Four Walls

8

IN THE SUMMERTIME, STELLA loved coming to the morgue.

Like far too many things in her life, it was something Stella tried not to examine too closely. Still, there was a certain logic to it. Summers in New York could be absolutely brutal, heat in the eighties and nineties and high humidity. It wasn't as bad as, say, Florida, but it still wasn't any fun. Today was one of the nastier days. Just the walk from Belluso's to Morgenstern's house and back had exhausted her and left her dripping with sweat.

So coming to the morgue was a breath of, if not fresh air, at least cool air. In the wintertime, it was less than pleasant, but on days like this, Stella loved coming here.

Even with the dead bodies.

She also was happy to see that Dr. Sid Hammerback was the ME assigned to the Campagna case. Over the past few weeks, she'd felt protective of Sid, after she walked in on him on the floor of the autopsy room. He'd gone into anaphylactic shock from a sandwich, the contents of which he hadn't checked closely enough (he hadn't set foot in that particular deli since), and Stella had performed CPR to help revive him.

"How's my slave for life doing?" she asked with a cheeky grin as she entered the lab.

"At your service as ever," Sid said with mock solemnity. Then he broke into one of his infectious grins.

He removed his glasses, which were on a chain around his neck and separated at the nosepiece. Every time he pulled the glasses apart, Stella winced, thinking for a moment that he'd broken his glasses, despite Sid having had those glasses for years now.

The body of Maria Campagna was laid out on the table. Sid had already completed the autopsy: the body was naked, with the telltale Y-shaped stitching of a chest that had been opened.

Handing Stella his preliminary report in a manila folder, Sid said, "COD was strangulation. Her throat was crushed. Based on body temp, I'd say she died late last night."

Stella took the report and nodded. "That fits with Belluso's closing time."

"Lividity was consistent with position. She probably died where you found her."

With a slight bark of laughter, Stella said, "Good, because the scene was no help in that regard. Her body was on a floor that had been walked on, tripped on, and had things dragged over it for years now."

"Didn't find any prints or finger indentations on the neck." Sid walked to the big screen that hung over the table. Using a latex-gloved hand, he used the touch-screen interface to call up the X-rays of Maria's neck. "The anterior of her hyoid was splintered inward. There's also damage to the larynx, pharynx, thyroid, and two of the parathyroid glands. The pattern of the hyoid break and the collateral damage is consistent with an arm being wrapped around the neck and squeezing. Based on our victim's height, and based on the strength necessary to do this, I'm guessing our killer is a man who's taller than her and is right-handed."

Staring at the screen, with the points of impact highlighted in green by Sid, Stella saw that the pattern of damage to Maria's neck was at a slight downward angle as you went right to left. She nodded. "It fits-our guy grabbed her in a headlock from behind and literally squeezed the life out of her."

"I didn't find any trace on the neck, aside from that fiber you had in your report. Our guy was probably wearing a long-sleeved shirt when he did the deed."

"Yeah. It was certainly chilly enough late last night. What about the bruises on her knuckles?"

"They look to be antemortem. Safe bet that they're defensive wounds, though that's just between you and me until the labs come back on the blood. If it's hers, then I can't say for sure that the bruises had anything to do with the killer. If it's someone else's-"

"Then we've got something to work with." Stella sighed. "Anything else?"

Sid reattached his glasses over his nose and pointed at the area just above the Y-stitching. "Minor irritation of the skin in the pattern of a necklace, which tracks with the divot in her skin on the back of the neck. She definitely wore a necklace of some sort. It could've come off in the struggle."

"Or we could be looking at a robbery." Again Stella sighed. Still too many questions, not enough answers. But not all the evidence had been examined yet. There was the trace on the knuckles and the fiber they had found. "Thanks, Sid. And watch what you eat."

Chuckling, Sid said, "Always. Thanks, Stell. Oh, hey, listen, I'm having a cookout Saturday night. I'm going to start marinating the steaks on Friday."

Stella felt her mouth water. Sid had given up a career as a chef in order to become a medical examiner-a career choice Stella had never entirely understood, considering his culinary talents-and his steak marinade was the stuff of legends. The only ingredients Stella knew for sure were Worcestershire sauce, white pepper, and olive oil, and she only knew those because she'd guessed them and Sid reluctantly admitted she was right. (She was especially proud of guessing the white pepper.) Danny had jokingly threatened to take a sample back to the lab and was deterred only by the threat of Sid putting all his autopsies at the bottom of the priority list. Mac expressed concern about Sid compromising the integrity of the lab, prompting Sid's fellow ME (and Mac's girlfriend) Peyton Driscoll to punch him playfully on the arm. Sid and Danny had assured Mac that they were both kidding.

