By Blood Written

by Steven Womack

  “Where was it?” she said. Doodles, hearing her speak in the next room, aroused himself from a snooze on the bed and padded softly into the living room. Priscilla was down on her knees, her skirt pulled up to her thighs and her wool socks tracing paths through the dust, leaning over and scanning the spines of row after row of books. The cat watched as Priscilla slid slowly across the floor, moving from one set of shelves to another.

  Then Priscilla Janovich came to a row of worn paperbacks and stopped. She squinted to focus on the titles and the author’s name and then sat back on her haunches. She pulled one of the paperbacks out of its slot on the shelf and thumbed it open, straining to read it in the low light. She read the first few paragraphs of the first page, then looked over at Doodles.

  “Yes,” she said blankly. “Yes, I believe this is it.”

  CHAPTER 14

  5:30 A.M. Monday, Nashville

  Maria Chavez shivered as she walked into the Murder Squad break room and wrinkled her nose. An acrid, burnt smell hung in the air. She crossed the room to a counter next to a dingy refrigerator covered in bumper stickers and pulled the brown glass pot off the coffeemaker. The carafe had once been clear and new, but that was before endless pots of coffee with no one ever bothering to wash it out. Lately, someone had developed the habit of not turning it off at the end of the night shift. Maria only wished she knew who it was. She flicked the switch on the coffeemaker and turned the burner off.

  “It’s too early for this,” she whispered. She rummaged through a cabinet and found a mug that could almost pass for clean, then rinsed it out in hot water. She refilled it with cold and popped it in the microwave, then turned the plastic dial to set the timer for four minutes. The break-room microwave was so old you could almost boil water faster on the stove, only they didn’t have one.

  Still shivering and crossing her arms back and forth, Maria Chavez stopped at the thermostat by the doorway and fiddled with it until she was convinced she’d have no effect on anything, then crossed the hall and into a long, narrow room jammed with gray metal government surplus-type desks. The entire squad shared this one room, with several filing cabinets jammed in at the end partially blocking the only window. The room was cramped, dusty, and claustro-phobic when in full use, which was why Maria often came in early, so that she would at least have a little quiet time to go through her files.

  Things had been quiet in the last twenty-four hours or so. Metro Nashville was approaching its third day in a row without a homicide. Maria attributed it to the cold weather and, despite the shivering, welcomed the quiet time. Yet even though it was momentarily peaceful, she still had at last count six unsolved homicides on her plate since January 1.

  Maria opened the top drawer of one of the filing cabinets and extracted a three-ring notebook containing the file for complaint number 99-87432, which was the case of Althea Grant, a twenty-four-year-old African-American woman who had been found raped and strangled a week ago in her apartment out near the airport, just off Murfreesboro Road.

  The young woman had completed two years of college, was studying to be a paralegal, and by all accounts didn’t hang out in bars, do drugs, run around with the wrong crowd, or any other of the number of things a human being could do to increase his or her chances of being murdered. It didn’t take assignment to the Murder Squad for Maria Chavez to figure out that the vast majority of murder victims were doing something they shouldn’t be doing at a place they shouldn’t be with people they shouldn’t be with. She learned that early growing up in the slums of Laredo, Texas.

  That was why this case had kept her up most of the night.

  She’d studied the crime-scene photos, read the reports, most of which as the primary investigator she had filed herself.

  She’d gone back over her own notes, reexamined the crime-scene photos, rerun the interviews in her head, and still nothing. The only thing she could do was start over.

  Maria turned to the first page of the binder, a Form 104

  “Supplement Report” filed by the first officer on the scene.

  The officer had arrived even before Med Com personnel, and had handled the crime scene like a capable, experienced street cop. He’d done everything right and recorded it in that curiously detached manner taught to all recruits in their intensive report-writing classes at the academy. Maria picked up his narrative in the middle of the second page: Also revealed was the victim’s head and upper torso. The victim was laying on her back with her face toward her right shoulder. Her eyes were open and her mouth appared unusually agap, very wide. Between the victim’s chin and her left arm that was drawn across her body tied to the bedpost …

  Maria smiled at the misspellings. Okay, she thought, so they’re not English teachers.

