Inkslingers Ball (A Forensic Handwriting Mystery)

by Sheila Lowe

  Jovanic was still on call that night and his cell phone woke them both at two thirty-three.

  Another homicide, he said. A kid. She could tell from his hesitation how much he dreaded what he was going to find.

  Claudia was left with a heart beating too fast, feeling for the parents whose child needed the ministrations of a homicide detective in the middle of the night. She tossed around in the bed for a while, and when she couldn’t get back to sleep, got up, slipped on her kimono and cinched it with the sash.

  As if drawn by an invisible thread, Claudia padded barefoot across the shadowy landing to Annabelle’s bedroom door. A strong urge to reassure herself that the girl was safe prompted her to turn the knob and enter.

  Annabelle’s bedroom was at the front of the house, facing the ocean. The window blinds were open, the way Annabelle always kept them, even at night, the window ajar so she could listen to the waves at the bottom of the cliff and across the highway. She said the sound helped her sleep.

  Claudia could hear the mellow shushing now as she tiptoed to the bed. She need not have bothered to silence her footsteps. As she came close, she took in the rumpled blanket, the bare pillow where there should have been a tangle of black hair, and her heart thumped harder.

  Annabelle was gone.

  Chapter Nine

  Early Wednesday morning

  “Sir, you need to stop right there, this is a restricted area.”

  The young patrol officer moved toward Jovanic, one hand on his weapon, the other outstretched in a ‘halt’ gesture. Jovanic did not recognize the guy, but from his high-handed attitude, figured him for a rookie who was enjoying his job of controlling the handful of gawkers huddled in robes and jackets a little too much. Older cops in the department referred to officers like this guy as ‘boots’—fresh out of boot camp.

  The kid should have known that someone showing up in a suit at this hour was supposed to be there. He could have been an asshole about it, but Jovanic just moved his suit coat aside to show the badge clipped to his belt and identified himself. “Who’s in charge?”

  Through the semi-darkness he could see the rookie flush bright red as he recorded the detective’s name on his crime scene log. Everyone who came in and out had to go on the log. Jovanic strode past him, then past the black and white parked diagonally, blocking the alleyway in front of Harvey’s Neighborhood Market.

  Located on a small side street, the market was a mere fifty steps east of the sands of Venice Beach. Through the wide front windows, Jovanic could see that it was the kind of neighborhood store where local residents and tourists might stock up on booze, snacks, magazines, cat food; play a video game or two—like an independent 7-Eleven. Inside the store a uniform stood over a man seated on a chair in an aisle. The man was leaning forward, elbows on knees, head in hands.

  Continuing through the alley, he took note of the security-grill windows set in a red brick wall painted with cartoon characters and a friendly Welcome to Harvey’s, we love you. A cheerful contrast to what was awaiting him at the rear of the building.

  A second black and white blocked the small parking lot behind the store, and a third behind that one. Yellow crime scene tape had been anchored to the passenger side spotlight of the first unit and stretched across the lot, ending up wound around a drain spout attached to Harvey’s back wall at the other side.

  Jovanic approached with care, watching where he walked. A blue trash dumpster was jammed between the store’s back wall and a telephone pole inside the taped perimeter. There was a six-foot chain link fence behind the market and the adjoining stores, separating them from the parking lot and terminating at a gate that led onto the beach.

  As he approached, the driver’s door of the rear patrol car opened and a burly uniform exited. His shaved dome gleamed like a bullet in the security light that shone over the lot. Sergeant Marvin Williams, six-five, the color of sable; a voice that boomed as though he were speaking through a megaphone, even when he was supposedly keeping it down. Jovanic had run into him at the tattoo parlor scene, too.

  “Gotta stop meeting like this,” Williams greeted him.

  “Getting to be a bad habit. What’ve you got this time?”

  “Caucasian female, fifteen to eighteen.”

