Epsilon Creed (Joe Venn Crime Action Thriller Series Book 5) Page 2

  Where he ditched the car, secured his camera in a compartment beneath the floor in his apartment, plugged the memory card from the camera into his laptop, and discovered that he had, indeed, obtained a clear shot of the Lexus’ license plate.

  He slipped the memory card into a pocket of his jacket beneath his armpit, went out to Greenwich Village, and proceeded to get seriously wrecked.

  *

  Blowfly’s gut and lungs and bloodstream absorbed such a heroic stew of alcohol and cannabis that night that it was three in the afternoon before he first opened his eyes, and six in the evening by the time he was compos mentis enough to register what the news headlines online and on the TV and the radio were screaming at his addled brain.

  He was propped on the john, at the mercy of his clenching, pitiless bowels, with a dismal smoldering roach between his fingers and the basin within puking reach, when the cheery mid-afternoon DJ on the local radio station passed an inane comment about the crime scene in Scarsdale. Blowfly flung himself off the porcelain and scrabbled for his iPad, his phone, anything that would give him a real update.

  Ten minutes later, he sat pressed against the welcoming coolness of the living room wall, his eyes closed.

  The breaking story was fantastic. Beyond anything he could ever have wished for.

  He looked at the image of the license plate on his phone.

  You’re the shit, man, he thought. This isn’t gossip-column stuff. This isn’t Vogue, or Cosmo.

  This is network news. The NYT banner. Hell, the damn BBC.

  Blowfly set to work.

  He purged, at both ends. He took a half-hour-long shower under stinging heat followed by ball-shriveling cold. He drank three pints of black coffee. He ate a half-loaf of bread, slathered with whatever he could put together from the rancid cave that was his refrigerator.

  When he was ready, he took stock.

  He had his photos.

  Of the man, in silhouette. Of the guy’s car, with the license plate.

  And he had the knowledge that he, Blowfly Cronacker, was probably the last person, other than her murderer, who had seen Martha Ignatowski alive.

  Chapter 2

  The dead woman’s eyes bothered Detective Lieutenant Joe Venn most of all.

  Normally, a corpse’s eyes were either shut, or else wide open, with the gaze off into the glassy distance. But Martha Ignatowski’s upper lids were halfway lowered, and her pupils stared down her body, as if some violation had happened which even in death she couldn’t bring herself to ignore.

  “Some serious Botox,” murmured Kang. “Check out the forehead.”

  Venn glanced at him, irritated.

  Captain David Kang was Venn’s boss, and as such he had every right to be there. But his presence wasn’t necessary. In fact, Venn couldn’t remember Kang ever having been present an hour after he’d called Venn and told him that he was required urgently to work a crime scene. Usually, Venn updated his captain by phone, or in his office at One Police Plaza later on.

  This morning, though, Kang had signed off his call with the words: “I’ll meet you there,” and had left Venn staring at his cell phone, unsure if he’d heard right.

  Venn had been eating a leisurely breakfast at the time the call had come, across the kitchen bar from Beth. Both of them were in their bathrobes, an almost unheard-of occurrence at nine a.m. But it was a Saturday, and Beth, who worked as an attending physician at one of the bigger downtown hospitals, had a rare weekend off, so they’d decided to make the most of it.

  Venn reached for the ringing cell, rolled his eyes at Beth when he heard Kang’s voice.

  “Yeah, Cap.”

  Across from Venn, Beth pouted, but only mockingly.

  “You’re not gonna believe this one,” said Kang without preamble. “Got a body out in Scarsdale, Westchester.”

  Venn waited. Captain Kang was fond of dramatic pauses, and Venn had learned to indulge him.

  “Martha Ignatowski,” said Kang, like a conjuror pulling a rabbit from a hat.

  It took Venn a second to register the name. “You mean the heiress?”

  Beth cocked her head, interested, as she forked eggs into her mouth. Venn watched those lips. Gorgeous even at this hour, pre-makeup.

  “The same,” said Kang, with something like triumph in his voice. “Beaten to death in her bedroom. Her cleaning lady found her an hour ago.” Another actorly pause. “This is big, Joe. This is news.”

