Deadly Web (10 page)

How could someone who lived near his autistic sister so he could visit her every week be such an asshole, and write such vile things online? Was it one of the victims who had killed him? Or the drug dealer from the pub? Or someone else entirely? A mental list of suspects formed in Bernard’s mind as he tried to figure out how to tackle this case. He sighed. They needed to know more, needed to make sure they didn’t miss anything critical around the crime scene.

It was time to go. Gina wouldn’t let him sleep anyway.

He got up and started to dress.

Crime is not a very tidy thing. When a man is murdered, crime does not stop and wait politely for the detectives to investigate it thoroughly. It does not apologize for the intrusion, and offer to come back another day. Violence waits for no one.

Jacob and Mitchell assumed they’d be spending the day interviewing witnesses and suspects in the Frank Gulliepe murder case. They planned to track down the angry husband Lyla Harper had mentioned. They needed to do a door-to-door in Frank’s building. They also needed to check Lyla’s alibi with her boss; shocked as she might have been, lovers and spouses were always suspects. Then they would check the progress on Frank’s autopsy, see if there was anything they could use.

But the best-laid plans of mice and men oft go astray. Sometimes, they go astray because of an anonymous phone call.

In this case, it was a phone call reporting a murder. A woman named Dona Aliysa had been strangled to death.

Just like that, Jacob and Mitchell were snatched from Frank Gulliepe’s case, and thrown unceremoniously into a completely different murder case.

It was a small house in a poor neighborhood, just beyond the corner of Oak Grove Road and Treat Boulevard. Oak Grove Road was very busy this time of morning, and the cars going back and forth made Jacob wonder what bothered the residents here more: the noise pollution or the air pollution? The noise of the truck engines and the taxi drivers’ honking was almost unbearable, but maybe one could get used to it, if one had to.

The house’s wooden walls, originally white, were gray with dirt; the windows were grimy to the point where you could hardly see anything through them. By the time the detectives got there a patrol car, Matt’s van, and an ambulance were all parked on the narrow sidewalk. Jacob and Mitchell strode forth. There was no front yard to speak of; the house’s door practically bordered the sidewalk. Jacob took the crime scene log from the hands of the patrol officer standing in the doorway—an old, jaded officer named Kevin Finley.

“Anything we should know?” he asked Finley, quickly signing the log.

“She’s inside,” Finley said. “She’s dead.”

A man of few words.

The door was open, and Jacob and Mitchell entered the apartment. The woman’s body was on the floor, no more than three feet from the entrance, lying on her belly. Her head lay sideways on the flooring, pointed at the entrance. The left part of her face was significantly bruised, as if she’d been beaten; this was actually the marks of lividity, the stagnant blood that settled in the parts of the body which were closer to the ground.

Her eyes were shut, making her seem peaceful, but Jacob had seen enough murder victims to know this was misleading. Though victims frequently seemed at ease, murder was usually full of terror and pain.

The victim’s auburn hair was tied back in a haphazard ponytail. She wore a simple green dress, with her feet bare. Matt crouched by her side, collecting something from her nose with a pair of tweezers. Annie crouched next to him, inspecting the woman’s neck.

The room itself was quite bare. A small coffee table with two bowls on it—one with crackers, the other with pretzels. A couple of empty beer bottles stood on the table as well. There were several chairs around the coffee table, no couches. Jacob noted the glaring absence of a TV set. There was a small desk with a desktop computer, the monitor dark; bills and papers were scattered around the desk. Two posters of Buffy the Vampire Slayer hung on the walls, one of them framed, the other bare.

Jacob had already slipped on a pair of the latex gloves he always carried in his case. He crouched by Annie.

“Hey, Annie,” he said. “Do you have an approximate time of death?”

“Yeah,” Annie said. “Rigor mortis has almost completely set in. So has lividity. According to that and the body temperature, I’d say nine to twelve hours ago.”

Matt snorted.

Annie fixed him with a steely gaze. “Problem?” she asked.

“No,” Matt said. “Go ahead with your very accurate information.”

“Perhaps you can do better with your maggots?”

