Sunrise Highway Read online

  She rounded the corner and found Rakesh Wadhwa, the forensic pathologist, leaning over a naked woman’s body, smoke rising from the saw in his hand as he labored to remove the top of the skull. Rakesh wore his long dark hair up in a man-bun, a mask over the lower half of his face, latex gloves, and a white coat suitable for both autopsies and butchers’ shops.

  The woman was more intact than the pregnant one from Rockaway. A little younger than Izzy would be now, and a little smaller. But her knees and thighs were similarly chubby, and her D-cup breasts were spilling off to the sides in a familiar way, as if trying to take refuge in her armpits. Not your baby sister, Lourdes’s mind was telling her. No way she’d turn up here, even if she had been living out on the street or in a homeless shelter the last six months. The chances were literally ten million to one. Lots of people went missing and turned up alive. It only seemed like bad news had a way of beating the odds. Just the same, it felt like her heart was the size of a medicine ball as she forced herself to go over for a better look.

  “Detective Robles.” Rakesh tugged down his mask, revealing a trim mustache and goatee combo. “What’s good?”

  She came around to his side of the table. Just making sure. On a closer look, there wasn’t even much of a resemblance. Tiny pleasures and sorrows had etched themselves onto this woman’s face in a way that would never have registered on her sister’s rounder and softer features.

  “Life’s good,” Lourdes said. “But too damn short.”

  “That’s why we’re here. Right?”

  The funky bhangra beats that Rakesh was playing encouraged her to sway her hips a little, reminding her of what a strangely lively place an examining room could be. Once you got past the particular anxiety of accidentally seeing someone you knew. All the clean, gleaming surfaces, sharp blades, and efficient drainage systems made her think of a kitchen at a high-end restaurant. There was a faint odor of chicken vindaloo in the air, as if a good lunch had been eaten close by. Rakesh himself was a smooth-skinned, dark-eyed dude from Jackson Heights, an outer-borough striver like her, the pride of a big New Delhi family. A little arrogant maybe, but sometimes she liked that. If she wasn’t already living with Mitchell Vogliano, from the Brooklyn DA’s office, Lourdes might have accepted Rakesh’s earlier invitation to check out the hippest new dosa place on Curry Hill in Manhattan.

  “I hear you got done with our vic,” she said, glancing over at the sheet on the next slab, probably covering the remains from Rockaway.

  “I wouldn’t say ‘done.’” Rakesh put the saw down. “We still haven’t identified her.”

  “So what do you have for me?”

  “Well, there are some unusual things about this.” Rakesh turned professorial as he circled the covered form. “Typically, a body dumped in water either gases up and floats to the surface once it gets warm enough, or the crabs and fishes get their way and there’s not much left after a few weeks. But here we have a perfect storm of circumstances.”

  “Perfect, other than her being dead, you mean,” Lourdes said.

  “Quite. For one thing, she was weighed down to sink to the bottom. And the water is very cold where she was, which certainly helps with preservation. For another thing, she was put in a bag made of very strong material and it was taped tightly around the body, presumably to make sure the heavier stones remained in place to weigh it. Then the bag got wrapped tighter by the currents. My theory is it only developed the rips recently, which delayed the fishes getting at the remains.”

  “Almost like whoever dumped her wanted to keep her intact,” Lourdes murmured. “Right?”

  “Yes. And the bag looked like it was covered in sediment, which also could have helped. Or it could have landed in a crevice and been dislodged by the dredging earlier this summer. Which would explain why the remains were so intact.”

  “So how long was she down there?”

  “Hard to judge.” Rakesh inhaled. “Could be a month, could be two years—because of all these atypical factors. We all know about the bog man who was buried in peat. I just pulled up an article about a body they found in a bay in Switzerland that had been under sediment for like two hundred years and was covered in grave wax, similar to your girl.”

  “So you got nothing for me?”

  “Not nothing.” Rakesh put his hands up. “I’d say we have a decent shot at extracting usable DNA from the bone marrow.”

