City Dark(4)

When she recognized Zochi, Mimi nodded and waved, then kneeled beside the corpse as a man and a woman from the medicolegal investigation unit prepared to seal it into a white body bag. The bag seemed fluorescent in the moonlight. Zochi could see that the dead woman’s face was still visible, only partly lost to the shadows below the zipper. She looked like she was cocooned in a sleeping bag, ready for bed.

“You the DA?” one of the MLI techs asked Mimi.

“I am.”

“Want to see her before we zip up?”

“Just from the neck up, thanks.” She studied the face and the neck, then said to no one in particular, “Do you see ligature marks?”

“We didn’t,” Zochi said, impressed that Mimi had picked up on those. “There’s a bra around her neck, just like you’re seeing, but I couldn’t make out any markings.”

“We’ll see what the ME says,” Mimi said. “Any obvious vaginal trauma?”

“No. Nothing inserted. No blood underneath her.”

“Gotcha,” Mimi said. Zochi followed her gaze as it lingered on the bra, still wrapped around the neck, then moved up to the head. The victim had a thin, angular face. Her cheeks looked crumpled and jowly, like the skin wanted to slide off either side. The nose seemed a little crooked. The eyes, like the mouth, were not quite closed, as if she’d been peeking at the person who murdered her rather than staring up at him. “Zip her up,” she said, standing. “And how the hell are you, Zochi?”

“I’m good, Mimi, thanks. Why are you out here on this?”

“We’re slammed,” she said with a shrug. “I took the beeper tonight. I don’t live far from here; we’re over by Poly Prep.” The “beeper” was a dated reference to actual beepers, which used to summon ADAs to crime scenes when they were on homicide duty back in the day. Now it was mostly cell-phone calls.

“I found this in a side pocket,” Zochi said as they moved aside to let MLI work. “No other ID. No purse, nothing.” In an evidence bag was the leather object, soft looking and ragged.

“Looks like a day planner. Or a wallet?”

“Day planner, I think. I don’t know why she’d need one, but homeless people carry all kinds of things.”

“Have you looked inside it?”

“Not yet. It looks like it’s ready to come apart—rained on or in the water at some point. I’d like to open it and set things out, but not here.”

“PSA can get you into the management office of that building,” Sedrick said, walking over and sticking his thumb in that direction. “They’ll wake someone up.”

“That’ll work,” Mimi said. She looked Sedrick up and down. “You with the Six-Oh?”

“Nope. Night watch.”

“Did you get here first?”

“We got here around the same time,” he said, nodding to Zochi. “Guys from PSA—one heard a woman screaming and came over. It wasn’t the vic screaming, though; it was another homeless woman who found her. Cart-pushing lady named Wilomena. She’s back there with PSA still, but she’s not talkin’.”

“Is someone else coming out?” Mimi asked Zochi.

“Yeah, Len Dougherty from the Six-Oh. I texted him. He’ll be here in a few.”

“The wheel,” Mimi said. “You’re on that too?” The “wheel” meant the notification process that the responding detectives went through to get the police chain of command involved with a homicide.

“Oh yeah, they’re chattering already. We’ll see brass in a few minutes.”

Mimi nodded and glanced over Zochi’s shoulder. “Okay then. Back to Wilomena?”





CHAPTER 5


1:12 a.m.

Wilomena had little to say after an hour in police custody, although “custody” in this case meant she was seated on the curb with a couple of patrol officers who had asked her not to leave. They were from Police Support Area—or PSA—1. PSAs were commands that patrolled public housing units. There were a few such units, including some historically dangerous ones, in Coney Island. To Zochi, it seemed like a pretty cool gig for a younger cop, at least in the summertime. Rather than a typical squad car, PSA 1 responders tooled around in a marked NYPD pickup truck. For the moment, it was parked where Twenty-Seventh Street met the boardwalk.

Wilomena wore a dirty yellow housedress over a pair of long underwear. Her dark, fleshy arms were wrapped around her knees. She was staring out at the ocean, the south shore of Staten Island, and the distant lights of New Jersey beyond it. From time to time she would snap her eyes over to her shopping cart, as if someone might try to sneak off with it. To Zochi she looked forty or fifty and clearly homeless, or mostly so. In Zochi’s experience, people like Wilomena could be much younger than they appeared.

“Wilomena, my name is Detective Hernandez,” she said, sitting down. Mimicking how Wilomena was sitting, she put her arms around her knees.

“Yeah, I’m Donna Summer.” Wilomena stared at the water.

“We know your name; it’s okay.”

“Not my last name. You ain’t gettin’ that neither.”

“I’m not asking for it. Look, Wilomena—”

“It’s Donna. Wake up!”