Four Walls Read online

  Each of them in turn emptied his pockets, put the contents in a red plastic bin, and walked through the metal detector. Nobody set it off, for which Hawkes was grateful. He wouldn't have put it past Flack to have a third weapon on his person.

  Once that was done and they each had the back of his hand stamped with fluorescent ink, a steel door started to slide open.

  "Cameras can only be used in the weight yard and the immediate area around it," Russell said. "Any of my COs sees you taking any other pictures without authorization, your equipment will be impounded and you'll be escorted from the premises."

  Hawkes frowned. "And why is that?"

  Russell turned on him. "You have a problem with that, Dr. Hawkes, you can take it up with Albany. I'm just following the rules here. I suggest you do the same."

  "Okay." Hawkes noticed that Sergeant Jackson was rolling his eyes behind Russell's back. Captain Russell apparently had a reputation.

  They all walked into the alcove and were asked to place their hands on a tray with a hand-shaped indentation. Ultraviolet light was shone on their hands, and the fluorescent ink turned up blue where they'd been stamped. Hawkes thought that was a nice touch-putting something on visitors that they couldn't easily get rid of because they couldn't even see it.

  Once they had all shown their hands, the door they had come through slid slowly shut, and a facing door slid slowly open. They walked back outside, the heat and humidity hitting Hawkes like a hammer.

  They walked down a path that was lined with neatly arranged flowers; there was even a koi pond. Hawkes assumed that the landscaping was done by the inmates.

  Mac said, in a tone that suggested he'd been simmering for a while, "Captain, you asked for us. I don't appreciate being told how to do my job."

  "I'm not," Russell said. "I'm telling you what's allowed in my facility. Again, if you have a problem, take it up with Albany."

  Going through another set of double doors put them back in the AC. Three COs, all with one stripe on their sleeves, were waiting for them.

  Ursitti said, "Detective Flack, I'll take you to our interrogation room-you can start interviewing witnesses there."

  Flack nodded, then looked at one of the COs and smiled. "Hey, Terry, we gotta stop meeting like this."

  One of the COs-a big guy with a baby face-smiled and said, "Donnie."

  Russell looked back and forth between the two. "You two know each other, Officer Sullivan?"

  The CO with the baby face dropped the smile. "Yes, sir. Detective Flack's dad and my dad used to bust heads together in the one-one-two back in the day."

  "Swell," Russell said with a scowl. "Officer Sullivan, you'll accompany Detective Taylor. Officer Andros, you'll accompany Detective Messer. Officer Ciccone, you'll go with Dr. Hawkes."

  The six of them proceeded through a few more corridors, past several checkpoints and guard posts, and finally again went out into the heat and humidity. Hawkes wryly thought he was going to get pneumonia at this rate, although the AC inside the prison wasn't exactly what you'd call high-level. That was what Hawkes liked about both the morgue and the crime lab-high-tech equipment and dead bodies both needed to stay cool, so New York summers were bearable at work.

  Except when you went out to a crime scene.

  There was no shade to speak of in the open field between the building and the weight yard, so the sun was beating down mercilessly on the ground from the cloudless sky.

  As he crossed the yard, the sun hot on the back of his neck, Hawkes tried not to think about the fact that he was, once again, in a prison, with a CO dogging his every step. With this Ciccone guy walking right behind him, Hawkes almost felt like he was in prison for real again, not just visiting. Like he wasn't a person anymore.

  He really hated that.

  After a long walk across the grassy field, they reached the weight yard. Behind the weight yard was a copse of trees, which provided shade for a batch of picnic tables. Beyond the cluster of tables was a basketball court.

  The yard was completely empty, save for a few COs who were standing around the weight yard. Hawkes assumed that the place was currently in lockdown, with all the inmates confined in their cells.

  An African-American man with a goatee very much like the one Hawkes used to wear stood at the gate. The CO with Mac, Flack's friend Sullivan, said, "Jay, these're the crime lab guys. Uncle Cal said they can do whatever they want in the weight room."

