you,” she said.
“Yup. Your desk is right there.”
He pointed to the empty desk closest to his office. There was a headset and a cell phone on it and a briefcase sitting beside it.
“Bring your own lamp and chair. Phil took hers with her. The briefcase has all your goodies in it. The .38 is registered to you but I hope you never have to take it out. The headset is on intercom so you just press the button when you have a question or something to say.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “you all know Kate Winters. She was crazy enough to accept our invitation to become the new ADA. Get sociable later. Hue, it’s yours.”
Winters was immediately entranced by the briefing itself and a format that was as swift and detailed as Cody’s introduction to the TAZ.
Hue started by zooming into the brownstone scene pointing out that there was a ten-foot alley between it and the apartment west of it. A narrow fire escape led from the kitchen door of Handley’s apartment to the ground with a short landing at the back door of the vacant apartment.
The big screen dissolved to a couple of shots of the labeled footprints on the carpeting, and Cody’s analysis that someone else had entered the apartment between the time Wilma had straightened it up in the afternoon and Handley’s entrance later that night. He held up the baggie containing the mask.
“This was also in his briefcase,” Cody said, “We’ll get to it later.” He nodded to Hue.
Finally: The shot of Handley’s naked corpse, handcuffed to the chair, his mouth agape with the handball stuffed in it, eyes half-opened and terrified, the deadly gash in his throat. No blood.
Somebody in the room muttered, “Holy Christ!” Otherwise there was no response.
Cody paused at that point leaving the photo on the board. “I’m sure Wolf will have an interesting explanation of that enigma,” he said.
Then he promptly did a flashback: a shot copied from a photograph of Handley in the bedroom showing a handsome man in suit and tie smiling into the camera.
“This is our victim in better days,” he said. “You will each get a copy of the shot in your package.”
Bergman followed with background on Handley: thirty-five years old, parents both deceased; father killed in a skiing accident when Handley was a tike; raised with his sister as a ward of the State; scored a full scholarship to Princeton where he was a whiz kid; a Phi Beta Kappa hired the day he graduated by Marx, Stembler and Trexler; his steady rise to vice president of the brokerage firm and his pending marriage to Victor Stembler’s daughter, Linda.
Bergman held up the black book, which he pointed out, was a literal biography of the dead man.
“So much for the skin and bones,” Cody said. “Now let’s get to the heart of the matter.”
He described Amelie Cluett, the fact that she was in bed a scant twenty yards across the hall from where someone was butchering Handley, and played parts of his interview with her, including her sudden and voluntary autobiographical outburst, which earned a few chuckles from the crew.
Cluett: “Well, he also…uh…maybe I shouldn’t be telling some of this. You know, it’s very personal.”
Cody: “Raymond’s dead, Amelie. You can’t hurt his feelings.”
Cluett: “No, but there are others. Like his fiancée, Linda. She’s really sweet. I bumped into them in the hall once or twice. He’d talk about her.”
Cody: “Intimate things?”
Cluett: “Yes.”
Cody: “Such as?”
Cluett: “She wasn’t very…sexually oriented, I guess you could put it. She wasn’t into sex. Raymond was very much into sex. Raymond was a power player. Power players are always sexual people. Men and women. It’s an attitude. You can tell. I remember once he said, ‘Jesus, you’re a twice a week girl and I’m a twice a day guy.’ But he wasn’t talking to me. It was like he was having a dialogue with her. Then there were the weekends when they weren’t together and he’d talk
“Yup. Your desk is right there.”
He pointed to the empty desk closest to his office. There was a headset and a cell phone on it and a briefcase sitting beside it.
“Bring your own lamp and chair. Phil took hers with her. The briefcase has all your goodies in it. The .38 is registered to you but I hope you never have to take it out. The headset is on intercom so you just press the button when you have a question or something to say.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “you all know Kate Winters. She was crazy enough to accept our invitation to become the new ADA. Get sociable later. Hue, it’s yours.”
Winters was immediately entranced by the briefing itself and a format that was as swift and detailed as Cody’s introduction to the TAZ.
Hue started by zooming into the brownstone scene pointing out that there was a ten-foot alley between it and the apartment west of it. A narrow fire escape led from the kitchen door of Handley’s apartment to the ground with a short landing at the back door of the vacant apartment.
The big screen dissolved to a couple of shots of the labeled footprints on the carpeting, and Cody’s analysis that someone else had entered the apartment between the time Wilma had straightened it up in the afternoon and Handley’s entrance later that night. He held up the baggie containing the mask.
“This was also in his briefcase,” Cody said, “We’ll get to it later.” He nodded to Hue.
Finally: The shot of Handley’s naked corpse, handcuffed to the chair, his mouth agape with the handball stuffed in it, eyes half-opened and terrified, the deadly gash in his throat. No blood.
Somebody in the room muttered, “Holy Christ!” Otherwise there was no response.
Cody paused at that point leaving the photo on the board. “I’m sure Wolf will have an interesting explanation of that enigma,” he said.
Then he promptly did a flashback: a shot copied from a photograph of Handley in the bedroom showing a handsome man in suit and tie smiling into the camera.
“This is our victim in better days,” he said. “You will each get a copy of the shot in your package.”
Bergman followed with background on Handley: thirty-five years old, parents both deceased; father killed in a skiing accident when Handley was a tike; raised with his sister as a ward of the State; scored a full scholarship to Princeton where he was a whiz kid; a Phi Beta Kappa hired the day he graduated by Marx, Stembler and Trexler; his steady rise to vice president of the brokerage firm and his pending marriage to Victor Stembler’s daughter, Linda.
Bergman held up the black book, which he pointed out, was a literal biography of the dead man.
“So much for the skin and bones,” Cody said. “Now let’s get to the heart of the matter.”
He described Amelie Cluett, the fact that she was in bed a scant twenty yards across the hall from where someone was butchering Handley, and played parts of his interview with her, including her sudden and voluntary autobiographical outburst, which earned a few chuckles from the crew.
Cluett: “Well, he also…uh…maybe I shouldn’t be telling some of this. You know, it’s very personal.”
Cody: “Raymond’s dead, Amelie. You can’t hurt his feelings.”
Cluett: “No, but there are others. Like his fiancée, Linda. She’s really sweet. I bumped into them in the hall once or twice. He’d talk about her.”
Cody: “Intimate things?”
Cluett: “Yes.”
Cody: “Such as?”
Cluett: “She wasn’t very…sexually oriented, I guess you could put it. She wasn’t into sex. Raymond was very much into sex. Raymond was a power player. Power players are always sexual people. Men and women. It’s an attitude. You can tell. I remember once he said, ‘Jesus, you’re a twice a week girl and I’m a twice a day guy.’ But he wasn’t talking to me. It was like he was having a dialogue with her. Then there were the weekends when they weren’t together and he’d talk
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