Richard Hawke - Cold Day in Hell

“We haven’t determined a thing. I only beat you by five minutes. I haven’t even introduced myself to the corpse.”

The lieutenant brushed at the snowflakes settling on his shoulder. “If you want to make yourself invisible, feel free. You’ve got to keep out of the perimeter. I like a clean crime scene.”

I pointed at the boulder. “How about that rock?”

“If you feel like mountaineering.”

Another cop was using a tree next to the boulder as one of his corners for the crime-scene tape. I ducked under the tape and scrambled up to the top of the boulder. With the leaves gone, I had a nice view of Central Park Lake below me, the row of overturned rowboats running along the south shore, the cast-iron Bow Bridge arching over the lake. The intensity of the snow was already increasing, and in just a matter of minutes, the overturned rowboats had already started fading to white. The lake itself was partially covered with a thin film of ice in a shape reminding me of a piece from a jigsaw puzzle. Directly below was the large flat rock where people like to go sunning in warm weather. It was abandoned now, of course, except for a trio of uninterested mallards.

The body was lying about twenty feet from the base of the boulder. I couldn’t see much at first, as a pair of forensics experts and someone in a long black coat were squatting on either side of it. I could see pants legs and a pair of men’s brown dress shoes. Through the legs of the forensics cops, I could make out a large area of bloodstained snow and leaves. As Gallo approached the scene, he looked up to where I was standing. “How’s the view?”

“It’s a man,” I said.

Gallo tapped the side of his head. “We could use a natural like you on the force. What else can you see from up there?”

“Nothing. Your men have the better seats.”

The figure in the long black coat turned and looked up at me. “Some detective.” She rose and gave her lower back a solid stretch. Like the two forensics cops, she was wearing a wool NYPD cap, her short hair tucked in so that none of it would become part of Gallo’s crime scene. Her smirk arrived as if on wings.

“Hello, Detective Lamb,” I said.

She squinted up at me. “Fritz Malone. Long time no see.” Maybe not the strongest Long Island accent I’ve ever heard, but strong enough to defend itself.

“I guess we’ve just been haunting different corners of the city.”

“Yeah, well. No shortage of corners.”

Megan Lamb was a junior detective in Joe Gallo’s homicide squad out of the Twentieth. I’d known her for several years. We first met when she invited me to a diner in the Village one afternoon to chew me out for what she considered my interference with an investigation she was involved in. I was guilty as charged, and we’d had a spirited fight over it. Generally speaking, I found her somewhat guarded, but it’s not uncommon for women cops to keep their armor at the ready just as a matter of course. Still, I liked her. She had a passion for her job. She’d wade in plenty deep in the interest of the victim. The previous winter Megan had landed herself in the headlines by fatally shooting a serial killer and rapist in the line of duty. The Swede. Both Megan’s partner and her closest friend had been slaughtered by the Swede minutes before Megan’s arrival on the scene. Though she’d been hailed in the press as a hero and eventually been given the all clear by the department’s investigatory panel (standard procedure when a police officer fatally dislodges their weapon), a degree of murkiness had lingered around the circumstances of the shooting, and only a few weeks after her return to active duty, Megan had put in for extended leave. Some weeks after, rumors reached me that Megan was having a rough time of things and that she wasn’t exactly conducting herself in the healthiest of fashions, and I’d made a point to cross my path with hers one night, trying to pass it off as a coincidence. She’d sniffed me out and told me exactly what she thought of my “charity mission.” Nobody likes a hovering angel. I know I don’t. She’d remained off my radar screen until this past May. She was back on active duty, and her next fifteen minutes of fame came for being the cop who had slapped the cuffs on Marshall Fox when he was taken into custody for the murders of Cynthia Blair and Nikki Rossman.

Now Megan went into a pocket of her coat and pulled out a stick of gum, unwrapped it, and popped it into her mouth. She’s a fairly small-framed woman; the long coat threatened to swallow her. After methodically folding the wrapper and sticking it back in her pocket, she squinted up at me again. “Don’t go falling on my crime scene, Malone, okay? It’s deteriorating fast enough as it is. You just make like a statue and stay put up there.”

“You’re the boss.”

Megan indicated Gallo. “He’s the boss. I’m just the working stiff.”

I could see more of the victim now. A tie. An overcoat. The head was twisted to its left and partially submerged in a clump of red snow and dead leaves. Even from up on the boulder, I could tell the location of the source of the blood.

Megan turned to Gallo. “Fresh as a daisy.”

Gallo grunted. “Dead daisy.”

One of the forensics specialists spoke up. “She’s right. This guy isn’t an hour cold.”

From my perch, I was able to see one of the local television news vans pulling into the Boathouse Café parking area.

“Your favorite vultures have arrived,” I announced to Gallo.

Gallo turned to the cop whose radio call Charlie Burke had picked up and directed him to go head off the press. “Read my lips, Carr. No comment . Think you can handle that?”

Megan Lamb had pulled a small notebook from her coat pocket, and she scribbled down a note. “We need to get a tarp up here, Joe. This guy’s going to be a snowman in another five minutes.” The wind had kicked up and the snow was driving sideways. Megan brushed some of it from her sleeves and stepped gingerly around to where one of the forensics teams was carefully removing a clump of leaves and old snow from the victim’s face. She looked like a kid in that large coat. She bent down to take a look. “Jesus Christ.”

All I could see from my vantage point was the look on Megan’s face when she straightened again. She looked as if she’d taken a brisk slap.

Gallo asked, “What’ve you got?”

Megan indicated me. “Okay if he hears?”

“Yeah, sure. What is it?”

She puckered her lips. It looked almost like she was giving a smooch to the falling snow. Her breath frosted around her face as she exhaled. “It’s the lawyer, that’s what it is. The loudmouth.”

Gallo stepped closer to the body and bent over for a look. “Son of a bitch. That’s exactly who it is.”

I edged closer to the edge of the boulder, careful not to tumble off the slippery edge as I got a better look at the uncharacteristically silent, cold body of Zachary Riddick.

EXCEPT FOR THE CABBIE who drove Zachary Riddick to Central Park, the lawyer had last been seen alive at 12:20 on the day he was murdered. This was at the news conference, where Riddick had bellyached for a mistrial to be declared and for the immediate release of Marshall Fox from custody. He had been pure Riddick, decrying “the abysmal miscarriage of justice” and working up the sort of lather that Joan of Arc could have only dreamed of from one of her defenders. He also managed to slip in the phrase “my good friend Marshall Fox” or “my personal friend Marshall Fox” fourteen times, according to Jimmy Puck’s column in the Post . And as Joseph Gallo predicted, Riddick had produced a tape player and played the phone threat that had been recorded on Rosemary Fox’s answering machine.