Seven Ways to Die (26 page)

“How long will this take?” Cody asked.

“Can’t say for sure,” the wizard answered. “Right now he’s floating because ice is lighter than water. When he goes down and is fully immersed, he’ll thaw faster. Normally the lungs, which are ninety-percent water, would thaw first but we have to wait until the body and skin temperature rises to about 82.4 degrees to preserve the tissue before we start cutting. So blood will thaw first; it’s eighty-three percent water. He was probably dead by the time his temp dropped to 82.4. How long you figure he was in the icebox?”

“I’d say, roughly, 2 a.m. to 8:30 when we started moving him.”

“Six-plus hours at zero Fahrenheit,” Wolf muttered. “I’m guessing he was dead, hell, little guy that size, in probably two hours max. Depends on some other things. What he ate, if there was anything else contributing to death, stuff like that.” He paused and added, ”That was cruel, undressing him like that.”

“And no signs of a struggle,” Annie said.

“That’s because he was heavily drugged,” said Wolf. “Hypothermia begins at about ninety-five degrees. There would be intense shivering. By the time it drops to ninety-three the tremors would be severe, other abnormal body reactions would also set in—-hallucinations, delirium. Look at him, totally relaxed, hands in his lap. He was deeply unconscious when all the bodily reactions normally start. Perhaps he was dead before he was put in the freezer.”

Cody said, “That was Si’s guess.”

The Wolf turned to Simon. “Based on what?” he asked.

“Hunch.”

“You mean the idea just floated into his head?” Wolf said with a grin.

“Well, look at the set up. I don’t think this was a revenge killing or some impulsive thing. It’s just weird. So, I’m guessing it’s Androg’s work and if it is, the obvious cause of death will not be what killed him.”

Wolf looked back at the body which was slowly beginning to roll on its face.

“Good guess,” Wolf said, turning his attention to Annie Rothschild. “You ready for the toxicology tests?”

“Uh huh. I’m doing an analysis of the wine while we wait for blood samples and stomach contents. I think it was spiked.”

“How come?”

“I think that’s why the bottle and glass were next to the body. Like Si said, sooner or later Androg’s going to start bragging. Smell the bottle.”

Wolf picked it up, looked at the label. “Nobile di Montepulciano, 1986. Good year.” He took a sniff, lowered the bottle for a second, then took another. “It’s very faint.”

“Yeah. I didn’t notice anything until I started setting up the test sample.”

Wolf handed Cody the bottle.

“Take a whiff.”

Cody held it a few inches from his nose and moved it slowly back and forth, then leaned close and took a hefty smell.

“Chlorine, maybe?”

“Hardly discernible.”

“But it’s there,” Annie said and Wolf nodded agreement.

“So you’re guessing what? Chloral hydrate?” Cody said.

“Good old-fashioned knockout drops,” Wolf nodded. “If so, our killer slipped Uncle Tony a pretty strong mickey. It kicked in when he started eating and he fell face forward right into his dinner. Make that number one on the toxicology list, Annie.”

“Already have,” she answered.

“So the immediate cause of death was freezing,” Wolf said. “We’re looking for the proximate cause—what really killed him. I’m guessing we’ll find that in the blood sample.”

“And it won’t be drugs or thermal,” said Cody.

Annie nodded agreement. “Too obvious,” she said.

Cody thought for a moment and then pressed the button on his headset. “Hue?”

“Right here.”

“How’re you doing?”

“Ready for you.”

“Good. We’ll be over in a few minutes. Bring up Wolf’s list on the big board.”

“Gotcha.”

31

Sunday, October 28

Lou Stinelli was finishing his first cup of coffee and perusing the Sunday Times obits when he stopped at a headline.

“I’ll be damned,” he said.

“What is it?” Valerie asked, as she refilled his cup and doctored it with the usual three sugars and a generous dose of heavy cream.

“Remember Steamroller Jackson?”

She rolled her eyes. “Steamroller Jackson! How could I ever forget Steamroller Jackson, your old high school buddy? Our second date and almost our last, Mister Macho. I hated prizefighting then and I still hate it.”

Stinelli laughed, recalling the disastrous evening.

