Done for a Dime (3 page)

“What time we looking at?” he asked finally, snapping back to it.

“Dispatcher got the nine-one-one ’round midnight. Caller was a neighbor, said shots woke her up.”

“Marcellyne Pathon.”

“That sounds right. By the time she got to the window, nothing.”

“Told me the same thing just now.” Murchison glanced toward the gate, wondering whether the crowd outside had grown larger or thinned out, whether anyone had come up to Marcellyne and threatened her, told her everything she didn’t see.

“EMTs got here inside of twelve but too late regardless. Did a hat dance all over the scene, messed up any chance you had at shoe prints. All that just to confirm Mr. Carlisle’s no Lazarus. He means to stay dead. Lost too much blood and lost it too fast. Probably got a lung clipped, maybe both. Want a look?”

Murchison nodded, then crouched beside the body and tightened the fit of his gloves while Holmes removed the drape with one quick pull. As the victim appeared to him, revealed in an unintentional flourish like the culmination of a magic act, Murchison suffered an instantaneous series of fleeting regrets, intimations so momentary they could hardly be said to exist in time at all.

First, he pictured his wife and daughters, and feared for their safety. He’d felt this a lot lately, blamed middle age, the suspicion he’d somehow turned helpless: poor husband, bad father, weak man. Second, he indulged an inkling that life and death shared more in common than anyone knew, more like left and right than before and after. Third and last, he felt a disquieting sort of envy, wondering what it would feel like, to lay down that sword and shield.

The victim lay faceup, turned at the hip, like someone had tried to roll him over then stopped with the job half done. One arm reached forward, the other lay flung to the side. The feet were splayed a way you never saw in life, no matter how heavy the sleep. The face was long, narrow, with dark freckling across each cheek. A salt-and-pepper goatee. Deep eye sockets. Teeth, lips, and tongue all moiled with blood.

Murchison pulled up the pant cuff to check lividity. It was strong already, given the blood loss, leaving the skin an ashen purple-gray. The pant leg was mud-spattered, everything was. He drew the cuff back in place, smoothed it down. A little respect.

The man’s chest was a pulpy mangled knit of fabric and skin. Despite the damage the shots had caused, you could tell from his clothes that this had been a proud man: tailored sport coat, natty red shirt with a black silk vest, gray pleated slacks. A black beret had been knocked off his head; it lay a few inches from his hand, upside down. His hair still wore the crease where the hatband had pressed into it.

The blood pooled beneath him had begun to dry. Hard to know how much he’d lost. There’d be a lot in his lungs, too, Murchison figured. He checked the gravel to see if a slug lay loose there. “After they take him away,” he told Holmes, “let’s check underneath.” He had to hope the coroner’s people would have the sense to undress the man carefully, check to make sure a spent bullet wasn’t knocking around inside his shirt somewhere.

“Interesting position,” Murchison said, gesturing to the body. “Paramedics roll him?”

“No. Found him like that.”

Murchison glanced up, puzzled.

“There was a girl here when the patrols first arrived. She was shook up bad, could hardly get her words out. Got the idea she’s the one turned him over, tried mouth-to-mouth. Knees were muddy. Had blood all over, her hands, clothes. Even the eyelashes and hair. Like the vic coughed it up in her face.”

Murchison winced. “This girl, how old?”

“Late teens. Twenty tops.” Looking up at Stluka, Holmes added, “Pretty little white girl.”

The taunt ricocheted around the yard. Cops looked up, Black and white both. Stluka grinned, but his eyes were cold. “Love the one you’re with.”

Murchison said, “This girl, she’s where now?”

“ER. Like I said, she was nonresponsive when we arrived. Just sitting up there on the porch, staring at the vic. Like a trance. Clawing at her arm, fingernails bloody. Inside of her arm, skin was tore up in shreds. Paramedics had their hands full just getting her to stand up. Took her off to get treated and tranqued.”

“She see it go down?”

“Don’t know. Like I said, I barely got a word—”

“Barely,” Stluka said. “Come on, what’s ‘barely’ mean? She say something or not?”

Holmes did a little shoulder roll. The sleepy, pitiless eyes came on. “Yeah. Matter of fact, she did. She said, ‘I’m sorry.’ Said that a lot.”

Stluka let his jaw sag. “Sorry? Fucking Christ, Holmes, how you know she’s not involved?”

Murchison said, “You got a man at the hospital with her?”

