by Lisa Black
‘By its smell.’
He gaped at her, snorted, threw his hands up, turned in a short circle and then said to his brother: ‘All right. I just don’t like anyone federal poking their noses in our business, you know.’
‘I know,’ his brother assured him. This seemed to be a conversation they’d had many times already.
Carl thought another moment, then added, ‘It always winds up with them raising our liability cap.’
‘I know. But they have a job to do.’
Carl added to the agents: ‘And you don’t remove anything from this facility without my written approval!’
The female agent said, ‘We’re not here to pirate your secret designs, Mr Lambert.’
‘All the same. I play golf with your boss, you know.’
‘We’re aware of that, yes,’ the woman said, in a voice soft enough to lull a baby to sleep. Her partner rolled his eyes, but only after Lambert the elder had turned away.
Just then Theresa’s phone rang, and she moved to the relatively unscathed hallway to answer it.
It was Frank. ‘I need you,’ he said.
TWELVE
Theresa found the house with the sagging apple tree in the yard within fifteen minutes, responding to the concern in her cousin’s voice. She located Frank upon entering the house; he stood gazing at a TV set with a decently sized screen and a fraction of the dust found on the rest of the furniture. Nothing appeared on the TV and she saw no dead bodies. ‘It helps if you turn it on.’
His eyes but not his mind turned toward her. A small, well-groomed dog also looked up from its perch on the threadbare sofa.
‘Frank? What’s going on?’ He didn’t usually get so lost in thought – that had always been her bailiwick, and his the job of teasing her out of it.
‘You all right?’ he asked.
‘Fine. I told you, I heard the rumble, that was it. Didn’t even get knocked down.’ Not by the explosion, anyway.
‘This is Marty Davis’ TV set,’ he told her.
She waited, but that seemed to be the sum total of his explanation. ‘How do you know that?’
‘Because our victim is Marty Davis’ beneficiary,’ he said, with some irritation, as if she had not been paying attention. He wore the scowl that made weaker beings confess on the spot and his hair stood up as if he’d run a hand or two through it. ‘He left her all his worldly possessions, of which this TV represents the crown jewel.’
‘Where is the victim?’
‘Upstairs, in the bathtub.’
‘Drowned?’
‘Only in her own blood. She slit her wrists. And then let her son find her when he finally decided to mosey home from school – this had to be the day he actually went to school, which I gather is not a regular occurrence. Great plan, huh? Let your kid find you?’
‘Frank,’ Theresa asked carefully, ‘how long have you known this woman?’
That he did not seem to find this question strange only proved his agitation. ‘Since yesterday.’
Angela Sanchez came in the front door at that moment. ‘You all right?’
Theresa said, ‘Fine.’
‘And our resident genius?’
‘Shook up. One of his staff dead, one critical. He seemed pretty upset.’
‘You spoke to him?’ the cop asked, staring, and Theresa realized that even the normally unflappable Angela was a bit star-struck. ‘Isn’t he, like, the richest man in the world?’
‘Not the richest, I don’t think. But in the top five.’
Again, the slightly unfocused stare, but then Angela shook it off and spoke to her partner. ‘The landlord let her take the stuff. Lily had a copy of the will proving that she was the beneficiary.’
‘So he just let her waltz off with whatever she wanted?’
‘He had no intention of waiting for the probate process to clean out the apartment. Says he needs to rent it, and likewise had no intention of storing all Marty’s stuff for the duration. He wanted to get rid of it and she wanted to take it.’
‘Terrific.’ Frank did not seem able to tear his gaze from the TV set.
‘Marty Davis had lived there for almost ten years, and the landlord knew Marty didn’t have any close friends or relatives likely to protest.’ Angela looked around. ‘Where’s the kid?’
Theresa turned up her hands to confess ignorance.
Frank said, ‘A Victim Advocate took him to a neighbor’s. What about a car? If she got excited over a TV set, she must have wet herself to inherit Marty’s car.’
Angela shook her head. ‘A lease. The landlord called the company to come and get that before Marty’s body had cooled.’
‘Efficient guy.’
