Worst Case (Michael Bennett 3)

“I’ll hold the nails while you swing the hammer,” Emily said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “This is a shock. Maybe we should take a quick breather. Do you want to go up top for some air?”

You better believe I wanted to take a breather. I wanted to get the hell out of that steaming South Bronx crypt.

My thumb found my boss’s listing instead.

“Tell me some good news, Mike,” Chief Fleming said.

“I wish I could. I’m in the basement of two-five-oh Briggs Avenue. We need the Crime Scene Unit and the medical examiner.”

“Goddammit,” my boss said. “How?”

“He blew the kid’s brains out,” I said. “I’d give the notification duty to Georgina Hottinger, if I were you. She likes to play cop with her flashing lights. I wouldn’t want to deprive her of getting all the way in on the act.”

I met Ramirez and Schultz in the hallway when they finally arrived five minutes later.

“Canvass everyone you can find in this dump,” I said. “Especially the super. Roust him and the landlord as well. This guy took his time with this kid down here. I want to know why nobody noticed.”

Chapter 13

WHEN I RETURNED, Emily had her jacket off and was hovering over the body. She had her blouse sleeves rolled up and was wearing green rubber surgical gloves she’d gotten from somewhere. Her bag probably. I was impressed.

“The back spatter on the floor here and the lividity in the legs indicate he was killed in the chair,” she said without looking up.

I probed Jacob’s arm gently with my thumb.

“Looks like a semi-advanced state of rigor,” I said. “I’d say he was killed sometime early this morning. The handcuff cuts on the wrists and his scraped knees look like he was treated pretty roughly before he was killed. Tying this in with the question-and-answer stuff from the first call, I’d say this looks like a teacher-student domination fantasy or something.”

“Yeah,” Emily said, waving away a fly. “Welcome to Hell one-oh-one.”

I peered at Jacob’s face. He had his mother’s dark hair and creamy complexion, his father’s blue eyes.

Those eyes were frozen open forever now, along with his mouth in a rictus of shock and horror. There was a smudge on his forehead that I hadn’t noticed before, a gray mark like a small X.

“Hey, Mike,” Emily said a second later. She was standing at the other side of the room. “I think you need to see this.”

I joined her on the other side of the blackboard. On the back, someone had written:

MEMENTO HOMO, QUIA PULVIS ES, ET IN PULVEREM REVERTERIS.

“What is that? Latin?” Emily said.

“It is,” I said, staring at it. “My Catholic high school’s preferred method of torture. Memento means ‘remember,’ I think. Pulvis is ‘dust.’”

Cold numbed my back like a spinal tap as I suddenly realized its meaning.

“‘Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return,’” I cried. “It’s what Catholic priests say on Ash Wednesday when you get your ashes. Which must be what’s on the kid’s forehead. He gave Jacob ashes?”

Emily snapped her rubber-gloved fingers loudly.

“Wait a second! That’s it. ‘Teach us to care and not to care. Teach us to sit still.’ The poem is called Ash Wednesday, by T. S. Eliot. What does it mean? How does it tie into the kidnapping?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But I think the clock just started.”

I wiped the sweat out of my eyes.

“Ash Wednesday is only three days away,” I said.

Chapter 14