Page 27 of Two Kinds of Stranger (Eddie Flynn #9)

A glance from Harry over Sacks’s shoulder. The slightest nod. Sacks hadn’t seen me.

We were on.

Sacks held out his empty hand to Harry for a handshake.

Harry looked at him and smiled warmly. But he didn’t take it.

Before he retired from the bench, Harry would have had no trouble in shaking Sacks’s hand.

It was probably Harry’s former profession that provoked the greeting from Sacks: a mark of respect for the judiciary.

He certainly didn’t extend his hand to Bloch.

But now Harry was a consultant in a criminal-defense firm.

And you never knew who might notice you shaking hands with a cop.

We had hundreds of clients, and those clients had relatives and friends, and any such sighting could look like some kind of shady deal.

Criminal clientele are the most suspicious people in the world.

I could see Sacks nodding, then waving that same hand, no doubt waving away a kind explanation from Harry on why he couldn’t shake hands.

Sacks was an old professional. He knew exactly how the game was played and would take no offense.

Harry and Bloch turned, and the three of them made their way to the front of Elly’s building.

I checked my watch, dialed 311 and gave a description of the Silver Ford Taurus and its exact location, then hung up.

I climbed out of the driver’s seat. Lake came round the car with his bag of tricks in hand. We crossed the street and I checked Sacks’s windshield.

The laminated card was blue, with the NYPD logo in one corner, the license plate of the car below it.

The card said this vehicle was a property of NYPD and detectives were on call.

With this card, Sacks could park anywhere in the city, any time of day or night, and he would never get a ticket, even if he was parked in front of a fire hydrant on double red lines.

In New York, everywhere is a tow zone.

I took the bundle of flyers for theatre shows out of my jacket pocket.

Lake went to the front of the vehicle, took a knee and bent the number plate up from the bottom, bent it down again and worked it back and forth a few times. The aluminum plate didn’t take much effort to bend it out of shape.

This is the fastest way to take off a license plate. No tools required. Bending it back and forth enlarges the fixing holes on either side of the plate. Lake leaned back, pulled the plate right off over the screw heads.

Ten seconds.

Done.

I finished covering the windshield with the flyers, and Lake started on the back plate.

Ten seconds later, with the license plates in a storm drain, we made our way to the Starbucks next door to Elly’s building. Lake ordered green tea. I ordered coffee. I took my bill fold from my pants pocket to pay the cashier.

‘That’s eleven seventy-five. Sorry, we only take cards,’ she said.

I checked my back pocket, remembered I’d left my wallet in my other suit.

‘Do you have any cards on you?’ I asked.

‘I’m lucky I remembered to wear socks,’ said Lake.

‘Please, allow me,’ said the guy behind me in the line. He wore sunglasses and a bucket hat. He touched the card payment machine with his phone and it beeped.

‘That’s very kind of you,’ I said, pulled a twenty from my fold and held it out to him.

He waved it away.

‘Please, I insist.’

‘It’s fine. Anyway, I don’t have change,’ he said.

‘Don’t worry about it. Please, for your kindness.’

He smiled, nodded and took the cash.

New York had a bad reputation for many years. It still does, in certain parts of the city and the subways. What most people don’t understand is that what makes this the greatest city in the world isn’t the architecture and the history, it’s the people.

The server put our drinks on the counter. We found a table.

‘What the hell is green tea, anyway?’ I asked.

‘Now that I come to think of it, I have no idea,’ said Lake.

‘Is it, like, tea leaves and something else? Like mint? You should know this.’

‘No clue, actually. It’s not mint. That would be mint tea. Never thought about it before. It’s green. It must be healthy.’

‘It smells terrible.’

‘Then it’s definitely good for you.’

Lake talked more about his morning with Bloch.

The VA hadn’t been much help in finding Joseph Novak, the homeless man who had helped Elly when she got out onto the street and had vomited and passed out.

A volunteer at the VE Center said they would pass on a message to Joe Novak, but they wouldn’t give out any further information.

After a few minutes, an NYPD patrol car came in answer to my 311 call. It pulled up behind the Silver Taurus. A patrolman got out, checked the vehicle and got on his radio. If he had read the license plates and radioed for a check, it would have come back that this was an NYPD pool car.

No license plates, parked in a no-stopping zone and, considering the amount of flyers on the windshield, it had probably been there for some time.

Three minutes later, the tow truck arrived.

I took out my phone, sent a text to Harry.

He would be standing near Elly’s window, checking the street and keeping Sacks talking while Bloch took her time in Elly’s apartment packing her a bag.

Then when Harry saw the police towing Sacks’s car, he would take a moment to point that out to the detective.

That left us with a window of time where we could get in and search.

That was the plan.

We got up, left the coffee shop and stood with our backs to Elly’s building, ten feet from the doors.

Detective Sacks came charging out of the building, his hand in the air, waving to the tow driver who was shackling straps to the wheels of the Taurus. I moved, caught the door before it shut and together we slipped inside, called the elevator and rode it to Elly’s floor.

