by Michael Omer
“Hey.” Richie said. “Whatcha got there?”
“This is Mikey,” Bernard answered. “We caught him with some crack.”
“Huh. Okay. Only one guy in the holding cells. Lucky fellow will even have a bed to sleep on.” Richie stood up and led the way to the large cell’s iron door.
“Mikey, is that you?” someone called from inside the cell.
Mikey looked pleased. “Rufus? Well, that’s funny, meeting you here!”
Funny, Bernard thought, absolutely hilarious.
Richie fiddled with the lock. It was kind of wonky, always took a few seconds to unlock.
“What are you in for, Mikey?”
“Cops here thought I was Devin.”
“Devin Derkins? What, are they fuckin’ stupid? You ain’t Devin Derkins.”
“I know, I told them.”
“You don’t even look like him. I mean, Devin’s taller, and his hair is brown.”
“I know, man, I told them.”
“And he has that tattoo. You don’t have a fucking tattoo.”
“I know, Rufus. They have the wrong guy.”
“How is Devin? Haven’t seen him for a while.”
“He has the flu. Got it real bad, man.”
“That sucks. My sister had the flu last week.”
Richie opened the door. Hannah pushed Mikey inside, a bit too roughly.
As they walked away, they heard the happy reunion commence again.
“What are you in for, Rufus?”
“I hit someone in a pub.”
“Yeah? They arrested you for that?”
“You know how those cocksuckers are. If they ain’t filling their cells, they feel empty inside.”
The detectives went up the elevator.
“Damn it!” Hannah said, thumping the elevator’s wall. “This is exactly the kind of screwup we don’t need!”
Bernard shrugged “We got the guy.”
“We got a guy. Not the guy,” Hannah said. “Damn GD! He said that Devin Derkins would be there tonight, selling crack. He said that Devin was always there on Tuesday night, that this was his spot, that it was a sure thing.”
“Well, you know, even drug dealers take a sick day sometimes. We have a guy who had fourteen rocks on him. Who cares what his name is?”
“I do! This is the guy we have? Mikey? I don’t want a Mikey! Does this guy know who the supplier is? Probably not. He probably got the stuff from Devin. Damn it!”
The elevator doors opened, and they got out.
“You know,” Hannah said, still fuming. “I bet his lawyer will use this in court somehow . There’s probably a Latin phrase for it. Your honor, this is a clear case of Arrestum Mikus Instedum Devinum. Fuck!”
“Chill, Hannah,” Bernard said, his voice firm. He stopped in the hallway, looked at her. She turned to face him, and he could see it all in her eyes: anger, desperation, exhaustion.
“We got the guy,” he said, his voice softening. “We got a dealer off the streets.”
Her shoulders slumped. “Yeah,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. He could see a tear starting to form, and she turned around quickly and marched into the detective squad. He followed her, pretending as if he hadn’t noticed.
The squad room was a medium-sized open space with four wooden desks, one for each of the detectives. Two whiteboards stood on opposite sides of the room; when a complex case presented itself, the detectives would use the whiteboards to draw the timeline, list the suspects and their connections to the case, and brainstorm ideas. When there was no major case, the whiteboards were used to list random bits of information, draw sketches of cartoon animals, and leave each other messages. One whiteboard was currently empty; the other had the words Jacob, your wife called scrawled on it.
A filing cabinet stood on the far side of the room, the squad’s precious coffee maker on it. Next to the filing cabinet was the door to Captain Bailey’s office. The entire detective squad consisted of only four detectives and the captain. Unlike most squads, there was no sergeant or lieutenant. The chief thought it was beneficial for the captain to work closely with his detectives, with no middle management layers. Bernard secretly thought she was wrong, though he knew that Captain Bailey was happy with this arrangement. Bernard was a strong believer in management hierarchy. As it was, Fred Bailey was spread too thin, and sometimes this prevented cases from moving forward.
Bernard yawned as he watched Hannah sit down in her chair and turn on her monitor. He’d let her do the initial report. If he left for home right now, he had five hours of sleep to look forward to.
“Hey, Hannah, I’m taking off, okay?”
