Dead of Winter (CSI: NY) Read online

  Hawkes concluded, without beginning his autopsies, that the time of death calculated by the CSI detectives at the site of the killings might be reasonably accurate. Normal body temperature is 98.6°F. At the rate of approximately 1.5°F per hour, the body equilibrates with the temperature of the environment in which the body has been found unless the temperature of the environment is very hot or extremely cold. Given the 72°F temperature in the elevator and the dead man’s temperature, it was relatively easy to determine Charles Lutnikov’s time of death; it had been harder, much harder, with Alberta Spanio because of the partial freezing which would have dropped her body temperature rapidly. Hawkes could make a better estimate of time of death if he began with her and examined her systems and organs with his own instruments.

  He began with the knife sticking out of her neck.

  “Downward stroke,” he said carefully, removing the knife. “Deep. Someone strong. Also someone lucky or someone who knew just where the carotid artery was. She was asleep. No struggle. No movement. Not even after she was stabbed. Knife is a switchblade right out of The Blackboard Jungle or West Side Story which shows you how up-to-date I am about movies. Cheap, sharp.”

  Hawkes dropped the bloody knife into a stainless steel pan and handed it to Stella. She would add it to the collection, which included the pill bottle and lid and the glass with alcohol from the hotel room. By the time Hawkes finished, the bathroom window might also be in the lab waiting for her.

  Hawkes moved into the routine autopsy procedure which always seemed new and sacred, not the defiling of the dead but the honoring of justice which they and their families deserved.

  Hawkes carefully made a Y incision, a cut into the body from shoulder to shoulder, meeting at the sternum and then going straight down the abdomen to the pelvis.

  The interior organs were now exposed. Hawkes used a standard tree-branch looper to cut through the ribs and collarbone. He lifted the rib cage away to expose the heart and other soft organs which he took out and weighed. The next step was to take samples of fluid from all the organs, followed by making a slit in the exposed stomach and intestines to examine the contents.

  When his examination of the torso was complete, Hawkes moved to Alberta Spanio’s head, first probing the eyes for hemorrhages in case the victim was strangled before she was stabbed. Then he carefully made an incision in the scalp behind the head and peeled the skin forward over the face to expose the skull. With a high-speed oscillating power saw, he cut through the skull and opened it with a chisel, prying off the skullcap so he could lift out the brain in order to weigh and examine it without doing it any damage.

  As he engaged in each step, he described what he was doing and what he saw. His words were recorded, and the tape labeled as evidence.

  “Done,” he said finally. “I’ll get the samples to the lab.”

  “Tell them it has to be done quickly,” said Stella. “I’ll prod them from our end.” It was not uncommon in New York for a homicide lab report to drag on for weeks or even months.

  Hawkes nodded and moved to the sink in the corner where he took off his bloody gown and gloves, washed, and put on fresh gloves.

  Stella felt light-headed, and it must have shown because Hawkes said, “You all right?”

  “Fine,” she said.

  It wasn’t the autopsy or the sight of the flayed corpse that was getting to her. It was the damn flu. She cursed the weakness, thanked Hawkes, and headed for the door.

  “Now,” said Hawkes behind her, “let’s have a talk with Mr. Lutnikov.”

  Fortunately for Stella, Lutnikov was Aiden and Mac’s case. She wondered why one of them wasn’t there.

  Detective Don Flack had checked with the front desk and found out who had been in the rooms a floor up and a floor down from the one in which Alberta Spanio had been murdered. To be sure he also checked who had been in the rooms two floors up and two floors down.

  The only potentially promising room turned out to be the one directly over the open bathroom window. It had been occupied by a Wendell Lang who had specifically asked for that room two days before and was told it was occupied. He had taken another room, paid cash, and moved into the one over Alberta Spanio as soon as it was vacated. Mr. Lang had checked out at six this morning.

  Unfortunately, the clerk Flack got the information from had not been on duty when Wendell Lang checked in or out.

