The Decoy (4 page)

She does things like this after a job for Henry. Why, she couldn't have said.

Just as she couldn't have told you whether the sounds she's making now, as she pulls the barman into her, are real or fake or a little bit of both.

Next morning the sidewalks are covered in a filo crust of wet snow, towering crazily on the parked cars and the trash cans. Here and there, steam vents in the road have made melt holes, smoking lazily in the winter sunshine.

Claire buys a newspaper from the subway vendor to see if Bessie gets a mention in the theatre reviews. She does. 'Among the other cast members, Bessie Heron's energetic Sheep, Raoul Walsh's Mouse and Victoria Kolans' lithe and sexy Piglet all stand out.' She clips it to take home.

There's something on the second page about a body found in a hotel. The police haven't released any details.

===OO=OOO=OO===

When she gets to the tiny brownstone she shares with Bessie the other girl is still asleep, a shape huddled under the bedclothes. Claire wakes her anyway, hanging the Donna Karan dress back in Bessie's closet. She empties the pockets first. A sliver of card falls to the floor. The lawyer's business card.

'I'm worried about you,' Bessie's voice says from under her comforter.

'Why? It was fun.'

'Bullshit. It was meaningless sex with a total stranger.'

Claire grins. 'That, too.'

'It's not safe.'

'He used a rubber.'

Bessie's head emerges from the bedclothes. 'Not safe sex, stupid. Safe
life.''

'Bessie,' Claire says evenly, 'do you ever think you might just be a tiny bit paranoid? I mean, what the fuck is
this?'

She's holding up the thing she's just found in Bessie's underwear drawer
—
gingerly, in case it's loaded.

'What do you think? It's a pistol, Claire.'

'OK, I can see that. What's it doing next to your panties?'

'It was a present from my dad.'

'But you really wanted a doll's house that Christmas, right?'

'A
leaving
present. In case I ever need to protect myself in the big bad city.'

Claire puts the gun back carefully in its hiding place. She takes out a jersey, a shirt and some black Alaia leggings and tosses them onto the bed.

'Then again,' Bessie says thoughtfully, 'I might need to shoot the person who steals all my clothes.'

Claire jumps onto the bed. 'Who needs fashion labels when you're a star?'

'What's that supposed to mean?'

Claire hits her with the paper. 'Review. The management summary is, you're brilliant. An energetic and outstanding contribution to the history of the musical. And here, three months' rent. Sorry it's so late.'

Offered both the paper and the money, Bessie grabs the paper first.

===OO=OOO=OO===

Frank has back-up now, three good detectives who'll be working the case with him: Forster, Weeks, Positano. Their supervisors are crawling all over the four of them already, all the way to the top. All wanting to review the paperwork and offer an opinion.

The paperwork. Frank's been in since dawn, tapping the initial crime scene report into the computer on his desk.

These days, he's heard, they teach touch-typing in police college.

But he'll bet they don't teach you how to tell a man his wife has been found dead and violated in a hotel room.

And they certainly can't teach you how to tell if he already knows.

===OO=OOO=OO===

'Sir, can you think of any reason, any reason at all, why your wife should book a hotel just a short distance from your apartment?'

Christian Vogler shakes his head. 'She told me she was going to her sister's,' he mutters.

He's a tall, dark-skinned man, his hair cropped so short he might as well be bald, with the kind of physique that makes Frank think of turn-of-the-century prizefighters: a barrel chest on narrow hips, the body shape contrasting oddly with an immaculate three-piece suit, lace-up shoes and cufflinks. Frank estimates him at around forty, forty-one. A fair bit older than his wife.

Vogler's voice is soft, almost a whisper, as he answers their questions, though that might be from shock. He has just come from the mortuary, where he has identified the blotchy, marbled remains of his wife. The pathologist, or one of her assistants, had wrapped a cloth round the neck, covering the ligature mark, like a napkin folded round a bottle of wine. Even so, Stella Vogler hadn't been a pleasant sight.

Frank had deliberately scheduled this interview for immediately afterwards, the moment of maximum distress.

