Skin Deep (5 page)

“It still doesn't feel right,” Neil said. “Got a sex scene without sex.”

“You're still thinking accident?” Steve asked.

“Because I'm having trouble with someone she knows showing up for sex, strangling her instead, then setting up an asphyxia scene. It's too much of a stretch. Plus there's no physical evidence another person was there.”

They were back in the squad car with Neil driving back to headquarters at One Schroeder Plaza at the corner of Ruggles and Tremont near the Northeastern University campus.

“The champagne and lights are circumstantial. Same with the ligature trauma. She could have twisted. Nylons stretch. Plus I don't see any motive.”

“That's what we have to work on.”

The traffic was light at this time of the day. The plan was that Neil was going to make calls to the victim's credit card and telephone companies plus follow-ups on neighbors of the deceased while Steve would question Farina's colleagues at the Kingsbury Club on the North Shore.

“You seem pretty convinced.”

Steve could hear an edge of accusation. “Because Ottoman made a convincing scenario.”

“Hell, you were convinced from the get-go.”

Steve didn't know what Neil was getting at. “Only after I looked things over.” They didn't say anything for a while as Steve could sense Neil turning something over in his head. The rim of his ear was red and he chewed away on his stirrer.

“I don't know,” Neil finally said. “You seem to have all the answers is all.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know what I'm saying. You walk in an hour late, and one-two-three you put together a whole fucking homicide theory, and now you got the M.E. and D.A. in agreement.”

“I'm not sure what's bothering you.”

“I don't know either.” Neil rubbed his face. “Maybe I'm feeling a little put out is all. Mangini, C.S.S.—I thought we'd pretty well figured it out. Then you bring up the ligature inconsistencies.”

Steve felt his throat begin to tighten. “Yeah?”

“I don't know. Mangini should have picked up on that. Me, too…and the lights thing. It's just that I'm feeling like the south end of a mule.”

“I get it. You're feeling bad only because you're an inferior criminal investigator.”

Neil made a humphing chuckle. “Yeah, something like that.”

“Look, how many hangings have you had?”

“Not many.”

“Course not. You're up in Gloucester where they throw themselves in the water. Besides Boston's got more rope and stockings.”

Neil smiled and nodded. “Yeah.”

“Hey, man, we're partners. We're working this together, okay? There's no one-upsmanship bullshit.”

Neil nodded. “Maybe you called it.”

“And maybe not. We've got lab stuff still to come. We've got an investigation to mount.”

“Yeah.”

Steve felt himself relax a little in whatever reconciliation had been established. But he wasn't sure if Neil was sitting on something else.

“You seem to have all the answers is all.”

They had been partners for less than six months, so Steve was still getting to knowing Neil, who had been rehired from Gloucester on the North Shore. He had said that low pay, boring assignments, and minimal overtime made him leave. So he took the civil service tests, scored high, got hired, did time on the streets, and was eventually promoted to homicide. But the real reason for the move was his wife's death three years ago.

Neil wanted to be out of Gloucester and all reminders of his loss. Also, he wanted a fresh start for his sixteen-year-old daughter, Lily, who had behavioral problems. So part of Neil's emotional makeup was family baggage. That and a fierce competitiveness which sometimes surfaced as pit bull finesse.

Neil pulled the stirrer out of his mouth and tossed it out the window. Unconsciously, he began to finger the crucifix chain around his neck. It was another one of his tics. For several minutes, neither of them said anything as they proceeded toward headquarters, Neil looking as if he had put behind them any resentment that Ottoman had corroborated Steve's murder theory. But Steve was not convinced. Neil was a quiet brooder.

“I don't care how good a pathologist he is,” he finally said. “He gives me the fucking creeps is all. I mean, how many guys say, ‘Let's talk strangulation,' and grin like that?”

“You'd be creepy too if you spent your days cutting up cadavers.”

“Yeah, but I think he gets off on it. I mean, when he was a little kid instead of a fireman or baseball player, did he say he wanted to be a coroner?”

