by Rick Reed
“It’s me. I want my money, or you can tell the boss he don’t get the truck. Pay me and I’ll tell you where to find it.”
Coyote said nothing.
He took a few steps forward. He had to be firm. He might be out of this business for good, and how would he support his mother? He could drive the VW as far as it would take him, sell it, and take a bus to Texas. He still had friends there. He still needed the money.
He said in a loud voice that echoed in the cold confines, “You’d better make your mind up quick, Mr. Coyote. That cargo won’t last long in this cold. I just want what’s owed me.” He took another step and realized the glow was from a cigarette sitting on top of a crate. He backpedaled two steps when he felt a sudden pressure in his side and an arm tightened around his throat. His knees gave, and the arm pulled him backward and downward. He felt a face next to his and smelled coffee and cigarettes. The side of his chest felt as if he had just been punched in the ribs. It was on fire.
Pain found its way deep into his chest until his legs turned to jelly. The arm around his throat tightened even more and lowered him to his knees, holding him upright.
“Tell me where the truck is,” Coyote said.
The point of a weapon burrowed into the shoulder muscle beside his neck. “You’re making a mistake.” He reached up to grab the blade, but it dug deeper.
“I wouldn’t do that,” Coyote said in his ear. “One push and this goes through your heart. Tell me where the truck is.” Coyote pushed the blade a little deeper.
He let out a weak scream, and Coyote pushed the blade deeper still until the man’s muscles went slack and he slumped against Coyote’s legs like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
“You’d better tell me quick,” Coyote said.
“They’ll freeze,” he said with difficulty.
Coyote had no intention of going to the truck unless he needed to help Mother Nature along.
“That’s the point, asshole.” Coyote drove the long blade down through the man’s lungs and chest until he was sure he was dead. He pulled the blade free and let the body slide to the ground.
He knelt beside the body, checked the coat pockets and found the keys to the truck and pocketed them. He took the wallet and found a flip phone. He threw the phone and wallet up on the roof. The police would eventually find them, but he’d be long gone.
“You’ve been paid.” Coyote walked away.
Chapter 2
Detective Jack Murphy, third generation Irish American cop, ducked under the yellow crime scene tape blocking the mouth of the alleyway while his partner, Liddell Blanchard, aka Bigfoot, went to interview the first arriving officer.
Jack stood six feet tall. He was sturdily built, with short dark hair that was spiked in the front, and gray eyes that could turn stormy if he was provoked. He liked redheads, Scotch, Guinness, the beach, and long walks, minus the long walks.
His partner, Liddell Blanchard, stood over six and a half feet tall and weighed in at a full-grown yeti. Liddell was a transplant from the Iberville Parish Sheriff Department in Louisiana. He was part French, part Creole, and all muscle.
Once a month Jack and Liddell worked weekends in the detectives’ office. This weekend was their turn. If this run had come in thirty minutes earlier, it would have been a third-shift detective standing here, but such was the luck of the Irish.
The air was frigid. Jack covered his mouth and nose with a gloved hand. On the street behind him an ambulance was pulling away. Its emergency equipment was silenced. The coroner would be needed, not a medic.
In front of him, crime scene techs in winter gear covered by white Tyvek coveralls and hoods worked around a body lying in the alley like a crumpled piece of paper. Even from the sidewalk Jack could see dark splotches of red on the light-colored quilted jacket.
Sergeant Tony Walker approached him. Walker was fifty years old, but except for his salt-and-pepper hair, he could pass for twenty years younger. He didn’t have an ounce of fat on his frame. He had been Jack’s mentor and partner when he first made detective a decade ago, but then Walker was promoted to sergeant and transferred to Crime Scene. Since Tony had taken over, the Crime Scene Unit ran much more smoothly. The brass was afraid to cross him, and the other detectives respected him. It was the best of both worlds, as far as Jack was concerned.
Walker was bundled against the cold under an oversize Tyvek suit with the hood pulled up on a white sock cap. It made him look like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man in the Ghostbusters movie, or a fat, white commando.
