Don't Know Jack

by Diane Capri

  Kim smelled him even over the skunk perfume. She saw the rigor and the lividity from all the way across the room. Every professional in the house had to know Harry Black had been dead a lot longer than two hours. The GHP trooper must have known when he called in the homicide.

  People shifted again, blocking her view. The freeze frame ended. The video moved on. Gaspar looked at her and nodded. He had seen it too. The interior of the building matched its exterior for bleakness. There were four rooms. A total of maybe 800 square feet. Lots of pine, lots of gaps and warps. The living room had two worn recliners and a 60-inch flat screen TV. There were fashion magazines on a folding table. The windows were opaque with dirt.

  Gaspar had moved farther into the house, observing everything, just as she was. He was taking pictures from time to time.

  Of what?

  Am I missing something?

  Kim recalled Gaspar’s question. What kind of woman had chosen to live in this place? She glanced toward the kitchen and saw the answer right there.

  Mrs. Sylvia Black sat on one of the two kitchen chairs, head down. Cuffed hands hung between her knees. She held her palms together, rhythmically opening and closing each set of matched fingers, one set at a time, like a metronome, counting.

  Counting what?

  She had a recent manicure. She had perfectly shaped nails, quite short, painted pastel pink. She had a large square onyx ring with a silver cable around it on her right index finger, and a smaller turquoise ring by the same designer on her right pinky. She was wearing the kind of black patent sandals that fashionable women covet, and she had a fresh pedicure. Her toenails were polished deep purple. Her yellow silk blouse had a pink and green designer’s monogram. Dark silk slacks tapered smartly down her calf, where an ankle bracelet sat near a yellow rose tattoo.

  Then someone made a noise and Sylvia’s head snapped up, eyes darted wildly. Kim saw dark beauty, enhanced by skillful makeup. Sylvia’s eyes met Kim’s, and then she lowered her gaze to the floor and began her finger tapping again.

  Kim reached into her pocket and pulled out her camera. She framed the shot and said, “Sylvia?”

  The woman looked up and saw the camera. She squared her shoulders, raised her chin, and smiled, revealing bright white teeth offset by shimmering pink lip gloss.

  She was posing.

  Kim switched the camera to video mode and followed her gut.

  “I love your shoes,” she said. “Jimmy Choos, right? They look great on you.”

  Girlfriends.

  “Thank you,” Sylvia replied, holding her leg out in front, the better to display her stylish footwear. “These are my favorites.” She looked up into Kim’s face again. “Want to try them? Your foot’s really tiny, though.”

  “I’d better not,” Kim said, as if the refusal cost her a lot. “They wouldn’t like it.”

  They.

  Us and them.

  Girlfriends.

  Sylvia pressed her lips into a firm line, nodded as if to say she understood, and lowered her head again.

  Kim asked, “So what happened here?”

  Sylvia looked up again. Unsmiling this time, but not distraught. Not like she’d just killed a man whose body still lay in her marriage bed. “I’m not supposed to talk about it. I shot him. I couldn’t take him any more. That’s all I’m allowed to say.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “I’m not allowed to say.”

  “Well, aside from his horrible taste in interior design, what was wrong with him?”

  Sylvia smiled. She didn’t seem to grasp her situation. Maybe there was something wrong with her. Mentally. “I’m not allowed to say,” she repeated, smiling sadly now, as if she had much more she wanted to say, if only she was allowed to, which she wasn’t.

  “Did he hurt you? Do something to you?” Kim continued to record. Sylvia knew she was being filmed, but didn’t seem to mind. She didn’t ask for a lawyer or object to the questions. But she didn’t offer any information, either.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  Was that a confession? Remorse generally followed when wives killed their husbands, in Kim’s experience.

  “About what?” Kim asked.

  “That I’m not allowed to say anything.”

  Kim heard another car outside. “When do you think you’ll be able to tell us what happened?”

  Sylvia asked a question of her own. “What time is it?”

  Kim looked at her watch. “It’s one o’clock, give or take.”

  “Maybe later this afternoon,” Sylvia said.

