Some Degree of Murder rcc-5

by Frank Zafiro

  I was surprised at the gravelly sound of my own voice.

  “No apparent trace evidence was discovered at the scene. CSFU Technician Whitaker will continue his examination in conjunction with the Medical Examiner.”

  I pushed Stop, then Record.

  “Victim had the following items in her possession, in addition to her clothing.” I flipped my note pad page and read the list. “Sixty-three dollars in US currency, in the form of three twenty dollar bills and three ones. One condom, Safe-T brand. A silver ring on her left middle finger in the shape of a crucifix. A tube of lip balm, kiwi-strawberry flavor. A partial pack of spearmint gum. One gold necklace, also with a crucifix.”

  I pressed Pause and reviewed my notes briefly before pressing record again.

  “No purse was found. There was no identification or identifying paperwork.”

  I clicked off the recorder and scanned my remaining notes. There was no more pertinent information that needed to be in my initial report. Mostly, the notebook was filled with questions. Three were underlined.

  Who is she?

  What does she do?

  Who does she know?

  If I could get the answers to these three questions, I could figure out what happened. The plain fact was, most people were killed by someone close to them. Lover, brother, co-worker. It was always a good place to start.

  I pressed Record. “Investigation will continue, pending preliminary forensic results. Requested CSFU obtain fingerprints and run AFIS check as a priority.”

  If she’d ever been fingerprinted anywhere in North America, her prints would be in AFIS, the Automated Fingerprint Identification System. Whitaker would take post-mortem prints and run those prints through AFIS. With any luck, that’ll solve question number one.

  I flipped through my notes, making sure I had put everything I needed in the report. The information was scant. I hoped that Whitaker would come up with something more for me. He was a smart kid.

  I set the recorder down and rubbed my eyes again. I exhaled heavily, cursing my luck. A second murdered girl case in two weeks. That meant more media coverage and administration interference. Dead girls are high profile.

  I caught the first one because I was up next on the assignment rotation. I didn’t have a problem with that. Everyone takes a turn. It’s a bitch of a case, though, and slow going. That’s why I asked Lieutenant Crawford to give me a pass on the on-call rotation for the weekend-because I didn’t need another case right now. I needed to solve the Taylor girl case first. The request to drop out of the rotation was denied.

  The Taylor file was already an inch and a half thick. Some cases got to be too thick for file folders and I had to transfer them to the large, plastic three-ring binders. I had a feeling the Taylor case would be the same way.

  I closed my notebook and slid it next to the recorder. There was nothing more I could do until some of the basic forensics came back. There wasn’t even a populated area to canvass.

  I grabbed the recorder and pressed Record. “Investigation continuing. Detective John Tower, Badge #212.”

  I popped out the tape and labeled it with the report number. Then I put it in the scribe’s in-box. Glenda was the best transcriptionist in the city and would probably have it typed up before lunch. For all the good it would do me.

  The clock on the wall read ten after six. Too late to go home and sleep. I stifled a yawn and wandered back to my desk. In half an hour, people would filter in and the division would get busy. Well, some people would get busy. Others would get busy at looking busy.

  I sat back down at my desk and picked up the phone.

  Teri answered on the third ring. “H’lo?” Her voice was thick with sleep.

  “It’s me.”

  “Howzitt?”

  “What?”

  She paused and yawned. “I said, how is it?”

  “Rough case. It’ll take some work. How’s Ben?”

  “Still asleep.”

  “Good.”

  “So was I, if you’re checking.”

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay. It’s only the second time you’ve woken me up today.” Her voice was tinged with humor. “Look, I don’t have any classes today until noon. I can get him off to school. Do you need me to come by when he gets out? I’m done at two, so it’s no problem.”

  “Yeah,” I told her. “Come by. Also, I’m going to need to work some odd hours over the next couple of weeks. Can you do any nights?”

  “No problem. You guys are my only clients right now.”

  Probably the only ones she needed, at the price I was paying. “All right.”

  “Why do you have to work nights?”

  “Just some interviews I can’t get in the day time.”

  “Oh.”

  “Thanks for coming by so quick tonight.”

  “It was easy.” She yawned again. “I have no life.”

  “Me, neither.”

  She said goodbye and I hung up.

  Ben was taken care of, so I turned back to the desk in front of me. The Taylor file was my only other open case, so I grabbed it and opened it up for review.

  Fawn Taylor, born Fawn Madison, was fourteen years of age. She’d been reported as a runaway by her mother, Andie Taylor, one month ago. Two weeks later, her body was discovered next to a dumpster behind the Bingo Parlor at Sprague and Stone. A sixty-seven year old grandmother, Vivian Marsh, spotted her as she walked out to her car after losing her thirty dollar bingo allotment.

  I read through the background on Fawn. Her step-father was Steve Taylor. He married her mother when Fawn was three and adopted the little girl two years later. Apparently, her biological father has never had any contact. Andie Taylor said the pregnancy was the result of a one-night stand.

  Fawn had good grades at Sacajewea Junior High School until recently. According to her mother, most teachers said she under performed. Last year, her parents caught her with marijuana and her mother feared she was sexually active.

