I Am Quinn

by McGarvey Black

  She was about to call 911 when one of her other tenants from downstairs, Mr. Jenkins, walked in through the open apartment door.

  ‘What’s going on here?’ he asked ‘It reeks out here like a landfill on a hot Sunday in August.’

  ‘Someone died,’ the landlady said flatly. ‘The woman who lived here committed suicide.’

  ‘Quinn? She’s dead?’ he said. ‘She always smiled at me when she was getting her mail. Sometimes we’d talk for a few minutes about the weather or the news. She told me she was getting divorced. Where is she?’

  Ronny cocked his head towards the bedroom door.

  With that, the old man walked towards it.

  ‘I wouldn’t go in there if I were you, Mr. Jenkins,’ the landlady called out.

  ‘I want to see her,’ said the old man. ‘I want to say goodbye.’

  A minute later he came back ashen and with tears in his eyes.

  ‘I straightened her arms out so she’d be more comfortable and covered her up with a blanket so she would be warm,’ he said. ‘She used to say she was always cold in this place.’

  It was time. The landlady punched 911 into her phone while she said a little prayer for Quinn Roberts’ soul.

  Chapter 2

  Balancing a coffee in one hand and a bacon, egg and cheese in the other, fifty-one-year-old Detective John McQuillan, known around the station as ‘McQ’, nearly had a car accident when the dispatcher’s announcement crackled over his car radio. At first, he thought it was only a false alarm – another cat up a tree – until he heard that one word. Suicide.

  ‘Call from The Glades; female, aged forty-four; landlord ID; possible suicide,’ said the female voice.

  He took a few sips of his tasteless, lukewarm coffee and devoured the remainder of the greasy sandwich. He needed to soak up all the beer he’d consumed the night before at his brother’s fiftieth. The last round had been his idea and a colossal mistake and now he was paying for it. The taste of the salty meat combined with the scrambled and cheddar sent calming and happy signals to his brain, and he sighed with relief.

  Five minutes later, belly full, McQuillan put the flashing light on top of his unmarked car and headed to The Glades, the high-end section of Newbridge and usually the quietest part of town. Nothing happened in that neighborhood, good or bad, it was painfully, peacefully dull. Most of the big old Victorian homes in the area had been converted into two- and three-family rental apartments inhabited mainly by professionals who worked downtown or over in Rochester. The detective steered his vehicle up Brookside Drive and stopped in front of #1404.

  An empty black and white SUV with its light bar on top still flashing sat parked across the street. The front door of the police car was ajar and already attracting a crowd. A middle-aged, heavy-set woman wearing oversized glasses waved her arms frantically. Her face was almost as red as her Flaming Hot Cheetos-colored hair. Visible tear tracks mixed with mascara streaked down her cheeks.

  ‘Quinn’s dead,’ shouted the redhead.

  ‘Are you the person who called?’ said McQuillan to the agitated woman.

  ‘It was the landlady who called. I’m Quinn’s friend,’ she sobbed. ‘She’s dead. I can’t believe it. I drove over here from Avon. I knew something was wrong.’

  ‘Why did you think that?’

  ‘A couple of months ago, Quinn told me she wanted to kill herself. When she didn’t call me back this week, I got worried,’ she said, her voice catching. ‘The landlady said there were hundreds of pills on the floor around her body.’

  ‘Did Ms. Roberts use drugs?’

  ‘Quinn wasn’t into that. Her drug of choice was margaritas,’ said Viv, sniffling. ‘The last time we talked, she was better, but when I didn’t hear back from her all week, I got scared. She said once that she wanted to buy a gun.’

  ‘What did she want the gun for?’

  ‘She said she wanted to blow her head off,’ Viv said, crying softly. ‘I thought she was just being a drama queen; she could be like that sometimes. We used to call her the Quinntessa.’

  The detective walked towards the entrance of the building and immediately noticed something was wrong.

  ‘Where’s the goddamn yellow tape?’ he muttered to himself. He pushed open the front door, and the stench hit him hard. It was unmistakable. Death. Inside the foyer, civilians swarmed like ants: upstairs, downstairs, on the stairs. Several older men sidestepped the detective as he ascended the steps.

