Christopher Smith - Running of the bulls

“I had nothing to do with her death. I assumed you did it.”

Wood was on their list. “I didn’t.”

“Then who?”

“I have no idea.”

“Well, that’s intriguing, isn’t it?” He dropped to the floor and started doing push-ups.

“Does Wolfhagen know she’s dead? Have you talked with him?”

“Oh, I’ve talked with him,” he said. “This morning and last night. We couldn’t reach him because he wasn’t in California. He’s here, in New York. Staying at The Plaza.” He put one arm behind his back and continued. “Wasn’t too happy with you, Carmen.”

“I’m sure he wasn’t.”

He switched arms. “You had an off night. You made a few bad decisions. We’ve all been there. I sympathize.”

He jumped to his feet and ran his hand down the length of his muscled torso, wiping away the sweat. “Anyway, things have changed. Wolfhagen wants to move on this. He wants us to get through the list by the end of the day. The police are already onto it. They’re making connections. They suspect Martinez saw something and they’re probably right.”

He paused, plucked a tulip from the arrangement, turned it over in his hands and lifted the delicate red cup to his nose. “But now, she’s dead and that’s going to be enough for the police. They’ll know Hayes was murdered and they’ll connect him to the rest. Before the others make that connection, Wolfhagen wants them dead. It’ll make for one hell of a day, but I’ve agreed.”

“But we’ve already discussed this,” Carmen said. “If we move too quickly, the police will suspect him. Wolfhagen’s got motive. They’ll know it’s him. They’ll burn his ass.”

Spocatti tossed her the tulip. Carmen snagged it with one hand and stared at him.

“Wolfhagen knows the risks, but he’s no fool. He’s willing to take them because he’s going to be everywhere when each murder happens. When they die, he’ll have alibis. He plans to be with this person, that person, at this public event, that restaurant. It’s not a bad plan. As long as he remains in public when we take out the others, he should be fine. And besides, after my last job here, I’m tired of New York. I’ve been here too long. I want this over with. It’s time for something new. He wants those people dead by the end of tonight? Fine. I’m all for it. You should be, too.”

“Tell me how we’re going to do this when we have to let everyone know why they’re being murdered and catch everything on film?”

“I mentioned that to him and he’s willing to be more lenient. If the situation allows for it, great. But if we need to take a rifle and shoot someone in the back of the head in an effort to be more efficient, that’s what we do.”

He stepped beneath the U-shaped bars, jumped and gripped them tightly. Up, down, up. “One other thing,” he said to her. “Maggie Cain? Wolfhagen wants us to kill her first, but not before we’ve found every trace of what she’s written about him and burned the manuscript.” Up, down, up. Eyes hard and narrowed and suddenly fixed on hers. “I’ll take care of Cain. In the meantime, I’ll need you to search her apartment for that manuscript.” Up, down, up. “Oh, and there’s one other thing. Just a small thing. I also need you to figure out how we finish off the rest by midnight tonight.”

Even before Marty reached the cutting room, he could smell the stench of formaldehyde and human decay. When he entered the building, he swiped Vicks beneath his nose, which helped to a point, but as he approached the room, there was nothing he could do about the eerie scream of a Stryker saw as it bit down into bone just beyond the closed doors.

He was at the Chief Medical Examiner’s office on First Avenue. It was hot outside, but here the circulation of refrigerated air wasn’t as welcome as one might expect. It cooled the area, sure, but it also got the stink of death so far up into your nose, it was enough to make your stomach clench.

He pushed through the doors and looked across the room at Carlo Skeen, the chief medical examiner whose gloved hands were buried deep in the chest of an elderly man. He was pulling on something that wouldn’t come loose.

This was a breeding ground for bacteria and as they feasted on the dead flesh of the several other bodies in the room, the gasses they emitted were as cutting as anything Marty had experienced. It was a smell he’d never get used to. Just being here made him want to vomit.

And it got worse.

In the far corner of the room, a male intern started humming as he hunched over the head of a middle-aged woman. He started the Stryker saw again and appeared oblivious as the saw’s note deepened and sometimes caught as it glided across her milky white skull.

On the four other necropsy tables, those who were next in line were being drained of what had once kept them alive.

Marty focused on Skeen and moved toward him. He tapped him on the shoulder just as the man wrenched free one of the elderly man’s lungs. Typical of Skeen, he never flinched. He’d been aware of Marty’s presence the entire time.

“Are you never late?” Skeen asked.

Marty glanced down at the lung clutched in Skeen’s hands-black, pockmarked, cobwebbed with tar, it literally smelled of nicotine. His stomach tightened. “Nope.”

“Gloria ever slow you down?”

Marty watched him turn the lung over in his hands. Each time he did so, it stirred the air. “Yup.”

“Then you must have been late at some point in your life.”

“I drive fast, walk fast. Look,” he said above the whining saw. “Thanks for seeing me. Can we talk?”

“Sure.” Carlo placed the lung onto a scale spattered with blood and peeled off the heavy latex gloves. Marty decided he couldn’t look at the lung any longer. He glanced down and, with a jolt, found himself looking into the body’s cavity, which was peeled open and exposing the man’s organs. He turned away and focused on Skeen’s hands. Large, pink and smooth, the nails clipped close.

“So, what’s up?” Carlo asked.

“I need a favor.”

“Name it.”

“Maria Martinez and her daughter? They here yet?”

“Came in this morning.”

“I don’t suppose you’ve done them yet?”

Skeen laughed. “You’re funny, Marty. Really. You’re a scream.”

“It was worth a try.”

“Not really,” he said. “But I can give you a preliminary. The mother was shot twice in the back of the head at close range. The child’s neck was broken. That’s all I’ve got.”

“What about Judge Wood and Gerald Hayes?”

“They’re different,” Skeen said. “They came in last night and they’ve got priority. Ain’t power and position grand? We’re working on them now.”

“What’ve you found?”

“Nothing on Hayes,” Carlo said. “He’s still being drained. But Wood’s almost finished, except for some lab work. Want to take a look?”

They moved across the room to the table where Judge Kendra Wood lay beneath a shimmering white sheet, her legs lifted and parted in stirrups. With a flick of Skeen’s wrist, the sheet was gone, exposing what was left of Wood’s headless body. Marty looked at the “Y” sliced into her chest and asked himself that very question.

“It’ll take some time to know for sure, but it appears that she died from an overdose of methamphetamines and alcohol. Time of death occurred between three and four yesterday afternoon. Decapitation approximately nine hours later.”

Surprised, Marty looked at his friend. “Someone cut her head off after she was dead?”

“Hours after she was dead.”

“Why?”

Skeen shrugged. “That’s for you and the police to figure out. I can only tell you how she died and what happened to her after death.”