  I shook my head at that. Thirteen. I barely knew how to masturbate at thirteen and I thought I discovered something no one else knew about. At thirteen, this girl was already having sex. Times have changed and for the worse.

  According to both parents, there had been no major blowout between either of them and Fawn. She just became more and more rebellious against their set of rules and finally just didn’t come home from school one day.

  Two weeks after that, her body was discovered.

  I read through the Forensics report. There had been signs of sexual assault but no fluids. Nothing from the fingernail scrapings, either. Cause of death had been asphyxiation through strangulation.

  Something nagged at me. Tonight’s victim had bruising around her throat. Similar. But strangulation was the number one method of unarmed assault in sexual assault cases. It’s no stretch that both killers would employ the same method. Besides, tonight’s girl had stab wounds, too. Something nagged at me, though. I couldn’t quite say what.

  I pushed the file away. What a messed up world. Two dead girls in two weeks and I get both cases. Now I have to find two killers and if Crawford gives me anyone to help, I’ll shit sideways in surprise.

  Lindsay had asked me at the scene if the two murders could be the same guy. Ever since the Peter Allen Tyson serial killer case in the late nineties here in River City, any time two people died within ten miles and one month of each other, it was a serial case.

  “Lindsay,” I told him, “How much do we know about this girl?”

  “Nothing,” he’d said.

  “And how much evidence have we collected?”

  “Almost none.”

  “Exactly.” When he hadn’t gotten it from that, I gave up.

  I reached for the file again, but was interrupted by the sound of footsteps. Crawford came around the corner. He was already taking off his jacket and chewing on an unlit cigar.

  I remembered when the Chief decided to make the station go smokeless and how Crawford
went ballistic about it. He went almost as ballistic when his doctor told him to quit smoking or die of a heart attack. To defy them both, he kept a stogie on hand at all times but never lit up. I’m sure he thought it made him a rebel. I thought it made him look like a reject copy of the guy from the TV show Cannon. He had the whole look. The droopy mustache, receding hairline and expanding waistline. The guy even wore bad suits.

  “Tower,” he grunted without breaking stride.

  “Lieutenant.”

  “Give me a minute, then come to my office and brief me.”

  “Not much to tell,” I said.

  “Then it’ll go quick.” He disappeared into his office.

  I took my time closing the Taylor file and replacing it. I put my recorder away, too.

  After Crawford’s “minute” was up, I grabbed my notebook and walked into his office. It was messy, as usual. Crawford was a history nut and black and white pictures of cops were plastered all over the walls. Loose papers and folders were littered across his desk.

  “Sit down,” he told me.

  I didn’t want to be there long enough to sit down, but I knew he wouldn’t proceed until I took a seat, so I did. Crawford moved his unlit cigar to one corner of his mouth and nodded for me to begin.

  I flipped open my notebook. “Deceased is a Hispanic female, probably twenty. No ID on her person. Looks like she was strangled at some point. She was also stabbed multiple times in the chest.”

  “Dump job?”

  “Probably. No sign of struggle in the surrounding vegetation, but it was raining hard. A lot of our evidence washed away before she was discovered.”

  “Sexual assault?”

  “Unknown.”

  “Hooker?”

  I shook my head. “Dunno. She had a condom in her pocket, but these days that just makes her smart.”

  “Dump site?”

  “300 N. Erie.”

  Crawford shifted the cigar in his mouth. “Pretty close to the East Sprague corridor.”

  I shrugged. He was right. It was less than half a mile from where the prostitutes congregated and did business.

  “What else?”

  “Not much. Time of death, cause of death, even her identity will have to come through Crime Scene’s workup on the body. I don’t expect them to finish that today.”

  “Who’s the tech?”

  “Whitaker.”

  Crawford narrowed his eyes.

  “He’s good,” I told him.

  “Kind of a smart ass.”

  I didn’t answer.

  “What else?” He asked after a moment.

  I flipped through my notes. “Nothing to canvass. Lindsay helped Whitaker check in the evidence. Not much to say, really.”

  Crawford removed the cigar from his mouth and spat out of a small piece of tobacco into the garbage can. “Pretty light, Tower.”

  “It’s early yet.”

  Crawford grunted. “You think it’s related to the one from the Bingo lot? The fourteen year old?”

  “Fawn Taylor,” I told him.

  “Whatever. You think it’s related?”

  He was already thinking serial killer. “I can’t even begin to make that leap, Lieutenant,” I told him. “I have nothing on this case and still have work to do on the Taylor case.”

  “You’ve had it for two weeks.”

  “Yeah, and I’ve been working it.”

  “So do you see any relation?”

  I clenched my jaw. “Other than the fact that they’re both female and were murdered and dumped within two miles of each other…no, I don’t.”

  “Well, don’t rule it out.”

  “I don’t rule anything out until the evidence does.” Nothing like a lieutenant, who was never a detective, giving out free investigative advice. It was like Christmas.

  “Good. Where you going from here?”

  “I’ll look through last night’s reports for possible related incidents and wait on Forensics.”

  “All right. Keep me up to speed. The Chief’s office is calling me every day on this Bingo girl.”