  From behind her, the microwave chimed and Maria crossed the hall to make her tea. As she entered the break room, the telephone on one of the other desks began ringing.

  Maria looked up at the wall clock: five-fifty. This early in the morning in the dead of winter, she figured it was probably a wrong number.

  But the phone kept ringing, even as Maria opened a tea bag and plopped it into the not-quite-boiling water. She dipped it a couple of times and then with mounting irritation crossed back into the squad room and picked up the phone.

  “Homicide, Chavez,” she snapped.

  “Detective Chavez, this is Corporal Rogers in the lobby.”

  “Yeah, Rogers, whatcha got?”

  “Well, Detective, I know it’s kind of early,” Rogers said.

  “But I got a lady up here who says she knows who killed those two girls over on Church Street.”

  Chavez paused for a moment before speaking. “She for real?”

  The front desk corporal lowered his voice as if turning away from the visitor. “Kinda hard to tell. She’s like this old lady, you know. Looks a little, I don’t know … Maybe odd.”

  “Maybe odd,” Chavez repeated. “Great. You know what time it is, Rogers? It’s six in the freakin’ A.M. in the dead of freakin’ winter. Make her go away.”

  “Tried that already, Detective. She says she ain’t going anywhere until she talks to somebody.”

  Maria gripped the phone so hard her hand began to cramp.

  “Damn it, I shoulda stayed in bed. Who was I to think I could get some quiet time around here?”

  “I can’t answer that, Detective Chavez. Sorry.”

  “All right,” Maria said, sighing. “I’m on my way.”

  She hung up the phone, crossed the hall back into the break room, and picked up her teacup. She pulled the bag out and dropped it into a garbage can, then sipped the tea.

  She winced; it was way too strong now. Maria forced down one more sip, then, disgusted, poured the rest in the sink and started down the long hallway. This was, she conjectured, not going to be a good day.

  Maria pushed the heavy door open out into the main lobby and crossed behind the brick staircase over to the command center. Corporal Rogers spied her approaching and motioned with his head to the front of the lobby. Maria stepped past Rogers and through the metal detector.

  An elderly, thin woman of medium height stood looking out the front window, her back at an angle to Chavez. Maria stopped for a moment and watched her. She had a brown leather purse slung over her right shoulder, and over her left hung a faded white canvas tote bag with the words MALICE

  DOMESTIC printed on the front. There was something in the tote bag, something that seemed to put a strain on the woman’s shoulders. She wore a heavy checked overcoat and a pair of hiking boots with thick gray socks all the way up to her knees. Her straight gray hair was pulled behind with a red wool beret perched at an angle on her head.

  Maria cleared her throat. “Excuse me,” she said. The woman turned. Her face was lined and pale; she wore no makeup and her eyebrows were almost completely plucked.

  But her blue eyes were clear and bright.

  “Oh, yes,” the woman said. “I’m sorry, I was staring out the window.
I guess I’m kind of tired. I’ve been up all night.”

  Maria stepped toward her. “I’m Priscilla Janovich,” the old woman said, extending her hand. The tote bag slipped down her forearm, causing her arm to jerk.

  “I’m Detective Chavez. May I help you?”

  “Yes,” she said, and as she did so, Maria caught a whiff of the old woman’s breath. Maria’s nose wrinkled for the second time that morning. Drinking? This early?

  The shifting tote bag seemed to unbalance the woman, and Maria began to wonder just how drunk she was.

  “Yes, you can help me. Or maybe it’s the other way around.

  Maybe I can help you.”

  “Perhaps you should tell me what’s on your mind,” Maria suggested.

  “Didn’t that young man tell you?”

  “Well,” Maria said, shrugging. “Why don’t you tell me again?”

  “Of course,” the woman said. “I know who killed those two girls over on Church Street. And all the others.”

