I told her about Dr. Billings’s profile of the murderer and that the detectives were now concentrating their efforts looking for someone within the real estate industry, either an agent or an affiliate who might have an axe to grind with women of authority.
It was hard for her to get her head around the idea that someone so close to home could commit such atrocities. It would have been so much easier to believe that the killer was a total stranger.
I had been an active agent for thirty years but had been retired about six months by this time. Maggie, of course, was still entirely immersed in the business. Between the two of us, we knew most of the agents in most of the offices.
I asked her what had been in the grapevine just before the murders started. There was always scuttlebutt circulating about who was screwing whom, both figuratively and professionally. Nothing startling. There were a few dalliances of note, and agents were always grumbling about how some competitor had stolen their client, but certainly nothing to evoke the violent rage exhibited by the killer.
Earlier in the evening I had formulated a plan to turn Mr. Winkie into Mr. Happy, but by this time we were both so exhausted I discovered he had become Mr. Sleepy. Not wanting him exposed as Mr. Dopey, I kissed her goodnight and said good-bye.
I cautioned Maggie again not to set foot out of her office without a call, e-mail, or text letting me know where she was going, who she was going with, and when she would return.
She promised.
CHAPTER 16
The next morning I went out to retrieve my newspaper and discovered that Willie had retrieved it first. He was sitting on the front step absorbed in the headline: “Police Arrest Suspect in the Realtor Rapist Murders.”
I didn’t realize I had been out of the loop. The bust must have taken place the night before when I was sharing the evening with Maggie and Rolph.
“Shit, man,” Willie exclaimed, “I jes don’ believe dis is happenin’. Dis jus ain’t right.”
“What’s not right, Willie?”
“Dis here,” he replied and pointed to the story under the headline. “Here, you read it.”
The headline read that the police had finally found a common link between the three murdered women. All three drove luxury cars, and all three had their car regularly cleaned and detailed by Leo’s Luxury Car Service.
Leo Snipes had recently been estranged from his wife of fifteen years and was apprehended sleeping on a cot in the back room of his service bay by Officer Lincoln Murdock. Although Snipes declared his innocence, he was not forthcoming with an alibi for the nights of the murders. Snipes was being held in the city jail pending his arraignment.
“What’s the problem with this?” I asked. “The guy fits the profile. He has a connection to all the victims, and he certainly has an axe to grind with women, just being kicked out of his home.”
“I’ll tell you what’s wrong wif dis,” he exclaimed. “I been knowing Leo for ten yeas o’ mo. An I know Leo ain’t no killer. Sure, he used to boost some stuff like me, but he ain’t never hurt nobody. And he been straight, like me, since he opened his shop.
“An dat deal about being ‘estranged,’ look, man, Leo and Doris been fightin’ as long as I been knowin’ ‘em. Doris always knew Leo was fooling around but couldn’t never catch him. Leo always liked the women. I ‘member one time he was kiddin’ around and he say, ‘Willie, a girl’s panties may not be de bes thing on earth, but dey next to it.’ I bet Doris finally caught Leo doin’ de nasty with ole Charlene and kicked his black ass out o’ de house.”
“That may all be true, but if he’s truly innocent, he surely must have an alibi for at least one of the nights of the murders,” I said.
“Yeah, he probably got an alibi, all right. He jes don’ wanna say it. Charlene’s old man drive a truck over de road. I bet he outta town and Leo be over der boinking Charlene and he don’ wanna say nuffin to protect her. And hissef too. Charlene’s old man is one mean dude.”
“Do you think Leo would talk to me?” I asked.
“Probably not, lessn maybe I give you a note tellin’ him you okay. Dat might work,” he replied.
So I got a note from Willie and went to the city lock-up. Normally, I wouldn’t stand a chance of getting to talk to a suspect, but since our recent collars, Ox and I had achieved a celebrity status. You know, the Dynamic Duo and all.
