Shades of Black: Crime and Mystery Stories by African-American Authors (18 page)

“Are you going to say something, or stand their gawking at me Medearis?”

I sighed; the kind of sigh only a man who knows he's lost the best thing he's ever had can sigh. “Okay. Somebody did Lowenstein and this Vagina guy. Did he make the paper too? Never mind. The ME isn't finished, but it looks like they were done around the same time, maybe not together but one shortly after the other. The dude with the vagina was killed last. We have a witness who heard a woman screaming; then saw the woman running away from the scene. Looks like he pissed the killer off.”

“According to your report, your witness didn't really see much. What'd she say about the woman running away?”

“It's there.”

“Come on. That's it? How does she even know it was a woman if she didn't see any more than you wrote?”

“Hey, I can question her again if you want me to?”

“It's okay. I sent Spenser over, he seems to have a way with women.”

I took a deep breath. Radar. Nobody can convince me women don't have some kind of radar shit working for them. How does she know I had eyed this woman? Now I don't stand a chance. Spenser. Shit.

At the end of the day I had nothing. The Vagina was out of jail on bond for raping some young girl, twelve freaking years old. Nobody gave a shit that he was dead. At least, I sure didn't. I wanted to beat the dog crap out of any fool who messed with a young girl. Man, that freaked me. Somebody should have cut that dick off long ago. As for the big shot, somehow he died of natural causes. I suppose he climbed his ass in the Dumpster to die. Yeah right. That's what I had.

“Hey, yo, Detective Medearis, I got something for you.”

I stared at him. “You've got lipstick on your cheek. Where've you been Cowboy?”

“I went to see Hannah. She remembered something else.”

“Who the hell is Hannah, Spenser?”

“Our witness from Vagina.”

“On a first-name basis? Is that Hannah's lipstick too?” I asked. If a Black man could turn green I'd have been the Incredible Hulk about then.

“What can I say, I got the moves with the ladies,” he said, dusting his lapel.

“You know you can get your ass moved out of the department fooling with a witness, Spenser.”

“I'm kidding, Detective, chill out. That girl, Marci at the reception desk asked me for a birthday kiss. It's her birthday,” he said raising his eyes.

“You've got a lot to learn, son,” I said. I knew for a fact it wasn't Marci's birthday unless it came twice a year. “Get on with it. What did Hannah tell you?”

“She said she saw the woman stop under the street lamp and look back. She thinks the woman might have seen her, and now she's a little scared if we name her as a witness.”

I couldn't believe this shit. That woman scared. Please. “That's it? That's what you got?”

“That's not it, but she made me promise that I would tell you this before I told you what she saw. And that you'd promise you won't leak her name to the press.”

“And you agreed? What? You think we're a PR firm?”

“No sir. I just think we should protect our witnesses. Specially the beautiful ones.”

“Oh, I get it. Let the ugly women die, just save the pretty ones.” I shook my head. “What did she see?”

“She said she saw the woman stick something in her purse while she was standing under the light.”

“Something like what?”

“She doesn't know.”

“Okay, your news is that she saw the woman stop under the light and put something in a purse, and you think that will help us. What about why she waited before calling the police? You ask her that?”

He stood there for a minute biting his lower lip.

“Did you even check out Hannah's story?” I asked. “Does she own the buildings? Did anybody see her there before?”

“I checked that this morning before I left. She owns six warehouses in that area. One of them she visits frequently. She's stinking rich. She went to MIT. She used to be a professor. Moved here a while back, then left, then came back. She's been working at the CDC for two years. She owns a bunch of other property throughout the city. She's never been married. Has no boyfriends that I could find. She's beautiful, sexy, and smart, and when this is over I think I'm going to marry her.”

He said this with a shit grin on his face. “You're joking right?” I said, praying he was. What if I decided to marry her? She would be on my Halle Berry, J'Lo list of women I would marry if they would give me the time, day or night.

“Of course I'm kidding. I have a girlfriend. I love her.”

Was he for real? The phone rang. I answered it. “Detective Medearis here.”

“Detective, could you come over here please, quickly. I think someone is following me.”

Like a schoolboy I wanted to say, so Hannah, why don't you call Spenser? Instead I answered like the Mr. Cool I know I can be if I try, “I'll get a black and white over right away.”

“No, please. I'd rather it was you.”

“I'm off duty, Dr. Winston,” and playing hard to get.

“I need to talk to you. Honest,” she said.

I could hear a new element in her voice. One that I hadn't heard before. She was trying to seduce me. Soften me up. But I couldn't shake the feeling I'd seen her before. Cops don't forget faces. It can be a matter of life and death. I had to be wrong though. I couldn't imagine I could forget where I saw a woman who looked like that. I tried to relax my shoulders. Think. Did I arrest her before?

“Give me thirty minutes to an hour,” I said. “If you get too spooked before I get there, just call 911, okay.”

“Make sure she doesn't have any priors,” I said to Spenser. “I know this woman from somewhere. And there had to be a reason she didn't call the police right away.”

“Maybe she didn't come out when she first heard the screams? Maybe the woman she saw screaming just happened along, saw the body, freaked, and ran away.”

“Yeah, and maybe someday the tooth fairy is going to pay me all the damn money he owes me. Something isn't right about this story. Think about it. She described a woman who fits her own description. Why? If someone else happened to have seen her they would be giving us her description, but we couldn't tell it from the running away woman. I know I'm missing something here. I just don't know what it is.”

I called the ME's office. “You got anything more on Vagina or Lowenstein?”

