LITMIR.BIZ

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      But it wasn’t sorrow that had pulled her out of her room. It was hunger. She felt guilty—almost ashamed of the fact—but it was the first time in three days that she’d felt like eating.

      The family quarters were on the lower floor of the house, behind the main staircase, and as she came around the corner, she stopped at the foot of the stairs beneath the painting on the opposite wall. It was a massive canvas, almost life-size, and the first thing to be seen upon entering the hotel. Isabella paused in the shadows, looking intently at the first Isabella. The woman who’d been her mother, and who had died giving birth to her, was little more than a face with a name.

      She stared at the painting, accepting the fact that, except for the different hairstyle and clothing, it could very well have been a portrait of herself. She sighed, the sound little more than a soft shifting of air in the silent room.

      But for a vague longing for something she’d never known, she had no emotional ties to the woman, although her father had never been able to look at that painting without coming close to tears. At the thought of her father, she wrapped her arms around herself and tried not to cry. At least one positive thing had come out of this nightmare. Her parents were now together.

      When her stomach rumbled again, she dropped her gaze and headed for the kitchen. The large commercial-sized refrigerators were full of leftovers from the wake, so she had a wide variety of foods from which to choose. Getting a plate from the cabinet, she settled on a piece of cold chicken and a small helping of pasta salad. The silverware drawer squeaked as she opened it to get a fork, and when it did, she winced. The uncles’ rooms were on the top floor, which was two flights up from where she was, yet it wouldn’t be the first time in her life she’d gotten caught during a midnight snack attack.

      She stood for a moment, listening for the sound of footsteps coming down the staircase, and when she heard nothing but the ticking of the grandfather clock out in the lobby, she breathed a sigh of relief. She didn’t want to talk any more today—not even to them.

      She went onto the back stoop and sat down on the steps, balancing her plate on her lap as she took her first bite. The pasta in the salad was perfectly al dente and coated with a tangy vinaigrette. When the first bite of food hit her stomach, she inhaled slowly, allowing herself to get past the guilt of self-satisfaction and admit that it was good. As she ate, her gaze moved beyond the backyard of the hotel to the mountain looming on the horizon.

      White Mountain.

      For as long as she could remember, it had been the backdrop for her life. Somewhere in the ancient past of this land, a massive shift in the tectonic plates below the earth’s surface had created heat and pressure beyond man’s imagination, resulting in the birth of the mountain range of which White Mountain was a part.

      She had often wondered why it was called White Mountain, because it was black as a witch’s heart, with a thick stand of trees halfway up its steep slopes. Her father had suggested that it must have been named during the winter months, because then it was usually covered with snow.

      It was some time later before Isabella noticed she’d eaten all her food. As she stood, she also realized that part of her melancholy had eased. She wanted to smile, but her heart was too sore to allow herself the notion, although her father would have been pleased. He’d always said that the world looked far too grim on an empty stomach.

      With one last look at the overpowering peak, she went back in the house, quietly locking the door behind her. She set her plate in the sink and then started back to her room. It wasn’t going to be easy without her father, but she accepted his death as an inevitable part of life. The uncles were all of the same generation as her father, and she didn’t want to think of the days when she would eventually have to give them up, too. The saddest thing was knowing that Uncle Frank had yet to learn of her father’s death. He was going to be devastated that he hadn’t known, and guilt-ridden at not being here to help her through the ordeal. Isabella just wished he would come back, or at least call. He’d never been away this long before.

      A few moments later she entered her room and went back to bed. It wasn’t long before exhaustion claimed her and she finally fell asleep.

      Detective Mike Butoli swung his sore foot over the curb and stepped up with a hop as he headed into the crime lab. The coroner’s office had yet to perform the autopsy on his latest case, and he was chafing under the delay.

      An unidentified stiff in a Brighton Beach alley was not high priority, nor was it the only unidentified victim awaiting dissection, but for some reason the case was weighing heavily on Butoli’s mind. They’d put the stiff’s fingerprints into the system, hoping for a match, and at Lieutenant Flanagan’s suggestion had sent them to Interpol, as well. With the high concentration of Russian immigrants in Brighton Beach, it stood to reason that one or the other would result in an identification.

      He had been a cop for almost twenty years, the last twelve as a detective. He’d seen far more of the evil and depravity of the human condition than anyone should be exposed to and couldn’t remember the last time he had taken a case personally.

      Until now.

      Maybe it was because his headache was competing with the pain in his foot to see which could rack up the most misery. Maybe it was the guilt he was feeling for having fallen off the wagon after six long months of sobriety. But whatever the reason, yesterday, as he stood in that alley looking down into the old man’s face, he kept wondering what journey the man’s life had been on would cause it to end in an alley in Brighton Beach.

      Today he had a dead man with no identification, no witnesses to the crime, and he wanted answers to both. Information from the coroner’s office would have to wait, but he was coming to the crime lab with more optimism. If he got lucky, the analysis of the crime scene evidence would give him something to go on.

      Since he was expected, he walked into the lab without knocking and headed toward the small middle-aged man who was feeding information into a computer.

      “Hey, Yoda, what have you got for me?”

      Malcolm Wise had long ago accepted his nickname, but not without some disgust. It wasn’t his fault that nature had doomed him to look more like the famous character from the Star Wars series than he did his own parents. He turned to see Detective Butoli coming toward him and hit Save on the keyboard before giving him his full attention.

      “Why are you limping?” Wise asked.

      “Broke my toe.”

      Wise smirked. “I won’t ask how.”

      “Well hell, now I am disappointed. I thought Yoda had all the answers.”

      “Can the crap,” Wise said. “Short and balding is sexy to some women.”

      “Then thank God I was born a man,” Butoli countered. “About my stiff…got anything that will help?”

      Wise moved toward his desk. “The knife in his chest that was found in a Dumpster was Russian-made.”

      Butoli rolled his eyes. “Damn, Yoda. This is Brighton Beach. It’s full of Russian immigrants. Give me something I can use.”

      “The skin under his fingernails isn’t his own.” Butoli stifled a curse and popped a couple of breath mints in his mouth.

      “Anything that might help me put a name to the man?”

      Wise grinned as he lifted a plastic bag from a box and slid it across the table.

      Butoli caught it before it slipped off onto the floor.

      “What’s this?” he asked.

      “The victim’s shirt.”

      “What’s so special about a shirt?”

      “Maybe the name underneath the tag might help you.”

      Butoli’s eyes lit up.

      “His name? As in a laundry mark?”

      “At least part of it,” Wise said. “F.

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