  Flack took the original of the sign-in card, holding it carefully in the corners, and dropped it into a small plastic bag which he pocketed. Then, with a key provided by the manager, he went up to the room Wendell Lang had rented.

  The room was small. The maid had already made it up. He found the maid with a cart in the hallway, showed his badge, and asked if she had vacuumed the room and if she still had the trash from the room.

  The woman, Estrella Gomez, was chubby, fair skinned, and in her thirties. She had only a slight accent when she said, “Room 704. Nothin’ in the trash. No newspapers, nothin’ in the room. Didn’t use the towels. Didn’t even sleep in the bed. I ran the vacuum. Tha’s all.”

  Flack told Estrella Gomez to go to the front desk and tell them not to let anyone have the room, that it was a potential crime scene. Then he went back inside the room that Wendell Lang had rented, went to the window, opened it, and looked down and out. Sheer drop and two problems. The window was clearly in view of anyone looking up from 51st Street or across the street from a high-rise office building. The chances of someone lowering himself from the window and not being seen were poor even at night, although Don Flack had seen stranger things.

  Flack would know after Hawkes’s examination just when Alberta Spanio was murdered. If the sun had already come up, someone climbing out of a sixth-story hotel room stood a more-than-even chance of being spotted.

  As he pulled his head back inside the open window, Flack saw a mark in the center of the sill, a small indentation that cut a narrow band through the center of the white wood. The indentation looked new, the exposed wood clean. He touched it, confirmed it was fresh. He took out his cell phone and called Stella.

  Just as he was about to knock at Louisa Cormier’s door, Mac’s cell phone rang. He didn’t recognize the caller number on the screen.

  “Yes,” he said, stopping and looking at the highly polished dark wood door finely engraved with curlicues and flowered vines.

  “Mr. Taylor?” came a woman’s soft voice.

  Aiden stood nearby, aluminum case in hand, waiting.

  “Yes,” Mac said.

  “This is Wanda Frederichson. We’d like to postpone finishing until the weather clears and we can remove enough snow.”

  Mac said nothing.

  “Of course if you want to go ahead on Monday anyway, we’ll do our best but we recommend…”

  “Monday,” Mac said. “It has to be Monday. Just do your best.”

  “And you still want everything we discussed.”

  “Yes,” said Mac. “Long-range weather forecast says there won’t be any more snow after tomorrow for at least a week.”

  “But,” said Wanda Frederichson, “the temperature is scheduled to remain around zero for at least seven days.”

  Mac could tell that the woman wanted to say more, wanted to convince him to wait, but there was no waiting. It had to be Monday.

  “And you did say there would be no guests?” Wanda Frederichson asked, double checking.

  “None,” said Mac. “Just me.”

  “Ten A.M., Monday then,” Wanda Frederichson said, sounding resigned.

  Mac flipped his cell phone closed. His eyes met Aiden’s. If there was a question behind her brown eyes, she hid it. She knew better than to ask.

  Mac used the knocker on the decorated door. From inside the apartment, he could hear five notes chiming.

  “Phantom of the Opera,” he said.

  “Never saw it,” she said.

  The door opened. A petite woman in her fifties in a white blouse and blue skirt stood before them. Her hair w
as short, curled, and honey blonde, her eyes blue. Both the color of her hair and eyes were artificial, but nearly perfect. She wasn’t quite pretty, but she had a delicate, made-up elegance and an almost sad smile that displayed perfect white teeth.

  “Louisa Cormier?” asked Mac.

  The woman looked at Mac and Aiden and said, “The police, yes. I was expecting you. Mr. McGee called from downstairs. Please come in.”

  “I’m Detective Taylor,” Mac said. “This is Detective Burn. She’ll wait for me out here.”

  Louisa Cormier looked at Aiden.

  “She would be more than welcome…” Louisa began and then looked at Aiden’s jacket and said, “Crime scene. The young lady is going to go over my foyer.”

  Mac nodded.

