Tales of River City

by Frank Zafiro

The second one came from Renee, asking for a return call.

  Finch called her and she asked them both to come down the hall to her office.

  “You want coffee?” she offered when they walked in.

  “Is good here?” Elias asked, affecting a Russian accent.

  “Huh?”

  Elias shook his head. “Inside joke. What do you have for us?”

  Renee filled her cup and waved them to her desk. “Gwen sent over the results she got on the white fibers caught up in the gun.”

  “She left me a message,” Finch said.

  “Then you know that it’s used for decorative purposes. The department stores lay it down in their windows to look like snow. And they make Santa beards and wigs out of it.”

  “That’s what she said in her message.”

  Renee sipped her coffee. “Well, when she told me about the Santa beard, something clicked. You guys figured these two were killed within the last couple of days, right?”

  “M.E.’s report says within forty-eight hours,” Finch said. “Probably closer to seventy-two. The cold slowed down decomposition.”

  “That timeframe fits with the two witnesses we’ve talked to so far,” Elias added. “The victims were last seen around Christmas Day.”

  Renee removed a grainy black and white photograph from a file. “It’s a still capture from a video security camera at the MI-T Mart at 1527 N. Birch. Take a look.”

  Finch took the photo from her and looked at it. Two men in Santa Claus suits stood at the counter of the convenience store, brandishing pistols.

  “Notice anything?”

  Finch peered closer at one. “That looks like a revolver, and about the right size, too.”

  Renee nodded and handed him another photo. It was a blow-up of the suspect’s hand and the revolver. Despite the blurriness, Finch clearly saw the Santa beard caught up in the cylinder and the hammer of the pistol.

  Finch grunted and handed the photos to Elias.

  Elias grunted his approval and handed them back to Renee. “So you think this is Nalick and Moran?”

  Renee tucked the photos away. “I’m guessing there’s a good chance. But that’s not all.”

  “What else?”

  “A witness reported seeing two men in Santa suits run from the store and get into an old, beige Dodge just around the corner.”

  Finch’s eyes widened. “A Dodge? Did the witness get a license plate?”

  “No,” Renee said, “but he described the driver.”

  “Let me guess,” said Elias, smiling. “A large black woman.”

  Renee gave him a confused look. “No, actually she was white.”

  Charmaine Ross answered her door. She held a tall glass filled with ice cubes and a brown liquid. “What is it, officers?” she asked, her tone a practiced politeness.

  “Can we come in and talk with you?”

  She nodded and swung the door open. Both detectives entered and Elias closed the door behind them. Charmaine waddled to the kitchen table and eased herself into a chair.

  Finch sat down opposite her while Elias hung back. Charmaine took a drink from her glass and eyed them both. “What?” she finally asked.

  “The lab came back with fingerprints from the gun,” Finch said.

  “What gun?” Charmaine asked.

  “The gun you killed Jake and Kenny with.”

  The color drained from her jowls. “Wh-why would you say that?”

  “Because it’s the truth,” Finch said, his voice even. “You were the getaway driver when they robbed the MI-T Mart. Then something went wrong and you killed them both.”

  “No,” she whispered.

  Finch nodded. “Yes. You did. We know it. We have proof.”

  “I—”

  Finch held up his hand, stopping her. “But there’s one thing we don’t have, Miss Ross.”

  She swallowed. “What?”

  Finch counted on his fingers. “We know what happened. We know when and where and how it happened. But we don’t know why.”

  Charmaine shook her head. “I don’t—”

  “Some people think why doesn’t matter,” Finch said, pressing on. “They figure, who cares? We know what, we know when, we know where, and we know how. The why is for storytellers, right? It doesn’t matter.”

  Charmaine reached for her glass. Finch dropped his hand lightly onto the top of hers. He felt her thick fingers trembling.

  “But it does matter, Charmaine,” Finch said, his voice soothing. “It matters a lot to juries. Once they hear all about what happened, when, where, and how, all they really want to know about is why? Why did it happen? Was it greed? Jealousy? Or something else? Something like self-defense?”

