Richard Hawke - Cold Day in Hell

Megan shut her eyes and instantly saw Helen’s still and battered form, curled at the feet of Albert Stenborg. Megan felt like a knife was slashing at her lungs. At that precise moment, she knew that she should step down from the investigations. Something unhealthy was at play here. Some murky math. Helen’s killer was dead and in the ground, but apparently that wasn’t enough. It would never be enough. Not one cheap life for one beautiful one. The evil of that bastard was still out there, even if the man himself wasn’t. That was the problem. That was what Megan hadn’t succeeded in obliterating-the evil. It slipped from person to person. It had slipped up on Cynthia Blair and on Nikki Rossman. Megan had killed the Swede but not the evil. Albert Stenborg was simply evil’s discarded skin. Irrelevant. It was still out there, on the hunt, reaching from the shadows and plucking victims whenever it pleased.

Megan went into the living room and fetched the photograph of Helen from the bookshelf. She took it to the coffee table and set it there, facing the couch. She lay down on the couch, pulling the thin blanket off the back of the couch and spreading it over her. Not for the first time-not by a long shot-she told herself that if this kept up, she might as well just sell the stupid goddamn bed, for all the good it was doing her.

NIKKI ROSSMAN HAD LAST BEEN reported seen by a neighbor in her building. A widow named Rose Campanella told the police that she had seen Nikki carrying a shoulder bag, climbing into a “big fancy car” on the night before her body was discovered. Mrs. Campanella’s various descriptions of the driver essentially neutralized one another. The driver remained behind the wheel; he got out and opened the door for Nikki. He wore a chauffeur’s cap and outfit; he was “dressed regular.” The driver’s height, weight, hair color-Megan Lamb calculated that the witness had created a minimum of four completely different people who purportedly spirited Nikki Rossman away from her Tribeca apartment some four to eight hours before her murder.

Megan walked Mrs. Campanella through her story close to a dozen times. Fact and fiction were so intertwined in the rendering that the detective despaired of culling anything at all useful. Megan conducted the interview in the elderly woman’s apartment, two flights down from where Nikki had lived. She could not identify the pungent odor that permeated the apartment; an uneasy blend of peppermint, vinegar and mildew was the best she could come up with. The Lord Our Savior Jesus Christ was heavily represented on the walls, the bookcases, the tchotchke shelves. The furniture was covered in flower-print fabrics. The lamp shades were the color of nicotine and gave off a sepia glow. Midway through the interview, a pillow on the couch where Mrs. Campanella was seated suddenly stood up and stretched. Not vinegar, Megan said to herself. Cat piss. By God, am I a detective or am I a detective?

Megan was ready to toss in the towel when Mrs. Campanella mentioned that Nikki had offered to throw away her trash for her. Megan pounced.

“Trash? You didn’t mention anything about trash before.”

“I don’t think you asked.”

“Your building’s trash cans are caged out front, aren’t they?”

“Yes.”

“So what do you mean, throw your trash away? Do you mean she offered to lift the lid so you could toss the trash in?”

“No, no, my legs give me trouble. You see how I walk? It will take me an hour to go where you can go in a minute. I am so slow. The sweet pretty girl. She says she will take my trash downstairs for me and throw it out.”

“Take the trash downstairs ?”

“Yes.”

“From where? Where was she when she said this?”

“Outside my apartment. In the hallway.”

Megan dug her nails into her palms. To Mrs. Campanella, she continued to show a patient, friendly face. “So then this conversation didn’t take place in front of your building. This wasn’t right before you saw Ms. Rossman get into the fancy car.” To herself, she added: with the tall, short, blond, brunet driver who was and wasn’t wearing a chauffeur’s outfit.

“Yes. It didn’t. This is right here. The girl is coming down the stairs.”

“But Mrs. Campanella. If you encountered Ms. Rossman right outside your door, on the third floor, how could you then see her getting into the car in front of your building? I’m assuming Ms. Rossman walked faster than you do.”

“A newborn baby walks faster than I do, honey. When I was younger, I could dance, I could stay on my feet all day and night if I wanted. You have no-”

“Mrs. Campanella. If you saw Nikki outside your door and she headed downstairs, how did you also see her downstairs getting into a car? Are there windows in the stairwell?”

“No window.”

“Did Nikki accompany you down the stairs?”

“No. That is not what happened. She is dressed to go out and have fun. Not to waste her time with an old woman like me.”

Megan silently implored the blue-eyed Jesus on the wall behind the woman. Help me. “So okay. Nikki would have reached the ground floor well before you got there. And there was no window in the stairs. Was the car not yet there and waiting for her? Is that it? Was Ms. Rossman still waiting for it when you got downstairs?”

“No. Not that. She says she is forgetting something. When she sees me on the stairs, she says she is forgetting something, and she goes back up to her apartment.”

“She goes back upstairs,” Megan said evenly. “You forgot to mention that the other times.”

“Did I? Well, I am nervous. This pretty girl in my building, you saw what happened to her. It is horrible. How can I feel safe?”

“Of course. I’m not criticizing you. You’re doing fine. Let’s just get this straight. Ms. Rossman went back upstairs to her apartment to get something she forgot. Did she mention what it was?”

“No.”

“You proceeded downstairs with your trash?”

“Yes.”

“And when Ms. Rossman appeared downstairs-”

“She had it.”

Megan leaned forward, twining her fingers into a single fist. “It.”

“The envelope.”

Megan hoped her smile didn’t look as weary as she felt. “I don’t think I’ve heard anything about an envelope, Mrs. Campanella.”

“A blue envelope. A square blue envelope.”

“You mean like a birthday card?”

“Maybe.”

“I’m not asking if it necessarily was a birthday card, Mrs. Campanella. But that kind of card? The kind of card you buy for someone’s birthday?”

“I don’t know what kind of card it is. It is an envelope. Blue. Like the sky.”

“She didn’t happen to mention that she was going to a birthday party or some other sort of celebration?”

“Not to me she doesn’t.”

“But you think this is what Ms. Rossman went back up to her apartment to fetch? This sky-blue envelope?”

The woman made a clucking noise. “You are the detective, not me.”

Megan jotted down in her notebook: Card. Blue. Occasion ?

“Thank you, Mrs. Campanella. You’ve been very helpful.”

Megan climbed the stairs to Nikki’s apartment. Ryan Pope was sitting at the kitchen table, eating an apple. In his other hand was a small circular plastic case.

“Are you on the pill?” Megan asked.

“Somebody was.” He offered the case. Megan took it from him and opened it. “Night before last. We can assume she was meaning to come home.”

There were footsteps on the stairs, then a knock on the doorjamb. “Dead lady live here?”

It was Rodrigo, one of the department IT guys. Rodrigo came into the apartment carrying a slender metal attaché case, and Megan directed him to a table in the front room. A computer was sitting on the table. The chair in front of it was a miniature armchair. It had one of those beanbag pillows on it, the kind you sometimes see people bringing with them on airplanes. This one was hot pink. The chair looked to Megan like the kind a person would settle into, spend some time in. Megan was curious about the computer.