Diagnosis: Danger Read online

  “What?” he demanded, hoping it was something they could work with and not just Louis making a random comment about the country’s state of affairs.

  If the smile on Louis’s face were any wider, it would have cracked his lips. “Seems a passerby got a home movie of the last murder.”

  It sounded as if they were finally catching a break, but Mike knew not to get too excited until he heard everything. Louis tended to get carried away. He was the optimist in their partnership. As for Mike, he’d always been a realist. In addition, the job had taught him that nothing was ever what it seemed.

  “So how much does he or she want for this home movie?”

  If he detected Mike’s skepticism, Louis gave no indication. This was the first real break that they’d caught in relation to the three senseless murders. “That’s just it. It’s a tourist—some guy here for the first time with his wife—and they want to, quote—” he paused dramatically “—‘do the right thing.’”

  Mike frowned. “What’s that mean? They’re willing to charge us the going rate for film instead of selling the video to the highest bidder?”

  Louis shook his head so hard, the ends of his unruly hair swung back and forth. “No, he and his wife are giving it to us.”

  Mike stared at his partner in disbelief. Even so, he was on his feet, slipping on his leather jacket. “You’re kidding.”

  Louis got up, taking his jacket off the back of his chair, never breaking eye contact. Mike found himself thinking that if his partner were any happier, he would have been levitating an inch off the ground.

  “Never on an empty stomach.” He tugged his jacket on, falling into step beside Mike. “Which reminds me, I haven’t had lunch yet.”

  “It’s eleven o’clock,” Mike pointed out, nodding at the clock on the wall as they passed it.

  “Exactly.” Louis went out the door first, then turned to look at him. “You buying?”

  Mike laughed shortly. He wasn’t ready to start celebrating just yet. Louis was older by half a decade, but Mike was the more jaded of the two. He’d stopped believing in Santa Claus at five, much to his mother’s dismay. “If this film turns out to be the real thing, I’ll buy you a steak, Louis.”

  “Don’t toy with me like that, DiPalma.” Louis’s voice echoed down the stairwell. “You know how that kind of talk gets my gastric juices flowing.”

  Mike shook his head. “You’re a walking stomach, Louis. Your gastric juices are always flowing. Let’s go get us a video.”

  The video turned out to be genuine, as was the couple. Visiting New York to celebrate their twenty-fifth anniversary, Mae and Raymond Applegate, from Grand Forks, North Dakota, were only too happy to help in the investigation.

  “Will there be a commendation? Ray deserves a commendation,” his wife, a slightly heavyset woman, said with zeal. Her husband tried to hush her.

  “I’ll take it up with the captain,” Mike promised. “Just give my partner your address. And we’ll be returning the tape when we’re finished with it.”

  “Keep it as long as you need,” Raymond urged. “I’m just happy to help.”

  Didn’t meet people like that every day, Mike thought as they left the hotel room.

  Didn’t meet women like Natalya, either.

  The thought had just popped up and he buried it the moment it did. He had a tape to authenticate. There was no time to think about a woman who took his breath away.

  Later at the precinct, the computer wizard that the department retained verified that the video surrendered by the Applegates hadn’t been doctored in any way.

  “Can you see anything?” was Mike’s next question to the technician, since the videos most amateur filmmakers made tended to be shots of their feet and out-of-range tourist attractions.

  “Well, it was pretty grainy,” Leonard said, pushing his hair out of his eyes. “So it took a little doing to enhance it.”

  “Enhance it?” Louis echoed.

  “In this case, make it clearer. It was shot in the evening, with pretty poor lighting. The streetlamp in the area appeared to be out, so at first, all you see is shadows.”

  “And at second?” Mike wanted to know.

  “Well, you be the judge,” Leonard urged. Louis and Mike flanked him on either side as he struck several keys on the keyboard. The tape began to play on the wide-screen monitor.

