he was shot at close range.”
Moran leaned in and peered at the wounds. “Looks like the gun was right up against the skin.”
“Any sign of a struggle?” Hernandez said.
Chang gazed up and gave the sergeant an impatient stare. “Sometimes I wonder about you, Frank. We’re lucky the fish left anything for me to examine,” Chang shifted his eyes back to Moran and asked the lieutenant to help him turn the body. “Take a look at this,” Chang continued, and pointed to several faded red stains on the back of Myer’s shirt.
“Blood?” Moran asked.
Chang nodded. “I’d bet my ponytail on it.”
Moran gazed at the AME, smiled tightly and nodded.
“It tells me,” Chang said, “that the body was placed in the water several hours after the murder, thus allowing the blood to permeate the fabric. Otherwise, the water would’ve washed it all away. In my opinion, this is not Myer’s blood. There was a struggle and the victim inflicted damage on his assailant who bled onto the back of Myer’s shirt.”
Moran peered at the faded stains. “Or the killer turned the body over and stained the shirt with the victim’s blood.”
Chang nodded. “If the bloodstain wasn’t so washed out I could probably be more certain from the size of the blood drops and their angle, but under the circumstances you could be right.”
“From the wounds I’d say small caliber… possibly a .22, a 9mm or .38 were the weapons of choice.” Moran said and stood up.
“Two shooters?” Hernandez muttered.
Moran shrugged. “Maybe.” He then turned to Chang. “How long has he been in the water?”
“Hard to tell with the currents in this part of the river, but from the deteriorated condition of the body and the bloating, I’d say three to five days. I’ll know for sure after the autopsy.”
When Hernandez chuckled, Chang turned and glared at the sergeant.
“Something on your mind?”
Hernandez shook his head. “Haven’t said a word, Milos.”
Chang grunted. His penchant for performing an autopsy on every corpse, including the decapitated ones, was a running argument between him and Hernandez. The sergeant stepped forward, reached into his topcoat’s pocket, and drew out a plastic evidence bag containing a black lizard-skin wallet. “This was on him. Over five hundred dollars in it.”
Moran eyed the wallet and nodded. “That and his Rolex rules out robbery as a motive,” he said, and turned to AME. “Okay, Milos, he’s all yours.”
While Myer’s body was being loaded onto a waiting gurney, Moran walked to the other side of the pier and gazed out at the turbulent dark green water. The squawking of seagulls flying alongside a garbage-laden barge being towed upriver drew Moran’s attention.
“Garbage collectors… that’s what we are, Frank; nothing but garbage collectors,” he murmured. His eyes followed the barge.
Hernandez joined him and looked at the passing barge. “It’s times like these that make me want to quit the department, switch to day classes, and get my law degree faster.”
Moran looked at his partner with feigned surprise. “What, and give up the chance to serve and protect? C’mon, let’s move it. You heard the Commish—top priority.”
The color slide of a nude ash-blonde young woman filled the screen. She lay face up in a pool of blood on top of a linoleum floor. The gash across her neck was so deep that her head hung at a ninety-degree angle from her torso and although she was naked, her breasts were not visible due to the amount of blood that covered them. Multiple deep slashes had mutilated her face, and two bullet holes disfigured the center of her chest. Her blue eyes stared out at nothing and her mouth was agape in an expression of surprise that said dying had not been on her agenda that day.
“Lacy Wooden, age 24, single, professional dancer, found dead in her apartment on East 72nd Street, with ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ in her CD player programmed to the ‘Repeat’ mode” Moran said from the back of the dark room at 1 Police Plaza. “The coroner’s report placed the time of death between noon and two in the afternoon, about four hours before the body was supposedly discovered by Paul Myer. Moreover, according to the file, Paul Myer and she were a hot-and-cold item. Statements from neighbors and friends corroborate that they would fight like cats and dogs and then a week later be lovey-dovey again. There are also statements that Lacy occasionally showed up to dance classes with a mouse under an eye, compliments of Myer.”
When Moran pressed the remote, the close-up slide of Lacy Wooden’s neck and chest wounds were met with a collective gasp. Hernandez was seated in a tattered black swivel chair at a long foldable table. Third grade detective Robert Darcey, a thin, lanky man in his early thirties with boyish features and sandy hair sat next to him, and second grade detective Alice Simms sat across from the two cops, drumming with her fingernails the open file that lay in front of her.
Moran went on. “The gashes were so deep that they almost severed her head. Whoever killed her had a lot of pent up anger. Butchered and shot her.”
Another click and the photo of a bloodstained ten-inch kitchen knife came on. “This had Paul Myer’s fingerprints all over it and—” Moran began and then clicked on another slide. This time an enlarged bloodstained fingerprint on a wall appeared. “This was identified as being Paul Myer’s fingerprint.” Moran walked to the wall light switch.
“What about the gun?” Hernandez asked.
“Never found,” Moran said, and flicked on the lights. The overhead fluorescents flickered for an instant and then glowed.
“The report says she was sexually assaulted,” Simms said. She was a slender, green-eyed woman in her mid-thirties with mocha-colored Creole features and short curly mouse-brown hair.
Moran strode toward the whirring projector and turned it off. “Semen was found inside her, and that’s where things get ugly for DA Shilling.” Moran marched to the front of the table, leaned in, placed his fists on the table, and repeated what Commissioner Newbury had told him about the lack of DNA testing.
“Yeah, but Myer was convicted of first-degree murder and got life without parole, anyway,” Darcey piped in.
“Didn’t you read your copy of the file?” Hernandez said.
Darcey put on his best little-boy smile and said, “Sorry, I had a heavy date and—”
Hernandez stared at him, shook his head and shot Darcey an impatient look. “Myer was exonerated by the Court of Appeals thanks to a sharp-thinking young Legal Aid lawyer who had a DNA test run on the semen and proved it wasn’t Myer’s.”
“But—” Darcey started to say.
Moran interrupted. “Myer told the detectives that on the afternoon Lacy was killed, he was going to her apartment to patch up a row they’d had. When he got off the elevator at the third floor,
