Meet the New Boss

Chapter 6

Four days into the investigation of the DOA found in the dumpster, the squad assembled in Fisk's office to bring him up to date. Marty reported first. "The ME says the cause of death can't be determined from the part of the body they have. There's no sign of any injury or medical condition that could have caused her death. She was 35, maybe a few years older – kinda old for a hooker. The decapitation and amputations were definitely done after she was dead, with some kind of saw. It's possible they'll be able to match a saw to the saw marks on the bones – if we ever find the saw, that is."

"Did the ME find anything at all that could ID her?" Fisk asked.

Marty shook his head. "Nope. She had an old, healed broken arm, but that won't help ID her unless we can get X-rays to compare it with – "

Fisk completed the sentence for him, " – and we can't get her X-rays if we don't know who she was."

"Right," Marty agreed.

"Anything else?" Fisk asked.

Campbell answered him this time. "The ME said there was sexual activity shortly before death – probably consensual. He took swabs for DNA, but they haven't found a match to anyone in the DNA database, so far."

"Preliminary tox screen was negative, except for a trace of alcohol," Marty added. "Looks like the track marks on her arms are pretty old."

Karen spoke up. "Vice, Narcotics, and Missing Persons have come up empty. If someone knows she's missing, they haven't reported it."

"What's the plan now?"

"Karen and me are gonna go out tonight, talk to some of the girls on the streets, see if there's anyone they haven't seen around the last few days," Tom replied.

"OK," Fisk said, frowning, and dismissed the squad.

Jim took off his earpiece and leaned back in his chair. He rotated his neck, which gave a satisfying crack. He listened to the activity around him in the squad room, but he hadn't been paying attention and wasn't sure who else was there. The past three days at the 4-0 had brought a painful and unwanted reminder of the isolation that came with blindness. The camaraderie he'd developed with his fellow detectives at the 8 had enabled him – eventually – to break out of that isolation. But that wasn't likely to happen here – not if Krause had anything to say about it. Here he wasn't only blind – he felt invisible.

He frowned, thinking about the case he'd just reviewed. Seven-month-old Joey Rodriguez had died as a result of massive bleeding in his brain, six years ago. Jim had never seen little Joey's autopsy photos, but that didn't make any difference – he couldn't get the mental images of the dead infant out of his head. No matter how many homicides he worked, the senseless death of an innocent child always got to him – especially now, when he and Christie were talking about starting a family.

The detectives who investigated the case were certain it was a "non-accidental injury," as their reports put it, but they had been unable to make a case. Joey had seemed perfectly all right until the moment he collapsed in front of his parents and three other family members, and all of them claimed nothing happened that could have caused Joey's injury. The ME could only say Joey had suffered a closed head injury; he was unable to determine when or how it happened. Jim remembered a similar case they'd had at the 8 last year. That case had also baffled the ME until he called in an outside expert, who told them a child with a head injury can sometimes appear to be OK for a day or two, before crashing. Maybe that was what had happened to Joey. If that was the case, they needed to look into the teenaged cousin who'd baby-sat Joey two days before he died. Thinking this was a cold case they might actually be able to clear, Jim steeled himself to talk to Krause.

"Boss in his office?" he asked.

"Yeah," someone answered. Jim didn't bother trying to identify the voice.

He crossed the room to Krause's office and reached for the door handle. Nothing. Guessing the door was open, he knocked on the door frame.

Krause watched Jim in silence, then answered his knock. "Yeah."

"I think I got something on one of the cases – Joey Rodriguez," Jim said,

"What's that?" Krause asked skeptically. He listened as Jim explained his thinking, then leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. "You want to spend the department's money on some so-called 'expert' just because you have a theory?"

"It isn't just a theory, boss – " Jim began.

Krause cut him off. "Forget it. And if you have any more bright ideas, keep 'em to yourself, you hear me?"

Jim started to ask Krause why he was reviewing cases, if Krause wasn't going to let him investigate them. But he didn't need to ask. He already knew the answer. Without another word, he turned away and went back to his desk.

He sat down and brought a hand up to his mouth, thinking. For the first time, he allowed himself to consider the possibility he wouldn't be able to prevent them – whoever "they" were – from forcing him off the job. The thought sickened him. He couldn't let that happen. He'd worked too hard to get reinstated and to prove he could do the job to go down without a fight. But he needed to know who was trying to force him out. He ran through a mental list of the possibilities, but none of them seemed to fit.

He pushed those thoughts aside and reached for the next file in the stack of cold cases. He opened the file but didn't start feeding its pages into his scanner. Instead, he left it lying open in front of him as he tuned out the sounds of the busy squad room and tapped his fingers distractedly on his desk. After a few minutes, he stopped abruptly. He had an idea. He would talk to Walter Clark. Walter had been around for a long time. He knew a lot of cops. He knew who was dirty and where the bodies were buried. If anyone could help him make sense of what was happening and find a way out, it was Walter.

Fisk hung up the phone and emerged from his office. "ME just called. We got a possible ID on our DOA."

"How?" Marty asked.

"A dumpster diver found a hand last night in a dumpster over on Essex. The ME says it's a probable match to the DOA. It was still in pretty good shape, because the weather's been so cold the past couple of days, and the ME was able to get good prints. They came back to a Joyce Matthews."

"I'll run her for priors," Karen said. When the records check was completed, she reported, "She has convictions for prostitution and drug possession – but they're all old. The last one was more than ten years ago."

"I got an address," Campbell volunteered.

"Hit it," Fisk ordered.

"Pretty nice building for a hooker," Marty commented when they arrived at Joyce Matthews' address.

"Maybe she wasn't hooking anymore," Tom pointed out.

"Or she wasn't working the streets," Karen suggested. "Maybe she moved up to a more 'high-class' clientele."

When, as expected, there was no response to their knocks on the door of Joyce's sixth-floor apartment, Marty directed the super to open the door. He gave a low whistle when he looked inside. "Nice place," he commented.

Karen looked over his shoulder. "Yeah," she agreed, "it looks like someone paid a decorator a lot of money."

"Too bad Joyce isn't gonna enjoy it anymore," Tom said. "We better get started."

The detectives spent the next two hours systematically searching the apartment, then canvassed the building.

"Not many neighbors at home this time of day," Tom reported to Fisk when they returned to the squad. "Those that were home said there wasn't a lot of traffic to and from her apartment."

"One neighbor said she saw a man coming and going from the apartment fairly regularly," Karen added. "She said he was an 'older man' and 'well-dressed.' She thought he might be a relative of the DOA."

"Couldn't she give a better description than that?" Fisk asked, sounding frustrated.

"Not really," Karen told him.

"You find anything in the apartment?"

Karen held up a plastic evidence bag. "Her bank statements for the past year. There's a deposit on the first of the month, every month – $3,000."

"Any indication of the source?"

"No. But as far as anyone knew, she didn't work."

Campbell spoke up for the first time. "The super said the apartment was rented in her name. The rent was always paid on time, in cash. He doesn't think she was paying the rent, but he doesn't know who did."

"But there was nothing in the apartment to indicate anyone else was living there – no men's clothes or anything like that," Marty added.

"There was something – " Karen began.

"What's that?" Fisk asked.

"The apartment was clean – I mean, really clean – it almost looked unlived-in. It was like someone had scoured the place. It still smelled like bleach, a little."

"Not you, too," Marty muttered sarcastically.

Fisk ignored him. "You think she was killed there?"

"It's possible," Karen replied.

"I'll call Crime Scene," Fisk said. "Marty, Nate, you meet them there."

"We'll go, too," Karen said, "and re-canvass."

"OK. Hit it."