Текст книги "Ghosts"

Автор книги: Ed McBain

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Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 12 страниц)

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There were nineteen wounds on the body of Gregory Craig. Carella received the typewritten list from the morgue at Buena Vista Hospital ten minutes before Hawes came in with the morning newspaper. The list read:

WOUNDS CHART, GREGORY CRAIG:

Slash wound across throat ¾" long.

Slash wound across throat just under first one, 2½" long.

Stab wound 1½" right of midline just over collarbone.

Stab wound 4½" right of midline and 4" above nipple.

Stab wound over midline and in line with nipples.

Slash wound on chest beginning on midline approx. 5" below chin and tailing downward and to the left 2" long.

Stab wound 1½" left of midline and over collarbone.

Stab wound 8½" left of midline and 3" below nipple.

Stab wound (entry and exit) midway between elbow and armpit, on inside of arm.

Slash wound 1" long on outside of left wrist.

Slash wound 1¼" long on inside of right wrist.

Stab wound on back 15" below base of skull and 5½" left of midline.

Stab wound on back 15" below base of skull and 3" left of midline.

Stab wound on back 13¼" below base of skull and 3½" left of midline.

Stab wound on back 12" below base of skull and 8" left of midline.

Stab wound on back 20" below base of skull and 3½" left of midline.

Slash wound on inside of ring finger of right hand.

Stab wound (entry and exit) on top side of middle finger of right hand.

Slash wound right side of head above ear and tailing downward 1½" long.

That was a whole hell of a lot of stab and slash wounds. They didn’t quite add up to the estimate Carella had given the Homicide cops at the scene, but they were sufficient to indicate that whoever had killed Craig had really and truly wanted him dead; you do not hack away at a person nineteen times unless you want to make sure. On the other hand, Marian Esposito—as she’d been identified from a driver’s license in her shoulder bag—had been stabbed only once, just below the left breast, the blade entering her chest and her heart and apparently killing her at once. If the crimes were related, as they seemed to be, the logical assumption was that she had got in the killer’s way as he was fleeing the scene of the first murder. Even before Hawes came in with the morning paper, Carella had decided that the line of investigation should concentrate on Craig. He marked the case folder “R-76532,” and on the folder for Marian Esposi to, he wrote in the words “Companion Case R-76532” following her case number, R-76533.

The squadroom that Friday morning, December 22, was relatively quiet. The suicides would not start till Christmas Eve, and then they’d taper off a bit till New Year’s Eve, when there’d be another rash of them. Miscolo in the Clerical Office had casually mentioned that there’d be a full moon on New Year’s Eve. The full moon would compound the number of suicides. Holidays and full moons, it never failed. In the meantime, there’d been an increase in incidents of shoplifting and picking pockets, but burglaries, muggings, rapes, and robberies had fallen off; go figure it. Maybe all the burglars, muggers, rapists, and armed robbers were out shopping the department stores and getting their pockets picked.

The squad’s duty chart hung on the wall alongside the water-cooler, where the lieutenant figured it was certain to be read. The Police Department respected no holidays, but the duty chart for every Christmas Eve and Christmas Day normally listed almost exclusively the names of Jewish detectives who had traded off with their Christian colleagues. This year, however, things were different. How was this year different from all other years? This year, Christmas and the first day of Hanukkah happened to fall on the very same day—December the twenty-fifth, naturally—providing ample evidence of the brotherhood of man and the solidarity of the democratic ideal. It caused problems only for the cops. Everybody wanted to be off on Monday, when the twin holiday occurred. But everybody couldn’t be off on Monday because then all those cheap thieves out there would run amok.

Compromise.

