Perish

by Lisa Black

  “Yeah, her. In here every week for months and she doesn’t know what the victim did all day or whether she had any family left in the world. She’s either not real observant or not real curious.”

  Maggie said, “Maybe neither. The homeowner didn’t leave a lot of personal stuff lying around—as in none. Whatsoever. What did the boyfriend say?”

  “That he hasn’t got a clue,” Riley went on, slouching his bottom onto the arm of the far recliner and waiting for Keshawn to finish his notes. “They worked late with some other people; that was the last he saw of her. No reason to call. They didn’t make a habit of texting nite-nite to each other; they weren’t that kind of a couple. Lots of hot tempers at work, but that’s normal for this business.”

  “The mortgage business?” she asked.

  Jack said nothing, as usual, letting his partner do the talking, so Riley nodded. “Big money in mortgages. Something about somebody wants to buy the company—”

  “And she didn’t want to sell?”

  “No, she was hot to sell, but on her terms. Then there’s some other buyer and lawyers and accountants gumming up the works—I couldn’t make what he said add up to an actual sentence with a noun and a verb for the most part, so I’m sure I didn’t get the full disclosure, but it sounded like one more day in the glittery world of high finance. These people chew Maalox for breakfast. But murder?”

  “I saw her bank account statement in the office,” Maggie said. “It looked pretty murder worthy to me.”

  “Yeah, to me too. But to these suits? They lose that much before breakfast without batting an eye. Sometimes the market goes up, sometimes it goes down.”

  Keshawn finally spoke. “This don’t look like corporate espionage to me, anyway.”

  No one had to ask what he meant.

  He had set the clipboard aside and now focused the camera’s lens on the puncture into Joanna Moorehouse’s cheekbone. “It looks like pure animal rage.”

  After he completed his photographs and asked the detectives approximately twenty-five more questions, he had the body snatchers stretch a transport sheet lengthwise along the victim’s body to flip her onto. Maggie crouched next to him, camera at the ready, to see what lay underneath Joanna Moorehouse.

  The snatchers pulled on the left arm as Keshawn pushed on the woman’s hip, and the body, stiff as an I-beam, rolled onto its right side. Keshawn and Maggie snapped pictures, then took a closer look.

  Nothing commanded their attention. Joanna Moorehouse from the back appeared every bit as fit and toned as Joanna Moorehouse from the front. Most of it had been coated in red as her lifeblood had seeped out and around and under her, except in spots such as the center of her buttocks and her shoulder blades, where the liquid couldn’t quite wriggle under the skin. But a few minutes’ inspection established that there were no injuries; all the assault had taken place while the killer had been eye to eye with his victim.

  The snatcher holding Joanna’s arm let go, but just as the corpse would have settled back into its original position, Maggie’s gloved hands shot out to grab it. “Whoa!”

  “Whoa yourself,” Keshawn said. He helped her support the upper back as the whole body started to slide away from them. “See something?”

  Maggie stared at a swirling of blood messed up by Joanna’s struggles to push off her attacker, struggling to hold the woman’s body from falling back onto it. “Does that look like a fingerprint?”

  Their heads bumped as they gazed downward at a feathery pattern at the edge of the blood pool, next to where Joanna’s left arm had lain.

  Keshawn made a doubtful mumble as the snatchers flipped the body over onto the sheet. Maggie still stared, moving her body in a deep crouch that threatened to overbalance.

  Keshawn said, “Not trying to be, you know, obnoxious or nothing, but you pretty flexible, girl.”

  “Yoga,” she explained, her voice muffled by her thighs. She let the snatchers move the body and waited until Keshawn left the dais to get a few last details from the detectives. If she could have gone into a sphinx pose and positioned her arms around the possible print to keep it safe without looking completely ridiculous—and getting someone else’s dried blood on her shirt—she would have.