  Manage expectations, she reminded herself. On the cop shows Lourdes was partial to, genetic analysis was always a slam dunk. In real life, not so much.

  “Can you confirm she was carrying a baby?” she asked.

  Rakesh shook his head. “Sorry, Lourdes. There could have been a fetus, but babies don’t have enough fatty tissue for adipocere to form. So there were other bones, but I can’t even help you prove there was a second body. I know you were looking for more.”

  “You don’t know what I’m looking for,” she snapped, more harshly than she meant to.

  His gaze lingered on a space just above her eyes maybe a quarter second longer than necessary. Obviously, he’d understood there was a personal reason her cell phone number was at the bottom of the alert she’d put out a few months back to all local law enforcement, looking for any information about a missing female named Ysabel Robles, thirty-two years of age, five foot two, down to 143 pounds the last time Lourdes saw her, distinguishing birthmark on her left thigh and a tattoo of Alex Rodriguez, the former Yankee star, on her right shoulder.

  “Sorry, hombre. I’ve been stressing lately.”

  “Yeah, I heard.” He turned down the music. “You know, IAB talked to me about you using resources to look for your sister. Right?”

  “And what’d you tell them?”

  “I told them I didn’t know anything about that and I’d only observed you being about the job.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Nothing to thank me for. You didn’t do anything wrong.” He dropped his voice and his brown eyes. “Listen, I didn’t need to get into a hassle with the NYPD. But I’m not going to join in a witch hunt either. I’m just trying to do my job. I have enough work to do at this office.”

  “I can respect that.” She nodded, a little embarrassed about letting her personal business get around this much. “I’m sorry if I crossed a line here…”

  “You didn’t.” He looked up shyly. “But as long as we’re talking about it, let me ask: Was your sister pregnant when she went missing?”

  “No, but she talked about wanting a baby. Not that she was in any shape mentally to handle one.” She sighed, signaling that she was ready to put this back on a strictly professional level. “Anyway…”

  “Anyway, if I had to make a guess at this point, I’d say this woman was down longer than your sister has been missing.”

  “What about cause of death?”

  “The hyoid bone in the throat is shattered, which makes you think about strangulation as a possible cause of death, but makes it harder to prove.”

  “What about those rocks down her throat?” she interrupted, getting impatient.

  His upper lip gave a little twitch, betraying slight annoyance at getting his rhythm thrown off. “It’s unusual, to say the least.”

  “I know why I’d say that. Why do you?”

  “It’s not something I’ve ever seen before.” He clasped his gloved hands. “You were right that the stones that weighed the bag down were different from the ones in her trachea.”

  “So is that how she was killed?”

  “Can’t say definitively.” He shrugged. “It could’ve been done postmortem. Her teeth are a little chipped. But not as much as you might expect them to be if she was locking her jaw, trying to keep someone from forcing rocks in her mouth.”

  “You know something else.” Lourdes started to lean against a table in disappointment, but then realized a bloated old black man was already lying on it. “Don’t hold out on me, amigo.”

  Rakesh took off his lab coat and hung it on a hook on the
back of the door. “I only went the extra mile because it was you.”

  “Okay…”

  “I sent a photo of the stones over to a marine geologist I know at the state university lab in Stony Brook. He said they don’t appear to be rocks from the bottom of the inlet as Detective Braverman theorized.”

  “And?”

  Rakesh picked up a specimen jar and shook it at her. A half dozen gray and white pebbles rattled inside.

  “Look.” He handed it to her. “These are too odd-shaped and irregular. In fact, my friend says they reminded him of the little aggregate stones he has in his driveway on Long Island.”

  “That’s weird.” Lourdes held the jar to the light, studying the rocks at a different angle. “Right?”

  “People have driveways in Queens as well.” Rakesh shrugged. “So I’m not jumping to any conclusions. But the whole business feels hinky.”

  “How hinky?”

  “Look, given the circumstances, the first thing you think of is gang murder,” he said. “The old-timers who used to work here talked about wise guys with canaries down their throats.”

