THE BUILDING is a six-level century-old stained-brick with a mock-Tudor parapet. A bodega with a sun-faded red and yellow awning over the door occupies space on the ground floor. A variety of posters in the window announce cold cuts, cold beer, and cigarettes for sale. A vinyl door-sticker advertises an ATM inside. Three men and an overweight alley-cat stand in the doorway loitering. The proprietor stands behind a register.
In the neighborhood kids run amok in the heat. Adults sit on the hoods of parked cars, lounge on door-stoops, lean in doorways. They watch with wary interest as the police gather in an ostentatious show of force; four black and whites, two unmarked vehicles. Patrol officers stand like centurions outside the building. A Medical Examiner’s van announces the presence of a dead body. With this amount of firepower, onlookers predict a massacre.
The crew from a local news affiliate is on the scene. I recognize the reporter from a recent if short-lived, relationship. Florida Germaine approaches microphone in hand, cameraman trailing.
“No comment, Florida,” I say before she’s ten feet away.
“C’mon, Fortune,” she says. “You owe me.”
“How you figure?”
Germaine sneers. “You kidding me? You’re not that good in bed.”
With Gabby snickering, we enter the building.
The crime scene is a fifth-level unit. A dozen people crowd the small apartment spilling out into the corridor; uniformed officers, plain-clothes detectives, a half dozen Crime Scene techs. No one is doing any work. It looks like a house party.
“Shit!” Gabby mutters under her breath.
Stepping forward into the room, I raise my shield. “Yo, can I speak to the detective in charge? I’m Fortune.” To be heard above the din, I repeat myself.
The room goes quiet as I gain their attention. A beefy-looking guy with thinning hair pops his head from a bedroom into the living area. He glances at me before eyeing Gabby. He says, “Dex Fortune? Howdy, podna’. Took yer time gittin’ here. Horse gone lame? Mosey on in, set a spell.”
To the boys from the Bronx, this is hilarious. I take no offense.
The beefy looking guy with thinning hair introduces himself as Detective Willy Pollack. He wears shirt sleeves and a necktie loose at the collar. Pollack is a thirty-year veteran of the force six months to retirement. He’s compelled to tell us this only to say, “Don’t want no politics or jurisdictional bullshit, my friends. Only here to babysit the corpse and go home.”
“You could have done a better job securing the crime scene,” Gabby says.
“Word is you have a repeater on your hands, hon. This is my parting gift to the boys. Just want to see, first-hand, what the work of a serial killer looks like, is all. Stories to tell the grand-kids, you know, when they see it on TV. Aside from a pension, what else has a retired cop got to look forward to?”
Pollack stares at Gabby as if he’ll eat her alive.
Gabby smolders. “This is a joke to you?”
“Does it look to you like a joke to me?”
Hoping to avert disaster, I intercede. “Listen, Pollack, we’re taking a lot of heat.” The room is small and windowless. With a temperature over eighty-five degrees outside, inside, the air is noxious. “In twenty-four hours, it will be out of my hands. An Inspector has been assigned.” I roll my eyes to mock the arrogance. Knowingly, Pollack nods. “Let’s all get along, okay?”
“Sure, whatever. Meat wagon wants her out of here anyway, before she starts to bloat.” The victim is grossly overweight. Pollack snorts. “Ask me, she already has.”
“What do you know?”
“Not much. From her ID, Kelly Plett, thirty-four years of age. From her neighbors, a divorced mother of three.”
“Any children living here?”
“Nope. Live with the ex. No need to worry they’ll turn up to see her this way. Time of death nine p.m. to three a.m. this morning. With the heat? Who knows?”
“Witnesses?” Gabby says.
“Listen, hon, do your own spade-work. You have a dozen grunts on this case already, I’m sure. Me and my guys are not here to do your heavy lifting.”
Gabby does a slow burn.
I say, “Fair enough. But for now, we need the room. Have your guys clear the scene. Have the CSU hang back. We’ll coordinate the door-to-door. Don’t trouble yourself.”
Pollack glares. “You’re already trouble, bub.”
“Hey,” I say. “At least you have stories to tell the grand-kids.”
Still glaring, Pollack steps into the main room. He shouts: “Okay boys, clear the scene. Show’s over. Sheriff Dex Fortune has arrived.”