  When the others were at a safe distance she got out the tripod for her camera, put an ABFO ruler next to the print, and snapped the tiny area at a variety of exposures and apertures. She used a digital SLR but this was not a point-and-click situation. The shiny white tile turned out to be both a blessing and a curse—as a background it created perfect contrast with the dark red print, but it also bounced back light from the flash and even the windows, making the print’s ridges disappear in a blaze of unglory. Finally, she obtained a few images that satisfied her.

  She returned to her car, passing the two detectives as they spoke to a handsome but harried-looking young man. The police IT guy stood next to the latter while holding Joanna’s cell phone in his latex-gloved hands, comparing the call history while Riley took notes. The young man said, “Yeah, that’s our in-house lawyer. He’s working on the requirements violations. That’s—let me see, I think that’s one of Deb’s numbers—yeah. She’s with Ergo … Insurance, they’re insurance. That one … I don’t know who that is … let me see… .”

  Maggie retrieved the Amido Black reagent and stopped in the kitchen to borrow a pitcher, which she filled with tap water, handling the faucet handle as gingerly as possible to avoid the black carbon she’d dusted it with. Then she appropriated a roll of paper towels and returned to where the body had lain.

  Amido Black stained blood to a dark purplish black shade and could bring out further ridge detail in her one lonely print. But it had to be rinsed—easily accomplished on a small object or anything vertical, like a wall. Quite a different stretch of road when gravity could not be your friend.

  Less would have to be more. Instead of dousing the area, she used a disposable plastic pipette to drop the dark reagent onto the blood pattern, enough to cover the print and extend a few millimeters past its edges. The liquid formed a perfect blob and sat there. The floor must have been perfectly level…. Nice to know the quality of the construction stayed in line with its price.

  Because it showed no inclination to flow, instead of pouring the water from the pitcher she used another pipette. Squeezing its bulb hard gave the water enough force to push the stain to the side, where she blotted it with the paper towels. Not exactly elegant, but it worked. The ridges darkened, other smudges and spots appeared, but no more prints. Only that one.

  It could belong to the victim, but Maggie didn’t think so. It appeared to be a simple loop but oriented upward, toward where her head had been, not downward where she would have put her hands to cushion a fall to the floor. Possibly she tried to turn to her left side, pushing off the floor with her right hand.

  But it could also be from the killer’s hand as he held his victim down in order to continue stabbing her. His hand slipped off her bloody arm and—wait, then he’d have to be holding the knife in his left hand, to free his right fingers to press on the floor. But the chest wounds seemed to skewer to the victim’s left, which would be the killer’s right. Plus that one puncture under the left cheek. It all put Maggie in mind of a right-handed killer.

  Oh well. She’d find out soon enough when she got Joanna’s prints from the autopsy. She packed up her equipment to tote back to her car, fighting the nagging feeling that there should be more she could do. Such a brutal murder, and such a dearth of evidence left behind.

  Chapter 5

  Jack stood in the shade of the weeping willow trees with Riley and Jeremy Mearan, but the branches couldn’t shelter him from the humidity. Cleveland temperatures could vary wildly in the summer but the lake always kept the air hydrated. He and Riley had convinced the young man to loan them his phone so the IT guy could compare his e-mails with the ones on Joanna Moorehouse’s laptop—which would be helpful, but keeping him from alerting the rest of the staff to their boss’s
demise would be really helpful. Usually the suspect list began with family, then friends. Coworkers ran a distant third. But this victim, from everything they could determine, had no family or friends. Virtually every communication on her phone had been from a business associate, and they had found no sign of a second cell or another computer or even a damn iPod. Coworkers catapulted to the top of the “automatically-suspect-these-people” list, and Jack was already forming a plan to infiltrate that pool.

  But the separation from the electronic heart of his universe was already giving Jeremy Mearan the shakes. “But I have to tell them. Joanna is the company, and the place is already in chaos because of this merger. They have to know she’s not coming back!”

  Maggie came out of the house with her usual comportment of awkward containers and crossed the drive to her car. Mearan was not too upset to forgo checking out her ass but kept on point. “I want to leave, and I want my phone back.”

