Stuart Kaminsky - Dead of Winter

"Does the elevator automatically come back down here?"

"No sir. You have to push the L button or it sits wherever it stopped last."

"Are the two other elevators as small as the one with the body?" Mac asked.

"No sir," repeated the doorman. "They're considerably bigger. Elevator three is small because it only goes up from fifteen to the penthouse and then back down here."

A whirl of wind beyond the rattling glass front doors turned the doorman's head. "Looks real bad out there. Hear it's cold too. Below zero."

"Mr. Lutnikov lived on three," Mac said. "Any idea why he was on an elevator that didn't stop at his floor?"

McGee shook his head. "Everything from fifteenth floor up is single apartments. Take up the whole floor. Four, five bedrooms, balconies. Ms. Louisa Cormier in the penthouse has her own screening room, with these real plush seats and a great big screen. People up there have the big dollars."

"For Lutnikov to get to elevator three…" Mac prompted.

"He'd have to come down to the lobby, get on elevator three, and go back up," said the doorman.

"Mr. Lutnikov know anyone who lived on fifteen or above?" asked Mac.

McGee shrugged his bony shoulders.

"Wouldn't know," he said. "Friendly building but not close-like. People in the lobby say hello, smile polite-like but…"

The paramedics were coming through the hall carrying a stretcher with a zippered body bag, the dead man inside. Mac could see Aiden Burn putting crime-scene tape across the door of the elevator.

"I'll get the door for you," said McGee, hurrying in front of the paramedics and pushing open the door to a rush of wind, an invading gust of snow and a blast of icy air that ran through Mac's shoulder blades.

Aiden joined Mac. She slipped her gloves off and dropped them in her pocket. The lingering cold from the outside attack of the storm had hit her. She zipped up her blue jacket, the twin of Mac's with the words "Crime Scene Unit" in white letters across the back.

"He wasn't going out jogging in his slippers," said Mac, watching the body being loaded into the ambulance.

"Where was he going?" asked Aiden.

"Or coming from?" answered Mac.

"Somewhere between fifteen and twenty-one, which is the penthouse," she said. "The buttons show the elevator doesn't go between one and fourteen, but it does go to the lobby and the basement. There's a B button on the elevator. No garage."

"You take the basement. I'll start on fifteen."

"Whoever shot our victim stood outside the elevator," Aiden said. "No powder burns on his shirt. Elevator's too small to fire a shot and leave no powder burn."

Mac nodded.

"And," she added, "he or she was a good shot. Entry wound is right in line with the heart."

"Can I turn elevator three back on?" asked the doorman.

"No," said Mac. "It's a crime scene. There's a stairwell?"

McGee nodded his head and said, "It's the law."

"The tenants will have to use the staircase down to the fifteenth floor and take one of the elevators from there or keep walking," Mac said.

"They are not going to like that," said McGee, shaking his head. "Not at all. Can I call them and tell them?"

"Right after you give me the names of every tenant from the fifteenth floor up," said Mac.

"I'll write them down for you," said McGee, picking up an automatic pencil from the dark brown desk and clicking it with his thumb.

ED TAXX ADJUSTED THE THERMOSTAT in room 614 of the Brevard Hotel. The thermometer showed it was sixty-five degrees, but the Brevard was old, the heating system unreliable, and the weather outside frigid white.

Taxx was a twenty-five-year veteran with the District Attorney's security division. One more year and his daughter would be off to college in Boston. Then, Ed told his wife, they would head for Florida and screw the New York winters.

Ed had grown up on Long Island, had looked forward to winter snows, snowball fights, sledding down Maryknoll Hill, being kid macho like the other boys playing hockey with freezing fingers and ears in Stanton Park. When he reached the age of forty, he stopped looking forward to the winters, the car that threatened not to start, the snow that kept him in his car for hours with the heat turned up, and the need to concentrate to keep from skidding always on his mind. Worst of all were the long gray depressing days. He would not miss the city when he retired.

He looked at Cliff Collier, who didn't look cold at all. Collier was thirty-two, bull strong. He had been an NYPD uniformed officer for six years and a detective for two years.

In two hours they would be relieved by another team guarding Alberta Spanio, who was currently asleep in the locked bedroom. Cliff and Ed had met two nights earlier when they relieved two others from their respective offices. Each night they had tucked Alberta in just before midnight, heard her lock the dead bolt. Collier had spent the night watching television shows constantly being interrupted by weather reports as the snow piled higher and the temperature dropped lower. Taxx had sporadically watched television and read a mystery novel set in Florida.

The two men neither liked nor disliked each other. They had little in common but the job. After ten minutes of small talk once Alberta locked her door, they had settled into conversational silence and Jay Leno as background white noise.

The Brevard Hotel was not a regular safe house for the NYPD or the District Attorney's office. No chances were being taken with Alberta Spanio. No chance that there was a leak in the department. That's what the two men and the people on the other two shifts had been told. They all had enough smarts and experience to be selected for the job, which meant that they all knew there was a chance that the people they were protecting Alberta Spanio from might find out where she was.

Had Alberta, short, big busted, unnaturally blonde, and very naturally frightened, asked for a phone call, Ed and Cliff would have given her a polite "no," the same polite "no" she would had received if she asked for a ham sandwich. No room service. No outside delivery. Food came in only when there was a shift change.

The relief officers, due in about an hour, would bring something for breakfast, probably Egg McMuffin sandwiches and coffee, which had been their breakfast of choice the day before.

"It's eight," Taxx said, looking at his watch. "We'd better wake her."

"I could use the john," said Collier, who rose from the couch and nodded as he moved to the bedroom door. He knocked loudly and called, "Wake up call, Alberta."

No answer. Collier knocked again.

"Alberta." First a call and then a question, "Alberta?"

Taxx was at his side now. He knocked and shouted, "Wake up."

Still no answer. The two men looked at each other. Taxx nodded at Collier who understood.

"Open it up or we break it down," said Taxx, loud but calmly.

Taxx looked at his watch, counted off fifteen seconds and stepped out of the way so the younger, larger cop could throw his weight against the door. Collier threw his shoulder into the door the way he'd been shown in the Academy. Use the muscle part of the arm not the bony part of the shoulder. Don't throw everything into the first lunge if you don't have to get in fast. Hit it hard, wear it down. Fight the wood, not the lock. When Collier hit it, the door cracked but didn't open. The dead bolt held. Collier backed up a few steps and threw himself into the door again. This time it flew open to the sound of splintering wood, and Collier stumbled forward, almost falling.

The room was nearly frigid.

Taxx looked at the bed, a mound of blankets. The window across the room was closed, but a draft of icy air was coming from the open door of the bathroom.