The smell of putrefaction assaulted her from the first, the odor thick and strong, coating her clothing and hair. The sweetish smell of rotting flesh activated her gag reflex and she fought the urge to vomit. The hideous droning of swarming flies filled the room, the size of the swarm larger near the bed.
Oh Jeez, was all she could think. Those scumbags in CID knew there was trouble here. That’s why I pulled this duty!
The apartment was small, just one and two bedroom kitchenettes in the whole building. At one time it was swanky before the road construction that cut the area off from the downtown train station and contiguous cross streets. Afterwards the streets became potholed and almost impossible to drive with only beaters or two wheelers making the trip to the front doors of the building. There was a bus two blocks away that came and went three times a day, but ask anyone who lived there about public service. They’d tell you how thinly it was spread through the hood.
The room that greeted Maude with its unholy smell was a twelve by twelve kitchenette with a small bathroom, closet and sleeping area included. There was air conditioning but the thermostat was turned off producing a stiflingly hot apartment.
A thirteen inch television sat on an orange crate against the wall near the chair. The small stove and kitchen counter top were covered in the detritus from takeout meals; cockroaches crawled with abandon on empty food cartons and soda cups. The sink-full of dirty dishes gave her an idea about the lack of housekeeping. Aiming her weapon at the bathroom, Maude lightly kicked that door open, the soft impact revealing a filthy four-by-four shower with an adjacent commode. A tiny lavatory sat off to the side crowded into the room leaving little space for a man or woman to stand.
She stepped away from the bathroom and moved toward the single bed where the dead thing was lying, the sound of flies’ buzzing growing louder as she stepped closer. She hoped it was an animal, really hoped, but she knew in her gut that the covered corpse on the bed had been a living human being.
Moving next to the bed she found the smell to be even more cloying, the odor an entity owning the bedroom and the object on the mattress. Usually at those scenes someone would have a small jar of chest rub with them. The menthol rubbed on the nose was always a welcome cover for the smell of death.
Maude pulled rubber gloves from the pouch on her belt and went back to the bathroom where she removed some of the toilet paper from the roll, careful to touch nothing else. A few drops of water on the paper made a temporary mask for her nose, and after applying it, she began breathing through her mouth. Rotted flesh smells always made her nauseous in confined spaces.
The picture of Frank might be all that she needed. If he was the person in the bed then everyone’s job could have become a lot less complicated. Using her gloved hands to avoid compromising the crime scene Maude gently took hold of the top corner of the red and white bed coverlet and pulled it all the way back, exposing the head and torso of the victim. She almost groaned for the grisly picture of viscous liquids and dark dried blood covering the face and chest lay before her exposing the open maggot-filled hole where the mouth should have been.
The body appeared to be a fully developed adult human female. The breasts had been hacked off leaving two ragged holes in the chest where other maggots moved slowly back and forth feeding on the decaying flesh. Mature flies, like those that had been buzzing around since Maude opened the front door covered parts of the body, the lightweight coverlet a poor barrier between the victim and the noisy insects.
While trying to get her breath and stop gagging, she stepped back and noted the dried blood on the floor directly under the body where it had soaked through the thin mattress. Withdrawing her cell phone from her pocket she dialed her boss, informing him of what she had found.
“Lieutenant, the warrant serve for CID is not happening today. I went to the address, and found the door open. There’s a dead female here who appears to have been tortured and mutilated, been here a while. Better send out the crew and a guy who knows about flies.”
A dozen expletives flew from James Patterson’s mouth.
“I was getting ready to go home! Just one Friday I’d like to set out on my patio with a cold beer in one hand and one on the table, watching the sunset.”
Maude chuckled. The boss had thought that by sending her with an arrest warrant for a petty drug dealer he could forget about keeping her busy for the rest of the day. For his part he would have had the CID lieutenant in his debt, never a bad place to be. She probably should have left it alone, but what the heck.
“Yeah, Boss, I guess you’ll need to be here since we’re working shorthanded during the holiday,” Maude drawled, wishing for a cigarette to complete the satisfaction of screwing him over.
“I’ll be there detective. CID will get their boys out there with a team to secure the building. We’ll need to knock on doors and find witnesses.”
“Small chance of that; this place has gone into lock-down in the last fifteen minutes.”
What she really wanted was to get out of the room. A few steps into the hallway brought a measure of relief from the stench, giving her lungs a chance to breathe in some non-putrefied air. She yearned for nicotine but knew there was no time to smoke.
While waiting for the team to arrive she had to protect the scene with her person. No leaving until she was relieved. Too many cases were lost in court because of a break in the evidence chain. Her small notebook was in the top pocket of her shirt, and she recorded the facts of the find, noting where the body lay, and how she had observed it, while the details of the room were still fresh in her mind. Always you wrote the facts, she thought, just the facts, no emotional response must be recorded in the book. She had stacks of those used books back home in file boxes. Just like tax forms, you have to keep them forever.