  Charmaine’s shoulders sagged.

  “Was that it, Charmaine?” Finch asked softly. “Was it self-defense?”

  Tears formed in her eyes.

  “Tell me, Charmaine,” Finch said. “Tell me why it happened.”

  She lowered her head and her voice hitched. “He was gonna kill my Kenny,” she said. “He was strangling him and I just….” She broke into sobs.

  Finch patted her hand. “It’s okay. Tell me the rest.”

  “He was on top of Kenny, ch-choking him. I just wanted to make him stop. I didn’t mean to kill him.”

  “Did you shoot him?”

  She nodded, looking up with bleary eyes. “With Kenny’s gun. But the bullets got Kenny, too. They went through.”

  “What happened after you shot Jake?”

  “Kenny stood up,” she told him. “But he was bleeding bad and then he fell down.” She lowered her head again and cried.

  “Where’d the guns come from?” Finch asked.

  “J-J-Jake,” she sobbed.

  “Where’d he get them?”

  “I don’t know. Some Italian guy.”

  “Dominic Bracco?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “What were you doing up there on Palmer Court in the first place?” Finch asked.

  “Huh?” She raised her eyes, sniffling.

  “Jake and Kenny were struggling in a grave that was already dug. Why was there already a grave dug?”

  Charmaine wiped her nose with the back of her hand, her eyes hardening.

  “Who was that grave for, Charmaine?”

  She was fast for a big woman. She lashed out at Finch and caught him in the temple with the meaty knife edge of her left hand. He toppled over backward in the folding chair. The rickety card table flew to the side and her drink splattered onto the floor.

  Charmaine charged directly at Elias, lowering her shoulder into his chest like a linebacker and drilling him. His breath whooshed out of him. He slammed into the door and slid to the ground.

  Finch rose to his feet in the kitchen and shook his head to clear his senses.

  Charmaine bellowed something incomprehensible at Elias and grasped him by the shoulder. She tried to toss him aside, but the wiry detective clung to her thick arm. When she raised her fist, Elias tucked his chin down and pulled her toward him. She didn’t budge, and clocked him with a straight right to the cheek. Elias groaned.

  Finch slammed into Charmaine from behind, driving her into the door face-first. She screeched in rage and clawed at him with her free hand. Finch leaned into her and grabbed hold of that thrashing hand, twisting her wrist as hard as he could.

  Charmaine’s screech turned into a howl of pain. She collapsed to her knees and the detectives were able to force her to her belly. Finch cuffed the wrist he held, ignoring the woman’s frenzied yelps of pain. Elias cuffed the wrist he had control of and they hooked the two sets of cuffs together.

  The two detectives kneeled for a moment on the floor of Charmaine’s dirty apartment, panting. Charmaine huffed and bellowed on the ground between them. Elias rubbed his left cheek. Finch touched his temple gingerly.

  “They’re both gonna bruise,” Elias said and sighed. “We’ll never live this one down.”

  Core Issue

 
Detective Elias eased the door to the interview room shut. He caught the eye of Officer Vickers, who sat in a chair a few feet away, writing a report. The patrol officer rose, but Elias waved him off. “He’s not going anywhere. Just keep an eye, okay?”

  Vickers nodded.

  Elias hurried to the break room fridge and removed a Coke. Back in the hallway, he spotted Detective John Tower trudging toward him.

  “Tower,” Elias greeted him. He recognized the familiar Styrofoam cup of coffee in Tower’s left hand.

  “Mornin’,” Tower grunted back. He rubbed his bleary eyes with his free hand.

  “Late night?” Elias asked.

  “Barbecue. And beer. Too much beer.”

  “That explains the slow response.”

  Tower smirked and waved his comment away. “Where are we at?”

  “What do you already know?”

  Tower shook his head. “Nada. Lieutenant Crawford called me, said there’d been a homicide and to get my ass down here. Then he hung up. I guess Finch is on vacation?”

  “Mexico,” Elias said. Finch was his regular partner.

