Tales of River City

by Frank Zafiro

  The hole in the ground looked about two feet square. When Finch’s vision returned, he shined his light onto the hole. Elias’s beam crossed his own and they stared for a long minute, saying nothing.

  A leg clad in dirty jeans lay across the top of a torso in a bloody white T-shirt.

  “Both of ’em are face down,” Elias said, pointing. “That’s the calf of the guy on top. The white T-shirt on the bottom looks like a back to me.”

  Finch nodded.

  “And they’re lying in opposite directions,” Elias added. “See that tapering there? That’s headed toward the shoulders.”

  Finch followed his beam of light. “Looks that way.”

  “Not a lot of blood on that shirt.”

  “Could be an entry wound.”

  “Could be the dirt soaked it up,” Elias answered. “But we’ll never know thanks to Mr. Contractor. Killed here, do you think?”

  “Dunno.” Finch moved his beam of light around the dirt basement and saw nothing but footprints and a shovel on the ground three feet from the hole.

  “Strange,” Elias said.

  Finch turned toward the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Cameron Whitaker came first, a large black bag slung over his shoulder and a camera dangling from his neck. A young black girl stopped a step behind him, carrying another large bag of equipment.

  “About time,” Elias joked. “We were about to call the county forensics team instead.”

  Cameron snorted dismissively. He turned to the girl. “Gwen, what contributes the most to crime scene evidence being destroyed or compromised?”

  “Cops.”

  Cameron smiled. “Especially detectives.”

  Finch and Elias got the hint and backtracked out of the area around the shallow grave.

  “Lot of footprints here,” Finch told Cameron.

  “I’ll photograph and collect them, don’t worry.”

  Elias stepped in the virgin dirt near the base of the stairs. “There’s one for negative comparison,” he said with a smirk and brushed by the two technicians.

  Cameron grinned and shook his head.

  “We’ll interview the complainant while you get all your photos and preliminary measurements,” Finch said. He held his hand out to Gwen. “Joe Finch, by the way.”

  She took his hand. “Gwen Jackson.”

  “Gwen just got hired,” Cameron explained. “Diane retires in March, so we’ve got until then to get Gwen trained up.”

  “Welcome aboard,” Finch said, and walked outside.

  Rick Anderson crushed out his cigarette and immediately lit another one. He looked back and forth between the two detectives.

  “I ain’t never seen nothing like that,” he said, his voice wavering.

  Finch nodded his understanding. “It’s quite a shock.”

  Anderson let out a long, shuddering stream of smoke and shook his head. “Buried like some dog that got put of its misery. Jesus.”

  “Mr. Anderson, you know we have to ask you some questions, right?” Elias asked.

  “Huh? Oh, yeah. Of course. ’Cause I found the body, right?” He took a deep drag on his cigarette.

  “Exactly,” Elias answered and nodded toward Finch, who opened his steno notepad.

  “You’re the contractor in charge of this development?” Finch asked.

  “Just the seven in this cul-de-sac.”

  “Why were you here this morning?”

  Anderson exhaled. “I gave the boys the day off today to watch the football game.”

  Finch and Elias exchanged glances.

  Anderson looked at them in disbelief. “The WSU game? They’re in the Holiday Bowl.”

  “I’m not much into football,” Elias said. “It’s sort of a dumb sport, if you ask me.”

  Anderson’s jaw fell open. “Dumb?”

  “If you gave everyone the day off,” Finch asked, interrupting, “why were you here?”

  Anderson looked away from Elias to Finch. After a moment, he shrugged. “I like to check the worksite, even on off days. The security company sends a guy around from time to time, but stuff still turns up missing. I’ve got a lot tied up in these jobs here, so here I am.”

  “Had much of a problem with theft lately?”

  He shook his head. “No more than usual. Which is bad enough.”

  “Fire any employees lately?”

  “Not in the past few weeks, no.”

  Finch made a few notes. “Anything missing this morning?”

  “No, but when I got to this house, I noticed the shovel missing. I poked around until I found it in the basement. That’s when I saw all the footprints and the fresh digging.”

