City Dark(32)

She hooked her phone to its charger and went to wash her face before bed. The bathroom was through a narrow door to the right. An old wooden crucifix hung just next to it. Halle blew a kiss toward it as she approached the bathroom.

There it was again.

Scritch, scritch.

She turned and walked back toward the balcony door. The glare didn’t allow for much of a view outside, but she could see her potted plants on the right side: a coleus, a heart of Jesus, and some impatiens, limp in the summer heat. She placed her fingertips on the glass.

Scritch.

She heard it for a split second, down and to the left. She looked in that direction but couldn’t see a thing. She had some begonias on that side. Could be there was a bird on the balcony, some stray gull or an ugly blackbird. They might peck at the flowers. Or maybe it was a cat. It wasn’t hard to reach her balcony. A cat could almost jump to it from the ground. She stood back, straining to get a view, but saw nothing. She paused and then opened the door a few inches. Hot, damp air rushed in, the kind that would frizz her hair in seconds. She poked her head out and looked down.

A big hand grabbed a fistful of her hair and slammed her face into the doorjamb. Too shocked to form a scream, she let out something between a cry and a moan. Her face felt like it had been split down the middle, her eye socket like a thin shard of glass had been jammed through it. Her left hand, still inside, splayed against the wall. Her right hand clutched the doorknob.

She felt the attacker’s grip loosen, then close again around more of her hair. In a reflex, she yanked her head back and lost a clump, pulled from her scalp like patches of grass. In a ballerina twist she spun around and flung herself into the apartment, her hands reaching forward like a drowning person’s. The red robe flew open, exposing her breasts and the rounded curve of her stomach, dwarfing the baby-blue panty triangle beneath.

She lurched a step forward. The attacker’s big hand found purchase again, this time like pincers on her neck. She gagged and felt him draw close. She could almost smell him now, an earthy scent like wet cement. His other hand slid across her stomach. The sensation of spreading fingers over her body made her want to retch. Instead, she drew a breath to scream. He moved the gripping right hand around to her throat and choked the scream quiet. Then he pushed her through the door and bumped it shut behind them both.

Panic crawled up Halle’s belly, a blooming sensation like she’d been plunged into cold water. The last thing she focused on was the ancient wooden crucifix—her grandmother’s—the one that opened in the back to reveal holy water, two candles, and crumpled, yellowed directions for last rites. Crazily, she remembered in that moment how weirded out she and her grade-school friends had been when they first discovered that the wooden back slid open to unveil such creepy stuff inside: the vial, the curled paper, the thin, white candles.

She reached for the crucifix in those last seconds, her eyes like saucers. The man gripped her shoulder with his left hand, felt for her jaw with his right, and wrenched her head back as far as he could manage with a savage twist. There was a sickening series of snaps, like breaking wishbones.

Then the darkness around Hallelujah Rossi ate her whole.





CHAPTER 28


Saturday, July 29, 2017

7:30 p.m.

There was no headboard on the dead woman’s bed, just a mattress and box spring pushed against the wall. She had a wealth of pillows, though, including an embroidered one with the names of twenty Brooklyn neighborhoods stitched over its surface. Above that pillow, on the yellowing plaster wall itself, was a message, written out in OPI’s Lincoln Park After Dark nail lacquer:

HOLLY

FWYDTM

The letters were neatly painted, the width of the polish brush and maybe a half inch or more in height. They seemed to magnify in flashes as the crime scene unit snapped pictures. The duty lieutenant from the Sixty-First Precinct, a tall, lanky, mustachioed Black man named Goodridge, stood between the kitchenette and the bed and cursed under his breath.

“I hate this shit,” he said. Beside him was a Six-One detective, the one most likely to catch the case. He was short with a pink face and a baby-fine buzz cut. His name was Brad Gallagher.

“What shit?”

“This shit. Clown car, freak show . . . what the fuck?”

Gallagher grunted something in reply. Outside the tiny apartment in the hallway, the neighbors were wailing like professional Sicilian mourners—another thing Goodridge had to deal with. It was making canvassing almost impossible. Everyone was hysterical, and so far no one had reported seeing a thing. They were also exchanging observations and stories and getting lost in each other’s shock. The dead woman’s landlord, in particular, was a complete mess.

Her body was splayed out on the floor. She should have been facedown, but her head was turned at a hideous angle to her body. The robe was still on, hiked up so that her backside was exposed, covered only by a blue thong. It was a grim example of the indignities of violence, even in death. The crime scene unit and MLI techs moved around the place like ants. It occurred to Goodridge that there had probably never been as many people in this space as there was now.

“No signs of forced entry on the door to the balcony,” Gallagher said. He had sauntered away but was back. Goodridge sighed. She had been found by a friend who had keys and hadn’t heard from her all day despite a slew of messages. The friend had turned both locks, including a dead bolt, to open the front door, so unless the killer had his own keys, that wasn’t how he had left.