Fourteen

THE blue and white fast boat named Martin Morrow decelerated as it approached us.

The vessel was fifty feet long with an enclosed bridge. A high mast behind the cabin carried the emergency lights, which stopped flashing when the engine was cut.

Avoiding the corpse in the water, the boat floated up to the dock, lightly bumping the wooden planks. Immediately, a figure in a shiny wet suit leaped from the deck and hit the river with a splash.

As he swam toward the dead girl, a young cop in a blue formfitting uniform hopped over the rail and landed in front of us. His badge read Burns.

“Hello, sailor!” Madame said with a wave.

“Ahoy, there,” Officer Burns replied.

We watched as he tied off the boat. Then he pulled a wrench from a utility belt and worked the safety railing. In under a minute, Officer Burns unbolted a section of the railing and set it aside, giving the crew full access to the dock.

“Which one of you is Ms. Cosi?”

I waved my hand.

He jerked his blond head in the direction of a male silhouette inside the shadowy cabin. “Our sergeant will need your statement, so stick around, okay?”

“Like glue,” I assured him.

Suddenly, a voice called from the water. “Give me a hand, bro!”

Burns donned waterproof gloves. Then he and the man in the wet suit moved the body onto the shadowy dock. As the diver climbed out of the river, Burns detached the dead girl’s red backpack and set it aside. Kneeling, he looked up at his partner.

“You’re the EMT, Hernandez. What do you think?”

Hernandez ripped the dripping snorkel-mask from his head to reveal curly black hair and liquid brown eyes. With obvious irony, he said—

“I think she’s a goner.”

“Yeah, sure, but do you think she’s the jumper they’re looking for upriver?”

“She’s fresh enough, I guess.”

Hernandez then leaned in for a closer look, but he didn’t need to lean far. He wasn’t much taller than I was, though his skintight wet suit revealed all muscle under the neoprene.

“I see maceration on the extremities.” Hernandez glanced at me. “That’s wrinkled skin, ma’am. There’s not much rigor mortis, but cold immersion slows the process, so there’s no gauging time of death from that.”

Hernandez wiggled the water out of his ear with a stubby finger.

“Low tide and wakes from river traffic could have swept the jumper down here. I mean, it’s definitely possible—”

“Excuse me,” I interrupted. “What jumper?”

“We received a report of a female going into the water at the Boat Basin on 79th Street,” Officer Burns replied. “The scuba team went in after her, but no joy. They knocked off their pattern search up there a couple of hours ago. They’ll be back at it in the morning.”

“When did this woman jump?”

“Sixteen hundred hours.”

My civilian mind translated: four o’clock in the afternoon. “You said the jumper went into the water. Did she fall?”

Burns shook his head. “Eyewitnesses claim it was a suicide. They saw her jump. It was very deliberate.”

Madame sniffed. “If you think this might be the same woman, why were divers searching where she jumped in? Clearly, the current moves objects up and down the river, depending on the tide. I’m just a taxpayer, but it seems like a terrible waste of resources to me.”

Burns’s reply was diplomatic.

“Ma’am, when a body drowns, its lungs fill with water and the corpse sinks. It’s only after gases build up in the stomach that it becomes a floater, and that could take days.”

“Then why didn’t this poor child sink?” Madame asked.

“Her backpack. It contained enough air to keep the body buoyant.”

“I’m sorry, but that doesn’t add up,” I said. “Why would a girl jump into the river to commit suicide with what amounts to a flotation device strapped to her back? If this girl was so determined to kill herself, wouldn’t she have filled her pack with rocks or something equally heavy?”

Hernandez and Burns exchanged glances but offered no answer.

“And what about that wound on her head?” I pointed to the visible gash.

Hernandez found his tongue. “Could be postmortem damage. Bad stuff happens in the river. She could have hit a rock or a pier, or been clipped by a passing boat. She definitely got knocked around. I mean, look at her. She’s even missing a left shoe . . .”

It was true. The dead girl wore a single slip-on sneaker on her right foot, hot pink to match the streaks in her blond hair. The pockets of her skinny jeans were turned out, too. They looked like stunted angel’s wings against the saturated denim.

Burns faced the corpse. “Let’s find out who she is.”

Still on his knees, his gloved hand rifled through the pockets of her cropped jacket but found nothing.

“Looks like the tide took everything,” he said glumly.

“Check out her backpack,” Officer Hernandez suggested.

The gloves made it a struggle, but Burns managed to get the zipper undone. Inside he found three sealed plastic containers that formerly held food but now carried only air.

Madame cocked her head. “Did you find any rocks among all that buoyant Tupperware, dear?”

Ignoring her, Burns tossed a small plastic box to Hernandez.

“There’s something in the backpack’s other compartment.”

He opened the second zipper and reached inside. A moment later, Burns displayed what he’d found.

Madame gasped at the sight.

In his gloved hand, the Harbor Patrol officer clutched a thirty-two-ounce stainless steel thermal mug. The logo branded on its side was a familiar one—

The Village Blend.