Then she heard a rhythmic beeping sound—then the whoosh of machines.
Voices mumbled around her, but they were not her concern.
She had a flash of understanding. She was in the hospital. She’d had a serious incident of some kind—there was a pressure in her head, jamming her thoughts.
She remembered being a young girl at the Dontaku Festival, the street full of people in bright-colored costumes playing samisen and beating drums.
Thousands of paper lanterns floated on the water. Kites with tails of red ribbons danced overhead, and fireworks burst open the sky.
Keiko felt more pressure building inside her head, a thunderstorm. Dark and cold and terribly threatening. The noise of the storm was a loud rumble, drowning out all other sound.
Was she passing now?
She did not want to go!
Keiko was inside this darkness that was not sleep, when suddenly Yuki’s voice, close but distant, broke through the numbness.
Yuki was speaking to her. Yuki was there.
“Mommy. It’s me. I’m here. Hold on, Mommy. I love you.”
She tried to call out, Itsumademo ai shiteru, Yuki. I love you forever, my daughter.
But a large tube filled her mouth, and she could not speak.
And then Keiko drifted farther into the darkness.
But she came back—she was fighting the storm.
Someone was inside her room. Someone here to help?
She heard footsteps around her, felt a pull at the IV line in the back of her hand.
Her heartbeat sped up!
This was not a dream.
Something was wrong. This person hadn’t come to help.
An explosion of pain bloomed inside Keiko’s head.
She couldn’t see. She couldn’t hear. Keiko screamed out in fear, but nothing came out of her mouth.
She understood what was happening now—she was being murdered; then her thoughts melted as she slipped into the void.
Keiko never felt the cold, metallic touch of a coin, first on one eyelid, then on the other.
She didn’t hear the whispered words in her ear.
“These coins are your transfers, Keiko. Good night, princess.”
Part Two
MURDER, MURDER
EVERYWHERE
Chapter 34
YUKI WOKE UP in the dark, her heart racing in leaps and bounds. Everything came back to her immediately, and with unusual clarity. Dr. Pierce mouthing condolences in the hospital waiting room. Lindsay driving her home from the hospital, putting her to bed, sitting with Yuki until she finally slept.
Still, it made no sense.
Yesterday, her mother had been well! Today she was gone.
Yuki grabbed the clock—almost 6:15.
She called Municipal Hospital, punched her way through the Audix menu. At last she got a live operator who connected her to the ICU.
“You can come anytime, Ms. Castellano,” the ICU nurse said. “But your mother isn’t here. She’s in the basement.”
Yuki’s rage was instant and blinding. She sat upright in her bed.
“What do you mean she’s in the basement?”
“I’m sorry. What I meant to say is that we can’t keep deceased patients in the ICU —”
“You put my mother in the hospital morgue? You insensitive —”
Yuki slammed down the receiver, then picked it up again and dialed for a cab. She couldn’t trust herself to drive right now. She dressed quickly in jeans, a cardigan, running shoes, and leather jacket, and dashed outside her apartment building to Jones Street.
She struggled during the seven-block cab ride to assimilate the frankly unbelievable.
Her mother was gone. There was no more Keiko in her life.
Inside the hospital, Yuki wove her way through the shuffling people in the lobby, sprinted up the stairs to the ICU. Eyes darting, she looked from one to the other of the nurses at their station. They were talking to one another, acting as if she didn’t exist. She lifted a chart and banged it sharply down on the counter. That got their attention.
“I’m Yuki Castellano,” she said to the nurse, the one with the bran-muffin crumbs clinging to the front of her uniform. “My mother was here last night. I need to know what happened to her.”
“Your mother’s name?”
“Keiko Castellano. Dr. Pierce was her doctor.”
“May I see your medical power of attorney?” the nurse asked next.
“I’m sorry?”
“You know about HIPPA? We can only tell you about your mother if you have medical power of attorney.”
Anger blazed through her. “What are you saying? Are you mad?”