  Riley brushed a leaf off his shoulder. “Of course. But we’re going to need to talk to some of your staff anyway, so it would be better if that could all be done at the same time.”

  “Why? What difference does that make?”

  Riley said something conciliatory but untrue, because simply put it would be better for the investigation to question people before they’d had enough time to compare notes, get stories straight, or resolve to speak no ill of the dead. Usually ill was what got the dead where they were, and exercising restraint in commentary of same often covered up important information.

  The IT guy came out of the house with a square package in brown paper—certainly the laptop—and stored it in his car.

  “There!” Mearan announced. “He’s done. I’ve told you all I can, and I want to leave.”

  Before Riley could agree, Jack said, “Just give us five more minutes and we’ll have you on your way.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Look. Someone took the woman you slept with and sliced her open like gutting a deer.”

  Mearan blanched. Puking seemed a definite possibility. “What do you mean, sliced open? You said stabbed—and I thought that meant stabbed. You mean they cut her more than once?”

  Jack ignored this. “Do you care? I’m not asking if you loved her. But do you at least care?”

  “Yes! Yes, I—” He seemed to realize that he meant it, and it came as a bit of a surprise to him. “I care.”

  “Do you want us to find who did this?”

  Still pale, Mearan nodded.

  “Okay. Then wait here.”

  He and Riley moved away, out of earshot. Maggie slammed her trunk shut and joined them.

  Riley asked, “What are you thinking, partner?”

  “We’ve got an opportunity here. Given this location, the doors locked—or at least we think they were—this is probably not random. This woman had no life outside her job. We have to assume she knew her killer and she knew him from work.”

  “So we burst into the office, announce that she’s dead, and question everybody while they’re still in shock?”

  “Exactly. Then we ask for DNA and fingerprints.”

  Riley scoffed. “No way they’re going to give us that. These sound like high rollers, not Sunday-school teachers.”

  Maggie waited between them, her gaze switching back and forth, as absorbed as a spectator at Wimbledon.

  “They will, with all their coworkers around them. Their pals and cubicle-mates might wonder if Jake in cubicle three refuses to give up his DNA. They might start to wonder why. That sort of thing makes office parties awkward and promotions iffy.”

  “He said we’re talking about twenty, twenty-five people, and we don’t even know what this place looks like. If they physically scatter, there’s nothing we can do. If they want to go home to weep into their hankies or play hooky with a sort of snow day, we can’t stop them. It’s not the crime scene.”

  “I know,” Jack said. “But it’s worth a try.”

  “And it might come as a shock to little Joanna’s flunkies, but the guy who did it—he knows she’s dead. He’s not going to be shocked at all. He might even have called in sick today, just in case we pull such a stunt.”

  “He’ll be there. He’ll be calm and cooperative. He might even give up his prints, if everyone else does. He won’t want to do anything that will make him stand out.”

  “How do you know that?”

  Because that’s what I would do, Jack thought. “Trust me.”

  Riley raised one eyebrow. That wasn’t something Jack said often, or ever. He studied Jeremy Mearan, then turned back. “Okay. Why not? Like you said, it’s worth a try. Maggie, you come too.”

  That surprised her. “Me? Why?”

  She didn’t want to be around him, Jack knew. Any more than he wanted to be around her. Each other’s existence formed a personal sword of Damocles with the thread ready to snap at any moment. It didn’t make for social comfort.

  “In case my smooth partner here talks them into prints. We may have a window of about two and a half seconds before they change their minds and we’ll want to be ready to go. You got stuff in your car?”

  She shrugged. “Yeah, some.”

  “Okay, then.” He nodded toward their subject. “Test run. Let’s see you get him on board.”

  Jack cracked the knuckles of one hand and said with a confidence he didn’t feel, “No problem.”

  They returned to the victim’s sort-of boyfriend. Jack told him that they’d like to accompany him to his office to inform the staff and then gather as much information from same as they could. At first the guy blinked in confusion more than any sort of concern. “Sure … whatever.”