  And this could just be another stepping stone in your career, Cap, thought Venn, though he didn’t say it. “Yeah.” He looked up at the clock on the wall, then at Beth. She smiled, shrugged: what can you do?

  “I’ll be there in thirty minutes,” said Venn.

  That was when Kang told him he’d meet him there.

  Venn tossed the cell phone onto the counter and reached for Beth’s hand. “Hey, honey. I’m so sorry...” They’d planned on a lazy day together, maybe a little shopping, a stroll through the park to enjoy the spring weather.

  She waved a hand. “Happens. Just as long as you’re back in time for tonight.” She narrowed her eyes. “You haven’t forgotten, have you?”

  “No,” Venn sighed. “I haven’t.”

  “Oh, come on.” She swatted his shoulder playfully. “It won’t be that bad.”

  As Venn headed for the stairs to get dressed, Beth said: “So aren’t you going to tell me who your mystery victim is?”

  “Keep your eye on the news broadcasts,” he said. “I give it an hour until it breaks.”

  In fact, when he turned on the radio in his Jeep Grand Cherokee on the way to the scene, there were already mentions of a ‘disturbance’ out in Scarsdale, at the home of Martha Ignatowski.

  *

  Venn was head of the Division of Special Projects, a small outfit under the command of Captain David Kang who had created it himself almost three years earlier. The Division dealt with cases which had a political angle. Much of Venn’s work involved low-level corruption investigations, but occasionally a big one came along. The last such case had been the Sigma killings four months ago.

  The murder of a wealthy society lady, a celebrity heiress, wasn’t obviously political, Venn reflected. But the ramifications might be. Whenever a person of significance like Martha Ignatowski became a victim of crime, particularly a serious crime like murder, the NYPD tended to come under fire. It was sad, but true. Ten blameless families in the Projects might be the object of muggings or burglaries or assaults, but it took a rich, prominent victim to focus attention on the shortcomings, real or imagined, of the cops. And if the cops were criticized, so by extension was City Hall.

  Venn knew Captain Kang would be requiring a quick result on this one. He was headed for the Commissioner’s office, or at least that’s where he was aiming, and he couldn’t afford to put a foot wrong on the way. Venn thought wearily of the scrutiny he himself would be under, not just from Kang but from the press, as soon as they got wind of the fact that he was the senior officer on the case.

  He didn’t need the Jeep’s GPS to guide him to the Ignatowski house once he was within a few blocks of it, because the media vehicles were already arrayed along the street, their equipment set up like ballistic weapons during a medieval siege. Venn parked up on the curb where he could find a space and strode to the gates of the property, his shield held up like a cross among a swarm of vampires. Except the shield attracted the throng of reporters instead of repelling them.

  “Hey, are you a cop?” asked one dumb hack. His question was greeted by mocking laughter from his peers.

  “Detective, what’s happened?” asked another.

  “I don’t know,” said Venn, which was more or less true.

  The shutters were popping all around him. He knew he cut a camera-pleasing figure, a big man in a leather jacket with hair so close-cropped it was almost shaved back. A TV viewer’s idea of what a New York cop ought to look like. Beth kept telling Venn he needed to smarten up, start wearing suits. But it wasn’t his s
tyle.

  Two uniformed cops ushered him through the gates of the property while a bunch of their colleagues kept the reporters back. Venn took in the manicured, landscaped lawns, the immaculately tended flowerbeds. The house itself was tastefully designed, quietly rich rather than in-your-face. He seemed to remember seeing it in the pages of a magazine he’d leafed through, maybe at the dentist. But he didn’t have much of an aesthetic sense, he cheerfully acknowledged, and one mansion looked the same as another to him.

  Through the imposing front doors, the crime scene crew were already set up and at work. Venn recognized a couple of them and nodded, stepping carefully round them as they knelt on the floor of the entrance hall.

  Captain David Kang was at the bottom of the staircase at the end, talking with another plainclothes cop. He raised a hand as if Venn was a long-lost brother.

  “Joe. You know Lieutenant Harpin?”

