Page 22 of The Writer
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THIS CLOSE TO the park, Eighty-Third is mostly residential. Old-money brownstones with less than half converted to multifamily. Only a handful of businesses—dry cleaner, sandwich shop, day care, a corner bodega. Unlike the corner grocery a block from Declan’s apartment, the bodega here has no bars on the windows. No advertisements for lottery tickets, discount Marlboros, or two-for-one burritos. This shop’s large picture window has a colorful display of fall fruit with carefully placed leaves of red, yellow, and bright orange. The alley Declan enters is sandwiched between the bodega and an antique-furniture store, and with the ivy growing across the brick, it looks more like the mouth to some secret garden than a spot to hide the area trash. The crime scene tape and two patrol cars blocking the street appear out of place—if it weren’t for those squad cars and the medical examiner’s van, you’d think you were on the set of some rom-com.
“Killer’s gotta be a newbie,” Declan says to Cordova as they duck under the tape. “The pros know better than to dump a body south of One Hundred Fifteenth. Rich folk don’t stand for that.”
“They’re not above watching the show, though.” He gestures at the windows on the opposite side of the street. “Got eyes everywhere.”
Sergeant Hernandez is halfway down the alley, barking orders to a group of four uniforms. He spots Declan and Cordova and comes over. “Twice in one week, Detectives. This isn’t good for property values.”
Declan smirks. “Maybe it’s time to talk to your broker about lightening your portfolio.”
Hernandez is right, though. They’re only a few blocks from the Beresford. That’s two dead in less than a week. The last murder in this area before that must have been six months ago.
Cordova is still looking up at the windows. Hernandez follows his gaze. “I’ve got unis knocking on all those doors. I’ll let you know if they get anything useful. This alley is accessible the way you came in and it opens up on Eighty-Second too, so two points of ingress.”
“Any cameras?”
“Still checking.” He turns and points at the dumpster. “Your girl’s in there. Sanitation guys found her. Decomp is pretty bad. I’d put her at maybe five or six days.”
That seems like a long time. “How often do they empty the dumpster?”
“Normally every Monday and Thursday. They said it got skipped on Monday because a delivery truck had the alley all blocked up. They don’t wait around when that happens.”
Declan looks at Cordova. As usual, he’s wearing a suit and tie. Shoes shined to flawless perfection. Declan is in jeans and a gray henley. An old pair of Reeboks. He nods at the dumpster. “I don’t suppose you want to flip for it?”
“Not a chance.”
Hernandez puts two fingers in his mouth, whistles, and points at one of the uniformed officers, a kid Declan doesn’t recognize. “You still got that Tyvek handy?”
The kid fishes around in a black duffel, finds a package, and tosses it to them.
Declan snatches the protective suit from the air, quickly slips it on over his clothing, tugs up the zipper, and puts on the gloves. “You’re buying lunch,” he tells Cordova, then steps over to the dumpster and switches on his recorder. “Transcriber, this is Detective First Class Declan Shaw of the NYPD Twentieth. It is Thursday, November sixteenth, 2023. The time is eleven twenty-three. Current location, an alley on Eighty-Third, between—” He shouts over his shoulder, “Anyone know the exact address?”
“Between fifty-nine and sixty-three,” Hernandez tells him.
Declan repeats that. He peers over the edge of the dumpster, clears his throat. “We’ve got a female, Caucasian, possibly Latino, tough to say with decomp. Late twenties. Multiple stab wounds to the chest and abdomen. Defensive wounds on her right hand. Thick slice down her palm. Looks like she made a grab for the knife and caught the blade. She’s about halfway down. I think…” Declan shakes his head and frowns at Hernandez. “They didn’t find her like this, did they? Did someone dig her out?”
Hernandez points to a pile of garbage stacked against the wall next to the dumpster. “Sanitation guys recognized the smell. They took out enough trash to confirm it was a person, not an animal, and called 911.” He points his thumb back down the alley. “I’ve got them in a patrol car if you want to talk to them.”
“Where’s their truck?” He doesn’t remember seeing one on the way in.
“Sanitation sent another team out to pick it up and finish the route.”
Declan nods and looks into the dumpster. “I see a purse, but I can’t reach it. I’m going in.” Using a plastic milk crate as a step, he climbs up, swings his legs over the side, and comes down as far from the body as possible. The suit has a respirator built into the hood, but Declan isn’t using it; it muffles his voice and make the recording difficult to transcribe. As the scent of decay and week-old garbage assaults him, he deeply regrets that decision. His eyes begin to water as he kneels down and carefully opens the purse. “No cash or credit cards, but they left her ID.” He pulls out her driver’s license and says, “Cordova? You there?”
“Yeah.”
“See what you can find on a Mia Gomez.” Declan stands up and watches Cordova key something into his phone.
A few seconds later, Cordova holds up the phone. “Is she one of these?”
Although the lighting in the driver’s license photo is terrible, he has no trouble matching her to one of the pictures; she has the same highlights in her hair. “Third one from the left,” he says softly. It’s a professional headshot, most likely something for work. Brown hair rolling over her shoulders in loose waves, a mischievous look in her eyes, the slight turn of a smile at the corner of her full lips as if the photographer just told her a joke and she was trying to keep from laughing before he snapped the shot. Beautiful woman.
Cordova clicks on the picture. “Mia Gomez. Twenty-eight years old. She’s a senior account exec at a company called GTS. Office is one block over on Eighty-First.” He clicks through additional links. “Looks like she’s active on a few social media platforms, but she hasn’t posted anything in about a week. Consistent with what Hernandez said about TOD.”
“I don’t see her phone or the murder weapon.”
“Assailant probably took both.”
Declan slips the driver’s license in the Tyvek suit’s breast pocket and looks back down. He’s standing in at least three feet of trash. “We’ll need to empty this out.”
“Not it,” Cordova says softly.
“Detectives? We’ve got a lot of blood over here!” That comes from a uniformed officer standing about two-thirds of the way down the alley.
Declan climbs back over the side, and they quickly walk over. The patrol officer is kneeling by a dark stain on the blacktop. He points at some old wood pallets. “Someone stacked those on top,” he tells them. “Tried to hide it.”
Cordova bends to get a better look, then switches on his phone’s flashlight, and the extra light brings the blood right out. He studies the nearby pavement, then slowly walks away at a crouch and stops about ten feet from where he started. “Looks like she was stabbed here, maybe tried to get away, maybe stumbled, managed to make it to where you are, then fell and bled out.”
Declan looks around his feet, spots a thinner trail heading back toward the dumpster. He takes the driver’s license from his pocket. “She weighed a hundred and sixteen pounds. One person could have carried her from here, but I wouldn’t rule out two.”
Cordova straightens up and goes oddly quiet.
“What?”
His face is slack. “Hoffman’s gonna use this. You know that, right? We’re only a handful of blocks from the Beresford. Morrow goes to trial, he’ll say the same assailant who broke in and killed David killed this woman too.”
Declan snickers. “A judge will never let him tie the two together.”
“Might. Two stabbings within days. This close.” He gestures at the dumpster. “Her money’s gone. They’re saying a burglar broke into that apartment and David surprised him… fits their narrative. I could see a judge letting that in. A judge like Berman? He would.” He nods slowly. “Knowing Hoffman, he’ll probably connect the two cases in the press the moment this leaks out.”
Declan hates that Cordova is right. It doesn’t really matter if the cases are connected; Hoffman only needs to create doubt to save his client’s skin. Declan starts back to the dumpster, muttering defiantly, “I guess we better solve it, then.”