Now or Never (29 page)

“Way of the world, doc,” Rossetti said, making way for the photographer and his equipment.

Within minutes he had set up his lights and commenced videotaping the scene and the victim, as well as taking stills.

Dr. Blake crouched next to the body. “Not much mystery about how she died,” he said briskly. “Both the jugular and the carotid slashed. Two different cuts. Plus multiple other stab wounds.” He made careful notes, pointing out the wounds to the photographer for close-ups.

Harry waited by the door, arms folded, his face expressionless. “When did it happen, doc?”

Blake adjusted his glasses. “What’s today? Still Sunday?” He looked at the greenish stains on the flanks of the abdomen, indicating the beginnings of putrefaction. He lifted her wrist; the body was still slightly stiff. “There’s still some rigor mortis. I’d say Saturday, early. Around thirty-odd hours ago. I’ll know better after I check the vitreous humor at the autopsy.”

Harry knew he was talking about the jellylike fluid in back of the eye, which he would extract with a fine-needled syringe and which, because it was resistant to
postmortem changes, would give a more accurate indication of the time of death.

Blake carefully placed plastic bags over the hands and feet to preserve any trace evidence adhering to them. “No rape, though, detective,” he commented. “Or at least no immediately visible signs of it. I could be wrong. Again, we’ll see at the autopsy.”

Dr. Blake looked at the battered, blood-encrusted face, seeing her as a person for the first time, instead of a dead body. He looked at her for a long time. “Do you know who she is?” he asked Harry.

Harry shook his head. “Her sister is outside. She’ll identify her.”

“It’s hard to tell under all that blood, and her so cut up, but she looks kind of familiar.” He packed his instruments away in his black bag and got to his feet. “Well, that’s my job done. For the moment. She’s all yours, gentlemen. See you at the mortuary.”

“Thanks for coming out, doc,” Harry said.

As Blake edged carefully past him, his foot struck something. He didn’t notice, but Harry heard it. He hunkered down, looking at the object on the floor.

“Detective,” he said triumphantly to Rossetti, “I think we have our murder weapon.”

It was a small knife, maybe seven inches long, with a plastic cover over the narrow blade. There were no visible bloodstains—Harry guessed the killer had cleaned it.

He signaled the photographer to take pictures and measurements. Then someone from the crime lab, wearing protective gloves, picked it up, bagged it carefully, and took it away.

Harry spotted the bloody bag on the floor: “Birds’ Eye Frozen Peas,” the label said. “2 lbs.” Avoiding it and the trail of blood, he edged toward the body in the doorway.

It was as bad a horror scene as he had witnessed in his career. Her bloody hands had left a scrabbled trail down
the door, and around where she lay crouched on her knees was a lake of congealed blood. It looked as though her entire blood supply had ended up on the carpet.

Forensics had dusted the light switches, and now they turned on the lights. An ambulance wailed its arrival as he crouched over the body.

There was a gaping hole where her throat had been, and her face had been savagely carved. Her eyes were open, rolled up into her head.

Rossetti was standing over him. “Oh, my God,” he said in a strangled voice. “Oh, my God, Harry, it’s Suzie Walker.”

Harry’s spine crawled, and the hairs prickled the back of his neck. He had never had to deal with a murdered person he’d known, had never known personally someone who was now just a mutilated body instead of a vital, attractive young woman.

Stunned, he got quickly to his feet, staring down at her, filled with violent rage. “Christ,” he roared, slamming his clenched fist over and over again into the wall.
“Why?
Why the fuck did he pick on her?” He was rigid with anger at the senselessness of it.

Rossetti stood rooted to the spot. “Excuse me,” he said, hurriedly making for the door. He walked to the end of the street, and hidden in the shadow of a large red maple, he vomited.

Harry stood, stone-faced, as the paramedics zipped what was left of Suzie Walker into a body bag, then placed her on a gurney and wheeled her into the ambulance. There was no need for emergency sirens as it took off.

He thrust his burning fists into his pockets. If he’d had the murderer right there before him, he would have killed the bastard. Strangled him with his bare hands. Kicked him like the beast he was. Then he reminded himself soberly that he was a cop. He needed to be dispassionate, detached, an investigator, and that was all. But in his mind
he still saw Nurse Suzie Walker smiling at him with those beautiful green eyes, heard her retort to Rossetti when he asked her for a date.

