Jessie Black Box Set 2

by Larry A Winters

“Almost like winning Bingo,” Graham said.

  Novak shifted the car into park and cut the engine. Outside, the crisp spring air touched Graham’s face.

  “I’m serious,” she said, as they looked at the lights flash against the brick wall of the row house.

  “I know. And I’m taking you up on it. I’m going to knock this one out of the park.”

  Graham smiled. “Let’s do it, partner.”

  Entering the crime scene, Graham mentally reviewed what she knew. The victim was a man named Kent Edley. Thirty-two years old, Caucasian, single. He lived alone in his row house in this trendy neighborhood of Philadelphia. He worked for a public relations firm in Center City. And a few hours ago, someone killed him in a brutal fashion.

  Crossing the police threshold at the front door, she resisted the urge to let out a low whistle. From a small vestibule at the entryway, she could see a family room with a couch, some side tables and chairs, and a TV. The room had probably looked very nice a few hours ago—stylishly decorated with modern, tasteful furnishings. Now, though?

  “How’s that stomach doing?” she whispered to Novak.

  “Holy shit.”

  It was a horror show. Blood and gore everywhere. In the middle of the mess, the victim’s body sprawled across a hardwood floor that looked like it had been stained red. The entire region of the man’s groin had been cut away. Hacked off, leaving a bloody gash exposing flesh and bone. The smell almost suffocated her—something like a butcher’s shop mixed with roadkill.

  Beside her, Novak made a noise in his throat. She touched his arm, hoping to steady him.

  Crime scene technicians worked the room while Mandalia, the assistant medical examiner, crouched over the body.

  “Cavalry’s here,” a uniformed officer joked as Graham and Novak struggled into plastic gloves and booties.

  Mandalia raised his head. His gaze found Graham and Novak, and he smiled. “Hello, Detectives.”

  “I hope you didn’t solve the mystery without us,” Novak said.

  “Far from it,” one of the CSU guys said. His name was Gary Danziger. Graham had shared a beer or two with him over the years, knew him to be a good guy. He said, “No footprints. No fingerprints. The shower upstairs was used recently—probably to wash off blood. We’re dealing with a careful perp.”

  “I hate it when they’re careful,” Graham said.

  “What about the….” Novak gestured at the mutilated body. “Did you find the rest of him?”

  “No,” Mandalia said. “The penis, testicles, and some skin, ligaments, and muscle are gone. Looks like the killer took them as a souvenir. Or a snack. Who knows these days.”

  Novak seem to wobble on his feet. Graham thought his skin was starting to look a little green. “You okay?” she asked quietly.

  “Fine,” was all he managed to get out, as if he was afraid to open his mouth too widely.

  Novak had said he wanted an epic end to his career. He probably hadn’t meant barfing all over a homicide crime scene. “Let’s go outside for a minute.”

  Outside the row house, the fresh evening air was a welcome break from the smells and sights of death and mutilation inside. She and Novak walked a few houses down the street, where the flashing police lights were a little less intense.

  “I’m okay, Emily. Really.”

  “I know you are. You’re a pro.”

  “It’s just sickening. It’s always sickening. Never gets easier.” He took off one of his gloves and wiped his hand across his forehead. His face looked damp, with a sheen of perspiration despite the mild spring night. “Christ.”

  “I know.”

  “Yeah, but you’ve got an iron stomach.”

  Graham shrugged. “Doesn’t mean I don’t have a heart. It’s hard for me to look at this kind of thing, too, believe me. Damn hard.”

  “Thanks. It’s good to hear that.”

  She met his gaze. “Just don’t tell anyone. I don’t want to mess up my rep.”

  “Your secret is safe with me. Ready to go back inside?” He put his glove back on.

  “Sure, if you are.”

  He gave her a wan smile. “I think I’m really going to appreciate retirement.”

  They started to hike back toward Kent Edley’s row house. Graham took the opportunity to breathe in as much of the fresh air as she could. Novak stared at the ground, looking pensive.

