VC01 - Privileged Lives Page 7

  “The incisions on the chest are superficial, don’t mean anything. The skin coloring and neck contusions indicate asphyxia. Like I said before, looks like he was strangled. We’ll know for sure when we get to the lungs. The leg was cut off an hour, two hours after his heart stopped beating. The shear marks on the femoral bone were made by a rotary blade.”

  “Dan, I don’t get it. Why take a dead leg?”

  “That’s your field. I’ll tell you what happened, you figure out why. The left testicle, on the other hand, was cut off before death.”

  Cardozo couldn’t believe he had missed it. “He lost a ball?”

  Hippolito lifted the scrotum sac. Now Cardozo could see it. One testicle.

  “How long before death?”

  “Figure at least a year—it’s completely healed.”

  “Did a doctor do it?”

  “Either a doctor did it or a doctor stitched it.”

  “Why would you take a ball off?”

  “A lot of reasons. Like cancer maybe.”

  “A guy this young?”

  “The environment’s not healthy, Vince. You see pathologies developing early in a great many mammals. The reproductive organs are especially vulnerable.”

  Hippolito pulled on a pair of heavy latex gloves. He removed the suction catheters from the dead man’s wrists. He angled the overhead light and began speaking into a microphone suspended over the table.

  “The body is that of a young male Caucasian, twenty to twenty-two years of age, height approximately six feet, body weight prior to drainage one hundred forty-nine pounds, light weight due to absence of right leg, which has been severed at the midpoint of the femur. Left testicle missing. Superficial cutaneous cuts.”

  He opened the dead man’s mouth and peered in.

  “One filling, upper left second molar.”

  Hippolito moved to the foot of the table, took hold of the ankle, and rotated it slowly.

  “How is your little girl?” he said. “Still a real charmer?”

  It made Cardozo uneasy to discuss his daughter in a room full of dead bodies. It seemed like inviting bad luck. “Fine, thanks. Terri’s just fine.”

  Hippolito walked to the other end of the table and lifted the head, testing the resistance of the neck muscles. He reached up to the microphone. “Rigor mortis is pronounced, indicating death occurred at least thirty-two hours before examination.” He lifted each eyelid in turn and gazed down into the unseeing eyeballs. “She must be beginning school now, your little girl?”

  “Sixth grade.”

  “A prodigy.” Hippolito studied the throat closely, then spoke into the mike.

  “Contusions on front of neck, probably thumb imprints. A rash is visible around the neck.” He angled the light further down the body. “And around the waist and the ankle.”

  “What kind of rash?” Cardozo interrupted.

  Hippolito raised a hand to turn the mike aside. “Maybe an allergy, but the localization is unusual for that. Most likely some kind of abrasion.”

  “Think he was tied?”

  “I’ll have to peel the skin and see it under a microscope. Looks like a reaction to some kind of particles or granules. I don’t think rope would do it, but we’ll see.”

  Hippolito unhurriedly studied the dead arms and wrists.

  “What’s that?” Cardozo said suddenly.

  The left hand was balled into a fist.

  Hippolito frowned, pulled at each finger in turn. “I’ll be damned, Vince. He’s holding on to something.”

  The M.E. took a pair of surgical pliers, adjusted the grip around the dead man’s index finger, and gave a quick twist. The finger flapped loose with the crack of a breadstick. With three more cracks Dan was able to bend the hand open.

  Cardozo could see something small and white, the size of a fat caterpillar, wedged into the pulpy gray valley of the heel of the palm.

  Hippolito probed the object free with a pair of tweezers.

  “A cigarette butt.” Hippolito frowned. “Filter tip. Check the brand.” He handed it to Cardozo.

  There was a ring of red around the filter.

  “Lipstick,” Cardozo observed.

  The M.E. pointed to a plastic evidence bag. Cardozo dropped the butt into it.

  Hippolito was examining the hand, shaking his head.

  “The cigarette was extinguished on his palm. I’ll tell you something, Vince. This happened while he was still alive. And here’s what’s weird.”

