Darkness Descending: A Mimi Patterson/Gianna Maglione Mystery (The Mimi Patterson/Gianna Maglione Mysteries)

by Penny Mickelbury

  “What?”

  “The vic,” Cassie said. “She’s a girl.”

  Gianna was looking at a young male dressed in Philadelphia Seventy-Sixers attire—Allen Iverson’s jersey number— and a pair of those too expensive high top sneakers. He wore a gold watch and ring on his left hand. His hair was corn-rowed. His eyes and mouth were open. The teeth were white and perfect. Gianna looked at Cassie, who was watching her closely. Then Cassie looked at Jim Dudley, who also was watching Gianna. He looked at the people nearest him— cops, paramedics, the medical examiner— and waved his hand at them, making a circle. And that’s what they did— made a circle around Gianna, Jim, Cassie and the vic, making sure nobody could see that they saw. Then Dudley knelt down and raised the Sixers jersey. The first thing Gianna registered was that the torso had been cut—hacked to shreds. Then the real horror registered: this boy had breasts, small ones, and they’d been all but excised from the torso. “Good God!”

  “You see some shit like this and you wonder if He is,” Jim Dudley said.

  Gianna looked at the ME and Dr. Wanda Oland stepped over to her. “Lieutenant. I would say it’s good to see you again, but...” The doctor shrugged off the need to add further commentary.

  “Is this anatomically a woman, Wanda?” Gianna asked, speaking directly into the doctor’s ear, making certain she wasn’t overheard.

  The doctor replied in the same fashion. “If you’re asking me whether there’s a vagina, there is. Fully and naturally formed. If you’re asking me whether this is a hate crime, it is. Did you get a good look at what’s carved on her body?”

  “That’s not just hacking?” Gianna asked.

  She shook her head. “I’ll save you having to look again. ‘Die Dyke’ is what’s cut into her.”

  Gianna’s stomach heaved. She didn’t trust herself to speak, so she didn’t. Instead she turned away to look for Cassie.

  “Hey, Lieutenant.” The ME called her and she turned back. “Thanks for not asking me a lot of those stupid television cop questions. I appreciate it,” she said, and dug into her pocket for her cigarettes, holding the pack between her hands as if deriving pleasure from just the thought of the nicotine rush, though she’d no more light one than kick dirt on the corpse. “I’ll call you when I have something to tell you,” she said, and looked up at the sky, better scenery than down where they were. “And I’ll be as quick about it as I can.”

  Gianna walked back to the doctor. “Well, maybe one question.”

  “Fuckin’ cops,” Wanda Oland said wearily. “What?”

  “It’s an easy one,” Gianna said. “How old do you think she is?”

  Oland nodded. “That is an easy one: Barely thirty, if that.”

  That’s what Gianna thought. Actually, what she’d thought was that the victim was about Cassie’s age. That’s what she was thinking when Cassie appeared at her side.

  “Boss,” she said, they walked away from the crowd, away from the official crime scene, and into the weeds and broken glass of a vacant lot. The smell of urine rose up around them. The night was becoming windy, courtesy of a hurricane that was tracking slowly up the eastern seaboard, bringing the promise of wind and rain and possibly cooler weather and an end to summer in D.C. Right now, though, the wind only blew the putrid urine scent back and forth.

  “Tell me everything, Cassie, starting with who she is. If you know.”

  “I don’t know. I do know that she was in the club earlier and that she left about one o’clock.”

  “In what club?” Gianna looked all around. “There’s a club around here?”

  Cassie nodded, turned and pointed. “In the next block. That two story brick building on the corner there? That’s the place. Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights only.”

  “And you know she was there because you were there?”

  Cassie nodded again. “I left about twenty minutes after she did. When I came out, I heard people yelling, shouting, and I saw a crowd up here, so I checked it out. I found her like you saw her.”

  Gianna looked around again, assessing the distance from the corner to where the body lay. “Where was she going? Would she have parked this far away?”

  “She was probably headed for the subway. That’s where we were going.”

  “What we?”

  “I was with two friends.”

  “Did you recognize any of the people near the body when you got there? Had you seen any of them in the club?”