  Tower nodded dismissively. “So run the case for me.”

  “Patrol’s sitting on the crime scene. It’s pretty straightforward and Forensics is already processing it. I’ve got the suspect in the room and he’s about to roll.”

  Tower pointed at the can of soda. “Bribery?”

  Elias grinned. “It wouldn’t be the first time someone sold his soul for an ice-cold Coke.”

  Tower sipped his hot brew and sighed. “True,” he said. “This early in the morning, I’d sell out for a cup of java myself.”

  “He wants to tell his story, though,” Elias continued. “I just don’t know how long that feeling will last, so I gotta get back in the room with him. If we can get a confession here, this case’ll clear by noon.”

  “You want me to wait out here?”

  “No, come on in. I just don’t have time to brief you first.”

  “Fill me in after the confession,” Tower suggested, and Elias nodded.

  Inside the interview room, Elias placed the Coke in front of a thin-faced, bespectacled man who looked to be in his late twenties.

  “Thanks,” the man said, reaching for the can with delicate fingers. His face bore the scars of adolescent acne.

  “Grant, this is Detective Tower,” Elias said.

  Grant gave Tower a bare nod. He popped the top on the Coke can and took a long drink from it.

  “You were going to tell me what happened tonight,” Elias said.

  “That’s right,” Grant said, suppressing a belch.

  Elias turned his palms up in a “go-ahead” gesture.

  Grant took another sip and set the can on the table. He glanced around the room. “You should have windows in here,” he observed.

  “Too many distractions.”

  Grant smiled. “Summer does have its distractions, doesn’t it? Baseball. Beer.”

  Outside of Grant’s vision, Elias saw Tower wince at the mention of beer.

  “Barbecue,” Grant continued. “And babes, of course.” His smile faded. “Summer always seems to be when my relationships bomb, though.”

  “Why’s that?” Elias asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is that what happened with Lisa?”

  Grant’s eyes narrowed and the corners of his mouth turned down. “Pretty much. It was her fault, though.”

  “How’s that?” Elias asked.

  Grant considered for a moment. “I guess you could say that she was broken inside.”

  “Broken how?”

  “She couldn’t really love someone. I should’ve seen the signs.”

  “Signs?” Elias asked.

  “All kinds of ’em,” Grant told him.

  “Name one for me.”

  Grant shrugged. “She didn’t like kissing, for starters. Especially French kisses.”

  Tower lifted his cup and sipped to hide his grin. Elias didn’t react. “So?”

  Grant eyed him carefully. “You don’t think that’s weird?”

  It was Elias’s turn to shrug. “In the minority, sure. Weird? I don’t know.”

  “It’s weird,” Grant said. “Trust me. I minored in psych.”

  Tower rolled his eyes. Elias ignored him.

  “It doesn’t matter, though,” Grant continued. “The kissing thing was just a symptom of a deeper problem. The woman couldn’t love. Like I said, she was broken inside.”

  “She have an opinion about this?”

  “Usually, no. But she admitted to me once that she felt like she was damaged goods.”

  “Damaged goods,” Elias repeated. “You agree with her?”

  “’Course I did. And that’s why it didn’t work out. She just couldn’t be with someone who can see that deeply into her. She needed some shallow guy who would just troll around the surface and buy her façade.”

  Tower took another sip of coffee, his eyes thoughtful.

  “She broke up with you?” Elias asked.

  “No,” Grant said. “I broke up with her.”

  Tower raised a doubtful eyebrow.

  “And then?” Elias asked.

  Grant shrugged. “Then, nothing. But I guess it got to her, because she started seeing a shrink.”

  Elias made a show of checking the file. “Dr. Charles Phillips?”

  “Yes. And apparently he is very good, because I heard from mutual friends that Lisa changed after that.”

  “Did you talk to Lisa about it?”

  “Once,” Grant admitted.

  “And?”

  “She said Dr. Phillips got at her ‘core issues.’” He made quote signs in the air, then shrugged. “I guess that he helped her out quite a bit. She even said that she didn’t feel like damaged goods anymore.”

