“For what?” Kylie asked.
“She said, ‘If anybody asks if I was here, you say no.’”
“And that’s what you said, so you earned your hundred bucks. And then you told the truth, so now you won’t be getting into the back of that police car with me,” Kylie said. “Have a nice day, Nestor.”
She grabbed the brass handle on the door and yanked it open. She waved me on through and followed me to the car. Nestor just stood there, shell-shocked.
“As I was saying,” Kylie said as she slid into the driver’s seat, “there’s nothing mysterious about it. Muriel Sykes beat us to the punch. And now that I know she’s out to sandbag us, I’ve changed my mind.”
“About what?” I asked.
She eased the Ford into traffic. “Next Tuesday I’m voting for Spellman.”
Chapter 20
We were back in the car, heading downtown. “You realize of course that Evelyn’s laptop is only missing temporarily,” Kylie said.
“You think it will turn up next Wednesday morning as soon as the election is over,” I asked, “or do you think Sykes will keep it under wraps until she’s sworn in on January first?”
“Either way, NYPD Red is not waiting. Let’s go pay Evelyn a visit. Maybe she can tell us something. Give Chuck Dryden a call and ask if he minds seeing me twice in one day.”
“I don’t think he’d mind if you moved in with him,” I said. “In case your keen cop mind hadn’t picked up on it, the boy has the hots for you.”
“Oooooh,” she said breathlessly, tossing her blond hair in a spot-on imitation of Marilyn Monroe. “He’s so smart and I’m so dumb, I can’t imagine what he sees in me.”
“My guess is he’s smitten by your humility,” I said.
The Office of Chief Medical Examiner is on East 26th Street, just around the corner from one of their primary sources, Bellevue Hospital. As expected, Chuck was more than happy to see us, and when I say us, I mean not me. I let Kylie do the talking.
“Chuck, we’re running into roadblocks left and right. We definitely need your help,” she said.
He smoothed out his white lab coat with both hands. “This way,” he said, and walked us into an autopsy room where Evelyn was on a slab.
“We’re not usually this fast,” he said, “but she went right to the front of the queue. We just finished stitching her back up.”
“Tell us what you found,” she said.
“This is not a copycat murder. In life, this victim may have come from an entirely different social stratum than the first three, but they all died the same death. Asphyxiation. Probably suffocated by putting a plastic bag over their heads. All four were in captivity for at least seventy-two hours, their bodies were all scrubbed down with ammonia, and they all had the same stomach contents—pizza. And not just any pizza. Same dough, same sauce, same quality cheese. This was authentic, homemade—not commercial like Domino’s or Pizza Hut.”
“You can tell that?” Kylie said. She looked at me. “He’s amazing.”
Chuck stood there soaking it up, most likely trying his darnedest not to get an erection.
“What about defensive wounds?” Kylie asked. “Bruised knuckles, skin under the nails—something they might not be able to get rid of with ammonia?”
“Nothing,” he said. “It would appear that none of the victims ever got a chance to put up a fight.”
Kylie leaned over the table to get a closer look at Evelyn’s face. “Why is her mouth all busted up like that?” she asked. “Do you think the killer used a ball gag?”
“No, that would keep the victims quiet, but whatever this was did a lot more damage. Broken teeth, lacerations inside the mouth, and torn jaw muscles. A ball gag wouldn’t rip them up like that.”
“What would?”
“I don’t like to hypothesize,” Dryden said with a wry smile.
“But you have an educated guess, don’t you,” Kylie said.
“Not in the official report. Nothing goes into my reports unless it’s completely verified. I deal in facts, not whimsy.”
“Then give me thirty seconds of whimsy,” she said. “Please.”
Dryden smiled as I’d never seen him smile before. “Off the record,” he said. It was a statement, not a question.
“Cross my heart,” she said, drawing an imaginary X on her left breast.
With a twinkle in his eye, Chuck said, “How familiar are you with medieval sadomasochism?”
“A little,” Kylie said, looking at him with newfound respect. “But apparently, not nearly as much as you.”