In police work, as in marriage, compromise was essential. Henny Youngman’s repertoire included a joke about the man who wants to buy a new car and his wife who wants to buy a mink coat. They compromise. The wife buys a mink coat and keeps it in the garage. Steve Carella and Meyer Meyer compromised by tossing a coin. Carella won. He would work on Christmas Eve, and Meyer would work on the first day of Hanukkah. But that was before the Eight-Seven caught the double homicide. With a homicide case, you worked it into the ground during those first few important days. Carella had the gnawing suspicion that he’d be with this one a long time—a hot pastrami sandwich and a bottle of soda pop in the squadroom on Christmas Day. Terrific.

At his desk across the room, alongside one of the wire-mesh grilles that protected the squadroom from missiles flung at the windows by an unappreciative precinct citizenry—and incidentally kept any prisoners from leaping out to the street below—Detective Richard Genero sat typing up a report on a burglary that was three weeks old. Genero was a short dark man with curly black hair and brown eyes. He had recently taken to wearing Benjamin Franklin eyeglasses whenever he typed his reports, presumably to better his spelling. He still spelled “perpetrator” as “perpatrater,” a fatal failing in any police department. He had a transistor radio going on his desk, and the strains of “Silent Night, Holy Night” flooded the squadroom. Carella listened to the music and guessed that if Lieutenant Byrnes walked in this very minute, Genero would be back walking a beat before the new year. Genero typed in time to the music. Carella wondered when he would ask how to spell “surveillance.”

It was 10:37 A.M. by the squadroom clock. The snow of the night before had ended shortly before dawn, and the sky outside was now a blue as bright as a bride’s garter. From beyond the squadroom windows, Carella could hear the sounds of tire chains jangling, an appropriate accompaniment for “Jingle Bells,” which now replaced “Silent Night” on Genero’s transistor. He did not much feel like working today. He had told the twins he’d take them to see Santa Claus sometime this week—but that, too, was before the double homicide.

“Where is everybody?” Hawes said from beyond the slatted wooden railing that divided the squadroom from the corridor outside. “Did you see this, Steve?” he asked, and came through the gate in the railing. “We got ourselves a biggie.” He tossed the morning paper onto Carella’s desk and then went to the water-cooler. The paper was folded open to the page opposite the book review.

The obit on Gregory Craig told Carella that the man had written a best-selling book titled Deadly Shades, which presumably had been based on his own experiences with ghosts in a house he’d rented in Massachusetts three summers ago. The book had topped the nonfiction best-seller list for a full year and had been reprinted six months ago, garnering a paperback advance of $1.5 million. The motion picture was currently being filmed in Wales, of all places, with a British star playing Craig and a galaxy of fading well-known actresses in cameo roles as the shades who’d plagued his hoped-for vacation. The obit went on to say that he’d written a half dozen novels before turning out his nonfiction blockbuster, listing them all by title and quoting some of the reviews the newspaper had given him over the past twelve years. There’d been a hiatus of five years between his last novel and the ghost book. His sole survivor was listed as Miss Abigail Craig, a daughter. The obit did not mention the murder of Marian Esposito, Companion Case R-76533.

“What do you think?” Hawes said, and crumpled the paper cup he was holding, and tossed it at Carella’s wastebasket, missing.

“I think they saved us some legwork,” Carella said, and opened the Isola telephone directory.

When Abigail Craig opened the door for them at 11:20 that morning, she was wearing an expensively tailored suit over a silk blouse with a scarf tied at the throat, brown high-heeled boots, gold hoop earrings. They had called first to ask if they might come over, and she had seemed a bit reluctant on the phone, but they chalked this off to the natural grief and confusion that normally followed the death of an immediate member of the family. Now, sitting opposite her in a living room dominated by a huge and lavishly decorated Christmas tree, they weren’t sure whether she was at all grieved or confused. She seemed, in fact, more interested in getting to her hairdresser than in telling them anything about her father. Her hair looked fine to Hawes. All of her looked fine to Hawes.

