With Malice

It would be better if the public information officer handled the press. But that wasn’t going to happen here tonight, not with a black woman and her two children gunned down in a drive-by. The College Hill project had convulsed under escalating street gang violence, the ironic and tragic aftermath of a major drug bust that had left the formerly dominant Dark Angels decimated and leaderless. Three other gangs had flooded into the void, warring over control of the lucrative turf, where ecstasy, crystal meth, crank and smack flowed like deadly, golden water in neighborhoods where hope was dim and life was cheap. The P.I.O. would be there, trying to sound cool and authoritative as he dispensed what little meaning could be found in such mayhem. Detective Karen Sweeney was on her own.

She sighed and looked at the patrolman. “Who’s your backup, and where is he?”

He nodded toward the end of the alley. “Patrolman Stan Barnes. Fresh out of the academy and he walked into this. He’s in the car.” Ewing pointed at a pale yellow puddle splashed down a wall opposite the body. “He lost it.”

Karen looked at the stain on Ewing’s cuff and realized he’d been standing with the other cop when it happened. Unlike the horror that had been visited upon the woman at her feet, Karen could see that scene clearly. Ewing standing there, patting the young cop’s shoulder, offering whatever supportive words there were, while the man lost both his dinner and his pride. “Tell him it’s okay. It happens to most of us the first time or two.”

“I did,” Ewing said simply.

Karen nodded. “Okay. You’re logging. Tell…Barnes, is it? Tell Barnes we’ll use his cruiser as a command post until downtown gets us a crime scene van. I’ll be out to brief the press when I know something. In the meantime, all he knows is that we’ve found the body of a young, white female, and the investigation is ongoing.”

“The usual spiel,” Ewing said. “It’ll give him something to do. Good idea, Detective.”

“Thanks.” He nodded, jotted her name and badge number on a clipboard, and strode to the end of the alley.

Karen unslung the bag on her shoulder and set it atop the lid of a crusty Rubbermaid trash can a few yards down from the body. She pulled out a dozen of what looked like dinner place cards and numbered each with a black magic marker. She then stooped and put the card numbered “1” on the yellow stain and spoke into a microcassette recorder.

“Item one, yellow-brown stain at base of north wall, opposite victim, vomit of Patrolman Stan Barnes.”

She continued in a slow, methodical pattern, first working her way to the end of the alley along the north edge, marking and noting an oil stain, two sodden and faded cigarette butts, and a half-dozen other bits of debris, all of them probably meaningless. Once at the head of the alley, she pulled out a fat yellow piece of chalk, drew an arrow pointing back into the alley and crouch-walked her way back to her evidence bag, dragging the chalk on the concrete in a wavy, sometimes broken, but clearly visible line. This demarked the “safe” path into the alley, so the medical examiner and any other officers who responded could get to the body without disturbing evidence.

With that first task completed, she had banished the horror from her mind, at least temporarily. Now she could turn her attention to the body and its immediate environs with cool, professional detachment. She lifted the recorder to her lips as her eyes swept the scene.

“Victim is a white female, apparently early-to mid-twenties. Bruising and diffuse ligature marks on wrists indicate that the hands were bound at some point, although no matching material is immediately visible at the scene. Nylon stocking tied around the victim’s neck, along with pitecchia in the eyes and teeth indicate strangulation as the probable cause of death. Missing tissue on breasts, lower abdomen and upper thighs, with torn edges. Probably bitten away. Extensive bloodstains on skin and partial clotting indicate this was probably pre-mortem.”

Forcing herself to take a mental step backward, she took in the overall impression of the victim. No prostitute, she decided. This woman looked too well-conditioned for that, and in no way blowsy. That helped, because it was likely she would be reported missing before too long.

She turned away again as humanity pushed aside objectivity, took a slow, deep breath, and forced herself to continue. She looked again, clinically. Something was wrong. “Lividity is noticeably uneven, greater on the left shoulder, arm, hip, outer thigh and calf, although victim was found on her back. Victim may have been…”

Switching off the recorder, she called to the end of the alley. “Ewing. C’mere a minute.”

The patrolman approached along the path she had marked. “What’s up, Detective?”

“I think the body was moved. Have Barnes clear the street around the end of the alley and photograph any tire tracks. Make sure he shoots my car, yours and his for negative comparison.” She looked up at the overcast sky. The Florida air was thick with humidity. “And tell him to hurry it up. It looks like it’s going to rain soon.”

