Page 154 - Labelle Gramercy, On the Case

Jury-rigged

“Let us begin with what looks like a pool of victims,” she said, in
her monotonous way. “Juror number one, Wanda Lustig, if I am
reading this correctly and it is accurate, died in the early hours of
April 6, less than twenty-four hours after I left active duty. Any
significance to this yet, Duncan? Apparently not, according to your
comments. The salient elements, as noted here, are the circumstances
and manner of her killing. She was found Sunday evening, after a
friend with whom she had a dinner date became alarmed by her
failure to respond to telephone calls or repeated knocking at her
door. The apartment manager let the patrolmen and paramedics into
her rooms. Ms. Lustig, a free-lance editor and ghostwriter of articles
in trade journals, was dead. You arrived on the scene close to
midnight—I trust your pager is in working order, Duncan—and
determined that neither the body nor anything else in the apartment
had been disturbed. Is that correct?”
“Yes, yes, of course. I had to take the responding officers’ word
for it, but they weren’t rookies.” I began to feel like a suspect, not for
the first time in her presence. This is how you get a reputation as a
lone wolf, I reflected, and wind up without anyone willing to cover
your back in a hostile situation. She didn’t care, maybe didn’t even
realize it. I could not count the number of times she had left me out
of an investigation from start to finish. Lieutenant Gramercy, with at
least twenty years on the force, still didn’t carry a gun—anyway, none
that I’d ever seen. But she had to keep up her skills: a story in the day
room was that she could fire every weapon we had, right- or left-
handed, with deadly accuracy. I never had any desire to be on the
firing range when she was there. I’d rather compete with my peers.
Labelle took my response as adequate, for she went on skimming
the report without giving me the third degree. “Ms. Lustig, age fifty-
three, height five feet seven inches, weight one hundred thirty
pounds, seemingly died without much struggle. Her glasses remained
on the nightstand, as did the cordless telephone. The bedclothes were
bloody and disarranged, indicating the victim was taken by surprise in
her sleep. The door from her kitchen to the common service porch
and fire escape for her wing of the building had been jimmied,
probably with a screwdriver. The lab technicians discovered no
fingerprints other than the victim’s anywhere on the premises. Time
of death, per the medical examiner, was between three and six a.m.

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