Harry was waiting outside the elevator.

‘What took you so long?’ said Harry.

‘Sorry, how did it go?’

‘Sacks is a baseball fan. I know nothing about baseball. It was hell. Bloch had to pretend she was looking for a purse that proved impossible to find. We’d better be fast. I got the impression he’s already suspicious.’

Bloch came out of the bedroom, dropped a gym bag off her shoulder and put on latex gloves.

‘I didn’t see any bloodstains. The apartment looks normal apart from the bedroom. The bed is stripped to the mattress, but I didn’t see any blood or signs of violence,’ said Bloch.

‘Let’s go dark and take a look,’ said Lake.

Harry and I closed the curtains in the kitchen, the living room, then went to every room, closing the blinds to ensure the place was as dark as possible.

Lake tossed Bloch what at first looked like a plastic bar about two feet long.

She pressed the bottom of the bar and one side of it lit up with bright purple light.

She moved into the corner of the room and began to sweep the floor.

Lake had a similar dark light, and he started in the kitchen area, sweeping the light over the kitchen work surfaces and the floor.

It didn’t take them long to clear the room. Even less time to sweep the bathroom.

Harry watched in silence. While the apartment was dark, I could still see well enough.

There was nothing remarkable about the place.

By Manhattan standards, it was a really nice apartment and would’ve cost a bundle every month.

But there didn’t appear to be any sign that this was a place where two people had been murdered not one week ago.

‘Some spotting in the sink drain. Not enough. James probably cut himself shaving at one point. Let’s go over the bedroom,’ said Lake.

As they moved into the bedroom, I closed the door behind them.

Harry and I then opened the blinds and curtains in the kitchen, living room and the bathroom.

I checked the street, saw Sacks still arguing with the tow-truck driver and the patrolman.

He outranked the patrolman, who would’ve ordered the tow-truck driver to unhook the vehicle.

But the tow-truck driver was having none of it, by the looks of things.

The Taurus was still halfway up the trailer ramp.

It wasn’t moving further up the ramp, but nor was it coming back down.

Tow-truck drivers, as a rule, don’t give a shit.

‘We’d better hurry,’ I said.

I left the window, entered the bedroom behind Harry.

Lake had his light focused on the mattress.

There was some spotting, but not a huge amount.

UV lights, in the correct range, show up all kinds of stains that are not visible to the naked eye.

Blood, bacteria and other bodily fluids are visible because they do not reflect the light back from the surface.

He sprayed some of the spots, took a Q-tip to the stains and then placed it in a plastic tube.

Beside the double bed, Bloch was on her knees on the floor.

She swept the light over a large stain, the size of a dinner plate, only visible on the hardwood floor under the UV light.

It was strange to see something materialize under the violet and purple light, and then disappear just as light left it.

This staining did not appear as dark as the area that Lake was examining on the mattress.

Bloch took a sample, same method Lake had used: collecting the material on a Q-tip and then placing it in a sealed plastic tube. She’d send everything to Raymond, a forensic DNA expert in a local lab who did all of her work and brought back results quickly and efficiently.

‘We’re done,’ said Bloch.

Harry swept open the curtains. I ran back to the living room, and checked the window, which gave the best view of the street below.

The Taurus was off the ramp. The NYPD patrol car and the tow truck were gone.

‘Sacks is on his way. We need to move now,’ I said.

Lake took Bloch’s evidence tubes and the light, putting it all in his bag as Lake and I left the apartment, ran down the hall, past the elevator and through the door leading to the stairwell. Soon as we got down a floor, we slowed, and took our time on the stairs.

‘Looks like that place has been cleaned up well. What do you think?’ I asked.

‘I’ve never seen a murder scene quite like it.’

‘Could the cops have destroyed the scene on purpose? All the bedding was taken.’

‘It will be in evidence. We don’t know how the victims were killed, but at least we know how they weren’t killed. They weren’t shot or stabbed, nor did they die from any kind of blunt-force trauma. There’s just not enough blood around.’

‘What about the area Bloch found on the floor?’

‘That wasn’t blood, at least that’s my best guess. Blood looks like a black hole under dark light. This was much lighter staining. Best guess, it’s a concentrated area of bodily fluid and bacteria.’

I nodded, said, ‘Then we do know how they died.’

Lake stopped on the landing, turned to face me.

‘How?’

‘The stain on the floor is probably vomit residue. My guess is James and Harriet were poisoned, same as Elly.’

My phone buzzed in my jacket.

Caller display read CHRISTINE . I hit answer.

‘Hi, are you okay?’ I asked.

‘I’m just peachy . I take it you completely ignored everything I said to you the other day and you went to Cross’s place and fucked him up?’

‘Ah, I didn’t touch the guy. Bloch and Lake went to see him and things got out of hand. I’m sorry, but maybe it will teach the guy a lesson.’

‘It taught him a lesson alright. I just got out of the precinct. He’s alleging I paid someone to beat him up. I got arrested and questioned by police. He’s getting a restraining order against us. Don’t do us any more favors.’