Hudson River Homicides (Memento Mori #4)

CHAPTER ONE

Homicide detective Ray O’Halloran—the bulky Irishman with strawberry blond hair, a ruddy complexion, and a personality not unlike that of a schoolyard bully—was approaching from the throng of uniformed officers and PPE-wearing scientists, skirting a truck-mounted crane with its boom extended beyond the guardrail and into the water.

“That you, Grim?” he called over the crane’s engine.

O’Halloran dipped in and out of the overhead light before coming to a stop at Larkin’s side.

“Almost didn’t see you in that Funeral Director Special. ”

Larkin wore his usual uniform of a charcoal-gray suit, crisp white shirt, pink tie, artfully arranged paisley pocket square of white and gray, and mint-green derbies. He diverted his gaze from the aquatic recovery effort to level his reaper-gray stare on O’Halloran.

O’Halloran pointed and said, “I guess I shoulda just looked to the shoes for confirmation.”

Larkin quoted, “One does want a hint of color.”

O’Halloran’s brows scrunched together.

“Albert Goldman,” Larkin stated. “ The Birdcage . You called me in the middle of date night.”

“Your idea of date night is Nathan Lane in drag?”

“You’re lucky it wasn’t a Marilyn Monroe film—otherwise, I’d have not picked up at all. Why have you called me to an active crime scene.”

As if in answer to Larkin’s inquiry, someone from the water shouted the go-ahead, which was echoed by another individual, and then the crane began to retract and hoist a secured refrigerator from the river.

Water gushed from the bottom panel as the unit was lifted high enough overhead to get it over the pier railing.

It gradually rotated midair to face Larkin and O’Halloran, and scrawled across the door in all caps with what was likely permanent black Sharpie was the message: PIN ME TO DETECTIVE LARKIN.

“Port Authority called it in,” O’Halloran explained.

“Asked if we had a Larkin on the force. Considering you’ve become something of a household name…

didn’t take Dispatch long to confirm.” O’Halloran looked over his shoulder and pointed toward the news vans.

“Your fan club must have been listening to the scanner.”

At that, Larkin said in a clipped tone, “I’m not interested in giving them material for another write-up that compares my real-life detective skills to that of a century-old fictional character.”

“So sayeth the cop with enough commendations to rival the damn commissioner.”

A man with the recovery effort jogged onto the pier, approached the suspended kitchen appliance, and gave the crane operator a series of hand gestures until the white, Marcom brand refrigerator—standard in every typical New York rental—was laid on its condenser on a tarp that’d been set out in advance.

“I take it that your presence is a formality,” Larkin stated, watching as the slings were removed from the fridge.

“It’s being treated as a homicide,” O’Halloran confirmed. “If you want it, you gotta play ball.”

“It’s incredible, the asinine amount of red tape justice must contend with.”

A third voice interrupted the two. “That you, Larkin?”

Larkin sidestepped O’Halloran. Approaching the scene, wearing a shapeless PPE jumpsuit, with a black Pelican case in one hand and a camera strapped around his neck, was Neil Millett—the perpetually cynical and sharp-tongued detective with the Crime Scene Unit who Larkin had worked alongside of on three cases since Monday, March 30.

Millett was several inches taller and a few years older than Larkin, with honey-brown hair and a pulse on fashionable attire—although he shied away from Larkin’s more extreme color combinations.

Walking beside Millett and hastily pulling on a navy-blue windbreaker with the emblem of the OCME on the left breast was Dr. Lawrence Baxter.

Given the number of years a forensic pathologist dedicated to schooling, residency, and fellowship alone, Larkin logically knew that the good doctor had to be at least his own age of thirty-five.

But when taking in Baxter’s slight frame, coppery red hair done up in a classic James Dean quiff, those retro browline glasses, and a solid skincare regiment, it all had a way of aging him like a particularly vague autopsy report: Decedent is between twenty and fifty years of age.

Millett came to a stop on the opposite side of the fridge and set his kit down on the cement walkway. “I’d say it’s nice to see you again, but a crime scene is hardly the place for such platitudes.”

Larkin’s mouth twitched.

Baxter said, “I don’t attend scenes for just anyone, you know. Where’s your hunky forensic artist for me to ogle?”

“Contrary to what my recent caseload would suggest, Detective Doyle is not typically at my side in an official capacity,” Larkin answered.

“What about unofficial?” Baxter countered.