  Elias cocked his head sideways and scratched his chin. “That’s what I don’t get, Mr. Anderson.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, you saw the mound of dirt there, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And it had to look a bit like a grave, right?”

  “I suppose.”

  “But you started digging anyway? I mean, what did you think you were going to find? Buried treasure?”

  Anderson flushed, the red in his cheeks just barely visible in the pre-dawn light. “I don’t know. I was mad that someone thought they could bury their junk in one of my houses, I guess. I didn’t expect to find…what I found.”

  “What exactly did you find, Mr. Anderson?”

  Anderson swallowed. “A leg, I think.”

  Finch and Elias exchanged another glance.

  “What?” Anderson asked. “It’s not a body?”

  Finch read Elias’s thought, the same as his own. He doesn’t know there are two bodies.

  The rest of the interview yielded nothing. Finch jotted down Anderson’s information and they released the contractor to go home. He gave them a shaky handshake and left in his truck.

  “Anything there, you think?”

  Finch shook his head.

  “He’s a bundle of nerves,” Elias said.

  Finch removed a piece of gum from his jacket and offered Elias one, who declined. “He’s nervous because he found a dead body in the basement of one of his houses,” Finch said, popping the gum into his mouth. “And it sounds like his livelihood is tied up in this cul-de-sac, too. He’s probably worried if the place will sell now.”

  Elias shrugged. “It wouldn’t be the first time someone called in their own homicide.”

  “No,” Finch replied, “but it doesn’t make sense here. If Anderson did it, why would he call it in? It sounds like he’s got today and tomorrow to smooth out that basement to hide the grave. As soon as it warms up, they’d pour concrete down there and he’d be home free.”

  “You’re probably right,” Elias conceded. “But I’ll be curious to see if he knows either one of those John Does down there.”

  “So will I, but this contractor didn’t even realize he found two bodies. I don’t think he’s our guy.”

  Elias shrugged. “Probably not. But he likes football, and that makes him suspicious in my book.”

  Back in the basement, Cameron had set up bright portable lighting. The area of the crime scene was lit up like a stage.

  “You get pictures yet?” Elias asked him.

  “Yep.” Cameron patted the camera that sat on top of one of his black bags. “We’ve got the scene measured, overall pics, and all of the footprints.” He lifted his chin toward Elias. “Except yours, of course.”

  Elias grunted. “You going to start digging, then?”

  Cameron shook his head. “We don’t dig. Do we, Gwen?”

  Gwen mirrored his head shake. “No.”

  “What do we do?”

  “We excavate,” Gwen answered.

  “Jesus,” Elias muttered. He twirled his index finger impatiently. “Then let’s go, Indiana Jones.”

  Elias and Finch stood by and watched the painstaking process. The forensic specialists removed the dirt a little at a time, sifting and examining every shovelful. The closer the team got to the bodies,
the smaller the shovels became.

  “This is like watching paint dry,” Elias told Finch. “Let’s get some fresh air.”

  The two detectives returned to the front porch of the house. The sun had risen, and natural light flooded the front yard. The breath from both men fogged in the air between them.

  “A hit, you think?” Elias asked.

  Finch shrugged. “If it is, they did it here. If this was just a dump job, you’d think that they’d lay them in there a little more neatly.”

  “Or chop them up.”

  “At least some lye,” Finch conceded.

  Elias grunted.

  The two men mulled what few facts they knew. After a while, an unmarked police cruiser rolled to a stop at the curb. Two more detectives, Ray Browning and John Tower, exited and approached the porch.

  “What do these guys want?” Elias asked.

  Finch shrugged.

  Ray Browning, a compact black man with a full goatee and splotches of gray hair at the temples, stopped at the bottom of the steps. “Crawford called and said to come out and help you guys. What do you need?”

  “Not much, really,” Elias told him. “We’re waiting while Cameron and the new girl are down in the basement excavating.”

  “Excavating?” Browning asked.