  There were three men in the grainy footage, two assailants and their victim. Only one of the assailants could be marginally identified. Atypical of other cases around the country, the two men who were attacking the homeless man didn’t seem to be doing it for the thrill of the kill. Nor were they doing it to rob a person who owned nothing but the shoes on his feet.

  “Hey, freeze that,” Louis ordered. He leaned in closer, examining what was on the monitor. One of the men was kneeling over the homeless victim. “Is he stabbing that guy in slow motion?”

  Leonard adjusted his rimless glasses, moving the video frame by frame. “Sure looks that way.” A few more strokes of the keys brought the picture even more into focus. Not satisfied, Leonard enlarged it to the next level.

  Mike stood behind Louis, his arms crossed as he studied the footage intently. “Wait, freeze it again.” Leonard did as he asked. “That’s not a stab.” Excitement finally began to bubble in his veins. Mike pointed at the screen. “That’s an incision.”

  “An incision?” Louis squinted despite being a foot away from the monitor. Confusion creased his rounded face and he looked at Mike over Leonard’s head. “He practicing to be a doctor?”

  Leonard had resumed playing the video. Mike watched intently. There were only a few seconds left. “Whatever he was doing, they were scared away by our tourist with the camera.” He nodded at the tech. “Thanks, Leo. Print up a couple of copies.”

  “Will do,” Leonard agreed, as Mike began to walk out of the darkened room.

  “Where are you going?” Louis wanted to know as he hurried after him, lengthening his strides in order to catch up.

  Watching the video had made him think of something. It was a long shot, but this was a job based on long shots. “Back to the M.E.”

  Donald Ruiz, the medical examiner, was far from happy to see the two detectives return since he knew it meant reopening a case. He greeted their appearance with a sigh that seemed to come from the bottom of his size twelve feet.

  “To what do I owe this visit?” the older man asked sarcastically.

  Mike got right to it. “We need you to dig up the reports on those three homeless victims that were killed in the last four months.”

  “I sent out copies,” Ruiz said stubbornly. But the staring contest between Mike and the M.E. was short-lived. The man threw up his hands. “And you’d be looking for what?”

  Mike believed in having a decent working relationship with everyone, but he and the M.E. had never hit it off. “Something missing.”

  “You mean like personal items?” It was obvious that the M.E. was thinking the police helped themselves to whatever might have been found on the men’s bodies before they were brought to his table.

  “More like bodily effects,” Louis corrected.

  “Or body parts,” Mike added.

  The M.E.’s jaw slackened slightly as he abandoned his initial resistance. “Now that you mention it, the first guy came in with only one kidney and the second didn’t have his spleen.”

  “And you didn’t think this was anything unusual?” Mike asked, incredulously.

  Ruiz immediately became defensive. “You can lose a spleen in an auto accident. I figured the other guy maybe sold his kidney to get some money to buy his booze. Black market, that sort of thing.”

  “And the third victim?” Mike pressed.

  The medial examiner smirked, vindicated. “Everything was there. Liver was shot, but everything else looked to be in working order.” Shaggy eyebrows drew together in a scowl. “It’s all there in the report I dictated,” he grounded out.

  Mike wasn’t ready to give up
just yet. “How about an incision?”

  Ruiz looked at the two men as if they’d just suggested going on a weekend trip to the Arctic. “What?”

  “A fresh incision,” Mike specified. “Some tourist gave up a video he took. He caught the last murder on tape.”

  Ruiz looked duly impressed. Eighty percent of the department’s cases were solved because of luck but coming up against it was always a bit numbing. “Damn.”

  “Yeah, our sentiments exactly,” Mike agreed. “It looked as if one of the murderers was making an incision when our amateur Steven Spielberg caught him in the act and he and his partner fled.”

  Curiosity got the best of him. The M.E. temporarily abandoned his belligerent attitude. “What are you thinking?”

  Mike threw out one viable theory. “Could be cannibalism.”

  Louis’s eyes widened so far it looked as if they were in danger of falling out of his head. “You mean like in Silence of the Lambs?”