She was one of those creamy blondes with a flawless complexion usually attributed to British women who ride horses. Her eyes were a brilliant green fringed with lashes as blonde as her hair; her face was somewhat narrow, with high cheekbones and a generous mouth that looked richly appointed even without lipstick. Her upper lip flared a bit, showing perfect white teeth even when she wasn’t speaking. Hawes loved the ones with an overbite. Hawes wished they were here to exchange Christmas gifts instead of to ask questions about a dead man who seemed to hold little or no interest for the cool beauty who sat opposite him in brown high-heeled boots, her legs crossed.

“I’m sorry I have to rush you,” she said, “but my appointment is at noon, and Antoine is clear across town.”

“We’re sorry to break in like this,” Hawes said, and smiled. Carella looked at him. They hadn’t broken in at all. They had called a half hour ago and carefully prepared her for their visit.

“Miss Craig,” Carella said, “when did you last see your father alive?”

“A year ago,” she said, startling him.

“And not since?”

“Not since.”

“How come?”

“How come?” Abigail said, and arched one eyebrow. “I’m not sure I know what you mean.” Her voice was Vassar or Bryn Mawr out of Rosemary Hall or Westover. Her manner was irritated and impatient. Carella had never felt comfortable with these long, cool, poised types, and she was doing little now to ease his distress. He looked at her for a moment and debated his approach. He decided to lay it on the line.

“I mean,” he said, “isn’t that a bit unusual? An only daughter…”

“He has another daughter,” she said flatly.

“Another daughter? I was under the impression…”

“More or less,” Abigail said. “She’s young enough to be his daughter anyway.”

“Who’s that?” Carella asked.

“Hillary.”

“Do you mean Hillary Scott?”

“Yes.”

“I see.”

“Do you?” Abigail said, and reached for a cigarette in an enameled box on the end table. Lighting it, she said, “Let me put it to you simply,” and blew out a stream of smoke, and then put the gold lighter back on the table. “Ever since the divorce my father and I haven’t got along. When he took up with the Spook, that was the end. Period. Finis. Curtain.”

“By the Spook…”

“Hillary.”

“And when did he…take up with her, Miss Craig?”

“Shortly after Shades was published—when all the creeps in the universe were coming out of the woodwork with ghosts of their own.”

“You’re referring to Deadly Shades?”

“My father’s big moneymaking masterpiece,” Abigail said, and crushed out the cigarette.

“It was published when?”

“The hardcover edition? A year and a half ago.”

“And he met Hillary Scott shortly after that?”

“I don’t know when he met her. I didn’t find out about them until Thanksgiving a year ago. God knows how long they’d been living together by then. Invited me over for the big turkey dinner. ‘Hello, darling,’” she said, mimicking broadly, “‘I’d like you to meet Hillary Scott, my lady friend.’ His lady friend!” she said, her eyes flashing.

“Fucking little twenty-two-year-old spook hunter.”

Carella blinked. He was used to all sorts of language in the squadroom and on the streets; you couldn’t be a cop for as long as he’d been one and still expect people to say “darn” and “shucks.” But the obscenity had sounded completely out of place in this festively decorated living room on Hall Avenue. Hawes, on the other hand, was watching Abigail with an intensity bordering on instant obsession; he loved the ones who said “fuck” through their overbites.

“So, uh, the last time you saw your father,” Carella said, “was…”

“Thanksgiving last year. When he introduced me to the Spook. That was it. The last straw.”

“What were the other straws?”

“The divorce was the big thing.”

“And when was that?”

“Seven years ago. Right after Knights and Knaves was published.”

“That’s one of his novels, isn’t it?”

“His best novel. And his last one.” She took another cigarette from the enameled box, held the lighter to it, and blew out a stream of smoke in Hawes’s direction. “The critics savaged it. So naturally, he took it out on Mother. Decided that Stephanie Craig, poor soul, was somehow to blame for what the critics had said about his book. Never once realized that the book was truly a marvelous one. Oh, no. Figured if the critics said it was awful, why, then, it had to be awful. And blamed Mother. Blamed her for the lifestyle—one of his favorite words—that had caused him to write his universally panned novel. Said he wanted out.” Abigail shrugged. “Said he needed to ‘rediscover’ himself—another favorite Gregory Craig utterance.” She dragged on the cigarette again. “So he rediscovered himself with a piece of crap like Shades.”

