Authors: Giorgio Faletti
To get to the construction site, she had walked up Third Avenue.
She had to emerge from that anonymity that had allowed her to merge into the humanity around her and assume a very specific role. The arrival of a detective on a crime scene was always a special moment, like a curtain rising on an actor. Nobody ever moved a finger before the person in charge of the investigation arrived. She knew the kind of things she was going to feel. And she knew that, as always, she’d have been happy to do without those feelings. The place where a murder had been committed, whether recently or some time in the past, had a certain grisly fascination. Some murder scenes even became tourist attractions. For her, a murder scene was a place where she had to put her emotions to one side and concentrate on her job. Whatever theories she might have constructed in her head during her brief walk were about to be put to the test.
Bowman and Salinas, the two officers sent by Bellew, were nowhere to be seen. They must be inside, putting yellow tape around the area where the body had been found.
The workers had gathered outside the door of one of the huts at one end of the site. Standing slightly apart from them were two other men, a large black man and a white man in a
blue cotton work jacket. Everyone seemed extremely nervous. Vivien could understand how they felt. It isn’t every day you knock down a wall and find a corpse.
She approached the two men and flashed her shield. ‘Hi, I think you’re expecting me. I’m Detective Vivien Light.’
If they were surprised to see her arrive on foot, they didn’t show it. Their relief that she was here, that they finally had someone they could talk to, overcame any other consideration.
The white man spoke for both of them. ‘I’m Jeremy Cortese, the site supervisor. And this is my deputy, Ron Freeman.’
Vivien, sure that the two men couldn’t wait to get started, came straight to the point. ‘Who found the body?’
Cortese indicated the group of workers behind them. ‘Jeff Sefakias over there. He was knocking down a wall and—’
Vivien interrupted him. ‘OK. I’ll talk to him later. Right now I’d like to take a look at the scene.’
Cortese took a step towards the site entrance. ‘This way. I’ll take you.’
Freeman didn’t move. ‘If you don’t mind, I’d rather not see that … that thing again.’
Vivien made an effort to suppress a sympathetic smile. She was afraid that it might be misunderstood, that the man might think she was making fun of him. There was no reason to humiliate someone she instinctively sensed was a good person. Not for the first time, Vivien reflected on how difficult it was to guess a person’s character from his body. The man’s huge frame would have struck fear into anyone, and yet he was the one upset by the sight of the corpse.
Just then, a large dark sedan pulled up close to the barriers. The driver quickly got out and opened the door for the
passenger in the back seat. A woman emerged from the car. She was tall and blond and must once have been beautiful. Now she was only an advertisement for the futile battle some women waged against the indifference of time. Even though her clothes were casual, they all had designer labels. She reeked of Saks Fifth Avenue, massage sessions at exclusive spas, French perfume, and snobbery. Without so much as a glance at Vivien, she addressed Cortese directly.
‘Jeremy, what’s going on here?’
‘As I told you on the phone, we found a man’s body while we were digging.’
‘Well, I understand that, but we can’t stop work because of it. Do you have any idea how much this site is costing the company per day?’
Cortese shrugged and made an instinctive gesture with his hands in Vivien’s direction. ‘We were waiting for the police to get here.’
It was only then that the woman seemed to notice her presence. She looked her up and down, with an expression Vivien decided wasn’t worth the effort of deciphering. Whatever test she was subjecting her to – clothes, looks or age – she knew she hadn’t passed it.
‘Officer, I hope we can resolve this regrettable incident as soon as possible.’
Vivien tilted her head slightly to one side and smiled. ‘And who do I have the pleasure of …?’
‘Elisabeth Brokens,’ the woman said in a self-important tone. ‘My husband is Charles Brokens, the owner of the company.’
‘Well, Mrs Brokens, what I might define as a regrettable incident is the nose your plastic surgeon stuck on your face, for instance. What happened here is something the rest of the
world insists on calling homicide. And as I’m sure you know, that’s something that tends to be of great interest to the law. Which, if you don’t mind my saying so, has priority over your company’s balance sheet.’ She stopped smiling and abruptly changed her tone. ‘And if you don’t get out of my way I’ll have you arrested for obstructing an investigation by the New York Police Department.’
‘How dare you? My husband is a personal friend of the commissioner and—’
‘Then I suggest you complain to him, Mrs Brokens. And let me get on with my job.’
She turned her back on the woman, and left her standing there like a block of marble, plotting some retaliation or other. She headed for the opening that she assumed to be the site entrance.
Jeremy Cortese fell into step beside her. There was an incredulous but blissful look on his face. ‘Lady, if you ever have a site that needs supervising, I’d be happy to offer my services for free. Mrs Brokens’ face after your little speech is going to be one of the happiest memories of my life.’
But Vivien barely heard him, her mind already elsewhere. As they crossed the threshold, she took in the situation at a single glance. Just beyond where they were now, marked out by a protection fence, was a hole in the ground that covered about three quarters of the area of the whole site and was as deep as a cellar. The bottom of the hole was the floor of the two different buildings, divided down the middle by a line. On the other side, part of the street level floor still had to be demolished, but most of the work had been done. At the bottom, the two officers were just finishing cordoning off an area in the left-hand corner. A worker was leaning against a wall behind them, waiting.
Cortese provided her with answers before she had even asked the questions. ‘Sonora acquired two old buildings next door to each other. We’re demolishing them to build a condominium. As you can see, we’re nearly finished.’
Vivien pointed to the floor divided in two. ‘What was here before?’
‘On this side, an apartment block with a restaurant at street level. Italian, I think. We moved a whole lot of old equipment. On the other side, there was a small garage. I think it was put there after the building was built, because we found signs of renovation.’
‘Do you know who the owners were?’
‘No. But the company probably has all the papers.’