  Jovanic nodded. This much he knew from the phone call that had brought him here. “So, what’s it look like, Marv?”

  “A bloody fucking mess, that’s what. Somebody beat the shit out of her.” The big cop jerked his head at the trash dumpster, whose lid was down. “Body’s in there.”

  The security light was on the parking garage at the north end of the lot, leaving this end shadowy. Using the Maglite he had brought with him, Jovanic scanned the outside of the dumpster, then the ground around their feet and farther out, observing that the concrete and asphalt were surprisingly clean. As far as he could tell, there was no blood on or around the dumpster. He squatted on his heels and shone his light underneath. No blood on the ground, either.

  The big question in his mind was, if a killer needed to get rid of a body, why take the trouble to bring it to a crowded residential neighborhood where it would certainly be found, and relatively quickly? Most killers would have dumped the body in the nearest ditch outside of town. There were probably hundreds of undiscovered corpses in the desert around Southern California.

  Maybe someone wanted to send a message: She’s garbage.

  “Who found her?” Jovanic asked the sergeant.

  “Store owner.” Williams took a notepad from his pocket and checked it. “Khan Khosa. Brought out the trash when he was locking up and there she was. LaRue’s sitting on him inside.”

  “Any wits?”

  “Not so far. Got a couple guys knocking on doors across the alley.”

  “Okay, Sarge, thanks. My partner’s on his way, if you want to go.”

  Williams nodded and strolled back to his unit. Where was Coleman, anyway? Randy had sounded groggy over the phone. He knew better than to drink while on his rotation. If he didn’t show up soon, Jovanic was going to kick his ass all the way downtown and back. Then he mentally kicked his own ass for acting like a geezer, and moved on to the next task.

  Once he had gained a sense of the crime scene it would be his job to call the coroner, and crime scene techs if he needed them. As the lead investigator, the crime scene belonged to him, but the body belonged to the coroner’s office. Nothing could be done with it before the coroner’s investigator arrived; no checking of pockets or rolling the body over and looking underneath.

  Jovanic did a slow 360, taking in his surroundings with a meticulous eye, snapping pictures with his phone. Two stories of condos rose above the gated parking garage comprising the first floor of the building straight across the alley from Harvey’s. Several windows from that building and adjacent ones had direct views onto the area behind the store. Despite the late hour, choosing such a populated area said the killer was brazen. Had a resident chosen to look out of one of those windows at just the right moment, they might have witnessed the body dump.

  Several lights showed behind window blinds. People woken by the officers knocking on doors, no doubt. Jovanic could hear them in his head: “Sorry for the inconvenience, sir, but we’ve got a situation…”

  Some of the residents would feel no concern over a homicide that was not directly connected to them. They were the ones who would complain about being disturbed in the middle of the night. Others would lock themselves back inside their homes with a macabre thrill that something as frightful as murder had come so close. The rest were the curious ones who made up the group now standing on the sidewalk being barked at by the rookie to stand back.

  Pulling on a pair of latex gloves he had brought from his vehicle, Jovanic prepared to raise the dumpster lid. In his twenty-three years of being a police officer, fifteen of them as a h
omicide detective, he had never quite become hardened to the first sight of the havoc humans wreak on one another. He told himself that when he did, it would be time to quit the job.

  Breathing through his mouth to avoid the stink of rotting food and God knew what else might be in the bin with the body, Jovanic propped open the dumpster lid with a stick he found leaning against it for the purpose.

  It was always worse when they were young.

  The victim—what had once been a real girl with a real future—now nothing more than an empty shell—lay on her right side about a foot below the rim. She had been dumped on top of a pile of bulging trash bags, some ripped open by scavengers who had left decaying waste spewing from them. Thanks to the cool nighttime temperature, the flies had not yet arrived. Still, the faint odor of death was already in his nostrils.

