The Maude Rogers Murder Collection

by Linda L. Dunlap

  Oh Jeez, was all she could think. Those scumbags in CID knew there was trouble here. That’s why I pulled this duty!

  The apartment was small, just one and two bedroom kitchenettes in the whole building. At one time it was swanky before road construction cut the area off from the downtown train station and contiguous cross streets. Afterwards the once decent streets became potholed and almost impossible to drive. Now only beaters or two wheelers made the trip to the front doors of the building. A bus two blocks away came and went three times a day, but ask anyone who lived there about public service. They’d tell you how thinly it was spread throughout the hood.

  The room that greeted Maude with its unholy smell was a twelve by twelve kitchenette that hosted a small bathroom, closet and sleeping area along its periphery. Air conditioning was available, but the thermostat had been turned off, producing a stiflingly hot apartment. In retrospect, she figured the temperature was intentional—bodies rotted quicker in heat.

  A thirteen-inch television sat on an orange crate against the wall near the solitary chair. The small, apartment-sized stove and kitchen counter top were covered in the detritus from take-out meals. Cockroaches crawled with abandon on empty food cartons and soda cups. The sink-full of dirty dishes was the piece d resistance of poor housekeeping. Aiming her weapon at the bathroom, Maude lightly kicked, and the door flew open. The soft impact of her shoe against wood revealed a filthy, four-by-four shower, with an adjacent commode. A tiny lavatory overcrowded the room leaving little space for a man or woman to stand.

  She stepped away from the bathroom and moved toward the single bed where the dead thing was lying, the sound of flies’ buzzing growing louder as she closed in. Maude knew instinctively that the covered corpse on the bed had once been a living, human being.

  Closer to the bed the smell was even more cloying. Usually at those scenes someone would pass around a jar of chest rub. Strong menthol rubbed under the nose was always a welcome cover for the smell of death.

  Maude pulled rubber gloves from the pouch on her belt and went back to the bathroom. She removed a few squares of toilet paper from the roll, careful to touch nothing else. A few drops of water on the tissue made it stick to her nose, and after applying it, she began breathing through her mouth. Rotted flesh smells always made her nauseous in confined spaces.

  The picture of Frank might be all that she needed. If he was the person in the bed, everyone’s job would be a lot less complicated. Using her gloved hands to avoid compromising the crime scene, Maude gently took hold of the top corner of the red and white bed coverlet, and pulled it all the way back, exposing the head and torso of the victim. She almost groaned. A maggot-filled hole was where the mouth should have been.

  The body appeared to be a fully developed, adult human female, whose breasts had been hacked off, leaving two ragged holes in the chest. Other insects moved slowly back and forth feeding on the decaying flesh. Mature flies, like those that had been buzzing since Maude opened the front door covered parts of the body. The lightweight coverlet was a poor barrier between the victim and the noisy insects.

  While trying to get her breath, and stop gagging, Maude noted the dried blood on the floor directly under the body. The blood appeared to have soaked through the thin mattress and dripped onto the floor. Withdrawing her cell phone from her pocket, she dialed her boss, informing him of what she had found.

  “Lieutenant,” she said hesitantly, “the warrant serve for CID is not happening today. I went to the address, and found the door open. There’s a dead female here, who appears to have been tortured and mutilated. Been here a while. Better send out the crew and a guy who knows about flies.”

  A dozen expletives flew from James Patterson’s mouth. “I was getting ready to go home! Just one Friday I’d like to set out on my patio with a cold beer in hand as I watched the sunset with my wife.”

  Maude chuckled. The boss had thought that by sending her with an arrest warrant for a petty drug dealer he could forget about keeping her busy for the rest of the day. For his part, he would have had the CID lieutenant in his debt, never a bad place to be. She probably should have left it alone, but what the heck.

  “Yeah, Boss, I guess you’ll need to show up since we’re working shorthanded during the holiday,” Maude drawled, wishing for a cigarette to complete the satisfaction of screwing him over.

  “I’ll be there detective,” Patterson grumbled. “CID boys will show up as a team to secure the building. We’ll need to knock on doors and find witnesses. You know the drill.”

  “Small chance of that,” she cautioned. “This place has gone into lock-down in the last fifteen minutes.”

  What she really wanted was to get out of the room. A few steps into the hallway brought a measure of relief from the stench, giving her lungs a chance to breathe in some non-putrefied air. She yearned for nicotine, but knew there was no time to smoke.

  While waiting for the team to arrive Maude had to protect the scene with her person. No leaving until she was relieved. Too many cases were lost in court because of a break in the evidence chain. Her small notebook was in the top pocket of her shirt, and she recorded the facts of the find, noting where the body lay, and how she had observed it, while the details of the room were still fresh in her mind. Always you wrote the facts, she thought, just the facts, no emotional response must be recorded in the book. She had stacks of those used books back home in file boxes. Just like tax forms, you have to keep them forever.

  The traffic cop who arrived soon after was breathless from running up the stairs, and Maude knew the forensic team with the cameras was close behind. Still she waited. Her experience told her that the mistakes she made then would be fodder for a hungry defense attorney later.