“It’s a mess back there, Jack,” Walker said.
“What have we got?” Jack asked.
Walker tilted his head toward the body. “White male, possibly in his late forties. He was stabbed once in the side of the chest. Multiple times in the trapezius strap of muscles up here on top of the shoulder.” Walker patted the top of his own shoulder. “And at least once in the throat, through and through. The owner of the Coffee Shop found the body this morning. I heard she thought he was a drunk. She told Magary she didn’t touch the body. He was first officer on the scene. My guess is the victim has been down overnight, ten to twelve hours. It takes that long for blood to freeze, and some of the blood pooled under him is frozen. No identification on the body. Nothing in his pockets so far.”
Jack pointed to the end of the alleyway. “What’s back there?”
“Trash, boxes, the back door to the Coffee Shop, and the back of the barber’s place next door. A small alleyway connects with Lincoln Avenue. We have everything roped off, and there are officers posted on Lincoln Avenue to keep people out of the back alley.”
Liddell approached them and said, “I just talked to Officer Magary. Magary said he’d found homeless people, drunks, and some college students sleeping in the alleyway. His first thought was that the guy was a drunk. He got closer and saw all the blood, checked for a pulse, backed out, and called for detectives and Crime Scene. Freyda Rademacher, the owner of the Coffee Shop here, called in the original run as a mugging. He said she swears she didn’t go near the body.”
“That would have been...?” Jack asked.
“Seven o’clock sounds right, pod’na,” Liddell answered.
Walker said, “The killer made sure this guy was dead.” He pointed to one of the punctures in the fabric of the coat.
“Some kind of blade,” Liddell said.
Walker said, “See the shape of the tear in the jacket. It’s star shaped. I’ll run it through our database after we get the autopsy. Maybe Dr. John has seen this before.” He was referring to Dr. John Carmodi, the forensic pathologist for the Vanderburgh County Coroner.
Corporal Morris interrupted them. “One of his shoes came off, and I found this in the shoe.” He held up a clear evidence bag that contained a brass key. “Can we turn him over, Sarge? I want to see what’s under him. We haven’t found any identification, but we haven’t been able to search him.”
“Let’s do it,” Walker said. “Coroner’s on the way?”
Corporal Morris said, “It’s a balmy five degrees. It was three below overnight. This guy’s a popsicle.”
Morris and another tech turned the body on its back. The once-tan quilted jacket was splotched with deep red blooms around the left shoulder and left side of the chest, but there were no obvious injuries to the front. He was dressed in tan desert-style military boots, no gloves, no hat, and a Black Watch plaid scarf tucked down inside the jacket. No jewelry. His hair was blond, going on gray, going on bald, and crusted with frozen blood. His cheeks were sunken. His lips were deeply lined. The middle and index finger of his left hand were yellowed. Ice crystals had formed on the ridges of the jacket. Tony and Morris were right. He’d been down a while.
Jack had worked some stabbing deaths less than a month ago where the cold was a factor. Those bodies displayed frozen blood, too. He remembered from the autopsy report tha
t blood contained chemicals that slowed the freezing process. He was sure this guy was killed here and left here.
Jack asked Morris, “Were his shoes scuffed like he’d been dragged?”
“No. One just came off. I figure he was struggling with whoever killed him. It happened right here where he is,” Morris answered.
The victim’s face was flattened like a coin on the side that had lain against the ground. Morris patted down the victim’s clothing and said, “We’ll have to wait until the coroner gets him to the morgue to search him better, but he doesn’t have anything on him except the key.”
“We can’t rule out robbery as a motive,” Jack said. He knelt beside the body and examined the victim’s hands. “I don’t see any marks on his hands.”
Walker agreed. “No scrapes or defensive wounds. He didn’t fight his attacker.”
Jack asked, “Any idea what kind of lock the key goes to?”
Morris took the evidence bag out again. Imprinted in the metal were capital letters. ABUS. He pointed to the letters.
“Tony, can you take a few pictures of this guy’s face with my phone?” Jack asked.