  “Why then?” Kim saw Sergeant Brent and another Margrave cop come in.

  “I’m just not allowed to say.” Silvia returned her gaze to the floor, and began her finger tapping again. Kim filmed the ritual for a full minute, but Silvia didn’t look up again.

  “I’ll catch up with you later,” Kim said.

  No response.

  ***

  Kim slipped into the bedroom for a closer look. The master suite contained two rooms. She checked them quickly before focusing on the body. Both were lined in rough pine planks like the rest of the house. There was a small bathroom on one side, and a small closet on the other. The closet was open. It held three empty wire hangers on the rod, and two men’s sneaker boxes on the shelf above, and dry cleaning bags and paper shoulder covers on the floor.

  The bathroom was barely large enough for a shower stall, a sink and a toilet. The shower curtain was moldy and stained by iron-rich water. The toilet was running, porcelain cracked. The bedroom itself had a fourteen-inch oval mirror hung too high for Sylvia Black. A ceiling fan hung in the middle of the room, not turning. One jalousie window with frosted panes provided weak natural light.

  But the bed itself was the main attraction. It filled most of the room. It was just a queen mattress on a box spring. No headboard or footboard. There was about two feet of space all the way around the bed. There was a beige cotton blanket tangled up in sheets that might once have been white once. There were three pillows with cases in the same yellowed percale as the sheets. There was not as much blood as there might have been.

  Kim noticed everything: the blood, the smell, Black’s pallor and the blue bruises unmistakably creeping up his sides from where he lay on his stomach, rigid with full rigor. She was certain he’d been dead more than ten hours. Probably closer to fifteen. But absolutely, positively, most definitely more than two.

  She memorized his position. She’d need a recent photograph to know anything about his face. The bullets had gone right through. They were buried in the wall planks. Kim thought about the difficulty of removing them for evidence.

  Black’s left arm was bent at the elbow, his hand resting near his face. A thin gold band encircled his ring finger. Not a symbol of love and fidelity in his case, clearly. His right arm was bent palm up. His legs were splayed.

  Kim counted the entry wounds: seven visible. Two in his head. One in each of his four limbs at the elbow and knee joints, and the seventh at the base of his spine.

  Out in the woods, no one can hear you scream.

  ***

  Next Kim checked the kitchen and noted the camper stove, the small refrigerator, and the dirty sink. She opened the cabinets and saw plastic dishes and plastic glasses that might have been yard sale bargains ten years ago. One cabinet held canned food, mostly soup and beans, with a few cans of sausage. Stuff that would last a good long while, she guessed.

  The refrigerator was just as sparsely stocked. Three bottles of beer, some orange cheese, some yellow mustard. Some catsup, half a jar of sweet pickles. Nothing that would sustain a human soul.

  Kim found Gaspar waiting on the porch.

  “Now what, number one?” he asked.

  She said, “Did you know that a hummingbird consumes more than four times its weight in food every day?”

  “What?”

  “Try and keep up, okay? We tiny Asian women eat like birds.”

  One beat. Two. Then he got it.
He grinned.

  “You see all that and still want to eat?” he said. “You’re cool.”

  Home run.

  She said, “I saw a diner on the county road. Maybe they’ll have something that won’t give us a disease. But let’s walk around the house, first. Outside. I don’t want to miss anything. I’m hoping I never have to come back here again.”

  “I hear ya, sister.”

  They stepped down off the porch together and walked the outside perimeter. The side and back lawns were in the same condition as the front. Cracked, dried, mostly bare red dirt, a few dead weeds for color. There was one outbuilding in the rear yard, clearly constructed by the same inept craftsman as the house. The outbuilding had never been painted and weather had grayed the pine boards. It was nothing but a three-sided box with a wall from back to front that divided port from starboard. On the left side was a clothes washer and a dryer probably purchased when Reagan was president. On the right side was a ten-year-old Ford Taurus, sun-faded, beat-up, run-down. The driver’s door was slightly ajar.

