Entombed

Scribner Book Company

Chapter 1

I looked at the pool of dried blood that covered the third-floor landing of a brownstone on one of the safest residential blocks in Manhattan and wondered how the young woman who'd been left here to die yesterday, her chest pierced by a steak knife, could still be alive this afternoon.

Mercer Wallace crouched beside the stained flooring, pointing out for me the smaller areas of discoloration. "These smudges, I figure, are partial imprints of the perp's shoe. He must have lost his footing over there."

The blood streaked away from the door of the victim's apartment, as though her attacker had slid in the slippery fluid and stumbled to the top of the staircase.

"So there's likely to be some of this on his clothing?"

"Pants leg and shoes for certain, until he cleans them. Look here," he said, and my eyes followed the tip of the pen he was using as a pointer. Outlined on the light gray paint of the door to 3B was another bloody design. "That's hers, Alex. She must have braced herself with one foot against that panel to push the guy off. She put up a fierce struggle."

I could make out the V-shaped tip of a woman's shoe sole, and inches lower the circular mark that confirmed it was a pump rather than a flat.

"High heels and all, she did pretty well for herself. Just lucky." The uniformed cop who had been assigned to safeguard the crime scene for the past twenty-four hours spoke to Mercer as he straightened up.

"That's what we're calling it now when someone resists a rapist and ends up in the intensive care unit with a few holes in her chest and a collapsed lung?"

"Sorry, Ms. Cooper. I mean the girl is fortunate to be alive. You know she went DOA when they pulled up to the docking bay at the emergency room?"

Mercer had told me that. Annika Jelt had stopped breathing on the short ride to New York Hospital. The cops who were dispatched to a neighbor's 911 call reporting screams in the stairwell knew there was no time to wait for an ambulance. The young officer who carried the victim down to the patrol car had served in the army reserves as a medic during the war in Iraq. Annika owed her life to the fact that he revived her in the backseat of the RMP, on the way to the ER, before she was rushed into surgery to inflate her lung and stanch the bleeding.

Mercer led the way down the staircase. The traces of black fingerprint dust on the banister and walls reminded me that the Crime Scene Unit had done a thorough workup of the building when they were summoned by Mercer, shortly after the 3 a.m. attack on a frigid morning in late January.

"He never got her inside the apartment?"

"Nope. She fought like hell to keep him out."

"Did he take anything?" I asked.

"Keys. He took the ring with the keys to both the vestibule door and the apartment. The super's changed both locks already."

"But money? Jewelry?"

"Her pocketbook was lying on the ground next to her. Cash and credit cards were inside and she still had on her earrings and bracelet. He wasn't there for the money."

Mercer had double-parked outside the five-story walk-up on East Sixty-sixth Street. He had awakened me yesterday at six o'clock to tell me about the case. We had worked together for the better part of the decade that I had run the sex crimes prosecution unit of the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, while he had been assigned to the police department's Special Victims Squad. He knew I'd want the first heads-up about the crime, before it was reported on the local network news and before the DA, Paul Battaglia, hunted me down to get enough details so that he could answer the flood of calls from local politicians, concerned citizens, and the ever-curious media. Violent crime, especially sexual assault, was always fodder for headlines when it happened in the high-rent district of the Upper East Side.

I left my desk in the criminal courthouse this afternoon to join Mercer at the victim's apartment. It always helped me begin to frame an investigation and prosecution if I could see exactly where the attack had occurred and what evidence there was of a struggle, or any clues to the perpetrator's method of operation. What the lighting conditions were, the size of the area involved and distances between the beginning of the attack and its conclusion, as well as potential evidence that might be cleaned up or altered in the days to follow -- I liked to see those things with my own eyes. The cops had still been too busy processing the scene themselves to allow me access when Mercer called me yesterday morning, but now they had given the green light to let him walk me through it.

In addition, my years of work on these cases often added another experienced perspective to that of the police team -- and sometimes it resulted in recalling a distinctive detail or trait that would lead the investigators to a repeat offender in this category of crimes in which the recidivist rate was so extraordinarily high.

Mercer started the engine and turned up the heat in the old department Crown Vic that had responded to more sexual assaults than most officers ever would in a lifetime. "So, did anything there speak to you?" Mercer said, smiling at me.

I rubbed my gloved hands together against the harsh winter chill that had seeped through the cracks around the car windows. Lots of veteran cops got vibes at crime scenes, claiming to be able to figure out something about the assailant by being in the same space. I shook my head. "Nothing you don't already know. Yet one more sick puppy who was somehow aroused by forcing a woman he'd never seen before to engage in a sexual act."

"There are buildings with doormen on both corners of the block. This is a fully occupied brownstone on a well-lighted street. He's a cool case, this guy. He got her at the front door on top of the stoop, as she was unlocking it -- "

"She told you that?"

Mercer had been waiting at the hospital when the young woman emerged from the anesthetic late last evening. "Too many tubes coming out of the kid to speak, and the docs only gave me fifteen minutes with her. I asked some basics until she ran out of steam. She squeezed my hand like I told her for some yes-and-no kind of questions."

We were driving to the hospital, just a few blocks away on York Avenue at Sixty-eighth Street. Mercer stopped in to check on his victim on the way to his office this morning, and insisted on seeing her again, as he would every day until she recovered. He wanted to tell the young exchange student that he had telephoned her parents, in Sweden, and that they were flying here tomorrow. Until they arrived, he would be the closest thing to family she would have at her side.

"Did Annika know he had the knife when he accosted her?"

"She never even heard him coming. I figure the first thing she felt was his arm yoking her neck and the blade of the knife scratching the side of her throat."

"Not a particularly distinctive MO," I said.

"You looking for creative, too, Alex?"

I shook my head.

"It's all in the details, as you know. Exactly what words he said, how he touched her, what he smelled like. It may be a couple of days until we can get all that from her."

"And hope in the meantime that he doesn't feel it necessary to finish the job with another victim tonight or tomorrow."

Mercer flashed his badge at the security guard in front of the hospital driveway, who motioned him to leave the car right at the curb.

Sophisticated monitors beeped their...