The Cold Room by Robert Knightly Page B

database maintained by New York State or the Federal Government without turning up a match. I knew that if there was even the slightest chance that Jane could be identified through her fingerprints, the men who disposed of her body would have cut off her hands.

SEVEN
    I began my work day in the early afternoon at One Police Plaza, NYPD headquarters, arriving at two o’clock for a meeting with the NYPD’s criminal profiler, John Roach, a meeting arranged by Adele. Roach was in his mid-fifties, a detective first grade who’d been at the business of detecting for thirty years. His thinning hair was too gray even to be called salt-and-pepper, his jowls and forehead deeply creased. His nose was pinched at the end – it dropped almost to his upper lip when he smiled to reveal a half-inch gap between his front teeth. Academic might be a charitable way to describe his overall appearance, though goofy also came to mind as I returned his smile and shook his hand.
    Roach gestured to a chair, then took a seat on the opposite side of his cluttered desk. ‘Show me what you’ve got.’ His voice was hoarse, barely above a whisper, and I had to actively resist the urge to lean forward, to be drawn into his orbit. ‘CSU was otherwise occupied,’ I told him. ‘This was the best I could do.’ I passed over the crime scene photos I’d taken with the Polaroid on Sunday morning, as well as the autopsy report.
    Roach got up at that point and began to pin the photographs to a cork board, one of a series of bulletin boards that ran along the wall behind his desk. He arranged the photos in three groups, the general scene first, then the trace evidence with the tire impressions and the cut fence-link. The victim came last, prone and supine, up close and from a distance.
    For the next fifteen minutes, while he examined the photos, then the autopsy report, Roach spoke not a word. Lost as he was in the puzzle, I simply became irrelevant. And the puzzle was what Roach lived for – the puzzle was all he had. Profilers act as consultants, studying the evidence, offering advice, but they neither investigate, nor interrogate. They’re coaches, not players.
    When Roach finally turned to face me, he was smiling again. ‘Tell me about your witness.’
    â€˜His name is Clyde Kelly. On Sunday, he went out for a morning stroll, down to the waterfront in Williamsburg. Purely by accident, he witnessed a fat man with narrow eyes pull a woman’s body from the back of a van, then drag her across a dirt mound to a chain-link fence. The fat man severed one link of the fence before spotting Kelly, who took off. That’s the end of the story, unless you want Kelly’s impressions.’
    â€˜I do.’
    â€˜According to Kelly, the man could’ve been “dumping a barrel of motor oil down a storm drain.” It was just a job to him.’
    At that point, Roach picked up the phone and called the ME’s office. Five minutes later, he was speaking to Dr Kim Hyong who’d conducted the autopsy. I’d called Hyong three times before leaving my apartment without getting past his voice mail.
    Of course, Roach was a bit of a celebrity. If not with rank and file detectives, at least with Hyong, who also liked puzzles. But if the snub was humiliating, the new elements Hyong added to the mix captured my full attention. Tests for carbon monoxide and cyanide had found no trace of either in the victim’s blood, while a third test proved that she had, in fact, been pregnant.
    Roach re-examined the photos pinned to the cork board after hanging up, taking his time about it. ‘What do you want to know?’ he finally asked.
    â€˜How about the name and address of her killer?’
    â€˜Sorry.’
    â€˜Then tell me how many hands played a part in her death and her disposal.’
    â€˜More than one. Perhaps as many as three or four.’
    â€˜Does that eliminate a serial