The traffic cop who arrived soon after was breathless from running up the stairs, and Maude knew the forensic team with the cameras was close behind. Still she waited. Her experience told her that the mistakes she made would be fodder for the critics later. Leaning against the door was restful to her back. Muscles down her vertebrae were tense from the late night partying and the five floor climb. She almost regretted the interruption when CID arrived with their bags and cameras. Right behind them, breathing hard and coughing on the last step was Lieutenant Patterson.
“Okay, Detective, where’s the body? Is this the place? Has anyone been here and left the room?” The questions were coming from three sides, but the only one she answered was from her supervisor.
“No sir, no one has been here at all except for me,” she said, watching as the techs from the lab dusted the front door for prints after the first of the gloved county photographers entered the door. “The body is on the bed. I touched the doorknob barehanded and gloved up to pull back the coverlet and use the bathroom faucet. I never entered the kitchen.”
Maude accompanied Patterson inside the small alcove that made up the bedroom, nodding at the techs that stood back waiting.
“It’s pretty bad, Boss,” she said.
Once inside Maude walked straight to the bed and found it undisturbed as she knew it would be. She checked her gloves to make sure they were sound, nodding again at the techs standing off to the side as they waited for the police to do the look-see before they got involved. All those standing in the vicinity of the body were assaulted by the over-ripe smell of human flesh decomposing in a hot room. The flies continued their buzzing, lighting on the live bodies gathered around the bed. An investigator from the crime lab brought out a large container of chest rub and began passing it around, sharing the menthol cover-up with anyone who wanted it.
Maude told her story as it had happened, how she searched for Almondera to serve him with the failure-to-appear warrant, and not finding him she was presented with the crime scene and its grisly offering. After a bit, Patterson released her and some of the uniformed officers to knock on doors for witnesses, the other cops glad to help, grateful they hadn’t been part of the body fi
nd.
The need for a cigarette was overpowering by the time she stepped outside the room and lit one. To hell with policy, she thought. It’s a hit building. They cook drugs here over an open flame.
When the cigarette burned down she used a soda cup on the floor with a few drops in the bottom to extinguish cigarette’s fire. She was reluctant to see it go as she put the cold butt in her pocket to keep from contaminating the scene. Giving a nod to the traffic cop she readied her notebook as they walked a few paces down the fifth floor corridor looking for someone who might have seen something happening in room 507. The street cops were going door-to-door on the other floors asking for anyone who might have observed strangers in the building. Never could tell what someone might remember.
The first door belonged to 504 just in front of her and Maude knocked on it with authority.
“Open up, Police,” she yelled for all to hear.
After two more tries she gave up and wrote down the time and door number in her book. She would be expected to keep an accurate account of the time spent searching for witnesses. Her job was sometimes more record keeping than action, even on days when there were crimes committed and cases to be solved. The end of the story was often played out in the courts where the cops presented written accounts as vital testimony.
She thought about her partner, one of the most accurate record keepers she had ever worked with, and wondered how he was doing. The boss had given him a few days off after the shooting because he was really messed up about nearly getting killed. The last she heard he was taking a short vacation with his wife and kids, headed to the beach and the clear blue water of Mexico. She hoped he was okay and would be back, but it was doubtful. His wife had been nagging him to quit and go back to work in her daddy’s company. The same old story, she had heard it a few times before, only this time it might just happen. There’s nothing like a near-death experience to wake a man up and make him realize where his treasures lie. She was thinking about that when she and the street cop got to 509, the apartment that was catty-cornered across the hall from the crime scene.
“Detective Rogers, Police Department,” she shouted, knocking loudly on the door. “I need to talk to you!” Her fists were hurting from pounding the hard wood of the doors. She and the officer waited then she knocked once again. The pressure of her touch moved the door inward. It was not only unlocked it had been left partly open. When she pushed the knob, the door swung open by itself on oiled hinges, revealing a duplicate apartment to the crime scene in 507. A small room with the obligatory kitchen and hard chair were visible through the door.
“Oh no,” she said to the uniformed officer, though the remark was mostly to herself. Maude’s bad feeling had just gotten worse. The air in the room was as odorous as the crime scene in 50, and all her senses were on alert. The buzzing of a different family of flies filled the small apartment, moving together in groups, as though they were a solid mass.
The detective’s job in Homicide and a long retirement afterward were Maude’s career goals. She never cared for upward movement in the department, and even though there was the bias in the way women were treated on the force, still she lived for what she did on the job. The thrill of the catch was what she loved. Admittedly, some of her cases smelled worse than rotten fish. It was at those times true dedication to the job made a cop voluntarily enter a place of horror.
The door to the small bathroom was ajar as though the last person who departed had been too hurried to close it. There was nothing in the small room other than the usual furnishings. Maude gently closed the door, stepping lightly away toward the sleeping area, her weapon trained on the bed where a large lump lay covered by an identical coverlet to the one across the hall.
Struck by the unusual circumstances of the coverlets, Maude held off pulling the fabric back from the bed, taking time to look the room over. She dreaded the possibility of another crime scene, but knew the elements were there. On the floor in front of the bed lay a white bathrobe, the kind that hotels and cruise ships give to VIP customers. It was smeared with blood on one side. Maude’s guts roiled, the dread in her a stimulus to nausea.
