Free It Happens in the Dark by Carol O'Connell

attack.
    The lieutenant waited until the detectives sat down at their facing desks by the bank of windows. Strolling up to them, he said, “Good morning. Did you guys have a nice
leisurely
breakfast?” There would be no yelling. Too much pain. He rolled his newspaper tight to the width of a beat cop’s baton. “I wanna see your reports on my desk in—”
    Mallory handed him a short stack of paper, and he leafed through it. She had typed up their reports and all the interviews. When did she sleep? Did she even
need
sleep?
    Jack Coffey unrolled his newspaper and opened it to the entertainment section. “Let me read you a few lines from
The Herald
’s second review of the play. ‘A death in the audience every night. It’s a play
and
a lottery. Buy a ticket and take your chances, but get your will in order before you go.’” He crushed the paper into an unwieldy ball. “Commissioner Beale didn’t bother with chain of command today. He called to ask if there was a problem with letting the play go on. CSU released your crime scene. So, unless you two have a—”
    “Hey, no problem,” said Riker. “Of course, if somebody dies tonight, that’s gonna make us look stupid.”
    “Ain’t gonna happen,” said the lieutenant. “I called the ME. That woman who kicked off two nights ago? Dr. Slope says she had a heart attack. And the playwright’s death was suicide.” Jack Coffey sent his copy of
The
Herald
flying ten feet to land in a corner wastebasket, a perfect shot. He was much practiced in disposing of bad press this way. And now a civilian clerk stepped up to him and handed over the preliminary autopsy reports still warm from the printer.
Nice timing
.
    “Hold on,” said Riker. “Even Harry Deberman knew that guy was murdered. He tried to hijack our case.”
    “Then I may personally hand it over to that worthless asshole.” The lieutenant held up the two sheets of paper. “Prelims on your vics.” He slapped them down, one on Riker’s desk, “Heart attack!” and one for Mallory, “Suicide!” Softer now, he said, “Wrap it up. Make it go away.”
    •   •   •
    The room temperature was chilly, the better to keep the meat from spoiling. A morgue attendant walked up to the wall of stainless steel lockers and pulled out two cold-storage drawers for the theater fatalities, Mrs. McCormick and Mr. Beck, who had died on successive evenings.
    Tallest among the living and the dead was Dr. Edward Slope, a man with the ramrod posture of a general and gray hair that fit well with a countenance of unyielding stone. The wave of his hand was sufficient to send the attendant scuttling away. The doctor consulted his clipboard, scanning the autopsy findings, and—contrary to the complaint—he found nothing amiss with the work of his pathologists. Turning a cold eye on the two visitors from Special Crimes, he showed them a smile that said,
I’m going to eat you alive.
    Not every detective in the NYPD warranted a personal audience with the chief medical examiner, but he had a history with Kathy Mallory, an infrequent player in the Louis Markowitz Floating Poker Game. He had lost many a hand of cards to his old friend’s foster child before the little shark was out of grade school. All these years later, he was still looking for ways to get even—and ways to keep her engaged in what passed for a relationship with another human being. Toward these ends, he employed more sophisticated challenges than cards, each encounter ending in a bloody face-off across a dead body. He did this for Louis. He did it for love.
    So this was their game now. They both called it war. However, he was a gentleman, and the first strike would always be hers.
    The young detective pulled the sheet back from the face of the woman’s corpse. “You ruled her death as natural causes.” This was said in the tone of talking down to imbeciles.
    “Daring of me, wasn’t it? My pathologist saw two heart valves that should’ve been replaced