by David Hosp
He cast his mind about for anything else worth saying— anything that might make the charade seem more real. “Yeah, you know,” he repeated just to fill the void.
Jack sat in silence for another moment or two before he was able to pry his eyes from the cracks in the dirty linoleum and look at the man sitting in the wheelchair beside him. The resemblance between them, which had been acute when they were both much younger, was still there, but atrophy had taken its toll. The cheeks were hollow now, and the shoulders—which had once been so broad and strong, thrown back in defiance of the world’s injustices—were slumped forward, bony and frail under the lint-ridden bathrobe Jack had purchased a year ago. But the change was most evident in the eyes. They had once burned with joy and anger and mischief, a concentration of life that affected everyone and everything within their reach. Now they were empty sockets sucked back into a thin face, the whites turned yellow and lined, like the cracks in the floor of this godforsaken place. Whenever Jack Cassian found the courage to look there—into the eyes he had known his entire life—his pretense fell apart, and he understood that the man he once knew so well was gone. Above the eyes, the deep purple sickle-shaped scar rested in the divot that marred the man’s forehead.
The buzzing of Jack’s pager broke the silence. He let it vibrate a few times, still looking at the man next to him, whose blank stare remained unchanged. Finally, he unclipped the tiny device from his belt and looked at the number on the display. Then he returned the pager to its resting place.
He leaned forward, letting his head drop again as he brought his fingers together into a pyramid. “Listen, Jimmy, I’m sorry,” he said. “That was the office. I gotta go out on a call.” He sighed. “I’d planned to stay longer.” He looked up again, and for just a moment the hope crept back into his heart; that lingering, illogical optimism that allows a person to believe, against all medical assurances, that maybe—just maybe—there might be some flicker of recognition. It was useless, though, and he knew it, in his head if not in his heart.
He stood up, straightening out his slacks and pulling on his sport coat. He took a step toward the door, then paused, standing behind the man in the wheelchair. The other man had still not moved since Jack’s arrival, and had acknowledged neither Jack’s presence nor his imminent departure. On his lap, resting askew between the arms of the wheelchair, was a new bathrobe, still sitting in the box with the wrapping paper flowering up from underneath. Jack leaned forward, his hand resting on the man’s fragile shoulder, and kissed the top of his head.
“Happy birthday, bro,” he said. Then he turned and left the room.
z
The trip down from the medical facility in Maryland took longer than expected, and by the time he reached D.C. it was after six-thirty. Cassian sped through the city, his thick brown hair whipped back as he slid his beat-up old motorcycle through the traffic.
He throttled back the engine and kicked the bike into a lower gear as he rounded the corner at Seventh Street. A police barrier had been set up outside the little townhouse, and a crowd had gathered at the perimeter marked out by the yellow police tape, like a swarm of flies along the edge of fresh roadkill. Cassian pulled up to the perimeter, where one of the officers waved him through.
“Wozniak,” Cassian said, nodding in recognition at the young man in uniform. He took off his sunglasses and tucked them into the breast pocket of his sport coat.
“Cassian,” the man replied, giving a halfhearted salute. He eyed the motorcycle as Jack put down the kickstand. “Still tempting fate on that thing, huh?”
Jack smiled. “Gotta tempt something, don’t I?”
The patrolman smiled back. “I guess.” He nodded up toward the townhouse. “Train’s waiting on you,” he said. “Been here for close to an hour. Seems like he’s in a shitty mood.”
“How can you tell?”
Wozniak shrugged noncommittally. “It’s pretty grisly up there. Crime Scene got here about forty-five minutes ago, and they’re working the place over.”
“Jack!”
The shout startled them both, and they turned toward the house. There, on the landing just outside the front door, stood Darius Train. His huge lumpy figure looked tired, as always, and he rubbed a hand over his bald, dark brown scalp. “Jack!” he repeated. “Get up here!”
“Guess that’s my cue,” Cassian said to Wozniak. He looked over the officer’s shoulder. The crowd was continuing to grow, and seemed to be getting more restless. “Keep these people back, okay? We’re gonna have enough to deal with up there as it is.”