  Cassie shook her head. “I really wasn’t looking at the crowd, not at first. I was concerned about the vic and whether anybody had called it in. And whether or not she was still alive, though I didn’t think so. But Mike checked for a pulse anyway.”

  “Who? What? Somebody touched the body?”

  “My friend, Mike. She’s a medic in the Army. She just got back from the Middle East, so she knows dead when she sees it, and she said there was no pulse.”

  “Mike’s a woman?”

  Cassie smiled. “Her name’s Mary Lynne but it’s such a girly-girl name and she always hated it, so she started calling herself Mike in junior high and now everybody calls her that.”

  “OK, I’m sorry. Go ahead.”

  “The first squad arrived at one twenty-six, and that’s when things got nasty. So I circled around to the rear, to see if I knew any of the cops, and that’s when Dudley saw me and told me to call you.”

  “Nasty why?”

  “Have you taken a good look at the people out here?” Cassie asked.

  Gianna took a good look at Cassie. “Why do you ask?”

  “You asked if I recognized anybody from the club and I don’t, specifically, but I’m sure that most of the spectators were there, and they’re hanging around not just being nosey, but to make sure nothing gets swept under the rug. And I guess that’s why I stayed around, too.”

  Gianna let her surprise show, then her anger. “You know better than that. If this is a hate crime, and it certainly looks like it may be, then you know nothing will get swept under the rug.”

  “You thought the vic was a boy, right, Boss?”

  “So what?” Gianna was more than a little irritated, and the Boss irritated was more than a little unnerving to Cassie.

  “How many of those people over there you think are males?”

  Gianna looked where Cassie looked, thought about the question, and looked closer, looked beyond the surface at the faces of all the boys in the crowd. Then she looked hard at Cassie. “What are you saying, Cassie?”

  “Thinking about what’s happened up in New Jersey, and thinking about some of the things that’ve happened around here...:

  “What the hell are you talking about? What happened in New Jersey? What things have happened around here?”

  “Sakia Gunn, Boss, and Shani Baraka. And just last month, a couple of Doms were denied entry to the Bayou.”

  “A couple of wha...you mean...what do you call them?

  “Doms, Ags—for Dominants and Aggressives.. They couldn’t get in. Just because of who and how they are.”

  Gianna recalled the mutilated body lying not ten yards away and felt an overwhelming sadness. No matter how much progress was achieved, it still was never enough. Somebody would always find a reason to hate something or somebody.

  “I think we’ve been made,” Cassie said, breaking into her ruminations.

  Gianna perused the crowd and saw what Cassie had seen, and realized what the crowd was seeing: Cassie in her skin tight jeans and tee shirt, Gianna in her black jeans and boots, her shoulder holster visible beneath her jacket to anybody looking closely enough. Their own attire was as definitive as that of the, what did Cassie call them? Doms and Ags. “Well, you’d better come all the way out,” Gianna said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do.

  Cassie took her ID and weapon from her waist pouch and clipped them on her belt, aware that the crowd noticed. “Now what?”

  “Go see if you can learn anything officially, now that they know who you are, while I ca
ll Eric. Then we’ll organize a canvass and hope that somebody saw something and will tell us about it.”

  Cassie nodded. “OK, Boss.” She turned away, then came back. “Who’s Detective Dudley? Should I know him?”

  Gianna hesitated briefly, then answered. “He was the lead on your assault investigation. He made the collar and the case that bought your attackers twenty-five to life in the Federal pen in Virginia.”

  “Damn,” Cassie said, for once at a loss for her customary stream of words, and she sauntered off.

  “Hey! You! Cop!”

  Gianna looked toward the group of people that had been watching her and Cassie. One of them beckoned and she walked over. “Can I help you?”

  “Where you send her? That other cop? The Black one?”

  “Y’all ain’t gon’ let her find out who killed this dude, are you?”

  “She’s going to help find out,” Gianna said.

  “Why she got to ‘help? Why she can’t be in charge?”