'And you?' Mike Positano prompts. 'Where were
you
three nights ago?'

'I was working late. At the library.' He shrugs. 'Stella was away. There was no reason to go home.'

'She called you,' Frank says. He shows Vogler the printout from the hotel computer. 'She called you from her room. This
is
your home number?'

'Yes. But I wasn't there.'

'Well, that's another thing we're having trouble understanding, sir,' Positano says gently. 'You see, according to this record, she was on the phone for nearly three minutes.'

There's a silence, then Christian Vogler says, 'She must have been checking to see if there were any messages. You can access our machine from an external phone.'

'Did you notice any messages when you got back?'

'We had separate voicemail.'

Frank notes the use of the past tense. In his experience, relatives generally took about a week to start speaking of the deceased that way.

'Or she could have been
leaving
a message,' Positano suggests. 'For you. Telling you where she was.'

Vogler blinks slowly. Now that Frank has had a little time to study him, he notices the almost arrogant way the tall man holds their gaze, the hint of disdain in his cold green eyes. 'There was no message.'

'We may want to take your machine in so our technical people can take a look,' Positano says. Vogler shrugs his assent and crosses his legs. The shoes are immaculately polished. Frank wonders if they're handmade.

'Mr Vogler, did anyone see you at the library? Anyone who could vouch for you?'

'There were people there, sure, but I don't know any of them.' He stares at Frank. 'You can't possibly think… Do I need a lawyer?'

Frank sighs ostentatiously.

===OO=OOO=OO===

While Vogler is phoning his attorney, Positano says, 'There's one born every minute.'

'There's one finds out every minute, too,' Frank says.

'Think he's the perp?'

'Too early to say. But he's got a lot of composure for someone who's just been bereaved.'

Positano nods. 'What about VICAP?'

VICAP — the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program —
is a database set up by the FBI to track serial offenders as they move around the country. Thirty pages of computerized forms to fill in, just to tell you whether or not your crime resembles another one that hasn't been solved yet, either.

'Even if we get a match, VICAP won't tell us why Stella was in that hotel room. That's the first nut we've got to crack.' Frank gets to his feet and drops the Starbucks cup of cold latte into the trash, carefully, so the liquid won't splatter his trousers. 'We're done for now, anyway. Vogler's lawyer will tell him to shut up until he gets here.'

'And afterwards, if I know lawyers,' Positano says morosely.

===OO=OOO=OO===

The medical examiner places her scalpel on Stella's right shoulder and carefully cuts down towards the centre of the chest. She has to hold the breast out of the way to make the cut straight. Then she cuts again, from the other shoulder, so the two lines meet just below the ribs. From there the scalpel goes in a straight line, down Stella Vogler's stomach.

A gym-toned body, Durban thinks. The stomach lightly muscled. All those hours on the Stairmaster for this.

Her navel is complex and intricate, like the knotted mouth of a balloon. The pathologist's scalpel slices it in two, continuing all the way to her pudenda.

Which has been shaved, roughly, to reveal the bruising Dr Ling spoke of at the crime scene, a faint chromatograph of decay under the straw-coloured stubble. Dr Ling has also performed an internal examination, with the corpse's feet held up in stirrups in a grotesque parody of a gynaecological exam as the pathologist's gloved hand probed inside her.

'The vaginal rupture is about three inches by three-quarters of an inch,' she'd reported. 'It's a tear, not an incision.'

'What sort of implement are we talking about?'

'Well, it might not have been an implement. The tear is about the size of a human fist.'

Frank felt his mouth go dry. 'Could that have happened accidentally? During sex play?'

'I doubt it. Nature designed this part of the body for childbirth. It takes a lot to damage it.' The doctor met his eye. 'The reports came back from the lab. There were traces of glycol stearate on the vaginal swab.'

'What's that?'

'It's a compound used in moisturizing creams. At a guess, the killer used some on his hand as a lubricant. You might want to check the complimentary toiletries in the hotel room to see if one's missing.'

'We'll do that.' Frank made a note.

Now that the body has been cleaned up, a small round scar is visible on the inner thigh, no bigger than a dime. There appears to be some kind of pattern or relief within the hard, white tissue, like the brass rubbing of a coin.