  Maria felt her brow knit. “Others?”

  “Yes,” the woman said. “The Alphabet Man, I know who he is.”

  Maria felt her stomach jump just above her belt line. This was the second time in two weeks someone had tossed out that name to her in the lobby.

  “What did you say your name was?”

  “Priscilla. Priscilla Janovich.”

  “Well, Mrs. Janovich-”

  “Miss, please.”

  “Miss Janovich.” Maria corrected herself. “Why don’t we go back to my office and talk.”

  “Oh, yes, I think we should,” Priscilla said, as Maria stepped aside and motioned for her to go first.

  Maria escorted her past the guard cage and over to the heavy metal doors that barred the way into the interior of police headquarters. She slipped her ID out of her front blouse pocket and slid it through the card reader.

  “This way,” she instructed.

  She led Priscilla down the hall until they got to an interview room. “Would you like something?” Maria asked.

  “There’s no coffee on right now, but a glass of water, a Coke perhaps?”

  Shot of Jack Daniel’s? she thought.

  “No, I’m fine. I think we should get to this.” The interview room was small, with a mirror on one wall and a small table with two metal chairs. Priscilla Janovich sat down in a metal chair behind the table as Maria sat opposite her.

  “Is there anyone on the other side of that mirror?” Priscilla Janovich asked.

  Maria smiled. “You obviously watch a lot of television, Miss Janovich.”

  “Oh no, only a few shows. But I read a lot. Almost all mysteries.”

  “Ah,” Maria said. “So you’re a big mystery fan …”

  “Yes, that’s how I figured out who the Alphabet Man was.

  After I read that article in the Sunday Times yesterday.”

  “So that’s how you heard the term ‘Alphabet Man,’” Maria chimed. “For a minute there, I thought everybody’d read our case files.”

  “So you are investigating the murder,” Priscilla said, her voice excited. “You know, I’m so glad they put a woman on that case, it’s just-”

  “Miss Janovich, there are a lot of detectives working those murders, and we’ve had a lot of people tell us they know who did it. A few have even confessed. Not one’s been straight with us, though.”

  “Oh, well, I am,” Priscilla said. “I know.”

  “Okay,” Maria said. “I’ll bite. Who is the Alphabet Man?”

  Priscilla Janovich leaned down and pulled the canvas tote bag up into her lap, then upended it onto the table. Four paperbacks tumbled out.

  “Him,” Priscilla said, pointing at one of the books. “He did it.”

  Maria stared at the pile of battered paperbacks. “Who?”

  she asked blankly. “Who did it?”

  “Him! ” Priscilla said, pointing. “Michael Schiftmann!

  The man who wrote these books!”

  A half hour later, Priscilla Janovich had finished her synopsis of each one of the four paperback editions of Michael Schiftmann’s novels. She explained that she’d read the latest book,

  The Fifth Letter

  , but hadn’t bought it yet since it wasn’t out in paperback. Priscilla went on to say in a moment of supreme irrelevancy that she was such a mystery fanatic she read her favorite writers in hardcover on loan from the library, then when the paperback was issued-usually a year or so later-she bought the cheaper edition and read the book again.

  “And yesterday, when I read the article in the New York Times, I realized I’d heard all this before!” Priscilla said, her eyes beaming.

  Maria looked up from the yellow legal pad where she’d been taking notes. “So you’re saying this guy commits murders, then writes books about them.”

  “Yes,” Priscilla said excitedly. “He bases the plots of his novels on murders he commits. Oh, he changes the locations around and some of the details, but the substance is there.

  You can’t change that.”

  “Okay, so-”

  “And the books are really good!” Priscilla continued. “I mean, I sat down yesterday afternoon and started rereading them again from the first and wound up reading all four in a row.”

  Priscilla rearranged the books in order of publication. “I was up all night,” she said proudly.

  It shows … Maria thought.

  “And I’m sure that if I got the fifth one and reread it, it would only back up what I already know.”