  “Yeah,” Elias said. “They don’t dig. Ya dig?”

  Browning groaned at the joke.

  “You two going to work the scene, then?” Tower asked, sipping coffee from a Styrofoam cup. His hair was thinning and his face bore his customary impatient scowl.

  Finch nodded, his lips pressed together. You’d think he could’ve brought us all a cup.

  “Any leads? Because if there’s nothing—”

  Finch said, “Maybe you could help us with something.”

  Tower grimaced. “What?”

  “The contractor, Rick Anderson. We could use some background on him.”

  “Today?”

  Finch shrugged. “He found the bodies.”

  “We’ll take care of it,” Browning said. “If anything comes up, we’ll page you.”

  “Thanks.”

  As the two detectives walked away, Elias gave Finch a considered look. “The contractor is clean.”

  “Probably.”

  “So you’re just being an ass—”

  “They get the four-hour minimum of OT just for driving up here,” Finch replied. “I figure, let them earn it.”

  Elias squatted next to the shallow grave. Using his pen, he pointed at the back of the body in the white T-shirt, who he’d dubbed as John Doe. “At least three entrance wounds.”

  Finch surveyed the scene. Both bodies lay face down in the dirt. The legs of the man Elias had dubbed Sam Doe crossed onto the top of John Doe. No injuries were immediately apparent to Sam Doe, although Cameron and Gwen had excavated deep enough for Finch to see that the ground near Sam’s middle took on a darker hue. Whatever injuries Sam Doe had sustained, they caused him to bleed a lot.

  “Could still be a hit,” Elias said.

  “Could be.”

  “Doesn’t look orderly enough, though, does it?”

  “Nope.”

  Elias pointed at the black revolver that had been uncovered in the dirt next to John Doe’s shoulder. “You get photos of that yet?” he asked Cameron.

  “Yeah. Everything’s been photographed.”

  Elias waved him over. “Go ahead and collect it, then.”

  Cameron nodded to Gwen. The young woman stepped carefully to the edge of the shallow grave and knelt down. She lifted the gun, gripping it with her thumb and forefinger of each hand. She held it up by the barrel and the bottom of the grips.

  “What’s that?” Finch asked.

  Along with Gwen and Elias, he leaned forward and squinted at the firearm. Long, dirty white strands hung from the cylinder.

  “Dunno,” Elias muttered.

  “We’ll figure it out at the lab,” Gwen said, full of self-assurance.

  Elias grunted.

  “How many rounds?” Finch asked.

  Gwen worked the cylinder release effortlessly. “Six casings,” she said, and peered closer. “Three with primer marks.” She closed the cylinder. “I’ll confirm that at the lab for you.”

  “And print the casings,” Finch said.

  “Of course.” Gwen held up the gun for Cameron to photograph again, then stored it in a paper evidence bag.

  “Let’s roll him over,” Finch said.

  Gwen knelt down and took Sam Doe by the shoulder with both hands. She pulled gently, but the stiff body barely moved. Gwen’s eyes narrowed and she put more force into her next pull. Sam Doe rolled toward her.

  “Handsome,” Elias observed.

  Sam’s bloated, purple face was fixed in what looked like an expression of wonder. The front of his torso was coated with dried blood.

  “Shot in the back three times,” Elias said, pointing to John Doe. He swept his pen to Sam Doe. “Shot in the front. Three times?”

  Finch nodded. “Could be.”

  “Doesn’t make sense, though.”

  “Not yet.”

  Elias sighed and stood. “Nothing about this makes sense.”

  Finch and Elias stood next to Finch’s detective’s car as the medical examiner’s van pulled away from the curb. Cameron had transported the body to the morgue for an autopsy, leaving Gwen to clean up the forensic tools and drive the van back to the station.

  “She did pretty good in there,” Finch observed.

  “She looked pretty good in there,” Elias answered.

  “What was your wife’s name again?”

  “Just stating a fact,” Elias said. “She’s a cute young thing.”

  Finch shrugged. “That’s the style now, I guess. All those forensic TV shows makes everyone think you have to be beautiful to work a crime scene.”

