Skin Deep (2 page)

Lieutenant Detective Steve Markarian was deep asleep that Sunday morning when the call came in on his landline. It was a little after nine and his day off, but his supervisor called to say that a Jamaica Plain woman had been found dead of suspicious causes in her apartment. Captain Charlie Reardon wanted him to take the lead because all the other detectives were busy with other cases, including a double homicide in Dorchester the previous night.

The address was 123 Payson Road, a pleasant tree-lined road off Center Street, a neighborhood of modest one- and two-family Victorian homes that once held Irish immigrants who had clawed their way into the middle class in the early decades of the twentieth century. Today the homes were pricey condos for young professional gentry with Beemers and Peg Perego baby strollers.

By the time he arrived, the street had been sealed off and three patrol cars were blocking the road. In front of the house a few uniforms stood behind stretches of yellow tape. In spite of the cool drizzle, several onlookers had gathered. At the curb a white medical examiner's van waited with a body collector inside talking to a patrol officer through the window. The rear doors were open. Steve flashed his badge, and one of the patrols said, “Second floor. They're waiting to bring her down.”

“Who's the detective?”

“Sergeant French.”

Steve's partner. He headed into the building and up to the apartment. Standing in the middle of the living room was Neil French with Tim Callahan, the superintendent of the J.P.P.D., Bobby Mangini from the M.E.'s office, and a crime scene technician. They were talking about the historic triple play from the sixth inning of last night's Red Sox–Yankee game that Neil had taken his daughter to. In the dining room forensics personnel were getting ready to leave.

Neil glanced at his watch. “What took you so long?”

Steve shrugged off the question. “I was supposed to be off. Why are you here?”

“Hogan's kid has a basketball tournament, we did a switch.”

“So what do we have?”

“Looks like autoerotica gone bad.”

Neil was monochromatic in a navy blazer and navy shirt and jeans. The dark colors emphasized his florid face and nearly transparent hair. In his mouth was a red plastic stirrer that he worked with his back teeth. It was what he did instead of smoking cigarettes. Half the pens and pencils on his office desk were chewed. Neil was a bundle of nervous energy that could make him impatient and ornery, especially when maxed out on overtime. And he was maxed out.

“No sign of forced entry. No scratches on the lock. No evidence of a struggle. Nothing that anybody else was here.” The red stirrer jiggled up and down as he talked like one of those pens that record seismic activity.

“We're waiting for you to take a look before we take her,” Mangini said.

“Who found her?” Steve's eyes fell on three framed photos on the fireplace mantel.

“Patrol came on an alarm call about seven thirty after her girlfriend found her. She got concerned, when she got no response by phone, so she came up and tried the door, and when she couldn't get in she contacted the landlady in the apartment below. They found her. They're both downstairs with the responding officer.”

“Any estimate how long she's been dead?'

“Hard to tell. Based on lividity and rigor, maybe fifteen, twenty hours.”

The apartment had the familiar Victorian layout—living room, dining room, kitchen in a line, a hall with two bedrooms off the dining area. Steve followed Neil through the dining room where a closed Dell laptop sat under a chair. In the kitchen were technicians he knew from crime scene services. “We're ready to take her when you are,” Mangini said.

Steve nodded. The kitchen looked as if it had just been tidied up. The only thing suggesting activity was a single wineglass on the counter, and near it an open bottle of Taittinger, two-thirds full. Fingerprint dust showed latents on it and the single glass. The sink was empty. When Steve glanced at Neil, he saw something in his expression that didn't look right. “You okay?”

Neil nodded him into a small bedroom that had been set up as a workout space with an elliptical machine and free weights. On a wall was a poster of a woman in workout clothes making a muscle while three other people in workout clothes glared at her biceps in mock-dismay.

“It's Terry Farina.”

It took Steve a moment to register the name. “Oh, shit.” In the poster her hair was darker and cut short, so he could barely recognize the night student from Northeastern University.