  Hippolito pointed his scalpel to a quarter-inch circle of ash and caked blood.

  “He closed his hand around the burning cigarette. Normally that wouldn’t happen, the reflex would be to eject it or somehow evade it.”

  “Could the killer have forced his hand closed?”

  “See how the tendons are tensed? That shows he clenched his own hand. It’s not a normal reflex to pain.”

  Hippolito gazed at the body.

  “What strikes me is, there’s a remarkable absence of defensive wounds. Not that the peace sign on the chest is life-threatening, but still you’d think that the victim would have tried to defend himself in some way.”

  Cardozo remembered the scratches on the doorman’s face. “No skin under the fingernails?”

  “A little, but it looks like his own.”

  “What’s his own skin doing under his fingernails?”

  “He itched, he scratched himself.” Hippolito reangled the light. “Now we dig in. Better stand back.”

  He lowered his face shield. Using a high-speed circular saw, he began an incision into the chest. Blood and tissue spattered up.

  Cardozo backed off. “Dan, I’m going to say good-night.”

  Driving home down Second Avenue, Cardozo didn’t see any patrol cars. He busted three red lights.

  When he let himself into the apartment, Mrs. Epstein, the neighbor, was in the livingroom watching TV. She bustled up from her chair. “Terri’s asleep. Your lamb chop’s in the oven, I left it on low. By now it’s dry. We thought you’d be home earlier.”

  “I thought so too. How much do I owe you?”

  “You gave me twenty last time. I owe you.”

  “Then we’re even. Thanks.”

  Mrs. Epstein was a heavyset woman with gray hair, and she kept brushing a strand away from her eyes. “She’s a beautiful child. You should spend more time with her.”

  “I’d like to.”

  He walked Mrs. Epstein to the outer hall.

  “I hope it wasn’t too lousy, whatever you had to do today.”

  “Not too lousy.” He watched her let herself into her apartment. He waited for the click of her door, then came back into the living-room. He tossed his manila envelope onto the table and snapped off the TV.

  His gaze traveled across the convertible sofa with its hand-knitted blue woollen afghan, the lamps with plastic protecting the shades, the white spinet piano with Terri’s finger exercises open on the rack, the goldfish tank, the framed oil painting of a valley near Lourdes where he’d been on his honeymoon. It wasn’t the greatest room on earth, it would never win prizes for interior decoration, but every object spoke to him. He was comfortable here, the world couldn’t batter down the door.

  He felt too wired to go to sleep. He picked up Mrs. Epstein’s paper and put his stocking feet up on the sofa. He turned to the sports page.

  “Hi, Pop.” Terri stood in her nightgown rubbing her eyes. “What’s that?” She pointed at the envelope on the table.

  “Pictures.”

  “Can I see?”

  He hesitated, feeling the same instinct he had in the morgue, the instinct to keep his daughter and his corpses in two separate compartments of his life. “You don’t want to see.”

  “He’s dead, isn’t he.” Terri had opened the manila envelope and was sitting in lotus position on the rug staring at the glossy of John Doe’s face.

  “Honey, I told you not to open that.”

  “What you said was, ‘You don’t want to see.’�
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  “I meant don’t open it.”

  “You should say what you mean.”

  “You’re going to make a very obnoxious lawyer some day, you know that?”

  She looked up at him, eyes serious. “Who was he?”

  “We’re trying to find out.”

  She rotated the glossy ninety degrees. “He was gay, right?”

  Cardozo was interested. “Why do you say that?”

  “Oh, because he’s good-looking.”

  “Come on. There are plenty of good-looking straight men and plenty of ugly gays too.”

  “Yeah, you’re good-looking and you’re straight, but this kind of fuck-you good looks—”

  “Hey, mind your language.”

  “Sorry. But he wears his looks like a prom queen. I-know-you-want-me-and-you-can’t-have-me. You can tell he spent two hours a day taking care of that skin and hair.”

  Did they teach her this stuff in school, he wondered? Somehow he didn’t think the sisters and the lay teachers at Saint Agnes would be capable of it. “You can tell that, can you?”