“Sure thing.”
As Cassian turned and headed toward the front door to the house, he heard Wozniak call after him. “Hey Jack!” Cassian turned around. “Thanks again for the Nationals tickets. It meant a lot to my kid,” the officer said.
Jack waved him off. “I couldn’t use ’em, and I didn’t want them to go to waste.”
“Yeah, well, still. I’ve never seen my kid so excited in his life. Washington even beat the Yankees. You imagine that? Made me look like a hero.”
Jack smiled. “I’m guessing you already looked like a hero to your kid.”
Wozniak nodded. “Thanks all the same.”
Cassian squinted as he walked up the pathway toward the front door. The sun was beginning to set to the west, over toward the Capitol dome and the White House, but the temperature remained in the low nineties.
Detective Sergeant Train was watching him from the steps in front of the house, and he wore his usual look of annoyance. When Jack first made detective three years earlier and was told that he would be partnering with the giant, he’d had his reservations. Train, a veteran of more than twenty years on the force and a former all-District linebacker from one of the roughest areas of the city, seemed an unlikely fit for Jack, the product of a modest, pleasant suburb in Maryland. When they had first been introduced, Jack was sure he’d heard the man mutter the phrase “pencil-neck” under his breath, and there was no mistaking the look of disappointment on his face. In spite of their inauspicious beginning, however, the two had gelled quickly, their strengths and weaknesses complementing each other and making them a formidable team. In addition, they shared a sardonic sense of humor that seemed to grow naturally from the disillusionment of being a cop, and from dredging through the worst that human nature had to offer.
“Sarge,” Cassian acknowledged Train when he reached the top step. He turned around so that they were both facing out toward the street.
“Detective,” Train responded, and Cassian thought he sensed a hint of impatience in the tone. The older man cut a quick glance in Cassian’s direction, taking note of Jack’s casual slacks and the expensive shirt beneath Jack’s sport coat. On the surface, no two men could seem more different.
“What happened? You get the call in the middle of a manicure or something?”
“That’s funny, Sarge,” Cassian said. He looked at the rumpled gray suit his partner was wearing—one of five identical outfits he owned. “Really, I need to take more style tips from you.” Cassian looked off into the distance, away from his partner. “I was visiting Jimmy,” he said after a moment. “It’s his birthday.”
The look of annoyance disappeared from Train’s face, replaced by one of concern. Jack wasn’t sure which look bothered him more. “How’s he doin’?”
Jack shook his head, ignoring the question. “What’ve we got here?” he asked.
Train stared at the younger man briefly before replying. “A fuckin’ mess is what we’ve got here,” he said at last. He took out his notebook and flipped it open. “Elizabeth Creay,” he started. “Thirty-six years old. Reporter for the Post.”
“No shit?”
“No shit. We’re gonna have a lot of people looking over our shoulder on this. Already got a call from her editor making demands for information.”
“What’d you say to him?”
“I asked him where he was this afternoon between two and four.”
Cass
ian nodded. “That must’ve gone over well. Did you ask him for a list of all the people she worked with, too?”
“Didn’t have the chance.” Train looked sideways at his younger partner. “It turned into a short conversation. Hopefully it bought us some time, though, while he hollers at the captain.”
“What else do we know?” Cassian asked, referring to the victim.
Train consulted his notes again. “Ms. Creay is—pardon me, was—divorced; one daughter, fourteen. According to relatives, the ex-husband lives out in Old Colony, Virginia.”
“Old Colony? Nice town. How’d she get stuck in this neighborhood?”
“I guess we’ll have to ask him that.” The older detective shrugged. “She probably had a crappy divorce lawyer.”
“As crappy as the guy you used?”
Train shook his head. “Nobody’s that crappy.” He looked down the street and frowned, the lines in his face deepening and his mouth drawing up tight. “She found her.”
“Who?”