  “It’s perfectly fine with me,” Louisa said with a smile. “Not that I could do anything about it even if it weren’t. There’s been a murder, and as the most isolated dweller in this building I’d like you to find out who did it as soon as possible. Please come in.”

  She stepped back so Mac could enter. When he was inside, she closed the door.

  The room was more than a room. It was a dark, marble-floored, broad expanse with a dining area bigger than Mac’s apartment, with a massive wooden table and sixteen chairs around it, plus a living area that looked large enough to play tennis in furnished with brightly upholstered antique furniture. Sliding glass doors led to a balcony with a panoramic view of the city facing north.

  “It is big, isn’t it,” Louisa said, following Mac’s eyes. “This is the part I let Architectural Digest use, this and the kitchen, and my library/office. My bedroom however…” she pointed toward a door in the living room area, “was off-limits to Architectural Digest, but not to you.”

  “I’d be very interested in seeing all the rooms,” Mac said.

  “I understand,” said the woman with a smile. “Doing your job. Coffee?”

  “No, thank you. Just a few questions.”

  “About Charles Lutnikov,” she said, leading him into the living area and, with a delicate right hand, inviting him to sit where he wished.

  Mac sat in an upright upholstered chair. Louisa Cormier sat across from him on a claw-legged sofa.

  “You knew Mr. Lutnikov?”

  “A little,” she said. “Poor man. Met him when he first moved in. He was carrying one of my books, had no idea I lived here. I have a well-deserved reputation for being unwilling to talk about my work, but when I saw Charles in the lobby several weeks later he was carrying another of my books. Vanity.”

  “He was vain?” asked Mac.

  “No,” she said with a sigh. “That’s the title of the book and the main character. I was, however, succumbing to vanity when I saw Charles with one of my books. I asked him if he was enjoying it and he said he was a big fan. Then I told him who I was. For an instant he didn’t believe me and then he opened his book to the inside back flap and looked at the photograph. I know what you’re thinking, that he knew who I was all the time, but he didn’t. I could tell. My only concern was that he not become a gushing fan. I couldn’t live with a gushing fan in the same building. You know, afraid to run into him, having to make small talk. The people in this building have respected my privacy as I’ve respected theirs.”

  “So you…?”

  “Laid out ground rules,” she said. “I’d sign his books. He was not to approach me with questions or comments if we ran into each other. We would simply smile and say ‘hello.’ ”

  “And it worked?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “Did he ever come up here?” Mac asked.

  “Up here? No. Have you ever read any of my books?”

  “No, I’m sorry,” he said.

  “You needn’t be. Millions, however, have.”

  She smiled broadly.

  “Someone in our unit is a fan,” Mac said. “I’ve seen him with your books. Did you hear a shot fired this morning?”

  “What time?” she asked.

  “Probably around eight,” he said.

  “I was out at eight,” she said seriously. “I go out every morning.”

  “Where did you go this morning?”

  “Well, in good weather I walk to Central Park, but this was not the day for it,” she said. “I bought a newspaper, had coffee at Starbucks, and came home. Please.”

  She stood up and headed for the room which she had said was her office/library.

  “Come,” she said. “I’ll sign a book for your police officer friend. The new one, Courting Death. It comes out in about a month.”

  Mac rose to follow her and said, “Did you hear any noise this morning?”

  “No,” she said, opening the door to the office/ library. “No, but I probably wouldn’t even if someone were shot right outside my front door. I was in my office here from six till eight with the door closed, working on a new book, and then I went out.”

  “You took the elevator?” asked Mac.

  “You mean did I see a dead man on the elevator?” she asked. “No I did not. I didn’t use the elevator. I walked down.”

  “Twenty-one flights,” Mac said flatly.

  “Twenty,” she said, “we have no thirteenth floor. I walk down the stairs every morning and after my walk, I climb the stairs. Those stairs and my walk are really the only physical exercise I get.”

