Gladyss of the Hunt Read Free

was a sloppily dressed clerk who silently pointed to the metal gate to his right. When I went over to it, he buzzed me in, then I went up a flight of stairs.
    The browning wallpaper looked more like flypaper. The lighting was permanently dim, and the floor tiles were worn down or missing altogether.
    A yellow ribbon sagged loosely across the end of the second-floor corridor. As I stepped over it, I heard a police radio and traced it to Room 236. A big, middle-aged patrolman named Lenny Lombardi was leaning in the doorway finishing a hotdog.
    â€œWhat’s up?”
    â€œIt’s the Blonde Hooker thing,” he replied. Somebody had killed two prostitutes within the past two months, both of them tall and blonde. I didn’t know exactly what had happened, but there were rumors that the murderer had mutilated the bodies horribly.
    â€œSo what exactly does he do?”
    â€œBelieve me, you don’t want to know. And you don’t want to go in there.” He pointed behind him with his half-eaten hotdog.
    â€œI’ve seen bodies before,” I replied, although actually I had only seen new ones. At that point, childbirths were my one claim to fame. I had driven one bursting mama to Roosevelt Hospital, and on another occasion I’d arrived in the middle of a labor in process and helped in the delivery.
    â€œThe killer pulled this one apart limb by limb, numbered the pieces, then taped her back together.” An annoying strand of sauerkraut was hanging from Lenny’s large right cheek.
    â€œNumbered her?” Inside I could only see the back of one of the gloved and masked CSU investigators. He was on his hands and knees, going over the worn carpet with a lint brush. Since the window was open and it was about thirty degrees, he had kept hisNorthern Exposure parka on. The other technician had Crime Scene Unit printed on the back of his jacket, and was dusting the end table for fingerprints. Their metallic suitcases were open in the corner of the room.
    When I took a step inside the room, I saw the vic. With her blood-splattered arms and legs thrust in the air, it looked as if she’d died in the Happy Baby yoga pose. I couldn’t understand how the limbs were defying gravity until one of the forensic people moved away. Several tight coils of transparent tape glistened in the sunlight. The tape encompassed the victim’s elbows and wound its way up her wrists. A black bracelet with large onyx-like pieces dangled from her left wrist, and between her slightly curled fingers the killer had apparently slipped a business card for some local establishment. Another spiral of tape was wrapped around her knees and connected her ankles. More tape tied her upper and lower limbs together.
    Not until I looked closely did I see the full barbarity of the crime. The victim had been raggedly decapitated. Nestled on her abdomen, within the tightly woven confinement of taped-up arms and legs, was her head. I slipped back out to the hallway.
    â€œAnyone know who she is?”
    â€œPross.”
    As I watched the technicians dusting the surfaces and the bedside lamp, I asked, “When did they find her?”
    â€œMaid found her this morning,” Lenny said.
    â€œNo one saw the john?”
    â€œThe desk clerk said the girl signed for the room. A guy was with her, but he couldn’t even give an age or race,” Lenny explained. I knew he was tired of talking about it.
    â€œSo whose case is it?”
    â€œHernandez already came and went.” He was one of the precinct homicide detectives.
    When a murder occurred, the precinct detectives came first. If it was an isolated killing, as it usually was, it belonged to them. After they ran it through the database, if a preexisting pattern turned up—an open case—they would call for homicide investigators from Manhattan South. They caught everything south of 59th Street.
    As he pulled on his scarf and buttoned up his coat, Lenny said,