slipknot on the lower branch came undone, and the bag dropped in a short fall of inches until the officers below held a taut line.
‘Just hold the bag in place!’ Mallory heard a squeak that was almost mechanical. Almost. She turned her head a bare inch, and now she was looking into shiny rodent eyes. The creature had no sense of fear. Its snout was inches from her face.
What long teeth you have
. It hissed. And then, balance lost, the rat dropped to the ground to land twitching and squealing at the feet of the two patrolmen, who seemed happy to see it.
Was it a sick rat, or just a clumsy one?
Bang!
A dead rat.
With better balance than vermin, Mallory dropped from the bough to land with cat’s grace on a lower one, and so she made her way down through the tall tree and then swung from the lowestbranch to stand beside the two officers. ‘Don’t bring the bag down till I lose that guy.’ She nodded toward the newspaper stringer, who stood with Riker in the field, madly writing lines in a small notebook. Whatever her partner was feeding the man, she knew it would be nothing useful.
The second ambulance siren of the day could be heard in the distance as she approached the stringer. One hand with long red fingernails – call them claws – wound around the man’s arm, and she led him farther away from her crime scene. As they walked, she dictated his copy.
Tomorrow morning, when the
Times
hit the newsstands, her status as lead detective would be a matter of public record – and not her lieutenant’s call. The mayor tended to believe everything he read in the papers, even when half the lies came from his own office, and it was the police commissioner’s job to kiss that fool’s feet and make this news item come true.
‘Nobody else has this story. I can keep it that way till tomorrow morning.’ Mallory took the pen and pad away from the civilian and jotted a brief note to this effect. It was addressed to the city desk editor, a man with debts in the favor bank that were owed to her foster father, and she signed it
Lou Markowitz’s daughter
. Then she used the stringer’s camera phone to take a photograph for the front page of tomorrow’s edition. In perfect focus, she framed the hanging tree and the uniformed policemen.
Click
. ‘Okay, you’re good to go.’ She returned his camera phone. ‘Go!’ And he did. He ran.
Riker was doing damage control in the clearing. He waved off the ambulance crew twenty feet from the tree and then made a call to request transport for a corpse. Turning to the patrolmen, he said, ‘Lower the body. We gotta get it out of the bag and lose that rope before the meat wagon gets here.’
Mallory nodded her approval. The worst leaks came from the lowest-paid employees of the Medical Examiner’s Office. So nowthey had one body for the hospital, one for the morgue – two if she counted old Mrs Lanyard – just a typical day in New York City, and there would be no mention of trees or burlap bags and ropes, no red flags that could be sold to the television networks.
When the bag was lowered to the ground and opened, what flesh remained on a female corpse would not help with identification. The body had been attended to by bugs and rats. And there was no chance of fingerprints; these extremities had been gnawed to the bone. There was silver duct tape on this face, too. It covered the eyes and mouth. And the dead woman had other things in common with the surviving victim: her bondage ropes, both ears sealed with wax, and her nudity.
Mallory loved money motives best. She looked for them where other detectives would see only evidence of insane cruelty. And so this corpse was a disappointment. The blond hair was high maintenance, but the untreated brown roots were years long. No upscale salon would miss this customer.
All around them was the bedlam of the emergency room, the babble of foreign languages and screams that needed no translation. Added to this background music were layers
‘Just hold the bag in place!’ Mallory heard a squeak that was almost mechanical. Almost. She turned her head a bare inch, and now she was looking into shiny rodent eyes. The creature had no sense of fear. Its snout was inches from her face.
What long teeth you have
. It hissed. And then, balance lost, the rat dropped to the ground to land twitching and squealing at the feet of the two patrolmen, who seemed happy to see it.
Was it a sick rat, or just a clumsy one?
Bang!
A dead rat.
With better balance than vermin, Mallory dropped from the bough to land with cat’s grace on a lower one, and so she made her way down through the tall tree and then swung from the lowestbranch to stand beside the two officers. ‘Don’t bring the bag down till I lose that guy.’ She nodded toward the newspaper stringer, who stood with Riker in the field, madly writing lines in a small notebook. Whatever her partner was feeding the man, she knew it would be nothing useful.
The second ambulance siren of the day could be heard in the distance as she approached the stringer. One hand with long red fingernails – call them claws – wound around the man’s arm, and she led him farther away from her crime scene. As they walked, she dictated his copy.
Tomorrow morning, when the
Times
hit the newsstands, her status as lead detective would be a matter of public record – and not her lieutenant’s call. The mayor tended to believe everything he read in the papers, even when half the lies came from his own office, and it was the police commissioner’s job to kiss that fool’s feet and make this news item come true.
‘Nobody else has this story. I can keep it that way till tomorrow morning.’ Mallory took the pen and pad away from the civilian and jotted a brief note to this effect. It was addressed to the city desk editor, a man with debts in the favor bank that were owed to her foster father, and she signed it
Lou Markowitz’s daughter
. Then she used the stringer’s camera phone to take a photograph for the front page of tomorrow’s edition. In perfect focus, she framed the hanging tree and the uniformed policemen.
Click
. ‘Okay, you’re good to go.’ She returned his camera phone. ‘Go!’ And he did. He ran.
Riker was doing damage control in the clearing. He waved off the ambulance crew twenty feet from the tree and then made a call to request transport for a corpse. Turning to the patrolmen, he said, ‘Lower the body. We gotta get it out of the bag and lose that rope before the meat wagon gets here.’
Mallory nodded her approval. The worst leaks came from the lowest-paid employees of the Medical Examiner’s Office. So nowthey had one body for the hospital, one for the morgue – two if she counted old Mrs Lanyard – just a typical day in New York City, and there would be no mention of trees or burlap bags and ropes, no red flags that could be sold to the television networks.
When the bag was lowered to the ground and opened, what flesh remained on a female corpse would not help with identification. The body had been attended to by bugs and rats. And there was no chance of fingerprints; these extremities had been gnawed to the bone. There was silver duct tape on this face, too. It covered the eyes and mouth. And the dead woman had other things in common with the surviving victim: her bondage ropes, both ears sealed with wax, and her nudity.
Mallory loved money motives best. She looked for them where other detectives would see only evidence of insane cruelty. And so this corpse was a disappointment. The blond hair was high maintenance, but the untreated brown roots were years long. No upscale salon would miss this customer.
All around them was the bedlam of the emergency room, the babble of foreign languages and screams that needed no translation. Added to this background music were layers
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