What did her question have to do with patients’ rights? Her mother had just died. She had a right to know why that had happened.
Yuki fought for control of her voice. “Is Dr. Garza here, please?”
“I’ll call him, but Dr. Garza can’t tell you anything, either, Miss Castellano. He’s bound by HIPPA, like we all are.”
“I’ll take my chances,” said Yuki. “I want to see Dr. Garza!”
“Take it easy, okay,” said the nurse, training her huge, expressionless eyes on Yuki, letting her know that she thought she was out of her flipping mind. “I’ll see if he’s still here.”
Chapter 35
DR. GARZA WAS INSIDE his stark, windowless office when Yuki knocked on the open door. She almost hesitated as he looked up at her, his face hard, showing his instant resentment at her intrusion. What a dick, Yuki thought.
But she pushed on, taking the chair across the desk from him, coming right to the point.
“I don’t understand why my mother died,” she said. “What happened to her?”
Garza plucked at his watchband.
“I’m sure Dr. Pierce told you, Ms. Castellano. Your mother had a stroke,” he said. “You understand? A thrombus, a blood clot, went to her brain, preventing blood flow. We put her on anticoagulants, but we couldn’t save her.”
The doctor flattened his hands on the desk in front of him, a gesture that signified “That’s it. End of story.”
“I understand what a stroke is, Dr. Garza. What I don’t understand is why she was chirpy at dinner and dead by midnight. She was inside a hospital! And you people didn’t save her. Something about that stinks, Doctor.”
“Please take your tone down a few notches, if you don’t mind,” Garza said. “Bodies aren’t machines, Ms. Castellano. And doctors aren’t miracle workers. Believe me, we did our best.”
Garza reached out and covered Yuki’s hands with his. “It’s a shock, I know. I’m sorry,” he said.
It was an oddly intimate gesture that startled Yuki, and repelled her. She jerked her hands away instinctively, and the doctor retracted his.
“By the way,” said Garza, turning cold again, “you’ll need to speak to Nurse Nuñez on your way out. Your mother has to be transferred to a funeral home within twenty-four hours. I’m afraid we can’t keep her here longer than that.”
Yuki stood up abruptly, knocking over the chair as she got to her feet.
“This isn’t over. I’m a lawyer,” Yuki said. “I’m going to look into this thoroughly. I’m going to find out what actually happened to my mom. Don’t move her until I say so, understand? And by the way, Dr. Garza, you have the bedside manner of an eel.”
Yuki turned toward the door, stumbling over the upturned chair, her feet catching the legs, pitching her forward.
She stopped her fall by grabbing at the wall, snapping off the light switch with the flat of her hand as she clumsily regained her balance, plunging Dr. Garza’s office into blackness.
She didn’t stop to say a word, or even to turn the light back on.
Feeling wobbly, Yuki negotiated the doorway, the hallway, the stairwell. And from there, she ran out to the street.
The air outside was heavy and damp, and suddenly she felt faint. Yuki sat down on the sidewalk under a large sycamore tree and stared at the peo
ple going to work as if it were a normal day.
She thought about the last time she’d seen her funny, feisty mom. Keiko had been eating ice cream in bed, dispensing her crazy old-world advice with the conviction of a judge.
And she remembered most how much they’d always laughed.
Now, all of that was over.
And it just shouldn’t be.
“Mom,” Yuki said now. “It wasn’t a dignified exit, I know, but I left that bastard sitting in the dark.”
She laughed to herself, thinking how much her mother would have enjoyed that scene.
Yuki-eh, why you never act like lady?
Then the pain swamped her.
Yuki drew her legs up and hugged them to her chest. With the solid old tree against her back, she put her head on her knees and wept for her mother. She sobbed like a child, one who would never be the same again.
Chapter 36
IT WAS TOO EARLY for this kind of crap, just 7:00 in the morning when I pulled up to the curb in front of an old Tudor-style house on Chestnut Street. A large evergreen tree sent fingers of dark shade across the grass between the house and the garage. A handful of cops already dotted the front lawn.