Walker took the photos and handed the phone back to Jack. “One day you need to learn how to use this. Technology isn’t your enemy, Jack.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” Jack replied, and he and Liddell walked back to the sidewalk.
Liddell said, “The university bookstore is just across the street. I peeked in the window and didn’t see any surveillance cameras. The sign says it’s closed Saturday and Sunday. The bank next to it faces Lincoln Avenue. I know there are some on the bank that face Lincoln Avenue and the university. There’s one in the back looking over the parking area.”
“Let’s go talk to the woman that found the body,” Jack said.
“Her name is Freyda Rademacher.”
Jack opened the front door of the Coffee Shop. A bell over the door tinkled, and warm air blasted them. The place was empty except for a woman wearing gray sweats behind the counter. The sweats were old, like the woman. The cuffs were frayed and the butt was translucent from wear. It was impossible to guess her age, but her thin gray hair said it was safe to assume she was past her prime.
She paid no attention to the men and poured water into an old-fashioned stainless-steel coffee percolator. Two glass coffee carafes sat nearby, one with an orange handle for regular, the other green for decaf. A five-pound bag of coffee beans was on the floor beside a small table. Two bags of what might be roasted peanuts sat on top of the table with a coffee bean grinder.
A restaurant-size gas oven was by the sink with all four burners turned on high. She put the coffee pot on one of the burners and lowered the flame. Jack’s mother had one of these coffeemakers when he was a kid. She would grind her own coffee beans and add a dash of salt instead of peanuts. You knew the coffee was finished brewing when the liquid that perked up in the glass bubble on top of the coffeemaker turned the right shade of brown.
Jack cleared his throat, but the woman continued to ignore them and opened the oven door a crack. The shop was filled with a mouthwatering smell of freshly baked apple pies.
She used a folded kitchen towel to take two pies from the oven and set them on the counter. Satisfied, she turned to them and wiped her hands on her flour-streaked apron. “More cops.”
Liddell said, “Mrs. Rademacher, I’m Detective Blanchard and this is Detective Murphy. We’d like to ask you a few questions if you have time.”
“I don’t,” she said. “I’m busy trying to run a business.”
The Coffee Shop was empty. “Mrs. Rademacher...” Jack began, and the woman’s shoulders dropped.
“Oh, go ahead. I guess you people won’t leave me alone today. I didn’t see anything. I don’t know who killed that guy out there. It wasn’t me. No, I didn’t see anyone. Yes, I found the body, but I don’t have a police record. Now can I get back to work?”
“Why would you think you’re a suspect, Mrs. Rademacher?” Jack asked.
She grinned and showed some of her top teeth were missing. “I watch Cold Case Files and CSI New York,” she said. “I know the last to see ’em alive or the one that finds ’em is the prime suspect.”
Jack had experienced CSI’s effect on the public. Crime show addicts were a different breed of people.
Jack said, “We don’t think you killed anyone. You’re not our prime suspect.”
“Unh huh,” she said as if she didn’t believe him.
“But you are our best witness. You might be able to break this case wide open.”
“You think so,” she said, feigning surprise.
“What time do you open your business, Mrs. Rademacher?” Jack asked. He hoped to enlist her, but civic duty to help the police was a thing of the past.
“Depends,” she said and offered nothing else.
Time to change tactics.
“What time did you open this morning?” Jack asked again in a less friendly manner.
“Why?” she asked. “I told you I didn’t kill him. Are you going to arrest me?”
Jack said, “It’s warm in here. This building is maybe eighty years old.”
“Ninety-two,” she corrected him.
“I can see you don’t have central air or heat because there are no air vents or steam heaters. Even in a building with good insulation it would take that stove of yours several hours to heat this place. I’m guessing you’ve been open since five this morning.”
“Five thirty,” she said. “Stove’s a good ’un. They don’t make ’em like this no more. Don’t need central heat. I open the doors, front and back, for air.”
“You got in at five thirty. You called the police at seven,” Jack pointed out.
