The Murder Book

by Lissa Marie Redmond

  “We’ll follow up and keep you in the loop,” Joy said as she leaned over the desk to shake Church’s then Kevin King’s hand.

  Reese and Ben followed suit until it was just Lauren standing there awkwardly facing them. “I’d shake your hands,” she told them, “but I don’t want to reach over and bust a stitch.”

  Church held his palms up. “Not a problem. Just get better, okay? I’m so pleased you were well enough to come here today. We need you over in Cold Case.”

  “Yeah,” King agreed, “just get back to work soon.”

  Words she never thought she’d hear come from Carl Church’s mouth, or Kevin King’s while he was in Church’s presence. Be nice, she reminded herself, they’re trying to be good. Still, it was hard to think all was forgiven after everything that had happened. She couldn’t believe Church would just let it go. Or maybe she was the one who needed to let go of the past. “Thanks, guys. I’ll do my best.”

  The four detectives filed out into the reception area. “Marilyn’s at the office now,” Ben told Lauren and Reese. “I want her to listen to this right away.”

  “I’ll go see Tony down in the Communications office and get him to pull up all the incoming calls to the Homicide or Cold Case offices that day. If we can find a burner call, we can get an idea of who was up in the Homicide squad during that time frame.” Joy’s mind was on overdrive as she stabbed the down button for the elevator six times.

  “I want to come over,” Lauren said as the door slid open. “See the scene of my crime.”

  “You up for it?” Ben asked, positioning himself against the back wall.

  “As ready as I’ll ever be,” she replied, hitting the door close button.

  17

  There’s no such thing as lunchtime at police headquarters. You got something to eat when you caught some downtime, whether you were a detective, a report technician, a cleaner, or the commissioner. At twelve thirty in the afternoon, the poor lobby RTs had a line of people at the front window stretching almost out the door. Linda, the RT on duty, looked up from the elderly woman she was helping when Lauren and her entourage came in.

  “Lauren!” she called, making everyone in line turn and stare. “I’m so glad to see you! And you look so good!”

  Lauren’s hand snaked around to her right side and settled over her wound. It felt like she was wearing her scars on the outside for all the world to see. “Thanks, Linda. I’m just here for a visit, though.”

  Lauren heard a man say to his companion, “That must be the one who got stabbed.”

  “Feel better,” Linda called after them as she pressed the buzzer for the inner hallway door. Maybe I’ll use the Church Street exit when I leave, Lauren thought as they waited for the world’s slowest elevator to take them to the third floor, be stealthy like the guy who shoved a blade between my ribs and pounded my head.

  The elevator was so old it didn’t even bong when the door rumbled open. The others would have taken the stairs to the third floor, but Lauren knew they were trying to be considerate of her injuries. After what felt like an hour of upward travel, she stepped out into the Homicide wing.

  To her left was the chief of detectives’ office, his own RT sitting sentry behind a glass wall so she could screen his visitors. Her back was to the group, and she didn’t turn around from her computer. Just as well, thought Lauren. I’m in no mood for small talk.

  Reaching over, Joy swiped the door open to the Homicide office with a quick snap of her wrist. Going in first, Reese held the door for the others as they filed through. The smell of old coffee, cheap disinfectant, and bad cologne hung in the air. Mario must be working, Lauren mused, rocking that funky cologne he wears. Everyone knew not to use the phone after Mario did, unless they wanted to smell like an elderly Italian gigolo with no sense of moderation.

  Nothing had changed. It was still the beat-up, run-down, overworked office space it had been since Lauren had started working there. The only difference was the moving equipment parked in the hallway.

  The crew that was on duty came out of the back office to say their hellos and how glad they were she was all right. She awkwardly accepted their hugs with her good arm, stitches blazing by the time they were through.

  “Detective Lauren Riley!” Lauren turned to the familiar voice. “Nobody told me you were coming!”