  The library/office was big, not as expansive as the rest of the apartment, but big enough for an ornate ebony desk with curved legs and inlaid ivory strips with a matching chair and two walls covered with shelves of books, not as many as Lutnikov had in his smaller apartment, but a sizeable number. Against another wall was a floor - to - ceiling glass-enclosed case with wooden shelves. Neatly stacked on the shelves was an odd assortment of objects.

  “My collection,” Louisa Cormier said with a smile. “Things I’ve used for research for my books. I try to use or at least handle crucial objects so I know what I’m talking about.”

  Mac looked over the collection which included an old Arvin radio from the 1940s, a Boy Scout axe, a large crystal ashtray, an enormous bound book with a red cloth cover, an Erté art deco statue of a sleekly dressed and coiffed woman about a foot high, a claw hammer with a dark wooden handle, a blue decorative pillow with yellow tassels and the words NEW YORK WORLD’S FAIR printed on the front, a two-foot scimitar with a gold handle, a Coke bottle from the 1940s, and dozens of other odd pieces.

  “I’ve been told,” Louisa said, “that if I signed them and put them on eBay the collection would be worth close to a million dollars from loyal fans.”

  “No guns,” observed Mac.

  “I go to gun shops and firing ranges when I write about guns,” she said. “I don’t collect them.”

  There was a set of six file drawers, also ebony, against the wall behind the desk. On the wall above the file cabinets were fourteen framed awards and an eleven - by - fourteen - inch black-and-white photograph of a pretty young girl standing in front of a cleaning store.

  “That was me,” she said. “My father was the clerk in the store. I worked there after school and on Saturdays. That was back in Buffalo. We were far from well-to-do which turned out to be a blessing since I enjoy and appreciate having and spending money. Here it is.”

  She was at an eye-level shelf in the right-hand corner of the room. She pulled out a book, opened it to the title page, and asked, “Who is it for?”

  “Sheldon Hawkes,” Mac said.

  She wrote with a slight flourish, closed the book, and handed it to Mac.

  “Thanks,” he said taking the book.

  There was a computer, a Macintosh, on the desk and a printer, no scanner, no state-of-the-art accessories.

  “Anything else?” she asked folding her hands, her smile broad, warm.

  “Nothing now,” said Mac. “Thanks for your time.”

  She ushered him to the front door and opened it. Aiden stood in the hallway, metal case in one hand.

  “If I can be of any further help…” said Louis
a Cormier.

  “Do you have any hired help?” Mac asked.

  “No,” she said. “A cleaning crew comes in and cleans every three days.”

  “Secretary?” he asked.

  Louisa cocked her head slightly to the left like a frail curious bird and said, “Ann Chen. She keeps my social and business calendar, protects me from reporters, fans, and the idly curious, and handles my correspondence and Web page.”

  “She work here?” asked Mac.

  “Not usually. Normally she works out of her apartment in the Village. My phone number is unlisted but somehow people get hold of it. The calls go to Ann who with a simple touch of a button forwards them to me after she screens them.”

  Both Aiden and Mac could see that Louisa was definitely considering a question, but decided not to ask it.

  “Is that it?” she said instead.

  Aiden opened the stairway door. The crime-scene elevator was still on the first floor.

  “For now,” said Mac with a smile. “I’m sure Sheldon will appreciate the book.”

  Mac held the book up. He followed Aiden through the door, and they stepped out, leaving Louisa smiling behind them.

  When the door closed, Aiden said, “Hawkes reads mysteries?”

  “Don’t know,” said Mac, starting down the narrow stairs. “Give me a large bag. I want to check our famous author’s fingerprints. You got blood samples from the carpet?”

  Aiden nodded.

  “Now,” said Mac, “let’s see if they match Charles Lutnikov’s.”

  “She know something?” asked Aiden, her voice echoing as they moved slowly downward.

  Mac shrugged and said, “She knows something. She was very bubbly, talked too much, kept changing the subject. She was working hard to be a thoughtful hostess with nothing to hide.”