Carol O’Connell - Crime School

Behind the thin protection of the curtain, Riker lowered his voice to plead with the chief medical examiner. ‘Just five minutes? A fast exam, a few samples for – ’

‘Not a chance.’ Slope turned in the direction of the banging. ‘You have to let that doctor in.’

‘Why? What can he do for her now? He’ll stop the – ’

‘If this woman has family, you’re leaving the city open for a lawsuit. So we’ll go by the book.’

As Slope reached for the curtain, Mallory ripped it aside. Behind her, the door was closing on the East Side lieutenant. As a parting gift, Loman must have released his pent-up aggression on the doctor in the hall, for the banging had ceased.

‘I made Loman give us two detectives for grunt work.’ Mallory turned to face Dr Slope. ‘Dead or alive, we need the exam. Now.’

The chief medical examiner was a man who gave orders, and he was not about to take this from her. All of that was in his voice when he said, ‘The victim will be dead by morning. This can wait.’

Riker braced for a new round of hostilities, but Mallory surprised him. ‘Maybe you’re right,’ she said. ‘A cover-up is better.’ And now she had the pathologist’s complete attention.

Dr Slope folded his arms, saying, ‘What do you – ’

‘A lot of mistakes were made tonight,’ said Mallory. ‘No one called an ambulance. A rookie fireman decided the victim was dead. Maybe because she didn’t blink – who knows? He used to be a cop, so he preserved the crime scene.’ She pointed to the hospital bed. ‘And he left that woman hanging.’

Her foster father had been Edward Slope’s oldest friend and the founder of his weekly floating poker game. The doctor had known Mallory in her puppy days, loved her unconditionally, and knew better than to trust her. He turned to her partner for confirmation of this highly unlikely scenario.

‘It happened,’ said Riker. ‘It’s the East Village virus. No senior men were riding on that fire truck tonight.’

Mallory all but yawned to show how little this case mattered to her. ‘So Loman’s detectives go along with a call of homicide – by a fireman. And then your man, a doctor – the only one authorized to operate a damn stethoscope – he confirmed the death.’

‘If he confirmed it – ’

‘I hear things,’ she said. ‘I know all about the corpse that woke up in your morgue last month – another victim who wasn’t quite dead. Was your assistant on that case too?’

‘I’m sure this woman was dead at the time – ’

‘You’ll never be sure.’ She stepped back to appraise his tuxedo, then reached out to run one red fingernail down a satin lapel. ‘But what the hell. It’s a party night.’ This was one of Mallory’s more subtle insults: the fireman, the police and Slope’s own assistant had all done their part to turn a woman’s brain into coma soup – but why should that spoil the doctor’s fun? ‘No great loss.’ Mallory glanced back at the door, then lowered her voice to the range of conspiracy. ‘She’s just a whore. We’ll let the nurses wash the body and destroy the evidence. No one will ever know what happened tonight.’

She turned her back on an outraged Edward Slope, and this was Riker’s cue to step forward and soften the damage, saying, ‘I need this exam. It’s gotta be now.’ And last, the finishing touch, he saved the doctor’s face with a bribe. ‘You’ll get a police escort to the party. Traffic’s murder tonight.’

‘You’ve won my heart.’ Dr Slope set his medical bag on the bed, then turned to Mallory. ‘Kathy, take notes.’ This was the doctor’s idea of getting even, for she always insisted on the distancing formality of her surname. He smiled, so pleased by her irritation, as he pulled on latex gloves.

‘No makeup.’ Riker leaned over the bed to take the first photograph. ‘Looks like Sparrow was in for the night. So the perp wasn’t some John she picked up on the street. Any sign of drugs?’

Dr Slope examined the woman’s eyes, then the fingernails. ‘Nothing obvious.’ There was no bruising on her arms, nor any fresh puncture wounds. He clicked on a penlight and examined the nasal passages, then pulled an empty syringe from his bag. ‘She’s not snorting it, but I’ll get a blood work-up.’

When the sheets had been pulled away and the hospital gown untied, an old stab wound was exposed on Sparrow’s left side. ‘Looks like a knife was twisted to widen the cut – sheer cruelty.’ Dr Slope was impressed. ‘I gather this isn’t the first time someone tried to kill her.’

Through the camera’s viewfinder, Riker watched the other man’s gloved fingers explore the scar. ‘It happened a long time ago.’

‘A street fight?’

‘That’s my guess.’ Riker knew Mallory could give exact details of that fight, but she was continuing the long silence of Kathy the child. ‘Sparrow was real good with a knife.’

‘In that case, I’d hate to see the damage to her opponent.’ The pathologist looked up. ‘Or perhaps I did – on the autopsy table?’

Riker merely shrugged, for he disliked the idea of lying to this man. ‘It wasn’t my case.’ And that was the truth. He turned the camera on Sparrow’s face. Even after seeing proof of her identity, it had taken him a while to recognize those naked blue eyes undisguised by mascara and purple shadow. Two years ago, the prostitute’s hair had been bleached to straw. Tonight, what was left of it was a more natural shade of blond. And there had been other changes since he had last seen this woman.

Awe, Sparrow, what did you do to that wonderful shnoze?

Once, her broken nose had been a dangerous-looking piece of damage in the middle of her pretty face, hanging there like a dare. Now the nose was remade, and all that remained of her character was a slightly prominent chin that stuck out to say, Oh, yeah? the bad-attitude line of a true New Yorker.

At their last meeting, Sparrow had been in her early thirties. The street life of drugs and whoring had aged her by another twenty years, but now she seemed brand-new again – so young. ‘She had a facelift, right?’

‘Rhinoplasty too,’ said Slope, ‘and dermabrasion. Her last surgery was a brow lift. There’s still some post-op swelling. Nice work – expensive. I gather she was a pricey call girl.’

‘No, nothin’ that grand.’ Sparrow had never been more than a cheap hustler with an accidental gift for making him laugh. When she was a skinny teenager, Riker had turned her into an informant.

You were soaking wet that night, too stoned to come in from the rain.

She had strutted up and down the sidewalk, shaking her fists at skyscrapers and hollering, praying, ‘God! Give me a lousy break!’ All of Sparrow’s deities lived in penthouses, and she had truly believed that manna would fall from heaven on the high floors – if she could only get the gods’ attention.

But you never did.

Over the years, she had peddled her body to pay for heroin, always vowing to kick the habit tomorrow – and tomorrow. Lies. Yet Riker remained her most ardent sucker. He gently touched a short strand of her butchered hair. ‘What did the perp use on her? Scissors or a razor?’

The pathologist shrugged. ‘Haircuts are not my area.’

‘It was a razor,’ said Mallory, who paid hundreds of dollars for her own salon expertise.

Riker imagined the weapon slashing Sparrow’s hair, her eyes getting wider, awaiting worse mutilation as the razor moved close to her face – her brand-new face – stringing out the tension until she lost her mind.

Mallory moved closer to the bed. ‘What about that mark on her arm? That looks like a razor, too.’