  Marilyn, the Queen Mother of the Homicide squad, charged down the hallway and threw her arms around Lauren’s neck. A breast cancer survivor, Marilyn wore her brown and blond streaked hair short, framing her fiftyish face. The tears Lauren felt on her neck were real and came from a place of joy: Marilyn loved her detectives. Some needed her more than others, but she considered all of them family, and the feeling was reciprocated.

  “It’s good to see you,” Lauren told her, still holding on, ignoring the pain in her side. “Hell, it’s good to still be here.”

  Marilyn nodded into her shoulder, stepped back and wiped her eyes. “I know the feeling. You scared the hell out of me.” Then the mother hen came out as she asked, “What are you doing here? Why aren’t you home resting?”

  “Actually, Marilyn,” Ben interrupted, “we need your help. Can we borrow you for a second?”

  She looked from Lauren to Reese, then back to Ben. “Of course, you can. What’s going on?”

  “Why don’t we go into the Cold Case office?” Joy suggested. “It’s a little more private.”

  Lenny the cleaner didn’t look up from his emptying of a trash can into the huge rolling tote he pushed around for just such occasions. He was born deaf, and with his back to them, hadn’t acknowledged their presence. But they knew he was aware the foursome had come in. He tended to mind his own business, like he’d always done over the forty years he’d been cleaning headquarters. Able to lip read from a distance, Lenny probably knew more secrets about the Homicide squad and its members than anyone else. He’d always chosen to keep them to himself.

  The problem was the woman in the chair sitting next to his tote, clutching a cheap pleather purse with a gaudy fringe tassel close to her chest. “Mister,” she was saying to Lenny, who continued his work by lining a trash can with a new plastic bag. “My boyfriend has been in there for an hour. I have to go. Mister? Mister?”

  Lenny could speak a few words with difficulty, of course, but almost never did. He chose to move onto the next trash can, ignoring her.

  “This is bullshit. I’ve been here for an hour,” she cried aloud, for everyone to hear. “And this loser is ignoring me.”

  “Come on,” Marilyn said, abruptly turning toward the woman. “Come sit out here in the hallway. That loser is deaf and can’t hear you complain.”

  “Nobody told me he was deaf,” the woman mumbled, getting up and sheepishly following Marilyn’s directions.

  Lauren saw Lenny smirk as he dumped another trash can into his tote. “Maybe,” Marilyn went on as she sat the twenty-something woman down on the bench that lined one side of the long hallway outside the office, “if you and your boyfriend would just tell the truth instead of lying about witnessing the shooting, you’d both be home now.”

  The woman pulled her purse up against her chest like a shield. “It’s none of my business. I don’t have to say nothing.”

  “It’s your business because the victim is your cousin. And you don’t have to say anything,” Marilyn corrected.

  “That’s what I said. I don’t have to say nothing.”

  Marilyn shook her head and called into the side office, “Mario? Can you come out and keep an eye on Miss Leoni here? Reggie is taking a statement.”

  “I’m coming,” Lauren heard Mario reply. The five of them ducked into the Cold Case office before they could be overwhelmed by his aroma.

  “Just another day in the Homicide office.” Marilyn shut the door behind them.

  Lauren’s desk was torn apart, her computer gone. Black smudges do
tted her desk where they had tried to lift prints, leaving behind the black powder. Her chair was gone. For good, she hoped. She couldn’t imagine sitting in that cheap, wobbly thing ever again. Or her desk. She’d have to move to the empty one by the interview room in the corner until they relocated headquarters to their new building.

  Everyone pulled up a chair to the mess table where Reese and Lauren usually dissected their case files, pulling them apart and organizing them on the long, faux wood tabletop. It was free of clutter now; Reese and Riley hadn’t opened a new case in two months. Joy sat herself at the head of the table, putting the folder Kevin King had given her down in front of her. Lauren’s eyes immediately fell onto the bald spot on the floor, next to her desk. A large patch of the carpet had been cut out, revealing the stained floorboards underneath.