“Why the hell did it have to be Suzie, Prof?” Rossetti stood beside him. His face looked gray in the harsh overhead light, and there was a bleak look in his eyes. “She was nice,” he said somberly. “She was dedicated to her job, she was a good woman.”

Now was the time to make the speech about nailing the bastard, about seeing him put away for what he had done to Suzie. Now was the time to say she had deserved better. But Harry could not. He thought bitterly that there would be no comfort in that for her family. And besides, he had said the same thing about Summer Young. With an effort he switched his mind away from the victim and back to the job facing him.

He grasped Rossetti’s shoulder comfortingly, then systematically began to search the bedroom.

W
HEN
H
ARRY AND
R
OSSETTI EMERGED
from Suzie’s cottage an hour later, Alec Klosowski was waiting outside for them. He had already told the uniformed cop what he had heard, and now he told Harry.

He was a nice-looking young man with shocked brown eyes and dark hair smoothed back in a ponytail. “It was Friday night,” he said, “about eight o’clock, and she was dressed for work. We were both locking our doors. She told me she’d lost her keys the night before. Someone had handed them in, and she wondered who might have had them. I told her to get the locks changed, you couldn’t be too careful.” He turned his head away. “Oh, God,” he said with a catch in his throat, “I didn’t expect this, though.”

“You couldn’t have known, Mr. Klosowski,” Harry reassured him gently.

“We both drove off, and I assumed she was working the night shift. She’s—she was a nurse, you know, at Mass Gen. I was surprised when I came home and saw her car parked outside again. Then I noticed a light on in the kitchen, and I thought I must have got it wrong, or else she had come home early.”

“What time was that, Mr. Klosowski?”

“Oh, around two, I guess. Yes, that would be about right. I’d just finished work you see, at Daniels on Newbury
Street. I’d just got the key in the lock when I heard the scream.”

He looked numbly at Harry. “At least, I thought at first it was a scream. I listened, but there was nothing else, and I told myself it must be cats yowling. There’s a lot of strays, feral cats, around here, and they often sound like that.” He hung his head, close to tears. “God, if only it could have been that. Just cats. If only I’d had the sense to realize she was in trouble.”

His young face was haggard as he looked back at Harry again. “I feel responsible. If I’d done something, knocked on the door and checked that she was okay, or called the police—”

“I doubt there was anything you could have done,” Harry said. “It doesn’t pay to think that way. You’re helping now by giving us valuable information.”

“There’s more,” Klosowski said. “I saw him.”

“Jesus,” Rossetti muttered, “an eyewitness.”

“I got ready for bed, went to open my window. I saw him walk from her house across the street. He was hurrying, and when he got to the other side, the parked cars blocked my vision. Not that I was looking, really—I just thought, oh, there’s the reason Suzie came home early. I smiled, for God’s sake.”

“Can you describe him?” Harry was praying he could.

“All I can tell you is he was sort of a short guy, stocky. Dark hair, I guess.”

“What was he wearing?”

Klosowski looked puzzled. “I didn’t notice, but it must have been dark clothing because he sort of blended into the night.”

“Did you see him get into a car?”

“No—yes … I mean I did, then I heard it drive past.”

“What sort of car, Mr. Klosowski?”

“I’m not sure exactly. It was kind of a wagon. You
know, maybe like a Jeep Cherokee or perhaps a station wagon. Smallish, a dark color, I couldn’t say which.”

Harry breathed a sigh of regret. “Mr. Klosowski, would you be willing to come to the precinct and make an official statement about what you saw?”

“You bet.”

Harry thought Alec Klosowski would be willing to do anything to absolve himself of the terrible guilt he was feeling. He was a good witness, though, coherent and reliable despite the shock.

“Detective Rossetti will take you there now, sir.”

Rossetti looked expectantly at him and said, “I’m off to the hospital to interview the sister. She’s in shock—they took her there. I’ll see if she can talk. I understand the parents are with her.”

Harry drove through the quiet night streets, replaying the information they had collected on Suzie’s killer. They had the weapon, an eyewitness description, a basic description of the vehicle, and the approximate time of the murder. The crime officers who were still going over the cottage would surely come up with further forensic evidence.