“The daughter. She was the first one here. Came home from school and walked in and found her. Neighbor heard her scream and called it in. The patrol car got here about ten minutes later and went inside—found the girl curled up in a ball.” The silence stretched out between them.
“Where is she now?” Cassian asked finally.
“EMTs took her to the hospital. She still wasn’t speaking. She’s with her grandmother now.” Train let the information sink in for a moment. Then he looked at Cassian. “You wanna go inside?”
Jack put his hands in his pockets. The crowd had doubled in strength since his arrival, and the onlookers were milling around excitedly. Ants at a picnic, he thought. Additional officers had been called in to keep the more aggressively curious back from the house so the Crime Scene technicians could do their work. “Not really,” he replied.
Train nodded. “Tough shit,” he said.
Cassian sighed. “Yeah, I know,” he agreed. “Tough shit.”
Chapter Two
“PLACE IS A MESS,” Cassian commented, noting the obvious. Inside the house, the furniture had been upended and lay strewn about like debris in the wake of a tsunami.
“Wait ’til you see the upstairs,” Train said. He pointed toward the back of the house, where a small area had been used as a study. “That’s where we think it began.” He swung his arm toward the rear window. “There’s a parking space out back in the alley, and a door that leads from the backyard into the kitchen. It looks like a B&E gone wrong. Perp’s in here—rifling through the drawers, looking for cash, silver, valuables, whatever—when the unfortunate Ms. Creay walks through the back door.” He pointed to a large reddish brown stain on the carpet near the archway leading into the kitchen. “He got her at least once down here, then dragged her upstairs.”
Cassian bent down and looked closely at the stain. It was thick with blood, and trailed off in the direction of the stairway. “Dragged her? We sure? Any chance she was still moving under her own power?” he asked.
“Possibly, but then why wouldn’t she run outside where someone might have helped her? Upstairs there’s no way out.”
Train shook his head. “It seems more likely she was dragged.”
“Why would he drag her upstairs, though?”
“It looks like he was trying to get her to tell him where more valuables were—maybe get the code to her ATM card or something; that’s becoming more common. The place was picked pretty clean; her purse, wallet, credit cards, all gone. Looks like some jewelry cases upstairs were looted, and if there was any silver, that’s gone, too.” Train pointed around the room to the smears of blood leading back out to the stairway. “The first wound must have been pretty bad to bleed this much”—he paused and shot Jack a serious look—“but he did a lot more damage upstairs.”
Cassian looked around the room. It was nicely decorated, but not opulent. A few expensive-looking pieces—the desk and a heavy oak coffee table—had been skillfully complemented with traditional-style replicas and nicely framed prints. Two of the lamps on the floor looked as though they might have been worth something, but it was difficult to tell, smashed as they were. Cassian walked over to the desk and looked at the drawers, which had been left open, their contents scattered on the floor. “Anything interesting in these?” he asked.
“We haven’t had a chance to inventory them yet,” Train responded. “Don’t touch—Crime Scene’s still working upstairs, then they’ll start down here.” He pointed to the back of the desktop. “Computer’s gone, though.”
Cassian looked down and saw that, sure enough, a computer was missing. Standing empty on the desk was a docking station for a laptop—the kind that allows the owner to plug in and use a normal-sized keyboard and screen. “Nice catch, Sarge,” Cassian said. “When did you become such a technology expert?”
“Fuck you,” Train said. “Deter pointed it out.”
Cassian bent down to look closer. “Top of the line,” he said, noting the brand name. “Should fetch our boy a pretty penny.”
“Hope it was worth killing for,” Train muttered.
Cassian took a deep breath as he scanned the room. Then he exhaled loudly. “Main event’s upstairs, huh?”
Train nodded.
“Okay, then,” Cassian said without enthusiasm, “let’s have a look.”
z
They followed the trail of blood back toward the stairway near the front of the house, around the banister, and up the stairs, careful not to disturb any of the splotches so that the technicians could get good samples and photos. Train pointed out a few smears along the wall, near the floor. “That’s the other reason we’re pretty sure she was dragged,” he explained. “Her initial wounds were above the waist, so in order to get that much blood so low to the floor she had to have either been dragged or been crawling.”