“All right, all right,” O’Halloran started. “Before someone starts crying ‘always the bridesmaid, never the bride.’”

Larkin replied, “In a 2015 report presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, a six-year study that followed the same 2,262 heterosexual couples—aged nineteen to ninety-four—found that women initiated sixty-nine percent of all divorces and consistently reported lower levels of relationship quality than their male counterparts. A particularly interesting takeaway from this research was that, among the unmarried heterosexual couples who broke up, there was no statistically significant difference between who initiated the split, suggesting that nonmarital relationships are more equal, flexible, and adaptable to the rapid-fire changes of today’s society. ”

“Good fucking God,” O’Halloran said under his breath while pinching the bridge of his nose.

“So the takeaway is, don’t get married,” Millett said, collecting a pair of latex gloves, safety glasses, and N95 mask from his kit.

Baxter countered, “I think the takeaway is actually, don’t be straight.

” He was smiling to himself as he watched Millett finish donning his PPE, but as the CSU detective began to snap a series of rapid photographs—collecting visuals of the fridge from various angles and distances, including the aggressively scrawled message addressed to Larkin—Baxter’s smile faded.

Rather solemnly, he asked, “This isn’t normal, is it? ”

Funny, Larkin thought, how desperate humans were to anthropomorphize something as lawless as the universe, to find order in its chaos, to find sense in its senselessness, to accuse man of deviating from the norm— living —when there was nothing true of human design except for the inevitability of death —but this should be viewed as abnormal.

Nietzsche’s aphorism 109 warned: Let us be on our guard against ascribing to it heartlessness and unreason, or their opposites; it is neither perfect, nor beautiful, nor noble; nor does it seek to be anything of the kind, it does not at all attempt to imitate man!

It is altogether unaffected by our aesthetic and moral judgments!

Man would always give birth.

Man would always raise his hand against the weak, the opposite, the other.

Man would always die.

And the world would never stop turning. It was unaffected .

It was only through man’s ability to theorize, to conceptualize, to empathize that he could assign meaning— morality —to a word such as “normal.”

A cool breeze skimmed uptown along the river’s surface as Larkin said, “‘There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.’ Hamlet believed Denmark a prison, and so it was. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern believed it not, and so it wasn’t.”

Baxter raised an eyebrow.

“Humanity despairs for reason , doctor,” Larkin continued. “From belief in the divine to chaos theory to existentialism. No matter how fraught with uncertainty, mankind yearns for purpose. Murder is not normal because you believe it so.”

“You don’t?”

“What I believe won’t change anything.”

“And yet, here you are,” Baxter said, gesturing at the crime scene surrounding them.

“Yearning for purpose,” Larkin concluded.

O’Halloran heaved a sigh strong enough to move mountains. “A regular fucking conversation just isn’t possible when you three idiots are involved….”

Larkin glanced sideways at O’Halloran. “We can discuss the career of Pete Alonso at a later date.”

“ Sure ,” O’Halloran said with a disbelieving snort.

“I’ve become quite adept at the ins and outs of baseball over the last few months.”

O’Halloran’s expression shifted to that of wary curiosity. “Yeah?”

Larkin turned to watch as Baxter busied himself with his own safety gear.

He continued in his usual monotone, “My Mets statistics are more a regurgitation of facts, but I’m certain you can use your limited imagination to pretend you’re discussing the current season with someone who appreciates sabermetrics. ”

“Asshole.”

Millett lowered his camera. “Now that we’ve covered the American trifecta of divorce, death, and baseball… can we have Dr. Baxter examine the contents?”

“Please,” Larkin answered.

Millett reached across the fridge, gripped the door handle, and yanked it backward.

A pungent odor immediately wafted out, acrid and overwhelming, like bleach and cat piss and human decomposition had all been mixed together in the same vat and was left to bake in the summer sun.

“Jesus H. Christ and his twelve fucking apostles!” O’Halloran swore. He took a step back and put a hand over his nose and mouth. “I’ve been working Homicide nearly fifteen years and never smelled a body this rancid.”

Millett had immediately gone to his kit and collected additional PPE. He gave the fridge a wide berth and approached O’Halloran and Larkin with the offerings.

O’Halloran held up his other hand in defense and asked Larkin, “Grim, you want the case, right?”

“Of course.”

To Millett, O’Halloran made a gesture of wiping his hands and said, “Best of luck with your acid bath.”