Codella answered the call from Muñoz as she sped up the West Side Highway. “I’ll meet you at Lielkaja’s apartment in fifteen minutes,” she told him.
He was standing at the bottom of the care coordinator’s brownstone steps when she pulled up and got out. Halfway up the block, men were unloading a crate from a double-parked truck. “I just spoke to Brandon Johnson,” she shouted over angry horn blasts from cars having trouble squeezing through. “According to him, Lielkaja and Merchant were sleeping together. Apparently Merchant liked it rough.”
“No surprise considering Jackie Freimor,” said Muñoz. “I just saw Julia Merchant. According to her, Lielkaja was in the dispensary Sunday night.”
“She told you that just now?”
He nodded. “She saw Lielkaja standing at the counter with a white bottle in her hand.”
Codella frowned. “Why didn’t she mention that to me on Monday?”
“I asked her that. She said it never occurred to her to think of Baiba being involved.”
“Maybe because all along she’s been convinced it’s someone else.”
“Who?”
“Her father.” Codella remembered her instant dislike of Julia when they’d first met, and she felt her annoyance at the young woman flaring up again. She climbed the steps and Muñoz followed. “It’s time to put some hard questions to Baiba.”
She pressed the care coordinator’s buzzer, but there was no response. She held it down a second time for several seconds. There was still no answer. “I want to speak to that woman.” She pressed the superintendent’s buzzer. When his voice came over the intercom, she said, “NYPD. Let us in.”
A minute later, the super appeared and opened the front door for them. Codella showed her identification, and she and Muñoz headed for the stairs. The super started to follow, but Codella turned on the steps and held up her hand. “No. You stay down here.”
Muñoz banged on Lielkaja’s door. “Police!” he called. “Open up.”
When Lielkaja failed to answer, Codella pounded the door with her fist. Then she took out her iPhone and dialed the care coordinator’s cell phone number. She listened to the ringing through her phone, and then she realized she could also hear the ring on the other side of the door. She looked at Muñoz. “Get that super up here,” she said.
Muñoz descended to the first floor and she waited in silence. How many times had she stood in front of someone’s locked door like this? Were they going to find an empty, unremarkable room on the other side, or were they about to enter yet another scene of terrible violence?
A minute later, she and Muñoz watched the super insert a key into Lielkaja’s lock. He swung the door open and moved to step forward, but Muñoz grabbed his arm and pulled him back into the stairwell.
Codella had seen what he saw. “Put your hands in your pockets right now,” she instructed him. “Go back to your apartment and stay there. Don’t speak to anyone you see. Don’t touch anything. Nothing. If you do, you’re tampering with a potential crime scene and I’ll make sure there are consequences. Do you understand?”
He nodded, but his eyes kept darting into the room. “Go,” she said. “Now. We’ll speak to you later.”
When he was gone, she and Muñoz moved carefully into the room. They stopped at the foot of the bed. Lielkaja lay on her back with one arm dangling off the mattress. The scarf Codella had seen coiled around her neck yesterday now lay on the mattress along with her big sweater. Codella stared at Lielkaja’s flawless skin and clouded sea-blue eyes. She wore a gray T-shirt and the same cotton sweats Codella had seen her in yesterday. Her full breasts pressed against the thin fabric of the shirt. Her body was firm and shapely. A few strands of her butter-blond hair were in her face. She was like a reclining starlet who might rise from sleep at any moment to electrify the room. But Lielkaja was never going to rise. Her lips were bluish. Her pupils were tiny pinpoints. And her skin was cold and lifeless when Codella checked for a pulse.
“I’d say she’s been dead since yesterday.” Codella moved to the side of the bed. Lielkaja’s fingernails were clean and unbroken. No blood stained her body or the bed. Her throat was red, just as Brandon had described it, and yellowish, thumb-sized bruises dappled her upper arms.
“Note the time, Muñoz. And call it in.”
Muñoz fished in his jacket pocket for the small spiral notebook he always carried. As he recorded the time and got on his phone, Codella lifted her iPhone and photographed the body. Then she turned to survey the room. Fifteen feet away, a clear plastic Juice Generation cup sat on the round blond-wood table where she had interviewed Baiba yesterday. The lid was on the cup, and a straw was sticking through the lid. The inch of liquid still in the cup was dark red.
Codella walked over to the table. Only then did she notice the single sheet of folded paper resting beneath the cup. She was staring at the two typed lines of text on the paper when Muñoz came behind her. They read the words together. I’m sorry Thomas. I can’t live with what we did.
“What do you think?” asked Muñoz.
Codella didn’t move or speak. In her mind, she heard Thomas Merchant’s voice yesterday in his office. I did not kill my wife. She pictured Brandon Johnson shivering in front of the Hudson River today as he told her, What if she liked him so much that she wanted to be the new Mrs. Merchant? What if she used me to kill Lucy?