  ‘Is there a police officer here?’ McQuillan shouted out to no one in particular.

  On the second level, an older woman with platinum blonde hair pinned up on top of her head leaned over the dark wooden railing.

  ‘I own this building,’ she hollered, ‘I’m the one who called. Your other officer is up here.’

  The detective continued wearily up the creaky steps.

  ‘It’s so sad. That poor woman,’ the landlady wailed as the detective got closer. ‘I’ll never be able to rent this apartment when people find out someone killed herself in here.’

  McQuillan reached the top step out of breath and promised himself he’d reinstate his expired gym membership.

  ‘It’s going to take me weeks to get this place cleaned up,’ said the landlady as she pushed open the front door of Quinn Roberts’ apartment. ‘I don’t know how I’m going to get that smell out of here.’

  Chapter 3

  Three middle-aged men deep in animated conversation barely noticed McQuillan when he entered the vestibule. Officer Yancy stood a few feet behind them taking a statement from a white-haired man.

  ‘What the hell is going on here, Yancy?’ said McQuillan angrily as he pulled the young cop aside. ‘Who are all these civilians and why are they in the middle of my crime scene? It’s like Grand Central Station at rush hour in here. And, where’s the fucking barricade tape?’

  ‘I thought I had a roll in my trunk, but I guess I didn’t. I’ve been trying to get everyone out, McQ but…’ Yancy started.

  Out of the corner of his eye, McQuillan saw a dog dart through the living room, sniffing and poking its nose into every crevice.

  ‘This is an active crime scene, you idiot,’ the detective barked, unconcerned that he might be overheard. ‘Why is there a goddamned dog in here?’

  ‘That’s my son’s dog,’ the landlady interjected, pointing to a young guy in painter’s clothes outside the front door. ‘I told him to come over, in case there was a problem.’

  Two additional cops in uniform arrived just as McQuillan addressed the crowd. ‘Anyone not a member of law enforcement, leave the building immediately.’

  There was some grumbling as one of the uniformed officers herded the nosey neighbors out. When the floor was cleared, McQuillan walked towards the back. The minute he crossed the living room threshold, the stench hit him hard. For the second time that day, his stomach did a flip, and he once again regretted his choices from the night before. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a tiny jar of Vicks VapoRub and put a dab under his nose to camouflage the overpowering smell.

  Nearing the back hall, he braced himself. He’d seen dead bodies before. Some cops took it in their stride, ‘corpses were part of the job, not a big deal’. For McQuillan, every single time was awful. He was always mindful that the victim wasn’t just a lifeless body. Somebody once loved them. Sometimes they looked like they were only sleeping, but other times it was gut wrenching. It was especially bad if they were young. The condition of a body depended on a couple of things; how long before it was found and the weather. Natural chemical decomposition mixed with heat and humidity made a potent combination. Together, they did terrible things to human flesh.

  He took a deep breath and held it while he turned the knob on the bedroom door and opened it. Scanning the contents of the room, he was forced to inhale again, and the putrid stink made him cough.

  The dead woman was on the floor next to the bed, covered by a white knit blanket. Her shoulder-length black hair cascaded around her face
obscuring most of it. He made a mental note of the position of the body. It struck him as odd. Hundreds of pills and dozens of prescription bottles littered the floor. His nose and twenty-five years on the beat told him she’d been dead for a few days.

  He pulled out his little black book and a pen and drank in the scene. It was an ordinary woman’s bedroom and it was a mess; bottles tipped over, magazines, newspapers and mail scattered about the room. The windows were shut tight, curtains and blinds akimbo. There were photographs in frames, maybe of her kids, in every corner of the room. The top of the white dresser was covered with cosmetics, jewelry, hairbrushes, and other assorted girl junk. Shoes and clothes were strewn across the floor.

  A clear liquid pooled on the wood floor in the corner of the room. McQuillan dipped his finger into it and smelled his hand. The all-encompassing odor already in the room made it difficult for him to tell what it was. He guessed it might be urine. A small pile of vomit lay on the white rug near the body. He wondered if the dead woman puked after she took a handful of pills. Maybe it wasn’t suicide, he thought, it could have been an accidental overdose. He hoped that was what it was, for her family’s sake.