Before leaving, the boys yuk-it-up some more.
The room now clear, I summon the Crime Scene tech in charge. “Anything you can tell us that would help us clear this case by nightfall?”
“You mean like a smoking gun?”
Gabby bristles. “Yeah, exactly that.”
“We’ve dusted and mostly the place is clean. Your boy is thorough. Where we find prints or DNA, I suspect it will belong to the deceased. Or those assholes.” He jerks a thumb over his shoulder at the departing cops. “No smoking gun, here.”
“Computer?” I say.
“Seriously, dude? The woman is living on food stamps. So, no, not unless it fell off the back of a truck.”
In the bedroom, we pull on latex gloves. Same MO: female Vic bound with duct tape to a straight-back chair, though this time the chair is made from metal-tubing with a seat made from vinyl burned through by cigarettes. There is a length of nylon pantyhose wrapped around her neck, brand unknown.
“A wonder she hasn’t burned the place down.” Gabby nods to an ashtray on the bed-stand full to overflowing. “Chatterbox says he picked her up at a ballgame?”
“What he said. Working the concession stand at Yankee Stadium.”
“Yankees play last night?”
“Thumped by the Red Sox eight to one.”
“Another season lost.”
“Chatterbox says he bought a hot dog and a beer.”
“Lovely. We have a perp who follows the Yankees, eats hot dogs, and drinks beer.”
“We’re building a profile.”
“Of a thousand potential suspects.”
“Not me. I follow the Mets and prefer burgers.”
“Do the concessions at the stadium have surveillance video?”
“These days? Must have.” Raising my phone, I dial Tony Giardano to find out. I tell him, “Victim is a woman name of Kelly Plett. See if she worked the concessions at Yankee Stadium. If she did, was she working last night’s game? If so, which booth? Secure the video, view it, create and print a still of every male between twenty and sixty years of age standing approximately six foot tall with a trim build.”
As I disconnect with Tony, Gabby circles the body. Kelly Plett is not a pretty sight. Her ID lists her age at thirty-eight, but she looks like fifty miles of rough road.
Her hair is unclean. She has a sallow complexion. Her teeth are bad, her skin pocked. Kelly wears a short-sleeve tee shirt and has full-sleeve tats to the wrist on each arm. The tee shirt is stained with food and vomit. Her blue jeans are torn, faded, and frayed at the cuff. They are stained at the crotch. We are thankful she hasn’t evacuated her bowels.
“No disrespect to the deceased, but I think our victim is a tweaker,” Gabby says.
“No sign of forced entry. Chatterbox offers drugs and booze in exchange for an invitation?”
Using a ballpoint pen, Gabby lifts the victim’s tee shirt, exposing Kelly’s pendulous breasts and bulging gut. Her torso, like her arms, is an uninterrupted tapestry of ink reaching from clavicle to waist, shoulder to shoulder, and down over her doughy midriff. There is no discernible theme to connect one ink blot to the next. Some tats look self-inflicted, others look like prison art.
Given all that’s going on there, no surprise we miss it at first. After searching hard, Gabby spots it. Three hearts—one red, two blue—inked into the skin just above the nipple on Kelly’s left breast.
✽ ✽ ✽
On our walk to the vehicle, we are ambushed by Florida Germaine. She pulls us up short. “You have the patience of Job, Florida.”
“I’ve missed the six o’clock newscast, Dex. Any comment for the news at eleven?” Germaine shoves a microphone in my face.
Gabby is irritated. I put it down to envy.
“No comment.”
“Give it a rest, Dex. I know the victim is Kelly Plett, thirty-four years of age, mother of three, living alone, did thirteen months in Albion Correctional for a repeat DWI, strangled by a set of nylon pantyhose. I need you to answer only one question: Is it the work of The Chatterbox Killer?”
Sphinx-like, I hold my tongue.
“I’ll put it out you’re hung like a hamster.”
Stoic, I remain silent. Gabby laughs.
“Now’s your chance, Detective. Go on record with the official version of the story, or I make up as I go along. You know I can, and I will.” With me refusing to comment, Germaine says, “Have it your way, Dex. By tomorrow, the City will be in a panic, and you’ll be ghosted by every girl in Manhattan.”