by Dan Ames
“What are you talking about?” Terry looked at him with scorn. “Let’s see if we can make our way down there. Coroner is on the way.”
“Who found him?” Majewski asked as he followed Terry to the end of the footbridge, off the walking path, and into the weeds that led down to the small channel. It was nothing more than a tiny inlet from the river. There was no current and the water was stagnant.
Clearly, the corpse hadn’t been washed in here by the river. Majewski figured someone dropped him from the bridge, in fact, probably from the exact spot where they’d just been standing.
“Hope this isn’t poison ivy,” he said as he tore through some thick weeds.
“Shit, this is a mess,” Terry said ahead of him. Majewski caught up to the other cop and they both looked at the remains of the body before them.
Majewski could just make out the vague shape of a torso, but the rest of it reminded him of the meat displays at Eastern Market. One chunk was definitely a leg, he could tell that by the high top basketball shoe it was still wearing.
“When someone tears a body up like that, doesn’t it usually indicate they knew them?” Majewski asked his fellow cop. “The more violence inflicted on the body, the greater the likelihood the killer knew them personally?”
Even in the dark, Majewski could see Terry’s raised eyebrow.
“What, you been watchin’ Silence of the Lambs again?”
Majewski felt his face go red with heat, but he knew he was right. He had read that somewhere.
The body shifted in the water and Majewski gave an involuntary start until he realized Terry had merely poked it with the end of his baton.
“Scared you, didn’t I?” Terry said, without turning around.
Majewski didn’t answer but instead looked down at the body. The part that seemed to indicate a face had turned slightly up from the water and he couldn’t stop looking at him. Something tugged at his brain, an image he couldn’t quite place.
The chunk of flesh was definitely part of a face. Majewski could tell that because he could make out the shape of an eye.
And then it hit him.
“Jesus, I might know who this is,” he said, as his mind ran through the catalog of faces every cop had stored in his brain. Witnesses, confidential informants, thugs, suspects. The parade of personalities flashed through Majewski’s mind. And then suddenly, one separated itself from the others.
“Flowers,” he said. No, that wasn’t quite right. “He’s a homeless guy. Used to be a big-shot lawyer.”
“His lawyerin’ days are over,” Terry said.
“Flores!” Majewski exclaimed. “Angelo Flores. A homeless guy I rousted a few times.”
“Are you ass clowns done fucking up my crime scene?” a voice called from the bridge overhead.
They both looked up and recognized the medical examiner so they made their way back up to where the forensics team was assembling their gear to retrieve the body.
The coroner was a slim white man with big glasses. He looked like a high school librarian and when he saw Terry’s massive body emerge from the dense brush, he suddenly realized who he had just cursed. And just as suddenly, he got very busy.
Majewski shared his hunch on the identity of the corpse with the coroner, as well as the pair of detectives who eventually made their way to the scene. Majewski was quite proud of himself. He didn’t plan on being a patrolman his whole life, and little things like this were noted in his file. In fact, he made a mental note to go home and right down his contribution to the case so he could whip it out during his next performance evaluation.
He spent the next hour watching the body being removed from the water and eventually hauled away.
It wasn’t exactly how he had anticipated his shift ending, but that was the great thing about being a cop. You never knew what the hell your day was going to turn out to be.
He thought again of the Jaws movie.
“He’s gone under the boat,” Majewski said to the silence in his squad car. “He’s gone under the boat!”
Chapter Twenty-Three
“You’re not making me happy,” Ellen said.
We were standing outside of Barry Kemp’s house. There were at least four squad cars, as well as the coroner’s vehicle, and a news van had appeared on the scene. Ellen and I were leaning against her squad car, using it to block the view of the news people.
“Hey, it’s not my fault. He was dead when I got here,” I said.
“Why didn’t you tell me he called you?”
“He said he wanted to hire me, not that he had any new evidence,” I said, which wasn’t exactly a lie. He said he had information, not evidence. Big difference.
“Run through it for me again,” she said. I stopped myself from rolling my eyes. My sister wanted me to tell her the story again to see if there were any kind of inconsistencies, like I was an amateur.
She was just doing her job, though, so I told her the same story, start to finish, without adding any new details, mostly because there wasn’t anything else.
“Right,” she said, with about as much enthusiasm as a bald man realizing he’s having a mid-life crisis.
Ellen went over and joined a group of cops and a detective who had already questioned me. They had my statement and I was free to go, but I wanted to hang around. Something was terribly wrong with this whole scenario and as it continued to nag at me, I found myself not wanting to drive back to Grosse Pointe. I was missing something and it was staring me right in the face.
Ellen walked back over to me.
“Do me a favor,” she said. “Leave.”
So much for waiting for inspiration to strike.
“I understand, those guys over there are threatened by me,” I said. “Happens all the time, so many men with low self-esteem. It’s an epidemic.”
Ellen had already started walking back into Kemp’s house and ignored me.