Cortese moved on, and Vivien followed him. They reached the corner to their right, where a concrete staircase, left over from the old buildings, led down to the lower level. There was a desolate feeling to the deserted site, with pneumatic hammers lying on the ground and a big yellow vehicle with a log drilling tool standing to one side. Everywhere was the grey gloom of destruction, without the colourful promise of rebirth.
As they went down the stairs, two of the crime scene
technicians
appeared, carrying their instruments. Vivien signalled to them, and they approached.
Vivien and Cortese got to the bottom of the stairs. The two officers were waiting for them there. Cortese stopped a couple of paces from the yellow tape. Officer Victor Salinas, a tall, brown-haired young man who had a crush on Vivien and whose eyes made no secret of the fact, waited for her to reach him then raised the tape to let her through.
‘What’s the score?’ she asked.
‘At first sight, I’d say normal and complicated at the same time. Come and see.’
At the far end was a kind of square cavity wall. Vivien turned her head and saw that on the opposite side there was another exactly the same. Most likely, one or more columns, now demolished, had formed a line between them.
In front of her, through a gap in the concrete, she saw a forearm covered in what remained of a cotton jacket. A skull with traces of shrivelled skin and hair could also be glimpsed inside, grinning like a figure from the Day of the Dead. But this was no allegory – this was very real evidence of violent death.
Vivien walked up to the wall. She looked carefully at the arm, the body, the material of the sleeve. She tried to peer inside, seeing what details she could make out. She knew how important first impressions could turn out to be.
She turned and saw that the crime scene officers and a man of about forty in a sportcoat and a pair of jeans were standing just beyond the tape, waiting for instructions. Vivien had never seen the man before but from his vaguely bored air she guessed he was the medical examiner. Vivien walked over to them. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Let’s try getting him out of there.’
Jeremy Cortese stepped forward and pointed to the worker who had been standing to one side. ‘If you like, there’s one of my men here who has no problems with dead bodies. In his spare time, he helps his brother-in-law who’s an undertaker.’
‘Call him over.’
Cortese signalled to the worker, who came towards them. He was in his early thirties, with a boyish face and vaguely oriental features. Shiny dark hair peeped out from under his hard hat. Vivien thought there must be something Asian about him.
Without a word he walked past them, went to the wall and bent down to pick up the pneumatic hammer from the ground.
Vivien went up to him. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Tom. Tom Dickson.’
‘All right, Tom, listen. We have a delicate situation here. This has to be done with extreme care. Everything inside that hole could be important. If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather you used a hammer and chisel, even if it takes longer.’
‘Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing. You’ll find everything the way you want it.’
Vivien placed a hand on his shoulder. ‘I trust you, Tom. Carry on.’
She had to admit the man knew his business. He widened the gap in such a way as to make the inside accessible, making the rubble fall outwards but without moving the position of the body.
Vivien asked Salinas for a torch and went closer to take a look inside the hole. There was still a lot of daylight, but the semi-darkness inside made it difficult to see. She shone the torch at the walls and the dead man. The narrowness of the space had stopped the body from sliding to the ground. The dead man was resting on his left side, his head tilted at an unnatural angle. It was this that had given the impression, when seen from the outside, that his head was resting on his shoulder. The enclosed environment and the lack of humidity had partially mummified him, which was why he was much more intact than would normally have been the case – and which also made it much more difficult to calculate how long he had been hidden here.
Who
are
you?
Who
killed
you?
Vivien knew that for the families of missing persons, the worst thing was the anguish of not knowing. Someone
one
night
‚
one
day
left home and never came back. And in the absence of a
body, his loved ones spent their whole lives wondering what, where and why. Never giving up a hope that only time could gradually extinguish.
She pulled herself together and resumed her inspection.
When she aimed her torch at the ground she discovered, next to the feet of the corpse, an object covered in dust that looked at first glance like a kind of large wallet. She asked for a pair of latex gloves, slid into the opening, and bent to pick it up. Then she straightened up and signalled to the crime scene team and the medical examiner.
‘OK, gentleman, it’s your turn.’
As the team got to work, she examined the object she had in her hand.
She blew on it gently to remove the layer of dust. The material was imitation leather, and must once have been black or brown. She could see now that it wasn’t in fact a wallet, but a document holder. She opened it carefully. There were two hard plastic sheets inside, stuck together, which made a slight tearing noise as she pulled then apart.
Inside were two photographs.
She parted the plastic and gently slipped her fingers in to extract them without ruining them. She examined them by the light of the torch. In the first, a young man in a helmet and combat uniform was leaning on a tank and looking gravely at the camera. Around him there was vegetation that suggested a tropical country. She turned the photograph over. There was something written on it, faded by time, with some of the letters almost erased, but not enough to make them illegible.
Cu
Chi
District
1971
The second photograph, which was much better preserved, surprised her. The subject was the same young man who had
been looking thoughtfully at the camera in the previous photograph. Here, he was in civilian clothes, a psychedelic T-shirt and work pants. In this image he had long hair and was smiling and holding a big black cat out to the camera. She studied the man and the animal closely. At first she thought it was a deformation caused by the angle, but then she realized that her first impression had been correct.
The cat had only three legs.
There was nothing written on the back of this photograph.
She asked the other officer, Bowman, for two plastic bags, and slipped the document holder and the photographs inside them. She went up to Frank Ritter, the head of the
crime-scene
team and handed them over to him.
‘I’d like you to analyse this material. Look for fingerprints, if there are any. Examine the victim’s clothes. Plus, I’d like these photographs to be enlarged.’
‘We’ll see what we can do. But if I were you I wouldn’t hold out too much hope. Everything looks pretty old to me.’
The ME walked around the stretcher and came and joined Vivien. They limited the introductions to the absolute minimum.