"WHO?" asked Danny the next morning after Stella finished reading the E-mail message on the screen in front of her.
Danny hadn't slept well. He dreamt of a chain dangling in the cold wind and himself slowly sliding down it, trying to hold on, his hands slipping, knowing he would eventually run out of chain and fall into the darkness below him. It was a long dream. He remembered calling out for help below but no one could hear him at that distance in the darkness and the whistling wind. He had been happy to get out of bed at five and get to work.
"Jacob Laudano," Stella said.
Danny looked over her shoulder at the screen and read out loud, "Jacob the Jockey?"
"That's what he's called," she said.
"He's a jockey?"
"Was," she said.
"Which means…" Danny began.
"He's probably small," said Stella. "Let's…"
She used the mouse and hit more keys.
"The last time he was pulled in, that was last August, he stood four ten and weighed ninety pounds. Look at his rap sheet."
Danny looked. The list was long and included an arrest for stabbing a prostitute and five other arrests for bar fights, all involving knives.
"Laudano is a known associate of Steven Guista," said Stella.
"What do we do?" he asked.
"Attach a ninety-pound weight to that chain," she said. "Lower it twelve feet and see if it holds."
"We'll need more chain," said Danny.
"We'll need more chain," Stella agreed. "But that can wait. Guista's bakery truck was picked up last night. It's at an impound on Staten Island."
"So we're going there first?" asked Danny.
Stella shook her head "no" and said, "First we go to Brooklyn."
"Brooklyn," Danny repeated. "Why?"
"Guista took a car service from a location in Brooklyn last night," said Stella, reaching for a report next to her desk and handing it to Danny. "We check the company. Find out where he went. Should be easy. One of the two kids who took Guista's truck for a spin remembered Guista, the time and the car."
"It's going to be a busy day," said Danny. "What about Laudano, the Jockey?"
"Flack is on it," she said.
"He should be in bed," said Danny.
"He should be in the hospital," said Stella, "but he's not. He's on the street. Let's go."
"Since we're on the subject of hospitals," he said. "You're not looking any better."
"I'm fine."
"Your face is red," he said. "You have a fever."
She ignored his comment and put the computer in sleep mode, dropped a small stack of reports in a file folder, and stood up.
"The Jockey," Danny said almost to himself. "Who would have thought? It makes no sense."
"Why not?" asked Stella, leading the way out of the lab.
"A crooked union boss with mob connections hires a circus act to murder a witness? A strong man and a…" Don asked.
"Little person," Stella completed.
"Why?" asked Danny. "They were sure to be noticed."
Stella picked up her kit in one hand and her file folder in the other. Danny took her place at the computer.
"Maybe we're supposed to think it's a circus act," she said.
"Red herring?" asked Danny.
"It smells fishy," she said with a smile.
Danny groaned.
Stella left the lab, went to the elevator, and pushed the button for the lobby. Stella coughed, a raspy cough.
"Why?" said Louisa Cormier's agent, Michelle King, a twitchy woman in her late forties. Like Louisa she was well groomed, thin, and dressed for business in a black suit and white blouse. She did not have her client's good looks, but she made up for it with a handsome, confident severity. The room smelled of cigarettes and a flowered spray scent.
Aiden sat in one chair of King's office on Madison Avenue. King played with a pencil, tapping it impatiently against the top of her mahogany desk.
"Why?" Michelle King asked again.
Mac looked at her for ten seconds and said, "We can go to our offices and discuss this. I don't think you'd like it there. Dead bodies and evidence from things people don't like to touch or even see."
"I did advise Louisa to get a gun and keep it loaded in her apartment," Michelle King said, reaching for a cigarette in a packet in one of her desk drawers.
"You mind?" she asked, unsteadily holding up the cigarette.
"We won't arrest you for it, if that's what you're asking," Mac said. Smoking was illegal in New York City buildings. "Besides, many of the people we have to deal with smoke," Mac said. "We accept it. One of the hazards of the job."
"Second-hand smoke?" Michelle King asked lighting up with a silver-plated lighter. "It's a myth created by anti-smoking fanatics who have nothing better to do."