“Is your mother still alive?” Hawes asked.

“No.”

“When did she die?”

“Three summers ago.”

“How?”

“She drowned. They said it was an accident.”

“They?”

“The Coroner’s Office in Hampstead, Massachusetts.”

“Massachusetts,” Carella said.

“Yes. She drowned in the Bight, two miles from where my father was renting his famous haunted house.”

“This was how many years after the divorce?”

“Four.”

“And they spent their summer vacations in the same town?”

“She never got over it,” Abigail said. “She wanted to be near him. Wherever he went…” She shook her head.

“A minute ago, Miss Craig, you said the Coroner’s Office…”

“Yes.”

“Do you believe your mother’s death was accidental?”

“She was on the swimming team at Holman U when she was a student there,” Abigail said flatly. “She won three gold medals.”

The report from the Mobile Crime Lab was waiting on Carella’s desk when they got back to the squadroom. It stated that the lock on the door to the Craig apartment was a Weiser deadbolt, meaning that it could be unlocked on both sides—inside and out—only with a key. There had been no key in the lock on the inside of the door. There were no jimmy marks on the jamb, no scratches on the perimeter of the lock or around the keyway, no signs of forced entry. The apartment’s service entrance—opening into the kitchen from a small alcove lined with garbage cans—was similarly equipped with a Weiser deadbolt. Again, there were no signs of forced entry. A check of the lock on the big door leading to the rear ramp of the building showed no signs of forced entry. Whoever had killed Gregory Craig was a person who either lived in the building and was known to the security guard on duty or was someone known to Craig himself. If the killer had first been announced by the security guard who was off skiing his brains out someplace, then Craig had given the okay to send him upstairs. There were sixty apartments in the Harborview complex. Carella made a note to begin a door-to-door canvass of the tenants, and he made a further note to ask Byrnes for additional manpower on the case—fat chance of getting it three days before Christmas.

At 12:20 that afternoon he called the Craig apartment, hoping to catch Hillary Scott there. He let the phone ring an even dozen times, replaced the cradle on its receiver, looked up the number for the Parapsychological Society in Isola, and dialed it.

“I’ve been trying to reach you,” Hillary said.

“What about, Miss Scott?”

“Didn’t you get my message?”

“No, I’m sorry, I just got back.”

“I gave the message to somebody up there. Somebody with an Italian name like yours.”

Carella looked across the room to where Genero was eating a sandwich at his desk, munching in time to “Deck the Halls.”

“I’m sorry, what were you calling about?” he said.

“The autopsy. I understand they want to do an autopsy.”

“That’s right, an autopsy is mandatory in any trauma case.”

“Absolutely not,” she said.

“Miss Scott, I’m afraid this isn’t something—”

“What happens when Greg’s essence passes over?” Hillary said. “If you cut him open and take out his insides, what happens when he gets to the spirit world?”

“I have no control over this,” Carella said. “An autopsy is mand—”

“Yes, I heard you. Who do I talk to?”

“About what?”

“About stopping the autopsy.”

“Miss Scott, the Medical Examiner’s Office has probably already begun work on the body. It’s vital that we establish the cause of death so that when the case comes to trial…”

“It’s vital that Greg’s spirit pass over intact!”

“I’m sorry.”

There was a silence on the line.

