Terminal City Read Online Free PDF Page A

purpose,” Johnny said. “I’m just telling you that the endgame was in that suite. I’d say she was drugged to unconsciousness—although toxicology results may take weeks to tell us with what—her body folded practically in half to be concealed in a large suitcase or trunk, and that she was brought to the forty-fifth floor of this hotel to be raped and murdered. She died right on that bed.”
    “Why?” I said. “Mercer’s right. For what possible reason?”
    “I won’t pretend to be of any help on that count.”
    “Any preliminary estimate of when she died?” Rocco Correlli asked.
    Johnny lifted his glass again, tilting it in the direction of Fareed Azeem. “I’d say ‘the game is afoot,’ my friend, but it would be in such bad taste. A pathologist outside his morgue versus a chemist with his portable new filter. I’m at such a disadvantage, Fareed. Shall I go first?”
    Azeem gestured his consent with both hands.
    “It’s now Tuesday evening, after nine P.M. I’d put the time of death at somewhere between noon and six P.M. yesterday. Of course that’s before I get to gastric contents and all that. The rigor, the appearance of the body, the color of the blood.”
    “That’s the best you can give me?” the lieutenant asked. “Half a day? That costs me a dozen men stuck on more than a hundred video monitors in real time.”
    “They can always fast-forward ’em, Loo,” Pug said. “Bores me to tears to look at those empty corridors on surveillance tapes.”
    “Hence my introduction to the amazing Dr. Azeem. I’ll come closer after tomorrow’s autopsy, but let’s see what he can tell us.”
    “No insects,” I said softly. “I didn’t see any activity, or any obvious decomposition, despite the intense heat. You’d think if it were more than twenty-four hours ago . . .”
    “The air conditioner was on full blow when uniform responded,” Pug said. “It was like a meat freezer in here, Alex.”
    “Let me go back across the hall and check my camera,” Azeem said. “I’ll give you a reading of the machine and explain the result.”
    He stood up and walked out of the room.
    “This imprint you’ve described on the girl’s back,” Mike said. “Is it distinctive enough to give us a clue?”
    “The design may be fairly common,” Johnny said. “Sort of chevron-shaped print, perhaps on a linen cloth that lined a piece of luggage. But there are also letters, some of which are quite easy to make out. There’s an uppercase G, followed by an a or an o. In some instances the next one appears to be a v or maybe a y. It hasn’t left the same impression in every place because of the natural protrusions of the bonier parts of the body. It’s clear on the hips and on the shoulder blades, but then you lose the markings in the small of the victim’s back. The curvature there obviously didn’t make contact with the patterned fabric.”
    “Any other specifics?” I asked. I was playing with the first few symbols on my pad.
    “Seems to end with the letter d.”
    “Goyard,” I said, filling in the blanks and sketching the familiar design that adorned all the company’s products. “Probably the oldest trunk maker in existence. Nineteenth-century Parisian.”
    “They teach you that at Wellesley, kid?” Mike said. “Give me a broad with a little class, an inherited fortune, a lot of foreign travel to see her old flame, and I’ll show you a prosecutor right in her element. Voilà . Could be the murderer’s a French chef, with a suitcase full of carving knives, out to avenge a broken heart. I’m telling you, Coop’s going to crack this case. She’ll get her personal shopper right on it.”
    I was trying to laugh at Mike’s digs rather than take umbrage. I wondered whether he was back to his old ways of putting me down just to save face in front of Rocco Correlli, or if his extended vacation had cooled the affection he had finally expressed two months ago.
    “Hard not to be noticed with