  “Because I’m in charge. She works for me.” She reached into her pocket and retrieved a handful of the cards she kept at the ready and passed them around to anybody who’d take one. Several people would not; this was not the crowd from which the police auxiliary drew its members. “You have anything to say, call. You can talk to her or to me or to whoever answers the phone.”

  “‘Hate Crimes.’ You think that’s what happened to her? A hate crime?” somebody asked.

  “It wasn’t no love crime, Dog, that’s for sure,” somebody else answered, and a hot wave of angry emotion wafted through the crowd, and muggy night air seemed to hang even heavier.

  Gianna noticed that the body now was bagged and that evidence cones now were in place along the sidewalk and into the vacant lot. Crime scene investigators and evidence techs were on their knees with cameras and tweezers and envelopes, picking up bits and pieces and scraps. The assistant ME was leaning against the EMT bus smoking a cigarette, waiting for the coroner’s van so she could take the body. It was an odd, eerie scene: A narrow area hot with artificial light, surrounded by the blackness of night. Gianna made eye contact with Dudley and he broke away from a knot of people he was huddled with and came toward her. “I’m sorry to have to say it, Maglione, but I don’t envy you this one. This is some ugly shit.”

  “Hate’s an ugly thing, Jim. I’m just glad you recognized it for what it was as soon as you did. Nothing worse than playing catch-up on one of these. I appreciate the heads up and I won’t forget it.”

  He lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply, and blew smoke out of the side of his mouth, away from Gianna. “So, Officer Ali just happened to be on the scene?”

  “Any ID on the vic?” Gianna asked, ignoring the question.

  Dudley accepted the unspoken rebuke with a slight shrug. “Nope. We got a Metro fare card, a hundred sixty dollars in cash—crisp, new twenties—two joints in a plastic bag, a cell phone, and a car key. A Mercedes Benz car key.”

  Gianna followed Dudley to his car. She held up one of tagged evidence bags to the light and scrutinized the Metro fare card. It was a new one, a twenty dollar buy with one trip on it. If the victim had indeed taken the train, they could tell where she boarded by the amount remaining on the fare card. Thank goodness the Metropolitan Transit Authority operated on a distance-based fare system and not on a flat rate. “A farecard and a single car key. She parked at a Metro station and rode over here.”

  “Her ID’s in the trunk of her car,” Dudley said, following Gianna’s train of thought. “Hey, Wilson!” he shouted, and rotated his hand in the air like a royal giving a wave. A patrol officer trotted over. “Find me a subway map.” The uniform nodded and trotted off.

  Gianna looked at her watch. Eric would arrive at any moment with the rest of her Unit. She looked around for Cassie, saw her talking to a group of people across the street, and walked back over to the crime scene. The coroner’s wagon had arrived and Wanda Oland was overseeing the moving of the body. “You want something, Lieutenant?”

  “If you don’t mind, Doc, I’d like to take another look at her.”

  “No problem.” The ME waved her techs aside. Gianna was grateful that the body now was on a gurney so she could see without having to kneel down. Oland unzipped the bag, pulled back the sheet, and Gianna leaned in close. The victim’s skin was flawlessly clear—not the caliber of complexion obtained from drug store soap and lotion. Her nails were short but perfectly and professionally manicured. Her teeth were an advertisement for an orthodontist: Perfectly aligned, not a cavity to be seen. Gianna peered into the open, vacant eyes: Contact lenses. “Looking for anything in particular?” Oland asked, close enough that Gianna could smell the nicotine on her.

  “Did you notice her watch and ring?”

  Wanda Oland lifted and dropped her shoulders as if she expected some of the weight of her job to roll off. “Not beyond the fact of their existence. Why?”

  “A Movado and a Penn class ring.”

  “So,” the doctor said, the word carrying no hint of dismissal or disregard. Nor was it a question, really, and unless Gianna told her, the doctor would have no way of knowing that the cop remarked on the University of Pennsylvania class ring because, along with the Seventy-Sixers jersey, it struck a familiar chord. The cop was a Philadelphia native. And as the doctor said, So?

  “Not typical jewelry for the victim of a street crime,” Gianna said.

  The doctor shrugged again. “But not unprecedented,” she said.