“Yeah—” Her phone rang. “Hang on.”
Bernard winced. It wasn’t fair. He was just about to go home.
Hannah picked up the phone. “Detective Shor,” she said, then: “Oh, hey, Candace.”
Candace was one of the police dispatchers. Bernard felt his shoulders tense.
Hannah listened for a while, then mouthed the word murder at Bernard.
“No, no, no!” he whispered. “Tell her we can’t. Tell her that we just finished with a stakeout and we haven’t slept yet—”
“Uh huh,” Hannah said, writing something on a pad in front of her. “Traynor Road. Uh huh.”
“Tell her to wake up Jacob!” Bernard whispered frantically. “Rory was up all night yesterday. I’m exhausted. I can’t go to another—”
“Yeah, sure, we’re on our way.”
Bernard groaned as Hannah hung up.
“Jacob already took the last two murders,” Hannah told him brusquely. “This one’s ours.”
Bernard shut his eyes, hating his partner for a second. Mikey would be going to sleep on the little cot in his cell right about now. No murder case keeping him out of his bed. No children waking him up crying every twenty minutes.
Being an incarcerated drug dealer sounded like paradise.
Chapter Two
The address Candace had given Hannah was a building on Traynor Road. Hannah knew the neighborhood. It was a popular place for young people looking for reasonably cheap apartments close to the city’s hub. Although the buildings seemed old and dirty, it wasn’t a bad neighborhood, and crime there was not as frequent as people thought. As they got closer to the crime scene, Hannah slowed the car down. Her eyes began to scan the surroundings, looking for anything out of the ordinary.
She fought the urge to accelerate and get there as fast as they possibly could. The murderer could be fleeing the scene right now, hiding behind that billboard, or the tree on the corner. Even if he was long gone, she wanted to get a mental image of the area. Were there security cameras on the street? Perhaps an all-night drugstore whose clerk might have seen something?
The streets were completely empty. It was one in the morning on a Wednesday, and most of the city’s drunk or homeless didn’t hang out in this neighborhood. The windows around them were dark. Only she and Bernard traversed the empty street, on their way to meet a dead man.
“Jacob would have been happy to investigate this murder,” Bernard muttered. “I mean, he has nothing better to do. He would have jumped from his bed like lightning at the thought of a dead man waiting for investigation. But noooo. Detective Hannah Shor didn’t want his precious sleep to be interrupted. Because God forbid Jacob’s sleep be terminated before dawn.”
Hannah didn’t answer. Bernard was in a grumpy mood, but she knew it would soon dissipate. He was tired. He had three small children, and he rarely slept for more than two hours straight. Does he ever regret having children? she wondered. He certainly complained about them a lot.
She parked next to a patrol car, in front of a four-story building whose front wall was sprayed with graffiti. It was an odd mix of artistic signatures, obviously drawn with care and thought, intermingled with a black-sprayed sentence that read Fuck Dan Smi. Either the spray can had run out in the middle of the composition, or the subject really was named Dan Smi.
Officer Tanes
sa Lonnie was waiting for them at the building’s entrance, sipping from a steamy mug. Someone here was hospitable. Hannah hoped whoever had supplied the beverage would be happy to make more. The detectives got out of the car, Bernard slamming the door much louder than usual. They both approached Tanessa.
“Hey, Tanessa,” Hannah said warmly.
“Hey, Hannah!” Tanessa said, her perfect face remaining serious.
How could someone look so amazing in a patrol officer uniform? Back when Hannah had been in uniform, her body had looked like a dressed-up potato. Looking good wearing the vest, the patrol officer’s gear belt, and the uninspiring uniform seemed impossible, yet Tanessa somehow pulled it off. Like all the Lonnie siblings, she was smashing. Her hair was brown like Hannah’s, but that was where the similarity ended. While Hannah’s hair was always a bit lackluster, Tanessa’s hair was long, rich, and gleaming. It always looked as if it should be in a shampoo commercial. Her skin was a cool, smooth white, emphasizing her constantly smiling rose red lips. And her eyes—almond shaped, sparkling green—eyes that would have sunk ships, thousands of years ago.
