Gladyss of the Hunt by Arthur Nersesian Page B

call you when I get home, just like I promised.”
    I cleared out my locker and headed over to Manhattan South Homicide, at Thirty-fifth Street near Ninth Avenue.
    I checked in with the desk sergeant, who had me fill out a short stack of paperwork. Then I was directed up to Sergeant Farrell’s squad room on the fourth floor. I felt like a child as he introduced me to the other two investigators assigned to the case; I’d seen them briefly at the murder scene two days before. Annabelle Barrera and Alexander Oldfield were both third-grade detectives. Annie, as she liked to be called, was an attractive middle-aged Latina; I would learn that she watched her diet and maintained an exercise routine as bestas she could while fighting crime and raising two high school-age boys. Alex, who was African American and lived in Orange County, seemed intent on going the other way. As I witnessed throughout the first day, his large flabby body was constantly being fed from a bottomless drawer filled with extra large bags of cheese puffs. The one uncanny thing about them was that though they were of different races and sexes and had different body types, their faces were weirdly similar.
    Hopping slowly around on his one good foot, Bernie led me into his small corner office, which had the name Herbert Q. Kelly painted on the glass door. It was his old partner’s.
    â€œKelly?” I asked, “Herbert wasn’t related to Ray?”
    â€œHe liked to be called Bert, and no, he was not related to our commissioner.”
    â€œBert and Bernie?” The pair of them sounded a little Sesame Street .
    â€œThe reason you’re here”—he was done with the chitchat—“is that yesterday we got a call from a downtown madam who said she had a john asking for a tall blonde.”
    â€œYou’re kidding.”
    â€œAnnie pulled on a wig and we went in. The guy took one look at her and said she was too short, and too old.”
    â€œSo you lost him.” I only wished O’Ryan could hear this.
    â€œNo, we brought him in anyway, checked out his prints and his alibi for the three murders. So it wasn’t a complete loss. But Annie agreed that we should find some sexy blond giraffe. So thank her for your assignment.”
    â€œI will.”
    â€œSo here’s the background. The first murder was reported a little over a year and a half ago, when a maid at the Olympian Arms on Fifty-third Street found the body of Mary Lynn MacArthur.” He slid some gruesome photos over to me. “A few weeks later, a cleaning lady at the Spartan opened another door and discovered the grisly remains of Denise Giantonni.” More horrific photos. Both women had been decapitated, like the one I’d seen at the Templeton, and large, crude numbers had been savagely carved into their limbs. “Both women were drugged,” Bernie continued. “Mary bled to death while Denise was strangled and mutilated afterwards.”
    â€œI wonder why he only made this cut on the first vic,” I said, pointing to a close-up picture that showed a long V-shaped scar running down MacArthur’s right inner thigh.
    â€œThere are other differences, like Denise has a sock hanging from the toes of her left foot, but at this point we’re focusing on the similarities between all three scenes.”
    I jotted down the dates of the first two murders so I could check and see if Noel Holden was around.
    â€œEven though the killer was more brutal with the second vic, the crime scene was a lot messier with the first girl,” Bernie said. “He probably strangled the second woman so there was less bleeding.”
    As Bernie flicked through the pages of his notebook, I took the opportunity to scan his dusty office. Above a stack of boxes was a wall full of commendations and pictures. At the center, I spotted a small picture frame holding a photo of a beautiful young Latina girl. Under it a caption read:
    Juanita