Steve laughed. “He probably made that decision in medical school.”

“That's what I'm saying. He's got a whole list of medical options—psychiatry, neurology, cardiology, gynecology, pediatrics, whatever. So, what kind of person decides he's going to make cadavers his specialty?”

“I don't think he sees dead people the way most people do. They're more like scientific problems to be solved. And what about us opting for homicide?”

Neil shrugged. “Maybe we're a little weird, too. Not like we've got lots of cool options—traffic, public safety, cyber crime, domestic violence, harbor patrol. Administration. I think I'd die an early death if I had a desk job.”

“Yeah, me, too.” Only on movie or TV screens was homicide cool—cops rolling into crime scenes in shiny black Hummers, wearing Armani suits, spouting hot-shit platitudes, finding conclusive DNA evidence, getting the bad guy IDed the next day. The real thing is not like that. Nor is the crime sanitized. In Steve's experience it was a daily confrontation with human depravity: bodies found in a basement, their brains exploded for a fistful of dollars; young kids dead in a playground over sneakers; a wife and child bludgeoned in a moment of madness because of mounting bills; a pregnant woman murdered, her fetus cut out of her. Or shooting dead some kid zonked out on OxyContin and coming at you with a gun. All in a day's work.

But one never quite gets used to it. You cope for a while, maybe seek counseling for the stress and horror. But eventually it comes back up like a clogged toilet. That's when you go for the unhealthy solutions—cigarettes, booze, drugs—whatever it takes to anesthetize your emotions to the constantly unfolding human tragedies. Sometimes they work. Sometimes they fail and you find yourself gripped by nightmares and crying jags, overcome by fear, depression, and cynicism.

The occasional blackout.

And then you have to go home to loved ones expecting emotional comfort, intimacy, and normal family life. At least medical forensics is science.

“What about you?” Neil asked. “Why'd you want to become a cop?”

“I just wanted to get out of the house.”

“That bad?”

Steve nodded. “My parents had a rotten marriage, fighting all the time. By the time I went to college, they were dead and I didn't know what I wanted to do. I thought maybe I'd be an actor. Then it was an English teacher. Then in my junior year I changed to criminal justice. I think it was all those cop shows. They made it look easy. Maybe I should have been a TV cop.”

“Yeah. But I can't see you as an English teacher.”

“Me neither. The funny thing is when I was a kid I never felt comfortable around cops. They'd look at me twice and I'd feel like I'd done something wrong.”

“Sounds to me like you were paranoid.”

“Yeah. I always felt guilty around them. Pretty weird, huh?”

“So, why'd you want to become one?”

“I guess to get bigger than the things that scared me.”

Neil looked at him with a half smirk. “You there yet?”

“I don't know. I think the job's made it worse.”

They arrived at the stoplight at Massachusetts and Columbus Avenues. “Check out this girl.”

Waiting at the light were two young women, one wearing a Northeastern University baseball cap and unremarkable student attire. The other was curvy and dressed in low-slung jeans and a short tight top, leaving most of her midriff exposed. She held a cell phone to her ear and leaned back slightly to hear better, stretching her exposure. “Cute,” Steve said.

“Cute? Her jeans are practically down to her bush.”

“Funny thing is you see a woman's stomach on the beach all the time and you give it little thought. But cover the rest of her and put her on the street, and it's provocative.”

“Provocative? It's goddamn slutty. And that's the standard-issue mall-girl look. I took Lily to the Cambridge Galleria last weekend, and I swear half the girls are dressed like that—got the belly-baring tops and low-slung spray-on jeans. Their navels got beads and rings and tribal tattoos. And the latest is short shorts with fishnets. I mean, they look like porn stars.”

Since his wife's death, Neil had been raising Lily on his own. She was a sullen kid who, like her father, suffered from migraines and who had some emotional issues that Neil said they were dealing with. Steve counted the seconds for the light to change.

“You see the same thing in church,” Neil continued. “No modesty. When I was a kid, you showed up in jeans or shorts, they wouldn't let you in the door.”

“Probably stone you.”