  He was thinking more along the lines of a Jeffery Dahmer kind of spree, which chilled his heart a great deal more than any movie plot conceived in Hollywood. But he knew that Louis liked to separate himself from his work through the magic of movies.

  “Yeah.” He advanced a second, possibly more likely theory. “Or body parts for sale. There’s good money in that.”

  “I vote for the second,” Louis said, just barely stifling the shiver that coursed down his broad, square back.

  Mike nodded. He was leaning toward that himself. “Either way, there’re going to be more homeless people in jeopardy with more to worry about than just the coming winter.”

  Ruiz shook his head. “That’s why I like working with the dead,” he confided. “The living are too complicated. Wait here. I’ll get the reports,” he promised. He was back in less than five minutes. “I made copies,” he volunteered, indicating the pages he handed over.

  Mike nodded as he took them. “Thanks.”

  As they left the building, he glanced at his watch. “Damn.”

  “Battery die?” Louis wanted to know.

  “No.” Abruptly, he handed the reports over to Louis. “Take these back to the squad room.” Stepping into the street, he held his hand up for the benefit of the cab in the distance. “I’m late.”

  Louis stared at him, bewildered. “For?”

  “I’m taking some personal time,” Mike told him. The cab pulled up practically at his feet. Mike opened the door. “Already cleared it with the captain.”

  “I’m your partner,” Louis complained as Mike got into the taxi. It was a known fact that Louis hated being left out of anything. “You’re supposed to share.”

  “I’ll bring back doughnuts. We’ll share that,” Mike promised, his words trailing after him through the open window. He gave the driver the address as the man pulled away from the curb.

  Because of traffic, Mike missed the service. But he managed to make it to the cemetery before the priest arrived.

  Paying off the driver, he got out of the cab and began to walk across the field. He could see a number of people gathered around the open grave site. stopped beside a headstone with an angel arched on it.

  He’d wanted to be there for Natalya, but it looked like a lot of people had had the same thought. She didn’t really need him, he told himself. If he were smart, he’d just double back across the field and leave.

  Looking at the faces of the five women around her, he figured they had to be Natalya’s family. Although there appeared to be six different shades of hair colors, the features were close enough to label them as sisters. All except for the shortest one. She had deep black, straight hair, worn short in a style that seemed to pop up every decade or so. It vaguely reminded him of a Dutch boy. The more rounded figure and somewhat older face told him that she was probably Natalya’s mother. Although the woman didn’t look all that much older than her daughters.

  Mike was about to retreat from the cemetery when Natalya suddenly looked up. Their eyes met and held. He watched surprise, and then pleasure, wash over her face. Even at this distance, it managed to send chills down his spine.

  Was she like that when she made love? Or was she so skilled at the art that nothing surprised her?

  Whoa! Where did that come from?

  He was standing in a cemetery, for God’s sake. You weren’t supposed to have those kinds of thoughts in a cemetery.

  He saw her say something to the woman beside her and suddenly they were all looking at him. All six women and the one lone man who stood among them.

  Natalya’s father, he guessed.

  The escape he’d meant to make slipped through his fingers. Detected, he had no recourse but to stay where he was as Natalya made her way to him.

  She laced her arm through his the moment she joined him. “I didn’t expect you to come.”

  “I thought maybe you needed someone.” He looked at the group she’d just left. “Not exactly an original thought I guess.”

  “That’s just my family,” she told him needlessly. “They all knew Clancy. And liked him. He didn’t have to put on his act around them,” she added. “I knew he’d like seeing them come to his funeral.”

  Mike looked at her for a long moment. What was it like to have that kind of faith? Much to his mother’s dismay, that sort of belief didn’t enter into his life. “You believe that.”

  “With all my heart,” she said with feeling, then looked up at him, curious. “Why? Don’t you?”

  “My mother says, if I’m not careful, I’ll wind up in hell.” His mouth curved slightly. “I’d be worried if I believed there was such a place.”