This wasn’t a planned, premeditated murder. He would bet it was a robbery gone wrong. Suzie had come home unexpectedly and caught him in the act. And he had killed her.

That was his theory, for now, until something proved him wrong. He was always ready for the unexpected; when you were dealing in homicide, nothing was written in stone.

He parked the car outside Emergency and walked up the steps. There was a leaden feeling in his heart as he walked toward the admission desk where he had so often seen Suzie. The two nurses on duty looked at him with shocked eyes.

“It’s true then?” one of them asked, “about Suzie?”

He nodded. “I’m sorry.”

“She was a great girl,” the nurse said, her face beginning to crumple. “Always pleasant, even when we were overworked. And so pretty …”

“And she was a good nurse too,” the other one said, her hands gripped into tight fists as she fought back tears. “The shit,” she muttered angrily. “The dirty bastard. They are like vermin, these killers. They should be eradicated, the same way we do rats.”

Harry thought she was right. “I’m sorry,” he said again, then went slowly down the corridor to the booth where the Walker family awaited him.

Terry Walker was lying on top of the bed, fully clothed except for her shoes. She had been sedated; her eyes were open but slightly unfocused. Nevertheless, she managed to raise herself into a sitting position when Harry came in. She looked a bit like Suzie, only with darker hair.

Mrs. Walker was sitting in a chair next to the bed, and he saw instantly that her girls took after her. She had the red hair and green eyes, the pale freckled skin and the angular bone structure that gave them their pixieish look. Tears were cascading down her face, though she made no sound. Her husband was standing next to her, holding her hand tightly. He was tall and rangy, with dark hair, and there was a look of total devastation on his face.

Harry would have given anything not to put them through this, but it was part of his job. He introduced himself and shook hands with the father, whose own hands were icy cold.

“Mr. and Mrs. Walker, I knew your daughter. I often saw her here at the hospital. I am most deeply sorry, and I am sorry too that I have to inflict these questions on you at such a time. But if we are to catch this—the perpetrator of this crime, there are certain things I need to know from you.”

“Dad, tell him about the tape.” Terry’s voice was
shaky. She had closed her eyes again as though she couldn’t bear to look at him.

“It’s all on the tape.” Ed Walker handed the small answering machine over to Harry. He was making a great effort to get the story straight, but his voice trembled, and he seemed to be searching for the right words.

“Suzie … she called Terry, left a message on the machine…. She broke off in the middle—she just said, ‘Oh, my God, oh, my God, what are you doing here?’ and then there was just this terrible sound, and then … nothing.”

Harry could hardly believe what he was hearing. They had the actual crime on tape? He could already see the metaphoric noose tightening around Suzie’s killer’s neck.

“We were supposed to meet on Saturday,” Terry said in a weary voice, her dull eyes looking into his. “And I know she had a date Sunday night with a guy from Beth Israel. His name is Karl Hagen—he’s an intern there.”

“Had she known him long?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. But I think maybe he did it.”

“Do you have any reason for thinking that, Terry?”

She shook her head. “Suzie was too busy to date a lot, but these things are usually about sex, aren’t they?”

Harry heard Mrs. Walker gasp and said, “I doubt it, this time. At the moment we’re thinking more in terms of an interrupted robbery.”

“But what did Suzie have worth stealing?” Ed Walker demanded, anger suddenly exploding from him. “She was just a young woman, a nurse still studying. She had no jewelry, no money. Just a TV and a cheap hi-fi.”

“Sometimes when people are looking for money to buy drugs, Mr. Walker, available is all that matters.”

Ed Walker stared down at the floor, unable to speak, and Harry touched his shoulder lightly in sympathy. “Thank you, sir,” he said quietly. “I won’t disturb you
anymore. When you’re ready to leave, a squad car will be waiting to take you home. We can talk again later.”

Harry interviewed the charge nurse next. Like Klosowski, Nurse Jim O’Farrell was blaming himself. “I told her she was no good for work, so she might as well go home,” he said in a stunned voice. “I did it. I sent her to her death.”

“Accidents and homicide are most often the result of a chain of events,” Harry told him. “Suzie had a migraine and couldn’t work. She would have had to go home anyway.”