“They’re not maggots, they’re eggs, and—”

“That’s enough.” Jacob said. He looked at the body sadly. “I know you two are tired, and you just finished processing another crime scene. But this is not helping.”

They both quieted down. Matt stood up and walked off to the small kitchen. Annie moved the head a bit.

Mitchell knelt by Jacob and Annie. “So somewhere between eleven-thirty and two-thirty?” he asked.

“That’s right,” Annie said. “Two-thirty sounds a bit more likely. If it were eleven-thirty, I’d expect her to be stiffer. And it matches the body temperature.”

“Anything else we should know?” Jacob asked.

“She was strangled,” Annie said. “Someone choked her with his bare hands. See those marks on her neck?”

Jacob nodded. It was easy to see the bruised finger imprints on either side.

“From their position, I’d wager that whoever did this was sitting on her when he strangled her. She has petechial hemorrhages on the sclera of the left eye, which is consistent with strangulation as well. So far I see no indication for any other cause of death.”

“Thanks Annie,” Jacob said. He turned to the door. “Finley?” he called.

“Yeah?” Officer Finley walked inside.

“Who found the body?”

“I did. I was sent by the dispatcher to investigate an anonymous tip. Someone called to report a murder.”

“Was there anyone here besides the woman?”

“If there was, I would have mentioned it.”

“Any witnesses?”

“No.”

“Do we know who she is?”

“The caller said her name is Dona Aliysa.”

“Anything else?”

“No.”

“Thanks,” Jacob said, not even trying to hide the disgust in his voice. Some patrol officers were a joy to work with, while others clearly did the least they could to assist.

Jacob got up and slowly walked to the bedroom, stopping in the doorway. Violet, Matt’s partner, stood in one corner of the room, scribbling on the pad in her hand, frowning as she did so. Jacob liked Violet, and appreciated the focus and skill she brought to her job. She briefly raised her eyes and they met with his. She nodded at him, and he nodded back.

The room was cramped, with a double bed, a nightstand, several shelves, and a closet. It also overflowed with memorabilia. Jacob easily identified the TV series it was taken from:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
again. Amy had gone through a phase of binge-watching the entire series.

There were three posters of Buffy on the wall. Dozens of action figures covered the shelves. There was a pile of comics stacked on a small shelf, each in its own plastic binder. An intricate knife was propped on the nightstand, with a small plaque which denoted it as a prop replica. There was a Buffy plushie on the bed, as well as a plushie of one of the side characters, whom Jacob didn’t recognize.

He opened the closet and scanned it. It was tidy and sparse, not a lot of clothes there. There were, however, more Buffy comics. He didn’t touch the comics in the closet or on the nightstand. Those plastic binders would be fantastic for fingerprints, if there were any.

“The woman loved Buffy, huh?” he said stupidly. It was the crime scene chat equivalent of
How about that weather
. Pointless words, whose sole purpose was to make sure that conversation happened.

“Yup,” Violet said, intent on her pad.

“My daughter watched the series,” he said. “Seemed kind of a silly TV series to me. What kind of a name is Buffy, anyway?”

“I saw all seven seasons,” Violet said. “Twice.”

“Oh.”

He glanced around the room once more, bending to look under the bed, examining the knife replica closely. Finally, he left the room, knowing the short conversation he’d just had with Violet would bother him for the rest of the day.

“Excuse me?” someone called from outside the house. Both Mitchell and Jacob walked out the front door. An elderly woman—about sixty, wearing a garish purple dress and huge red spectacles—peered at them curiously from where she stood on the sidewalk.

“Yes, ma’am?” Mitchell said.

“Is everything okay? Did something happen to Dona?”

“I’m Detective Lonnie, ma’am,” Mitchell said. “And you are?”

“Gwyneth. Like the actress,” the woman said. Jacob wondered if she always introduced herself like that. “I’m Dona’s neighbor.” She motioned at the adjacent house, which seemed better maintained than Dona’s own place. There was even a flowerpot on one of the windowsills.

“Well, ma’am, I’m afraid I have some bad news. Your neighbor is dead.”

“Oh, my,” the woman said.

“Did you happen to see anyone here last night?”

