated storage locker where corpses were kept pending autopsy or burial. The morgue assistant appeared five minutes later. He was a short, bearded, unattractive man, slovenly in appearance as well as in manners.

“NYPD was already here,” he said as he led her to the elevator and they descended to the basement. “Got prints, DNA, took some pics-the whole nine yards.”

“I got the memo,” said Alex. “I still need to see the body.”

The attendant opened the door to the storage room and walked in ahead of her. Alex waited as he located the body and transferred it to an examining table. “Take your time,” he said. “He ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

Alex approached the table without hesitation. A Catholic childhood and its attendant visitations and open-casket funerals had robbed her of any fear of the dead. Her job had done the rest. She stood over the assailant, Randall Shepherd, true name unknown. The body had been washed. Hours in refrigeration had turned it the complexion of a fish belly.

Three entry wounds decorated the torso. Two were spaced an inch apart just above the liver. The third defined an immaculate circle directly above his heart. Alex shot 40-caliber hollow-points designed to explode on impact and spend their energy within inches of entering a body. In layman’s terms, they went in small and came out big, and in between wreaked havoc on bone, arteries, and organs.

The hatred provoked by the sight of this lifeless, inert form astounded her. A will to violence rose up inside her. She dug her fingers into the seams of her pants to stop herself from striking the body. Death wasn’t enough. He deserved worse.

Three hits and thirteen misses.

If one of those misses had struck him earlier, Mara and DiRienzo might still be alive. The thought would haunt her for a long time. Alex released her grip on her slacks. She was not angry at Shepherd. She was angry at herself.

But she hadn’t come to the morgue to critique her marksmanship. She had come to confirm her hunch that the assailant was a professional soldier. It was not simply the perfect barracks corners on the beds. It was how Shepherd had handled his weapon. How he had fired in crisp three-shot bursts. How he had kept his cool under fire, holding his position and concentrating first on one target and then on another. She had no doubt that the assailant had been in a gun battle before, more likely more than once.

Alex had come because soldiers have tattoos.

At first glance she spotted three. A Samoan war band around the left arm and a series of tribal stripes running up the shoulder. The design was standard and told her nothing about the shooter. A second tattoo was more promising. Below the shoulder on the right arm, a striking cobra was inked, and below it the Roman numerals III.III.V and the words Vincere aut Mori, which she took to be Latin for “Conquer or Die.”

Alex snapped a photograph of the tattoo with her phone.

A third tattoo, on his right breast, showed an inverted isosceles triangle inside which a small, comical black owl sat staring straight ahead. A parachute filled the space behind the owl. In one corner was a red 1⁰. In another, a green 2 REP. A single Latin word was written along the exterior of each of the triangle’s legs: Legio. Patria. Nostra. She knew the tattoo signified membership in a military organization. The question was which one.

Again she took a picture.

On a hunch, she lifted the right arm. She saw it at once and some small part of her felt assuaged. There on the fleshy underside of his torso were the letters AB.

AB for the soldier’s blood group.

Not just a soldier, she told herself. A commando.

And most probably a mercenary.