  Besides, leaning against the door was restful to her back. Muscles down her vertebrae were tense from late night drinking and the five floor climb. She almost regretted the interruption when CID arrived with their bags and cameras. Right behind them, breathing hard and coughing on the last step, was Lieutenant James Patterson.

  “Okay, Detective,” he began speaking as he walked. “Where’s the body? Is this the place? Has anyone been here and left the room?”

  “No sir, no one has been here at all except for me,” she said, watching as the techs from the lab dusted the front door for prints. In a moment, the first of several gloved, county-employed photographers entered the door. “The body is on the bed,” she continued. “I touched the doorknob barehanded, but gloved up to pull back the coverlet, and to turn on the bathroom faucet. I never entered the kitchen.”

  Maude accompanied Patterson inside the small alcove that made up the bedroom, nodding at the techs that stood back waiting.

  “It’s pretty bad, Boss,” she warned.

  Once inside Maude walked straight to the bed and found it as she’d left it. She checked her gloves to make sure they were sound, nodding again at the techs standing off to the side waiting for the police to do the look-see before they got involved. All those standing in the vicinity of the body were assaulted by the over-ripe smell of human flesh decomposing in a hot room. The flies continued their buzzing, lighting on the live bodies gathered around the bed. An investigator from the crime lab brought out a large container of chest rub, and passed it around, sharing with anyone who wanted the cover-up.

  Maude told her story as it had happened, how she searched for Frank Almondera to serve him with the failure-to-appear warrant, and not finding him, she came upon the crime scene and its grisly offering. After a bit, Patterson released her and some of the uniformed officers to knock on doors for witnesses. Those cops were glad to help if it meant getting away from the body.

  The need for a cigarette was overpowering by the time she stepped outside the room and lit one. To hell with policy, she thought. It’s a hit building. They cook drugs here over an open flame.

  After the cigarette burned down, she used her fingers to extinguish the butt. She was reluctant to see it go. She put the cold butt in
her pocket to keep from contaminating the scene and gave a nod to the nearest traffic cop. Readying her notebook, Maude and the cop walked a few paces down the fifth floor corridor looking for someone who might have seen something happening in room 507. The other street cops were going door to door throughout the building, looking for anyone who recently might have observed strangers using the stairs. Never could tell what someone might remember.

  The first door she tapped on was labeled 504, and it was directly across from the crime scene. Maude knocked on it with authority.

  “Open up, Police,” she yelled for all to hear.

  After two more tries she gave up and wrote down the time and door number in her book. She would be expected to keep an accurate account of the time spent searching for witnesses. Her job was sometimes more record keeping than action, even on days when there were crimes committed and cases to be solved. The end of the story was often played out in the courts where the cops presented written accounts as vital testimony.

  She thought about her partner, one of the most accurate record keepers she had ever worked with, and wondered how he was doing. The boss had given him a few days off after the warehouse shooting. He was really messed up about nearly getting killed. The last she heard he was taking a short vacation with his wife and kids, headed to the beach and the clear, blue, water of Mexico. She hoped he was okay, and would be back, but it was doubtful. His wife had been nagging him to quit, and go back to work in her daddy’s company. The same old story, Maude had heard it a few times before, only this time it might just happen. There’s nothing like a near-death experience to wake a man up and make him realize where his treasures lie. She was thinking about that when she and the street cop got to 509, the apartment that was catty-cornered across the hall from the murder room.

  “Detective Rogers, Madison Police Department,” she shouted loudly. “I need to talk to you!” Her fists hurt from previously pounding on hard wood. She touched the door labeled 509 and the pressure of her knuckles edged the door inward. It was not only unlocked, it had been left partly open. When she pushed the knob, the door swung open by itself on oiled hinges, revealing a duplicate apartment to the crime scene. A small room with the obligatory kitchen and hard chair were visible through the door.

  “Oh no,” she complained to the uniformed officer, although the remark was mostly to herself. Maude’s bad feeling had just gotten worse. The air in the room was as odorous as the other and all her senses were on alert. The buzzing of a different family of flies filled the small apartment, moving together in groups, as though they were a solid mass.

  The detective’s job in homicide, and a long retirement afterward were Maude’s career goals. She never cared for upward movement in the department, and even though there was the bias in the way women were treated on the force, she lived for what she did on the job. The thrill of the catch was what she loved. Admittedly, some of her cases smelled worse than rotten fish. It was at those times true dedication to the job made a cop voluntarily enter a place of horror.

  The door to the bathroom was ajar as if the last person who departed had been too hurried to close it. There was nothing in the room other than the usual furnishings. Maude gently closed the door and trod carefully lightly away from the door toward the sleeping area. She trained her weapon upon on the bed where a large lump lay covered by an identical coverlet to the one across the hall.

  Struck by the unusual circumstances of the coverlets, Maude held off pulling the fabric back from the bed, taking time to look the room over. She dreaded the possibility of another crime scene, but she knew the elements were there. On the floor in front of the bed lay a white bathrobe, the kind hotels and cruise ships give to VIP customers. It was smeared with blood on one side. Maude’s guts roiled, the dread in her a stimulus for nausea.