“You want to know why it took me two hours to call the police. It’s none of my business who’s drunk. I keep myself to myself.”
“But you did call the police,” Jack said.
“I took trash out back, and he hadn’t moved since I opened. I told your dispatcher I didn’t want to be involved. She said I didn’t have to give my name.”
“That’s right,” Jack said. “We got your address from the phone call.” Jack didn’t have to pretend to be impatient. “Ma’am, we can do this here, or we can do it downtown. Start talking or I’ll take you to lockup for failure to assist an officer in the performance of his duty.”
She snorted. “That’s a good ’un. Cops have to read you Miranda rights first.” She put an age-spotted hand to her mouth to suppress a grin.
“Are you gonna talk or do I have to get rough?” Jack asked and winked at her.
She crossed her arms as if in thought. “Take a seat.” She pointed at one of the booths nearer the stove and came out from behind the counter. She was wearing a ratty pair of cloth house shoes, and her bare ankles showed. Her sweatshirt and the thighs of the pants were flour spattered. Considering there was a dead man just outside her shop, Jack didn’t understand how she could be enjoying this encounter.
“You boys might as well have coffee and a piece of pie. I don’t have any donuts,” she said with a mischievous wink.
Jack remained standing, and Liddell considered the rickety wooden booth.
“Mrs. Rademacher,” Jack said, and she interrupted.
“Name’s Freyda. I never did like being called by my married name. Mr. Rademacher, curse his hide, is dead. Dying was the only good thing he ever did. He used all our savings and bought this damn place, and I’ve been stuck here since.”
Jack found a sturdy chair and pulled it over to the table. He motioned for the woman to sit. She ignored him and went behind the counter again. She came back with two mugs of black coffee and handed them to the two detectives.
“Want some apple pie?” Without waiting for an answer, she went back around the counter, got plates and silverware, and brought one of the pi
ping-hot pies to the table.
“Thank you, ma’am,” Liddell said. He slid into the booth and scooped half of the pie onto a plate.
Freyda Rademacher sat on the chair. “Ask your questions.”
“Okay. Freyda,” Jack said. He remained standing. “If you were the detective, what questions would you ask such a fine, observant woman as yourself?”
Freyda snickered. “Fine woman. That’s a hoot. You must be blind as a bat, but let me think. I guess I’d ask about that car down the street. And I guess I’d ask who the customer was that left here at closing last night.”
“That’s good thinking,” Jack said. “Tell me about the car and the customer from last night.”
“You haven’t tried your coffee,” she said.
“You aren’t drinking the coffee,” Jack said.
“Are you kidding?” she said. “This is way too strong for a ‘fine woman’ such as myself.”
Jack took a sip. She was right. He could strip paint with this stuff.
She said, “If I was a detective I could ask the questions, but she wouldn’t say anything to the cops. She, or he, would be afraid of getting whacked. Killers always return to the scene of the crime. That’s what that hunk on CSI New York says. Gary Sinise knows killers.” She pronounced his name “Sin-ci.”
Chapter 3
Liddell asked for seconds on the pie and a second cup of coffee.
Freyda said, “You like my pie.”
Liddell grunted with a mouthful and scooped the other half of the pie onto his plate.
“That guy last night didn’t like my pie, and he barely touched his coffee. Just sat there writing in that little notebook. What do you think he was writing?”
Jack asked, “You said you saw a car down the street with the engine running. Did he come in that car?”
“I was in here when he came in. Can’t see down the street from here, can I?”
“Tell us about your customer. Anything you can remember,” Jack said.
She got up, brought the steel coffee pot to the table, and warmed up Liddell’s coffee. “It grows on you.” She sat back down. “He was a white man. Younger than me. Older than you two. He was shorter than me, and I’m five feet ten. He was wearing a dark-colored spy coat. You know? A trench-looking thing like they wear in spy movies. He had on a cowboy hat and cowboy boots. He never took his gloves off,” she said and looked at Jack eye to eye. “You need to know what color his eyes were? I don’t know.”