Raffi Yessayan: 2 in the Hat

Connie surveyed the room. He had to play this right. Greene was standing by an open window smoking a cigarette, his attempt at hiding his nasty habit in the smoke-free building. Of course the smoke went everywhere except out the window. The cigarette smoke usually bothered Connie, but not today. Ward sat at the small table in the middle of the room staring at Greene, inhaling as much smoke as he could.

“C’mon, man, just a couple of tokes?” he asked the detective. “This is what they call cruel and unusual punishment, ain’t it? Smoking in front of a man who’s been locked up with no privileges.”

Greene smiled and blew some smoke in his direction.

“Asshole.”

Connie sat in the chair across from Ward. “ Tracy, you want a smoke?”

“What the fuck you think, Mr. DA? Yeah, I want a smoke. And don’t call me Tracy. I prefer T, or Mr. Ward from you.”

“T, you know it’s against the rules for us to let a prisoner smoke. You’re technically in the custody of the sheriff’s department even though they passed you off to the detective here. The sheriff’s department doesn’t like it when we violate their rules. But maybe we can make an exception for you. You promise not to tell anyone if we hook you up?”

“No problem. I already told you I ain’t no snitch.”

“Okay, we’ll give you a smoke if you tell us what happened the night you got shot.”

“What did I just tell you about not being a snitch? Why you try to play me? You just brought me into court and tried to put me on trial with no judge. That’s what they call a kangaroo court, right?” He looked toward Greene.

“You weren’t on trial,” Connie said. “You’re the victim here. You’ve been shot and we’re trying to find out who did this so we can charge him with the crime.”

“If I’m the victim, why you putting me through this shit, dragging me into a courtroom and threatening me with contempt.”

“I’m not trying to put you through anything. The people in that courtroom were grand jurors. Their job is to investigate crimes and indict the people who committed those crimes. That’s why there’s no judge. It’s a secret proceeding, and I’m the one that runs the show.”

“I didn’t like it and I ain’t going back, not to testify, not for nothing.”

“I’m not talking about testifying, and you don’t need to go back. I just want you to tell me and the detective what happened that night. It doesn’t leave this room. No grand jury minutes with your name on them floating around the neighborhood.”

“Why should I trust you?”

“I’m a man of my word. And I ain’t no snitch either. You don’t tell anyone I gave you a smoke and I don’t tell anyone about our conversation in this room.”

“No tapes?”

Connie shook his head.

“No report with my name in it?”

“No tapes. No reports. I just want to know who you were with that night, who shot you, and what your beef is with him.”

“What’s in it for me?”

“You get to nail the dude who left you crapping in a bag. And you get a smoke.”

“Can you do anything with my sentence?”

“No.”

“Can you get me into some programs so I can earn more good time?”

“I know a deputy superintendent at the jail. I can make a call for you. No guarantees. That’s it, a smoke and a phone call. And no one knows we talked.”

“How about you take these cuffs off so I can enjoy the smoke.”

“First we talk.”

The feeling of anxiety was the same every time Alves stepped into the sterile room. He had witnessed dozens of autopsies, but he still felt the way he did before the first one. Death was not a pretty thing, especially unnatural death. It wasn’t like an elderly person dying in bed after a long life, a tired body giving out. There was something about the machinery that is the human body being stopped abruptly, unlawfully, violently, and the pathologist trying to determine which piece of the mechanism was toyed with, hindered, severed, obliterated.

Besides him and Mooney, there were three people in the room. The medical examiner, Jacob Belsky, was all suited up and preparing his equipment and a BPD photographer taking some “before” shots of the John Doe corpse. Eunice Curran, the head of the BPD crime lab, stood by, waiting to examine the body for trace evidence. At his request, she had been at the crime scene the night before, too. Eunice was the best, and Alves couldn’t risk one of her newer criminalists missing an important piece of evidence.

“Find anything yet?” Alves asked Eunice.

“Nothing.” She was all business today. None of the usual harmless flirting, not during an autopsy, and certainly not in front of Belsky. She walked over to another metal table where she had laid out John Doe’s clothing on large individual sheets of brown paper torn from a roll. As always, she was careful to keep each item separate for further analysis and storage. “I gave these a visual inspection before I removed them. I’ll go over them more thoroughly with an alternate light source when I get back to headquarters.” She rested her hand on a duffel bag at the end of the table. “I brought a portable light to go over the bodies before Belsky starts cutting.”

Alves watched as Mooney made his way to the autopsy table. The victim’s skin was discolored, taking on a greenish-black pattern, and his face and abdomen were swollen. He looked worse than he had the night before on the hill. Other than the damage caused by decay, Alves didn’t see any signs of trauma, except for the single bullet hole in the center of his chest. He hoped they’d recover a bullet inside him that wasn’t too damaged. A ballistics match could be another piece of evidence linking this case to the earlier homicides and eventually to a suspect.

“Is this the kid from Franklin Park last night?” Mooney asked the obvious question, not making any assumptions.

The medical examiner nodded. “John Doe. Jane’s in the other room.”

Alves’s BlackBerry vibrated. He removed it from his belt. “Alves,” he said. He mouthed the words “Sergeant Pratt” to Mooney and headed toward the window. Pratt did all the talking and Alves listened intently. It was news that he was hoping for, news that he needed to move forward in the investigation, but news that he dreaded. When Pratt was finished, he hung up on Alves without a good-bye.

“What is it?” Mooney asked.

“They think they’ve got an ID on the vics. Courtney Steadman and Josh Kipping. A couple of BC students who haven’t been seen since Saturday night. Their friends didn’t think anything at first. But when they saw the news reports this morning, calls started coming in. Pratt sent some cars out to their parents. They’re on the way to make a formal ID.” It was too bad IDs were made only through photos now. Parents were deprived of the opportunity to give their children a final hug, a kiss, the chance to run their fingers through their children’s hair one last time.

“Where’s the girl?” Mooney asked.

“What do you need from her?” Belsky asked, not much of his face visible beneath his safety glasses and mask.

“We think these victims may be related to some homicides from ten years ago,” Alves said. “Sarge was involved with the original investigation. We need to see the female to confirm that we’re dealing with the same killer.”

The ME led them into the adjoining autopsy room.

“We’re going to need you guys, too,” Mooney said to Eunice and the photographer.

The girl looked just as bad as the boy, her body showing signs of deterioration, her eyes open and covered with a cloudy, opaque film. He wondered if she really was Courtney Steadman. He prayed that she wasn’t, for her parents’ sake. But then, what did it matter? Someone’s parents were going to be devastated. For a moment Alves was back on the hill where he had seen her the night before, staring into his eyes, begging for help. She looked even worse now, lying naked on a cold steel table. A final indignity before being cut open, no longer human, just evidence.