Entombed by Linda Fairstein

Teddy
swings. I didn't ask him how they met. They were supposed to hook up
tonight, around midnight, at a bar on York Avenue."
    "Midnight? Why so
late?" I asked.
    "Emily had to do a
piece on a performance artist who was appearing at the Beacon Theater.
Some musical geek who plays Burt Bacharach songs in the style of
Beethoven, reciting the lyrics in German. Wasn't due to break until
almost eleven. She planned to come home to drop off her notes and
change clothes since she had to pass right by the apartment on her way
to York Avenue. Then she was joining Teddy for cocktails."
    Mercer picked up the
thread. "So you figure she got popped on the stoop?"
    "Probably. Can't find
any witnesses yet, but that's how the others got it, isn't it? Her
handbag's in that front room with the keys inside it."
    "How'd you find her?"
    They started back to
the bedroom. The articles she'd been working on could not have produced
much income. A search for the best homemade ice creams in Brooklyn, the
controversy over whether owls should be sold as domesticated pets, and
the effect of winter weather on the projected population of deer ticks
in the Hamptons for the coming summer. I replaced the folders and
joined up with the guys.
    "Facedown on the bed.
Naked."
    "Completely?" Mercer
asked.
    "Yeah. Her clothes
were in a pile next to the bed."
    "Did she undress or
were they cut off?"
    "See for yourself,"
Mike said. He pointed to a row of brown paper bags, each tagged and
labeled. "I looked everything over- didn't notice any holes. The lab
can work 'em up for blood and semen."
    Mercer crouched next
to the bags and started to open each one, removing the single piece of
clothing inside and holding it up for a look.
    "Her arms were tied
together behind her back. Ankles were bound, too. Stabbed five times in
the back. Carving knife, about fourteen inches long, with the blade.
Still in her when Teddy stumbled in."
    "Her own knife?"
Mercer asked. We didn't think our perp carried anything that big when
he prowled the streets.
    "Matches a set in the
kitchen. Maybe he took a look at her and figured a pocketknife wouldn't
get the job done," Mike said, glancing back at Mercer. "Those last
bags? That's the panty hose. They're bloody, man. Maybe he cut himself
in the process and we've got his fluid on them as well as hers."
    I watched as Mercer
opened the last two paper bags and removed the items one by one. Dried
blood had formed clumps on the pale taupe surface of the hosiery,
caught in the fine mesh webbing. The empty outline of a foot dangled
from his hand, part of the knot that had restrained Emily for the kill.
    "Something else
bothering you, Mercer?" Mike asked. He knew his old partner well enough
to recognize the puzzled expression on his face.
    Mercer passed me one
of the bags. "Little things."
    "Like what?"
    "Our man never hit
before midnight. Never stabbed anybody in the back before-"
    "Shit, he never
stabbed anybody at all till that Swedish kid fought him last week.
Maybe he liked doing it. Maybe thinking he'd killed a girl satisfied
him even more."
    "Always had his own
knife-the small folding kind," Mercer said, ticking off a punch list of
distinctions from the four-year-old case details he knew so well. "Her
keys shouldn't be inside her pocketbook, like she had time to replace
them and close it up. They'd be on the floor or a tabletop. The jacket
would be in here, with the pile of clothes."
    "Three, four years is
a long time in a pervert's life. Maybe his style changed, maybe his
whole approach."
    "It's not just the
little things," I said, twisting the piece of bloodstained evidence and
holding it up by the toe. "This isn't panty hose."
    "Then what the hell
have I been fumbling with all these years, trying to get inside the
damn stuff? Could have fooled me," Mike said.
    "Maybe you should try
it with the lights on and your eyes open once in a while," I said. "You
might enjoy it."
    "What have you got?"
    "Something bigger to
add to Mercer's instincts.