  That’s where my blood soaked through, Lauren thought as her eyes wandered over the black, discolored wood. This is where I almost died. The memory of blood in her mouth flooded her brain, causing her to grip the sides of her chair with both hands, steadying herself, stomach reeling.

  “Marilyn,” Ben said, snapping Lauren back to the matter at hand, “I want you to listen to this recording we received from the DA’s office and tell us if you’ve ever heard this woman’s voice before. If she’s ever left a message, or if you’ve spoken to her on the phone. Maybe if she’s ever been here in the office. Anything at all.”

  He hit the Play button. Marilyn sat with her hands clasped in front of her, listening carefully to the audio recording. When it was finished, she asked to hear it again. Shaking her head slowly from side to side, she said, “No. I’ve never spoken to that person, and I know for a fact that she didn’t leave a message in this office on the ninth.”

  “Could someone else have answered the phone?” Joy asked.

  “Don’t you work here? You know the phone doesn’t stop ringing. There were fifty frigging cops up here that day. Any one of them could have answered the phone.”

  “Maybe Tess will recognize the voice,” Reese said hopefully, leaning back in his chair. “Does the name Peaches ring a bell?”

  “Not a one. And how does the DA’s office not know where this came from? Don’t they have super-secret spy gear to trace this kind of stuff?” Marilyn asked.

  “It didn’t come in on the main line.” Ben reached over and took the recorder back. “It came in through one of the phones down in Archives. An old number that used to be a confidential tip line.”

  “The old Snitch Board? I remember that,” Marilyn said. “Prisoners used to leave all kinds of messages at all hours of the night. Charlie Daley was in charge of following up on them when he was head of the Narcotics Squad. He’d keep the crack-house tips and pass the homicide stuff along to us. Why is the DA’s office using our old number?”

  As Joy explained the inadvertent switching of the phone numbers, Lauren’s mind thought back to Charlie Dailey.

  Charlie Daley had retired as a lieutenant out of narcotics fifteen years before. In charge of the drug squad during the bloodiest years Buffalo had ever seen, he’d been a legend in the nineties for his leadership and attention to detail. While half the Narcotics Squad went to prison for being dirty, his crew proved to be squeaky clean, no matter how hard the Feds tried to prove otherwise.

  “Is Charlie still alive?” Reese asked.

  Marilyn gave him a look. “Sure, he’s still alive. And just because he’s old enough to have changed your diapers, I’d show him some respect if you go and see him, or he’ll slap that smart mouth of yours.”

  Reese held up his hands in mock surrender. “Why does everyone think the worst of me? I’m pretty charming, Marilyn. Admit it.”

  She wasn’t admitting anything. “I don’t think you’re his type, darling.”

  “Did you know Charlie?” Joy asked Ben. Joy had about ten years on the job; Ben, maybe sixteen or seventeen.

  Ben nodded. “A little. But he was here in headquarters, and I was on patrol. He retired a year or two after I got on. I went to his retirement party at O’Flannan’s pub, though. Great time. I think I’m still hungover.”

  “I know him,” Lauren said, trying to stem the wave of nausea that was passing over her. In her head blood was filling her mouth, hot and thick and salty, threatening to make her vomit. She choked it back with a visible effort. Marilyn put her hand on Lauren’s arm.

  Swallowing hard, Lauren managed, “I used to hook for him. He’ll talk to me.”

  18

  Before Lauren got her detective’s badge, she had been a prostitute.

  With less than a year out of the academy, Lauren got to work with Narcotics and Vice, posing as a prostitute. Working undercover, she dressed in the oldest, beat-up jeans she could find, spilled coffee down the front of ripped tee shirts, and rubbed dark-purple eye shadow into the lower corners of her eyes to transform from a fresh-faced police officer in her early twenties to a strung-out hype selling her body for drug money. After seeing her roll around with a suspect while assisting on one of his raids, Charlie Daley had handpicked her for the detail, thinking she had the stomach for the disgusting, perverted johns she’d have to encounter. She did. And for three months she had been pulled out of her precinct and plopped down into the shadows on the corners.