"Peyton and Mac are already coming, and so's Sheldon. Danny and Lindsay had to beg off, though. What about you?"

"Wild horses couldn't keep me from your marinade, Sid. I'll be there with bells on."

"Good, then I'll know you're coming," Sid said with a smile.

Rolling her eyes, Stella departed the lab with the autopsy report in hand.

Upstairs, she found Lindsay talking with Adam Ross. Both were wearing their white lab coats with NY: CRIME LAB stenciled on the breast.

"Please, they don't know what winter is around here," Lindsay was saying. "They get a few inches of snow and everyone hides in their apartment like it's the second coming. We'd have to get four feet of accumulation in Bozeman before we'd even notice it's snowing."

"Which is why I stay away from Montana," Adam said with a shudder. "People weren't meant to live in the cold. Remember, humanity started out in Africa, where it's nice and toasty." He smiled under his beard. "What I love is when they bitch when it goes over ninety. That's a cold snap where I come from in Arizona."

As she approached the pair, Stella said, "Yeah, but it's a dry heat."

"Which is as it should be," Adam said without missing a beat. "Humidity just messes with my hair."

"Right," Lindsay said, "because hair care is at the top of your list of priorities."

"Damn right." Adam couldn't hold the straight face. On a good day, he might remember to comb his unruly brown hair, and that was done in by his habit of running his hands through it.

"If a native New Yorker can join this out-of-towner conversation about what weather wimps we are…" Stella said.

Adam straightened, immediately all business. Or as all business as Adam ever got. He was the prototypical lab rat. Occasionally, Mac or Stella would drag him out into the field, usually kicking and screaming. He'd confided in Stella once on the subject. "Going into the field," he'd said, "makes it too real, you know? Out there, it's people being hurt. In here, it's a puzzle to be solved. I can focus better on puzzles."

Now Adam said, "Well, I've got good news and bad news."

With a sigh, Stella said, "Bad news first."

"As usual." He held up a printout. "Ran the fiber and found a match almost instantly."

Stella winced. Fast matches meant common matches. The bane of evidence-gathering was the common fiber, the standard shoe print, the fashionable piece of jewelry. The holy grail of the crime lab was finding something unique to the victim and/or the perp. To Adam, she said, "That's never good."

"And today's not the exception. The fiber is a standard cotton/polyester blend. Nothing particularly unique about it, no trace of anything else-just black cotton/poly."

Stella muttered a curse. "So our killer was wearing, on a cool night, a black sweatshirt."

"Yup. I have officially narrowed the suspect list to three quarters of the population of New York City."

"More like seven eighths," Lindsay said. "I remember when I first moved here, I thought everyone was depressed all the time." She smirked. "They don't wear that much black in Montana."

"Still," Stella said, taking the report from Adam, "at least we know our killer was wearing a black sweatshirt. If we find a suspect who was wearing one, it gives us something to work with." She looked at Adam. "What's the good news?"

Looking sheepish, Adam said, "Er, well, I lied. There is no good news."

"Swell."

The sound of a twelve-bar blues song emitted from Stella's jacket pocket. Reaching inside, she pulled out her Treo, which displayed the words DETECTIVE JENNIFER ANGELL and Angell's cell number. She touched the screen to answer the phone and put it to her ear. "Heya, Jen."

"Stell. Listen, I got good news and bad news."

"Do you really have good news, or are you and Adam using the same gag writer?"

"Huh?"

"Never mind-what's up?"

"Well, I just spent ten minutes on the phone with Jack Morgenstern's lawyer, Courtney Bracey. That's ten minutes I'll be begging for on my deathbed. I've decided to beat the Christmas rush and start hating her now. They're coming in this afternoon, and it looks to be as much fun as root canal."

"Sounds like a blast. What's the good news?"

"I left a message for our vic's boyfriend, Bobby DelVecchio? He called me back while I was going ten rounds with Bracey. He's also coming in this afternoon, and he says he knows who the killer is."