Skin Deep (7 page)

We will.

The assurance he gave to families all the time—a little dollop of hope that justice would have its day. And each time Steve passed on that promise, every fiber of his being was crackling with conviction, in spite of the fact that back at headquarters they had a room full of cold cases—their little “chamber of shame” as it was known.

We will, Terry.

Flowers were in full bloom and the sunlight made a dappled green canopy in front of the house where Terry Farina had been strangled two days ago. Around six thirty, Steve pulled into a spot across the street. He removed the keys from the ignition, slipped them into his jacket pocket, but sat for a few minutes taking in the scene.

There was no traffic. The only movement was a strip of yellow police tape still fastened to a tree in front of the house, looking like a tribute to soldiers at war. A young mother pushing a baby stroller came down the opposite side of Payson Road. As she approached, she abruptly steered the stroller down a driveway and crossed to the other side to avoid passing in front of number 123.

As he waited for the woman to pass out of sight, he was hit with an overwhelming sensation that he had done this before. Been here on this street, parked in this very spot—sitting and waiting. The layout of the buildings; the way the road unfolded beneath the canopy of trees. The shafts of sunlight through the branches. He had been here before. Before Sunday. Before the investigation. But he could not recall ever driving up Payson Road before or any prior cases that had brought him to the neighborhood. So why the uneasy sensation flittering across his arms and up his back like electric currents?

What you call your basic déjà vu, Bunky. Just a little neurological glitch. Nothing more. Happens to everybody.

(And not surprising given the kind of buggage you've got in your wiring.)

Someplace he had read that there was no real mystery to déjà vu—nothing metaphysical, no ESP or romantic intimations of past lives. In the time it took for one side of the brain to inform the other side of the experience being recorded, it seemed like two different events, though separated by mere nanoseconds. Kind of bad news for the full-mooners of the world.

Electrochemistry, not déjà voodoo
.

He shook away the sensation, got out of the car, and headed toward the building. The place was still, the windows of the second-floor apartment were dark. The pink and white geraniums in boxes on the upper porch looked out of place.

He walked around back. Mrs. Sabo was apparently out since the garage was empty. Terry's navy blue Ford Escort had been confiscated for examination by forensics techs. He returned to the front, and with a duplicate house key from Mrs. Sabo he let himself inside. The door locked automatically behind him and, according to Mrs. Sabo, it always remained locked—a requirement spelled out in contracts to tenants.

Steve looked up the twelve blue carpeted stairs to the second landing. In a moment of vague anticipation he waited, but felt nothing. And the moment passed.

To his right on the wall was a two-button switch plate, still showing fingerprint powder. One turned on the interior light above the top of the stairs. He opened the front door again and flicked the other switch. The porch light above the front door went on. He then pressed the second-floor doorbell and heard the chimes upstairs. Unless Terry had left it unlocked, the killer had to have rung and waited until she came down. Through the peephole Steve could see the houses across the street. With or without the porch light she would have recognized her visitor as someone safe to bring upstairs.

He climbed to the landing. A strip of police tape still hung from the frame like an old party streamer. Dusting powder was on the door and doorknob. With another key he let himself into the apartment and closed the door behind him.

The place looked exactly as it had the day before except emptied of police and personnel. He moved to the center of the living room where Neil had stood talking baseball with the others. Their voices had yielded to a sucking silence.

On Sunday, he had inspected every inch of the place, shot photos, collected samples, dusted surfaces, scoured for hairs and fibers. Then, maybe a dozen people moved about with technical kits and collection bags. The place was a crime scene, and he had clicked into cop mode and had done his work as at any crime scene. But now the place was dim and as lifeless as a tomb. And like a tomb the space had a near-sacred feel about it. All around lay the affects of the woman Terry Farina had been—furniture, lamps, glass paperweights, seashells, watercolors, books on psychology and Italian art, wall hangings, photos of her with her brother and sister, their children, their parents. Things once important to her. Now artifacts of a dead woman.