I was admitted to a holding cell, and Leo was brought in wearing cuffs and shackles. I explained who I was and read Willie’s note. He still was reluctant to talk to me, so I decided to just go for it and told him I knew about Charlene and why he was reluctant to use her for an alibi.
“Look, man,” he said, “I can’t be draggin’ Charlene into dis. Her ole man beat de crap out o’ her if he find out.”
“Just tell me the truth,” I said. “If you were really with Charlene, that means the real killer is still out there and will kill again. Do you want that on your conscience?”
“O’ course not,” he said. “Yeah, I was wif Charlene. Wot am I gonna do?”
“Tell you what,” I said. “I’ll keep this to myself for now. Captain Short is a personal friend of mine. I trust him. Let me talk to the captain and see if we can substantiate your alibi without having to expose Charlene publicly. Okay?”
I went directly to Captain Short’s office and told him everything that Willie and Leo had told me. While he had hoped this arrest would bring an end to the nightmare, he understood that if the wrong man were locked up, the killer would certainly be free to claim another victim. He said he would personally go to Charlene and, if she could substantiate his story, he would get it on tape.
That’s why I liked this guy.
I was feeling pretty good about myself. I was in the locker room getting my gear ready for the day when someone grabbed me from behind and slammed me into the wall.
Murdock.
Apparently the word had traveled fast that I had spoken to Leo.
Murdock had me pinned up against the locker with his forearm across my throat and his knee in my crotch. He got right in my face and shouted, “What are you doing talking to my collar, old man? You got no business talking to prisoners. You aren’t even a cop. You’re a damn civilian playing cop. I’m warning you for the last time. Keep your hairy old nose out of my business.” He shook me, let me go, and I dropped in a heap.
Well, that could have gone better, I thought.
I was enraged that he was so shortsighted that he would rather preserve his collar than put the right man behind bars. But I was even more upset by his remark. What did he mean ‘hairy old nose’?
I am meticulous about my grooming. Maggie makes sure of that.
Now I do understand the problem. I have found that as I grow older my hair follicles are migrating south. As the years have passed I have discovered I have less hair on my head, but overall, I haven’t really lost it. It just relocated to my ears, nose, and eyebrows, and Maggie doesn’t like it.
It’s a constant battle keeping ahead of the little guys. Have you ever tried clipping the hairs out of your ears? First of all, how do you see in your ears? It can’t be done. I tried once and almost gave myself a lobe-botomy. Since then, I have to slip my barber, Mac, a couple of extra bucks to trim the forest out of my ears. And boy, do these babies grow fast. Sometimes I think someone is pouring Miracle-Gro in my ears when I’m asleep.
And don’t get me started on the nose hairs. Where do they come from? Back when I was selling, Maggie said to me, “How can you expect your buyers to concentrate on your contract when all they can think about is that big gray thing sticking out of your nose?”
Real Estate 101.
And even worse, one evening I’d picked Maggie up for an evening out, and as we were driving along I noticed Maggie looking at me. I was expecting, “Oh, sweetie, I really missed you today,” or “I’ve really been looking forward to this evening.” Instead, I got, “You might want to tuck that thing back up in your nose till you get home tonight.”
&
nbsp; Great. That always sets the mood for a romantic evening.
I hate clipping nose hairs, but a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do, so I bought a Remington Turbo. It scares the shit out of me when I think about sticking Turbo up my nose. I’m always afraid it will pull instead of cut. You ever pull out a nose hair? Hurts like hell and it sounds like a Black and Decker, which doesn’t help. But it does have a little light that shines up my nostril before I poke it in.
Very high tech.
Maggie doesn’t like bushy eyebrows either. She says I look like Wilford Brimley, the old guy who does commercials on TV and looks like he’s got two white hairy caterpillars chasing each other across his forehead. I don’t want that, so I have a tiny little pair of scissors that Maggie got me for Christmas sitting on the shelf by my Remington Turbo.
The gift that keeps on giving.
The next morning I opened my newspaper and was relieved to see the headline “Suspect Released in Realtor Rapist Murders; Police Baffled.”