  She was small and slender, roughly Annabelle Giordano’s size and age. The unwelcome thought pushed its way through. Jovanic had never aspired to be a parent, but the past summer spent with Claudia and her young charge had awakened something in him, if not a desire for fatherhood, an awareness that he had never had before. He had learned to see past Annabelle’s armored exterior to the defenseless child inside.

  And now, this girl in the dumpster, who had been somebody’s daughter, stared through him with vacant blue eyes under half-closed lids, and made him think of Annabelle.

  Her left arm covered her head as if she were trying to protect herself. But Jovanic was certain that by the time she had arrived in the alley, even a tank could not have protected her.

  He ran the Maglite over the young victim’s face, noting the tiny red dots of petechial hemorrhaging in what he could see of the sclera and the skin below the eyes. That pointed to probable strangulation. The corneas had already started to dry and cloud over, which told him she had been dead for at least two hours.

  It would not be a stretch to assume that the trails of black mascara on the pallid flesh had run with tears before smudging into the bruises on her face. He pictured her crying, begging her assailant to stop hurting her. The smeared blood around the swollen mouth was still pretty fresh. Broken front teeth showed through parted lips. A deep gash on her cheek could have been made by a blow from a heavy ring. Whoever had done this to her had plenty of physical strength.

  The left arm and hand also bore bruises. Broken fingernails—defensive wounds sustained while trying uselessly to fend off the killer’s savage blows. The right arm was tucked under her, but Jovanic guessed it would reveal more bruises and abrasions.

  He knew he should not touch the body before the arrival of the coroner’s investigator, but he was impatient for answers, impatient to find the killer and get justice for his victim. Pushing down a rush of anger he reached out a gloved finger and carefully lifted a strand of blonde hair off her neck. There were no ligature marks, but three long red impressions had spread out behind her ear, ending in deep scores. The scores were the fingernail marks of a killer who had used his bare hands to choke the life out of the girl. If they got to the body soon enough, the coroner might be able to lift prints from her skin. If so, and the prints were in one of the databases, the case might be solved fast and easy.

  Who had killed her? A drug-crazed boyfriend? A drunken father or stepfather? A pimp? He did not think a stranger had randomly chosen her off the street. It was unlikely that a stranger would have taken the time to place her in the dumpster.

  Her clothing appeared to be of decent quality. The faded denim jeans, black tube top and tennis shoes on otherwise bare feet might not be what a hooker would wear on the street to draw attention, but despite her obvious youth, Jovanic’s instincts told him she might be a working girl. If his instincts were correct, she would not be the youngest hooker he had encountered.

  Using his iPhone, he took close-up photos of her face. Assuming they got a line on who she was, he would need them for initial identification. Having to show a photo of a dead child to her parents had to be the worst duty of his job.

  There would be more evidence for the body to divulge, but that would wait for the autopsy. More urgent was the need to question the witness who had made the gruesome discovery. He removed the stick, closed the dumpster lid and started toward the front of the store.

  The sudden sound of muffled music stopped him mid-stride.

  Making a quick about-face, Jovanic ran back to the dumpster and raised the lid with a still-gloved hand. The sound emanated from deep inside the bin. A tantalizingly familiar cell phone ringtone that died as abruptly as it had started. Either the call had gone to voicemail or the caller had given up and clicked off. He was forced to wait for the coroner’s work to be done and the body removed before the phone could be retrieved.

  Khan Khosa, a Pakistani immigrant, informed Jovanic that he had purchased Harvey’s Neighborhood Market from Harvey himself some two years earlier. He was a slender brown man in his forties, puffing hard on a Dunhill, the half-empty box next to an ashtray brimming with butts smoked down to the filter. Jovanic, a reformed smoker himself who now favored toothpicks, approached the owner and Officer Ron LaRue, with a sudden desire to join Khosa in a smoke to deaden the scent of death that had lodged in his nose.

  After instructing LaRue to wait outside and let him know when the crime scene people arrived, Jovanic pulled up a chair next to the shaken owner.