“I’ve heard about too many mutilated spirits,” Hillary said.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “Miss Scott, the reason I was calling—”

“Far too many,” she said, and again there was a silence on the line. Carella waited. There was no sense continuing the argument. The autopsy would be performed whatever Hillary Scott said or did. As he’d just told her, the ME’s Office had probably already begun work. At the morgue, the body of Gregory Craig would be slit open like a slab of beef, the vital organs removed and tested, the skull lifted back on a tab of flesh to expose the brain. When the corpse was later displayed in a funeral home, none of the mourners would realize they were looking at the hollow shell of what had once been a man. The silence lengthened. Carella assumed he had made his case.

“I was wondering if you could meet us at the apartment later today,” he said.

“What for?”

“There’s the possibility that Mr. Craig may have been surprised by a burglar. We want to know if anything’s missing, Miss Scott, and the only way we can determine that is with someone who knows what should be in the apartment.”

“It wasn’t a burglar who killed Greg,” Hillary said.

“Why do you say that?”

“It was a ghost.”

Sure, Carella thought. A ghost tied Craig’s hands behind him with a wire coat hanger. A ghost stabbed him nineteen times in the chest, the back, the arms, the throat, the hands, and the head with a ghost knife the lab boys had not been able to find anywhere in the apartment. The same ghost knife that had most likely been used on Marian Esposito, Companion Case R-76533.

“I felt a very strong flux in that apartment yesterday,” Hillary said.

“Can you meet us there in an hour?” Carella asked.

“Yes, certainly,” she said. “But it wasn’t a burglar.”

If it hadn’t been a burglar, it had certainly been someone who’d helped himself—or herself—to a great many things in the Craig apartment. According to Hillary Scott, there had been some $300 in the bill compartment of Craig’s wallet when she’d left the apartment yesterday morning at 10:00. She knew because she’d asked him for cab fare to the office, and he’d fanned out a sheaf of fifties, searching for smaller bills. The money was gone now, but Craig’s credit cards—seven of them in all—hadn’t been touched. His jewelry box, open on the dresser top, had been looted of a gold Patek Philippe wristwatch with a gold band, a pair of gold Schlumberger cuff links set with diamonds, a gold pinkie ring with a lapis stone, and a gold link bracelet. Hillary was uncertain about the value of Craig’s missing jewelry, except for the gold bracelet, which she’d bought for him herself last Christmas and that had cost $685. She suspected the Patek Philippe wristwatch had cost somewhere in the vicinity of $6,500. She was more specific about the jewelry that was missing from the box she kept in the top drawer on her side of the dresser. All of it had been given to her by Gregory Craig during the year and a half they’d been living together. She listed the stolen items as:

One Angela Cummings hand-carved root bracelet of Burmese jade and eighteen-karat gold at $3,975.

One Elsa Peretti snake hair band of eighteen-karat gold at $510.

One eighteen-karat gold choker set with diamonds at $16,500.

One pear-shaped diamond pendant set in platinum with an eighteen-inch chain of eighteen-karat gold at $3,500.

One emerald-cut diamond set in a platinum ring at $34,500.

One pair of eighteen-karat gold earrings with Mobe pearls at $595.

One pair of diamond earrings set in platinum at $1,500.

One rope choker of eighteen-karat yellow and white gold at $2,950.

One bracelet of eighteen-karat pink, yellow, and white gold at $1,250.

And two fourteen-karat gold bangle bracelets at $575 each.

In addition to the jewelry stolen from the box, she told them she was missing from the dresser drawer itself an Elsa Peretti bean-shaped bag of twenty-four-karat gold lacquered with magnolia wood at $2,500 and a Chopard bracelet-watch of eighteen-karat gold set with diamonds at $14,500. She had kept the watch in the original case it had come in; the case was still in the drawer, a black velvet exterior, a white satin lining—but the watch was gone. She knew the value of the jewelry Craig had given her because they had recently made an insurance appraisal on all of it.

“But not on his jewelry?” Carella asked.

“Yes, his, too. But we had to get separate policies because we aren’t married. I was only familiar with what mine came to.”

“And what was that, offhand?” Hawes asked.

“Offhand, it was exactly eighty-three thousand four hundred and thirty dollars.”

