Chapter 13 Bloch

13

Bloch

‘Must be a party,' said Lake.

They stood outside Margaret Blakemore's address on West 74 th Street. It was coming up on midnight, and down the street a group of people were filing out of a house, waving their goodbyes and making the short trip to their neighboring homes.

‘I don't like parties,' said Bloch.

‘One of their neighbors has been murdered. What kind of people throw a party at a time like this?'

‘Rich people,' said Bloch.

An unmarked NYPD pool car pulled up beside the two investigators. A small, rotund cop with a belly that hung over his pants, got out of the passenger seat of the Ford and flashed his badge.

He was Detective Marvin Neeson. A thirty-year veteran. His career had begun when the city was climbing out of the grip of drugs, gangs and prostitution. When the murder rate was higher than his blood pressure was now. His face had a ruddy hue to it. Not just his cheeks, it looked as if someone had spraypainted his head in a pinkish-red.

‘Bloch?' he asked.

Bloch nodded, took out her ID, showed it to him.

‘Why are we doing this now? I should've been home in bed two hours ago. Instead, I have to come down here and babysit you two,' said Neeson.

‘We wanted to take a look at the scene around the same time the crime was committed. It helps,' said Lake.

‘Helps what?'

‘Helps us get a better sense of the crime,' said Lake.

‘You don't need to be a friggin' crime-scene expert to know what happened here. We got the murder weapon. End of story. Say, I didn't see your ID.'

Lake nodded, said, ‘That's right.'

‘You ain't getting inside until I see ID.'

Bloch said, ‘He's with me.'

She said it as both a statement of fact, and as an end to the conversation. Bloch was well known in New York law enforcement. A few years ago, she had trained some of their best officers in hand-to-hand combat, and advanced driving skills. At first, some of the cops were resistant to being taught self-defense by a woman. A couple were downright mad about it. Those two decided to take her on, on the mats, full contact. One of them was an NYPD golden gloves champion. The other had been an amateur wrestling champ and self-described ju-jitsu expert. Both of them had to eat a lot of shit from their lieutenants when they had to take a couple of months off, on paid sick leave, after their bouts with Bloch.

‘I know you,' said Neeson.

Bloch nodded.

‘If he's with you, fair enough. But you're responsible for him,' said Neeson, and handed Bloch the key to Margaret Blakemore's house and got back in his vehicle.

Before Bloch put the key in the door, she stood back, lit up the lock face with a flashlight.

‘No toolmarks,' she said, then tried the key.

Bloch and Lake went inside and shut the door behind them. Found the light switch.

The hallway was large, dominated by a beautiful wooden staircase with a red carpet in the center of the stairs, held down by brass runners. The floor was pale tile. They spent five minutes with their flashlights tracing the floor, looking for anything out of place, any spot of blood, markings on the floor, anything out of the ordinary. There was nothing.

‘No back door in these houses,' said Lake. Bloch nodded, and they continued into the room on their left.

What had once been two rooms had been converted into a single living space. Wide and long. Couches, an antique roll top and side tables in the bay window area, and the second area at the back was the kitchen. A large chrome stove and porcelain sink, with a long table in the center of the room. A bench on one side, chairs on the other. It looked like a space for socializing. The stove top looked as if it had never been used. Along the opposite wall was a wine rack.

They scanned the kitchen area quickly and then focused their attention on the living area. Even though cleaners had been employed, there was still a darker grain to the wooden floor just in front of the window. Everything else was neat and in its proper place.

‘What do you think?' asked Lake.

‘No forced entry. No signs of a struggle. She knew her killer,' said Bloch.

‘That doesn't help us with defending the good doctor.'

‘It is what it is.'

Down on her hands and knees, Bloch examined the stain, turned and then stared up at Lake.

‘We know the killer fired three shots,' she said. ‘One took her in the chest and lodged there. No exit wound. Then, when she was on the floor, two shots to the head. The rounds were .22 caliber. No exit wounds from the skull. There's not much blood here. Massive intercranial hemorrhaging would have led to bleeding from the nose, ears and the entry wounds,' said Bloch.

‘With the head shots, both entry wounds were mid temple. Half an inch between them. That's decent grouping,' said Lake.

Bloch nodded.

‘No scorch marks around the entry wounds. No pressure bruising from the barrel of the pistol. Same on the chest wound. He stood back, aimed and fired,' she said.

‘Jackson doesn't know how to shoot,' said Lake. ‘You can get lucky with one shot. Not three. Not when you're drawing down on a real-life, moving, breathing, defenseless human being.'

‘It looks like an execution. Someone who knew what they were doing.'

‘Not much of a defense,' said Lake.

‘It's a start,' said Bloch.

Together, they scanned the downstairs rooms again, then made their way to the upper floor. There were four well-proportioned bedrooms spread over two floors. A bathroom, a main bedroom with its own bathroom and a small guest room on the second floor that had been converted into a dressing room. Two more bedrooms on the third, both with adjoining bathrooms.

