on her cheekbones, pink eye shadow that matched the blouse, and bright pink lipstick that had smeared along one side of her face.
After the body, the first thing crime-scene services would look at would be the trash bag. They would hope to find something on it that might tell them how it—and the girl—got there. If they had been carried in a car, there might be fibers from the carpet, or traces of oil. If a man, or men, had carried the load, there might be hairs or microscopic pieces of skin on the bag. Then, of course, if the girl had been raped, as it appeared she had, there would be a treasure trove of evidence there, semen, hair, maybe DNA under her fingernails.
The truth was, though, that the crime might be prosecuted withall the forensic evidence in the world, but it was much more likely it would be solved from finding out who the girl was, what she had been like, who she had hung out with, what she had liked to do on the weekends. You didn’t find your killer with the scientific stuff, Quinn had learned. You just used it to pin it on him. It was the regular old cop work that got you into court in the first place.
And that would start with finding out what her name was. He called his witness over and asked him if he knew her. The guy looked like he was going to throw up, but he choked out, “Luz Ramirez. Her family lives over there.” He pointed to a dismal-looking brick apartment building across the way.
“Okay.” He turned to Ellie. “That’s our first thing. We gotta talk to the family, find out where she was going, then we’ll want to start doing door-to-doors, that kind of thing, see if anybody saw her last night.” He looked again at the victim’s face. She looked younger and younger the more he stared at her. “She’s dressed up like she was going somewhere. We gotta figure out who the hell she was going to meet.”
SEVEN
OLGA LEVITCH POURED the steaming water into her teapot and waited a few minutes for the tea to steep. While she waited, she planned her day, mentally traveling through the rooms of the museum, starting her cleaning at the top of each room and working her way toward the bottom and out the door. When the tea was ready, she poured it into her thermos and went to get her cleaning cart. Though it was only five A.M. , she could tell that it was going to be another hot day, and she craved something cool and relaxing. The Impressionists, she decided—she would take her tea break with the Impressionists.
It was her favorite part of the day, when she put aside her cleaning supplies and sat down for those delicious twenty minutes to drink tea and look at the art. After twenty-seven years, she knew every painting in the museum as well as her own face in the mirror. It was why she had kept the job, despite the low pay and the early starting hour. Actually, she liked getting to work at five. In those dark hours before the staff started arriving, before the museum’s doors opened to the public, she could pretend that she was at home in her grand palace, that all the art was hers, to be looked at as she pleased. As she dusted, she could make believe that she was caring for her own collection,that the paintings all belonged to her. It was something about America that she found interesting, this idea that you might be able to own a painting yourself, that you might be rich enough to live in a house that looked like a museum. Of course, she had gone to the Hermitage when she lived in Moscow, and she remembered feeling proud that her country owned such beautiful things, but she had never wanted to actually own them herself. That was what America did to you. It made you want things. And when you couldn’t have them, it made you sad, sad about something you never should have wanted in the first place.
She started out in the basement, in the cavernous stone room that housed the museum’s collection of Egyptian antiquities. The room gave her the creeps, and she tried to clean it as quickly as
After the body, the first thing crime-scene services would look at would be the trash bag. They would hope to find something on it that might tell them how it—and the girl—got there. If they had been carried in a car, there might be fibers from the carpet, or traces of oil. If a man, or men, had carried the load, there might be hairs or microscopic pieces of skin on the bag. Then, of course, if the girl had been raped, as it appeared she had, there would be a treasure trove of evidence there, semen, hair, maybe DNA under her fingernails.
The truth was, though, that the crime might be prosecuted withall the forensic evidence in the world, but it was much more likely it would be solved from finding out who the girl was, what she had been like, who she had hung out with, what she had liked to do on the weekends. You didn’t find your killer with the scientific stuff, Quinn had learned. You just used it to pin it on him. It was the regular old cop work that got you into court in the first place.
And that would start with finding out what her name was. He called his witness over and asked him if he knew her. The guy looked like he was going to throw up, but he choked out, “Luz Ramirez. Her family lives over there.” He pointed to a dismal-looking brick apartment building across the way.
“Okay.” He turned to Ellie. “That’s our first thing. We gotta talk to the family, find out where she was going, then we’ll want to start doing door-to-doors, that kind of thing, see if anybody saw her last night.” He looked again at the victim’s face. She looked younger and younger the more he stared at her. “She’s dressed up like she was going somewhere. We gotta figure out who the hell she was going to meet.”
SEVEN
OLGA LEVITCH POURED the steaming water into her teapot and waited a few minutes for the tea to steep. While she waited, she planned her day, mentally traveling through the rooms of the museum, starting her cleaning at the top of each room and working her way toward the bottom and out the door. When the tea was ready, she poured it into her thermos and went to get her cleaning cart. Though it was only five A.M. , she could tell that it was going to be another hot day, and she craved something cool and relaxing. The Impressionists, she decided—she would take her tea break with the Impressionists.
It was her favorite part of the day, when she put aside her cleaning supplies and sat down for those delicious twenty minutes to drink tea and look at the art. After twenty-seven years, she knew every painting in the museum as well as her own face in the mirror. It was why she had kept the job, despite the low pay and the early starting hour. Actually, she liked getting to work at five. In those dark hours before the staff started arriving, before the museum’s doors opened to the public, she could pretend that she was at home in her grand palace, that all the art was hers, to be looked at as she pleased. As she dusted, she could make believe that she was caring for her own collection,that the paintings all belonged to her. It was something about America that she found interesting, this idea that you might be able to own a painting yourself, that you might be rich enough to live in a house that looked like a museum. Of course, she had gone to the Hermitage when she lived in Moscow, and she remembered feeling proud that her country owned such beautiful things, but she had never wanted to actually own them herself. That was what America did to you. It made you want things. And when you couldn’t have them, it made you sad, sad about something you never should have wanted in the first place.
She started out in the basement, in the cavernous stone room that housed the museum’s collection of Egyptian antiquities. The room gave her the creeps, and she tried to clean it as quickly as
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