Because of her oh-so-subtle suggestion, I left too and went back to my car, got inside and turned the key. I sat there for a minute or two, still trying to figure out what was nagging me.
My phone buzzed and I figured it was Anna wondering where the hell I was. I hadn’t really had time to tell her what was going on and now it had gotten late. She probably wouldn’t be too happy when she heard I was in Royal Oak again and I didn’t plan on telling her I’d stumbled into a murder scene.
With a tap of the thumb I unlocked my screen and the phone came to life. I saw that I had several new text messages. I clicked on the messages icon and suddenly I was looking at a woman’s back, bent over in front of me, with her buttocks being actively penetrated by someone’s member, not mine.
Porn?
What the hell?
My first thought was that I’d been spammed, but how had they gotten my phone number?
I looked again at the photo. It was clearly shot from the man’s point of view and I realized he was the one who’d snapped the photo.
My next thought was panic. Porn on my phone! I suddenly felt like a seventh-grader who’d been caught hiding a Penthouse under his mattress.
Who the hell had sent this to me? It had no return contact, just a jumble of numbers.
Another message from the same sender was waiting for me. I groaned inwardly and clicked on it, actually holding the phone farther away from me, as if the image would be less offensive.
Porn again, this time the woman was on her back with her legs spread, but her face was covered.
“Jesus,” I said. A million thoughts raced through my mind.
The third and final message from the sender awaited me. I let out a deep breath and tapped.
Oral sex, this time, which at least showed the woman’s face.
A little gasp from my mouth echoed in the car.
It was Judy Platkin.
Chapter Twenty-Four
My first instinct was to delete the pornographic photos. I mean, come on, as a husband and a Dad the last thing I want to be doing is carrying around a bunch
of smut on my phone.
Call me old-fashioned, but old habits die hard.
However, it was now evidence. Evidence of what, was the question. Evidence that Judy Platkin was into porn? Because that’s what it looked like to me. She knew she was being filmed. In the oral shot, her eyes were locked onto the photographer. This was no hidden camera – unless the guy was wearing a spy camera around his chest, which seemed unlikely.
This felt like one of those porn cases that usually happens with celebrities. A consensual sex tape that is eventually made public, stolen from a Hollywood A-Lister by their plumber.
Had some contractor grabbed a homemade sex tape from a well-to-do Grosse Pointe woman and made it public? But why send it to me?
The person who’d sent me these lovely images had carefully concealed their identity. Somehow, a phone number didn’t show up on the display, rather, all that appeared was a jumble of letters and digits.
How had they managed that? I’d never heard of anyone even being able to do that.
There was a person who could help me with that, though, so I forwarded the sender contact, not the porn, to Chi Chi. Maybe she could use some of her computer wizardry to figure out where the messages had actually originated.
That done, I put the car in gear and pointed it back toward Grosse Pointe.
Frankly, I was glad to get away from the carnage I’d seen at Barry Kemp’s house. I’d seen death before, certainly, but not quite in that graphic of a situation. I mean, that was a killing frenzy.
Traffic was light and I was soon close to my exit from the freeway. As I pulled off the Interstate, it occurred to me that I knew where Judy Platkin lived. She had hosted a party a few years back and for some reason or the other, Anna and I had been on the invite list and we went. Ordinarily I would never remember such a detail, but that party always stood out to me because the Platkins actually ran out of booze and one woman was so desperate for more that she called home and had her teenage daughter bring a bunch of bottles to the Platkins. That, my friend, was a very real need for alcohol.
The Platkins lived on a street called Yorkshire in a big house made with yellow brick. Not bright yellow, more of a soft hue, like cat urine. I’d suggested that to Anna and she had shushed me before the party. Still, I remember walking around thinking that it actually did smell like cat piss, but that I was probably just imagining it.
The good thing was, it made it easy for me to spot the house. I pulled past it, drove down the block and then turned around. I parked a few houses down from the Platkins but knew that I couldn’t stay too long in the space. Grosse Pointers are notorious busybodies and I knew someone was probably already watching me, their hand on a phone to call the cops if I started doing something weird.
The street was quiet. A couple of cars passed me up ahead on Kercheval, going toward the village. Other than that, it was silent.
The debate going on in my mind was fairly intense. I wanted to go up and ring the doorbell and see if Judy was home. But to what effect? I certainly had no intention of showing her photos of herself having sex with someone. I imagined myself holding the phone up and thrusting them directly into her face for maximum shock.
But something told me she wouldn’t really be all that shocked.
What would I gain by questioning her? Plus, I really spent a fair amount of time trying not to be an asshole. Confronting her about an affair, with sex pictures, in her own home?
Certainly the fact that Dave was dead and she might have had something to do with it, or somehow be involved, made a case for forgetting the niceties of the moment. But still, there was probably a better way to confront her, if that’s what I ultimately decided to do.