“No, not last night. But she has a boyfriend, you know.” Gwyneth pronounced the word
boyfriend
like some people pronounced the term
psycho serial killer
.

“Do you know where we could find this boyfriend?”

“No. But I bet he killed her.”

Mitchell raised an eyebrow. “Why would you say that, ma’am?”

“I have a nose for those things,” the woman said, sounding proud.

“Really?”

“I read a lot of mystery books, and half the time I can guess who the killer is before the detective does.”

“Do you know the boyfriend’s name?” Mitchell asked.

“No. How was she killed?”

“We are not at liberty to say. Aside from her boyfriend, did Dona have any friends, acquaintances, or family who came to visit her?”

“Not that I noticed. She was very quiet. She was a nice neighbor. Her boyfriend talked loudly on the phone out here on the sidewalk one night, so I asked him to be quiet. I sleep very lightly. He was rude.”

“Rude how?”

“I can’t repeat what he said, but it wasn’t nice.” She tried to peer around the detectives into the house, but, if her disappointed face was any indication, didn’t manage to see anything interesting.

“Thanks, ma’am.” Mitchell said

The woman turned around and started walking briskly to her home. Jacob was sure there would be a news reporter there within fifteen minutes.

“Oh!” The woman turned around, and marched back. “See that car parked over there?” she pointed at a dirty gray Chevy. “That’s Dona’s car. That’s useful information, right?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Jacob answered. “It is.”

The neighbor beamed, and Jacob knew without a doubt she would tell all her friends and family how she had single-handedly helped the police crack the mysterious murder of Dona Aliysa.

The car was, in fact, registered to a Rene Aliysa, not Dona Aliysa. Mitchell and Jacob drove off to Rene’s home, leaving Annie and Matt alone with the unpleasant Officer Finley.

It was not a good day for Rene.

Two strangers appeared on her front steps. Peering at them through her peephole, she asked what did they want. She wasn’t about to just open the door for anybody. That was how poor Felicia next door got robbed.

They flipped out their badges.

It was a real outrage. Sending two policemen just to harass her again? Was it her fault Gustav kept running away? He was a strong dog; she couldn’t help it if he sometimes tore his chain apart. It was probably that asshole from down the street who’d reported her again. Just because Gustav once dug a small hole in his lawn. Seriously, people should—

They weren’t there about Gustav.

They were there about Dona.

As the bald detective explained how sorry he was, listing people she could talk to, asking some questions about her daughter. Rene could only stare. It was strange, how his lips kept moving, but the words made no sense.

Dona? Dead?

Murdered?

She thought of her beautiful daughter, when she was two years old, grinning at her after going down the slide for the first time. Laughing hysterically when she was five, running around the backyard naked, refusing to get dressed. Aged eight, riding her new red bicycle for the first time, looking so proud. Dona at fourteen, sobbing because Peter had dumped her and was now going out with Stephanie; Rene softly caressing her hair, telling her it would get better. At seventeen, making her parents a beautiful dinner for their anniversary. The phone call they’d gotten just last week—Dona in a good mood, saying that she was thinking of looking for a job, that she wanted more from life, that she was getting better.

She couldn’t be dead.

They were wrong.

The detectives were asking her questions.

She couldn’t talk.

The bald one with the cold blue eyes was holding his hat in his hands. He was telling her softly that maybe she should get inside, sit down, drink something. She clutched at those words, at those mechanical tasks that could be performed. She walked inside. She drank a glass of water. She sat down.

They started asking her questions again. They were in her house. Had she invited them in? Did it matter? She started talking to the angel-faced one, whose eyes mirrored the pain she felt. He understood her, she knew. She told him about Dona. How she had felt when Dona was born. How Dona was already walking by the age of ten months. How she was the top of her class. She remembered a painting she had, that Dona had painted when she was only six. Did they want to see it?

The angel-faced detective asked her about friends, about enemies, about disagreements. No, she explained, Dona had no friends, no enemies. In fact, she had no one. She suffered from depression, could not keep a job, Rene and her husband paid for Dona’s apartment.

There must be some friend, the sad detective said, someone Dona occasionally talked to. Or maybe a boyfriend…