"And first-hand murder," said Mac. "Is that a myth?"
The agent looked at Aiden, who said nothing, which seemed to unnerve King more than Mac's questions.
"All right," King said. "I advised her to get a gun, even suggested the kind she might get, one just like mine."
"Can we look at yours?" asked Mac.
"You think I shot that man?" she asked, blowing out a plume of smoke and pausing in her pencil tapping.
"We know he's dead," said Mac.
"Why on earth would Louisa or I want to kill this man, whoever he was?"
"His name was Charles Lutnikov," said Aiden. "He was a writer."
"Never heard of him," King said, putting out her cigarette.
"Your name and phone number were in his address book," said Mac.
"My-?" King said.
"He called your office three times last week," said Aiden. "It's in his phone records."
"I never spoke to him," King insisted.
"Your secretary?" asked Mac.
"Wait, the name does ring a bell," said King. "I think that may have been the name of the person who kept leaving his number. The message from Amy, my assistant, was that he said he had something important to tell me."
"But you didn't call him back?"
She shrugged.
"Amy said he sounded nervous, was very insistent and… well, I'm an agent. I've got lots of oddballs wanting to talk to me about their ideas for books. One of Amy's jobs is to keep them away from me."
"But this oddball lived in the same apartment building as one of your biggest clients," said Aiden.
"My biggest client," King corrected. "I was unaware of that."
She reached into her desk drawer suddenly and came up with a small gun which she pointed at Aiden. Neither detective flinched.
"My gun," King said, handing it across her desk.
Mac took it and handed it to Aiden who examined it and said, "Never been fired."
"Not even loaded," said King. "It's like a chenille blanket I had when I was a little girl. I keep it around for comfort and a sense of security, which I delude myself is real."
"What happens to the manuscripts of Louisa Cormier's books after she gives them to you?" Mac asked.
"She doesn't give me manuscripts," said King. "She E-mails me her manuscripts as attachments. I read them and send them on to her editor. Louisa's work requires very little editing by me or the publisher."
King picked up the pencil again, considered tapping it, changed her mind, and put it down.
"What about the first three books," said Mac.
King looked at him warily.
"The first three books were… a little rough," King said. "They needed work. How did you know?"
"I read them last night, as well as the fourth and fifth," said Mac. "Something changed."
"With experience and confidence, Louisa's work, I'm pleased to say, has steadily improved," said King.
"Do you keep her books on your hard drive?" asked Mac.
"I have hard copies made in addition to disk copies of all Louisa's books," King said.
"We'd like to borrow the disks," Mac said.
"I'll have Amy make copies for you," she said, "but why would you- "
"We won't take any more of your time right now," said Mac, rising.
Aiden got up too.
King remained seated.
"We'll be in touch," said Mac, going to the door.
"I sincerely hope not," said King, reaching for her cigarettes.
When they got past the reception area and into the hall, Aiden said, "She's lying."
"About?"
"Those first books," said Aiden.
Mac nodded.
"You noticed," she said.
"She's protecting her golden calf," said Mac.
"So?" asked Aiden.
"Let's go see Louisa Cormier."
Stella saw the red, amoeba-shaped splotch of blood on a low snowbank on the sidewalk next to a black plastic garbage bag.
The driver, a Nigerian named George Apappa, had taken her to the spot where he had dropped the man who had bled on his backseat. George had noticed the blood as soon as he got to his home in Jackson Heights. He couldn't miss the blood. The man had left a small puddle on the floor and a dark, still-moist streak on the seat.
It had taken George almost an hour to clean the bloodstains. He got into bed with his wife at two in the morning and the phone rang at six- his dispatcher, telling him to get into the garage immediately. He told Stella all this with the sound of a man who had planned to sleep until noon, but instead had dragged himself out of bed, half expecting to be told he was fired when he got to the garage. Stella had a feeling the twenty she slipped him would help him get over his lack of sleep.
Stella could feel him watching her from the car as she wiped her nose and took a picture of the mound of snow, then scooped up some of the snow with a shovel and dropped it in a plastic bag.