Nothing out of place.

Everything looked neat and tidy. Even the bed.

‘Has Alan Blakemore spent the night here since the murder?' asked Lake.

‘No,' said Bloch. ‘There was a story in the Post . He came back to the city to ID the body, checked into a hotel, flew back out to Madrid the next day.'

Lake nodded, and they set about checking the drawers and closets in the main bedroom.

Bloch peered out of the window. The light from the chandelier threw her reflection onto the glass. She unlocked the window, pulled it up and stuck her head out. The smells of the city came to her. The smell of rain in the air, sewage too. The street was mostly in darkness. The residents were now at home in their beds.

Lake joined her.

‘Listen,' said Bloch.

Stilling his breathing, Lake remained motionless, his ear cocked. The only sounds were distant rolls of tires on the avenue at the end of the street and the low hum of the city.

‘I don't hear anything.'

‘Exactly,' said Bloch. Reaching into her pants pocket, she came out with a handful of change. She aimed it at the trash can resting against the lamp post next door. The quarters hit the can with a crash and rattled and danced into the gutter. A few stray coins bounced off the hood of the police car parked outside. Detective Neeson got out of the car, looked around.

Bloch watched the lights come on in the bedrooms of the houses opposite. She leaned out of the window further. Lake did the same.

Only when they leaned forward did they spot the young woman across the street staring up at the window. She had long dark hair, tied up in a ponytail. A pink sweater and blue jeans.

Bloch met her gaze.

The young woman didn't flinch. Didn't look away.

She just stared.

A key part of being a detective is developing a sense of people. Being able to read expressions, body language, changes in tone of voice. Bloch wasn't good at reading people. Never had been, and never would be. Her brain operated on a different level. Numbers. Facts. Science. Logic. People were unreliable, and therefore a slight mystery to her.

As she stared at the young woman across the street, Bloch felt something stir inside her. Whatever hormones and chemicals the central nervous system needed to deal with a threat – they were swirling around Bloch's body right now. This wasn't the emotional part of her mind – this was the old, dormant, lizard part of her brain. The survival instinct.

The young woman looked away, continued to walk up the street, away from the house. She didn't run. She walked slowly, like she was out for a stroll.

‘Who was that?' asked Lake.

Bloch shook her head.

Front doors opened, windows opened and people gazed out into the street to see what the noise had been.

‘The neighbors are on edge,' said Lake, ‘but I guess this is the kind of street where folks pay attention to noises in the night. There's a lot of rich folks here who don't want to get robbed.'

They both came back inside, and Lake closed the window.

‘Medical examiner put the time of death between midnight and one a.m. We know the victim wasn't found until the morning,' said Lake. ‘There was a party down the street, which would have made noise, but not everyone was there. How come none of the other neighbors came to check on her when they heard the shots?'

‘The rounds taken out of Margaret Blakemore were .38 grain hollow points. Subsonic. The shots don't break the sound barrier when fired, so no crack of gunfire. You combine a subsonic round with a suppressor and each shot will be no louder than forty, maybe fifty decibels,' said Bloch.

‘What does fifty decibels sound like?' asked Lake.

‘Normal conversation is about sixty decibels.'

‘Shit, so the killer knew her, knew the area, knew how to shoot and knew his ammunition. This is looking more and more like a professional hit. I know the husband has a solid alibi and he's way out of state for the time of the murder, but could he have hired a hitman?'

‘We can rule out the husband. No real motive. And this is not a professional hit,' said Bloch.

‘Why not a professional?'

‘Because she wouldn't let a stranger into the house and a hitman would've shot her when she opened the front door.'

Lake shook his head, stared at the ground. They both fell silent for a time, considering their thoughts.

‘The cops have searched these rooms,' said Bloch. ‘They haven't tossed the place, but they would have completed a cursory search, trying to build a picture of Margaret's life. They kept it tidy, though. This is all exactly as it was when the murder occurred.'

‘Agreed. The rooms and contents would have been given a quick once-over. There's, what, half a million dollars of jewelry just sitting on the dressing table in the other room. If nothing there was taken, no need for the cops to tear the place apart. This wasn't a robbery.'

‘They knew it wasn't a robbery when they saw the body,' said Bloch. ‘She was still wearing her engagement ring. That's a big rock.'

‘Fair enough,' said Lake. ‘So what is our motive here? It's not robbery. Postmortem shows she wasn't assaulted in any way – so it's not sexual. It's like you said – it's an execution.'

They began to examine the bedroom – the nightstand, the closet, both working different sides of the room.

Bloch closed Blakemore's underwear drawer, opened the second drawer and began looking through her socks when she stopped.

‘Lake,' she said, and from inside a pair of rolled-up socks Bloch pulled out a cell phone.