by A W Hartoin
Raptor stood over the body, blood dripping down her hand. “Takp his pulsp.”
“He’s dead,” I said.
“You don’t knowp,” she screeched. “He could be thweeping.”
I grabbed Wallace and clamped her jaws shut. “Look at his eyes.”
Hal was dead. His eyes were open and cloudy. He probably died at least three hours before, maybe more.
“Check him!”
“Can’t you smell that?” The smell of feces and death was faint, maybe because of the cold, but it was definitely there.
“Check him!”
Balancing an insane pug on my hip, I knelt by Hal and pressed my fingers to his cold, rubbery neck. The moment I touched him, a jolt went through me. Something was off, but I couldn’t see what. The dim light from the one naked bulb above the bed didn’t reveal much. “Sorry, Raptor. He’s gone.”
I stood up, holding a wriggling pug to my chest and trying to ignore the chills racing up and down my spine.
“I need a twowl,” said Raptor.
I couldn’t stop looking at Hal’s face. There was vomit, but no blood.
“Mercy.”
This is not a murder. He just died. People die. Happens all the time.
“Let me think,” I said.
She turned around. “Screw thisp. I’m getting a twowl.”
“No! You’ll disturb the scene.”
“Scene?”
“It could be a crime scene.”
Raptor snorted and blood sprayed between her fingers.
“For the love of God, Raptor, knock it off.”
“I need a twowl.”
“Fine!” I pinned Wallace between my feet and don’t think that was close to easy. I took off my thin hoodie and tossed it to her. “Use that.”
“Are you kidding?”
Raptor looked at me, her big eyes growing larger. She wiped her nose on my hoodie and blew a copious amount of snot into it. I have to think she enjoyed it. It was the closest she’d ever come to snotting on me. “He probably had a coronary.”
“Probably.”
“You saw him, Mercy. He was fine last night. He didn’t even drink that much, not for him anyway.”
Great. Man dies after moderate night of drinking.
“Did he have any medical conditions?”
She blew her nose again and went for the side table, where there was a stash of pills.
“Don’t touch that,” I said.
“Why not? Because you think it’s a murder?”
“It might be. You don’t think this feels weird?”
She hawked something juicy up into my hood. “I think you’re a glory hound. You’ve always been a drama queen. Only you would leap off a bridge in Paris. Of course, there were thousands of tourists videoing it. Figures.”
“I was trying to save Angela Riley,” I said. “It hurt, by the way. A lot.”
Raptor blew a raspberry.
“What would you have done? That guy was going to kill her.”
“I wouldn’t imagine a crime every chance I get.” She gestured to the room.
“Come on, Raptor,” I said. “What about Wallace? She’s going nuts.”
“She is nuts. Look at her.”
Wallace’s eyes were rolling around like a roulette wheels and her tongue was crazy huge.
“I think there’s something wrong with that dog,” she said.
“There is, but not this. She knows something’s off.”
“Wallace isn’t a murder-sniffing pug.”
“Murder?” A maid stuck her head through the door. She saw Hal, dropped her towels, and screamed like a banshee before bolting.
“God dammit, Mercy!” Raptor punched me in the shoulder and ran out, yelling, “Wait! It’s okay!”
I followed and watched her chase down the maid, who was waving a dust cloth over her head, screaming, “Blood! Blood!”
Somehow, I didn’t think having a bloody person chasing her was going to calm the woman down, but Raptor wasn’t one to give up. She dashed down the row of bungalows and cornered out of sight.
The bungalow across from Hal’s opened and a nude biker sauntered over. Lucky for me, he was so obese I couldn’t see anything important. What I could see was bad enough.
“Hey, babe. What’s the word?” He yanked the knotted red bandana off his head and shook out a glorious head of hair. Shoulder-length brown locks cascaded onto his hairy shoulders in perfect waves. I was transfixed until he scratched the stretched-out flaming bike tattoo on his balloon belly.
“Nothing. We’re good.”
