Page 6 of Stay Awake
Halliday turned to the cleaner. “Is the dead man the owner?”
“I never seen owner before. He always at work when I clean. Doorman give me key. I give key back after I finish,” Olga explained in halting English.
Next to her was a cleaning trolley. Olga told them that she worked for a company that provided maid service for short-term apartment rentals.
“Olga, did you take anything out of the apartment? Towels, bedding, garbage, anything at all?” Halliday asked.
“I throw out one bag from kitchen.” She pointed at a garbage chute near the elevator.
The police officer who’d been questioning her groaned softly. He knew what that meant. He’d have to take Olga down to the garbage room to identify the trash bag she tossed down the chute.
Halliday took crime scene gloves out of her runner’s pack and put them on, along with shoe covers. Another cop stood guard outside the apartment’s front door, which was crisscrossed with crime scene tape.
“Any other detectives arrive yet?” Halliday asked, taking a clipboard and signing in.
“You’re the first,” he answered.
Halliday held out her phone to film her movements as she ducked under the crime scene tape and entered the apartment. It stunk of ammonia. The faux marble tiles by the entrance were damp from fresh mopping. Streaks of cleaning fluid were drying on the mirrored living room walls.
“Looks like Olga cleaned the place before she found the body,” she called out to the cop by the doorway.
“She cleaned the living room and kitchen before she went into the bedroom. That’s where she found the stiff. In bed with a hole in his chest. Push open the bedroom door and you’ll see him.”
The apartment was the size of a hotel room and just as impersonal. It had a compact kitchen and living area. There was a gray leather L-shaped sofa and a round coffee table with a freshly vacuumed shag rug underneath. On the wall was a large-screen television. The kitchen counter had two metal barstools for meals. The apartment was too small for a dinner table.
Halliday filmed the living room and kitchen area before opening the stainless steel fridge. Inside were shelves of deli containers of salads and cut-up fruit from Whole Foods, an assortment of yogurts and a half-drunk bottle of orange juice.
Next to the sink were two tall drinking glasses that had been cleaned and left to dry. More evidence washed away. “Damn. We really can’t get a break,” Halliday muttered.
She popped a piece of mint gum into her mouth and cracked it as she pushed open the bedroom door, holding out her phone to record her entry into the room where the murder had taken place. Halliday felt a rush of cold air from a rotating ceiling fan as she stepped inside.
She didn’t turn off the fan. Nor did she turn on the bedroom light.Nothing could be tampered with until the forensic team officially photographed everything exactly the way it was found.
The bedroom was semidark. The lights were off and the window shades were pulled down. Halliday could see enough to determine the victim was male, likely in his thirties.
The wildly rotating ceiling fan tousled his hair as it spun, making it look as if he was still alive. Halliday squatted down to get a closer look at him. The indents in his square-jawed cheeks suggested he had dimples when he smiled. He looked like a man who smiled a lot. His jaw was square. His nose was aquiline. His lips were decidedly blue.
He was naked except for black boxer shorts. His clothes were in a pile on the carpet. An ugly gash under his rib cage suggested the murder weapon was a sharp object of some sort, probably a knife. Halliday hadn’t seen a knife lying around during her cursory inspection of the scene. She wondered if the killer had taken it.
She guessed the victim died instantly. It explained the lack of any notable blood splatter at the scene. It did not explain the serene set of his mouth. Nobody looked that relaxed while being stabbed to death.
She saw nothing lying around to help identify the victim. There was no wallet on the bedside table. No cell phone. The bedside drawers were all empty.
“How did you get here so quickly? Traffic’s backed up for miles this morning.”
Halliday spun around to see Dr. Franklin, the medical examiner, entering the bedroom.
“I was on my morning run to work when the call came in,” Halliday said. She knew Franklin from her time in forensics.
“You’re still running?” he asked.
“Six miles a day. Five times a week. What about you?”
“Gave it up after my knee surgery.”
Dr. Franklin’s narrow face was pursed in concentration as he checked the room temperature from three different locations. He was close to retirement and had given up any pretense of adhering to dress code conventions. These days he tended to wear polo shirts and chinos rather than suits and ties. It gave the impression he’d abandoned a golf game to come to the murder scene.
“I assume the ceiling fan was on when the victim was found?” he asked. “It might affect my calculations on the time of death.”