Tanessa had returned from sick leave two weeks ago. She’d been kidnapped and slashed by Jovan Stokes, the serial killer. Hannah guessed Tanessa was recuperating from more than just the cut on her neck, though that had left a nasty scar. Whenever Hannah saw her, Hannah felt a pang of guilt. It was partly her fault it had happened.
“What do we have here, Tanessa?” Bernard asked. Hannah noticed his tone was soft. No more bad mood for Bernard Gladwin. Tanessa made it all go away.
Tanessa’s mouth curved downward. “It’s a mess. This guy, Frank Gulliepe, was murdered in his apartment—that’s number thirteen. Top floor. The murder was reported by his friend, Jerome Piet.”
“Did Jerome see the murder?” Hannah asked.
“No, not exactly. You should talk to him to get the full story. He’s currently in the apartment of Mr. Gulliepe’s neighbor. Officer Bertini is securing the entrance to the crime scene and the entrance to the neighbor’s apartment, just in case Jerome decides to leave.”
“Okay. When did you get here?”
“We got here at oh-thirty-five, as did the paramedic. We checked the apartment. It’s… well. It’s not pretty.” Her eyes became distant, as if she was replaying the scene in her mind. She raised her hand, touching the scar on her neck. Hannah had seen her do this repeatedly over the past weeks. Why had they let her come back? The girl obviously still needed time to heal. And now, not long after returning to duty, she’d run into a murder scene on her shift. It was unlucky, to say the least.
Tanessa cleared her throat and carried on, her voice a bit formal, almost mechanical. “The apartment was empty, aside from the victim. The paramedics rushed to his aid. A few minutes later, after deciding the victim was beyond any help they could give him, they called the ME, and received permission to declare the victim dead. Then they left the apartment to avoid disrupting the scene. We contacted the dispatcher immediately, and secured the apartment’s entrance. We got a very basic statement from Jerome Piet and the neighbor. The crime scene investigator… I keep forgetting his name… the short guy…” She pulled a sheet of paper from one of the pockets in her gear belt, the crime scene log. She scanned it quickly “Oh, right. Matt. Matt Lowery and Violet Todd got here at oh-fifty-five. Matt told us to secure the building’s entrance as well, to avoid crime scene contamination, so I went downstairs.”
“And you somehow got coffee in the process,” Hannah said.
Tanessa blushed. “The neighbor made us coffee,” she said.
“Okay. And in what apartment is the crime scene again?” Hannah asked.
“Well, I’m not sure if Matt decided to include the stairs or hallway as part of the crime scene, but the murder took place in apartment thirteen. And the neighbor is in apartment fourteen.”
“Anything else?” Bernard asked.
“The neighbor heard something. It woke her up.”
“But she didn’t call the police?”
“No.”
“Thanks, Tanessa,” Bernard said.
“Just sign the log before you walk in, Detectives,” Tanessa said, and handed it to them.
They both signed the log and entered the building. The light in the lobby was dim, the walls cracked and gray, the entire ground floor bare. There was no elevator in the building, and Hannah and Bernard ascended the stairs by foot, keeping to the right side, their eyes scanning the surroundings. Most likely this was the path the murderer took both before and after the murder. If the staircase was ever washed, it was annually; the entire thing was covered in dirt. The murderer’s footprint was there somewhere in the dust, among hundreds of footprints, but if there was a way to determine which was the murderer’s Matt would know it.
They reached the top floor, where Officer Sergio Bertini—Tanessa’s partner—was standing in front of the door to apartment thirteen. The detectives nodded at him, and he nodded back. There was no small talk. He wasn’t Tanessa.
The door was a simple white wooden door; on it hung a small black sign with the number 13 written on it. Bernard pushed the door open; it swung in to reveal a living room, and the first thing that met Hannah’s eyes was the body of the man, lying on the floor three feet or so from the entrance. He looked about twenty-five, maybe thirty, average height, bald. His face was contorted in a grimace of surprise and pain.
