Kalisha wants to roll her eyes, but wisely she does not. Instead she says, “Well, let’s coordinate your instinct with whatever we learn from the lab’s blood workup.”

  She’s about to review more of her notes, hoping to get Tierney back on a less instinctual track. But suddenly the conversation is interrupted by an emergency alert on their phones.

  The detectives tap on their devices and read.

  FEMALE VICTIM. DEAD. MULTIPLE KNIFE WOUNDS. VICTIM APPROX 35 YOA. PREGNANT APPROX 8 MOS.

  14 ST. MARKS PLACE. APT. 3. POLICE ON SCENE VIA 911.

  A woman eight months pregnant, an apartment located close to Emily’s apartment, a victim who’s thirty-five years old…

  If the outcome is what they both fear, then Kalisha’s meticulous notes and Tierney’s legendary instincts aren’t worth a bucket of spit.

  CHAPTER

  22

  JOEL TIERNEY’S FIRST ASSIGNMENT years ago, as a tagalong detective, was Narcotics. Tierney was an “altar boy,” the name given to young and young-looking rookies.

  He watched but he wasn’t allowed to participate. The first bust he ever witnessed was three men and two women at a Polish church street fair in the Bronx. The five of them were selling heroin in the church restroom as openly as the folks outside who were selling kielbasas and pierogis. Six officers surrounded the five suspects. The altar boy was so excited and uplifted that he slapped cuffs on one of the dealers.

  This very rookie move led to Tierney’s baptism with two nicknames: Little Asshole and Kid Enthusiasm. The joke names were understandable, but the fact was that Tierney loved being a detective. And the higher-ups noticed.

  One month later, Tierney was not only participating in drug busts, arrests, and investigations, he was also on call seven days a week.

  Kid Enthusiasm never got tired. He turned into the detective that the others had to beat.

  One year later, Tierney was transferred to Homicide. “Sort of a promotion,” the precinct captain told Tierney. “The thing is, as I’m sure you’ve heard, it’s tougher than shit.” Then the captain added, “But you’ll get used to it.”

  Tierney was delighted.

  The captain turned out to be correct. Tierney actually did get used to it. At some point, he became essentially immune to the horrors of homicide work. The newborn twins who were suffocated in a green plastic garbage bag. The drug-addled teenage boy whose drug-addled girlfriend amputated the five fingers of the boy’s right hand and left him to bleed out. The old man who put a bullet in his wife’s brain because “we both suffered enough from her Alzheimer’s.”

  Yes, he has more or less become used to it, but this case… well, this case is a first for him. His friendship with Betsey puts him closer to her friend Emily. Even though Tierney didn’t answer Kalisha’s question—“You think it could be Emily?”—she knew the answer. And, of course, so did Tierney.

  They continue driving across St. Marks Place, the street circus of tattoo parlors and pizza joints in the East Village.

  They arrive at the crime scene, a heavily guarded and police-barricaded area. Tierney’s been at places like this a few hundred times now.

  POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS.

  An NYPD sergeant opens their car door and gives them a quick “Follow me, detectives. The team is at work. It’s all pretty gruesome.”

  Tierney thinks, So, what else is new? but says, “Do we have an ID yet?”

  “Not yet,” says the sergeant. “There was no wallet or license. Victim had a phone. The IT guys just got here. They’re working on cracking it. She had no computer or laptop or anything else on her.”

  Tierney nods, but all he can think is: In a minute we may actually have an ID. In a minute I might be the guy who makes the ID.

  Tierney and Scofield now head down a short hallway toward the room where the victim is. Tierney glances into the small closet just outside the bedroom.

  Kalisha’s hands and arms are actually shaking, and she is thinking, Whose place is this? Some guy? Some friend? Is this where that Emily woman ended up? In a crappy cookie-cutter East Village apartment? Betsey called her “charming.” Charming, yes, that’s the word she used.

  “Did you get anything from that little closet outside?” Tierney asks. An NYPD sergeant responds.

  “Nothing, empty, like the rest of the place. There was just an old-fashioned broom in there. That’s it up against the wall, all wrapped and tagged and ready to go.”

