Page 45 of One of Us Is Guilty

Bloch wondered if Lake being a killer somehow helped him find others who shared his dark nature.

‘What did you find out?’ he asked.

Bloch drained the last of her coffee, folded up the wrapper of her blueberry muffin and tossed it on her empty plate.

‘Carey and Larkin weren’t on shift when the body was found. They weren’t even partners,’ said Bloch. ‘Carey got her detective promotion the day the body was found. This is her first homicide. The whole precinct is talking about it. The captain is pissed too.’

‘So he got orders from higher up the chain of command. Somebody with power put a rookie and a world-class fuck-up on a high-profile murder. Doesn’t make sense,’ said Lake.

‘It makes sense if that person wants to control the investigation.’

‘Any hits on Teresa Chase?’ he asked.

‘Not yet. My contact checked most of the databases, nothingshowing in New York. She’s doing a wider search, and she’s still waiting for VICAP results.’

The violent criminal apprehension program was a database of unsolved violent crimes statewide. While it had its drawbacks, it sometimes helped identify violent offenders through victim profiles and common patterns.

‘Do you still have your forensic kit in that . . .car?’ asked Bloch, checking her watch.

‘Yeah, why?’

‘Larkin and Carey are not flavor of the month in the precinct. The rest of the detectives see the Molly Green case as a promotion ticket. They’re pissed. There’s a patrolman named Terry Johnson due to perform a check on the crime scene at seven. He’s a friend. And his brother is homicide, one of the people Carey stepped over to land this case. Terry will have a fresh crime-scene seal with him when he performs his check.’

Lake glanced at his watch, tapped it. It was an old digital Casio. The face was scratched and the LCD display was fading out with the rapidly diminishing battery. He pressed the side button, adjusted his view to block out the light, but still couldn’t read the display.

‘What time is it?’ he asked.

‘Time you got a new watch. It’s five thirty. The building is a half hour from here.’

‘We can take my car.’

Bloch said, ‘We want to get there today. Get the kit. We’ll take my Jeep.’

West Harlem, 135thStreet, a line of gray-brick apartment buildings sitting opposite the Bus Stop Diner on the corner of Broadway. The buildings were four stories high, with a solid steel-fronted security door leading to the lobby and a bank of apartment buzzers on the wall. Bloch made a call, the door buzzed and Lake pushed it.

A single elevator served the residents, with a staircase to the left. The walls were either painted yellow or had aged into that color.

No cameras anywhere.

They took the elevator to the second floor.

A cop in uniform waited in the hallway. There were four apartments on each floor. They passed two apartments to get to the cop who stood outside a door with a yellow seal, about the same size as a dinner tray, stuck over the frame and the door.

The cop held a fresh seal in a packet in his hand. As Bloch and Lake approached, they put on black disposable gloves so as not to contaminate the scene.

‘You’ve got ten minutes. You haven’t seen me. I haven’t seen you,’ said the cop.

He turned, took a key from his pocket and used it to split the seal, then unlocked the door and stood back.

The apartment was in darkness, curtains drawn. Bloch found a light switch, flicked it up. The door opened into the living space of the apartment.

‘Watch your step,’ said the cop.

Bloch looked down, saw a large dark stain on the gray carpet. It was about three feet wide and crusty, a pool of blood that had soaked into the fibers. The stain was in the middle of the floor. This area had a couch facing a TV and a bookshelf with dusty paperbacks, their yellowed pages facing outwards instead of the spine, perhaps arranged this way for aesthetic purposes.

A single door on the right stood open and Bloch could see a tiled wall and a small sink through the gap. The bathroom.

Beyond the living area, divided by a breakfast bar, was a small, neat kitchen. White cupboards, steel sink, a microwave, an oven below and an electric stove on top. Nothing on display in the kitchen, not even a dirty coffee mug.