Silent Mercy by Linda Fairstein Read Free Book Online Page A

head. The only thing I’d say about him for sure is that he was powerful. Not artful and no surgical precision. Really strong. Must have used something like an ax or a hatchet. A machete, maybe.”
    I leaned back against the cracked vinyl padding on the seat of the booth. “Where do you even begin on this one?”
    “It’s got ‘personal’ stamped all over it,” Mike said. “Nothing random about this victim. Nobody goes to all this trouble hacking up a stranger. Get a make on her, it’ll tell us half the story.”
    “You know, Alex,” Mercer said, “morning news shows will blast this story everywhere. All the nuts respond to gruesome. Your office, the local precincts, the squad phones—they’ll be ringing off the hook. Every woman who didn’t come home last night will have someone looking for her. Prepare yourself for the onslaught.”
    “I’ll be in court. Thoroughly preoccupied.”
    “And we’ll be pawing through every Dumpster and incinerator north of the DMZ,” Mike said, referring to 110th Street, where Harlem unofficially began. “Hoping this madman didn’t toss her head or the murder weapon in the river. And the zoo. I’ll send Grayson to the Bronx Zoo. Keep him out of my way. Egg on my face, Coop?”
    “Not the usual kind,” I said, reaching over with my napkin to wipe the ice cream from the side of his chin. “I’ll bite. Why the zoo?”
    “Could be an orangutan, no?”
    “You lost me.”
    “Everything you ever taught me about Edgar Allan Poe. ‘Rue Morgue.’ The monstrously fierce killer who defied Parisian police’cause he could scale the sides of buildings and kill women, getting away undetected.”
    “Perfect, Mike. The monkey did it. Flew over the gates of Mount Neboh with his headless torso before making his escape. The DA’ll be impressed.”
    “Great ape, Coop. Orangutans are apes, not monkeys.” Mike was chewing a toothpick, his dark eyes flashing with the energy his breakfast provided. “How do I start, you want to know? Just like Poe. Ratiocination. Forget the hysterics that are going to surround this case and think rationally. Make sure no orangutans escaped from the zoo.”
    We had worked a murder at the home of the great poet and storyteller years earlier, and Mike had devoured his tales of the bizarre and grotesque.
    “You keep your eyes peeled for a head,” he said, pointing the toothpick at me and tugging at a few straggling strands of my hair as he stood up. “Or somebody carrying a bag that might weigh—oh, I’d say about nine pounds six ounces.”
    The counterman handed me the check and I left cash on the table as we stood up.
    “How’d you come up with that number?”
    “My last decapitation, Coop. The human head accounts for less than ten percent of the body mass, usually in the eight-to-twelve-pound range.”
    I wouldn’t sleep at all now. Facial features were flooding my imagination. The manner of this woman’s death would haunt me. I didn’t know the first thing about her, but I was wildly creating a visual image, a life and a family, and of course a brutal death.
    “And you arrive at nine-six by? . . .”
    “Eyeballing her, kid. Much shorter than you. Maybe five-five. Brunette, from the rest of the hair on her body. And she wasn’t from the streets.”
    “How so?”
    “Pedicured toes. No track marks. No tats. About your age, I’d say. Breasts were firm. Skin was unwrinkled and smooth. My money’s on midthirties.”
    I had turned away from the broken body of the victim on the church portico, while Mike studied it to learn as much about her as he could in just the few minutes spent with her in the dark and cold.
    “I’ll drop you at home, Alex,” Mercer said. “Let’s see what the day brings.”
    “Expect the usual,” Mike said, gnawing the toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other. “A handful of domestics, child pervs scouring the playgrounds and cyberspace, identity theft up the wazoo. Let’s meet up at the end of the