  “Really?”

  “I can’t tell you the number of upscale johns I’ve processed, pillars of their various communities, found in alleys, flop houses, crack houses, dumpsters, shitty neighborhoods like this one. Fruit from the forbidden tree and all that. So many of ‘em I’ve lost track.”

  Gianna looked down at the brutalized, lifeless young body stretched out before her. Is that what this was, pursuit of a bite of forbidden fruit gone wrong? Or was this something else entirely?

  It wasn’t no love crime, that’s for sure. The words played themselves over in Gianna’s head. A crime of passion, perhaps? Or, as it seemed, a crime of hate? She looked up and saw Detective Eric Ashby headed toward her, followed by Cassie, Tim McCreedy, Linda Lopez, Bobby Gilliam and Kenny Chang. The Hate Crimes Unit. Her team, her people. Time to get busy.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Cassie had convinced Gianna to let her handle things at The Snatch and now she was regretting her insistence. Dee Phillips flat out refused to discuss the murder of a patron a block and a half from her door, so expecting her cooperation was out of the question. “No law was broken in my establishment, therefore I have no interest in the matter,” was her response. When Cassie kept talking, Phillips took her by the arm and ushered her out of her office and literally pushed her toward the front door. The woman was tall, square, and solid, more than strong enough to propel Cassie forward against her will, and certain enough of her legal standing not to be the least bit intimidated by Cassie’s various attempts at intimidation.

  “Are you certain you didn’t see the victim tonight? She was back here, in the ladies room, just before she left,” Cassie said.

  “There are no ‘ladies’ rooms in this establishment,” Dee Phillips said coldly. “There are rest rooms, or bathrooms, or toilets. But no ladies rooms. That’s because no men are permitted on these premises.”

  “Whatever,” Cassie said, now annoyed as well as frustrated. “I’m asking whether you saw the victim,” and she described her again, down to and including the watch and ring she wore. And Cassie would have sworn an oath that Dee Phillips was lying when she said “That description means nothing to me. Now, go away and please don’t bother me with this foolishness again.”

  “Foolishness? A woman is dead, murdered. You think that’s foolishness?”

  “I think your attempt to involve me and my establishment is foolishness,” Dee Phillips said. And something about the way she checked her watch and stole a glance at the dancers on the bar added dimension
to the earlier lie.

  She knows something, Cassie thought as she snaked her way through the crowd clustered at the bar. She pushed for the front door so she could exit before the show ended; she didn’t want to get stuck inside here for an extra twenty minutes.

  “You just made it,” Darlene said, turning the key in the door.

  “I think that’s probably illegal,” Cassie said, eyeing the locked door.

  Darlene scrutinized her. “You were in here earlier. With that Army dude. I didn’t know you were a cop.”

  “I wasn’t,” Cassie said, then, “I mean, I wasn’t working then. I was just hanging out with some friends. The dead body up the block changed all that.”

  “Damn! That’s some shit, ain’t it?” Darlene’s face turned sad and her voice became even lower and softer. She looked over Cassie’s head toward the two dozen people still in line, turned her back on them, and leaned in close. “Hey, tell me somethin’? Was it really Tosh?”

  “Was it really what?”

  “Who got smoked up the street. Somebody said it was Tosh. Was it?”

  “She didn’t have any ID so we don’t know her name, but maybe you could describe this Tosh for me?” And Darlene did, right down to the model of the sneakers on her feet and the description of her Mercedes Benz. “So, is it her?”

  “Sounds like, but you understand we have to obtain positive confirmation, and then we have to notify the next of kin—”

  “Oh fuck!” Darlene’s eyes widened and she pounded the sides of her head with her fists. “Oh fuck! She got up from her stool and walked a tight circle.

  “What? What’s wrong? You know something else? What is it?”

  Lili,” Darlene said, her whole face turned downward in sadness. “Lili don’t know. Oh, this shit’s fucked, Man.”

  “Who’s Lili?” Cassie asked, knowing better than to push but needing to convey a sense of urgency to the big bouncer.

  “Tosh’s bitch. She just finished her set. Somebody better tell her.”