  “Sure. Did he dye his hair?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Was he a model?”

  “A model?” Cardozo reflected on the possibility. “I don’t know that either. I’ll have to look into it.”

  Cardozo arrived at Doctors Hospital a little after seven in the morning. His shield got him past the guard and he found Babe Devens’s room.

  “Mrs. Devens?”

  The woman sitting in the cranked-up hospital bed gazed at him with extraordinarily large blue eyes. “Yes?”

  He’d never met her, but she was no stranger to him. He’d studied her life, her friends, her habits. He’d stared at that sleeping face and wondered what she’d look like awake. What her voice would sound like. Now he knew. With her pale blond hair and her clear pale skin, she hadn’t aged a day in seven years. It was as though she’d been in deep storage.

  “May I come in for a moment?” He didn’t wait for permission. “Lieutenant Vince Cardozo, twenty-second precinct, homicide. I worked on your case.”

  He showed her the gold shield. There was a pause. He could feel her hanging back with that word homicide, staring thoughtfully at his face.

  He pulled a chair over to the bed. The air in the room was fragrant with the scent of bougainvillea. A vase of bloodred blossoms sat on the dresser.

  “I know this isn’t the best time for you,” he said, “but we’d like to close the case as quickly as possible. We thought, with your recovery, you might have something to add to our understanding.”

  She wasn’t saying anything and neither were her eyes.

  “I realize this isn’t pleasant for you, and I apologize, but I have to ask what knowledge, what recollections you have. Specifically, do you recall the attempt on your life?”

  “Mr. Cardozo, would you kindly tell me what in the world you’re talking about?”

  He looked at her. Her face was intelligent, alert.

  His heart stumbled. He realized she didn’t know. Suddenly he knew he’d been set up.

  He rose and went to the window. Head raised, shoulders back, he stood looking out at the jagged line of buildings high in the morning light.

  He rethought his strategy. As a cop he had certain skills: how to bullshit, how to observe, how to turn on a sort of street charm. It wasn’t the kind of charm Babe Devens was used to, but he could manage the occasional three-syllable word and at least not have to duck if four syllables came zinging back at him.

  He circled around to the chest of drawers and picked up the silver framed photograph. “Is this your little girl? Cornelia?”

  She was watching him. “Cordelia.”

  “Cordelia. Right. You meet so many people you get names mixed up.”

  “You’ve met Cordelia?”

  “Talked to her. Beautiful little child. A lot of poise. I have a girl around the same age—twelve.”

  “Cordelia’s not twelve anymore.”

  “No, I guess not.” He angled the silver frame. “Beautiful garden. Where was this picture taken?”

  “My husband and I have—we had a home in East Hampton.”

  “You don’t have it anymore?”

  Her eyes met his. “I’ve been told I don’t have a husband anymore.”

  “Mrs. Devens—I have a feeling you’re beginning to figure out why I’m here.”

  “You think he tried to kill me.”

  “We think you might remember.”

  “I don’t remember anyone’s trying to murder me.”

  “Memory’s tricky. Especially when you’ve been unconscious for a time.”

  She studied him, stretching out the slightly uncomfortable silence. A questioning look was in her eyes.

  “Was it you who investigated?”

  “I didn’t head up the investigation. I wasn’t even lieutenant then. But I did some legwork. Asked some questions. Got some answers. Don’t know if the answers mean a hell of a lot. For what it’s worth, I know what you were wearing that night.”

  “A blue gown.”

  “What you ate.”

  “Squab stuffed with wild rice. Raspberry mousse with white chocolate sauce.”

  “What you drank. What recreational drugs you did.”

  She lowered her head, like a little girl.

  “Who you danced with. Who your husband flirted with.”

  She looked at him quickly.

  He smiled. She didn’t quite smile back.

  “I liked the clothes you designed,” he said. “I’m no expert, but I thought you made women look good. Feel good. And they didn’t have to pay an arm and a leg. I know some women cops who used to swear by your stuff. It was great they could afford it. Women cops don’t get paid a whole lot. Neither do the men. You going to go back to it? Designing?”