  Jay nodded and took the keys out of his belt, then flipped through several before coming to the one that unlocked the padlock on the chain that kept the gate shut.

  Hawkes took in the entire crime scene with a practiced eye as the gate swung open with the metallic whining of hinges. Inside were several weight benches, half a dozen barbells, and a huge number of round metal doughnut weights of various sizes.

  One body was lying on the ground near the fence. There was blood all around him, splattered and smeared.

  Mac asked, "Can someone describe exactly what happened?"

  The man named Jay stepped forward and described the events of that morning, including forcing all the convicts inside the weight yard to lie on their stomachs. There were forty-five of them-the maximum occupancy, as Ursitti had said-and with them all lying down in there, it was a little cramped.

  When he was finished with his account, Jay pointed to the ground outside the weight yard. "Found that shiv. Nobody touched it after I found it, I made sure."

  "Thanks," Mac said as he walked over to where Jay was pointing. He yanked a latex glove out of his pocket and held it between his fingers, using it to pick up the item. "A toothbrush with a safety razor attached-and covered in blood."

  Sullivan said, "They don't get points for originality 'round here, Detective."

  "Good thing," Mac muttered. He pulled out an evidence envelope and dropped the makeshift murder weapon inside. "Blood's probably our vic, and this'll have the murderer's prints." He looked up. "Danny, you take Barker. Sheldon, check out Washburne."

  Hawkes nodded. As he entered the weight yard, Ciccone on his heels, he muttered, "Reconstructing's going to be difficult in this mess."

  "The hell you gotta reconstruct for?" Ciccone asked. "One of the skinheads killed Barker."

  "It was Mulroney," Sullivan added.

  Hawkes whirled around. Mac and Danny were looking at him, too. Mac asked, "How do you know that?"

  "I saw him. I already gave my verbal report to the LT. Hell, half the Muslims in here probably saw it, and so did the gangbangers hangin' around outside. Skinheads won't say nothin', but they don't have to."

  "Who's Mulroney?" Mac asked.

  "Jack Mulroney," Sullivan said. "He's in for assault-bar brawl, him against two homosexuals." Smirking, Sullivan added, "Not the fairest of fights."

  Ciccone muttered, "More like a fairy fight." Hawkes shot him a disgusted look, which the CO ignored.

  "Anyway, this is a step up for him," Sullivan said. "He's a brawler, but this is the first time he's actually killed someone."

  Hawkes nodded and walked toward the free weights, his mind already racing ahead to the true conundrum he had to solve: the death of Malik Washburne.

  He asked Ciccone, "Anybody see what happened to him?"

  The CO shrugged.

  From the gate, Sullivan said, "We were all busy lookin' at Barker getting shivved. I heard a clunk, turned around, and Washburne was on the floor."

  Hawkes knelt down next to the body. Here, at least, he was in his element. No matter how he was feeling, he knew that what he was good at-what he was here for-was using his medical degree and his experience to glean answers from dead bodies.

  Like everyone else here who wasn't a CO, Washburne was wearing the green dickies of a convict, though he had removed the shirt and was wearing only a white tank undershirt for weight lifting in the hot summer sun. He had apparently been growing his hair long in a seventies-style Afro-but it wasn't enough to hide the giant gash in his forehead.

  Putting on his latex g
loves-and sighing with the inevitablility of spending the next twenty-four hours with his hands smelling like sweat-drenched latex, a stench that grossed Hawkes out even more than the smell of dead bodies-Hawkes examined the gash. It looked about the right size to have been caused by one of the weights.

  Standing up, he took out his Nikon D200 and started photographing the body from every angle. Once that was done, he took out an L-ruler and balanced it on Washburne's cheek, to record the size of the abrasion on his forehead.

  Lying near the body was one of the free weights: a twenty-pound doughnut weight, based on the number stenciled into it. It had blood on one part of its edge.

  Looking up, Hawkes saw that barely two feet from the body and the fallen weight was a bench press. One side of the barbell had three doughnut weights.

  The other side had two. On the end with three doughnuts, the outermost weight was also a twenty-pounder.