She started to move slowly along the sidewalk, pausing every few steps to take another photograph. The trail of blood was reasonably easy to follow, frozen in place. Few pedestrians had yet trampled the icy sidewalk.
Stella put the back of her left hand against her forehead and felt both moisture and fever. She had a thermometer in her kit, but it was reserved for the dead. She had taken three aspirin back at the lab along with a glass of orange juice. She had no hope for this remedy.
It took her four minutes to find the doorway. There were blood splatters on the door, not thick, but visible. There was blood on the doorstop and something yellowish-brown that looked like vomit. She took photographs, got a sample of the yellow-brown goop, and started to stand when she noticed a spot of white in the crevice of the concrete step. She knelt again. It was a tooth, a bloody tooth. She bagged it and rose to check the listing of the names of the tenants of the building lined up, white on black, near the right side of the door. The names meant nothing to her. She wrote all six down in her notebook.
Whatever had happened here had happened just before ten, according to the driver's log. It was possible someone inside had heard whatever it was that caused someone to vomit and lose what looked like a reasonably healthy tooth.
Stella rubbed her hands together and called Danny Messer at the lab.
"Check out these names," she said. "Got a pen?"
"You sound terrible," he said.
"I sound terrible," she agreed. "The names."
She read off the names slowly, spelling each one.
"Got it," he said.
"Check them all out. If you find something, call me back. Guista may have been on his way to see one of them last night when something went wrong."
"What?" he asked.
"I'm sending what I've got over to you with a cabbie," she said. "Pay my fare. I've already given him a tip."
Stella tried to hold back a cough. She couldn't do it.
"Stella…" Danny started, but she cut him off.
"Got to go."
She clicked off and went to the car where George Apappa sat, head back, eyes closed. She opened her kit, dropped the digital disk of photos, the blood samples, the bloody tooth, and the clump of vomit, all separately bagged, into a zippered insulated bag. Then she opened the driver's side door.
George awoke and had the bag in his hand before he could speak.
She gave him the CSI address and told him to put the bag directly in the hands of Daniel Messer, who would be waiting for it. Messer, she said, would pay whatever the charge was. She handed him a ten dollar bill on top of that.
There was a beat in which she saw George wanted to ask what this was all about, but he didn't. He placed the bag on the seat next to him as Stella closed the door.
This time when Louisa Cormier opened the door for Mac and Aiden she was not quite so bright and bubbling. She looked as if she hadn't slept and she was wearing what looked like an oversized flowered smock. Her hair was in place, as was her make-up, but not as perfect as the day before.
She stepped back to let them in.
"Michelle, my agent, called to tell me I should expect you," she said.
Neither Mac nor Aiden spoke.
"You suspect me of having killed that man in the elevator," she said calmly.
Mac and Aiden were expressionless.
"Please, let's sit," said Louisa. "Coffee? Good manners die hard. Unfortunate choice of words, but…"
"No, thank you," Mac said for both of them.
The three stood just inside the door.
"Well I was just having one so if you don't mind…" she said and headed for the kitchen. "Please, have a seat."
Mac and Aiden moved to the table by the window. A cold fog had settled over Manhattan. There wasn't much to see besides a few lights through the dense gray and the peaks of skyscrapers over the cloud.
"I'm sorry," Louisa Cormier said, cup of steaming coffee in hand, sitting at the table in the same seat she had been in the day before. "I've been up all night working. Michelle may have told you I have a book due by the end of the week, not that my publisher will do anything about my being late, but I'm never late. Writing for a living is a job. I think it's wrong to be late for work. Sorry, I'm rambling a bit. I'm tired and I've just been told I'm a murder suspect."
"Gun residue," said Mac.
"I know what it is," she said. "Bits, traces of powder left when a gun has been fired."
"It's hard to clean off," said Aiden.
Both CSI investigators looked at Louisa Cormier's hands. They were scrubbed red.
"You want to check my hands for gunpowder residue?" she asked.
"Gunpowder residue can be transferred from a person's hand to another object they touch," said Mac.