Codella could feel Muñoz waiting for her interpretation, but she wasn’t ready to give one. She walked to the bathroom. Nothing looked out of place. She pulled a tissue out of a box and used it to carefully open the bathroom medicine cabinet. The shelves were filled with perfumes, face creams, and a solid rack of nail polish bottles in various shades of red, pink, and purple. The only medications were Claritin and Advil. If she’d drugged herself, where was the drug?
She walked into the kitchen. It was spotless—not a dirty glass or plate on the counter or in the sink. She looked into the garbage can. It was empty except for a yogurt container. She glanced over at Lielkaja’s desk. Finally she returned to the table. “We’re supposed to believe that Baiba and Merchant killed his wife and then she committed suicide out of guilt. It doesn’t feel right to me.”
Codella pointed to the laptop and printer on the desk. “Why would you bother to type out a two-line suicide note?” she asked. “I mean, I could see if she were leaving a long letter, but—two lines? Why not just grab a pen?”
“Maybe she’s used to typing things out? Maybe she’s a little compulsive?” Muñoz didn’t sound convinced.
“And here’s another thing,” said Codella. “Does she look like someone who just got back from Juice Generation? Are we supposed to believe she got dressed—remember, it’s thirty degrees outside—went to the smoothie store, came back, and put on her sweats and T-shirt to drink up and say farewell to life?”
“You think someone brought her the smoothie and printed out the note.”
Codella nodded. “If she mixed her own death potion, Muñoz, then where did she get it? I don’t see any drugs lying around here. Do you? This place is immaculate.”
“So who are you thinking?”
“Well, that’s the million dollar question.”
Sirens were sounding on the street below. “Stay here. Guard the scene,” she told him. “I’ll go down and meet them.”
Three NYPD squad cars had pulled up, and six uniformed officers from this Upper East Side precinct were standing on the street when she stepped outside. Codella approached the one wearing sergeant’s stripes. She filled him in and then the sergeant started issuing orders. Soon the building was surrounded by yellow tape. One officer with a notepad recorded the license plate numbers of parked cars up and down the street. Two other officers guarded the crime scene perimeter, holding back pedestrians who arrived to do their own little investigations. An officer named García was stationed at the building entrance to sign people in, and another officer was inside the building making sure no one left their apartments.
A precinct detective Codella didn’t recognize showed up twenty minutes later and flipped her his shield in the stairwell outside Lielkaja’s door. His name was Cooper. He was tall, about forty, with curly towhead hair you’d expect to see in Norway, not Manhattan. “What the fuck are you doing at my crime scene?” he asked.
Codella would have asked the same thing if she were in his shoes. This was his precinct, after all, and precinct detectives were territorial. As far as he was concerned, she didn’t belong. She pulled out her identification. Whenever she had to do this, it felt like comparing the size of their dicks. “Manhattan North Homicide,” she said in case he couldn’t read. “This body is part of an ongoing investigation, and we’re going to have to work this scene together. It’s going to be a long afternoon and evening, Detective. I don’t want to have to pull rank, but I will.”
“Hey, I know you,” said Cooper. “You’re the one who solved the Elaine DeFarge murder, aren’t you? You caught that Wainright Blake guy who cut off locks of hair.” His tone turned almost reverential. Codella shrugged. Attention to her achievements always made her uncomfortable, but reverence was infinitely preferable to antagonism. “What’s your investigation?” he asked.
There was no reason not to share the details with him. This body was going to make the news. In fact, the satellite uplink trucks would probably arrive any minute. Too many dispatch calls guaranteed that the media was on to this. And they would quickly learn that Lielkaja was connected to Park Manor. It wouldn’t take a genius to draw the connection to Lucy Merchant.
Codella introduced Cooper to Muñoz. “From the looks of it, someone paid her a visit, and we need to know who. We need as much information as we can get from the neighbors. Can I count on you to work with Muñoz on this?”
Cooper looked at Muñoz. “Yeah. You can count on me.”
“Good.” She checked the time on her iPhone. In a few hours, she hoped, she would be sitting across from Thomas Merchant in a Manhattan North interview room, and there was something she needed before that happened. “Get as much as you can out of the neighbors. I’ll be back here in half an hour.”
She went downstairs and climbed in her car. She was staring at the reddish-brown façade of Lielkaja’s building as the crime scene unit van pulled up. She watched the team take their equipment out of the van in a carefully choreographed routine they performed every time they were called to a body. She watched them climb the front steps and sign in with García. Then she started the car engine and checked her messages. Constance Hodges had left two voicemails, but she didn’t want to talk to Hodges right now. She dialed Merchant’s office at Bank of New Amsterdam and waited for Roberta Ruffalo’s crisp voice to answer.