There was a minute possibility that under the coverlet lay a sleeping person, one who would rise up with indignation at being disturbed by strangers in the room. Maude hoped that was the case, but it was not to be. She borrowed a fresh pair of latex gloves from the assisting officer and pulled the coverlet back, exposing a dead body. A carbon copy in its mutilated state, the body lay decomposing like the victim in 507. Both breasts had been hacked off and the raw flesh grayed and shriveled with the passing of time. Maggots were present in the second victim also, an indication that the time of the murder had coincided with the first. The mouth and chest were the feeding ground for the pale, voracious, flesh eaters.
The blood on the victim’s face, neck and chest had sourced from a large slash wound in her left temple near the carotid artery, possibly the cause of death. The extra damage inflicted on the woman was no doubt entertainment for a demented killer who found pleasure in torture. The second murder appeared in its grisly reproduction to be the work of the same person or persons who killed the woman in 507. .
Wanting another cigarette, but knowing it was off limits at the crime scene, Maude took out her phone to make the call across the hall. She had stayed in the room paying homage to the dead woman, giving silent tribute to the life taken by a monster. After she dialed the lieutenant’s number, the phone rang several times before he finally answered.
“Patterson here,” he said brusquely.
She was silent for a minute, not quite sure how to tell her boss that his evening away from home had just been lengthened.
“Uh, Boss, you need to come across the hall to Apartment 509,” she said through the crackling of static over the phone. The reception was poor but it was better than yelling through the door.
“What do you need?” he impatiently replied. “I’m busy over here.”
“Trust me, Boss, you need to come over here,” she said again.
“Oh alright, I’ll be there in a minute.” Patterson growled, disconnecting the phone.
Maude stayed near the door with the street cop, waiting for her supervisor. With knees ready to buckle from the strain of the long day she waited for him to arrive. When the door opened she gave him the look, the one that said we’ve been screwed.
“Maude, what do you want?” Patterson asked loudly. The increased volume of his voice was an indication of his frustration. She could tell he was ready to leave, to finish up the day.
“In the bed, Boss, go check the bed,” she wearily insisted. Maude stayed where she was, delaying the necessity to look one more time. The breasts’ removal touched a nerve within her because of the violence and the obvious hatred from the killer.
The commission of such an act in room 507 might have been a trip into insanity for the killer, but a replay of the horror in room 509 revealed a need to shock and horrify all who came to observe. He had thrown down the gauntlet and he alone knew where he would strike next. A buzz of worry was beginning in her. They had to find the killer before he murdered again.
She knew she could put it off no longer and stepped into the sleeping area alongside her lieutenant. Surprisingly, he was calm and observant, his language without expletives.
“Did you touch anything Maude?” he asked.
“No sir, just the coverlet-with gloves.” She added.
“That’s good. I’m sending this officer across the hall to get a team and I want them to split up and get this room photographed and printed chop-chop,” he said, indicating the street cop who had entered the room with Maude.
Later, after the noise was over and the extra personnel left, the coroner showed up. His findings were that both young women were probably killed by the same person or persons. He stated that there were too many possible causes for the deaths of both victims, but it appeared that they had both been dead for several days. His information was a repeat of the wo
rds Maude had already used. Only an autopsy would tell the cause.
The large amount of blood found under the bodies gave the coroner reason to believe that the women’s breasts had been removed while they were still alive. Speculation was that the breast mutilation was done by a gardener’s tool or other roughly serrated blade resembling a small saw. The flesh with the nipples attached was not found. No one wanted to voice the word, trophies.
As an afterthought, the coroner ventured a more exact time of death, based upon the decay of the bodies, the bloating, and the presence of both maggots and flies. His best approximation was the victims were killed about six days earlier. That estimation allowed for generations of flies to reproduce. Due to the large number of the insects in the rooms, the coroner believed at least one or more generations had already hatched. Samples of the maggots were taken to determine if they were the same type of fly larvae in each victim.
Maude was weary. Her wristwatch hands were sitting on nine o’clock and the streets outside were already dark .There was little activity in the building. The extra officers who went door-to-door found no one who saw or heard anything. The responses were not unexpected. Seldom did anyone ‘see anything’ if it meant telling it to the police.
The crime scene techs had photographed both apartments, taking them apart to capture any prints, blood or body fluids on film. The bodies had been removed and transported to the coroner’s office where autopsies would be performed. Blood on the carpet was scraped and put into containers for testing at the lab and the victims had been photographed by two different lab techs. Both women had fingers that were broken in different places, but no determination could be made about those injuries. The tips were printed, and Maude was hoping for an identification of the victims before the night was over.
She had done her part by looking for residents to question. Sometimes comparing the answers given by potential witnesses gave a cop a lead. Not this time though. The lack of response to door-knocking showed her a thing or two. Some of the people were scared, and they weren’t talking. Thinking they might come around was a pipe dream.
The East Avenue Murders (The Maude Rogers Crime Novels Book 1) Page 2