  They never had to wait more than five minutes for Lauren to get propositioned.

  The detail was Charlie’s baby. He had the idea that drugs and prostitution were so closely linked that to tackle one would help combat the other. In the three months she was a decoy, she witnessed and made arrests for drug deals, assaults, robberies, and domestics. Prostitutes are invisible. To the denizens of the drug trade, the gangbangers, and the users, prostitutes were a fixture, like lamp posts or fire hydrants. Always in the background, forgotten and invisible until their services were needed. But also vulnerable to abuse from all sides: the johns, the pimps, the other hypes.

  Lauren discovered a great sympathy for the women and men out there selling their bodies to survive. Because that’s what it boiled down to, survival. To reach the point where you have to stand on the corner and sell yourself, you have to have endured enough physical, mental, and emotional anguish to wall yourself off from the rest of your life. When Lauren would talk to the street walkers, after they’d been arrested for threatening Lauren for standing on their corners, she’d find out they were mothers. And daughters. And sisters. Many had graduated high school. Or they had a family in the suburbs who were waiting for them to come home. They were more than just the bodies they were selling. Somewhere in their past they’d taken a wrong turn that had led to another, and now they lived on the corners, day to day, hour to hour, and didn’t think much about the future. They didn’t know if they had one.

  One of the first things Lauren did when she got to Cold Case was to pull every unsolved murder of prostitutes she could find. She and Reese solved a couple, a few were still looking promising, but most had gone back to the shelves. Still, it was Charlie Daley who taught her that these people mattered.

  She, too, had been at Charlie’s retirement party. Lauren had still been engaged to Joe Wheeler at the time and had to beg him to let her go to the party. Joe had been so controlling that he took the night off to go with her, just in case some other cop got any ideas about who she was with.

  Even with Joe hovering by her side all night, it had been a great time. Charlie had been well loved and respected. When he gave his speech, he pointed out Lauren specifically, telling everyone gathered at the Bison Rod and Gun Club, “That kid right there, she’s going to run this department someday.” Lauren had swelled with pride, even though Joe was squeezing her hand so hard she lost feeling in her fingers.

  She hadn’t seen Charlie since. She’d heard rumors he was living with a psychic south of the city in the Town of Lily Dale, famous for its lifestyle of spiritualism. Then she’d heard he was working as a railroad cop. The last word she had on him was th
at he was working in Lackawanna at a cemetery as a maintenance man.

  “I forgot you were a hooker,” Reese commented on their way home. “Is that why I’m always broke?”

  “There ain’t enough money in the world to pay me for servicing you,” she said.

  “Between you and Marilyn, my manhood has been completely diminished today.”

  “Not completely. You managed to get another date with the woman you blew off last night.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Reese poked at the radio, trying to find a good station. “I forgot.”

  They had stopped by the union office on the first floor, at Marilyn’s suggestion, to grab Charlie Daley’s most recent address. They got it, but no phone number. When Joy had run his name through the computer, it showed Daley hadn’t had a valid driver’s license in over five years.

  Reese and Riley had left Joy and Ben behind at headquarters. They had wanted to follow up on the angle of the burner call coming in. Reese was supposed to take Lauren home.

  “I’d like to say I hated every minute of that Vice gig, but it was just the opposite,” Lauren said. “I loved seeing the look on those guys faces when they realized their cars were getting impounded and they were going to jail for six hours.”

  “Six hours? That’s all?”

  “Long enough to get an appearance ticket and for their wives to find out.”

  Lauren heard Reese give a low whistle, then say, “I’d rather stay in jail.”

  She smiled. “Exactly.” More than one had begged to stay behind bars rather than go home to confront their wives.