"Interesting," said Louisa, working on her coffee.
"When we were here yesterday, you touched a few things," Mac continued.
Louisa was alert now.
"You stole something from my apartment?" she said.
Mac ignored the question. He was giving her as little as possible. Neither he nor Aiden had taken anything.
"You fired a gun recently," Aiden said.
Mac thought he detected the hint of a smile on the author's face.
"You have no way of knowing that," said Louisa. "You've not examined my hands and I doubt you would take an item of my clothing without a warrant."
Aiden and Mac did not respond.
"However," Louisa said, "you may do so. I think you will find residue on my right hand. I fired a gun at a nearby range two days ago, just before the storm. I think I should call my lawyer," Louisa said with a smile.
"Press will find out," said Mac. "But you have the right to call a lawyer before you answer any more questions."
Louisa Cormier hesitated.
"I told you I did fire a weapon," she said. "I test all the weapons I use in my books. Weight, noise, kick-back, size. I was at the range two days ago. I told you. It's Drietch's on Fifty-eighth Street. I'll give you the address. You can check with Mathew Drietch."
"What was the weapon?" Aiden asked.
"A.22," she said.
"Like the one in your desk," said Mac.
"Exactly. I decided to write about a weapon like the one I own," she said.
"Lutnikov was killed with a.22," said Mac.
"I found the bullet at the bottom of the elevator shaft," said Aiden.
"We'll find a weapon," said Mac. "And we'll match the bullet to it. You said you didn't own any gun but the one you showed us yesterday," said Mac.
"I don't," Louisa answered. "Mathew Drietch has a gun just like mine. He has hundreds of guns. You can chose the one you want to use. Mr. Drietch was quite happy to let me do so."
"You wouldn't know where that.22 is now, would you?" asked Mac.
"I presume it's safely locked away at the firing range," said Louisa.
"You mind if we search your apartment?" asked Mac. "We can get a warrant."
"I do mind if you search my apartment," she said, "but if you get your warrant and do so, you'll find no weapon here other than the gun in my desk, which you know has not been fired recently."
"One more question," said Mac.
"No more questions," Louisa said gently. "My lawyer's name is Lindsey Terry. He's in the phone book. I'm sorry if I'm a bit edgy but I haven't slept and…"
"I read some of your books last night," Mac said.
"Oh," said Louisa. "Which ones?"
"Another Woman's Nightmare, Woman in the Dark, A Woman's Place," said Mac.
"My first three," Louisa said. "Did you like them?"
"They got better after those three," he said.
"I've always thought the first three were my best," said Louisa. "Did You read the others?"
"Two of them," said Mac.
"You're a fast reader."
"I did a lot of skimming. I'm asking a professor of linguistics at Columbia to take a look at your books," Mac said.
"What on earth for?" Louisa said.
"I think you know," said Mac.
"You have my lawyer's name," Louisa said somberly. "Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to finish my book and get some rest."
When Aiden and Mac were in the small reception area in front of the elevator, Aiden said, "She did it."
"She did it," Mac agreed. "Now let's prove it."
They started toward the front entrance, footsteps a chill echo. In front of them, about twenty yards away, stood a lean man in his late twenties or early thirties. The expressionless, pale, clean-shaven man in jeans and a blue T-shirt and a down Eddie Bauer jacket had his hands folded in front of him as he watched Aiden and Mac approach.
When the detectives were a few yards away from him, he stepped in their path.
"You're investigating the murder of Charles Lutnikov," he said, his voice even, speaking slowly.
"That's right," said Mac.
"I killed him," the man said.
He was trembling.
"How are you doing?" Stella asked, standing back a few feet so she wouldn't breathe on Danny.
She was sick, no doubt about it. Temperature, chills, slight nausea.
Nausea was no stranger to CSI investigators, and Stella was no exception. She seldom wore a mask at a crime scene no matter how foul the smell, no matter how long a body had lain in a bathtub bloating and emitting up a putrid, familiar stench.