“I'm serious, man. Women wore dresses.”

“Times have changed.”

“Yeah, for the worse. I look at a girl like that and wonder what she was thinking when she looked in the mirror.”

“Probably, ‘This is how I feel like expressing myself.'”

“Yeah, ‘I'm hot. Fuck me.'”

“I was thinking more like, ‘I'm cute. Desire me.'”

“Maybe it's because you don't have a daughter.”

“Maybe. But I still don't think girls consider if boys will be turned-on or not. I think they dress because of what they see on other girls or TV. It's personal theater.”

“Okay, ‘I'm a ho in a hip-hop video.'”

“I didn't say it was intelligent theater.”

Behind Neil's protest was more than a conservative Catholic upbringing. Before joining homicide, he had worked in anticrime initiatives that targeted prostitution in the theater district and nearby Bay Village and Chinatown. Hundreds of arrests of hookers and would-be customers, many drug-related, had been made, but Neil hated the assignment. He couldn't wait to transfer out. After roughing up a few suspects, he was transferred to homicide.

“The thing is it scares me.”

“What does?”

“All the shit out there—in the media, movies, online—and what it's doing to Lily. Over the last year she's developed a woman's breasts. I don't know, maybe I'm supposed to be happy for her: ‘Hey, my kid's really stacked.' Maybe she's taking birth control pills, because that's what sometimes happens—they get overdeveloped. I think she's getting them from friends because I know it's not her pediatrician.”

“You're worried about her being sexually active.”

“Yeah, but it's not just that. She's aware how she looks, and she's beginning to flaunt herself. Her clothes are too revealing and I have to talk to her. But sometimes she slips out of the house looking like that chick. Or worse. Also guys are calling her all the time. And some of them are older—in their twenties. It scares me where it can lead.”

They were silent some more as Steve could sense Neil struggling with something.

Then he said, “I think she's sending stuff over the Internet to guys.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“Photos of herself.”

“You know that for a fact?”

“Yeah,” Neil said, and did not elaborate. “It's how she hooks up. It's what kids are doing today—making their own kiddie porn.”

“I once got in trouble for sending a love note to a girl in my class. For a month I got razzed. Not to mention how dear ole mom reacted.”

“Well, the sexual market's gotten younger and meaner, and if you ask me it's the Lindsay Lohans and Paris Hiltons who're to blame, teaching kids that all that counts is how hot you are. It scares the shit out of me.”

The light changed, and the college women began to cross the street as Neil trailed them with his gaze. As he pulled away, the woman with the auburn hair turned and looked back in their direction, as her friend pointed out some building. And in that microsecond Steve almost caught whatever recollection was trying to land, skittering just beyond the veil.

Something that set his chest pounding all the way back to headquarters.

“Look, there are dozens of good plastic docs in this town, but Carl says he's the best: ‘Cosmetic surgeon of the rich and the wrinkled.'”

Dana had met Lanie at a bistro on Newbury Street, Boston's Rodeo Drive. The curb was lined with Porsches, Mercedes, and BMWs and behind them were designer clothiers, designer hair salons, designer florists, designer galleries, and designer people sporting big shiny shopping bags with names like Armani, Chanel, DKNY, and Rodier of Paris. Because it was a warm spring day, they sat outside at faux Parisian marble café tables under red Cinzano umbrellas.

Lanie Walker, an administrator at GEM Pharmaceuticals, was ten years older than Dana and married to a pediatrician. Because the tables were packed closely to each other, she lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Aaron Monks. You can't do better than him.”

“I think I've heard of him.”

“Of course you've heard of him. He's on all the morning talk shows.
Boston Magazine
listed him in the top twenty-five most eligible bachelors in town. In fact, today's
Globe
has a story about his getting an award Saturday night at the Westin Hotel for inventing some transplant procedures.”

“I'm just thinking of a lid lift, maybe a nose job if I can afford it.”

“Then start at the top. I think he's done everybody who's anybody in Boston, not to mention a lot of movie people who don't want to be outed by the Hollywood paparazzi.”