  “As soon as I possibly can.”

  “Great. You’ve got a lot of fans out there.”

  “Mr. Cardozo, was my husband brought to trial for my attempted murder?”

  “Correct.”

  “Was he found guilty or not guilty?”

  “Guilty of reckless endangerment.”

  “Did you agree with that?”

  “I thought it was attempted homicide and I thought the evidence bore that out. But I’m a cop—not a D.A. I collect the facts. I don’t prosecute the case.”

  “Then you think my husband tried to kill me?”

  “I think he injected you with the insulin that put you in coma. I call that trying pretty hard.”

  He looked at Babe Devens and he sensed she wasn’t there anymore. She had gone somewhere else, into a room in her memory, and she had left a Babe Devens doll in the hospital bed. A doll trying hard not to let droplets spill down its cheeks.

  “You see, I don’t know any of this.” Her voice was low and unsteady. “No one’s told me about insulin or injections or attempted killing or reckless anything.”

  “There was a witness.”

  She sat not moving, leaning back against the headboard. Her eyes were fixed on her folded hands and then they lifted to meet his.

  “May I ask who?”

  “Your housekeeper found a tan bag in your husband’s dressing room. The syringe and the insulin were inside.”

  She squared her shoulders and stared straight ahead. “I remember the ride home. I remember unlocking the front door and dropping the key. We were laughing and stumbling. I don’t know what happened next. I suppose I undressed.”

  “You undressed and went to bed.”

  “And then you say my husband …” A furrow deepened between her eyes. “I don’t believe my husband—my ex-husband—tried to kill me.”

  “Scott Devens confessed. The charge was bargained way down, but he admitted it.”

  She was staring at the wall. Cardozo knew she wasn’t seeing the wall. He knew she was looking past it at something else.

  “But you’re not sure,” she said. “That’s why you’re here.”


  “Until you remember something that contradicts his confession, I’m sure. My feeling is you’ll remember something that supports it. And when you do remember, phone me.” He gave her a card with his work number.

  “Is it really going to help if I remember?”

  “Frankly, it could be a pain in the ass. But I like the bad guys to get what they deserve.”

  “And the good guys?”

  “They should end up happily ever after.”

  Their eyes connected.

  “Are you a good guy, Mr. Cardozo?”

  “Pretty good, all things considered.”

  “Maybe you haven’t considered all things about my husband.”

  “Maybe.”

  “What if I remember that it was the butler?”

  “That would interest me.”

  She was looking at him, smiling now. “You’re funny. I’m glad I met you.”

  “I’m glad I met you.” He stopped at the door. “Oh—Mrs. Devens.”

  “Yes?”

  “Welcome back.”

  7

  CARDOZO WAS AT THE PRECINCT A little before 8:00 A.M., in good spirits from his talk with the heiress.

  Three detectives were standing around the Mr. Coffees, yakking about Saturday’s game, stretching the moment before they faced the day.

  Cardozo walked over to the lieutenant’s desk and glanced down at the sixty sheet—the complaints from the preceding tour.

  He went into his cubicle. The two black plastic fragments he had found in apartment six had been placed on his desk in separate evidence bags, each bearing its own tag from the property clerk’s office.

  He opened the case folder, moved the property vouchers aside, and skimmed through the pages of the report. They all bore the heading CASE UF61 #8139 OF THE 22D PRECINCT, DETECTIVE VINCENT R. CARDOZO, SHIELD #1864, ASSIGNED. The 8139 represented the total number of cases reported as of this date to the precinct: homicides, stray dogs, stolen cars, anything and everything, solved and unsolved.

  Then the facts: John Doe, male, white, homicide by strangulation, May 24. A photograph of the dead man’s face was stapled to the page. There followed the time and place of the homicide; description of the scene of the crime; blanks for the victim’s name and relevant details of life, association, and employment; blanks awaiting names and addresses of persons interviewed; names and shield numbers of members of the force at the scene of the homicide; notifications made, still blank.