The last time she had held back the unplanned rush of bile had been two weeks earlier when she and Aiden had gone to the home of a cat lady in a brownstone on the East Side. A uniformed cop had been at the door, a look of disgust on his face, which he made no attempt to hide.
Stella and Aiden had gone in and been hit by the reek, the sound of dozens of cats howling, and a sweltering heat from radiators along the walls. The dark room smelled of death, urine and feces.
"Let's not play macho," Stella had said.
Aiden had nodded and they had put on the masks in their kit and made their way to the bedroom where they found the corpse of the old woman in the print dress. Dried vomit was on her chest. Wide eyes stared at the ceiling. Something crawled at the edge of her mouth, and a large orange cat sat on her distended stomach and hissed at the two women.
"Check with the officer," said Stella. "If he hasn't called Animal Control, have him do it now."
With that and the sound of her own voice speaking inside her, Stella reminded herself that this was what she did, what had to be done, and that she did it better than anyone else.
And so she had spent an hour in the filth, which had begun to accumulate long before the woman died. An examination of the body by Hawkes showed that the woman, who looked as if she had been strangled, had instead died after a heart attack, which caused her to choke on her own vomit.
Danny's back was turned to her. He held up a corked test tube with a yellow viscous liquid inside.
"Last time," he said. "You're sick. You should be in bed."
"It's a cold," she said.
He shook his head.
"I'm taking care of it. I had some tea," she said.
"One small step for mankind," he said.
Stella ignored him and asked, "What did you find?"
"Whoever produced this vomit, should change his diet," said Danny. "He's using his stomach to store and process fat. He had both pepperoni and some kind of sausage, also a large quantity of pasta with a spicy sauce that on a scale of one to ten I'd give an ah caramba."
"Danny," Stella said with barely veiled impatience.
"Flour," Danny said. "Unprocessed, unbleached. This guy has been breathing in flour."
"You tested the flour?" she said, holding back a sniffle.
"Traces in the vomit. Marco's Bakery. Perfect match to our sample," he said.
"And the rubber marks in the hallway of the bakery definitely match the heels of Collier's shoes?" asked Stella.
"All trails lead back to Marco's Bakery," he said.
He put the test tube down and turned to her.
"Mind if I make a clinical observation?" he said. He didn't wait for an answer. "Your nose is as red as a maraschino cherry."
"Stella the red-nosed CSI investigator," she said.
"No kidding," Danny said. "You should be- "
"I thought you said you were finished with playing doctor," she said.
Danny shrugged.
"Want to know about the blood work?" she asked.
He nodded.
"As expected, most of the samples from the sidewalk and the doorway match Guista's," she said. "He's losing a lot of blood. If he hasn't already, he'll pass out soon if he doesn't get to a doctor. But there's also blood from someone else."
Danny sat on a lab stool. Stella sank slowly into another one.
"Guista gets shot by Flack," she said. "He drives his bakery truck to Brooklyn, abandons the truck in front of a deli, takes a car. Gets out and walks half a block. Someone's waiting for him."
"And someone gets a surprise," said Danny. "My guess: Guista hits him hard. He throws up, bleeds, loses a tooth. Guista's on the run again. Or on a slow walk."
Stella nodded and said, "Something like that. The kids who took the bakery truck said he used the telephone. Did you check the call?"
Danny shook his head. "I'll check it now. You go home."
The look she gave him made Danny decide to end his crusade to get Stella to take care of herself. Finally.
"Did you check the names of the people in that apartment building?"
"Thought you'd never ask," said Danny. "All but one has an arrest record."
"So- " Stella began.
"The one without the arrest record is a Lynn Contranos," he said.
"You look absolutely glutinous with self approbation," Stella said.
"With…?"
"It's from a Hitchcock movie," she said, wiping her nose. "What about her?"
"Lynn Contranos aka Helen Grandfield," he said. "Dario Marco's trusted assistant."
Stella nodded.
"But that's not all," Danny said adjusting his glasses, eager. "Helen Grandfield's name, before she married Stanley Contranos, who is doing a minimum of ten to twenty for Murder Two, was Helen Marco, niece of Anthony Marco who is on trial as we speak. Ergo, Dario Marco is her father."