  “Sure.”

  “But this is a new one. I called around to a bunch of other ME’s offices and nobody had heard of anything like this either. And we’re talking about people who’ve seen heads severed, eyes gouged out, tongues removed…”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Lourdes wasn’t exactly squeamish, but she was in no mood to indulge these days. “Got it,” she said. “Somebody’s trying to send an old message in a new way. Same thing in the end, though. Don’t snitch.”

  “Then why bother to sink her to the deepest part of a channel with the other weight?” Rakesh asked. “Know what I’m saying?”

  The question stopped her cold. Right. Why send a message that no one else would ever see? There’d been something out of whack about this from the moment her shoe had touched sand in Rockaway.

  “Damn,” she said. “What’s up with that?”

  “The criminal mind is not my area of expertise.” He tapped the side of his head. “It’s yours. But there is one other unusual thing I wanted to point out.”

  “Don’t stop now, my brotha. You’re on a roll.”

  He nodded at two junior pathologists passing through the room and gingerly lifted a corner of the sheet over the Rockaway remains, exposing just the hands and belly. “See anything out of the ordinary?”

  Lourdes shrugged, thinking there would be something seriously wrong with someone who didn’t find all of this abnormal. “Yeah, Rakesh. We already established she could have been pregnant.”

  “Not that—this.” He used a scalpel to point at the left wrist. “It’s subtle but I don’t think I’m making it up. The left wrist is just very slightly smaller than the right one. I took an X-ray and confirmed that the bones are closer together.”

  “Which proves what?”

  “Malformation. Like she might have been wearing a restraining device of some kind for an extended period when the bones were still relatively soft.”

  “Or it could just be how she was born,” Lourdes said. “Now you’re the one reaching, Rakesh.”

  “No, I’m going the extra mile for you. Again.” He regarded her frankly. “Because of the situation with your sister. And because I like you.”

  “Got it.” She averted her eyes, at a loss for words for once.

  Rakesh covered the hands with the sheet. “I should also mention that she had a hairline skull fracture that was partially healed, which indicates it was not a cause of death. A cracked right fibula that could be pre- or postmortem. And various other injuries that we’re having a harder time assessing because so much of her is missing. It’ll all be in my final report. Suffice to say she was young, but she’d already had a very hard life.”

  “Younger than thirty-two?” Lourdes swallowed.

  “Again, I can’t be definitive, but I’m thinking yes.” Rakesh nodded. “Don’t quote me on it, though.”

  She felt a buzz at her side, like her cell was ringing. Maybe the call that would put all her questions to rest. She swallowed again and felt around for the phone, pulled it out, pushed the button, and looked at the screen saver of her and her sister. The one she’d put on only after her sister went missing. But it was just another phantom vibration. Residual electricity from a lost connection. Registering by her left hip, in the place where Izzy usually poked her. From the time they shared a bed in the cramped old apartment at the Whitman Projects. Holding each other when the grown-ups were screaming in the next room. Or the police were breaking down the door. Lourdes holding her baby sister and saying, “Don’t worry, muchacha, I’ll protect you.” When Lourdes was really scared enough to soak the sheets herself. “Look out for Izzy,” Mami said. “Promise me you’ll always do that. She’s not strong like you.” But Ysabel was such a fucking pest. And loco from before she was even a teenager and got her diagnosis. And then never taking her meds as often as she should have. Mi hermana. The wiggly little finger in the ribs. The little brown eyes following my every move. Going down with Lourdes to the Off Track Betting parlor on Myrtle Avenue to put five dollars on Lucky Day in the fourth race at Aqueduct for Mami. The two fat feet trying to wedge into my narrowest stilettos. The wrecker of my sand castles. Using Lourdes’s photo in her Match.com and Tinder profiles. My family stalker. Where did you go?