  Kim used her jacket sleeve and pushed the door fully open. The dome light came on inside. A bell warned that a key was in the ignition. The odometer showed 156,324 miles. On the passenger seat was an expensive designer handbag. Gaspar whistled, low and appreciative.

  “Look at that, would you?” he said. “That thing’s worth way more than the car. More than the house. Hell, more than the land, too, I’ll bet.”

  “How do you know so much about handbags, Agent Gaspar?”

  “I’ve got a wife and four daughters. I mentioned that, right?” He grinned at her. “Did I also mention we’re all big soccer fans? You know who David Beckham is?”

  Beckham wasn’t one of the top ten most wanted terrorists this week, so no, she didn’t recognize the name. But she didn’t say that.

  “The soccer genius with the gorgeous wife, Victoria?”

  Kim shook her head.

  “Victoria Beckham is a very beautiful and fashionable woman and a huge fan of all things Hermes. She has quite a collection. To the tune of about $2 million worth, according to my oldest daughter. Including a birthday present in the same style as this one here, that her husband reportedly purchased for north of $150,000.”

  “Assuming it’s not fake,” Kim said.

  “Even a fake would cost more than I’ll bring home this week after Uncle Sam takes his cut.” He opened the glove box and pushed a yellow button. The trunk lid released.

  Kim walked around to the back of the car and used her jacket sleeve to push the trunk lid up. “So, if the handbag is worth so much, how much do you suppose these four pieces of matching luggage would set you back?”

  Gaspar said nothing. Just took pictures of the luggage. Maybe to show his daughter, Kim thought. Then from behind them Chief Roscoe said, “I’d appreciate copies of those pictures. Unless you’d prefer to hand over the camera.”

  Gaspar slipped the camera into his pocket. Kim didn’t look up. She said, “Sure. No problem. We may want to look at your evidence, too. We can exchange when it’s convenient for you.”

  Roscoe didn’t back down. “I assume this trunk lid was already open when you got here and you haven’t violated anybody’s rights by opening it without a warrant.”

  “I love a cat fight,” Gaspar said, loud enough only for Kim to hear.

  Kim looked at Roscoe, square in the eye, and said, “I’m guessing this luggage and the other contents of this vehicle belong to your suspect. I didn’t know Harry Black, but he doesn’t seem like the luxury leather goods type to me.”

  “No,” Roscoe said. “He wasn’t. You’re right.”

  “Or rich.”

  “He wasn’t that either.”

  “And the way it looks is that Mrs. Black was packed, dressed, and ready to go. She waited until her husband was asleep. And then she shot and killed him. The question is why she didn’t go ahead and leave at that point. Why did she call 911 and turn herself in? That doesn’t make any sense. She’s maybe a little crazy, maybe out of touch with reality somewhat, but she’s well oriented to time and place, as the psychiatrists say.”

  “How do you know?” Roscoe said.

  “I talked to her.”

  Gaspar said, “And she didn’t kill him a couple of hours before we got here, either. Based on the lividity and rigor and the smell of decomp, I’m guessing he’d been dead eight hours or more when we arrived. There could be a federal crime here. We could call Atlanta, if you want. We could get some agents out here to take over.”

  “Or not,” Kim said. “It’s up to you. You can take Sylvia Black as a murdering wife and process her for homicide and use this evidence of flight to support premeditation and we can get back to our assignment.”

  Roscoe was considering her options. Kim recognized the signs. Eventually Roscoe said, “We’ll take it from here. We need to finish up with the scene and then I’d like to talk to you. Tonight. Or tomorrow. How can I reach you?”

  “We’re going to eat,” Kim said. “Our cell numbers are on the business cards we gave you earlier. Call us when you’re finished here and we’ll meet you at your office or somewhere else in town. How’s that?”

  “Sounds good,” Roscoe said, offering the firm, cool handshake she’d extended previously, but this time she offered it with more sincerity. “I appreciate the help. We’re a small department. We don’t get a lot of trouble. Some drugs. Meth mostly. A few robberies to finance the drugs. Some domestic battery on Saturday nights. And that’s about it. We’re a little out of our depth today.”