His eyes fixed on a photo of her posed alone, a pair of sunglasses perched on top of her head. He picked it up, feeling a strange resonance that he could not locate. He put it back.

As he moved through the living room toward the bedroom, he became aware that his heart was racing. In fact, his whole body was throbbing with the kind of adrenaline surge that came when poised with a SWAT team outside a door they were about to ram through, not knowing if they'd open up to blasts from the barrel of some badass felon.

He passed the bathroom—a space in white and chrome. A shelf was lined with hair products and skin lotions, aerosol cans of feminine deodorant and hairspray. Hanging over the sink was a large mirror framed with frosted lights. Nothing. Nobody in the shower stall.

As he moved down the hall toward the bedroom, the thudding got stronger. In reflex, his hand slid to his weapon, half-expecting someone to spring on him from a closet.

That was nuts, of course. Nobody else was here. His reaction was purely irrational, he told himself. And the reason was that this was the first of hundreds of homicides where he knew the victim. This was not a stranger's place. And that's where the jitters arose from. Terry Farina's presence filled the place, leaving him with an ineffable sense of guilt. Guilt that he was going through her now dead world. Guilt for being a cop and not preventing her death. That was it, he told himself. Some variation of survivor's guilt.

He stopped at the threshold to the bedroom.

Because the shades were still drawn and the sun was behind the trees, the interior was dark. As he stepped inside, his innards made a fist. An almost palpable sense of evil lingered in the space. He glanced at the now stripped-down bed, and like a flash card his mind lit up with the image of her noosed against the headboard, her dead, purple head gawking at him like a gargoyle.

He flicked on the lights.

Traces of dusting powder were everywhere. All the topical surfaces that a killer might have made contact with—headboard, nightstand, television, air conditioner, switch plate—had a white veneer, latent prints being cross-checked with anyone known to have visited the apartment. No matches so far had been made with anyone in the IAFIS, a fingerprint database. The killer had been careful to touch very little and wiped clean what he had.

He clicked off the lights and moved into the room, the sound of his shoes against the polished hardwood floor startling the gloom. He stepped across the Berber rug between the bed and the small sofa to the rear of the room then put his back against the window. Everything was in place except for the bedding, which was now at the lab. The bare block of mattress looked sacrificial.

He closed his eyes and held them shut for a full minute and gathered himself to a pinpoint of concentration. He cleared his mind, aware of nothing but the thump of his heart.

Terry Farina had been dressed in a black summer dress with spaghetti straps, black stockings, with black low-heeled sandals, her auburn hair giving her an incandescent blush. According to Katie Beals, she had no boyfriend. And given that they were leaving early the next morning, she had no plans for a night on the town. She had dressed for romance with her guest.

Ottoman had given a twelve-hour time-of-death window—from three
P.M.
on Saturday to three
A.M.
Sunday. The later hours didn't count since she was leaving at eight. Plus her telephone records showed that she took the last call at 2:14 Saturday afternoon. After forty-six interviews, they had no witnesses to anybody entering or leaving her apartment at any time on Saturday, June 2.

Mrs. Sabo said she had spent the day at her sister's place in Woburn and returned a little after seven. The first thing she'd done was turn on the TV and change into her bed clothes. In bed she had watched
Dateline
then
Law & Order
, which ended at ten when she clicked off the set. That meant for the few minutes before nodding off she would probably have heard movement or voices directly above her. So, most likely Terry Farina was already dead, and the killer gone. That put her murder between 2:14 and 10:00
P.M.

As if he were watching a video inside his skull, Steve heard the doorbell chime and saw Terry with her thick red hair and black satiny dress pass through the living-room door and down the stairs to let in her guest. Either Mrs. Sabo was not home yet or her television drowned out any sounds as Terry and visitor moved into the apartment, exchanged preliminary chitchat, probably in the living room. Maybe there was some kissing and fondling on the upholstered couch since matching fibers were found on her dress. Because the killer's time window was small, the preliminaries were probably short-lived. In a consensual decision, she led them to the bedroom, Terry in her sandals hard against the floor, the killer most likely wearing something softer—sneakers—and clothes that left no fibers, like Gortex. Mrs. Sabo claimed that she could hear Terry walk in heels. But not that night.