  Hawkes photographed the bench from as many angles as he could think of, then did the same for the doughnut free weight, both with and without the L-ruler.

  "Jesus Christ," Ciccone muttered. "You need a freakin' diagram, Doc? The weight came off that barbell. Whoever wasted Washburne probably conked him on the head with it. Hell, one of the cons figured that out while lying on his belly. In case, y'know, it ain't obvious."

  "It is obvious, but we still have to document it," Hawkes said, kneeling back down beside the body. "Prosecutors like it better when we're thorough. So do juries."

  "I done jury duty, Doc. Only thing we liked was to go home fast."

  Blood had pooled near the wound, but there was more blood on various parts of Washburne's body, all near the head or in spots where the gash could, conceivably, have dripped. Head wounds tended to gush, after all. Still, there was enough blood all over the place in here that it was best to collect as many samples as possible.

  Reaching into his kit, Hawkes took out several Q-tips and meticulously swabbed blood from the head wound, from several other parts of the body, and also from the doughnut weight. Each swab went into a separate evidence bags, which Hawkes labeled with a Sharpie. Hawkes noticed that one area of blood was significantly drier than the others. He noted that that batch should be tested first-in both mathematics and forensics, the discrepant part of a set usually provided the most useful information.

  As he was swabbing, he noticed a thread on the victim's shoulder. It looked like a green fiber. It probably belonged to Washburne's own prison outfit. Still, Hawkes grabbed his tweezers and pulled the fiber off, bagging and labeling that as well.

  "Y'know, I thought the most boring thing in the world was the overnight shift, when the convicts are asleep," Ciccone said, shaking his head, his arms folded. "Looks like I was wrong, 'cause this is way more boring. Don't know how you do it, Doc, this is the boringest damn thing."

  Hawkes didn't respond. Having established that Ciccone found what he did for a living dull, Hawkes found it easy to disregard the man and continue silently with his work.

  * * *

  Danny Messer had been surprised when Mac had tapped him to be on this detail, since Danny had some relatives who were incarcerated at RHCF. The Messer family had a significant number of members in the Tanglewood Boys. Danny had managed to stay out of that quagmire, graduating at the top of his class at the Academy, after which Mac had specifically requested him for his team.

  Being in the crime lab was the best thing for him. While nobody had said anything-and several people, including Don Flack, had said it wouldn't matter-Danny didn't think he'd be entirely trusted on the street. He'd grown up with his family under surveillance by the feds, after all.

  Besides, he liked working in the lab.

  Still, he tried to avoid his home borough of Staten Island as much as possible. Danny hated coming back home, a feeling he seemed to share with most people who'd grown up on the island and left it.

  Today, though, it wasn't possible. Stella and Lindsay were in the Bronx, and that left Danny and Sheldon to go with Mac-and all three of them would be needed. This was two bodies in a case that came down from on high: Albany to Deputy Inspector Scumbag Gerrard his own damn self.

  At least he could take heart in the fact that the place was locked down. All the convicts were in their dorms. They had stopped calling them "cells" in medium-and minimum-security places a while ago, for no good reason that Danny could see. Probably for the same stupid reason they started calling them "corrections officers" instead of "prison guards," and "sanitation engineers" instead of "garbage men," and "flight attendants" instead of "stewardesses." And, for that matter, "crime scene investigators" instead of "police scientists." Danny thought it was stupid. He knew that the term corrections officer was created to apply to licensed state peace officers, as opposed to guards, who were minimum-wage hacks with no authority outside the prison-and, for that matter, that flight attendant was more accurate and non-gender-specific. He still thought it was stupid.

  But he could do a George Carlin routine on the degradation of language on his own time. Right now, Mac trusted him on this case, and he would give it his best. Danny hadn't always given Mac good reason to trust him, so he appreciated those occasions when he did.

  Of course, he gave Sheldon the whodunit. Nobody had seen Washburne get iced. Danny's guy, though, everyone saw what happened.

  Still, people lied. Evidence didn't. That was why Danny rejected the life of lies that came with being a Tanglewood Boy and joined the crime lab.

  So he worked the scene.

