VC04 - Jury Double Read Free Page B

firecrackers.”
    Cardozo’s phone rang. “Cardozo.”
    “Vince? Dan.”
    He recognized the easygoing baritone of Manhattan’s deputy assistant chief medical examiner.
    “I’ve completed the preliminary examination on the Briars. Something surprising turned up and I’d rather not discuss it over the phone.”
    “John and Amalia Briar both suffocated.” Standing at the sink in his office two stories below East 30th Street, Dan Hippolito quartered four apples with a pair of autopsy scissors and fed them down the screaming chute of a Juicematic machine. “Luckily for us, their two pillows had begun to leak goose down.” He tipped the juice into two coffee mugs. His jogging shoes padded across the concrete floor and he set a mug on the table beside Cardozo’s elbow.
    Cardozo scowled. “What’s this?”
    “It’s good for you.”
    “When did you join the health fascists? Ellie’s on my case all the time.”
    “Ellie’s a smart girl. Drink it while it’s potent. Exposed to light, Vitamin C has a half-life of eight minutes.”
    Cardozo lifted his cup of juice and took a testing swallow. It was unbelievably sweet, unbelievably good.
    Dan strolled back to his desk. He turned a page of a laser-printed draft report. “There were feather particles on John Briar’s face and lips. There were feather particles inside his mouth and esophagus. But there were no feather particles in Amalia Briar’s mouth or esophagus. None on her lips or even on her face.”
    Cardozo studied Dan’s brown eyes, large and luminous beneath his receding hairline. “And what does that suggest to you?”
    Dan moved his mug in a circular motion, stirring up waves in the apple juice. “Small veins at the back of John Briar’s eyes had hemorrhaged—we call them ‘petechiae’—they’re a pretty reliable sign of forcible asphyxiation.”
    “What about Amalia’s eyes?”
    “That’s the odd thing. The veins were unruptured.”
    Cardozo sat forward in his chair. Something had shifted and he wanted to understand it.
    “In my opinion,” Dan said, “John Briar was murdered and Amalia suffocated on her own phlegm. She died a natural death.”
    Ellie Siegel turned the final page of the preliminary autopsy report. She exhaled a long, sighing breath.
    “Explain it to me,” Cardozo said. “Mickey admits committing two murders and one of them’s not a murder.”
    “This is only a preliminary report.” Ellie’s finger tapped her coffee cup. The clear polished nails caught glints of light from the fluorescent desk lamp. “Dan could have overlooked something.”
    “No.” Cardozo shook his head vehemently. “Not Dan.”
    Ellie didn’t answer. She pushed up from her desk and walked to the squad room window and stared out. Above the western skyline, pink welts stretched across the darkening heavens.
    “There are a lot of unanswered questions,” Cardozo said. “Why was Mickey waiting in the apartment? Why didn’t he get the hell out of there and save his ass?”
    “Maybe he wants to be punished.”
    “Then why doesn’t he show remorse?”
    “Some men don’t like to show their feelings. You don’t.”
    Cardozo had trained himself to ignore Ellie’s jibes. Her aim was laudable: the improvement and sensitizing of Vince Cardozo. But her tactics could be a pain. “How did Mickey get into the apartment? He didn’t have a key; the building staff were on strike; the Briars were bedridden. So who let him in? And why the hell did he even want to kill John Briar?”
    Down on 63rd Street, two ambulances raced by, sirens screeching a fierce duet.
    Ellie turned. “It’s only been six hours, Vince. Give yourself a break. You may not have all the answers yet, but at least you have the killer.”
    “Then why’s he lying about killing Amalia Briar?”
    “Maybe he doesn’t know he’s lying. Maybe Amalia was already dead when he suffocated her.”
    Cardozo studied the crime scene photo of Amalia: a dear old grandma who seemed to have dozed