  Kim appreciated the effort to make nice, even though Roscoe was more than just a little out of her depth and she knew it. That fact was obvious to the least sophisticated observer. But Kim would never have made such an admission in Roscoe’s shoes. Or any other shoes.

  “It’s going to rain,” Roscoe said, and walked away.

  “She’ll call us,” Gaspar said. “Right after she checks us out with Atlanta.”

  “That’s what I would do,” Kim said. “Wouldn’t you?”

  Gaspar grinned. “Of course I would.”

  Kim’s stomach growled. “Good thing Asian women don’t weigh much. If I don’t get real food pretty soon, you may have to carry me when I faint.”

  “Then we’d better hurry. We Cubans are not that chivalrous,” he said, as fat raindrops started to fall.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  A solid wall of rain overwhelmed the Blazer all the way down the country road. Gaspar turned the wipers to their fastest speed, but they didn’t do much. Headlights on bright showed nothing but a curtain of water dead ahead.

  “There,” Kim said, pointing at a dull gleam of aluminum. A sun-faded sign out front of the place said Eno’s Diner in letters the size of garbage cans.

  “Got it, boss.” She saw exhaustion around his eyes and pain in the lines that etched his face. He pulled the Blazer into the lot. The only other vehicle was a green Saturn. He drove as close to the door as he could get and turned the engine off. They sat for a moment listening to the rain hammering on the roof.

  Then they ran. She got there first. Was he still limping? She wrenched the door open, and they fell inside and back in time about sixty years.

  Eno’s Diner resembled a converted railroad car. Retro. Like American Graffiti. There should have been table-side jukeboxes in the booths loaded with Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis records. Maybe Ray Charles singing Georgia, or even that sad old dude, Blind Blake, considering the location.

  The place was narrow, with a long counter on one side, and booths lining the opposite wall, and a kitchen off the back. The doorway was in the center where one of the booths had been removed. A small sign posted at the cash register immediately ahead said, “Please be seated.” The entrance aisle formed a T intersection from the front door and required a right or left turn to choose a table. Gaspar turned right, walked fifteen feet on checkerboard black and white tile and chose a booth. He sat down hard on the red vinyl upholstered bench, facing th
e door. Predictable.

  Kim headed straight for the restroom, feeling her shoes squeak as each step pressed water through the soles. Noxious fumes from a pine scented air freshener assaulted her when she pushed the door open. She flipped on the harsh overhead florescent and a roaring fan started up. She performed her tasks briskly while forcing herself to ignore the rust stains and broken toilet seat. She pulled a bit of toilet paper to protect her fingers when she flushed and held the handle down, as the note taped to the tank instructed.

  Then she checked her reflection in the cracked mirror over the sink. “You’re hopeless,” she told the face. “Be careful or you’ll scare small children.” She pressed the water out of her hair with her hands and washed without touching the nasty soap cake and refused to use the wrinkled pull-down cloth towel hanging from its dispenser near the door. She shook her hands by her sides to dry them as best she could, and then drew her fingers up inside her sleeve and pulled the door open to escape.

  She slid onto the bench opposite Gaspar. He was full-on focused watching the diner, the parking lot, everything, like a predatory bird. God, she was tired. What she wouldn’t give for eight hours solid sleep. She’d be a new woman. But food first. She pulled napkins from a chrome holder and used them to dry her hands and pat the rain off her face. There was a two-foot round mirror on the opposite wall. It gave her a decent view of the room behind her. By moving her head slightly she could see the entrance, too. Not perfect. But good enough for government work.

  A waitress walked over and put two laminated menus with curled corners down on the red plastic table top and asked, “Can I bring y’all some coffee while you decide what you want?”

  “Absolutely,” Kim said, without looking up from the menu. One page with pictures of all-American diner food on both sides. Breakfast, lunch, deserts, and drinks. No dinner. No alcohol. No pre-packaged food. Ptomaine, she decided, was a real possibility.

  “Wide selection here,” Gaspar said. “We can get our burgers with or without cheese. Or our cheese with or without burgers.”