  First was pictures. You had to record the scene as it was before you started touching things.

  Once he got the full Vance Barker photo album, he looked more closely at the wound. Whoever did it nailed him right in the carotid. It was almost a perfect kill shot; anybody who got that artery sliced open would be dead in seconds. Whoever did this was professional or very lucky.

  Since this place was medium security, Danny tended to think it was the latter. But that wasn't his problem right now.

  Looking at the rest of the vic's face, he noticed that Barker had a split lip. Danny had almost missed it thanks to all the blood. Glancing up at the CO with him-Andros?-he asked, "When did our boy get into a fight?"

  "What day is it?" Andros said with a snort. "I've only been here a month, and this guy's gotten into twelve fights."

  "This one was recent."

  "Oh, yeah-yesterday's ball game. There was a brawl after Barker did a takeout slide at second."

  "Party never stops around here, huh?"

  "Tell me about it."

  Danny shook his head and stood up. He looked around at the chain-link fence, taking pictures of the blood spray on the metal.

  From the other side of the fence, Mac was inspecting the outside. "Looks like our killer reached in here." He pointed with a gloved finger through one of the holes in the chain-link.

  "Yeah," Danny said, "that tracks with the splatter I'm getting here."

  Mac said, "There's blood smeared on the lower part of this hole. It's smeared moving outward, and that's consistent with a hand being yanked back. Probably rubbed against the chain-link with his pinkie." He looked at Sullivan. "I'm going to need to see your suspect. You haven't changed his clothes, have you?"

  Sullivan shook his head. "Nah, they're all safe and sound and not moving."

  "Good. Can you take me to him, and anybody who might've been standing around him?"

  "Sure," Sullivan said. "They're all in Alpha Block."

  "Good." He looked through the chain-link at the weight yard. Danny thought Mac's ultraserious face looked comical broken up by the metal. "Danny, Sheldon, you two finish up here. Once you've bagged and tagged everything, meet me back at the captain's office so we can arrange to have the bodies shipped to the morgue."

  "Sure thing, Mac," Danny said.

  8

  IN THE SUMMERTIME, STELLA loved coming to the morgue.

  Like far too many things in her life, it was something Stella tried not to examine too close
ly. Still, there was a certain logic to it. Summers in New York could be absolutely brutal, heat in the eighties and nineties and high humidity. It wasn't as bad as, say, Florida, but it still wasn't any fun. Today was one of the nastier days. Just the walk from Belluso's to Morgenstern's house and back had exhausted her and left her dripping with sweat.

  So coming to the morgue was a breath of, if not fresh air, at least cool air. In the wintertime, it was less than pleasant, but on days like this, Stella loved coming here.

  Even with the dead bodies.

  She also was happy to see that Dr. Sid Hammerback was the ME assigned to the Campagna case. Over the past few weeks, she'd felt protective of Sid, after she walked in on him on the floor of the autopsy room. He'd gone into anaphylactic shock from a sandwich, the contents of which he hadn't checked closely enough (he hadn't set foot in that particular deli since), and Stella had performed CPR to help revive him.

  "How's my slave for life doing?" she asked with a cheeky grin as she entered the lab.

  "At your service as ever," Sid said with mock solemnity. Then he broke into one of his infectious grins.

  He removed his glasses, which were on a chain around his neck and separated at the nosepiece. Every time he pulled the glasses apart, Stella winced, thinking for a moment that he'd broken his glasses, despite Sid having had those glasses for years now.

  The body of Maria Campagna was laid out on the table. Sid had already completed the autopsy: the body was naked, with the telltale Y-shaped stitching of a chest that had been opened.

  Handing Stella his preliminary report in a manila folder, Sid said, "COD was strangulation. Her throat was crushed. Based on body temp, I'd say she died late last night."

  Stella took the report and nodded. "That fits with Belluso's closing time."

  "Lividity was consistent with position. She probably died where you found her."

  With a slight bark of laughter, Stella said, "Good, because the scene was no help in that regard. Her body was on a floor that had been walked on, tripped on, and had things dragged over it for years now."