I slammed the door shut on my three-year-old Explorer, buttoned my khaki blazer against the morning chill, and marched across the well-shorn grass.
Jacobi and Conklin were at the front doorstep interviewing a seventy-something couple wearing matching awning-striped bathrobes and slippers. With their stricken faces and spiky bed heads, the septuagenarians looked as shocked as if they’d just put their fingers into wall sockets.
The elderly gentleman screeched at Jacobi, “How do you know we don’t need police protection? You can see into the future?”
Jacobi turned his weary expression on me, and then introduced Mr. and Mrs. Robert Cronin.
“Hello,” I said, shaking their hands. “This is a terrible ordeal, I know. We’ll make it as easy on you as we possibly can.”
“CSU is on the way,” Conklin told me. “I’m okay here to do the interview, Lieutenant.” He was asking permission, but letting me know he was more than ready.
“It’s all yours, Inspector. Do your job.”
I excused myself and Jacobi; then we walked together toward the dark-blue Jaguar XK-E convertible parked with its top down in the driveway. A beautiful car, which only made things worse.
I’d known what to expect since getting Jacobi’s call twenty minutes ago. Still, when I looked into the victim’s face, my heart lurched.
Like Caddy Girl, this woman was white, probably eighteen to twenty-one, petite. Her blond hair fell to her shoulders in loose waves. The girl had lovely, lustrous hair.
She was “looking” out onto Chestnut Street with wide-open blue eyes. As with Caddy Girl, she’d been posed to look as though she were still alive.
“God, Jacobi,” I said. “Another one. Has to be. Jag Girl.”
“It was in the low fifties last night,” he told me. “She’s cold to the touch. And here we go again with the high-ticket clothes.”
“Head to toe.”
The victim was wearing a blue scarf-type blouse and a subtle blue-and-gray plaid tulip skirt. Her boots were Jimmy Choo, the kind that zip up the back. It was an outfit that would cost about three months’ of a cop’s salary.
One little discrepancy though. The dead girl’s jewelry struck me as wrong.
Her tennis bracelet and matching ear studs flashed with the prismatic light of fake diamonds. What was that all about?
I turned at the wail of sirens. I watched both the EMT and CSU vans roll up, park next to the lineup of squad cars.
Conklin crossed the lawn toward the EMTs. I heard him tell the driver, “She’s gone, buddy. Sorry you wasted the trip.”
As the ambulance shifted into reverse, Charlie Clapper stepped out of the scene-mobile with his kit and camera in hand. He walked over to where we were standing, said, “Another day, another body,” and asked us to kindly stand aside.
Jacobi and I stood a few yards from the Jaguar as Clapper shot his pictures.
I was thinking that I knew what he was going to find: a ligature mark at the young woman’s throat, no handbag, no ID—and that the car would otherwise be clean as a whistle.
“Smell that?” said Jacobi.
It was faint at this distance, but I’d smelled it before: a musky fragrance that made me think of orchids.
“Caddy Girl’s eau de toilette,” I said to my former partner. “You know, the first one you think, maybe it’s personal. But again? Another girl? Similar physically. Another immaculate crime scene? They’re getting off on the killings, Jacobi. They’re doing it for fun.”
We watched Clapper’s team dust the car for prints in silence. I knew that Jacobi and I were cycling the same unspoken questions.
Who were these two girls? And who was the kinky tag team that had murdered them?
What had triggered the killings?
What was the meaning of the odd dress-up tableaux?
“The balls on these guys,” said Jacobi as the ME’s van arrived. “Putting the vics on display like this. They’re not just having fun, Boxer. They’re giving somebody the finger.”
Chapter 37
I GRABBED THE PHONE in my office on the first ring when I saw that it was Claire.
“I’ve got some preliminary findings on Jag Girl,” she told me.
“Want me to come down?”
“I’ll be up in a few minutes,” she said. “I’m ready for a change of scene.”