‘He needed the parking space. He says Lily was distinctly unhappy when he told her that, but the mood didn’t last long.’
‘Not this afternoon, it wouldn’t have. She was flying when we saw her.’
‘So how did she go from high to slitting her wrists in one afternoon?’ Angela asked.
They fell silent. Theresa tried to sort out this information into a timeline, and fill in the missing parts. ‘So this victim – Lily? – went to Marty’s apartment to collect her inheritance?’
‘Three times,’ Angela clarified. ‘He says she broke in yesterday; it must have been immediately after we talked to her. I guess she had to check out her windfall. He came back from dinner to find the M.E.’s seal on the door broken, says he didn’t think much of it and figured one of the other tenants helped themselves to stuff that Marty wouldn’t need any more. He didn’t report it. He figured they only waited that long out of respect for Marty, whom everyone seemed to like despite his occupation. His tenants, he tells me, are not of the highest quality.’
‘So that was Lily?’ Frank asked.
‘He doesn’t know. But she showed up bright and early the next morning, demanding to collect her inheritance. He wouldn’t let her take anything, but he did let her go in and check it out while he dealt with a leaky pipe. Next thing he knows, she’s running off with what looked like a red cardboard box that had been on the dining room table and something shiny, a watch, or jewelry or something.’
‘And didn’t report that either, did he?’
‘Too busy with the leaky pipe. I’m guessing Lily then came downtown to get a copy of the will from the legal department – don’t ask me how, she probably stole that too—’
‘They might have given it to her.’ He didn’t exactly growl, but it came close.
‘True,’ Angela said, more cautiously. ‘It’s only one page long and hers is the only name in it – aside from his mother, who’s dead. After she left our car she somehow got back to the apartment and showed him the will. That was enough for the landlord, who by then wanted to be rid of both Marty’s stuff and Lily both.’
‘How did she get that TV back here?’
‘No idea. The landlord didn’t see anyone else with her or know what kind of vehicle, if any, she had.’
‘So Lily either got a ride or carried a fifty-two-inch, what, three miles?’
Angela said, ‘The TV’s bigger than she is. Though she seemed to have a lot of extra energy. The landlord described her as “super-hyper” on the second visit.’
Frank nodded, finally turning from the TV set. ‘So she helped herself to Marty’s watch, probably pawned it, then used the money to stop and smoke some meth before bouncing down to the Justice Center and running into us. Then she used the rest of the money to get a ride and cart Marty’s TV set home.’
‘And some other stuff,’ Angela said. ‘There’s a box on the kitchen table with some more jewelry, an iPod, a ton of CDs and a Nintendo model from four years ago with games to match.’
‘No way she walked, then,’ Frank said.
Angela said, ‘She worked for a courier. She could have called a co-worker, someone in the area who could pick her up and drop her off in between deliveries. A job perk the boss doesn’t need to know about.’
‘Send a guy to her job.’
‘Al
ready did.’
‘This all happened earlier today?’ Theresa asked, still playing catch-up.
‘Yeah. So how does she go from bouncing off the walls with excitement over her new TV set to slitting her wrists? That –’ he faced Theresa with eyes full of anger – ‘is what’s bothering me.’
She could see that. ‘Show me the body.’
Frank turned without speaking. She followed him through a kitchen cluttered with dirty dishes, unopened mail and loose food. Boxes of cereal stood open; one had fallen over and trailed Fruit Loops across the cracked laminate counter. Three cockroaches feasted there, too gorged to move as she walked by. A single navel orange, the only apparent concession to good health in the room, sat forlorn and forgotten behind the empty dish drainer. Theresa felt immense gratitude for her more hygienic upbringing.
Mail had been stacked on the table until the weight of it had pulled the top envelopes over. A number of them had warnings in red, dire predictions about the consequences of late payments, and seemed to have been soaked with water at some point. The cardboard box with the dead cop’s belongings sat as Angela had described. Next to it sat a small, empty box with bright red designs which had once held a cell phone.