"All roads lead back to Marco's Bakery," said Stella. "Let's pay them another visit."
"And take a couple of uniforms with us?" he asked.
Stella nodded and reached into her pocket for the small plastic bottle of tablets Sheldon Hawkes had given her less than an hour ago.
"Might make you more tired," Hawkes had said. "But it'll numb you down."
She opened the bottle.
The name of the young man who had confessed to the murder of Charles Lutnikov was Jordan Breeze, who lived on the third floor of the Belvedere Towers in a studio apartment. Breeze, a Drexel University graduate, was a computer programmer for an Indian company on 55th Street. His job was to create software programs to help track and map the universe.
Mac looked up from the folder in his hands into the eyes of Jordan Breeze and then back at the folder. Breeze had never been in trouble with the police, didn't belong to any radical groups. After questioning the neighbors, Mac had determined that he was a quiet tenant who always had a "good morning" for others. However, he had been seen less and less over the past few months. A number of other tenants had seen him at the Starbucks two blocks away working on his computer and a Grande Latte, but not for a while. Mac turned on the tape recorder.
"You're sure you don't want a lawyer?" Mac asked.
"Certain," said Breeze.
"Why did you kill him?" asked Mac.
"He called me a queer," said Breeze. "Not just once. Many times. I shuddered when I left my apartment in the morning or went back in the evening, afraid I'd run into him. I see the question in your eyes."
"What question?" asked Mac.
"Am I gay," said Breeze. "I'm not, but some of my friends are, and I'm not going to suffer homophobic fools. I took it for almost a year."
"And then," said Mac. "You killed him. How?"
"With a gun," said Breeze. "He was on the elevator. I could have avoided him if I had chosen to go down the stairs, but he would have seen me."
"You had the gun with you?" asked Mac.
"I did."
"You planned to kill him the next time he started in on you?"
"Yes," said Breeze. "I got in the elevator. The doors closed. He started…"
"He called me a skinny-ass fag," said Breeze. "The gun was in the outer pocket of my computer case. There is some shit I will not eat."
Mac nodded, looked at the file folder again and then up at Jordan Breeze.
"Where did you get the gun?" he asked.
"It was my father's," said Breeze. "He died a few years ago, cancer."
"What kind of gun?"
"A.22 millimeter."
"What were you doing on the elevator to the upper floors?"
"I followed Lutnikov when he got off and changed elevators," said Breeze. "He seemed surprised and amused."
"You got on the elevator because you planned to kill him," said Mac.
"Yes."
"What did you do with the gun after you killed Charles Lutnikov?"
"Got off the elevator and sent it up. Then I trudged happily through the snow to the East River and threw it in," said Breeze. "It went through a thin layer of ice. I threw the leather gloves I was wearing into the river too. I'm afraid you have me on charges of murder and polluting the river."
"How many times did you shoot Lutnikov?"
"Twice," said Breeze. "Once when he was standing and again when he fell."
"The doorman doesn't remember you going out," Mac said.
"I waited till the afternoon and lots of people were going in and out."
"How well do you know Louisa Cormier?" asked Mac.
"Never met her," he said. "Don't even know if I've even seen her in the building. I know she's in the penthouse. I haven't been in the building that long."
"Do you mind if we look at your apartment? We can get a warrant."
"Please," said Breeze, "by all means examine my apartment and check my storage locker in the basement."
There was a calm smile on Breeze's face, close to the contented smile of cult members who are certain they know the truth about life and have reduced its mystery to a simple loyalty.
Mac turned off the tape recorder, rose, and went to the door. As he opened it, Breeze stood on shaking legs.
When Jordan Breeze had been taken away, Aiden entered the interrogation room where Mac sat tapping the thin folder on the table.
"You don't think he did it?" she said.
"I'll look into it. If he didn't do it, someone gave him a lot of information on the killing," said Mac. "And we keep on the with the investigation of Louisa Cormier."
"You could be wrong," she said.
"I could be," Mac agreed.