The smell of oregano and pepperoni preceded Claire, who ambled into my office with a pizza box and a couple of cans of Diet Coke, saying, “Lunch is served, baby girl. Nature’s most perfect food. Pizza.”
I moved files from the side chair, cleared the stuff on my desk onto the window ledge, put out my finest paper napkins and the plastic cutlery.
“I took the stairs,” Claire said, dropping into the chair, beginning to carve up the pie.
“Well, give them back. We’re gonna need them later.”
“As I was saying before your awful joke,” she said, laughing at me, “I climbed the stairs. Three steep flights. That’s about a hundred calories, wouldn’t you think?”
“Uh-huh, I’d say. Probably cancels out a quarter of a slice of nature’s perfect food.”
“Never mind that.” She chuckled, flopping a steaming slice onto my paper plate. “I don’t believe in making war with food. Food is not the enemy.”
“A truce on pizza,” I said.
“To the truce,” Claire said, touching her cola can to mine.
“The whole truce,” said I. “And three kinds of cheese.”
I joined in with Claire’s long, rolling laugh, one of my favorite sounds in the world. Whenever work got particularly grisly, the two of us got giddy. Sometimes, it even helped. We polished off one of Pronto Pizza’s best in about ten minutes as Claire brought me up to date on our latest Jane Doe.
“Taking into account her exposure to the low temperature last night, I’m calling Jag Girl’s time of death somewhere ’round midnight,” she said, lobbing her empty can into the trash basket.
“The clothes were gorgeous,” she said, “but a bad fit. Too small on top, too big across the hips, but this time her shoes fit.”
“And she never walked in them, right?”
“Clean soles. And just like with Caddy Girl, that funky perfume was only on her labia.”
“When are you starting the post?”
“Soon’s I get back downstairs.”
“Want some company?”
I phoned Tracchio’s office and blew off the staff meeting. Was I rebelling against authority? Yep. Then I went out to the squad room and invited Jacobi. I filled him in as we jogged down the stairs to the morgue.
Chapter 38
I ALWAYS FOUND the stark reality of the morgue, Claire’s place, a shock to the nervous system—the unforgiving white light on the dead, the sheets hiding that their insides were out. T
he empty faces. The harsh scent of antiseptics.
Somehow, the circumstances didn’t completely dim Jag Girl’s material beauty. If anything, she looked younger, and more vulnerable, than she had dressed up in designer clothes.
The purple bruise circling her neck and the dusting of bluish bruising on her upper arms seemed like an insult to her flawless skin. After several hours in the morgue, she was starting to have a bad hair day, too.
I watched as my friend slipped into her gear—cap, gown, plastic apron, and gloves. “It looks like another soft kill,” Claire said. “No knives, no guns.”
Claire positioned her scalpel to make the deep, Y-shaped incision that would run from shoulder to shoulder, meeting at Jag Girl’s breastbone and extending down to her pubis.
She pulled up her mask, lowered her face shield, spoke into the mike as she made a layer-wise dissection of the strap musculature of Jag Girl’s neck.
She peeled back a flap of skin with her forceps. Showed me and Jacobi the brownish stain in the shape of a thumbprint.
“This young lady was asphyxiated by two complete nutjob assailants,” Claire said.
“Just like with Caddy Girl, there’s no petechial hemorrhaging. So someone held her down and burked her. Pressed her neck right here with his thumb. This boy is strong.
“Someone else applied a ligature. Sort of crinkly-like. Looks like a patterned impression, consistent with the rolled edge of a plastic bag. Probably put his paw over her nose and mouth to seal the deal.”
I couldn’t help staring at the victim and imagining the freaking outrageous homicide.
“It’s making me think that this is some kind of porn fantasy come to life,” I said. “No peep-show booth, no magazine or computer screen. What fun. Real girls without any barriers. The perps can drug them, rape them, dress them up, do whatever the hell they want.”
“There’s no sign this young lady fought back,” said Claire. “So until I get the tox screen, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say she was probably drugged, too.”