“That’s a lot of stuff to have kept loose in a dresser drawer,” Carella said.

“Greg was planning on buying a wall safe,” Hillary said. “Anyway, it was all insured. And besides, the security here is very good. We wouldn’t have taken the apartment if we weren’t promised such tight security.”

“Anything else missing?” Hawes said.

“Was he wearing his college ring?” Hillary asked.

“There was no jewelry on the body.”

“Then that’s missing, too.”

“What college?” Carella asked.

“Holman University. Where he met his former wife.”

“What kind of ring?”

“Gold with an amethyst stone.”

“Where did he wear it?”

“On the ring finger of his right hand.”

Carella remembered the Wounds Chart: Slash wound on inside of ring finger of right hand. Had the killer used the knife to pry the ring loose from Craig’s finger? Had he come into the apartment armed, or had he used a knife he’d found on the premises? If he’d come here specifically to commit a burglary, then how had he got through the “tight” security downstairs? Would Craig have admitted a stranger to the apartment, someone who’d later stolen in excess of $83,000 worth of jewelry and killed him before leaving? But Hillary Scott insisted it was not a burglar.

“The flux is strongest in this room,” she said. She walked to the desk facing the windows and put her hands on its surface. “He was here at the desk.”

“He?”

“A male spirit,” she said, running her hands lightly over the desktop. “Young. Black hair and brown eyes.” Her own eyes were closed; her hands flitted lightly over the surface of the desk; she swayed as she spoke. “Searching for something. Seeking. Restless. A restless spirit.”

Carella looked at Hawes. Hawes returned the look. Carella was wondering how somebody who so closely resembled his wife could be so certifiably nuts. Hawes was wondering what she’d be like in the sack—would she go into a trance from all the flux? And then he felt immediately incestuous because the damn girl looked so much like Teddy Carella. He turned away from Carella’s gaze, as though fearful his mind had been read.

“Anything missing from the desk?” Carella asked.

“May I open it?” she said. “Are your people through with it?”

“Go ahead,” Carella said.

She opened the drawer over the kneehole. A tray full of paper clips, rubber bands, and pencils. A staple remover. A box of key tags. A box of loose-leaf reinforcers. She closed that drawer and opened the file drawer to the right of the kneehole. It contained a sheaf of index folders lettered with names.

“Is that Craig’s handwriting?” Carella asked.

“Yes, shhhhh.”

“What are those names?”

“Ghosts,” she said, “shhhhhh,” and passed her hands lightly over the folders.

“He was searching here.”

“If he was,” Hawes said, “the lab boys’ll have prints.”

“Spirits do not leave fingerprints,” she said, and Carella thought, Nutty as a fruitcake.

“Those names…”

“Yes, ghosts,” she said. “Cases he planned to investigate for authenticity. Ever since he wrote Shades, he’s received calls and letters from all over the world, people reporting ghosts.”

“Anything missing that you can tell?” Hawes asked.

“No, but he was in here. I know he was in here.”

She closed the file drawer and opened the drawer above it. A ream of yellow Manila paper, nothing else. “Here, too,” she said. “Searching, seeking.”

“Did Mr. Craig ever keep anything of value in this desk?” Carella asked.

“His files are extremely valuable,” Hillary said, and abruptly opened her eyes.

“Maybe he was looking for something,” Hawes said. “Everything thrown around the room the way it was.”

“Yes, positively,” Hillary said.

“And found it,” Carella said.

Hillary looked at him.

“More than eighty-three thousand dollars’ worth of jewelry.”

“No, it wasn’t that. It was something else. I don’t know what,” she said, and passed her hands over the air as though trying to touch something the detectives could not see.

“Let’s check the kitchen,” Carella said. “I want you to tell us if any knives are missing.”