  “I don’t know about hell, but I know there’s a heaven.”

  Natalya sounded absolutely certain. He couldn’t help the amusement that came into his eyes. “You’ve got proof.”

  “Yes.” Natalya tapped her heart. “In here. I’ve felt it. But you didn’t come here to talk theology—or lack thereof.”

  “No,” he admitted. “I came for you.” He realized from her smile that he had said that out loud.

  Belatedly he noticed that not only was she holding on to his arm, but she was leading him back to where her family was standing. The priest had arrived and he had taken his place at the head of the grave, his Bible opened to his selection.

  The protest that might have come never surfaced. After all, he’d come to the funeral to give her moral support. He might as well take his place by her side—despite the fact that he was being scrutinized by seven sets of eyes. Even the priest sent a penetrating look his way before beginning to read.

  In a soft cadence, the priest said the words that would accompany Natalya’s childhood friend to his final resting place. For her sake, Mike did his best to look as if he believed in what was being said.

  Chapter 10

  The service was brief, simple. Just the way she knew that Clancy would have wanted it.

  All the while, Natalya was very aware of the tall man standing beside her.

  After the service, she quickly introduced Mike to her mother and sisters. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her father slip the priest an envelope, a gratuity for his time. She silently blessed him. Her father was one in a million. Both her parents were.

  But that didn’t mean she was going to allow her mother to have her chance at Mike.

  Very subtly, she slipped her arm through his and began walking toward the parking lot. “Thank you for coming,” she whispered. “You didn’t have to, but it was really very nice of you.”

  He didn’t want her making a big deal out of it. For one thing, he’d wanted to see her again, however briefly. He just hadn’t realized that her whole family would be there.

  Mike shrugged, passing off her words. “Seemed like the right thing to do.”

  “I’m having everyone over to the apartment for some sandwiches and coffee.” She stopped walking and looked up at him. His presence made the overcast day feel a little less dreary. “Nothing fancy. You’re welcome to come.”

&
nbsp; He would have been tempted—if the word everyone wasn’t part of the invitation. And besides, he’d only signed out for a couple of hours. “Thanks, but I have to be getting back.”

  “Of course.” She’d forgotten about that. The funeral had thrown everything off-kilter for her. She had another doctor covering for her today. She knew her sisters had done the same.

  Natalya resumed walking, tucking her arm back through his. When they reached the parking lot, she was aware that her family was behind her, but their pace had been slower so they hadn’t caught up yet.

  “Did you find out anything when you talked to Tolliver? I know you’re not supposed to talk about an ongoing investigation, but…” She let her voice trail off. And then she lifted her head, raising her eyes to his.

  The hope he saw there was hard to miss. He found himself getting imprisoned in the green orbs without hope of parole.

  She wasn’t going to like this, he thought. He hadn’t mentioned it to her because he knew it would make her angry. But maybe she deserved to know. “Tolliver told me that he was getting ready to fire Clancy.”

  This was a surprise. There’d been no love lost between the two, but Clancy had been a good worker, had taken pride in doing the best job possible no matter what it was. “Fire him? Why?”

  “Tolliver said it was because of improper behavior on Clancy’s part.”

  Clancy had known better than to hit on anyone he worked with. Not everyone was as tolerant of his ways as she was.

  “With who?” she wanted to know.

  He hadn’t realized how hard it would be to tell her, to shatter whatever image she had of her friend. But he couldn’t not tell her at this point. “Some of the bodies he prepared for embalming.”

  Her eyes widened in horror. Outrage was swift and immediate. The bastard, spreading stories about Clancy now, when he couldn’t stand up for himself.

  “Necrophilia? Clancy wasn’t like that.” Indignation vibrated in her voice. “He liked partners who were breathing. What a disgusting thing for Tolliver to say. He’s throwing up a smoke screen,” she insisted. “To hide whatever it is that he’s up to.”