The article went on to say that police had substantiated an alibi for Snipes on the nights of the murders. No names were mentioned. Whew!
Lady Justice had prevailed but Murdock would be really pissed.
I ran into the Professor. Naturally, he was curious as to the progress of the case. I shared with him all that I knew up to that point, including the psychologist’s profile.
I could see the wheels turning in that old gray head, trying to mesh the information we currently had with his years of experience.
Finally, he spoke: “Man who fart in church sit in own pew.”
“Excuse me,” I said. “What in the world are you talking about?”
“Let me put it in the popular vernacular,” he said. “In other words, never crap where you eat!”
“Oh, that really clears it up.”
“Listen, Walt, you need to be looking for a guy who up until now has worked with these powerful women but was able to keep his rage in check. Then something happened that upset his delicate equilibrium and caused him to go over the edge. He initiated some event that caused a shift in his relationship with women, possibly putting him in a subservient position.”
“I see where you’re going, Professor. I’ll give this some thought and see where it leads.”
I drove to the station thinking about what the professor had said. It sure made sense, but where would one start? With a hundred different offices, large and small, and several thousand agents, the possibilities of interaction were endless. Add to this the fact that the three victims were not in the same office and had no ongoing disputes, and there didn’t seem to be a common thread that would cause these women to be specific targets. The only commonality was that they were successful women with honorary titles and positions of authority. Hmm!
Maybe these women had absolutely no connection to the killer. Maybe they were simply surrogates and symbols of the powerful woman that had caused the killer to act. We knew the killer was no dummy. So far, he had left no clues and no witnesses.
Think about it.
If you’re upset at someone close to you and you kill them, who do the cops look at first? That’s why the spouse is always the first person questioned. Eliminate the people closest to the victim. So, if you’re smart, you will pick a victim removed from your frame of reference. That’s why random killings are the hardest to solve. There’s no obvious connection.
The professor’s words rang in my head. “Never crap where you eat.” Was the killer purposefully targeting powerful women outside his circle of influence? Was he hiding in the anonymity of two thousand agents while the police were looking for a connection where there was none?
After the squad meeting, I asked the captain if I could have a moment of his time. What could he say? After all, Ox and I had three good collars in a week.
I shared with him my thoughts on the case and told him I’d like to take some time to personally visit some offices and chat with some of my old realtor buddies. Having been in the business, I might possibly pick up on something that an outsider would miss. “Can’t hurt,” he said. “Do you need Ox?”
“Probably not. He’d just scare everyone to death.”
So with the captain’s blessing I started making the rounds. I began with the offices and agents I knew well. By the end of the day, I was so wired with caffeine I could hardly sit still. Everyone wanted to chat over a cup of joe.
No luck. Everyone was concerned and no one had a clue. So I went home.
CHAPTER 17
Upon arriving at my apartment building, I noted that Willie was busy with a large plastic trash bag tidying up the front lawn.
As I approached, I heard him mutter, “God sho mus’ love stupid people ‘cause he made so many of ‘em.”
“What’s up, Willie?” I asked. “Why so grouchy?”
“I just don’ understand how folks can be so filthy. I been clen’ up people’s stuff all day long. Mary called this monin’. Told me Billy Jenkins had moved out of number eight, so I went over der to clean de place up. Whole room full o’ trash. Dat boy been dere six months, and I don’t tink he been to de dumpster even once. Pizza boxes, beer cans, you name it, dat boy lef’ it. Dis-gustin.
“An’ den I gets home and dere’s stuff all over dis here front lawn. I jus’ gets so pissed off that people so stupid.”
“Well, you know what the Professor always says,” I replied, trying to inject a bit of good humor, “it’s better to be pissed off than pissed on.” Willie didn’t find that humorous.
“Yeah, well,” he muttered, “when I’se de one whats got to clean it up, I gets pissed on and off bof.”