  “It’s a corn broom,” says Tierney.

  “What?”

  “It’s a corn broom. That’s what you call those brooms that you swing, sorta sweep-sweep-sweep.”

  “Yessir,” says the sergeant. “In any event, like I said, we’ll send the broom over to the lab, along with some kitchen sink rags and some Roach Motel traps. That’s all we got. A roll of toilet paper, an empty can of Diet Pepsi.”

  “Well, check the closets again,” says Tierney. The sergeant nods, and it’s obvious to Kalisha that the sergeant is surprised that Tierney’s so involved with the empty closet.

  Then it suddenly comes to Kalisha. She realizes what’s going on. She senses that what Tierney is doing is playing for time. Detective Joel Tierney simply does not want to continue in. He doesn’t want to see the body. Kalisha stands back.

  “Let me know if you find anything, especially from the corn broom,” says Tierney.

  “Of course, sir,” says the sergeant. Then he adds, “Uh, the victim is in here.”

  “Yeah,” says Tierney.

  They take a few more steps, and the sergeant speaks again.

  “Right through here.”

  “Yeah,” says Tierney.

  The sergeant continues. “This is a rough one, detective. Ugly. Really ugly. You’ll see.”

  The usual cast of characters are at work: two police photographers, an assistant medical examiner, a coroner (the only team member who Tierney knows by name, Jonathan Ramiro), and the assorted group of print-dusters and chem experts.

  But Tierney and Scofield barely notice their police colleagues. They are, of course, immediately focused on the victim, who is lying on her back near the center of the room.

  An assistant medical examiner and two police officers, both women, are kneeling near the body’s feet. The sergeant’s earlier description of “pretty gruesome” was ridiculously gentle.

  I’ve never seen anything like it, Tierney thinks.

  The victim’s neck is deep purple. Strangled. The hands look broken. The skin on the arms, where it’s not caked with blood, is covered with burn marks and dark bruises. A large pool of blood begins on the floor near the head and streams down to a trickle near the knees. The woman’s head is tilted to the left, partially covered with bloody sprays of hair. Tierney slips on a pair of examining gloves. He squats down and gently moves the victim’s head to the right. Frightening as it will be, he wants to get a full-frontal look at the victim’s face. He moves to the other side of the victim. He crouches down near her head.

  Then the most shocking observation. The victim’s face is so disfigured that the corpse is unrecognizable. Great globs of blood form a large red and yellow hole where once the nose was, cheekbones so cracked that the one eye that is not covered by blood seems tilted outward from its socket, the hair (blond once, perhaps?) is bathed in blood, the corners of the mouth are severed. The victim’s upper torso has been covered in a coroner’s cloth, but bright turquoise tights—spattered with blood—have been pulled down below the victim’s knees.

  So who is this woman? Who in hell can she be? Emily? Who?

  But now he thinks for a split second: Turquoise? Turquoise tights. Emily would never ever wear turquoise anything. But who the hell knows. Everything that’s happening is totally startling, totally perverse.

  Kalisha slips on latex gloves. Then Kalisha points to the general area of the victim’s stomach. All she says is “Look.”

  Kalisha Scofield and Joel Tierney see a sight they never want to see again.

  The woman’s pregnant womb has been slashed.

  “We just got a fairly certain ID, Detective.”

  Tierney snaps at the officer. “For Chrissake, you can’t have a fairly certain ID. You have an ID or you don’t have an ID. You can’t be fairly certain.”

  “Yes, sir,” says the sergeant. “We may have an ID. We’re not certain. We found a small purse in the access hall on the second floor. The only thing in it was this phone.”

  The officer holds a phone, which is sealed inside a plastic evidence bag. The phone itself is in a black-and-orange paisley case. Tierney considers this, hoping that Emily would never own such an ugly, goofy-looking phone case.

  “What’s the victim’s name?” Kalisha asks.

  The sergeant answers. “If it’s who we think, her name is Caitlin Murphy. The report we got says she’s thirty-three, single, an executive at MHD, some sort of internet ad agency. Two assistant MEs have brought what’s left of the fetus to NYU Medical. DOA. They think that Ms. Murphy was seven or eight months into her pregnancy.”