Ewing nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

Karen then returned to her bag, tore off a long strip of waxy paper towel and laid it over the left side of the body, weighting it at each end with spare boxes of film. She carefully pulled the paper back a bit and studied the ruddy skin of the woman’s left hip and shoulder. The dimples were faint but visible, fading down the arm and thigh. Atop the woman’s thighs, Karen saw faint blood smears that mirrored those on her abdomen. She switched the recorder on.

“Remind the M.E. to check for carpet fibers. Victim was probably transported to the scene in a fetal position, on her left side. Probably in the trunk of a car.”

Two hours later, Karen watched as the M.E. techs zipped up the black vinyl body bag and hefted it onto a stretcher. The crime scene techs had arrived a half hour ago, and she had long since determined that the homeless woman who’d stumbled over the body was too disconnected from reality to offer any useful information. There was little left for her to do, and she walked back to her Jeep Wrangler, took a long swig from a lukewarm bottle of water, and began to scan Ewing’s and Barnes’ initial reports for anything they might have caught that she had missed.

She was still reading when her cell phone rang. It was the familiar voice of Sergeant Laura Aranchez, the overnight dispatcher for robbery-homicide.

“You’re going to hate me, Karen.”

“Don’t even go there, Aranchez.”

Karen heard the sigh and knew what was coming before the woman spoke.

“Afraid so, Detective. Black female, Tampa Palms.” Aranchez read off the address.

Karen fought down the anger. Yes, College Hill was important, but so was the single white female, mid-to late-twenties, whose mutilated body lay ten yards away in an alley. “I’m still working this scene, Aranchez. Can’t they free up someone from the gang-banger?”

“The lieutenant says you’re it,” Aranchez answered. “And he wants you there an hour ago.” There was a pause. “That address is Senator Lawrence’s house.”

Well, shit, Karen thought. That explains a lot. “I’m on my way.”

It was going to be a long night.

Karen surveyed the bustle of activity with more than a bit of disgust. It had taken her ten minutes to reach the Tampa Palms address, and the crime scene techs were already unloading their van as she pulled in. Death might be the great equalizer, but the rank of the living still held sway in the passage of the dead.

A middle-aged man in blue suit pants and a white dress shirt intercepted her on the way to the door and extended his hand. “Jerry Connally,” he said, as if the name ought to mean something.

She shook his hand briefly and stepped aside. “Detective Sweeney, TPD. If you’ll excuse me.”

He didn’t step into her path, didn’t move at all, yet his posture said I’m not finished with you yet. She met his eyes. “What is it you need, Mr. Connally?”

“I’m special counsel to Senator Lawrence.” He nodded over his shoulder. “You’re aware this is his home.”

Oh God, she thought. So it’s starting already.

“Yes, I am. It’s also a crime scene, and I’m the lead detective. And I’ve just been yanked off another homicide scene because they wanted me here in a hurry. So again, if you’ll excuse me…”

He moved aside, as if to give her entry, but his posture was such that she paused and looked at him again. He reminded her somehow of a broody hen protecting a chick. It was as if he wanted to tower over her, tower over everyone and everything to protect his charge. She wondered if Senator Lawrence liked that…or if he was even aware of it. But something clicked in her mind, making a note she was hardly aware of.

Then she dismissed him with a glance and brushed past him into the foyer.

These were the houses of the rich, out here, and space was generous. The foyer was large, tiled in green marble that framed the sweeping rise of a staircase. The activity she was interested in, however, was in a room off to the right. She could see the criminalists poring over the scene like a hive of ants with a fresh kill. The kill lay on the floor, covered by a sheet. Arterial spray across one wall and the sofa, along with the huge puddle on the floor around the covered corpse, told a great deal of the story.

The room itself was very much not Florida. It might have been taken from the home of British nobility of the eighteenth or nineteenth century, except that it was dominated by cream and ecru. Cream everywhere. And blood. As least half the blood that filled an average human body. Red on cream. Screaming.

With the criminalists all over everything, there wasn’t much she could do except ask to see the body and find out what they knew so far. She raised an eyebrow in the direction of Millie Freidman, the lead technician on the scene. Millie nodded, spoke a few words to one of her team members, and came over to her, taking care to stay within the taped-out pathway.

“What have we got?” Karen asked.

“Ugly. Very ugly. The senator’s seventy-five-year-old nanny had her throat slashed.”

Karen winced. Violence against the elderly always seemed so inexcusable. How much more harmless could a human being be?

“Yeah,” said Millie, reacting to Karen’s expression.

“Robbery?”

“It doesn’t look like anything else was disturbed. I have some people checking the rest of the house, though.”

“Any other wounds on the body?”