Just then Bernice Crenshaw emerged from the building. Bernice is eighty-three and was an elementary schoolteacher until she retired. Bernice lives in 2-B, across the hall from the Professor. She has been with me about ten years, and the Professor and I have noted that Father Time has been taking his toll. Her short-term memory seems to be slipping, and we’re afraid Alzheimer’s may be creeping up on her.
For those of us in our golden years, Alzheimer’s is even scarier than cancer or a heart attack. The thought of slowly losing our ability to think, remember the things we accomplished, and recognize the ones we love is frightening.
Sometimes we make light of the things we fear the most. It’s our way of coping. We trivialize in order to take away the power of that which we fear. Alzheimer’s jokes abound, and that’s okay unless they’re cruel.
I remember the Professor addressing the subject one day. “There’s more money being spent on breast implants and Viagra today than on Alzheimer’s research. By 2030, there will be a large elderly population with perky boobs and huge erections and absolutely no recollection of what to do with them.”
There! Take that, Alzheimer’s.
Bernice shuffled up to us. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re here! I’m afraid I’ve locked myself out of my apartment again. I was going out to get my mail, and as I was going out the door, I couldn’t remember if I had turned off the stove, so I went back in and checked the stove. Sure enough, I had left it on, and I laid my keys on the counter and turned off the stove, but then I couldn’t remember what I was doing before I went back into the kitchen, so I decided to sit down and write a letter to my sister. That made me remember that I was getting the mail, and I got so excited that I remembered that I ran out the door without my keys.”
Oh boy!
“Not a problem,” I said. “Willie can get you back in. By the way, Bernice, how have you been feeling lately?”
“Well, to tell the truth, I’ve been feeling kind of lonely. I’ve been thinking I might go visit my daughter in Topeka for a few days. But I can’t stay there very long. It’s my son-in-law. He’s a real jerk. He reminds me a lot of my husband.”
I hadn’t heard her speak of her husband before, and assuming he had passed way, I asked, “I’m so sorry about your husband. When did you lose him?”
“Didn’t lose him. Kicked him out and then divorced hi
m—for religious reasons.”
“Religious reasons?”
“Yes. He thought he was God and I didn’t. Always bossing me around. Telling me what I could and couldn’t do, where I could and couldn’t go. So I just finally told him where he could go.”
Whoa, this was a new side of Bernice we hadn’t seen before.
“It really does get lonely living alone,” she said. “I miss Bitsy, my little peekapoo.”
“What de hell’s a peekapoo?” Willie asked.
I explained that it was a dog. A Pekinese that had been bred with a poodle was a peekapoo.
Willie pondered that for a moment. Then with a gleam in his eye, he whispered in my ear, “If dat’s true, den if you breed a bulldog with a shiatsu, does you get a bullshit?”
Everyone’s a comedian.
After our misspent evening at Chez Francois, Maggie and I decided to try it again. We planned to grab a bite to eat and take in a movie.
Since she got to pick the restaurant last time, it was now my choice. You guessed it. Mel’s. Maggie was thrilled.
I had a chicken fried steak and mashed potatoes smothered in white cream gravy. Yum! It couldn’t get much better than that. I can’t remember what Maggie had, but whatever it was I’m sure it didn’t fit in her diet. We were, after all, at Mel’s.
I was enjoying a mug of steaming coffee with a piece of chocolate cream pie when a sharp pain in my back hit me like a bolt of lightning. My arm involuntarily jerked, and I slopped steaming coffee into my lap. That’ll get your attention. I couldn’t decide which hurt worse, by back or my dick.
“What in the world is wrong with you?” Maggie cried. She’s used to my idiosyncrasies, but this was outside the box, even for me.
“Wow! Don’t know,” I replied. “It felt like someone just hit me in the back with a rubber hose. It’s easing up now. I’ll be okay.” I started drying myself with a napkin. Good thing I had on dark trousers. At my age, someone might mistake my little accident with incontinence.
[Lady Justice 01] - Lady Justice Takes a C.R.A.P. Page 10