  Tierney stands stricken. He is not excruciatingly unhappy. And yet… and yet he is happier than he expected to be. It’s not Emily. Yet it’s still a horror show. He stares at the victim’s bloody belly.

  Then Kalisha gives her opinion: “Everything about this case sucks.”

  “You think so?” Then he points to the phone that the sergeant is holding. “May I see that for a minute?”

  “I really should hold it for the lab,” says the sergeant. “I don’t want to compromise the condition of the phone.”

  “Give me the fucking phone,” says Tierney, who snatches it from the officer’s grip.

  Through the plastic bag, Tierney punches the button marked CONTACTS. Then he punches in the letters A-T-K. A name and a number appear.

  The name is ATKINSON Emily.

  “Sunuvabitch,” Tierney says. “Caitlin Murphy. Emily Atkinson. These two women knew each other.”

  CHAPTER

  23

  IT’S ALMOST 9:30 P.M. when Scofield and Tierney leave the apartment where Caitlin Murphy was found. As they walk down the building’s back service stairway, Tierney says, “I’ve got to make a quick phone call.”

  Kalisha understands immediately that this is some sort of courtesy code for “I want to make this phone call in private.”

  Kalisha says, “I’ll grab the car then.”

  Five minutes later she drives up to the rear entrance of the building. Tierney sees her, just as he’s ending his call. He slides into the passenger seat.

  As Kalisha drives across St. Marks Place, she speaks.

  “So, have you told your buddy Betsey about what went down here just now?”

  “No way. Betsey doesn’t know anything about it, and since nothing has come of it…”

  Kalisha interrupts. “Emily was a contact in the victim’s phone. That’s not nothing.”

  “Until we find out more about the case, let’s just keep it quiet. She’s messed up enough about this whole thing.”

  Kalisha wants to say Wait a second, Betsey did an investigation with us, Betsey is the one who instigated the entire search, but you won’t tell her about this? Instead, she says the ever-useful phrase, “Yes, sir.”

  “Anyway, you and I have an interview now.”

  “Now? Right now?” asks Kalisha.

  “Right now. I had set it up for tomorrow morning, but I called her, and she’s available now.”

  All Kalisha would really like to do is go home, crack open a Bass Ale, then get a good night’s snooze. But she’s not going to share that thought with her partner as he begins briefing her on the person they’re about to interview.

  “It’s Emily’s neighbor. They’ve lived next door to each other for about two years, and it sounds like they’ve had a few—the polite word is tiffs. The usual kind of stupid stuff. ‘You play your music too loud.’ ‘You’re always coming and going.’ That sort of thing.”

  “How old is she?” Kalisha asks.

  “You’ll see her in a few minutes. I’d call her middle-aged. You’d probably call her old.”

  He looks down at his phone and continues talking.

  “Her name is Mariana Micelli. Italian, I assume,” Tierney says.

  Kalisha stifles the urge to say, “Italian? Really? I never would have guessed.” Instead, she says, “Okay, what’s the deal with this woman?”

  “Two officers spoke briefly with her after we investigated the destruction at Emily’s apartment. They got the impression she might have more to say about her missing neighbor. So I thought we could give it a shot. On the other hand, both Betsey and Emily—I’m pretty sure—told me once that Emily and Micelli barely knew each other.”

  “So you don’t know anything about her?” asks Kalisha.

  “Well, I know what I know from a little deft googling.”

  “Is she some sort of zany old Italian mama with the hand gestures and the accent?”

  “Actually, she’s a professor at NYU. And quite elegant. One very interesting thing about her is the death of her much younger husband, Lorenzo Micelli. He was an art dealer in Turin, I think. Let me see.” Tierney is clearly about to consult his phone.

  “Put down the phone, Detective,” says Kalisha. “Let’s just assume it was Turin for now.”