Holmes let his stare linger on Stluka. “Not yet. Needed the bodies here.”

Stluka shook his head. “Ah, Christ.”

“Get one. Call it in as soon as we wrap up.” For your sake as much as hers, Murchison thought, turning back to the victim. The pant pockets were turned inside out, the contents placed into evidence bags. “What’s missing?”

“Nothing, looks like,” Holmes said. “This stage, don’t see robbery. Somebody just came, pushed the gate open, pow. Then booked.”

Stluka dislodged a snarl of phlegm from his throat. “You checked inside, right? Secured the house.”

“Yeah. First thing. Yeah.”

“Relax, Sherlock, it’s a fucking question.”

Murchison snapped his fingers. “Hey, boys and girls?” He gestured for Holmes to cover up the victim. “Back to the pockets.”

Holmes drew the drape back across the body. “Wallet still in his jacket, fifty-two bucks and change inside. ID, credit cards. Untouched.”

“Okay.”

“Paper sack there? Got a pint inside. Sent another patrol unit, Gilroy, to canvas the liquor stores downtown, see what the counter help might remember.”

“Good. Too bad it’s Gilroy, but good. Anything else?”

“There’s a son,” Holmes said. “Showed up while I was securing the scene.”

Stluka shot a glance at Murchison.

“He didn’t get in here,” Murchison said.

“No. No. I heard the commotion at the gate, went out. Got a little wild, you know? Son went kinda crazy. But I settled the young man down. Told him he had to stay outside.”

“Okay, Holmes. Okay. That sounds good.”

“He’s a musician, too. The son. Coming home from a gig.”

“He went crazy. How?”

“Upset, scared. Talked tough a little bit, said we couldn’t keep him out. But I explained it to him. He sorta just caved in on himself then. Went all still, then boom, took a dive.”

“Look real?”

“Yeah. Damn good if not. Eyes rolled back, legs went. Had to use smelling salts, bring him around. Came to, shot up, and spewed his supper out front in the gutter.”

“Anybody else with him?”

Holmes shook his head. “Walked up alone.”

“Walked—from where?”

“Never got that far with him. He was still fending off the little blue tweeties when I planted him in a car. He’s down at the station now. All yours.”

Murchison looked around the yard one last time, collected his thoughts. Older man, dressed sharp, a musician of some note, ho ho. Shot in the back, his own front yard, left to drown in his own blood. And a white girl, trying to save him, failing, perching herself on the doorstep while she clawed at her arm till the skin was gone. A real human-interest story, if anyone bothered to tell it.

“I’m ready to go inside, check the house.”

Holmes said, “One last thing? The son, he IDed the girl.” Holmes checked his notes. “Nah-dee-ya … Lah-za-rank-o. Think that’s it. She’s his girlfriend.”

Murchison took out his pad and pen. “Spell it.”

Holmes obliged. A little mischief flickered in his eye. “Could be one of your people, Stookles.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“What is it—Po-lock? Slo-vock?”

“You hear what I just said?”

“You want, I can call you Cap’n Cracker, like they do around Dumpers in southtown.”

Murchison couldn’t help himself, he laughed. “Okay, that’s it, enough. We got one body here. My guess is that’s our quota.”

“Tell you what, Sherlock—”

“Let it go, Jerry. Holmesy—the son, he say anything else about this girl?”

“Yeah. Yeah. Said she was with the vic earlier tonight, drove him home.”

“From?”

“Club in Emeryville. Place called the Zoom Room. Where the son was playing.”

“But the son,” Stluka said, getting into it again, “he didn’t need a drive. He walked.” He looked back and forth, Murchison to Holmes. “It ain’t just me. That doesn’t make sense.”

Holmes slapped his notepad against his leg. “Like I said, he’s down at the station.”

Murchison checked the time. “Okay. Holmesy. I got Truax calling in for more bodies. Connect with him. Get somebody to help Hennessey out there with the neighbors. Not just the crowd. Door-to-door, I don’t care what time it is. Anybody has a story, get the particulars, then call me. Get a guy who’s done some major accident work—Crawford’s good, wake him up, blame me—have him check for rubber out on the street. Get a man over to the hospital, right outside the girl’s door. She doesn’t leave. Nobody in the room but hospital staff. I want first crack. We good?”

Holmes put his notepad in his slicker pocket and headed out. Murchison watched him go, loping like a giant through the gate.