  I nodded and left.

  I walked back to my desk. I thought about sitting down and starting back in with the Taylor file. I could hear Crawford moving around in his office, though, and knew I wouldn’t be able to concentrate.

  To hell with it, I thought, and walked toward the door.

  I needed some coffee and Rolaids.

  Monday, April 12 th Davenport Hotel, Morning

  VIRGIL

  I sat at the writing desk in my hotel room, a small cup of coffee steamed in front of me. From the inside pocket of my jacket, I pulled out a long, white envelope. Inside was a newspaper article with a hand-written phone number on the corner. I dialed the number and closed my eyes while the phone rang.

  On the fourth ring, she picked up. “Hello?”

  Her voice was close in proximity but distant in familiarity.

  “Do you know who this is?”

  “Yes,” she whispered, her voice barely audible over the hum of the heating unit in the room.

  “I’m in town now.”

  Her breathing skipped a beat and then returned to normal. “Thank you,” she said, her voice shaky.

  I wanted to say something to ease her pain or comfort her, but too much time had passed for anything deep or meaningful to be said.

  “I’ll be in touch.”

  When I cradled the phone, I opened my eyes. With a single press of a button, I called the concierge desk and ordered a taxi.

  The cabbie leaned his head slightly out of the rolled down window of his Chrysler. “You sure you don’t want me to wait?”

  With a quick glance, I saw him watching me as I opened my wallet to pay the fare. I finished counting out several bills and stuffed them in to his hand.

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  The cabbie nodded his head, disappointed at the lost fare of the return trip.

  The old Chrysler LeBaron turned around in the driveway of the cemetery, its fan belt squealing loudly. When he stopped at the entrance to wait for passing traffic, I realized the cab leaned to the right. I smiled at that because I thought his seat was higher than mine throughout the drive.

  My smile faded when I turned around.

  “Your mom sent me the article,” I said to her. “I feel kind of stupid doing this, but since I never got the chance to talk to you before I figured I’d take it now.”

  A warm breeze blew in from the south and the trees near us rustled in the wind.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you. We thought it was best that I stayed out of the picture. I figured I’d spare you that bad father baggage. Some people say a bad father is better than no father, but those people don’t know what they’re talking about.”

  The sounds of traffic whirred and wheezed by as we continued our conversation.

  “I hated my father. He was a real bastard. I learned to fight from him, though. A kid can only take getting smacked around for so long before he stands up and speaks up for himself. When I finally challenged him, he beat the piss out of me and smacked me around for a couple of more years. Then the day came when I hit him back hard enough that he never hit me again. That’s when I learned what I was good at.”

  I glanced around the cemetery and saw an old, white-haired woman brushing off the top of a headstone.

  “Your mom, she tried to keep me up to date on what you were doing. I sent her money every month for you and she always sent pictures of you. She never wrote anything, just the pictures. You were so beautiful the day you graduated sixth grade. I loved the little yellow dress you wore. It had blue flowers all over it. I really would have liked to have seen you that day.”

  I knelt down in front of her headstone and brushed the top of it with my fingers.

  “I wish I could have saved you. But that’s not my life. I don’t think I’ve ever saved anybody. I’ve ruined a lot of people, but never saved just one.”

  My finger traced the outline of
her name. “I promise you, like I promised your mother; I’ll find who did this to you. Then I’ll do what I do best.”

  Monday, April 12th

  1938 hrs

  507 West Corbin

  TOWER

  “Tough day fighting crime?” Teri asked.

  I closed the front door behind me and slid the deadbolt home. I couldn’t always tell with her if she was sincere or sarcastic. The two gears were about an inch apart.

  “Long,” I said. “You?”

  “Well, school was a pain, but Ben’s in a good mood. No whining at all.”

  “Good.” Ben rarely whines, but when he does, he makes it into an Olympic Sport.

  “You need me tomorrow, right?”

  I nodded. “After school, and then into the evening. If you want, you can crash here if it gets late.”

  “I have a paper I need to work on.”

  “You can use my computer.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “You let me use it for my English paper last month. It’s ancient. It’s running, like, Windows 1962.”

  I shrugged. “Use Ben’s then.”

  She laughed. “When? He’s on it from dawn to dusk. And he doesn’t even have to take potty breaks, so there’s no chance at all. You know, if computer screens give out cancer rays, he won’t live to fifteen.”

  “Then buy a laptop,” I snapped. “It’s not like I don’t pay you enough.”

  Surprise flickered in her eyes. Then hurt. Then anger.

  I took off my jacket and hung it on the coat rack behind the door.

  “Where did that come from?” she asked.

  I ignored her, walked to the fridge and pulled the door open. Two Kokanees left. I grabbed one and twisted the top off.

  “John? What’s wrong?”

  I took a pull from the bottle and counted to ten. Then I turned to her.

  “Don’t talk about Ben like he’s a monster.”

  She cocked her head to her side. “John, I was joking. Ben’s a great kid.”

  “It didn’t sound like a joke. It sounded like bitching.”

  “Bitching? Like what you said about money wasn’t?”