“Steamroller decked Jersey Kaminsky in the first round. You could hear that right connect in Albany and old Jersey went straight to the canvas…limp as a bag of marbles, and you…”

“Don’t start…”

“….almost fainted. I had to put your head down around your knees…”

“I
said…”

“Okay, okay, darlin’.” He raised his hands in surrender. “Christ, that was over thirty years ago. You got a memory like an elephant.”

“Are you kidding, Louis? That’s one night I’ll never forget.”

“Well, you can forget old Steamroller. Poor guy died late Friday night. Found in an alley yesterday morning, slumped against a brick wall. Apparent heart attack. Says he probably o.d.’d on cocaine or alcohol. He was only sixty-one.”

“Oh!” She said, covering her lips with her fingertips. The private phone line rang, interrupting any further conversation. Stinelli scowled at it.

“Damn it,” he said, “it’s Sunday morning. I haven’t finished the God damn paper yet. Take a number. Tell whoever it is I’m in the shower or something.”

 “You’d have me lie my soul into hell just so you can finish the paper,” she said sternly as she lifted the receiver.

“Hello,” she said sweetly.

“Good morning, Mizz Stinelli, this is…”

“I’d know that voice in my sleep, Micah. He says to tell you he’s in the shower—or something.”

“I’m sorry, Val, but it’s important.”

She looked over at Stinelli. “Is it going to ruin his day of rest?” Cody hesitated a second and said, “Just tell him I said Androg.”

“Androg?”

Stinelli looked up sharply. He jumped up and took the receiver.

“Micah?”

“Good morning, chief. Sorry to…”

“What about Androg?”

“He hit again.”

“How do you know it’s Androg?”

“Cause of death disguised. But that’s not the really bad news, Lou. The victim is Tony Crosetti.”

“Uncle Tony? My God what happened? When?”

“About one-thirty or two yesterday morning. Jimmy Farrell and I found him at about eight. Mama Crosetti called Jim because Crosetti didn’t come home Friday night. I happened to jog by Venezia while Jim was sitting there so we made a crime scene entry. We found Tony in the meat freezer. He was naked, sitting in a chair, frozen solid as an iceberg.”

“Oh, my God! Where are you?”

“At the Loft. Wolf’s doing the autopsy. So far it’s a state secret. We got him out of there fast. There aren’t many people around there at that time of day. The sign in the window of the restaurant says it’s closed due to illness in the family.”

“Christ, Cody, you can’t keep this quiet.”

“Jimmy’s going to front it. I expect the autopsy shortly but Farrell will make a prelim report that the cause of death is pending an autopsy tomorrow. He’ll blame it on the weekend.”

“Every cop in the lower end of Manhattan knows Tony.”

“None of the cops know any details and Jimmy won’t be talking; he’s busy helping with the funeral arrangements.”

Stinelli rubbed the back of his neck as he paced the kitchen.

“You know you got one helluva Monday coming up, pal. Two murders plus I promised you’d meet with that guy Hamilton about the Cramer case.”

“Don’t worry, chief, I’ll take care of it. Look, we got a very slick killer on our hands. The longer we keep it in the closet the better.”

Stinelli thought for a moment or two more.

“Okay…okay. But keep me up to speed on this. You turn up anything new,
anything
, you call me.”

“Maybe the less you know the better.”

“You let me decide what I should and shouldn’t know. Just keep me informed, kid. We clear on that?”

“Clear.”

Stinelli cradled the phone and sat down. He and Valerie had a rule: He never discussed business with his wife. But she knew
Lo Zio
and Venezia was one of their favorite restaurants. It was less than a mile from his office at One Police Plaza.

“Uncle Tony’s dead,” he said. “That’s all we know so far.” He took her hand as she sat down beside him, her eyes tearing up.

“Who’s Androg?” she asked.

“One of the bad guys.”

Δ

Vinnie Hue was ready for the Sunday morning briefing. He had all the photographs and comments from the scene of Tony Crosetti’s murder as well as the exterior front and rear shots of the Venezia prepared for projection on the big board.