  Then he stopped.

  “Toby?” Graham said. “If you need more time….”

  “Hold that thought.” He squatted by the side of the road. She saw that there was a sewer grate there. In the darkness, she had not noticed it earlier. Novak reached for something, then straightened up.

  He was holding a black, leather glove. There was something on it. Blood, she thought.

  “I guess our killer wasn’t so careful after all,” Novak said.

  “Toby, I think you just got your epic moment.”

  Novak smiled ruefully. “I got lucky. But sometimes, that’s all you need.” He pulled a clear, plastic evidence bag from his pocket and pushed the glove into the bag, then zipped the bag closed. “Let’s get this to our CSU friends.”

  Before they could move, a shout turned their attention toward the house. One of the uniformed officers from the crime scene jogged toward them. No, Graham thought as she peered at him through the darkness. The man wasn’t jogging. He was flat-out racing toward them.

  “Detectives!”

  Graham and Novak exchanged a glance, then ran toward the man, meeting him about halfway to the house.

  “What’s wrong?” Graham said.

  “There’s a woman.” The cop braced his hands against his knees and struggled to catch enough breath to speak. “She showed up at the scene a few minutes after you left. She says…. She says she knows who did this.”

  “Where is she now?” Novak said.

  “I put her….” He sucked in a lungful of air. “Put her in the back of a squad car to wait for you.”

  “Let’s go,” Graham said. She was thinking, Another lucky break? As Novak had said, sometimes that was all you needed.

  On the street in front of Edley’s house, the officer opened the back door of his squad car. A woman sat on the hard plastic seat inside. At a glance, Graham guessed she was in her late twenties or early thirties, but it was hard to tell because tears had streaked the makeup on her face and her hair was a tangled mess.

  “Please,” she said, “someone needs to listen to me.”

  “My name is Detective Emily Graham. This is my partner, Tobias Novak. We’re homicide detectives. If you have something to say, we’re listening.”

  The woman nodded, seeming to calm down a little bit.

  “Why don’t you start with your name?” Novak prompted.

  The woman nodded again. “Maxine. My name is Maxine Hazenberg.” She looked at her hand as she spoke her last name, at the ring on her finger.

  “Okay, Maxine,” Novak said. “What is it you want to tell us?”

  “I know who did this. I know who killed Kent.”

  Graham shot a glance at her partner, but Novak’s stare was fixed on the woman. He said, “I’m listening, Maxine. Who killed him?”

  “My … my husband.” She looked at the ring again. “Oscar Hazenberg.”

  “Okay, Maxine,” Novak said. “Thank you. Can you tell us why you think your husband did this?”

  She looked up at him with watery eyes. “He told me.”

  3

  The woman who’d appeared at the crime scene, Maxine Hazenberg, had their full attention.

  The question was, did she deserve it?

  Novak looked eager to believe the woman was the key to identifying and apprehending Kent Edley’s killer. After finding a spare interview room in the Roundhouse homicide bullpen, he’d offered her coffee, candy bars, potato chips. But Graham wasn’t feeling as hospitable.

  It wasn’t that she liked to look a gift horse in the mouth. But the truth was—in her experience, anyway—when somethin
g seemed too good to be true, it usually was.

  Murders didn’t solve themselves.

  The woman took a Kit Kat bar from Novak with a weak smile. She did not unwrap it. She did not look hungry. Her face was pale and tear-streaked, and she looked on the verge of crying again.

  Her gaze found Graham’s, and she must have sensed the detective’s distrust. “Am I…. I’m not in trouble, am I?”

  Novak leaned forward. “Of course not—”

  “It depends,” Graham said.

  Maxine looked at her. “On what?”

  “On whether you’re telling us the truth.”

  “Of course I am! Why would I lie?”

  Graham shook her head. “People are strange. Some just crave attention. The spotlight.”

  Maxine stared at her, silent. A tear rolled down the right side of her face.

  “We don’t think you’re lying,” Novak said hastily. “All my partner is trying to say is we don’t know anything about you.”

