Deadly Web (3 page)

Officer Tanessa 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.

The rug covered most of the floor, which was definitely in the room’s favor, as the flooring was gray and bland. There was a small dresser just next to the door, and it held a framed picture of Frank and a woman standing by what seemed to be a city park. The woman stared at the camera vacantly; Frank hugged her, smiling. They seemed similar to each other somehow. Brother and sister? Again Hannah thought of her uncle, then pushed the thought away.

“You should check the Roomba, Matt,” Bernard said, pointing at a small, round cleaning robot in its docking station. He was right, Hannah knew. Sometimes cleaning robots started working after the murder was committed, vacuuming up important evidence. Matt nodded, then went back to taking a photograph of the victim’s chest.

Hannah entered the apartment, examining the layout . The living room was connected to a small kitchen, and a hallway led out of the living room, probably leading to the bedroom and bathroom. She walked closer to the body, noticing some tears in the bathrobe.

“Sorry, coming through,” a familiar voice said from the doorway. Hannah turned to see Annie Turner striding inside. Annie was the city’s medical examiner, though Hannah always thought she looked more like a librarian, with her square glasses and her curly red hair. Her eyebrows were a bit high above her eyes, giving her an appearance of constant surprise.

“Hello, Annie,” Matt said. His voice was sharp, cold.

No one knew why Matt and Annie were so hostile toward each other lately. The last couple of weeks, being around the two of them was like being at a family dinner just after Mom found out Dad had bought a new sports car with their savings.

“Matt,” Annie replied shortly. “Are you done here?”

“I’m sorry that I’m such an inconvenience,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to stand in the way of your thermometer.” He got up and strode away down the apartment’s hallway.

Violet shook her head, exasperated, her eyes still on her writing pad. “Hey, Annie,” she said.

“Hey, Violet,” Annie said, the hostility melting away from her face. She turned and smiled at Hannah, then knelt by the body. “Just give me a moment.”

Hannah nodded. Bernard joined her by the body. They looked down at Annie inspecting the dead man.

“Well,” Annie said. “No rigor mortis at all. Can you give me a hand, Detective? I want to roll the body for a second.”

Bernard knelt by her, and they carefully lifted the right side of the body. Annie moved aside the bathrobe, exposing Frank’s back.

“Some very faint signs of lividity,” Annie said, pointing at some purplish marks on the skin. They carefully returned the body to its original position.

“I need to take his temperature, for protocol,” Annie said, “but he’s warm. This man died between thirty and ninety minutes ago. That would mean…” She glanced at her watch. “Between eleven-forty and twelve-forty. But I got the call from the paramedics at twelve-forty, and according to them he’d been dead for at least ten minutes, so… eleven-forty to twelve-thirty.”

“Okay. Thanks, Annie,” Bernard said.

“No problem, Detective. I’ll take the temperature and fill out some paperwork before the body is removed.”

“Let’s check out the rest of the apartment,” Bernard told Hannah.

Hannah started with the bathroom. It was moderately clean. There was a laundry basket with a pile of clothing. She carefully opened the medicine cabinet. Medicine cabinets could be a treasure trove of mundane surprises: antidepressants, Viagra, small illegal drug stashes. Not in this case. She couldn’t have imagined a more boring medicine cabinet if she’d tried. Some mild painkillers, Band-Aids, gauze. She closed it.

Bernard called to her from the bedroom. She joined him and they both stared at the open drawer in the dresser.

“So he liked to party,” Hannah said.

“Yup.”

The drawer was full of dildos, vibrators, various sexy outfits for men and women, several pairs of handcuffs, some jars of what Hannah assumed were different types of lubricants, some Fleshlights and various other things. Without touching anything, she could count at least eight packs of condoms. Either Frank Gulliepe had been a very optimistic man, or he had been getting plenty of action.