They checked the kitchen. On a magnetic wall rack, over the countertop, there were seven knives of varying sizes, one of them a ten-inch-long chef’s knife. According to Hillary, all the knives were there. They opened the cabinet drawers. She counted the table cutlery and the assortment of slicing and paring knives in the tray and told them nothing was missing.

“Then he came here with it,” Carella said.

Hillary closed her eyes again, and again spread her fingers wide, and pressed her palms against the empty air. “Looking for something,” she said. “Something.”

It was Cotton Hawes who caught the flak from Warren Esposito. The flak was perhaps well deserved; Hawes might have encountered the same indignation in any major city of the world, Peking and Moscow not excluded. Whatever the politics of a nation, the fact remained that if you knocked off somebody in the public eye, that murder was going to get more attention from the police than the murder of a wino or a scaly-legs hooker. Marian Esposito was neither a drunk nor a prostitute; she was, in fact, the secretary for a firm that specialized in selling gift items via direct mail. But there was no doubting the fact that she was somewhat less important than Gregory Craig, the best-selling writer. As her husband, Warren, paced the squadroom floor and raged at him, Hawes wondered whether they’d have given her case the same attention they were giving Craig’s had she been the one found with nineteen knife wounds in her and he’d been the one lying outside the building with a single stab wound. He decided the priorities would have been the same. Craig was “important”; Marian Esposito was only another corpse in a city that grew corpses like mushrooms.

“So what the hell are you doing?” Esposito shouted. He was a tall, hulking man with thick black hair and penetrating brown eyes. He was dressed on this Friday afternoon in blue jeans and a turtleneck sweater, a fleece-lined car coat open and flapping as he paced the floor. “There hasn’t even been a single cop to see me, for Christ’s sake! I had to make six phone calls before I discovered where they’d taken her! Is that what happens in this city? A woman is stabbed to death in front of her own apartment building and the police sweep her under the rug as if she never existed?”

“There’s a companion case,” Hawes said lamely.

“I don’t give a damn about your companion case!” Esposito shouted. “I want to know what you’re doing to find my wife’s murderer.”

“It’s our guess—”

“Guess?” Esposito said. “Is that what you’re doing up here? Guessing?”

“It’s our opinion—”

“Oh, now it’s an opinion.”

“Mr. Esposito,” Hawes said, “we think the person who killed Gregory Craig only accidentally killed your wife. We think he may have been—”

“Accidentally? Is it an accident when somebody sticks a knife in a woman’s heart? Jesus Christ!”

“Perhaps that was an unfortunate choice of words,” Hawes said.

“Yes, perhaps,” Esposito said icily. “My wife is dead. Somebody killed her. You have no real reason to believe it was the same person who killed that writer on the third floor. No real reason at all. But he’s a celebrity, right? So you’re concentrating all your efforts on him, and meanwhile, whoever killed Marian is running around loose someplace out there,” he said, and whirled and pointed toward the windows, and then swung around to face Hawes again, “and I can’t even find out where her body is so I can make funeral arrangements.”

“She’s at the Buena Vista Morgue,” Hawes said. “They’re finished with the autopsy. You can—”

“Yes, I know where she is. I know now, after six phone calls and a runaround from everybody in the Police Department. Who do you have answering your phones up here? Mongolian idiots? The first two times I called no one had even heard of my wife! Marian Esposito, sir? Who’s that, sir? Are you calling to report a crime, sir? You’d think somebody’s goddamn bicycle was stolen, instead of—”

“Most calls to the police are handled downtown at Communications,” Hawes said. “I can understand your anger, Mr. Esposito, but you can’t really expect a dispatcher, who handles hundreds of calls every hour, to know the intimate details of—”

“Okay, who does know the intimate details?” Esposito said. “Do you know them? They told me downstairs that you’re the detective handling my wife’s case. So, all right, what are you—?”

“My partner and I, yes,” Hawes said.

“So what the hell are you doing?” Esposito said. “She was killed yesterday. Have you got any leads, do you even know where to start?”