A good hearty scratch and I looked to see if it took off some of the ink. Nope. Just flaky skin. Shudder.
“He’s not lookin’ so hot.” The biker pointed past me at Hal.
“Oh, yeah.” I backed up and grabbed the door knob. I didn’t need any naked guys barging in and contaminating the scene. Bloody Raptor was bad enough. “Can you call the police?”
“Hell, no!” He marched back to his bungalow and slammed the door. That was easy. I’d have to remember “police” was the magic word in Sturgis.
I waited a second to see if Raptor would come back, but I only heard the maid’s wailing in the distance so I tied Wallace to a spigot I found next to Hal’s bungalow and went back inside to the phone to call 911. Like the whole vacation, even that didn’t go as planned. I got a weird “all circuits are busy” message and had to keep trying. After four tries, I got through and walked a fed-up dispatcher through what I was seeing. She insisted that I try to resuscitate Hal. Not gonna happen. He was dead.
“You have to try,” she said.
“I’m a nurse. Take my word for it, he’s pretty dead.”
“You don’t know.”
“Why do people think that I don’t know when somebody’s dead? I really do,” I said.
“It’s state law.”
“There’s no law saying I have to do CPR on a dead guy.” I sounded pretty calm. I wasn’t. It hit me hard that this was Grandad’s friend. He’d known Hal for forever and three days. They’d gone through a war together and from the talk last night, it was three times terrible. I’d have to tell him. I’d have to see his face.
“Just do it!” yelled the dispatcher.
“I’ll do it, if you come over here and take a good sniff. I’m getting kind of barfy right now.”
She gave out an exasperated sigh. “Fine. Poke him.”
Okay. Now we’re getting scientific.
“I poked him.”
I didn’t poke him. You never know what could happen.
“No, you didn’t.”
I rubbed my eyes and said, “You sound like my mother.”
“I’m a mother of four. That’s how I know you didn’t poke him,” she said.
“Let’s just say I poked and call it good.”
“You know this is being recorded, right?” she asked.
“I don’t care. Is somebody coming?” I asked.
She yawned. “On their way.”
“What’s the ETA?”
“Twenty minutes on the inside.”
I’d been staring at Hal so long I was starting to imagine him moving. That was not helping the creepy feeling. “Are you kidding?”
“It’s rally week. You’re lucky it’s morning.”
“Lucky isn’t the word I’d use,” I said.
“Ain’t that a fact,” she said. “I gotta take another call. We’re flooded.”
I think she might’ve put me on hold. In any case, I hung up and dug my nifty new taser out of the bottom of my purse. As Mom promised, it did have a great flashlight and the bright beam lit up the room. I held it between my teeth while I used my phone to photograph Hal and the rest of the room. I kept returning to Hal. Something about him. He’d fallen, having a coronary or whatever, thrown up, and died. I’d seen coronaries live and in person, but they were usually already on a gurney with one notable exception. An older guy came into the ER with his son holding him up, complaining of chest pain. He
was ashen and clutching his chest. Nothing gets a suburban ER going faster than chest pain and we were fast but not fast enough. The guy went down. On his knees. His son went down with him and we had to disentangle them before we could flip the dad over. I looked at Hal. He fell on his back and landed spread eagle? Did that happen in a natural death…or any kind of death?
Dad brought plenty of crime scene photos home from work and obsessed over them in his office. I was the kind of kid that didn’t learn my lesson. I’d go sneak a peek and have nightmares for weeks. Those people—men, women, and, I’m sorry to say, children—were in all kinds of contorted positions. People moved. They struggled. This didn’t feel remotely right. It looked…staged.
I squatted by Hal’s head and took a look. His face was inclined to the right toward the door. Traces of vomit were on his lips, cheek, and the carpet. It smelled like booze.
“Something’s wrong with this,” I said.
“Something’s wrong with you.”
I jumped and nearly cracked Raptor upside the head. “Don’t do that.”
“Don’t hang out with bodies in darkened hotel rooms.”