'What's that?' Frank asks. 'Did the killer do this?'

'No. That scar's years old.'

'Any idea what might have caused it?'

'Maybe she got off a motorbike the wrong way in a pair of cutoffs and burned herself on the engine casing. Or she could have dropped something in her lap at a barbecue; it's just below the bikini line.' Dr Ling shrugs and turns back to her work.

The shears with which she cuts through the ribcage are as big as hedgecutters, and she grunts with the effort of forcing them closed.

Frank stands back. There's no smell in here, yet. Icy air roars from huge air-conditioning vents above their heads.

The pathologist puts on a mask and hauls guts out of the cavity, endless handfuls of grey intestine in which the other, more brightly coloured organs nestle. Occasionally she removes one, with deft movements of her scalpel, and hands it carefully to her assistant.

After a few minutes she stops and goes over to the bench where the organs have been placed in a line, awaiting further dissection.

'That's strange,' she says, pushing back her floater mask. 'We haven't got a full set here.'

'Sorry? I don't follow you.'

'The spleen is missing. Not one of the most spectacular organs — all it does is store red blood cells — but you wouldn't want to be without it.'

'Was it… taken?'

'I think we can assume so. There's no medical procedure which would account for it not being here.'

The pathologist and the policeman look at each other for a moment. Whatever either of them wants to say, whatever they are thinking, this is not the time or the place. Dr Ling returns to the body and busies herself with the chest cavity, cutting and slicing. When she straightens up, Frank can see all the way down through the opening to the white of the spine.

Stay professional, he tells himself.

Dr Ling moves up to the head and makes an incision across the temples. She folds down a flap of skin, exposing ivory-coloured bone, as neatly as a chambermaid turning down a bed.

'You need to go outside now,' she says, pulling her mask back on. 'You can watch through the glass.'

Next to her, on a trolley, is an array of power tools.

She selects one with a fine-toothed circular blade and thumbs the button. An electric motor begins to screech, making speech impossible.

A few moments later the air is a blizzard of bonemeal.

Claire says, 'I'm in a box.'

'Who put you in the box?'

'My father.'

'What else is in there?' The young man asking the questions is sitting opposite her, very close, his legs almost entwined with hers.

'A rat,' she says.

'What's the rat wearing?'

She thinks, but only for a second. 'A diamond ring.'

'Where does the ring come from?'

'A beautiful woman.'

'What else has the rat got?'

'A knife.'

'It sticks the knife where?'

'Into my stomach.'

'What comes out of the hole?'

'Snow.'

'What happens to the snow?'

'My father drinks it.'

Across the rehearsal space, Paul claps once to stop them and says, 'Not bad. But, Claire, you're still thinking too much. How many times do I have to tell you? Don't think, just say the very first thing that comes into your head.'

'Could they have done more with the ring idea?' another student suggests. 'The exercise seemed to kind of fizzle out at that point.'

'I agree,' Paul says. 'Claire, turn it around now. You ask Keith the questions.'

The acting class takes place in a large, pale rehearsal room near the university. There are just a dozen or so students, and Paul.

She remembers her audition with him four months ago. The NYU/Tisch courses were the best of the best, and many times oversubscribed. Even if she could pay the exorbitant fees, she'd known that getting into the class would be tough.

She'd prepared a monologue — Brecht, or Tennessee Williams: something worthy and literary — and sat nervously outside the audition room off Lafayette, waiting her turn with all the glamorous New York beauties, confident, willowy creatures who'd dismissed her with a glance. When at last it was her turn, she'd gone into the rehearsal room to find it empty, apart from a tiny, pixielike man in a plain black T-shirt. He was sitting on the only furniture in the room, a white table, playing with a plastic coffee spoon.

She told him her name, and he pretended to write it down on a clipboard with the spoon. Then he looked at the spoon, puzzled, as if surprised it wouldn't write. Dipping it in an imaginary pot of ink, he flicked it at her.

Immediately she put her fingers up to her eye and wiped the imaginary ink away. He nodded.