The dog had been no neater with his food dish, or perhaps someone had accidentally kicked the bowl as they went by, because kibbles crunched under her feet. Not a single drawer or cabinet door was completely closed, but one stuck at least halfway out. This seemed to be the standard kitchen ‘junk drawer’, full of twist ties, assorted tools, take-out menus and a can opener.
She snapped a few pictures as they walked. A filthy home didn’t just represent a not terribly attractive lifestyle. It caused a serious problem in the investigation of the crime. At any scene investigators searched for items that didn’t belong, that stood out, that seemed to have been recently deposited. How could she find a stranger’s hairs or fibers on carpeting that hadn’t been swept in a decade, or determine if an intruder had knocked over a pile of items when everything in the house normally lived on the floor? Did the ex-boyfriend rip all the clothing out of the woman’s closet or did she simply find hangers too much trouble? There was a reason why investigators on TV always went to wealthy homes. How hard could it be to find a wayward casing in the rug when the maid had just vacuumed that morning?
The steps to the second floor creaked and Theresa stepped carefully to avoid tripping on the many loose strings – the floral tapestry runner reminded her of her grandmother’s house, as did the dark wood of the steps. Generations of footsteps had worn a groove into each one.
The upstairs held three tiny bedrooms and one bath, the conditions of all four on a par with the kitchen. The bathroom came first, at the top of the stairs. From the landing Theresa could see the too-white hand extend out over the edge of the porcelain tub and the puddle of blood on the floor. But she did a quick walk-through in the bedrooms first; once in the bathroom she would remain there for quite some time, so she might as well get a rounder picture of the victim before that. One bedroom must belong to the kid Frank had mentioned. It contained the electronic accouterments of a teenage boy’s life and smelled like team spirit.
‘What’s his name?’ she asked Frank, who leaned in the doorway. Over his shoulder, Angela watched Theresa.
‘Brandon.’ Some memory made him chuckle, a dry, mirthless rattle. This case bothered him, but she didn’t want to ask him about it with his partner standing there. No matter how close he and Angela might be, Theresa doubted they were to the point where Frank would be comfortable discussing a weakness. And letting your cases get to you was, in his view, a definite weakness.
A mattress on the floor and a stained comforter, shoved to one side, made up the bedding. A battered dresser with clothes overflowing from its drawers would have looked ransacked, but a healthy coating of dust on the edges made it clear that the compartments had been in that position for some time. Two notebooks sat neatly aligned at the foot of the mattress. Had young Brandon walked past the bathroom with his mother’s body to come into his room and drop off his school work?
‘Was the bathroom door closed when he came home?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Frank said.
Angela said, ‘From the way he described it, the door was not completely closed, but he said something about knocking on it before going in.’
Partially closed, so he probably had gone to his bedroom first. A boy would hardly want to walk in on his mother in the bathroom. But if he found the house unlocked he would assume she was home and eventually get curious about her location. Or simply need to use the toilet. ‘What about the house? Locked?’
‘Open.’
The next bedroom belonged to a female, one who wore tiny, shimmery tops and thong underwear. She also hadn’t been there in a long time; every item and surface had a half inch of dust on it. Frank explained about the daughter in jail.
Lily Simpson’s bedroom appeared similar to her son’s but with a slightly more feminine aspect. She seemed to be the same clothing size as her daughter but not as interested in dressing to appeal, owning mostly Tshirts and thin sweatpants, jeans and athletic shoes (called, in Cleveland, ‘tennis shoes’, despite the fact that few of its citizens had played the game since the mid-1970s). She had three books in the room, a dictionary, a paperback romance and the Bible, and one magazine (Cosmo). Two scratched CDs, Milli Vanilli and Tom Petty. Lily at least had a bed, with a wooden frame of indeterminate age and a set of unmade, threadbare sheets under a velour blanket with an assortment of dried stains. Theresa took a picture, and then gingerly pulled the top sheet back. None of the stains there seemed fresh.
A lamp stood on the nightstand between the bed and a badly painted wall. Next to it sat a box of tissues, a wadded-up bundle of bills, and three quarters. Theresa counted the money by its edges, without substantially moving the stack. Twelve dollars.