“Yeah.” Neil peeled off the wall and headed toward the master bedroom. “In here.”

Steve felt his heart rate kick up as he followed him down the hall to the large bedroom at the end. His attention was arrested by a bizarre structure rising from the mattress of a queen-size bed, sitting cater-cornered across the far wall. A white bedsheet had been draped from the headboard and over the deceased's body like a pup tent.

“When did crime scene get here?”

“About two hours ago. Where the hell were you?”

“My PDA was dead.” For some reason he had forgotten to recharge his PDA-smartphone last night. It took the captain three calls to rouse him on the landline.

Steve stepped into the room, which felt cooler than the rest of the apartment. A built-in air conditioner on the left wall was turned off. As Steve approached the bed the acrid odor of urine hit him. He snapped on a pair of latex gloves and braced himself as Neil lifted the sheet as if unveiling a sculpture.

The sight was like a jab to Steve's solar plexus. The woman was sitting naked in a lotus position, her torso held in place by a black noose fashioned from a woman's stocking, the foot-end of which was tied around her neck, the other fastened around the metal headboard behind her. A hand towel was pressed between her neck and the hose, probably as padding to prevent injury. Because of the weight of her upper body, the stocking was stretched to a rope, her head flopped forward.

She did not look like the woman he knew. She did not look human.

Although the color of her hair and paleness of her torso identified her as Caucasian, her flesh was gray and devoid of the flush of life. Her face was bloated and the gross congestion and cyanosis had turned it purple. Her mouth was slack and the black tip of her tongue protruded through a froth like a slug. Her eyes were slits of red jelly from scleral hemorrhaging. Her hands were balled at her sides, and urine stained the space between her legs where she had voided.

Steve could see no bruises on her body, which was lean and athletic, the physique of a fitness professional. She had firm full breasts, and although the hair on her head was auburn red her pubic hairs were dark and trimmed to an exclamation point.

“We figure she passed out and the pressure did the rest,” Neil said.

Steve nodded. He had seen a lot worse in his seventeen years as a cop. For sanity's sake, he had developed a psychic detachment that allowed him to view ruined bodies like an insurance adjuster evaluating wrecked cars. But this was different. He knew this woman—the handsome gleaming woman in that poster—her head now a grotesque alien thing.

As if reading his mind, Neil said, “You fucking believe it?”

Terry Farina had been Neil's fitness trainer at a North Shore health club before he transferred to Boston. She had also taken night classes at Northeastern University, where Steve taught Introduction to Criminology. She had taken a psychology course in a classroom next to his.

Steve shook his head as he looked around the room. It was a feminine space in mauve with a beige and green Berber rug on shiny hardwood floors, a white love seat with coordinating pillows neatly arranged, and floor plants. On a small round table sat a framed photograph of the woman and a female companion smiling. Too cheerful a setting for what sat on the bed.

Against the wall was a flat screen television, a remote control sitting on the nightstand. Draped on a nearby chair was her dress—a shiny black piece with spaghetti straps—and a black bra and black thong. What looked like the mate to the stocking lay draped over her dress. Her shoes stood side by side each other on the floor under the chair. On another chair against the wall was an unzipped green suitcase packed with clothing. As Neil had said, no obvious signs of struggle.

“She and the girlfriend were supposed to leave town this morning for a few days with her friend's family in Vermont.”

Steve nodded. “Anybody touch the body?”

“No.”

“What about patrol?”

“He says he didn't touch her, just called the alarm when he found her. Name's Larry Abraham. Steve, we've been through all this, it's in the report.”

“Were the lights on or off when they found her?”

“Off.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I'm sure,” Neil snapped.

Steve looked at him. “Is there a problem?”

“Look, we're ready to wrap up is all.” He checked his watch. “Forget it. I'm going for a coffee. You want one?”

“You put away any more caffeine you'll need a straitjacket.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“You're eating plastic.”

“You want one or what?”

“No. Send in Officer Abraham.”

“I already got a statement from him.”