“Talk about the high priest of half-assed.” Stluka picked up the dead man’s hat, checked inside. “Shoulda put a man with the girl down at the hospital first thing.”

•    •    •

The house felt less gloomy inside than out. It was cluttered, dust motes sailing in the lamplight, but somebody’d put out the effort to make a home. To the right of the entry sat a cramped dining room, with an old oak table and chairs. To the left was the living room. A lumpy sofa sat against the far wall. Above it, family photographs covered almost every inch of plaster. Murchison went close, checked the faces.

“Anybody we know?” Stluka asked, meaning perps and players.

Murchison shrugged. “Come look.”

The pictures seemed to be of family and friends. Three generations from the look of things: a matriarch, then the victim and his siblings, and after that nephews and nieces and others further removed. Murchison assumed the son was there—should have asked Holmes for a description, he thought—then shortly found the photograph he’d been hoping for.

Raymond Carlisle and a younger man stood side by side, each carrying a horn case. The victim was taller, a fact accentuated by his reedy build. He was darker, too, his skin a deep coffee color, with the spatters of dark freckling across each cheek Murchison had noticed outside, just as he noticed again the salt-and-pepper goatee, the deepset eyes. In life, they’d perfected the man’s intensity.

In contrast, the son, if that was who this was, looked studious. He had short-napped hair, and it set off his angular features, which resembled the victim’s. His skin was lighter, a reddish cinnamon color, and he wore a pair of rimless spectacles. Behind the glasses, his eyes conveyed warmth, not heat. But there was wariness in them, too. This young man, early twenties from the look of him, was no hothouse flower. He had a strength about him, and his bearing suggested an easy grace tinged with formality.

“Think I found the son,” Murchison told Stluka finally, easing aside so they both could look.

Murchison took note of Stluka struggling with his disbelief. The word
musician
conjured a distinctly different image in this town, given names like Pimp-T Junior, A. K. Hype, Treacherous Bo. The Violence Suppression Task Force had recently pulled in two rappers from Baymont tied to a statewide bank robbery gang who had laid out their entire MO on a locally pressed CD. The mastermind producer of the local rap scene was himself a major player in the crack trade who was currently sitting in jail, awaiting trial for placing a bomb outside the south county courthouse, hoping to destroy evidence in a third-strike prosecution that would put him away for life. The FBI had just helped out in the arrest of a group of failed rappers who called themselves Pitch Black Night, tied not only to drugs but six murders in the area. The granddaddy of them all, though, was a rapper named Master DePaul. He was the man who kicked off the turf war between Baymont and Dumpers that reached its peak body count in 1994. The city’s reputation still hadn’t recovered. Given all that and more, the general feeling on the force remained: if you were local, Black, and musical, you merited a watchful eye.

“Care to comment?” Murchison asked, standing back to take in the whole wall.

Stluka gnawed his lower lip, thinking. “Squeaky type, looks like. The son I mean.”

“Yeah, but I was thinking more generally. These look like working people, church people.”

“Spare me, Murch. Pictures lie.” Stluka turned away, took in the rest of the room. “Every fuckwad in the world’s got a snapshot somewhere makes him look harmless. And that’ll be the one the family fawns off on the media when it’s crying time.”

There was a piano in the room, piled high with sheet music. Stluka drifted toward it as Murchison pulled back the curtain at the window. Unless this Lazarenko girl had been waiting, she most likely went to look only once she heard shots. Like Marcellyne Pathon. And saw nothing. The glass was filthy. Given the clouds, the rain, the sparse streetlights on the block, it would have been dark in the yard, nothing but an amber porch light strewn with cobwebs.

“Well now, looky here,” Stluka said behind him.

He was standing beside the piano, holding a purse in one hand, an ID in the other. Shaking the purse, he caught sight of something inside. “Get that.”

Murchison glanced in, spotted the wallet, took it out.

“There a driver’s license inside?”

Murchison checked. “Yeah.” He read the name. “This doesn’t match what Holmes told us outside.”

“Nadya Lazarenko.” Stluka showed Murchison the loose ID he’d found first. “She’s all of nineteen.”

Murchison checked the other ID. “This one says she’s Stephanie Waugh, twenty-one.”

“Ta-da.”

Murchison checked the photos. The faces were similar, not identical. Probably a friend’s license. He dropped the wallet back into the purse. “She’d need phony ID to get into a club where her boyfriend’s playing.”