His heart was racing in strange anticipation.

He opened his eyes and they fell on the white love seat. Her dress had been draped neatly over the back, not tossed on the floor as if in haste. Her underwear, including the stocking mate, sat beside the dress. She had disrobed while standing up—like a stripper—and was careful about the garment as opposed to letting her lover tear it off in the heat of the moment. The techs had confirmed no rips or tears. And the M.E. noted negligible alcohol in her system and no drugs.

Yet she had died in a moment of fury with no time to scream. According to Ottoman, for ten brutal seconds Terry Farina knew that she was being murdered. When she blacked out, the killer continued the choke hold until her brain died. He then set up the autoerotica charade.

It all seemed so clear.

The stockings. Something about the stockings was not right. He rested his head against the window and stared into the darkness. He tried to see her standing there in the dress and stockings. But it wasn't coming to him. Something didn't jibe.

He pulled out his PDA communicator and clicked Dana's number. She answered on the fourth ring. He explained he was working on a case. “Would you wear black stockings with a small black spaghetti-strap dress with black shoes?”

“Not unless I was going to a funeral. Why?”

“Just wondering.”

“Especially not in June. In fact, most women don't wear stockings this time of year.”

When he clicked off he stared at the bureau. The next moment he snapped on a pair of latex gloves and began to go through the drawers. In the second drawer down, he found several pairs of stockings in different colors and textures, including a few black pairs with elastic stay-up tops. Also other undergarments, including bras, garter belts, thongs, and panties.

Going through the belongings of a victim always made him feel a little grubby because he was violating a domain intimate to the identity of a stranger. But clawing through the underwear of Terry Farina was worse because it created an uninvited titillation. It wasn't so much the sexy underwear. It was
her
sexy underwear—and he could almost detect the warmth of her body, the scent of her flesh. And he could recall the intimate thoughts that had flickered across his mind while on coffee break.

He punched a second call on his PDA, this one to Nelson Wu, a friend in the crime lab. “Nelson, I need a reading on the Farina stockings.”

“Okay, but give me a minute.” And he put Steve on hold while he got the sheet of specs. A minute later he clicked back on. “What do you want to know?”

“If they're new or used.”

“From the look under the scope they look brand-new. The fibers showed no microfraying from wear or washing. Also, the mate still has its packing fold visible, which means it was never worn.”

Steve's eye slid to the nightstand and the framed photograph of Terry and her sister. In the photo a pair of sunglasses was perched on top of Terry's head. “What's the brand?”

“Wolford and the model is…and are you ready? Satin Touch Evening Thigh High. It's the kind that stay up without a garter belt.”

“Elastic tops.”

“Yeah. And in case you're interested, they're top of the line—forty-eight bucks a pair.”

“So we're not talking your basic L'eggs off the rack at CVS.”

“Nope. They're a specialty item found in fancy lingerie shops or online. And in case you're interested, they're a patented chemical combination from DuPont Chemical, 87 percent nylon, 13 percent elastane.”

Steve went back through her dresser and the smaller chest of drawers in her closet. He found no other Wolfords. He pulled out his PDA again and called Nelson Wu back. “One more question. In her trash was there any packaging for the stockings?”

“I'll have to call you back.”

While he waited, Steve checked the rest of the apartment, then went down to the garage and rechecked the trash barrels. The contents had been collected by C.S.S. He headed back up.

Just outside the kitchen door on the back landing sat a table stacked with newspapers and magazines that reminded him of something odd from yesterday. He went back into the kitchen and opened every drawer and cabinet. In a cabinet to the right of the sink, mail had been stacked up on dishes along with Saturday's newspapers. The killer wouldn't do that, which meant that that the victim was probably in a rush to straighten out the place for company—or for her last-minute guest.