“Yeah, and I'll probably be sixty-five before I can get an appointment.”

“Use my name.”

The waitress came to take their orders, and they each asked for a glass of Chardonnay. Dana ordered a Caesar salad topped with grilled shrimp, and Lanie ordered a grilled fillet of arctic char. “Isn't that an endangered species?” Dana asked.

“Probably, because this is Newbury Street not Harvard Square.”

They were surrounded by young suburbanites in town for lunch and people-gazing, young professionals off from work, and chain-smoking Euro college kids, most dressed in tight black. “Ever notice that the older you get the more you're aware of all the twenty-somethings inhabiting the world?”

“Yeah, and I hate them.” The waitress returned with their drinks. “To makeovers,” Lanie said, raising her glass.

“But I haven't decided anything.”

“You will.”

Dana took a sip of wine then removed her sunglasses and surreptitiously pulled up her eyelids. “What do you think?”

Lanie lowered her own sunglasses. “You just took ten years off your face. Go for it.”

“And the nose?”

Lanie whispered, “You want the God's honest truth?”

“Maybe not.”

“Well, that's all I see. You've got a beautiful face and this distraction in the middle of it. Sorry, but it doesn't belong on your face. Period. Get rid of it and you'll be drop-dead gorgeous.”

Lanie's brutal honesty was part of her carpe diem charm. Unlike Dana, she was not conflicted over cosmetic augmentation. Over the last eight years she had had a brow lift, upper and lower lid lifts, and a lower face-lift that tightened her jawline. She also had regular Botox treatments and microabrasion therapy, giving her skin a fresh suppleness.

“I'm thinking of getting lipo on my belly.”

Lipo, not liposuction.
Already the procedures had nickname familiarity. “You think you really need it?”

Lanie dropped her hands below table level and grabbed a handful of flesh. “At least two inches.”

Dana's head filled with TV images of masked doctors ramming large suction tubes into women's bellies. It looked so violent. “Didn't you just get an elliptical machine?”

“That was Carl's idea. I hate the thing. In five minutes I'm exhausted.”

“What about your treadmill?”

“Terminal boredom. Look, I'm not like you. I hate jogging, I hate working out. I admit I'm weak, going for the quick fix and all. But, screw it.” Then she leaned forward again. “I bet you half the women at this place—and maybe some men—have had cosmetic work, including the Euro and Latin club kids. In fact, where they come from they start in their teens—nose jobs, boob jobs, butt jobs, tummy tucks, lipo, you name it. It's like going to the hair salon for them.”

“That's insane.”

“I agree, but it's happening. Look, for four thousand bucks you get a simple lid lift. Another six or seven you get the nose you've always wanted. If you have the money, it's a no-brainer, because you'll be happy. Even if you don't have it. Get a loan. You owe it to yourself. And do it now while you're still young, while your skin is still elastic.”

“Young enough for preventive surgery but too old to get a job. There is a God, and She doesn't own a mirror.”

“It's not just the job thing. I think you have a moral obligation to yourself.”

“You're making aging sound like a sin.”

“Well, if you can do something about it and don't, it
is
a sin. The point is you want to be as youthfully attractive as possible, right? Right! You don't like your nose, right? Right! So you owe it to yourself…and others.”

“What others?”

“Look, I don't have a crystal ball, but if things don't work out with Steve, you'll be entering a new phase of your life.” She leaned close again. “Look at these gorgeous hunks.” She put her knuckles in her mouth and moaned. “Check out the kid in black to your left.”

Casually Dana looked left to a table of three young men and a woman. The male in a loose black shirt opened at the neck had thick shiny black hair pushed back and a tanned Adonis face. Perhaps he saw Dana out of the corner of his eye because he smiled. Dana smiled back, having difficulty thinking that she had a moral obligation to get a lid lift for him.

“Look what's out there for you.”

“Yeah, me and Demi Moore.”

“You know what I'm saying. You'd be jump-starting your life with a
new you
and all sorts of possibilities.”