  “We’d like to be the ones to break the news, so to speak. To tell your coworkers of Joanna’s death.”

  An expression of great relief flowed over the young man’s face. “Would you?”

  Obviously the kid had been dreading it, truly dreading. Jack jumped on this. “Of course. We’ve had a lot of experience at that, unfortunately. And from an investigation point of view, it would be best if we could que—talk to people before they get too overcome to remember events clearly.”

  This made no sense, but Mearan didn’t care. As long as he didn’t have to stand in front of a room full of people and tell them that the woman he slept with had been slaughtered in the safety of her beautiful house and, oh, by the way, the company will probably fold now and you’ll all be out of your jobs, he would cooperate with any plan. He didn’t even ask for his cell phone back. He gave a brief description of the office—second floor of a small downtown building, cubicles for the originators, four offices for the execs, conference room, a file room. Then he came back to, what was to him, the most important point. “And you’ll tell them that she’s … dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you going to tell them that she was murdered? And … how?”

  “Yes, but perhaps not right away. That’s why it’s important that you say nothing and follow our lead, okay? Nothing. If anyone asks you for details, don’t answer.”

  Mearan studied the cops, eyes narrowing. “Easy enough—I don’t know any. You think whoever killed her works at Sterling. And that if you burst in there and don’t give them time to think you can surprise them into giving themselves away?”

  Jack said nothing. It sounded kind of ridiculous when the kid said it.

  “But how do you know it’s someone there? What if it was some random pervert or like the guy who cuts the grass or something?”

  “Then we still get an unvarnished account of Joanna’s recent activities.”

  Mearan didn’t seem to hear him, lost in his own mulling. “How do you know it wasn’t me?”

  Jack made himself smile at the guy. “Then you’ll give yourself away, sooner or later. And we’ll be there.”

  The apple in Mearan’s neck bobbed up and down.

  *

  Maggie drove the city’s assigned forensic unit vehicle with spotty AC and a lingering smell of blood from the M
oorehouse mansion to St. Clair Avenue, talking to her boss on the phone. She filled him in with every detail she could until he protested: “Okay, stop. I’ve got it, incredibly rich, lonely hottie gutted on her living room floor and the cops are chasing the staff at her company because they’ve got nobody else to look at?”

  “Well, yeah—that’s where we stand.” She could picture Denny pinching his broad nose with long black fingers, mentally rearranging his staff’s workload as she slowed at East 22nd and Euclid to avoid rear-ending a brake-happy van. She pulled around it. The driver also spoke on a cell phone. Some people could do both at once, and some couldn’t. “They’ve still got the house sealed, so we can go back whenever we want. At least until the department gets tired of paying two officers to babysit the place. The IT guy is going through her computer, trying to find out what she’s been doing and where she’s been going other than work. Jack called this offshore bank to alert us if anyone tries to access Joanna’s accounts.”

  “Who’s Jack?”

  She must be doing a better job than she thought of keeping her life compartmentalized. “Homicide.”

  “Oh, okay. And he thinks an office-full of people are just going to give up their vitals? In this day and age?”

  “You know you sound really old when you say things like ‘this day and age’?”

  “That’s because I am.” Denny chuckled. He could manage a laugh now and then since his third child started sleeping for more than an hour at a time. Some days he seemed downright perky. “And they don’t think it’s the boyfriend?”

  “No … they asked him to identify the body and he nearly puked at the thought. Then they unzipped the top of the body bag to show her face, and he caught a glimpse of the damage to her torso and nearly fainted.”

  “Okay, then. Do you need help? Josh is at a traffic.”

  He meant a fatal or possibly fatal accident, at which the crime scene technicians would assist the traffic investigators by taking the photographs. “Bet he’s not happy about that, with his allergies.”

  “Carol gave him a Benadryl nondrowsy. Says it will keep him going through anything. Did Amy get there?”