There was another addition: an alphabetical list of the categories with which forensic pathologists break down and identify how homicide victims are killed. They varied from one pathologist to the next but basically were pretty much the same. It was typical of the mordant humor of the enclave, much of it initiated by Vinnie, that the list, in his comic book script, was headed “Wolf’s Biggest Hits”:

1. Blunt trauma

2. Cutting, stabbing, piercing

3. Drowning

4. Drugs, including poisons

5. Gunshot

6. Suffocation

7. Thermal (electric, freezing, fire)

Individually, serial killers usually employed the same method to kill; strangulation and stabbing were popular because they enjoyed watching their victims die. Ted Bundy, one of its more prolific practitioners, once described serial killing as “a contact sport.”

Nearby in the lab, Wolf had moved the thawed corpse to the stainless steel table and was dictating his findings into an overhead mike.

Only Wolf, Rizzo and Bergman were absent. Rizzo was a few blocks away preparing to interview anyone who might have seen the killer. He was at a distinct disadvantage. Anyone working in the restaurants or on the street within view of the Venezia during the crucial hours between one and three a.m. would not be showing up for work until late afternoon. Bergman, meanwhile, had returned to the scene to go over Tony Crosetti’s receipts from Friday night, hoping something familiar might turn up since he was the last customer to leave the place. It was a long shot but at this point everything was.

But Larry Simon had some surprises for the crew and had provided Hue with several photographs and some documents for a presentation he would make following Cody’s briefing.

Simon sat back in his chair, patiently watching the panorama of death flick across the big screen as an obviously edgy Cody described in detail how Charley had led Cody and Jim Farrell to the freezer and thus to the harrowing discovery.

There was a murmur of discomfort as the first grotesque photo of Uncle Tony’s frozen corpse flashed six-feet high on the board. The entire crew was aware of the murder by then, but since they all knew the victim, the bizarre scene conveyed to each an ineffable sense of melancholy, of sorrow, despair, and, ultimately, anger. Nor did anyone in the room doubt for a moment that this was the work of the psychopath they knew only as Androg.

Cody gave them a moment to compose themselves before continuing, playing Annie Rothschild’s description of the entire scene.

“I think it’s safe to say we won’t be finding any DNA except perhaps Crosetti’s,” she said. “There’s no blood anywhere. We dusted the office and freezer and picked up some prints but I’m guessing they’re either Tony’s or the nephew’s. We’ll be checking his clothes for fibers, prints, anything that might give us a lead but the team agrees that our killer undressed him in the office, not at the freezer as I originally thought. The killer had more room and could stack the clothes in the closet where we found them and get them out of the way. This was a very carefully planned and executed homicide, just like Handley’s.”

“Rizzo and Bergman are canvassing the area with a team of Farrell’s best detectives,” Cody said. “Hopefully he’ll find someone who saw Androg or his car in the lot. And we’re waiting for Wolf to complete the autopsy. I’m sure he’ll have something to add.”

“Is there any possible connection between Crosetti and Handley?” Kate Winters said.

“Well, we’re pretty sure the killer was in the place at least once before this morning.”

“Not much help there,” Ryan said. “The place is crowded every night.”

“Typical,” said Simon. “Our killer’s hiding in plain sight.”

Before he could continue Wolf and Annie entered the room. He was still wearing blue scrubs and booties but had removed the blouse. The sleeves of his plaid shirt were rolled up to the elbows and he was drying off his hands with paper towels Annie was handing him one at a time from the roll she carried.

“Well,” he said, tossing a used towel into a waste basket, “we haven’t done the toxicology reports yet, but I can tell you how Tony Crosetti was killed.”

The entire crew turned their attention to Wolfsheim, which is how he liked it.

“He was drugged with a dose of chloral hydrate. He was nearly comatose when he died but he was dead before the freezer door was closed.”

“Okay,” Cody said, “what’s the kicker?”

“He was drowned,” Wolfsheim answered.

“We found diatoms, a form of plant life that lives in water,” Annie nodded. “When a person drowns, their lungs fill with water and the microscopic diatoms burst through the lungs and enter the blood stream. They move rapidly through the blood stream and throughout the body and ultimately settle in the bone marrow. Cut a bone and if it contains diatoms, it is a drowning.”