  “I’m the wife of a murderer,” Maxine said. “What else do you need to know?”

  “Well, why don’t you tell us where you’re from, where you grew up,” Novak started.

  Graham knew he was trying to use the mundane questions to calm her, but it was almost midnight and Graham wasn’t sure she had the energy to do this the long way. “Why would he tell you?” she said.

  “What?”

  “Your husband. Back in Northern Liberties, you told us you know he killed Kent Edley because he told you. Why would he tell you that?”

  Maxine looked at the Kit Kat. Graham followed her gaze. In its bright red wrapper, the chocolate bar looked incongruous in this bleak, colorless room. “To hurt me,” Maxine said, her gaze returning to Graham.

  “To hurt you?”

  “Yes. Kent and I were having an affair. Oscar must have found out. He killed Kent. But that wasn’t enough for him. He wanted me to know he did it. He wanted me to suffer.”

  “You were having an affair.” Novak wrote the words in his spiral notebook, and Graham knew what he was thinking. Motive.

  But she still wasn’t sold. This was too neat. Too easy.

  “Why didn’t you call the police? Why come to the crime scene personally?”

  “I thought … I hoped he was lying. I needed to see for myself.”

  “How do you know he wasn’t lying?” Graham said. She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest.

  “What? Because Kent’s dead. Isn’t he?”

  That was an understatement if she’d ever heard one.

  “Yes, but how do you know your husband killed him?”

  “Because he told me. And he … he went into detail.”

  Now they were getting somewhere. “Such as?”

  Maxine shook her head. She covered her mouth with her hand. For a second, Graham worried she was going to throw up. Then she seemed to regain control of herself.

  “He said he cut off Kent’s penis.”

  Although it would be impossible to keep this detail from the media for long, as of now, only the police knew about it—the police and the Hazenbergs, apparently.

  “Okay,” Graham said. She heard her voice soften and knew it was because she had begun to believe. She fought this impulse. “But I still don’t understand why your husband would tell you. He had to know you’d talk to the police.”

  “He knew that wouldn’t matter,” Maxine said.

  Graham shot a look at Novak, but he looked just as confused.

  “Why wouldn’t it matter?” Graham said. “We can arrest him right now, based on your statement.”

  “But you can’t prosecute him with it. That’s what he told me, anyway. Because of something called spousal privilege. It means a wife isn’t allowed to repeat in court something her husband told her in confidence.”

  Graham had heard of spousal privilege, but this was the first time she had ever run up against it in an actual investigation.

  “Is he right?” Maxine said.

  Graham thought about it. “I’m not sure. I’ll need to talk to someone at the DA’s office.”

  She hoped Jessie would explain that the privilege did not apply here. But she had her doubts.

  Because if something seemed too good to be true, it probably was.

  “Let’s start from the beginning,” Graham said. “Tell us the whole story.”

  It was after midnight when Maxine finished. The woman looked drained. Graham felt the same way.

  “I assume you don’t feel safe going home,” she said to Maxine. “We’ll get you a hotel room under a different name, so your husband doesn’t come looking for you.”

  Maxine nodded. “Thanks.”

  When that was taken care of, Graham and Novak walked outside to head home themselves.

  “Get some sleep,” she said to him. “I have a feeling tomorrow’s going to be a long day.”

  4

  The key to getting cash is to act like you don’t need cash.

  Words of wisdom from his father. Of course, Dad had died of a heart attack under a crushing mountain of debt, so maybe not the best role model for financial independence.

  Hal Nolan greeted the banker with a warm smile and a firm handshake. They strolled across a marble lobby to the banker’s office, where the banker took his seat behind a large desk and Hal sat in the visitor chair. It was constructed of stiff wood, but Hal sighed as if reclining in a plush La-Z-Boy. He commented on the lovely spring weather, as if he had all the time in the world and no worries.

  “Yes, it’s been unseasonably warm,” the banker agreed. The banker’s name was Rupert Grove, because of course it was. And he looked like the kind of guy who wore a suit on the weekend.

