The Corner II (36 page)

She walked to the bathroom, and when she didn’t find what she was looking for, she went to the laundry room. She rifled through the cabinets until she found a bottle of bleach. She grabbed a bucket that was under the sink and filled it with water and the chemical that could eliminate just about any trace substance. She casually walked to the bed and threw the mixture on the man. She did this a few more times making sure the bleach and water got soaked into the bed, Persian rug and floor. She went to the bathroom and got dressed.

“Damn, almost forgot,” she muttered.

She wiped down the pistol, and after fixing a cup of coffee with a gloved hand, she picked up the phone and dialed. She sipped the hazelnut-flavored java as the phone rang.

“Chicago Tribune,” the woman on the other end spoke.   

“Hi, don’t hang up. Listen to me and listen to me well. I know you’re the newest member in that office. I’ve done my homework like a good little girl.”

The woman on the other end, the newest journalist on the staff, just six months removed from Hampton University, listened as she grabbed her notepad. She also wondered if a joke was being played on her.

Vanessa continued, “I have just killed. I know this one will be chalked up as one of the city’s homicides, but I need you to go to the scene. Collect information, data and all that stuff you people do. Don’t miss a beat, though. I’m about to make your career. So get ready and get lots of sleep when you can, because I’m about to take you and the police for a ride.”

She gave the journalist the address and told her where the man had been shot and other pertinent details that would let her know that she was the one that was there, the one who’d killed Thomas. The journalist wrote as fast as she could. She was nervous but tried her best to hold back the smile that was forcing its way on her face. Being a new journalist, she’d only been handed scraps; petty robberies, burglaries and all the bullshit reports the veterans didn’t want, and now some woman was calling to let her know that she’d committed a homicide, and there were more to come. That is, if she was telling the truth.

Vanessa had given the journalist time to write and to let it all sink in.

“Did you get it all?” she said as she grabbed the car keys to Thomas’ S-Class Mercedes from the counter.

“Yes, what is your—”

She cut her off. “Andrea?”

“Yes?”

“If I’m going to throw you a bone to make your career, don’t ask questions. Just listen, okay?” 

“Okay, sorry,” was all the twenty-four year old could say.

Vanessa chuckled then stated, “Now let the games begin.”

Jack’s Blackberry sang a tune,
not a ring tone he had set for friends who were saved in the phone’s memory, but to the department. He reached over to silence the electronic device to keep it from waking his wife. He answered it and straightened as the detective on the other end told him of the homicide they’d been assigned to. Again he leaned to the nightstand, only this time to grab the pocket-sized notebook to write down the necessary information. As he wrote, he noticed that his wife wasn’t in the bed, and a part of him hoped that she was in the bathroom or downstairs fixing breakfast, but he knew differently—knew it was wishful thinking. She hadn’t been home in so long he’d lost count of how many days. Every morning he’d awake hoping that she’d made her way back home and would be disappointed every time, but he was getting over his wife more each day. That is, until she made a call to check on their daughter, and he hated that because it caused emotions to stir in him and excitement in his daughter.

Jack rose from the bed and stretched his athletic body. He needed to get to the crime scene as fast as he could, because in homicide, the first forty-eight hours are the most crucial.

Jack and his partner, Faye Miller, were next in line on the big board to catch the area’s next homicide, and here it was.

No slacks and hard bottom shoes today. It was Saturday morning, so it was jeans and a casual button-up shirt, and Jack was in it quickly. He clipped his holster on his belt and slid the city issued weapon in it. He grabbed his badge and clipped it on his belt next to the 9mm as he jogged down the wooden stairs. The coffee pot was empty—another sign that his caffeine addicted wife hadn’t been home. He frowned at the thought of her being gone but had more pressing issues at the moment. Or were they?

He was out the door and in his black unmarked sedan less than ten minutes from getting the call. His tires screeched as he gave the car too much gas while backing out of his south side home’s driveway. He was on his way to the crime scene and hoped that Faye had brought him a cup of coffee.

Nice fuckin’ crib,
Jack thought as he approached the two-level brick home that was nestled on a cul-de-sac. He got out of the sedan and nodded at the patrolmen who were standing around conducting crowd control. It wasn’t much of a crowd—just the neighbors who lived on the block. He lifted the yellow ‘Police Do Not Cross’ tape and ducked under it, entering the crime scene. He saw Faye Miller—his rookie partner of two months. She wasn’t a rookie on the department. She’d spent five years in patrol and four in warrants, so that gave her nine years under her belt, just six years behind Jack. She was now in homicide and had to prove herself, not because she was a woman, but because she was a rookie, solving crimes from a gas station attendant being killed during a holdup to what they had on their plate at the moment, a flat out murder.

Faye, who wore jeans, a white crew neck and a lightweight navy blue blazer, walked toward Jack with two Starbucks coffee containers in her hand. “Coffee, Jack?” she asked. Her face was serious—the way it has been the past month while working with her new partner.

“The question is how do you know what I like today? I may like cream and sugar, or I just might like mine straight black, just like my women,” he told the tall and curvaceously slim woman. He wasn’t trying to hit on her, but out of sheer habit he blurted out the line. It was the way cops talked.

She held up the coffee cup in her right hand. “That’s why I brought cream and sugar.”  She lowered that hand then raised the left. “And one that’s straight black.”

“Let’s get to work,” was all Jack could think to say as he took the cream and sugar from her. He watched as she gave one of the uniforms the black. “You wanted the cream and sugar?”

Faye replied, “Had a cup on the way. Just didn’t know what you wanted today. You know how you switch up on me at times. It all depends on your mood. Cream and sugar, you’re usually in a good mood. Black, shit is usually on your mind.”

Jack smiled. “Is that right, detective?”