“Well, I want a statement from him.”

Neil scowled his way out of the room.

Steve moved closer to the body. His hand was shaking as if there were a small nugget of ice at the core of his body. He had examined hundreds of bodies, including some he knew from the streets—druggies, snitches, gang-bangers, hookers—but never a personal acquaintance. He took a deep breath to center himself.

Because of the ambient coolness, decomposition had not begun. He examined the body and took photographs, and when he was finished he checked her clothing. With tweezers he examined the stocking mate—the same lacy top as the noose.

After several minutes, Neil returned with Bobby Mangini, another body collector, and the officer who had discovered Terry. “They're going to take her now.”

“I'd like to talk to Officer Abraham first.” Mangini and his assistant took the cue and went back out. Neil slunk against the wall, eyeing Steve.

Abraham was a square, athletic guy with a smooth boyish face that made him look like a high school linebacker. He was clearly unnerved by the sight, trying not to look at the body. “How long you been on the force?”

“Almost two months.”

“You'll see worse,” Steve said. “When you entered the apartment, who was here?”

“The landlady, Jean Sabo, and the woman's friend, Katie Beals.”

“Were the lights on or off when they discovered her?”

“They said they were off.”

“How about in the rest of the apartment?”

“The landlady said the lights were on in the kitchen and living room but not here.”

“Did you touch anything in this room or the other rooms?”

“No, sir.”

“How about the body?”

“I checked her carotid artery to confirm she was dead, but that was it.”

“Did either of the two women touch her body or anything in the room?”

“No, sir. They were pretty upset and had to leave. I told them to wait in the other room.”

Steve glanced at the body again. Her fisted hands meant she had died in agony. “What about the bed?”

“The bed, sir?”

Steve lifted the bottom sheet stretched over the mattress. The tag said Model—StroboMatic 10. “It's an orthopedic bed with motors that have a back and foot lift. It's also got a back massage.” Steve nodded at the nightstand. “That's a cordless remote.”

“Jeez, I thought that was for the TV.”

“They look alike. Was the bed motor on?”

“Not that I could tell.”

With his gloved hand, Steve inspected the remote. It had a timer setting—a maximum of an hour. “How about the AC?”

“It was on.” He slid a glance toward Neil.

“I turned it off,” Neil said. “It was freezing in here.” He raised the clipboard in his hand. “I got it noted in the report.”

Steve nodded and looked at Abraham. “It's a pretty nasty sight, especially with the girlfriend and landlady, but I'm wondering if you put the sheet over her.”

“No, sir. I think it was the M.E.'s.”

“M.E. sheets are blue.”

“I sheeted her,” Neil said. In his hand was a photo of the victim posing with another woman in a backyard setting.

“Thank you, Officer. I'll catch you later.” Abraham nodded and left the room. Steve moved to Neil. “You sheeted her?”

“Yeah. I got it out of her closet.”

“You might have contaminated evidence.”

“Evidence of what? She died of an accident.”

“That doesn't tell me why you sheeted her.”

“The guys were coming in and out.”

“They're crime-scene body collectors! They see this all the time.”

“Christ, I knew her. You knew her.” He stood the photograph back up on the table. “I didn't recognize her until I saw the poster. A fucking waste.”

“I'll say.” A uniformed officer with a sergeant's badge entered the room—Rick Malloy from the Jamaica Plain precinct. Behind him were Bobby Mangini and his assistant. “Fucking beautiful piece of work is what she was.”

“Crime scene says they're done,” Mangini said. “So we're going to put her in a bag.”

“Not yet,” Steve said. The others looked at him blankly, resenting his rolling in late and stalling the wrap-up. “I'm just wondering if you or your team moved the body when you checked her. Shifted her around or anything?”

Neil rolled his head in exasperation.

“We looked under her to check lividity, but she's pretty much like we found her.”

“Didn't alter the position of her head?”

“Just to check the ligature under the towel, but her head position's unchanged. Why?”