  Maria leaned forward on the small table, her elbows perched on the edge. “Miss Janovich, I don’t mean to doubt your word here, but can you understand how tenuous this is? Do you see how little this is to go on? I mean, how little sense this makes? I don’t know this guy”-Maria looked down at the paperbacks-”Michael Schiftmann, but he’s obviously, like, a famous writer and stuff. If the guy’s on the best-seller list, why would he go around committing these murders.”

  “If you read the books, my dear,” Priscilla Janovich said, slipping into teacher mode, “you’d know the answer to that question already. He kills because it’s the right thing for him and because he likes it!”

  The old woman’s words echoed in Maria’s mind. She remembered the first briefing she’d been given by the FBI agent, whose name she couldn’t remember because it was too early in the morning and she still hadn’t had her tea yet.

  Even though Priscilla’s choice of words made the hair on the back of her neck prickle, it still didn’t overcome her common sense, every bit of which told her this old lady was crazy and her story was ridiculous.

  “Look, Miss Janovich, I’ve made notes on what you’ve told me and I’ll enter it in the record,” Maria said. “But we can’t pursue something like this when-”

  “You don’t believe me, do you?” Priscilla demanded sternly.

  “Well, it’s not that, it’s just that we have to have more sub-stantive evidence to go on. Sheer speculation isn’t enough.”

  “Why don’t you read the books?” Priscilla asked. “See if it doesn’t make sense to you.”

  “I’m very busy, Miss Janovich,” Maria said defensively.

  “We’ve all got a lot to do around-”

  “That’s no excuse!” Priscilla snapped.

  “Ma’am, I’m sorry, but I just don’t think I can do anything on what is obviously speculation. I mean, we don’t even know this guy. And anyway, these murders you’re talking about that were allegedly recorded in this guy’s books, they’re outside our jurisdiction. We can’t do anything about that.”

  “What about those two girls on Church Street?”

  Maria nodded her head. “See, there you go. Good point.

  We don’t have anything to connect him to those murders.

  Nothing.”

  “Oh yes you do!” Priscilla exclaimed.

  Maria felt her blood pressure rising. She had to extricate herself from this as quickly as possible. There was too much work to do.


  “What?” Maria asked. “What have we got to connect him to these murders?”

  “Well,” Priscilla Janovich said in a huff. “How about the night those two girls were killed he was in Nashville?”

  Maria stopped cold. “How-how do you know that?”

  “I met him,” Priscilla announced in triumph.

  Maria thought the old lady really had gone off the deep end now. “Oh,” she said, patronizingly, “and where did you meet him?”

  “At the Davis-Kidd bookstore in Green Hills,” Priscilla said, smiling. “He was doing a book signing. Just check the newspaper. Better yet, call them.”

  An aggravated Lieutenant Max Bransford hung up the phone, pulled his massive bulk out of the worn desk chair, and went to the open doorway of his office.

  “Bea, you seen Chavez anywhere?”

  Bransford’s longtime secretary looked up from her computer screen. “No, sir, not all day.”

  “Damn it,” he muttered, walking past her and out into the hall. He walked twenty feet or so down the hallway and stuck his head in the squad room. Four detectives sat behind desks, each with his head buried in a folder.

  “Hey, any you guys seen Chavez?” No one looked up.

  “Chavez, guys. Remember her? Short, brunette, slight Hispanic accent, carries a gun. I just got a call from Hershel over at the ME’s office. She was supposed to be there an hour ago to pick up the tox screen reports on the Grant murder.”

  Jack Murray looked up. “I saw her this morning, Loot.

  Had to run upstairs to Print Division. Passed by the break room up there.”

  “The break room?” Bransford asked.

  Murray hesitated. “Yeah, Loot, the break room. She was laying on the couch.”

  Bransford felt the pressure from his jaw grinding his teeth together. “She sick?”

  Murray shook his head. “Didn’t look like it.”

  “What was she doing then, son?”

  “Uh, she was reading a book, sir.”