  Venn didn’t. He shook the guy’s hand. Harpin was around forty-two or -three, small-framed, prematurely gray with a matching mustache, and wearing a tweed jacket with elbow patches which put Venn in mind of a British TV detective. “Lieutenant Venn. James F. Harpin.”

  “Joe Venn.” Venn sized Harpin up, watching for hostility in the man’s eyes. It often happened. A crime took place on a particular cop’s turf, and Venn turned up to muscle in. He could understand how that would piss the cop off. But in Harpin’s gaze he saw no aggression, merely a quiet intensity.

  Kang jerked his head toward the stairs. He seemed as eager as a school kid about to meet a music idol. “Come check her out.”

  Kang was a Korean American whose jokey, motor-mouthed demeanor belied a shrewd mind. He’d wrangled the funding for the Division of Special Projects out of a notoriously tight-fisted budgetary committee a few years ago, and he guarded the Division ferociously. It had pulled off a number of spectacular successes under Venn’s command, which had been enough to keep it going over the years, although it hadn’t expanded into the major enterprise Kang would have liked it to be. Venn preferred it this way. He preferred a small, lean strike force to a clunking bureaucratic juggernaut.

  The crime scene techs filled the master bedroom, and it took Venn a few seconds before he could locate the body.

  Martha Ignatowski lay on her right side on the carpet beside her bed. Venn noticed her eyes first, those half-lowered lids, the way she seemed to be staring down herself. She wore a bathrobe which remained modestly closed and tied in the front, though the bottom had rucked up a little to display her bare legs.

  Beneath her head, the cream carpet was stained a dark, sticky maroon.

  A couple of other detectives wandered around, taking notes. Venn was introduced to them. They glanced from him to Lieutenant Harpin, as if they too wondered how the two men were going to get along.

  Harpin said, “Looks like blunt trauma to the right side of the head. A single blow. There’s no obvious weapon yet. No sign of a struggle, either. Nothing knocked over. We figure the blow took her by surprise.”

  Venn looked at the sash windows, where heavy drapes had been pulled apart. They were shut.

  “No sign of forced entry either, if that’s what you’re wondering,” said Harpin. “Windows, upstairs and downstairs, and doors. All intact. The front door is normally double-locked, according to the cleaning lady, but she found only the Yale lock on the latch when she arrived this morning. Whoever did this may have left through the front door and simply pulled it shut behind them.”

  “She live here alone?” asked Venn.

  “Yes.” Harpin raised a shoulder. “Well, officially. You know the gossip rags are always speculating. A rich, still-attractive widow. Does she have a sex life? Probably. Does she have a secret live-in lover? It seems unlikely, given the level of scrutiny she’s under. Was under, I should say.”

  Kang was hovering at the side of one of the techs, who gave off an air of irritation even though he didn’t turn round.

  “Any evidence she was interfered with?” said Kang. “Sexually, I mean.”

  “No,” said Harpin. The tech guy said nothing. In Venn’s experience, crime scene people didn’t say a lot while they were scouring for evidence, unlike in the TV shows. They had a job to do, and a running commentary wasn’t required. “Autopsy’ll tell us for sure, though.”

  “What kind of time frame are we looking at?” asked Venn. The blood beneath the corpse’s head looked more than congealed, though it was difficult to tell because the carpet had absorbed a lot of it.

  “Six to ten hours,” said Harpin. “So, between eleven last night and three this morning.”

  Venn turned away from the body and paced slowly around the bedroom, taking in the décor, the elegant furnishings. The bed was made, though a little dented on one side as if somebody had sat on it but not slept in it.

  He went to the open door of the en-suite bathroom and looked inside, past a couple more white-clad techs. The floor of the shower looked dry. Venn took a Kleenex from a pack in his pocket and used it to open a cabinet over the basin. The usual stuff: toothpaste, women’s safety razors, bottles of assorted pills including Advil and Valium.

  A woman’s bathroom, with no signs of a male presence.

  Venn returned to the bedroom. Kang and Harpin watched him.

  “Any breach of the security systems?” he asked.

