Joan Pickart - Body of Evidence

The super’s statement didn’t offer much more, except for his opinion that Gardner had been an arrogant, unfriendly man, but he also told the detectives that his wife had always despised the penthouse resident. In speaking directly to the wife, the detectives noticed her knitting bag and spotted some long, thin knitting needles in it.

Maggie caught the implication, but her report on the ice pick would inform Waters and Wilson that Gardner was not stabbed by knitting needles.

After inserting her own reports into the file, Maggie sat and speculated. Gardner had been beaten and stabbed. Had the beating come first, then his fall and after that the stabbing? It made a crazy sort of sense. Possibly dazed from being struck in the face, Gardner had fallen-maybe tripped over something-and hit his head on the table. The attacker, not realizing that his victim was already dead, ran to the bar, grabbed an ice pick and returned to Gardner ’s immobile body to repeatedly drive the sharp point of the pick into his chest.

Maggie’s phone rang. Absently she picked it up and said, “Detective Sutter.”

“Hi, got a minute?”

“Natalie, hi. Yes, I can talk. What’s going on?”

“Just thought we might have a burger or pizza together tonight. How about it? Do you have to work late, or can we meet somewhere. I have something to tell you.”

“Bet I can guess what it is,” Maggie said teasingly. From the lilt in her friend’s voice, her news had to be about a new man in her life.

“But don’t guess, okay? I’m dying to tell you all about it. Can we meet around six-thirty?”

“I don’t see why not. Where?”

“Do you want pizza or a burger?”

“Um…pizza. How about meeting at Tony’s?”

“Great. See you at six-thirty.”

After putting down the phone, Maggie checked the time. It was almost five. She had plenty of time to talk to Benton before she drove to Tony’s Pizzeria.

Bracing herself for a face-to-face with Josh, Maggie took the case file and her cell phone-she rarely did anything without it-and went to his private cubicle. He was at his desk, on the phone, and exactly as he’d done the first time Maggie had come to his domain, he waved her in.

She lowered herself onto a chair, then realized to whom Josh was speaking-the head of the Bureau of Detectives! Instantly alert, Maggie didn’t even pretend not to listen.

“It might be just a little too soon, sir,” Josh said. He had swung his chair around so that he was sitting sideways to his desk and looking out a window. It was dark outside, Maggie saw. Early nightfall was another aspect of winter she didn’t enjoy. “Doesn’t the woman understand her son was murdered?” Josh asked into the phone.

And then, “Yes, I realize the importance of closure to a mother, and that Mrs. Gardner would like to hold the funeral right away, but is the M.E. a hundred percent certain the body has no more secrets to tell?”

After a silent minute, Josh said, “All right, fine. But I’m going over to the morgue and have one more look at the deceased before the body is released. When am I going? Right now. Talk to you later.”

He put down the phone, swung his chair around and looked at Maggie. She set the case file on his desk. “Could we discuss…?” she began.

Josh interrupted her by getting to his feet. “Right now I’m going to the morgue for a last look at Gardner ’s body. Maybe you should come along.” He paused a moment, then added, “Yeah, no maybe about it. I want you with me. You might see something I don’t. And we can talk on the way. Go get your coat.”

“But…but…”

Josh stopped moving and frowned at her. “But what?”

“Nothing. I’ll get my coat.” She left in a rush and on the way back to her desk she used her cell phone and dialed Natalie’s number. “Sorry, but I have to cancel,” she said. “Something came up, boss’s orders. Maybe tomorrow night, okay?”

“Oh, darn. All right, we’ll do it tomorrow night.”

“Bye, Nat.”

Bundled up again, she joined Josh in the corridor leading to the parking area. They walked out together without talking. When they were in his car and underway, he said gruffly, as though greatly perturbed, “Mrs. Gardner is pestering the police commissioner for release of her son’s body for burial. I think it’s too soon, but I was just warned that it’s probably going to happen, whatever I think about it.”

“Are you thinking the M.E. missed something? Is that why we’re going to take another look at the body?”

“Sometimes there’s room for differing interpretations of bodily wounds. I don’t doubt the M.E.’s findings. Hell, I don’t know if I doubt anything, but I need to satisfy whatever it is that keeps gnawing at my gut.”

“Oh, you have one of those gut feelings that’s so prolific in detective novels.”

Josh slanted a startled look at her. “You don’t get ’em?”

“Only when I eat chili laced with loads of hot peppers.”

“You’re really pissed off at me, aren’t you?”

“Whatever gave you that idea?”

“Well, your frozen face could be a clue.”

He was using sarcasm on her, the jerk? “A frozen face is small potatoes compared to a frozen heart.”

“What’s that supposed to mean, that my heart is frozen? And just how the hell would you know if it was?”

“Clue upon clue upon clue, perhaps?”

“Because I didn’t follow through with that pass this morning? I had my reasons,” Josh said grimly.

“I’m sure you did.”

Josh let her have the last word and drove the rest of the way in silence. Maggie acted unconcerned, as though she couldn’t possibly care less about anything he did or said, when, in actuality, the ache in her chest felt like a mortal wound. This whole thing might mean nothing to him, but it was destroying her professionalism as well as breaking her heart. She had to do something about it.

The question, of course, was what? What on earth could she do to jar Josh Benton as he had jarred her? Was still jarring her!

At the morgue Josh requested a viewing of Franklin Gardner’s body. Ten minutes later he and Maggie were standing on opposite sides of the gurney on which Gardner ’s remains had been delivered from a refrigeration unit to a viewing room. Both Josh and Maggie wore latex gloves.

“He put up a fight,” Josh murmured, concentrating on the blotchy discolored spots on the victim’s arms and hands. “And the facial bruises have an odd pattern.”

“The report mentioned the probability of a large ring worn by the attacker.”

“I would think a diamond, for instance, would have broken the skin…leave cuts instead of impact bruises. Any large gemstone might cut the skin, for that matter.”

Maggie frowned a bit, thinking. “Unless it didn’t protrude above the overall design of the ring.”

“There is a design, isn’t there? Do you see it in the facial bruises?”

Maggie bent over to peer more closely at the facial bruises. “There’s something,” she said slowly. “A pattern of some sort. But I can’t make it out, can you?”

“No. Do you have your camera with you?”

“In my backpack. I’ll get it.” Maggie removed her gloves and tossed them in the appropriate waste receptacle, then went into her backpack, which she had left on the counter near the door. Returning to the gurney with her camera, she asked, “Haven’t we received the photos Jack took at the scene yet?”

“They’re in my office.”

Maggie stiffened. “Why aren’t they in the case file?”

“Because I’ve been studying them, trying to figure out which ones should be in the case file,” Josh snapped. “You can examine them anytime you want. There are far too many to keep them all in the file, and…and didn’t you see my note in the file when you went through it?”