  He needed some fresh air pronto and went back into the living room to fill his lungs. A police tech team was bagging samples while the photographer snapped pictures.

  ‘You called it a suicide,’ McQuillan said to the landlady, who was still standing by the front door.

  ‘Her friend told me my tenant threatened to kill herself,’ said the landlady. ‘That’s the only reason I came over here. I don’t barge in on my tenants. When you pay Joan Hemmerly your rent, you get your privacy.’

  ‘Everything gets labeled and bagged,’ he shouted over the landlady’s shoulder to one of the lab technicians. ‘Make sure you get a sample of that liquid on the floor in the bedroom and the puke on the rug.’

  McQuillan scratched his ears as Yancy and another uniformed cop approached.

  ‘I’ve been doing this a long time,’ he said to the two young cops. ‘This place is hinky. How many people were in here today? Was anything moved?’

  Yancy began to stammer. ‘W-well,’ he said, squirming as he read from his notebook, ‘there were the landlady, her son, the son’s friend, the dog, the victim’s friend, Ms. DeMarco, the downstairs neighbors; a Mr. Jenkins and a Mr. and Mrs. Rubin. Also, a middle-aged couple who lives down the street and three men who live next door stopped in. The mailman came in to deliver mail, but only for a minute.’

  McQuillan felt his blood pressure rise. His head started to ache as if someone had jammed an ice pick in his skull above his right eye.

  ‘See that old guy over there,’ Yancy said, oblivious to the effect his comments were having on the older detective. ‘He might have gone into the bedroom and put a blanket over the victim’s body. He also might have moved her arms a little.’

  McQuillan, mouth open, stared in disbelief at the incompetence of the young officer.

  ‘It seemed like a clear case of suicide, McQ, so I wasn’t that concerned about people being in here,’ said Yancy.

  ‘You weren’t that concerned?’ McQuillan said, his volume increasing. ‘It’s not your fucking job to decide that. Your only job was to secure this goddamn apartment and wait for me.’

  ‘I didn’t think I needed to…’

  ‘It’s a crime scene, Yancy, until I say it isn’t,’ said McQuillan, peering out the window at the flashing police car below. ‘And turn your goddamn lights off when you get out of your car. Half of Monroe County is standing outside because of your vehicle.’

  Yancy’s face turned bright red, and he abruptly turned and left the apartment.

  McQuillan pushed Yancy’s monumental screw-up out of his mind in order to focus on the situation at hand. Given the relative orderliness of the home, the vast number of pills and all the corroborating statements, McQuillan conceded, it looked like a suicide. Still, he had to be sure. Never assume anything, he reminded himself. Assumptions are for amateurs. He checked around for signs of a forced entry and found everything secured.

  An attendant wheeled a gurney through the living room while two other techs prepared to bag the body. The photographer took a few final shots as a red-faced Yancy returned to the scene.

  ‘The first rule of police work,’ McQuillan said, leaning over to the young officer, ‘secure the premises.’ Yancy nodded wearily, tired of McQuillan’s endless lecture. The detective knew the kid was pissed off, but he didn’t care. He wasn’t running a kindergarten, and he couldn’t tolerate stupid, lazy or sloppy. Yancy had been guilty of all three.

  Moving downstairs and out to the front lawn, McQuillan fielded questions from over fifty visibly rattled residents. After the Q&A, he talked to the landlady’s son who told him he had been inside Ms. Roberts’ apartment a few times to fix things. The seasoned cop sized the son up pretty quickly; the kid was strange and not the brightest bulb. Something about Hemmerly made the detective uneasy, but he couldn’t put his finger on what it was.

  Back in the bedroom, Yancy sorted through piles of papers.

  ‘Crack a window,’ said McQuillan as he entered the room. ‘Suicide note?’

  Yancy shook his head.

  ‘Nothing,’ the young cop said as he surveyed the room. ‘Look at all this crap. This lady must have been a hoarder or something.’