  Harpin shook his head, once. “Clean as a whistle. The company checked them just now, and they haven’t been tampered with. Motion detectors, alarms on the perimeter wall and all of the windows and doors. They’re intact.”

  “Did she have CCTV anywhere on the property?”

  Harpin said, “No. Too hackable. Some geek gains access to them remotely and he can spy on her, and all her visitors. A lot of rich people are wise to that these days.”

  Venn gazed out the window, where the warm spring morning sun was bathing the lawns in gold. “She let somebody in, then. Somebody she knew and trusted enough to allow access to her home. Possibly late at night.” He looked at Harpin. “When was she last seen alive?”

  “We’re working on that. The cleaning lady says Mrs Ignatowski left the house around eleven yesterday morning, alone, but she doesn’t know where she went.”

  Kang stepped closer to Venn. He was a full head shorter, but the intensity in his eyes made him seem on a level with Venn.

  “You think you got this one, Joe?”

  “Yeah,” said Venn. “I do. Makes it easier if it’s someone she knew, rather than a random burglar. Narrows it down.”

  “She knew a lot of people,” Harpin remarked.

  “But probably not a lot of people capable of doing something like this.” Venn turned to Kang again. “We’ll solve this one, Cap. Just keep the cameras out of my face, will you?”

  Kang beamed, but raised his hands helplessly. “Easier said than done, Joe. It’s a free country. Freedom of the press and all that.”

  “Right now I need you to be Kim Jong Un for a little while, okay?” said Venn.

  Harpin looked startled, and darted a glance at Kang. But the captain laughed.

  “My family’s from Seoul, dumbass. South Korea. I take your point, though.” To Harpin: “You happy to handle the press conferences?”

  “Yes,” said Harpin. “But I write the scripts for them, all right? Lieutenant Venn gets protected from the media, and in exchange my department heads this investigation. Not nominally, but actually.”

  “Got no problem with that.” Kang looked at Venn. “Joe?”

  “Yeah,” said Venn. “Fine by me.”

  He meant it. Harpin and the local cops were in charge. That didn’t stop Venn using his discretion as to how much information he shared with them.

  And Kang knew it.

  Chapter 3

  Micky Wong had never set foot in China – had never been outside the Continental United States, in fact – but his heart lay in Hong Kong, the birthplace of his parents.

  His mother and father had immigrated to New York in the late 1960s, after the
US Congress had changed the Chinese Exclusion Act and thereby allowed tens of thousands of Chinese nationals to enter the country legally. Like many if not most of the newcomers, the Wongs had embraced their opportunity with the ferocity of a condemned man given a last-minute reprieve. Both parents had taken whatever work they could find, putting in backbreaking hours in factories and steel mills, while each taking evening classes in English and civics and business studies.

  By the time Micky came along, the Wongs had been American citizens for almost twenty years, and were owner-managers of a highly successful dim sum restaurant in Mott Street. They’d lived the Dream, and while they weren’t wealthy by Manhattan standards, they considered themselves blessed beyond all imagining.

  The birth of Micky, their only child, when they were both in their early forties, was the blessing to end all blessings. Both Wongs believed Micky was America’s reward to them for their perseverance. And every evening, though as a quiet, undemonstrative couple they’d have been embarrassed to admit it to anybody else, they repeated the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag which hung on their living room wall.

  And so it was ironic that Micky, born and raised in America, saw himself exclusively as Chinese.

  Few of the people he engaged with on a daily basis were of anything other than Chinese ethnicity, if he could help it. Certainly none of his friends were. He dated Chinese women. He insisted that his associates speak to him in Mandarin whenever possible. He avoided American foods, American brands, American culture, again within the limits of what was feasible.

  Micky Wong saw no real need to visit the land of his ancestors, of his blood. He was twenty-seven years old, and he was convinced - with the utter, unwavering belief of the fanatic - that within his lifetime, China would dominate the United States, in the most literal sense. There wouldn’t be a military takeover. There was no need for that. America was on the wane, and China was rising to power in the world at an unprecedented speed. By 2050, when Micky would be in his early sixties, he predicted that China would rule the globe. He would therefore live in China by default, without having to take a step outside of New York.