  Tierney smiles and continues the story. “Anyway, Signor Micelli was very popular with the ladies. But one summer day, while he and the missus are summering on Lake Como, he shoots himself. No one knows why, it seems. Coulda been girlfriend trouble. Coulda been business problems. Coulda been… I dunno… Coulda been…”

  Kalisha fills in the words. “Coulda been his wife who shot him. Is that what you’re trying to say?”

  “I guess,” says Tierney. “But it was a while ago, and it was in Italy, and… who knows?”

  When the two of them arrive at Mariana Micelli’s apartment, it turns out that Joel Tierney is correct about the elegance of the interviewee. Mariana Micelli is no stock character from a TV spaghetti sauce commercial. This woman—perhaps sixty years old, with hair the color of spun gold—presents herself more like a Florentine countess.

  When she greets them at the door, she does not bother to read their NYPD IDs, nor does she shake Tierney’s hand when he offers it.

  “Thank you for making the time for us, Professor Micelli.”

  She responds, “Detectives, if I may, there are two little things you must know before we begin our discussion.”

  “And those things are?” Tierney asks.

  “The title I use is ‘doctor,’ not ‘professor.’ And my surname is properly pronounced ‘Michelly,’ not with the soft s as you spoke it, not ‘Miselly.’”

  “I’ll keep that in mind, Doctor,” says Tierney.

  “Please do,” she says. So far Dr. Micelli has not cracked even the touch of a smile.

  Scofield and Tierney follow her into a palatial living room. The high walls are covered in dark-green fabric. The furniture looks like authentic Louis XIV, heavy with gold leaf. An ornate crystal chandelier hangs from the center of the ceiling.

  The three people sit. Dr. Micelli reaches toward the glass coffee table between them and pours a single cup of tea, for herself. She offers nothing to her guests.

  “To begin,” says Tierney. “How long have you known Emily Atkinson?”

  “Approximately two years. I saw her the first day. The moving people were bringing in her furniture.” She pauses, then adds, “Nothing of real quality, nothing of interest.”

  “And you and she spoke?”

  “Yes. I graciously introduced myself. She told me her first name only, which I thought was far too familiar a gesture. But I ignored that. I wanted to be a good neighbor.”

  Another pause. Then Micelli says, “But that was not to be.”

  “What happened, Doctor?” Tierney asks.

  “I told your colleagues who spoke to me earlier. This Atkinson woman and I are cut from a different cloth. I am devoted to learning and art and the humanities. She seemed to be devoted to men and alcohol and God knows what else. My opinion, if you want it, is that she’s killed herself. I myself suffered the agony of the suicide of a loved one. My husband killed himself. Suicide. Why do people do it? Only the good Lord above knows.”

  Kalisha jumps in: “Is there anything else you can tell us about your neighbor?”

  Micelli takes a sip of her tea. Then she says, “She seems to have had many male friends. Why don’t you ask them?”

  “We are talking to anyone who might have helpful information,” says Kalisha.

  “Men friends. This Atkinson woman seemed to have mostly men friends. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised…” But Micelli stops there.

  “What would not have surprised you?” asks Kalisha.

  Micelli replaces her cup on its saucer. Then Tierney speaks.

  “Forgetting suicide for a moment, do you have any other idea why Ms. Atkinson might have gone missing?” Tierney says.

  “Assuming she has not taken her own life, then she’s just run off to another place. The reason? Women like that don’t need a reason. They take off when it suits them. Their bags are always packed. She could be in Denmark now. Or she could be a few blocks away, taking a stroll by the East River. But most likely, as I’ve said…” Instead of finishing her sentence she holds an index finger to her temple and mimes shooting herself.

  Tierney feels compelled to comment on Dr. Micelli’s casual cynicism.

  “You’re really angry about your neighbor, aren’t you?” he says.

  “Ascoltami, Signor Policeman. She was not a good woman,” says Micelli.

  “How do you know?” Kalisha asks.

  “Because I am wise.”

  “That’s not a particularly helpful answer, Doctor,” says Tierney.

  “It is as much of an answer as I can supply.”

  It seems clear to the detectives that Micelli will not be elaborating on her opinion of Emily Atkinson.

  Tierney takes one more shot at it.