Stuart Kaminsky - Dead of Winter

When the detectives were a few yards away from him, he stepped in their path.

"You're investigating the murder of Charles Lutnikov," he said, his voice even, speaking slowly.

"That's right," said Mac.

"I killed him," the man said.

He was trembling.

"How are you doing?" Stella asked, standing back a few feet so she wouldn't breathe on Danny.

She was sick, no doubt about it. Temperature, chills, slight nausea.

Nausea was no stranger to CSI investigators, and Stella was no exception. She seldom wore a mask at a crime scene no matter how foul the smell, no matter how long a body had lain in a bathtub bloating and emitting up a putrid, familiar stench.

The last time she had held back the unplanned rush of bile had been two weeks earlier when she and Aiden had gone to the home of a cat lady in a brownstone on the East Side. A uniformed cop had been at the door, a look of disgust on his face, which he made no attempt to hide.

Stella and Aiden had gone in and been hit by the reek, the sound of dozens of cats howling, and a sweltering heat from radiators along the walls. The dark room smelled of death, urine and feces.

"Let's not play macho," Stella had said.

Aiden had nodded and they had put on the masks in their kit and made their way to the bedroom where they found the corpse of the old woman in the print dress. Dried vomit was on her chest. Wide eyes stared at the ceiling. Something crawled at the edge of her mouth, and a large orange cat sat on her distended stomach and hissed at the two women.

"Check with the officer," said Stella. "If he hasn't called Animal Control, have him do it now."

With that and the sound of her own voice speaking inside her, Stella reminded herself that this was what she did, what had to be done, and that she did it better than anyone else.

And so she had spent an hour in the filth, which had begun to accumulate long before the woman died. An examination of the body by Hawkes showed that the woman, who looked as if she had been strangled, had instead died after a heart attack, which caused her to choke on her own vomit.

Danny's back was turned to her. He held up a corked test tube with a yellow viscous liquid inside.

"Last time," he said. "You're sick. You should be in bed."

"It's a cold," she said.

He shook his head.

"I'm taking care of it. I had some tea," she said.

"One small step for mankind," he said.

Stella ignored him and asked, "What did you find?"

"Whoever produced this vomit, should change his diet," said Danny. "He's using his stomach to store and process fat. He had both pepperoni and some kind of sausage, also a large quantity of pasta with a spicy sauce that on a scale of one to ten I'd give an ah caramba."

"Danny," Stella said with barely veiled impatience.

"Flour," Danny said. "Unprocessed, unbleached. This guy has been breathing in flour."

"You tested the flour?" she said, holding back a sniffle.

"Traces in the vomit. Marco's Bakery. Perfect match to our sample," he said.

"And the rubber marks in the hallway of the bakery definitely match the heels of Collier's shoes?" asked Stella.

"All trails lead back to Marco's Bakery," he said.

He put the test tube down and turned to her.

"Mind if I make a clinical observation?" he said. He didn't wait for an answer. "Your nose is as red as a maraschino cherry."

"Stella the red-nosed CSI investigator," she said.

"No kidding," Danny said. "You should be- "

"I thought you said you were finished with playing doctor," she said.

Danny shrugged.

"Want to know about the blood work?" she asked.

He nodded.

"As expected, most of the samples from the sidewalk and the doorway match Guista's," she said. "He's losing a lot of blood. If he hasn't already, he'll pass out soon if he doesn't get to a doctor. But there's also blood from someone else."

Danny sat on a lab stool. Stella sank slowly into another one.

"Guista gets shot by Flack," she said. "He drives his bakery truck to Brooklyn, abandons the truck in front of a deli, takes a car. Gets out and walks half a block. Someone's waiting for him."

"And someone gets a surprise," said Danny. "My guess: Guista hits him hard. He throws up, bleeds, loses a tooth. Guista's on the run again. Or on a slow walk."

Stella nodded and said, "Something like that. The kids who took the bakery truck said he used the telephone. Did you check the call?"

Danny shook his head. "I'll check it now. You go home."

The look she gave him made Danny decide to end his crusade to get Stella to take care of herself. Finally.

"Did you check the names of the people in that apartment building?"

"Thought you'd never ask," said Danny. "All but one has an arrest record."

"So- " Stella began.

"The one without the arrest record is a Lynn Contranos," he said.

"You look absolutely glutinous with self approbation," Stella said.

"With…?"

"It's from a Hitchcock movie," she said, wiping her nose. "What about her?"

"Lynn Contranos aka Helen Grandfield," he said. "Dario Marco's trusted assistant."

Stella nodded.

"But that's not all," Danny said adjusting his glasses, eager. "Helen Grandfield's name, before she married Stanley Contranos, who is doing a minimum of ten to twenty for Murder Two, was Helen Marco, niece of Anthony Marco who is on trial as we speak. Ergo, Dario Marco is her father."

"All roads lead back to Marco's Bakery," said Stella. "Let's pay them another visit."

"And take a couple of uniforms with us?" he asked.

Stella nodded and reached into her pocket for the small plastic bottle of tablets Sheldon Hawkes had given her less than an hour ago.

"Might make you more tired," Hawkes had said. "But it'll numb you down."

She opened the bottle.

The name of the young man who had confessed to the murder of Charles Lutnikov was Jordan Breeze, who lived on the third floor of the Belvedere Towers in a studio apartment. Breeze, a Drexel University graduate, was a computer programmer for an Indian company on 55th Street. His job was to create software programs to help track and map the universe.

Mac looked up from the folder in his hands into the eyes of Jordan Breeze and then back at the folder. Breeze had never been in trouble with the police, didn't belong to any radical groups. After questioning the neighbors, Mac had determined that he was a quiet tenant who always had a "good morning" for others. However, he had been seen less and less over the past few months. A number of other tenants had seen him at the Starbucks two blocks away working on his computer and a Grande Latte, but not for a while. Mac turned on the tape recorder.

"You're sure you don't want a lawyer?" Mac asked.

"Certain," said Breeze.

"Why did you kill him?" asked Mac.

"He called me a queer," said Breeze. "Not just once. Many times. I shuddered when I left my apartment in the morning or went back in the evening, afraid I'd run into him. I see the question in your eyes."

"What question?" asked Mac.

"Am I gay," said Breeze. "I'm not, but some of my friends are, and I'm not going to suffer homophobic fools. I took it for almost a year."

"And then," said Mac. "You killed him. How?"

"With a gun," said Breeze. "He was on the elevator. I could have avoided him if I had chosen to go down the stairs, but he would have seen me."

"You had the gun with you?" asked Mac.

"I did."

"You planned to kill him the next time he started in on you?"

"Yes," said Breeze. "I got in the elevator. The doors closed. He started…"

"He called me a skinny-ass fag," said Breeze. "The gun was in the outer pocket of my computer case. There is some shit I will not eat."