  There was a minute possibility that under the coverlet lay a sleeping person, one who would rise up with indignation at being disturbed by strangers in the room. Maude hoped that was the case, but it was not to be. She borrowed a fresh pair of latex gloves from the assisting officer and pulled the coverlet back, exposing a dead body. A carbon copy in its mutilated state, the body lay decomposing like the victim in 507. Both breasts had been hacked off and the raw flesh grayed and shriveled with the passing of time. Maggots were present in the second victim also, an indication that the time of the murder had coincided with the first. The mouth and chest were the feeding ground for the pale, voracious, flesh eaters.

  The blood on the victim’s face, neck and chest had sourced from a large slash wound in her left temple near the carotid artery, possibly the cause of death. The extra damage inflicted on the woman was no doubt entertainment for a demented killer who found pleasure in torture. The second murder appeared in its grisly reproduction to be the work of the same person or persons who killed the woman in 507. .

  Maude took out her phone to make the call across the hall. She stayed in the room instead of leaving in order to secure the scene. After she dialed the lieutenant’s number, the phone rang several times before he finally answered.

  “Patterson here,” he said brusquely.

  She was silent for a minute, not quite sure how to tell her boss that his evening away from home had just been lengthened.

  “Uh, Boss, you need to come across the hall to Apartment 509,” she said through the crackling of phone static. The reception was poor, but it was better than yelling through the door.

  “What do you need?” He impatiently asked. “I’m busy over here.”

  “Trust me, Boss, you need to come over here,” she said again.

  “Oh alright, I’ll be there in a minute,” Patterson growled, disconnecting the phone.

  Maude stayed near the door with the street cop, waiting for her supervisor. With knees ready to buckle from the strain of the long day she waited for him to arrive. When the door opened she gave him the look, the one that said, “We’ve been screwed”.

  “Maude, what do you want?” Patterson asked loudly. The increased volume of his voice was an indication of his frustration. She could tell he was ready to leave, to finish up the day.

  “In the bed, Boss, go check the bed,” she wearily insisted. Maude stayed where she was, delaying the necessity to look one more time. The breasts’ removal touched a nerve within her because of the violence and the obvious hatred from the killer.

  The commission of such an act in room 507 might have been a trip into insanity for the killer, but a replay of the horror in room 509 revealed a need to shock and horrify all who came to observe. The killer had thrown down the gauntlet and he alone knew where he would strike next. A buzz of worry was beginning in her. They had to find the killer before he murdered again.

  She knew she could put it off no longer and stepped into the sleeping area alongside her lieutenant. Surprisingly, he was calm and observant, his language without expletives.

  “Did you touch anything Maude?” he asked.

  “No sir, just the coverlet-with gloves,” she added. He knew she hadn’t but it was his way to ask.

  “That’s good. I’m sending this officer across the hall to get a team and I want them to split up and get this room photographed and printed chop-chop,” he ordered, indicating the street cop who was with Maude.

  Later, after the noise was over, and the extra personnel had gone, the coroner showed up. His findings were that both young women were probably killed by the same person or persons. He stated that there were too many possible causes of deaths to determine without autopsy, but both victims appeared to have been dead for several days. His information was a repeat of the words Maude had already used. Only the insides of the bodies would show for certain how they had died. Her personal wish was that it had been quick, before the mutilation started.

  The large amount of blood at the scene gave the coroner reason to believe the women’s breasts had been removed while they were still alive. His immediate speculation was that the breast mutilation was done by a gardener’s tool or other roughly
serrated blade resembling a small saw. The flesh with the nipples attached was not found. No one wanted to voice the word, trophies.

  As an afterthought, the coroner ventured a more exact time of death, based upon the decay of the bodies, the bloating, and the presence of both maggots and flies. His best approximation was the victims were killed about six days earlier. That estimation allowed for generations of flies to reproduce. Due to the large number of the insects in the rooms, the coroner believed at least one or more generations had already hatched. Samples of the maggots were taken to determine if they were the same type of fly larvae in each victim.

  Maude was weary. Her wristwatch hands were sitting on nine o’clock and the streets outside were already dark. There was little activity in the building. The extra officers who went door-to-door had found no one who saw or heard anything. The responses were not unexpected. Seldom did anyone ‘see anything’ if it meant telling it to the police.

  The crime scene techs had photographed both apartments, taking them apart to capture any prints, blood or body fluids on film. The bodies had been removed and transported to the coroner’s office where autopsies would be performed. Blood on the carpet was scraped and put into containers for testing at the lab, and the victims had been photographed by two different lab techs. Both women had fingers that were broken in different places, but no determination could be made about those injuries. The tips were printed, and Maude was hoping for an identification of the victims before the night was over.

  She had done her part by looking for residents to question. Sometimes comparing the answers given by potential witnesses gave a cop a lead. Not this time though. The lack of response to door-knocking showed her a thing or two. Some of the people were scared, and they weren’t talking. Thinking they might come around was a pipe dream.