“That’s fair.” I grabbed her arm. “Come here and look at this.”
“No, thanks. I’m good.”
“Seriously, I almost have it. Look how he’s lying there. On his back with the vomit—”
“So? Did you call the police?” she asked.
“Yes, yes. I called the police. They’re coming. The vomit.”
“What about it? It’s gross, disgusting, chunky vomit. I’ve seen gallons of the stuff.”
I hugged Raptor so hard she squealed. “What the hell?”
“It’s gone. There’s no chunky. No nothing.” I gave myself a pat on the back. For real, I patted myself.
Raptor looked at me like I’d just come in for an emergency psych consult. “The vomit is right there, Mercy. Let’s wait outside. The cops will be here any minute.”
“I’m not crazy. It’s gone.”
“It’s right there.”
“Look again. What did Hal eat last night? Steak, a giant baked potato, and fries.”
“So he likes carbo loading.”
“Yeah, he did, but where is it?”
Raptor bit her lip and then said, “Maybe he digested it.”
“He’s in full rigor and it’s sixty degrees in here. The eyes are cloudy. Look at that liver mortis. The blood had plenty of time to pool. And he’s fully dressed. He didn’t die at eight o’clock this morning. He died pretty quick after he got back last night.”
“Okay. Fine. Have it your way,” said Raptor, pulling back from me.
I yanked her down. “Look at that carpet. Tell me it doesn’t look cleaned up.”
She squinted at the bright circle of light on the dingy grey carpet. There was no mistaking the sweeping strokes on the carpet. Not all of the vomit was gone. There were some thicker spots that had been left behind on the edges.
I dragged her into the bathroom. The hand towel was missing. I sniffed the sink. Yep. Vomit.
“They cleaned it up with the towel and rinsed it down here,” I said.
“Maybe he did it,” said Raptor with a sneer.
I dragged her back out and pointed the light at Hal’s head. “Maybe he didn’t.”
“I think he did.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“So Hal collapsed, vomited, got up, and cleaned it. Then he went back and collapsed in the exact same spot?”
“Maybe he didn’t collapse. He just vomited,” she said. “How about that?”
I dragged her down and pointed the light at the side of Hal’s face. “It looks to me like that trail leads to the pool.”
Raptor jolted upright. “Is that what you want? Do you want him to have been murdered?”
“No.”
“What then?”
“Well, if Hal was murdered, somebody will have to investigate,” I said.
She gave me the stink eye. “Not you.”
That has not been my experience.
“Okay.”
Her hands went back to her hips. “I don’t think he was murdered. Who would murder Hal?”
“I can think of at least ten guys who tried it last night,” I said.
Raptor rolled her eyes. “That was just war stuff.”
“The blood said otherwise.”
“If one of those guys was going to kill Hal, they’d have beat him to death with a pipe, not whatever this is.”
“No signs of strangulation,” I said. “So poison?”
“Are you enjoying this?”
“Not even a little bit, but we’ve got to wait for the cops, so we may as well work on it.”
Raptor hesitated. “Maybe he smells.”
“Oh, he smells alright.”
“Shut up. I mean, like poison. Bitter almonds, whatever.”
“He might. Sniff him,” I said.
“Why me?”
“It was your idea.”
“You’re the expert.”
“I’m more like an unintentional detective.”
She shivered in the cold. “Whatever. Just sniff him.”
I sniffed him and it had to be in the top twenty of gross stuff I’ve done and I once had to pull a lightbulb out of a guy’s rear. Don’t ask. “No almonds, bitter or otherwise.”
Raptor went over to Hal’s collection of meds on the side table. “Bring the light over. I can’t read the labels.”
She took the taser light and I wrote down Hal’s meds. He was on two antidepressants, Plaquenil for rheumatoid arthritis, Celebrex, and Isradipine for high blood pressure. If it hadn’t been for the vomit, I would’ve thought suicide. Raptor thought the same thing. “Maybe he did it himself.”