“Just something I picked up on while working with you.”

They arrived at the front door of the home where a fresh out of the academy patrolman was standing to take their names. That was procedure for homicide crime scenes. Before anyone could enter a crime scene, their names had to be logged in so there would be a record of all who entered the scene.

As Jack signed his name he asked, “So what mood am I in?”

Faye answered, “Wife must’ve come home. You’re off the straight black.”  She signed in.

Jack grinned. “Some detective, she’s still gone,” he muttered.

“Sorry, guess that’s what I get for assuming.”

“No harm,” he said as he mustered a smile then nodded toward the entrance as he pulled a pair of latex gloves from his pocket. “Let’s see what we got.”

The coroner was waiting to do his thing, but at Jack’s request, he waited before touching the body. The scene wasn’t gruesome by any means. He’d seen worse, though there was a lot of blood along with what smelled like bleach soaked into the mattress. The Caucasian male’s eyes were wide open. His hands were cupped over his groin, and he was on his side with his body bent almost in the fetal position.

Dr. Chan Ho Park, a tall, lanky coroner of Korean descent, who Jack had grown to know well during his six years in homicide, was writing on his notepad. “So, how long you think you’ll be?” Park asked Jack as he wrote.

“Park, you’re always in a rush. My partner and I need to do our thing,” Jack glanced over at Faye as he slid on his latex gloves to let Park know who his partner was. Jack grinned when he realized that she already had her latex on—she was one step ahead of him.

“So what do you notice about the victim? I mean, besides the obvious,” said Jack.

Detective Miller stepped toward the body, examined it closely then gave what diagnosis she could. “I would say from the position he’s in, hand covering his private area and his eyes wide open, that he was shot there first and then in the head.” She walked from the foot of the bed to the head as she continued to give her analysis. “The bleach water is a way of getting rid of evidence, and I would say the killer was someone who had a dislike for the victim.” 

“Why is that?” asked Jack who was following Miller as she walked and talked.

“To shoot a man twice in the private area first, then the head,” she scanned the room looking at all the male officers then continued. “I think it’s safe to say that it wasn’t from bad sex, or a lot of men would be catching bullets every night.”

A crime scene investigator, who was taking photos, and Park, snickered at Faye’s statement. She had a way of slipping in a jab to men. She was like that, comfortable and loose around all the male officers, and she had to be since they dominated the department.

Jack was impressed. The crime scene unit had already taken many photos and was almost finished with lifting what prints they could. One of the crime scene investigators informed Faye that the shower was still running when the maid had arrived, and that she had turned it off. Faye had made a note to question the woman on what all she’d seen, touched and/or moved. She relayed the information to Jack. He told her to have a patrolman take the maid to the station and hold her there until he arrived.

The maid had arrived at the house before the squads, who were dispatched as soon as the reporter, Andrea Jones, from the Tribune called 9-1-1 after she’d received the call. Speaking of Andrea Jones, she was outside cooing one of the black uniforms who was on the other side of the yellow tape, standing bored out of his mind conducting crowd control for the all white crowd that wasn’t rowdy—just nosey. She figured he didn’t know much but picked the rookie’s brain for what he did know and found out that the man had been shot three times.

Andrea asked, “Do you know where he was shot?”

The rookie laughed slightly, then made a gun with his hand and pointed it at his private area, “The dick and then his dome.”  He shook his head. “What a way to go.”

“You’re right about that,” Andrea said sarcastically as she shook her head, not at the way the man was killed, but at the way the rookie patrolman thought he was doing a good job of flirting.

Faye was walking out of the house with notebook in hand. She was writing and talking into her Bluetooth to her husband who was asking when she would be home. Faye shook her head and explained to him that this wasn’t like patrol or warrants. She was on the clock for however long it took for that day, and she was very busy. She then reminded him that they were separated and not to call her. Faye’s head jerked a bit when there was a click. Her husband was used to getting his way, but Faye was one that he was never able to control. His selfish ways were tolerated by her because he was her husband, and she loved him, but his latest antics had put their marriage at its breaking point.

Andrea noticed the blonde woman in the blazer with the badge hanging around her neck by a neck chain.
The one in charge,
she thought.

She waved her notepad and yelled, “Hey detective, over here!”

Faye looked at the woman and from the notepad she was waving and her look, she assumed she was a reporter. Faye continued to Jack’s sedan and retrieved her mini-cassette recorder so she could record voice notes of the scene; something Jack told her would make things significantly easier. Once she retrieved the item, she gave the young black woman a moment of her time.

Faye spoke first, “We have no comment at the moment. You can call public relations at the department later.”

“I know more than you think. Can you give me ten seconds?” she looked around at the people and patrolmen.

Faye took the hint, raised the tape and let the woman near her, giving them some privacy.

“I’m Detective Miller, go ahead and make it quick.”

“I’m the one she called, Andrea Jones. I’m Andrea Jones from the Chicago Tribune.”

Puzzled, Faye asked, “The alleged killer called you?”

“Yeah, the woman who supposedly did this. She called—”

Faye pulled the woman even further away from everyone as she cut her off.  “You received a call about what happened here?” she questioned the young woman with a furrowed brow.   

“Yes. A woman called me and told me what happened. She gave me a few details, like the victim was Caucasian and that she’d shot him in the dick, oops, sorry. I mean, groin area, and then the head. Then I dialed 9-1-1 and gave them the address and information.”  Andrea didn’t tell her everything, only what she wanted the detective to know. That is, until she was officially being questioned, then she’d divulge more.

Faye waved to one of the patrolmen. He eagerly came to see how he could help the detective. Most patrolmen hoped these small windows of opportunities would become stepping stones to move them from shift work in patrol and into the detective ranks someday.