  Mami, during Lourdes’s last visit to the assisted-living facility where her mother was gradually disappearing with early-onset Alzheimer’s, had suddenly glared at Lourdes, like she was seeing her through the fog of the intervening years, and demanded, “Why did you leave your sister behind in the park? Didn’t I tell you to look out for her?”

  “Hey, Rakesh,” Lourdes said. “Can you do me one more solid? And maybe don’t mention this to IAB if they come around again?”

  “Haven’t I put out for you enough yet?” He tried to tease her with a smile.

  “I want to give you a sample of my DNA.”

  “What for?”

  “I should have done it already, but I couldn’t make myself. Just in case we need to make an ID. For my sister.”

  “You sure you want that?”

  It was only now, she realized, that she was coming to grips with the possibility that she would never see Izzy again. That she’d never feel that nudge in her side, that finger in her ribs again. Or worse. That the way she couldn’t stop swallowing sometimes when she thought about her sister would become a permanent condition.

  “Just give me one less distraction.” She nodded toward a jar of cotton swabs. “And I’d rather know than not know. So can we just do this?”

  4

  APRIL

  1977

  Billy the Kid was leaning against a brown Ford Pinto as Kenny Makris pulled into the Homicide Division’s parking lot in Hauppauge, “New Kid in Town” blasting from Rattigan’s car radio. Still wearing tinted aviators under a gray sky where the presence of the sun was only vaguely implied behind the heavy cloud cover.

  “Today I’m gonna give you a name,” the detective said.

  “Meaning you have someone in custody?”

  “Yes, but that’s not all I meant. I’m saying today I’m gonna help you make a name for yourself. In colored lights. The question is, are you ready to take it?”

  Kenny wiped a spot off his Datsun’s hood and pulled up the knot of his tie. “We’ve got a dead fifteen-year-old girl and a grieving mother. I’m here to do what needs doing. Just like you are.”

  Rattigan killed the radio and clapped him on the shoulder, almost knocking Kenny off-balance. “Atta boy.”

  While police headquarters had moved to Yaphank a few years ago, Homicide remained in its relatively anonymous squat building near Veterans Highway, nearly eighteen miles away, as if the department was trying to maintain some distance for plausible deniability. The building itself had no more character than thousands of other office structures on Long Island. Places so dull in appearance that no one would normally think to ask what went on in
them.

  Kenny followed Rattigan through a pair of slightly scuffed glass doors and into a brightly lit lobby with off-yellow walls, and without any obvious law enforcement symbols. A middle-aged woman in a floral-patterned blouse and dark slacks was in a receptionist’s office to the left, smoking a cigarette and fielding phone calls.

  “Dolly, buzz us through, will ya?” Rattigan called out. “I’ll love you forever if you do.”

  She pressed a button without a glance his way. Rattigan walked across the hall and pulled open a black metal door that Kenny might have otherwise taken for a janitor’s closet.

  “Her husband was that highway patrol officer who got killed on Jericho Turnpike last year,” the detective muttered, holding the door open. “They shot him while he was getting a plate number to write a fucking speeding ticket. The book was still in his hand when we found him. These are the times we’re living in.”

  There was a rote quality to how he said the words, Kenny thought. Like he was reaffirming the oath they’d made earlier before allowing Kenny deeper into the inner sanctum.

  “A couple things.” Rattigan paused after leading him down a darkened stairway to the basement and out into a hallway with cinder block walls. “You asked if we had a suspect in custody before. And the answer is we do.”

  “Excellent—”

  “He’s in here.”

  Rattigan nodded to a door on the left with a rectangular window beside it. Kenny came over to look through it. Seated at a table inside was a young black man, well-built, with broad shoulders pulled back unnaturally like he was rear cuffed, a bushy Afro, an unusually long neck, and what appeared to Kenny’s relatively inexperienced eye to be a light reddish bruise on a dark brown cheek. One of the heavyset detectives Kenny had seen at the crime scene was behind the man, arms folded in impatience, and in the corner an old green Peerless boiler was visible, with rusting pipes leading up to the ceiling, shaking and emitting occasional little puffs of steam.