  “How’d you feel about that?”

  “I felt great,” Grant said. “It’s all I ever wanted for her.”

  Tower’s eyes narrowed with suspicion.

  Elias asked, “That’s all you spoke about? With Lisa?”

  “No.” Grant bit off the word.

  Elias remained silent, waiting.

  Grant stared back for a few moments, then filled the silence. “She told me that she owed me a debt of gratitude. If I hadn’t broken up with her, she never would have sought counseling. She never would’ve learned how to love, which she knew she could do now.”

  “So she was grateful,” Elias offered.

  Grant snorted. “To a point.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Grant leaned back in his chair and sighed, running a hand over his trimmed hair. “When I suggested that we should give our relationship another try, she said no.”

  “No?”

  Grant clenched his jaw and nodded. “She said there was too much baggage.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “I got…angry.”

  “Is that why this happened tonight, Grant?” Elias asked soothingly. “Because you were angry at her?”

  Grant stared at Elias for a long moment, reached for the can and took a slug of the Coke.

  “Was that why?” Elias pressed.

  Grant flicked his gaze to Tower before answering. “Yeah,” he admitted. “I just couldn’t take it.”

  “Take what?”

  “The whole thing. I mean, she only got better because of me. I endured all the frustration and bullshit of a lousy relationship. I tried to work through it. Then once she gets her act together, she’s not willing to give us another try? What kind of gratitude is that?”

  “It doesn’t sound very grateful,” Elias sympathized.

  “It wasn’t!” Grant snapped. “She goes to this wonderful shrink and gets fixed and then leaves me out in the cold? That’s unacceptable.”

  “And that’s why this happened tonight? For revenge?”

  “Exactly.” Grant finished off the Coke.

  Tower couldn’t contain himself any longer. He set his Styrofoam cup on th
e table and leaned forward past Elias. “Wait a second. You murdered a woman because she got counseling and then didn’t want to date you?”

  Elias pressed his lips together in irritation and shot Tower a dirty look. Tower could read the unspoken statement there, telling him to shut up.

  Grant furrowed his brow. “No…. I didn’t kill Lisa.” Tower narrowed his eyes in confusion. “Huh?”

  Elias sighed in frustration and closed the case file.

  Grant shook his head at both of them, then squeezed the Coke can with a crunch. “I said, I didn’t kill Lisa,” he told Tower, as if talking to an idiot child. “I killed Dr. Phillips.”

  The Bastard Mummy

  Detective Finch watched his partner, Detective Elias, walk into the Major Crimes bullpen at 0645 hours. Elias rubbed his bleary eyes and reached for his coffee cup.

  “Don’t even bother,” Finch said, seated at his desk.

  Elias paused in mid-reach. “Huh?”

  Finch smiled humorlessly. “We’re catching. And you’re going to love this one.”

  Elias grunted. He finished reaching for his cup, filling it halfway. “Run it for me.”

  Finch didn’t reply, but held his plastic smile.

  Elias took a giant sip of his coffee. He stared at Finch. “So?”

  “You ever work a mummy case before?” Finch asked.

  On the way to the museum, Elias shook his head in disbelief. “You’re serious? A real mummy? As in King Tut?”

  Finch nodded, his lips pressed together tightly.

  Elias shook his head again. “But we’re Major Crimes detectives.”

  “I know.”

  “We work homicides,” Elias said. “Robbery. Serious assault.”

  “I know.”

  “So tell me this, then. Why are we going out on this case? Was this mummy murdered way back when and we’re supposed to solve the case?”

  “That’d definitely be a cold case,” Finch observed dryly. He turned onto Boone and headed toward Birch.

  “I’m serious, Finchie. From what you said, this is a theft case. Maybe a burglary at best. I thought those cases got worked in the GD.”

  Finch shrugged. Elias was right. Most property crimes were worked by the general detectives. It took a special reason for Major Crimes detectives to get assigned to a property crime. And Finch had a pretty good idea what that special reason might be.