  “It helps me.”

  “An overactive imagination helps you.”

  Elias grinned. “True. Now, where do you want to go on this?”

  Finch pressed his lips together. He hated the idea of letting a case sit through the weekend, but didn’t see anywhere to go until the forensics were complete. They didn’t even know who the victims were yet. With Browning and Tower taking care of the background on Anderson, likely a dead end, nothing else remained.

  “You don’t want to wait until Monday, huh?” Elias said.

  Finch shook his head, then shrugged. “Not much choice. The ME won’t even do the autopsy until Monday morning.”

  Elias nodded mournfully. “Monday, then.” He clapped Finch on the shoulder. “See ya bright and early, Finchie.”

  “See you then.”

  Both men got in their cars, but Finch headed to the police station. He wanted to take a look at missing persons reports, at least.

  “Was it bad?” Nadene asked him when he returned home empty-handed.

  “They’re all bad,” he told her, feeling bad for his brusqueness but unable to hold it back. “What’s for dinner?”

  Cameron spread the autopsy photographs out on the table. Besides Elias and Finch, Gwen stood next to Cameron. Lieutenant Crawford watched over his shoulder, chewing an unlit cigar.

  “This is really interesting,” Cameron said. He pointed at three entry wounds in the photograph of John Doe’s back. “The bullets went in here, and”—he moved his finger to another picture of John’s front—“exited here.”

  “What about—” Elias began, but Cameron held up his hand.

  “Wait.” He pointed at a photo of Sam Doe’s chest. “Three entry wounds here. No exit wounds.”

  “You recovered the bullets, then?”

  Cameron nodded. “Two were pretty mangled, but one of them must have hit mostly soft tissue. We were able to get enough rifling for comparison.”

  “Same gun?” Finch asked.

  “Yes. That bullet came from the same revolver we recovered next to John Doe.”

  “John Doe?” Lieutenant Crawford broke in. “So you stil
l haven’t ID’d these vics?”

  “Actually, we have. Both had prints on file with us.” Cameron nodded to Gwen.

  She flipped open her notebook. “John Doe is Jacob Nalick,” she said. “He’s in the computer extensively, mostly for low-end felonies.”

  “And Sam?”

  “Sam Doe is Kenneth Moran. Pretty similar record, though not as long.”

  Finch nodded in approval. At least that gave them something to look into.

  “Go back to this three-shots thing,” Crawford ordered. “Are you saying that both were hit by the same three shots?”

  Gwen looked at Cameron, who motioned for her to explain. “Yes, sir,” she said. “At least, what we can prove is that one of the bullets recovered in Moran came from the revolver recovered at the crime scene. The other two bullets were too mangled for confirmation, but since there were three bullets fired from the gun and three bullets recovered, it is logical to assume—”

  “I can do the math,” Crawford cut her off. “How’d they both get hit by the same three bullets?”

  “We think that Nalick was on top of Moran when the shots were fired.”

  “Huh?”

  Gwen shuffled through the photos and brought out a computer graphic rendering of the shallow grave. “This is a side view,” she explained. “If Nalick were on top of Moran and someone fired from above them”—she traced the trajectory of the three bullets—“the shots would enter through Nalick’s back and pass through him and into Moran beneath him.”

  Crawford’s eyes narrowed. “How’d all three bullets get through?”

  “Two of the three were pretty damaged, remember.” Gwen said. “The M.E. found nicks in two of Nalick’s ribs near his spine.”

  “But the bullets stopped in the second guy?” Crawford shook his head. “If the shots were powerful enough to go through the first guy, why—”

  “Because the first body, Nalick’s, absorbed a lot of the bullet’s kinetic energy,” Gwen said. “By the time the bullet hit Moran, it lost too much energy to pass through him.”

  Crawford scowled at her interruption. “But enough to kill him.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Finch examined the computer diagram. “If that’s what happened, how’d the guy on the bottom lying on his back when the bullets were fired end up lying face down with his legs across the top when we found him?”