“We're only separated, not divorced.”

The waitress came with their lunch.

Through the window Dana saw a print of a painting she recognized as Renoir's
Nude on a Couch.
“Some things never change,” she said, and she nodded to the painting.

Lanie squinted. “What never changes?”

“Women never stop posing and men never stop re-creating them.”

“I guess.”

“Instead of a couch, today it's an operating table. Instead of a paintbrush, he uses a scalpel. Meanwhile, the woman is nothing more than material to be refashioned.”

“Aren't we getting a little deep?”

“Nothing deep about it. It's the same old, same old sexist pressure on women to look good.”

“And it's not going to change, sweetie. We live in a culture that reveres youth. You're not old, but you don't look young enough for the job. And that's what you want. So get real, kiddo, and do something about it.”

Dana nodded. “I wonder if anybody knows her name?”

“Who?”

“The model in that painting. She's just another nude woman on a couch, but the artist is world-famous. And today they're plastic surgeons on TV.”

“I see your point, I think.”

After a few minutes, Lanie said, “I saw Steve's name in the paper—the murder of some health club instructor. You see the photo of her? She was a knockout. They have any suspects yet?”

“I'm not sure. He doesn't talk about his cases.”

Lanie took a sip of wine. “So what's happening with you two?”

“I don't know. I just want to be on my own for a while. It's a trial separation.”

“There's no such thing. And you're only fooling yourselves if you think so. I've known two dozen people who had trial separations, and each one ended in divorce.”

“We'll see. But I need time to reassess things.”

“Do you love him?”

“That's not the issue.”

“It's the bottom line. If you don't love him, then get out and get on with your life. There's too much you're missing.”

Yes, Dana still loved Steve. And she still had a sexual yen for him. But even before his infidelity, they had begun pulling apart. He was content to remain just the two of them, a streamlined childless couple for the rest of their days. And she wanted kids.

But there was more. Because of the stress of the job, the mounting pressures due to the increased crime rate, and their squabbling over his commitment problems, Steve had taken to alcohol, made worse because he also took antidepressants.

In his adolescence, he had been diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder that apparently grew out of the guilt he had carried over his parents' unhappy marriage and their untimely deaths. He spoke very little about his childhood; eventually he had outgrown the disorder. But he still had little rituals. If stress built up, he'd take to cleaning the cellar, rearranging all the tools at the workbench, straightening out his office upstairs, squaring books on the shelves, lining up knickknacks. And he'd do it repeatedly, and in the same fashion, worried that if he didn't follow the rituals something bad would happen.

The problem was not the rituals and annoying repetitions. It was his drinking on top of the meds. One night he had come home stressed-out. They had a fight over something, and in a fit of rage Steve smashed a lamp against the wall. What scared her was not just the violence, but that he had completely blacked out at the time, recalling none of it. Only later did she discover that he had taken a double dosage of the antianxiety medication Ativan on top of several drinks—a forbidden combination.

Perhaps they should have consulted a marriage counselor. Perhaps they should have worked on it before it had reached critical mass. But they were separated now, and she was beginning to enjoy her freedom, her own space, her sense of renewal, corny as that sounded.

“How are you and Carl doing?”

“The same. It's more of a habit than a marriage, but it works.”

They finished eating and paid the check. In leaving, Dana shuffled around the tables and glanced at the kid in the black shirt. He was gorgeous—lean tan face, large black eyes, thick shiny hair, cupid-bow lips. He looked up at her and smiled as she moved by. “Goodbye,” he said with a slightly foreign lilt.

She felt a gurgling sensation in her chest. “Goodbye,” she said, trying to make a cool and graceful departure.

When she got home, Dana called Dr. Aaron Monks's office to make an appointment. Because of his busy schedule, the secretary said that the doctor could see her in two weeks. When Dana said that she was really hoping to have the procedures done before returning to school in September, the secretary said she'd see what she could do.

An hour later she called back to say that because of a last-minute cancellation, the doctor had an opening the first thing tomorrow morning if she wanted to book it. Dana did.