  “Could use some rain, though,” Hal said. “For the grass.” Hal lived in a condominium apartment in Center City. He had no grass. But the woman in front of him at McDonald’s had said something similar this morning when he’d bought an Egg McMuffin, so he figured it was good enough for small talk.

  “A good, heavy rain would be helpful.” Grove let out a little chuckle. “Not exactly pleasant, but a necessary evil.”

  Kind of like you, Hal thought. His face was starting to ache from maintaining his enormous, fake smile.

  “So.” The banker steepled his fingers on his desk. “You’d like to discuss opening another line of credit.”

  “Just to cover overhead.” Hal shrugged, hoping to appear casual, blasé. “You know how it is.”

  But he doubted Grove had any idea how it was. Grove worked for a multi-billion-dollar international bank, which probably paid him a comfortable salary, health insurance, and a matching 401K. Grove came to work every day, put in his banker’s hours, and received a direct deposit every two weeks. He had a safe, dependable, predictable job.

  Running your own small business was a-whole-nother thing. And running a small law practice? In Philadelphia? What the hell could a man like Rupert Grove know about that? Grove didn’t have to balance feast with famine. Hal did. Grove didn’t have to hustle every dollar. Hal did. Grove didn’t have to chat up officious bankers about the probable moisture level of the grass, yet here was Hal, doing just that.

  “Sure,” Grove said, “I understand. Our concern, though, is that your firm is already behind on its payments for its existing loans.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about that, Rupert. Just a cash flow problem. Temporary. Kristina and I are doing really well. We have several big clients. The money is coming.”

  They had exactly two clients at the moment. One was broke, and the other was in prison—Hal supposed the one in prison might pay them in cigarettes, if they were lucky.

  The banker turned to his computer monitor, then pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger as if the idea of loaning Hal money was giving him a migraine. Good. Suffer, you miserly bastard.

  “Well, you see, cash flow is the problem. I can’t approve a loan without either cash flow or significant assets to pledge as collateral, and your f
irm is already fully leveraged—”

  Hal’s phone buzzed. The sound, audible from his pocket, interrupted Grove. Hal offered an apologetic grimace and pulled out his phone to check the screen. It was Kristina, texting him: Where r u? Hal put away his phone without responding.

  “Sorry,” Hal said. “You were talking about what you’ll need from me in order to approve the loan today?”

  Grove let out a sigh. “I’m constrained here. Do you understand? Your firm has nothing left to pledge.”

  “What about personal assets? We have a condo and my wife has jewelry….”

  “You offered those up six months ago, the last time we extended credit. There’s nothing left.”

  Hal’s phone buzzed again. He ignored it. He leaned forward, holding Grove’s stare. “Be intelligent about this, Rupert. Without a loan, my firm is going under. Chapter 7 bankruptcy. We’ll lose everything—and your bank will have to fight our other creditors for whatever’s left. Wouldn’t you prefer to work something out that is mutually beneficial, while there’s still time?”

  Grove leaned back in his chair. “The situation is that bad?”

  So much for his father’s advice.

  “It’s a temporary cash flow problem. Something all small legal practices struggle with.”

  “What did you have in mind?” the banker said.

  “If you can’t authorize a loan, then forgive part of the existing debt. Give us some breathing room to operate until we can collect our next few paydays. Then you and I both win.”

  Grove shook his head. “I can’t do that.”

  “Why can’t you?”

  Grove spread his hands. “Because you’re not a good investment.”

  Hal’s mouth felt dusty. He licked his lips. “I’m not taking no for an answer.”

  “You’re going to have to.” The banker looked uncomfortable now. Hal realized he’d gone too far and hoped the man wasn’t about to call security.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. I’m just eager for the opportunity to make us both a lot of money. All I need is a little flexibility. Maybe we could discuss—”

  Grove cut him off. “My advice? Fix your cash flow problem. Fix it quickly. Then come back here, and maybe we’ll have something to discuss.”