His bathrobe was wide open, and under it he was naked. Hannah could see several gashes on his chest, with clotted trickles of blood spilling from them. The body was lying on an off-white carpet with large brown stains where the blood oozing from the corpse had soaked into it. There was that familiar smell in the air: the coppery, bloody smell of death. No matter how many times Hannah had smelled it, it always made her feel a bit queasy.
Matt Lowery was kneeling next to the body. Matt was one of the shortest men Hannah knew, barely over five feet tall. The joke in the squad was that this helped him to see the evidence better, as long as it was on the floor, har har. He held a camera in one glove-covered hand, the white latex glove contrasting with his dark skin.
Violet Todd, a pale girl with smooth, shockingly pink hair, stood on the far side of the room, drawing something on a small pad in her hand. The crime scene diagram, probably. The detectives were very familiar with Violet’s incredibly accurate and clean diagrams. As far as Hannah knew, Matt and Violet were teammates, neither of them in charge of the other. Nevertheless, for some reason, everyone treated Matt as if he were in charge. It never seemed to bother Violet, but it definitely irked Hannah.
Matt glanced at the detectives, his large eyes looking tired and sad.
“There are gloves near the door,” he said.
Bernard bent and picked up the box of gloves. He took a pair and passed the box to Hannah, who distractedly took a pair and slid them on. She paused in the entrance, while Bernard stepped into the room. It was their usual pattern; Hannah tried to frame the entire scene in her mind, analyzing it, getting a “feel” for whatever happened, while Bernard preferred to start cataloging the details, separating clues and leads with which he later tried to assemble the puzzle.
The light from the small ceiling lamp hit the victim’s face in a way that gave Hannah a jolt. For a second, the dead man reminded her uncannily of her uncle Reuben, whom she had just seen the previous weekend while visiting her mother. He had the same bald head with only a few strands of hair surrounding it, the same stubble on his cheeks and chin, the same nose, slightly longer and wider than average.
Though Frank Gulliepe clearly wasn’t her uncle, the similarity unnerved her and she found herself uncomfortable with the dead body’s visible penis. Blood rushed to her face, and she looked away, pretending to examine a knocked-over chair, so the people in the apartment wouldn’t see her blushing. Her own reaction infuriated her, and she forced herself to look back at the body, focusing on its features. The bloody chest was surprisingly hairless, though a plume of black hairs rose
from the penis to the belly.
The lowest stab wound struck there, in the middle of the stomach. The rest of the wounds were higher, slashing the chest thoroughly. Hannah had seen several stab wounds during her nine years on the force, and these wounds definitely looked as if they’d been made by a blade. They’d know more when the medical examiner got there.
“Anything so far?” Bernard asked Matt.
The crime scene tech shook his head. “Just got here. The scene appears to be limited to the apartment and the hallway leading to it. It’ll take some time before I finish documenting everything. For now, all I can tell you is that there are no marks of forced entry, his wallet is on the night table next to his bed, and the apartment seems to be in order. I don’t think this was a robbery gone wrong.”
“What about the stairs?” Hannah asked.
“Well… I doubt I’ll be able to get anything useful from them. I’ll take some photographs of the most recent footprints at the top.”
Hannah looked around. The blood spatters drew her attention immediately, standing out garishly in the otherwise clean and orderly apartment. Aside from the blood around the body, there were three distinct places on the rug which sported blood spray and streaks. A section of the wall, about two feet from the floor, was marked by a spray of blood as well.
Hannah recalled one of her Dad’s favorite sentences: A wall always seems whiter when it has a black spot on it. What would he say if he saw this wall? She knew Matt would triangulate those marks to find the point of origin, figure out where Frank had been when he was stabbed. She focused on the room, ignoring the stains of violence.
It was a typical bachelor’s apartment. The furniture was tasteful but minimal. Two couches, a desk with a laptop computer in the corner of the room. A large TV screen fixed on the wall next to the computer. A small coffee table sat in the middle of the room, and on it were a bottle of tequila and two empty shot glasses. In the wall opposite the entrance door, a small window looked out onto the street. There was a bookcase with several books and what looked like an ugly decorative statue of a Buddha, though it was difficult to see the details from where Hannah stood.