It was my turn to give her the stink eye before I leaned in for a close look at the bottles. The not-right feeling got worse. “The Isradipine bottle’s empty.”
“Empty, empty?”
“I don’t see any pills, do you?” I asked.
Raptor and I were cheek to cheek staring at that bottle.
“He filled it five days ago,” she said.
“Ninety-day supply.”
“And they’re all gone.”
“Yeah.”
We straightened up and turned to look at Hal on the floor.
“He could’ve taken them and somebody cleaned up,” said Raptor.
I shook my head. “He didn’t take them. Not on his own, anyway.”
“Could be.”
“A guy that’s killing himself doesn’t take eighty-five pills, put the lid back on the bottle, and put it back like nothing happened. Plus, the light was off when we came in. How’d he take the pills in the dark?”
“You make me tired.”
“I get that a lot.”
The sad greyness of Hal’s room began to feel more and more oppressive. I checked the thermometer. Sixty degrees. My goose bumps had goose bumps. “Let’s go outside.”
“I feel kinda guilty about leaving him here all alone,” said Raptor, looking down at Hal, shivering with tears in her eyes.
“You want to stay in here?” I asked.
“Yes, I’ll stay with him.”
I was out. The smell, although mild, was getting to me in that small room and I started to think about Millicent and Myrtle’s ghost stories. Not a good time for that. I did feel a bit like a wuss, but Raptor was right behind me.
“I heard a siren,” she said when I raised an eyebrow.
“Okay.” I went and untied Wallace, who’d thrown up again and was sleeping in it. Sometimes, I just can’t catch a break.
“That dog is really weird,” said Raptor.
“Don’t I know it.”
Just then, Wallace woke up and exploded in a flurry of barks as two cops marched down the row of bungalows. The younger one, an officer Bennett, wore a starched uniform with pressed edges that could’ve given wicked paper-type cuts. The older officer, Trevino, had a much more casual air. He looked liv
ed-in with a quick smile but sharp, watchful eyes.
“Mercy Watts?” asked Trevino.
“Yes,” I said.
“You got a body?” asked Trevino.
“In there.” I pointed at the door. “Looks like someone gave him eighty-five doses of a high blood pressure medication and messed with the scene.”
Trevino saluted me. “Thanks a bunch, Perry Mason. We’ll take it from here.”
The cops went in Hal’s bungalow and Raptor asked, “Perry Mason?”
I shrugged. “Cop humor. I’ve never understood it.”
After a mere seven minutes, they came out, yawning. “Call it in, Bennett. Sooner we get this over with, the sooner we can catch some Zs.”
Bennett called in a possible suicide or heart attack.
“He didn’t have a heart attack,” I said.
“He was on multiple medications, one of which was for high blood pressure, and the room reeks of alcohol,” said Trevino. “I know it’s upsetting, but he was no spring chicken. This isn’t unusual for the Rally. Old guys come in, tie one on, and drop dead.”
“He didn’t drop dead.”
“He’s dead.”
“I mean, someone killed him. Aren’t you going to call the crime scene techs?”
Trevino and Bennett laughed in a way that made me think they thought crime scene techs were an affectation and not terribly useful. “Yeah, we’ll get right on that. We’re just knee deep in CSI.”
“You have to at least document the scene. Bag his hands and the meds. Aren’t you going to ask about the blood?”
“Blood? What blood?”
I pointed at the dirt. Blood spatter polka dotted the ground where Raptor was standing. She’d tossed my hoodie into the dirt, but she still had traces of blood on her face. Her nose was the size of a lemon.
“Ah, crap,” said Trevino.
“That’s interesting,” said Bennett, looking at the ground. Neither noticed that Raptor was injured. She crossed her arms and gave them a withering look that was usually directed at me.
“Not really. Raquel got hit in the face with these.” I pointed at the keys that were still in the lock.
The cops looked at Raptor and then each other. “Xena.”
“Long, dark hair, half-dressed, and screaming at some guy?”