  McQuillan took a final pass through the apartment while he analyzed what they had learned about Quinn Roberts. She had been found lying in a sea of multi-colored capsules. She had a history of significant mental health issues, possible bipolar diagnosis, including hospitalisations and threats of killing herself. The conclusion — her death was probably self-inflicted. But if it wasn’t, he was royally screwed. The DA would never take the case to a grand jury once they learned half the neighborhood had been traipsing around an unsecured apartment.

  The dark gray zippered body bag containing Quinn Roberts was wheeled out of the bedroom on the gurney, carried carefully down the stairs and then moved out to the street.

  ‘Look,’ the detective said, turning back to Yancy, who was still licking his wounds, ‘it was most likely a suicide, but you never make decisions based on first impressions. Everything stays on the table until it’s ruled out. If I’ve learned one thing from my two and a half decades on the force, you never know what the surprises are until you’re surprised. Then it’s too late. That’s why you have to do everything by the book. And if you don’t, you’d better CYFA; cover your fucking ass. Did you cover your ass, Yancy?’

  The young officer hung his head in silence.

  ‘Yeah, that’s what I figured,’ said the detective as he walked away.

  Chapter 4

  Viv walked out of the small apartment building, slumped into the front seat of her car and shut the door. Tears flooded into her eyes as she asked herself if she could have done more. Could she have prevented what happened?

  When Quinn first talked about killing herself, Viv and their other friends, Kelly, Margo and Nina went into panic mode. Each woman separately tried to reason with Quinn; they’d cajole or prop her up when she was down. Keeping their friend alive became a full-time job for all of them. Some days Quinn was buoyant and rational. But there were times, as Nina would often say behind her back, ‘Quinn was a train wreck’. The girls did what they could, but when Quinn spiraled downward and became increasingly needy, their own lives took precedence and they pulled away. It might have been out of self-preservation, or maybe they got tired of being her keeper. When Quinn moved forty minutes away to Newbridge, her ‘friends’ rarely saw her and kept in touch only by phone. Over time, even the supportive calls diminished.

  Viv blew her nose and punched Kelly’s number into her phone. She started to sob again when her friend answered, spitting out a string of nonsensical words.

  ‘Slow down, Viv, I don’t understand a word you’re saying,’ Kelly said. ‘Start over. What happened?’

  ‘It’s so awful,’ said Viv, hyperventilating. ‘Quinn’
s dead. She overdosed on pills.’

  ‘Are you sure? Did you see her?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ Viv said. ‘The landlady went into her room. She found Quinn on the floor in the bedroom. I couldn’t go in, I just couldn’t.’

  ‘She finally did it,’ said Kelly. ‘She always said she would. Her poor kids. Do they know?’

  ‘No,’ said Viv. ‘I mean, I don’t think so, it just happened. We should have done more.’

  ‘What could we have done, Viv?’ said Kelly, her voice getting louder. ‘We called her when we could. You know as well as I do that she didn’t listen to any of us. She was on a self-destructive path. We did everything friends could do.’

  ‘The last time I talked to her was three weeks ago,’ said Viv, sniffling. ‘Her divorce was moving forward, and she was in a pretty good mood. She even called Alec a “dickhead” so I knew she was feeling stronger. Her lawyer was finalizing the financial terms, and she said they were close to wrapping things up.’

  ‘She told me that too,’ said Kelly. ‘She wanted to fix up her new apartment and take some classes at the community center. She said she wanted to learn how to blow glass.’

  The last comment made both girls giggle for a second.

  ‘Quinn could be so random,’ said Viv, laughing and crying at the same time. ‘I really thought she had turned a corner. We should have paid more attention to her.’

  ‘Are you forgetting all the fire drills she put us through?’ said Kelly. ‘Let’s be honest, Quinn had become a huge burden for all of us. We have our own families to take care of. Don’t forget, we’re the ones who got her to go to a therapist and get on medication. And we helped her move into two other apartments before this one. Something was always wrong with Quinn. We were good friends to her. I have no guilt.’

  ‘Remember that time we all met for lunch and she told us her pills were making her fat? She said they made her feel like crap and announced she was going off them for good,’ Viv said.