Also on the nightstand sat a wooden tray with an assortment of drug paraphernalia. Two butts left from marijuana cigarettes, a roach clip to hold same, a crack pipe made of pretty blue glass with cooked-on black residue in its bowl, a few of the inch-square baggies used to hold cocaine or heroin. No syringes, though, so the baggies must have held crack, or at least some drug that did not need to be injected.
‘I guess she never really got away from it,’ Angela said.
‘Drugs?’ Theresa asked.
‘She made it sound like a thing of the past. Maybe that’s why she felt a need to smear Marty Davis’ name a little. He got off the stuff. She didn’t.’
Frank moved away from the door.
THIRTEEN
Theresa found him in the bathroom, a space barely large enough to hold the tub, a toilet and a single sink. The cabinet beneath it had only one door but held a healthy supply of toilet paper. Old-fashioned, undersized squares of white tile covered the floor, making the pool of blood seem even brighter by contrast. Plasma had begun to separate from the red blood cells, creating an outer halo of clear yellow liquid. Her clothes sat in a pile on the floor next to the toilet.
Lily Simpson lay in the tub, naked and white. Her knees were bent, her feet flat against the outer wall with her shoulders wedged into the far corner on one side of the faucet. Her head rested against the tiled wall so that she could stare at the cracked plaster ceiling with open eyes. Her dirty blond hair was dry and she wore no make-up. Many suicides put water in the tub, thinking that will somehow help them to bleed faster or simply make them more comfortable, but Lily had not bothered with that.
The box cutter she had used on her wrists lay in the bottom of the tub under her right shin. Her left arm stretched over the floor to create that dramatic pool but Theresa suspected that most of the draining had been accomplished through her right wrist, which lay on the bottom of the tub with a direct line of red between it and the drain. Her life had escaped neatly and efficiently.
Theresa began to photograph. When done with that, she sketched. Occasionally she asked a question. The landlord said she left Mar
ty’s place about four o’clock. No one yet knew how she had traveled from there to home.
Frank said, ‘Most of the neighbors didn’t pay any attention to her and didn’t know her friends. One woman across the street would hang out here occasionally; she knew some people who came by but only by their first names, of course. Never noticed their cars. Never knew Lily to mention suicide, either, but said she kept up with the drugs. Low-key, but constant.’
Theresa checked the medicine cabinet – aspirin, and a well-used safety razor. An empty pill bottle for a three-year-old oxycodone prescription. ‘She didn’t keep them in here where the kids could get them.’
Frank snorted. ‘Sure. She hid them in an open box next to her bed. That would really keep Junior from helping himself.’
Theresa checked the drawers. ‘No razors.’
‘That’s why she used the box cutter.’
‘Who has straight razors in the bathroom these days anyway? No one uses them to shave any more,’ she chatted, just to keep the conversation going, to stave off that awful silence emanating from the dead victim and maybe get her cousin to open up about why the suicide of a drug addict had rattled him, now that his partner had gone back downstairs. ‘Scraping wallpaper, that’s about the only time I’ve used a razor blade in the past twenty years. They’re more likely to be found in the garage or the tool box.’
‘Mmm.’
‘She probably pulled it – the box cutter – out of that open drawer downstairs, walked up here, took off her clothes and cut her wrists. Didn’t even take the time to write her kids a note.’
Frank leaned casually against the door jamb, with nothing casual in the way he stared at the frozen hand stretched out over the tile, the palm turned up in supplication or abandonment or in one last contented sigh. ‘But why? She’s bouncing around all morning, harassing everyone she can find to get what she wants, and then offs herself? Why? She thought Marty would have a million dollars stashed in his mattress? She found out what cable costs? Why?’
‘Suicide isn’t always logical.’
‘It’s never logical.’
‘Some people consider it a viable alternative.’ They had had this argument many times, so she skipped right to her concluding remarks: ‘If you don’t understand it, you won’t understand it, so don’t try. In this case, if she had taken a healthy amount of meth earlier today, she might have crashed. Methamphetamine dumps a ton of the body’s neurotransmitters into the nervous system at once. It’s like getting socked with a boatload of adrenalin.’
