Friday evening. The last, corner shop sandwich has turned into a kind of slime on the car dashboard because the taste of it didn't help with the hangover he's been struggling with since the morning. He should have chucked it two stops ago, but it takes enough concentration as it is to stay on game. Something's missing. Something's gone unnoticed.
Tuesday. Four o'clock in the morning and Salk's commander called him in, a double suicide at the Ritz Carlton and an adjoining residential tower. He's not ready, because he'd only fallen asleep a few hours ago, and by falling asleep I mean drank himself unconscious on the floor of his dull Brooklyn flat. He put down another finger of whiskey and then scoured himself in the shower till his skin was boiled red by the hot water. It washed out the stink of the liquor and stirred some life back into his shot eyes. He wouldn't fool his commander, but no one cared- so long as Salk did his job.
An escort lies crumpled upon the the suite's patterned carpet. Her silk negligee spreads serenely around her thighs and her arms poise around her head as if she's simply laid down in the grass. Her hair is unmolested and there is nothing that suggest discomfort. Only a pale foam spills from the small part of her lip, and it gathers on the carpet like a sort of deflated meringue. "Overdose," Salk mutters as he kneels down beside the woman. He turns her arm to reveal the inside of her elbow. His gloved fingers trace over the outline of a vein and feels the minute purse of a puncture. The detective lifts his head and scans the room till he discovers the discarded needle and belt, thrown beneath the bed.
"There," he gestures to the forensics technician.
Three such events in the past week and now two in close proximity does not have to mean a thing. There are other cases, actual murders, piling on their desks. Being here at this hour to investigate a suicide isn't the best use of his time. He asks them to show him the other scene in the adjoining apartment block.
Salk pauses to look out the opened hotel window. The adjoining scene is directly across the way. Below the windows there is a narrow service alley that separates the buildings and that space feels so small as to be crossed in a well placed leap. Salk presses his hand into the hotel window and peers, narrow eyed at the other building where the forensic technicians are already at work, documenting the scene. "Sir?" prompts a policeman.
"Yeah." Salk answers. He walks out of the hotel room and looks out at the gathered crowd of curious hotel guests. There is nothing there. No suggestion, no faces. He feels it already, the inkling that something is indeed off about this. But how could it be, it's just a suicide.
The other scene is something entirely different. The two events might not have drawn any suspicion had they not been in close proximity and occurred so soon after the other. A young couple dangles above their beds, hanging from their necks. A child's room empty with blanket dragged half across the room. Salk continues down the hall. A bathroom door ajar but there is nothing within. The window has been left open and the breeze carries the curtain out into the early morning. Salk looks out the window and down into the service alley. He finds the child lying behind the dumpster. It is ten stories below.
Salk stands outside after the coroner has removed the bodies. It's nearly noon by the time they'd completed their review of the scenes. He can barely keep his head together and the coffee isn't helping anymore. The man crushes a cigarette under his shoe and gives a gesture to the police sergeant in charge. "Till that pathology report come through we keeping these two as a crime scene. That includes the hotel suite."
"The Ritz an't going to like that. Can you imagine how much they charge for that room," the man whistles with a grin. "Besides, I heard captain gonna write that hooker off as a suicide."
"I'll talk with the captain. Just keep that room sealed."
He is waiting outside another scene. It is Friday and the pathology reports had returned much as they expected it to read. No sign of struggle, overdose. No indication of other drugs, which might imply sedation. The hangings were just as conclusive as was the murder of the child. Infanticide. The mother's prints. Salk dug his thumbs into the bridge of his nose and sucked in a sharp breath. He pushed open the car door and walked across the street to the new scene. Another one.