  “Look at my hands.” Khosa held them up so Jovanic could see. “I cannot stop them from trembling. It has already been more than two hours, but they will not stop.”

  “You had a big shock,” Jovanic said. “Why don’t you tell me what happened.”

  “All right.” Khosa gulped a deep breath and let it out on a big sigh. “I had already locked the front door of the shop and finished sweeping in the back—it is very important to me to leave everything clean and tidy, inside and out before I go home…” He stopped abruptly.

  “I noticed how well-maintained your store is out back,” Jovanic encouraged him.

  “Yes. I wash down the concrete nearly every night. This is a respectable neighborhood. Even though we have the drug rehabilitation clinic on the next block, they have never given any trouble. I cannot understand why someone would do such a terrible thing. To kill this young woman, and to put her into my rubbish bin! Why me?”

  Khosa pushed away a thick lock of coarse black hair that had fallen onto his forehead. “When I opened the top of the bin, there she was, staring straight at me.” He gave a violent shudder. “I dropped the top of the bin and to tell you all the truth, Detective, and I am sorry to have to say this, but I very nearly tossed my cookies.”

  Jovanic suppressed a smile at the euphemism. “About what time was this, Mr. Khosa?”

  “I close the shop at eleven o’clock. Usually, it takes about an hour to do the clearing of everything up. Tonight, though, after I swept up behind the shop I came back inside to do some paperwork on the computer. My wife does not like me to bring work home, but these accounts must be taken care of or there will be no shop. Do you have a wife, Detective?”

  “No,” Jovanic said truthfully, although having noticed signs of what he hoped was a thaw in Claudia’s commitment-phobia, he had begun to harbor a hope that his marital status might someday change.

  Khan Khosa nodded sagely. “Ah, well, perhaps you are lucky. I adore my beautiful wife, but sometimes she can be, well, a little difficult. When we got married, ten years ago…”

  Jovanic, who hadn’t gotten enough sleep before being woken by the phone, felt himself zoning out at the ancient history. He let the man ramble for a moment before breaking in. “You were going to tell me what time you went out back.”

  The store owner slapped his forehead. “I am so sorry, Detective. Forgive me. It was one-fifty-seven.”

  “That’s very specific, sir. How can you be so precise?”

  “I looked at the clock on the computer
before I switched it off. I wanted to see how late I had stayed, and how much explaining I would have to do to my wife. Even though it is a good neighborhood, she worries about me working late at night. And now, after tonight, she will be worrying even more.”

  “Did Officer LaRue give you a chance to call your wife and let her know you would be staying even later?”

  “Oh, no, no, no. I sent her a text message. Believe me, Detective Jovanic, if I woke her up, my life would not be worth any more than that poor girl out there.”

  Jovanic gave a brief understanding smile. “Did you hear anything unusual at any time last night?”

  “Cars pass by all of the time. A lot of people live around here. Youngsters come into the shop after school and try to steal from me. I always catch them. But I did not hear anyone at my rubbish bin, I assure you.”

  “Does anyone else besides you use the trash dumpster or the area behind the store?”

  Khosa’s face lit up. “Dumpster Dave!”

  “Dumpster Dave?”

  “Yes. I did not think of him until this very moment. He is a homeless person, quite harmless I believe, but he looks in all the rubbish bins for items to recycle, sometimes late at night. I try to shoo him away, but I know that he sometimes sleeps behind the fence in back. It hides him from the other street people.” Jovanic remembered the torn open trash bags under the body, possibly the work of Dumpster Dave. He would have his partner check around for the homeless guy and ask whether he had seen or heard anything.

  Accepting that he was unlikely to get anything else of importance from the store owner at the moment, Jovanic asked Khan Khosa to write out a statement and released him. At least Khosa had been able to supply a loose time frame for the body dump: after eleven o’clock, the store’s closing time, and before one-fifty-seven, when he took the trash out back.