"It wasn't a suicide, Lou," Jack repeated. The elevator arrived. He boarded but kept the door from closing. He didn't want to lose the connection with Lou. "I'll even put a fiver on it. I've never heard of a case of a woman committing suicide in the nude. It just doesn't happen."
"You're joking!"
"No, I'm not. The thought is that's not the way women suicide victims want to be found.You'd better act accordingly and get your crime-scene people there. And you know the feisty diplomat husband or whatever he is has got to be your number-one suspect. Don't let him disappear into the Iranian mission. You might not see him again."
The elevator door closed as Jack flipped his phone shut. He hoped there wasn't a deeper meaning behind the interruption of the evening's plans. Jack's true bete noire was the fear that death stalked the people he loved, making him complicit when they died. He looked at his watch. It was now twenty after seven. "Damn!" he said out loud and slapped the elevator door a few times with the palms of his hands in frustration. Maybe he should rethink the whole idea.
With rapidity born of repetition, Jack got his mountain bike from the area of the morgue where the Potter's Field coffins were stored, unlocked it, put on his helmet, and wheeled it out onto the 30th Street loading dock. Between the mortuary vans, he climbed on and cycled out into the street. At the corner, he turned right onto First Avenue.
Once he was on the bike, Jack's anxieties melted away. Standing up, he put muscle into his pumping and the bike shot forward, rapidly picking up speed. Rush-hour traffic had abated to a degree, and the cars, taxis, buses, and trucks were moving at a good clip. Jack was not able to keep up, but it was close. Once he had achieved his cruising speed, he settled back onto the seat and shifted into a higher gear. From his daily bike riding and basketball playing, he was in tip-top shape.
The evening was glorious, with a golden glow suffusing the cityscape. Individual skyscrapers stood out sharply against the blue sky, the hue of which was deepening with every passing minute. Jack streaked past the New York University Medical Center on his right and, a little further north, the UN General Assembly complex. When he could, Jack moved to his left so that he was able to turn onto 47th Street, which was one-way, conveniently heading east.
The UN Towers was a few doors up from First Avenue. Sheathed in glass and marble, the structure soared up an impressive sixty-some-odd stories into the evening sky. Directly in front of the awning that stretched from its entrance to the street were several New York City squad cars with their lights flashing. Hardened New Yorkers walked by without a glance. There was also a battered Chevy Malibu double-parked next to one of the squad cars. Jack recognized it as Lou's. In front of the Malibu was a Health and Human Services mortuary van.
As Jack locked his bike to a no-parking signpost, his anxieties returned. The ride had been too short to have any lasting effect. It was now seven thirty. He flashed his medical examiner's badge to the uniformed doorman and was directed to the fifty-fourth floor.
Up in apartment 54J, things had quieted considerably. When Jack walked in, Lou Soldano, Allen Eisenberg, Steve Marriott, and a number of uniformed officers were sitting around the living room as if it were a doctor's waiting room.
"What gives?" Jack asked. Silence reigned. There wasn't even any conversation.
"We're waiting on you and the crime-scene people," Lou said as he got to his feet. The others followed suit. Instead of Lou's signature rumpled and slightly disheveled attire, he was wearing a neatly pressed shirt buttoned to the neck, a subdued new tie, and a tasteful although not terribly well-fitted glen plaid sport jacket that was too small for his stocky frame. Lou was a seasoned detective, having been in the organized-crime unit for six years before moving over to homicide, where he'd been for more than a decade, and he looked the part.
"I have to say you look pretty spiffy," Jack commented. Even Lou's closely cropped hair looked recently brushed, and his famous five o'clock shadow was nowhere to be seen.
"This is as good as it gets," Lou commented, lifting his arms as if flexing his biceps for effect. "In celebration of your dinner party, I snuck home and changed. What's the occasion, by the way?"
"Where's the diplomat?" Jack asked, ignoring Lou's question. He glanced into the kitchen and a room that was used as a dining room. Except for the living room, the apartment seemed empty.
"He's flown the coop," Lou said. "He stormed out of here just after I hung up with you, threatening all of us with dire consequences."
"You shouldn't have let him go," Jack said.
"What was I supposed to do?" Lou complained. "I didn't have an arrest warrant."
"Couldn't you have held him for questioning until I got over here?"
"Listen, the captain sent me on this case to keep things simple and not to rock the boat. Holding that guy at this stage would be rocking the boat big-time."
"Okay!" Jack said. "That's your problem, not mine. Let's see the body."
Lou gestured toward the open bedroom door.
"Do you have an ID on the woman yet?" Jack asked.
"Not yet. The building supervisor says she'd only been here less than a month and didn't speak much English."
Jack took in the scene before homing in on the body. There was a slight butcher-shop odor. The decor read designer. The walls and carpet were all black; the ceiling mirrored; and the curtains, clutter of knick-knacks, and furniture all white, including the bed linens. As Lou had explained, the corpse was completely naked, lying supine across the bed with the feet dangling over the bed's left side. Although darkly complected in life, she was now ashen against the sheet except for some bruising about the face, including a black eye. Her arms were splayed out to the sides with the palms up. An automatic pistol was loosely held in her right hand, with her index finger inside the trigger guard. Her head was turned slightly toward the left. Her eyes were open. High on the right temple was evidence of an entrance gunshot wound. Behind the head on the white sheet was a large bloodstain. Extending away from the victim to her left was some blood spatter, along with bits of tissue.
"Some of these Middle Eastern guys can be brutal with their women," Jack said.
"So I've heard," Lou said. "Is that bruising and black eye from the bullet wound?"
"I doubt it," Jack said. Then he turned back to Steve and Allen. "Have our pictures been taken of the body?"
"Yes, they have," Steve Marriott called from over near the door.
Jack pulled on a pair of latex rubber gloves and carefully separated the woman's dark, almost black hair to expose the entrance wound. There was a distinct stellate form to the lesion, indicating that the muzzle of the gun had been in contact with the victim when it had discharged.
Carefully, Jack rolled the woman's head to the side to look at the exit wound. It was low down below the left ear. He straightened up. "Well, that's more evidence," he said.
"Evidence of what?" Lou asked.
"That this wasn't a suicide," Jack said. "The bullet traveled from above on an angle downward. That's not the way people shoot themselves." Jack formed a gun with his right hand and placed the tip of his index finger as the hypothetical muzzle next to his temple. The plane of the finger was parallel with the floor. "When people shoot themselves, the track of the bullet is generally almost horizontal or maybe slightly upward, never downwards. This was a homicide staged to look like a suicide."