I thought about texting Anna but didn’t want to use the phone in the darkened car and give the people watching from their homes a reason to call the cops on me.
Finally, I decided it was time to go.
But just as I was about to key the ignition, a motion light at the back of the Platkins’ house went on and moments later, a car backed out of the driveway.
I got a good look at the driver.
It was Judy Platkin.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The first thing I did was check my watch.
Just past eleven p.m.
Now, ordinarily that was no big deal. And I’m not about to say that everyone in Grosse Pointe is boring because that’s certainly not the case.
But the idea of Judy Platkin heading out on the town at eleven p.m. was a little off. For starters, Grosse Pointe was usually winding down at that time. Plus, she was going alone. And lastly, she headed straight down to Jefferson Avenue, which was a straight shot into Detroit.
Now, the idea of meeting friends in downtown Detroit isn’t unusual, but beginning the night at this time was a little odd.
So I did what seemed like a good idea.
I followed her.
It was easy, except for the fact that the road was almost completely empty. I had to hang way back but it was easy in Detroit, because everyone ignores the stoplights. There was no risk of losing her.
Eventually, I realized we were following almost the exact same path I’d taken when I’d followed Dave’s cell phone pings.
And then it got really weird.
Because she turned down the exact same street I had before, the one that I’d taken to the abandoned warehouse. By the time I turned onto the street, just moments after she’d turned from Jefferson onto St. Aubin, I expected to see a pair of bright red taillights. The same ones I’d followed down from Grosse Pointe.
But there weren’t any.
Which was impossible.
This area was mostly abandoned. There was a brewpub a couple blocks over, hanging on as the sole retail business that survived the previous economic drought. But there was hardly anything else.
So where had she gone?
I gunned the car forward, whipping my head left and right at every intersection. No sign of Judy Platkin.
This was bullshit. It couldn’t be. A moment ago I’d been bragging about how easy it was to tail her and now here I was looking like an asshole who’d lost her.
I circled around the block, no sign of Judy Platkin.
It seemed like an awfully big coincidence that we’d wound up here, a stone’s throw from the warehouse.
That’s probably where she was.
But why?
I drove down a block, and turned right, found myself quickly at the intersection where I’d parked before and done my search through the warehouse.
Now, I didn’t see anything.
I rolled down the windows and shut off my car.
No sound whatsoever.
Damnit, John, I said to myself.
You lost her.
Chapter Twenty-Six
That night, I dreamt I was tied up in the warehouse with rats gnawing at my feet. Just when I was about to pass out from the pain, I heard footsteps and screamed for the person to come and save me from the rats. A figure stepped out from the shadows. It was Dave. He had a gun. He pointed the gun at the rats and then just before he shot, he tilted the gun up and shot me.
My eyes snapped open.
My body was covered in sweat and my breath was coming in fast, shallow gasps. I glanced over next to me and saw Anna was still asleep. That was good. Nothing worse than waking her up earlier than necessary.
It was early, but not so early that I needed to try to get back to sleep. So I got out of bed, made a pot of coffee, got dressed, filled a huge thermos of fresh coffee and drove to my office.
It was still early and only a few people were out and about, getting coffee and bagels.
I turned on the lights, set some soft jazz on the little sound system I had and drank my coffee.
The dream was still in my mind but I forced myself to forget it. I had work to do.
It was still a mystery to me how Judy Platkin had managed to ditch me. Where had she gone? My best guess was that she’d simply looped back, hopped onto Jeff
erson, and headed somewhere else. But that would mean that she had seen me behind her and then had outmaneuvered me.
Not exactly something to be proud of, as a private investigator.
My phone buzzed and I looked down at the screen.
A text message from Nate.
You up?
I typed back. Yep, at office.
Suddenly, my phone started a constant buzz and I picked it up.
“Did you hear about the floater down on Belle Isle?” Nate asked me. I took a drink of my coffee. Never too early to hear Nate talking crime.
“Nope.”
“Some homeless guy,” he said.
“Since you’re calling me about it,” I observed, “I assume there’s more to it than just a drunk homeless guy drowning.”
“Yeah, this guy was cut up pretty well,” Nate said. “You might even use the term butchered.”
I put down my coffee cup. Images of Barry Kemp’s body filled my vision.
“It’s that serial killer again,” Nate said.
“I thought you told me he was killing hookers?”
“Hookers, but also a couple of homeless people. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference, because there isn’t always a difference.”
“Huh,” I said. The coffee hadn’t kicked in yet.
“But don’t tell anybody,” Nate said, lowering his voice as if Herbert Hoover had installed phone taps on our lines. “There are a lot of whispers about it, the FBI is getting involved, from what I hear.”
“When you say butchered, what do you mean, exactly?” I asked.
Nate let out a soft laugh. “What do you think I mean? It looked like a frenzy killing. Like someone really got into it once the blood and body parts started flying everywhere. Whoever this maniac is, he really enjoys his work.”