I repeated what he'd said as I wrote it on a pad. That way if I said it wrong he'd correct me. “He ejaculated before it was cut off, probably on his body. Hmm. And he was alive when it was removed. Now that's interesting too. What about the Dumpster? Drugs. What type drugs? Okay, he shot up heroin. Fresh needle mark. Is that what killed him? No, no heroin overdose. Just must have had it with him. Getting ready to shoot up. The fool gets in the Dumpster to shoot up and just dies? Traces of something on his clothes, but you don't know what it is. Sending it away. Hmm. But you think the blade belonged to Vagina? Okay. Thanks.”

“No priors,” Spenser said. “She's clean as a whistle. Not even a traffic ticket.”

“Spenser, when you went to see Hannah, did you notice anything unusual about her?”

“That she is beautiful.”

“Acknowledged. Anything else? She make you uneasy at all?”

“Me and a million other guys probably.”

“I don't mean that. I mean something else.”

“Nope.”

“What about her house?”

“Nothing.”

“What kind of scientist is she at the CDC?”

“Not sure. Something about nuclear medicine.”

“Nuclear medicine. I pictured her in my mind. Man was that easy. I could see every detail, her long hair, her red lipstick, red nail polish, ankle shoes—ankle shoes. And, something about her so familiar.

I picked up the phone, dialed the ME again. “Listen, can you check the body one more time for me, check the ding-a-ling too.”

I hung up. Dialed again. “CDC, may I speak to somebody in personnel?” I talked to them. Two years, she'd been working there two years. She came from MIT there. MIT. Interesting. I remember arresting an MIT professor before. Nah. Couldn't be.

I called Dr. Lowenstein's office. No one answered. “What kind of doctor is Lowenstein?” I asked Spenser. “You know?”

“No, just that he's some big shot.”

I looked up Lowenstein in the yellow pages. Just as I thought.

“Come with me, Spenser,” I said. “I'll teach you what a real detective does.” I drove to the warehouses. Walked from where Dr. Hannah Winston said she stood after running out of the warehouse. I had Spenser walk to the street lamp and pretend to have a purse. I couldn't make out what he was doing one way or the other.

We drove over to see Dr. Hannah Winston.

“Hello Dr. Winston,” I said.

“Thank God, you're here,” she said. “I think a man followed me today.”

“A man this time? Not a woman?” I said, scanning her house.

“No. But I'm sure whoever it was followed me.”

“Is that the briefcase you had at the warehouse that night?” I asked.

She looked over at a large inlaid oriental desk. The soft Italian leather briefcase was closed. I could see you needed a key to open it.

“Weird how you had your briefcase open in the car that night.” I said.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“I've been trying to figure out why would a woman come out in the middle of the night to get papers for a business meeting she had to leave for and yet she doesn't leave? Women plan things better than that. Don't they, Dr. Winston?”

“What are you getting at? I was going out of town, but my plans changed. Women can also change their minds.”

“You had money in your briefcase that night. Didn't you?”

She stuttered. For the first time I spotted sweat on her upper lip. “No, I didn't. I told you I came to pick up papers.”

“I saw the money. It didn't register immediately. I couldn't remember what made those kinds of impressions. Then I remembered you flicking my business card between your fingers. I've only seen two kinds of people handle cards that way, magicians and you know who else, don't you, Dr. Winston? And that's how it all came together.”

My cell phone rang. “Uh-huh. Yep. Just like I thought. Thanks. You're sure about that?”

“Dr. Winston, could I see your shoes from the other night?”

“My shoes?”

“Yes, your shoes. Am I not speaking clearly?”

“I don't have them.”

I shook my head. “You don't have them. Why is that?”

“I messed up my heels running in that gravel that night, so I threw them away.”

“Granted you messed them up alright. Let me guess, skin and bone fragments right?”

She didn't move, just stared at Spenser, as if her doe eyes could get him to rescue her.

“You know what gave you away? You don't really think like a woman. First off, a woman would have tried to put some clarity on what she'd
seen. Women observe so much in the dark. Leave a pair of earrings in someone's car, and a woman will find them in no time flat. They can look at pieces and put the puzzle together. Men.” I shook my head. “Somehow we need more pieces, and they need to be in some order before we can really get the picture. Take my wife, the police captain, okay, ex-wife, beautiful Black, sexy woman, but power and brains to knock your joans off. She could have solved this the first night.

“Me, it took me a few days. First off, she would have remembered where she'd seen you before. 1991. Right? Card sharking at a poker game in what—a warehouse. I busted you. Right. You sailed out of that on probation, first offense. Even then I couldn't figure out what a smart person like you, a college professor, was doing sharking cards. Money. You needed big money. For the operation. Am I hot?

“The way I figure it, Lowenstein's druggy son, who was in your class at MIT, figured out who you were—his old school buddy—and was blackmailing you since the CDC hired you as a gorgeous woman. Right. You killed the sucker, nuclear medicine-wise. And since it could only be proven he died of natural causes, who would care if he climbed his ass into a Dumpster to take a hit. You had on gloves. They left a powdered residue. When I shook your hand that night they felt chalky. I suspect latex, the kind that have powder to keep bad skin reactions down, huh. Am I right so far?

“The Vagina. That's where you really fucked up, so to speak. I think he caught you dumping the body. And being the low-life ignorant rapist he was, he thought he'd snatch a little tang from a beautiful woman. Cold? Hot? Hot I bet.

“One problem. Lowenstein is a plastic surgeon, so you still got your man thing on. When homeboy realized that, he probably wanted to beat the living shit out of you. But you were too fast. You beat his dick off with your spiked shoes, then cut him the Vagina you wished you had, and watched him die. You left the razor behind since it was his anyway. No fingerprints, thanks to your latex gloves. You cleaned your shoes off, knowing we'd have no reason to test them, since you were the witness and not the woman anyone could have spotted over the body. Pretty smart.
Explains the time element we've been struggling with. See we know you didn't call the police right away. Hot?