Stuart Woods - New York Dead

Stone nodded. “May we see him, please?”

“Now?”

“Please.”

“I’m afraid he’s busy at the moment.”

“We’re busy, too,” Dino said, apparently unable to contain himself.

Stone shot him a sharp glance. “I’m afraid we can’t wait for a more convenient time,” he said to the woman.

“One moment, please,” Mrs. Van Fleet said, not happy. She walked down the hallway a few paces, picked up a phone, dialed two digits, and spoke quietly for a moment. She hung up and motioned to the detectives.

They followed her down the hallway. She turned right through a door and walked rapidly down another hall. The decor changed to utilitarian. A vaguely chemical scent hung in the air. She stopped before a large, metal swinging door and indicated with a nod that they were to enter. Then she brushed past them and left.

Stone pushed the door open and, followed by Dino, entered a large room with a tile floor. Before them were six autopsy tables, two of them occupied by bodies covered with sheets. At the far end of the room, the body of a middle-aged woman lay naked on another table. A man stood with his back to her, facing a counter built along the wall. Memories of dissecting frogs in high school biology swept over Stone; the smell of formaldehyde was distinct.

“Marvin Van Fleet?” Stone said.

A sharp, metallic sound was followed by a hollow rattling noise. The man turned around, and Stone saw a soft drink can on the tabletop.

“Herbert Van Fleet,” the man said. “Please call me Doc. Everybody does.”

The man was not handsome, Stone thought, but his voice was – a rich baritone, expressive, without any discernible accent. A good bedside voice. The detectives walked briskly to the end of the room, their heels echoing off the tile floor. They stopped at the head of the autopsy table. Stone introduced himself and Dino.

“I’ve been expecting you,” Van Fleet said. He stepped over to the naked body on the table and picked up the forceps that rested beside the head.

“Oh? Why is that?” Stone replied.

“Well, of course I heard about Miss Nijinsky on television this morning. Given the nature of our relationship, I thought perhaps someone would come to see me.” He produced a curved suturing needle and clamped it in the jaws of the forceps.

“Did you and Sasha Nijinsky have a relationship?” Stone asked.

Van Fleet looked thoughtful for a moment. “Why, yes, we did. I was her correspondent, although she seemed to think of me as an antagonist, which I never intended myself to be. She was my…” He paused. “She was an object of interest to me, I suppose. I greatly admired her talents. Do you know how she’s doing?” he asked, concernedly. “She’s in the hospital, they said on television.”

“We don’t have any information on her condition,” Stone said. God knew that was true.

Van Fleet nodded sadly. He bent over the corpse, peeled back the lips with rubber-gloved fingers, and inserted the needle in the inside of the upper lip, passing it through the inside of the lower lip, then pulled it tight.

Stone stopped asking questions and watched with a horrible fascination. So did Dino. Van Fleet continued to skillfully manipulate the forceps and the needle, until the web of thread reached across the width of the mouth. Then he pulled the thread tight, and the mouth closed, concealing the stitching on the inside of the lips. Van Fleet made a quick surgical knot, snipped off the thread, and tucked the end out of sight at the corner of the mouth.

“Shit,” Dino said.

“Mr. Van Fleet, could you leave that until we’re finished, please?” Stone said.

“Of course.”

“Can you account for your whereabouts between two and three A.M. this morning?”

“ You can account for my whereabouts at two,” Van Fleet said, smiling. “I was where you were.”

“I remember,” Stone said. “At what time, exactly, did you leave Elaine’s?”

“A few minutes after you did,” Van Fleet said. “About two twenty, I’d say. Maybe the bartender would remember.”

“Where did you go then?”

“I drove down Second Avenue, and in the sixties I saw a sort of commotion. It seemed that someone had been hurt. I have some medical skills, so I stopped to see if I could help. They were loading a stretcher into an ambulance. I didn’t know it was Sasha until this morning, when I turned on The Morning Show .”

“Who else was at the scene when you stopped?” Stone asked.

“Two ambulance men, two or three Con Ed men, and a man with a television camera.”

“What did you do then?”

“I went home.”

“What route did you take?”

“I continued down Second Avenue all the way to Houston, then turned right, then left on Garamond Street. That’s where I live.”

“Did you see anyone you knew?”

“At two thirty in the morning?”

“Anyone at all. Someone else in your building?”

“There is no one else in my building. I live over a former glove factory.”

“We’d like to see your apartment. May we go there now?”

“Why?”

“It would help us in our investigation. If you had nothing to do with what happened to Miss Nijinsky, then we’d like to be able to cross you off our list of suspects.”

“I’m a suspect?” Van Fleet asked, surprised. “What do you suspect me of?”

“Well, we haven’t established the cause of… what happened, yet.”

“Was there a crime?”

“We haven’t determined that yet.”

“My impression from the news was that Sasha’s fall was a suicide attempt.”

“That’s certainly a possibility. We treat any unknown cause of death as homicide, until we know otherwise.”

“Then you suspect me of a homicide you’re not sure was committed?”

“As I said, Mr. Van Fleet, everyone who had anything to do with her is a suspect, until we know for sure what happened. Do you object to our seeing where you live?”

Van Fleet shrugged. “Not really, but I think I should ask my lawyer how he feels about it.”

“That’s your right.”

“Unless you have a search warrant.”

“We can get one if we feel it’s necessary.”

“If a judge feels it’s necessary, you mean.”

“We can get a search warrant.”

“I watch a lot of police shows on television, you see. I understand these things.”

“You object to our seeing your apartment, then?”

“No, I don’t, not really. However, I don’t think you have a good enough reason to ask. If you do have a good enough reason, then you can get a search warrant, can’t you?”

“It would certainly make us feel better about you if we had your cooperation, Mr. Van Fleet.”

“Please don’t misunderstand me, Detective Barrington, I’m most anxious to help. I greatly admire Sasha, and I would do anything I could to help you resolve what happened to her. But I don’t really see how visiting my home would help you, and I think such a visit would be an unwarranted invasion of my privacy. Of course, a judge may feel differently, and, if so, I’ll be happy to cooperate.”

“I see,” Stone said. He was getting nowhere.

“Is there anything else I can do to help you?”

“Not at the moment, Mr. Van Fleet. I expect we’ll talk again.”

Van Fleet nodded. “Any time. My pleasure. But there’s something I think you should consider.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s quite true that I have a history of what some people would call annoying Sasha Nijinsky. But I’m sure you can tell from the letters I wrote her that I had only admiration for her, that, certainly, I had no reason to cause her harm.”

“We’ll take that into consideration in our inquiry,” Stone said.