As they rounded the corner at the top of the stairs, Jack took in the floor’s layout. It was smaller than he expected. Straight ahead off the stairs was a small bathroom—the only one in the house—and to the left, he could see into a neat little bedroom that looked undisturbed. The bloodstains traced a path around the banister back toward the front of the house. “Master bedroom?” he asked with a tilt of the head.
“Yeah,” Train responded. “That’s the daughter’s room.” He pointed to the smaller bedroom on the left.
Jack poked his head into the room and looked around. It was pink and bright, with soft white carpeting on the floor. On the walls were hung colorful pastel prints and a map of the world in a gold ornamental frame. All in all, it was exactly what one would expect in the room of a well-adjusted fourteen-yearold girl. And yet something seemed forced, as if someone had tried to plaster normalcy over depression. Jack nodded to Train, indicating he was ready to proceed to the master bedroom. Train extended his arm in invitation. “After you.”
As he stepped into the room the sickly sweet smell of burnt flesh pierced his nostrils and he choked back his lunch. He looked at Train, who nodded solemnly. Cassian took a few deep breaths to acclimate himself to the smell, and then briefly canvassed the scene. Several police technicians were working their way around silently, but Jack ignored them. He took note of the location of the woman’s body, stretched out on the bed, covered in blood, but avoided focusing on the corpse—that would come later. Too often, he found, even seasoned professionals could become distracted when they began their investigation by examining the body and then working their way out into the rest of the crime scene. It obscured the larger picture, and caused them to overlook crucial details that seemed inconsequential in comparison to the enormity of the corporeal evidence. Cassian’s practice was to focus on the crime scene at its widest possible point, working his way inward in concentric circles toward the epicenter of violence, only examining the body after he felt he had a full impression of the overall picture.
He started along the wall closest to the door, farthest from the bed where the body lay. He noticed immediately that the room was
the most cheaply decorated in the house. Against the wall across from the bed stood a set of white lacquer bookcases, the kind that could be bought at Wal-Mart for twenty dollars. The shelves were lined with books, most of them big, heavily bound volumes of history, or biographical works dealing with prominent political figures. In front of the books stood a parade of pictures, mostly of a shy-looking girl progressing in age from birth to early teens, although Jack also noticed a few candids of a young woman who looked to be in her early twenties. She was relatively attractive, Jack noted, as he continued to pan around the room.
The wall farthest from the door looked out onto the street, although the shades were drawn. Again, Jack noticed that the window dressings were cheap, and failed to keep even the waning light from penetrating the room.
As he swung his line of sight around past the windows, he saw that the bedside table had been overturned. On the floor he could see a small lamp and a jewelry box that lay open and empty of all its contents.
He looked up at the wall above the bed. Two prints from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, both of impressionist works—Monet, if Jack was remembering his art history correctly—hung in nondescript frames in a feeble attempt at adding color to the room.
Finally, almost reluctantly, Jack looked at the woman on the bed.
She was strewn over the queen-size mattress, her arms akimbo, and her legs bent at the knees, crisscrossed at an impossible angle. Her throat had been cut—deeply—and her neck was twisted to the side. Her face, jaw frozen in a perpetual scream, was stuck to the sheets with blood that had pooled from her wounds. The damage was extensive, and Cassian forced himself to stay focused.
He walked around to the other side of the bed to take a closer look at the woman’s body. From that angle, he could also see a deep wound in her abdomen. “How many wounds total?” he asked, without looking away.
Train was silent for a moment, and it was Deter, the lead technician, who answered. “There’s at least one in her belly. There may be more in that area, but we haven’t moved her yet, so we can’t be sure,” he said. “There’s the obvious cut to her throat—damn near took her head off. It’s through all the way to the spine. Then there are a couple cuts to her arms that look like defensive wounds. Some of those blend into one another, so it may be difficult to get an accurate count.” He paused and looked over at Train. “It’s the burns we can’t figure out, though.”
