The Ashes of an Oak

by Bradbury, Chris

  Monday

  Chapter 15

  The body, dressed in cheap, frayed, denim shorts and a red T shirt with the words ‘Enjoy Coca-Cola Classic’ emblazoned upon it, was found at the door of the Brownsville Community Church.

  It had been propped against the door, leaned against the jamb, as if in repose, head tilted back, mouth slightly open, eyes peering out from between lowered lids at some unknown point in the distance. Its hands rested, palms together, in its crotch.

  The girl, black and maybe twenty-three or twenty-four, had long black hair that snaked down to her shoulders and fanned out across her chest. It lay across her cleavage as if trying to save her modesty in death.

  The little finger of her left hand had been removed with a sharp object. Blood had seeped from the wound and pooled and stagnated between her thighs.

  That hadn’t killed her. People rarely died from the removal of a finger. It was the head injury, hidden by her position against the door, that had done it. When moved forward, her hair had stuck to the wooden door and come away as if being peeled from drying paint.

  There was a single, deep concave wound beneath her thick hair. It wasn’t until she got on the table that the true depth of the injury, the true damage caused by the vicious single blow, would be seen, but at the scene, no other wounds could be found. She had been extinguished by the weapon in the murderer’s hand as easily as a candle flame by a soft whistle of breath.

  Steve Wayt, alone on the job for the first time in God knew how many years, kneeled before the girl, his head tilted, and looked at her face.

  She was very pretty. She had subtle make up on – a thin layer of purple eyeshadow, enough mascara to separate her long, natural eyelashes, a small amount of blush to highlight her cheeks, though she still had the sweet puffiness of youth in her face.

  Yes, he thought, for a whore, you were beautiful.

  ‘Looks like another one,’ he said without taking his eyes off her.

  The forensic team leader crouched down next to him. ‘We’ll see,’ she said.

  Steve turned to her, startled. He had expected Milt.

  ‘Would you mind moving?’ she asked. ‘You’re just adding to the workload. And make sure you don’t leave the stub of that cigarette in the area. Unless you want to be hauled in as a suspect.’

  She didn’t smile.

  Jesus! he thought. One of those new breed of women; has to be pushy to be heard. Wants the top jobs. Wants to see the men in their place. Wants to be the boss.

  Steve picked himself up and walked away backwards.

  ‘Okay,’ he said meekly. ‘I’m done anyway.’

  She ignored him.

  ‘The girl had no ID. No bag.’

  Emmet Diehl, back in the Captain’s chair, toyed with a pen, doodling, rolling it around in his fingers, doodling some more.

  ‘Where was her money?’

  ‘Money?’

  ‘She was a prostitute, Steve. Where was her money?’

  ‘There wasn’t any.’

  ‘Not stuffed in her chest or down her pants.’ It wasn’t a question. It was just a verbalised thought.

  ‘No,’ said Steve.

  ‘Unusual, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘Didn’t occur to you at the scene?’

  ‘No.’

  Emmet raised the pen and pointed it at Steve. ‘Keep your mind on the job, Steve. We all know there are other things going on that perhaps we might consider more important in our lives, but stay focused. If you can’t, I’ll give it to Patton and Simmons.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ mumbled Steve.

  ‘If you were fine, you’d be the one asking the question I just asked. Who found the body?’

  ‘The cleaner at the church.’ Steve flicked through his notebook. ‘Mabel Carthy. She came in at six to unlock and give the place a going over. There’s a funeral at midday.’

  ‘Not any more,’ said Emmet. ‘It’s a crime scene. I take it that didn’t occur to you either.’

  Steve remained silent.

  ‘Go back to the area yourself and part every blade of grass and poke every crack in the concrete. Never mind forensics. If they get shitty with you, refer them to me. Find the bag. Talk to the other workers in that area…’

  ‘That’s down to the uniforms…’

  Emmet brought his hand down with a slap onto the desk in a rare display of impatience. ‘Not today, Steve. I shouldn’t even need to ask you these questions. You should be feeding me with facts. I shouldn’t be begging for morsels. Now go. Talk to that cleaning woman again. Rope in any uniforms still at the scene. Find the goddam bag.’

  Steve, stunned by the unexpected tirade, froze.

  Emmet looked up from the paperwork he had started. ‘Would you please go?’

  Steve got up and headed for the door.

  ‘He’s good by the way,’ said Emmet. ‘Awake and talking. Mary says his limbs are working fine. Now stop worrying and do some police work.’

  Steve smiled at the Captain. ‘Okay,’ he said. He hesitated. ‘I guess this goes some way to putting Frank in the clear, eh?’

  Emmet didn’t answer, didn’t even look up.

  Steve waited. That awkward feeling of trivial dismissal hung from him like a wet coat. He tightened his lips and opened the door.

  After Steve had gone, Emmet put the pen down and rubbed his hands over his tired face.

  He hated playing the babysitter.

  ‘Get well soon, you old bastard,’ he said aloud. ‘I feel like I’m ten men down without you.’

  He picked up the phone and dialled. ‘Milt Eckhart, please. Captain Diehl.’

  There was the usual pause; find Milt, wait until he stopped moaning, wait for the gloves to come off, the walk back to the office, the old man’s moan as he sat down.

  ‘Milt? How you doing? Yeah, he seems to be okay. Just need to keep our fingers crossed. Listen, were you at the prostitute murder this morning? The one at the Community Church. No. Who took it? Kelly Peters? Okay. Listen, would you keep me up to speed with it? Have you spoken to Kelly yet? Well, if you do, perhaps she could contact me. Oh, you know. Just trying to match things up. Get some feedback. Okay. Thanks, Milt.’

  He put the phone down, then grabbed a piece of scrap paper and started a list of questions for Kelly Peters.

  Steve rolled up at the church. The area was cordoned off. Three uniforms hung around, one at the main gate, the other two outside the main door. They smoked and talked; easy money.

  Steve walked up to the two at the main entrance. He knew them – Jameson and Rhodes, both war horses. They’d be glad of the few hours away from the streets.

  The blood still lay stickily upon the church door and trailed to the concrete step. There it had pooled and was now almost dry, the heat of the day sucking every ounce of moisture from it. Soon, thought Steve, it would be dust, then it would be washed away by the winds and the rains and the passing footsteps and, but for the most invisible of molecules, it would be as if this was never the last resting place of an anonymous girl. Everything got washed away.

  He told the two uniforms to separate and search the property. They bitched and moaned, said it was too hot, but they did it anyway. They took a third each. There wasn’t much grass to look in or many cracks to dip in to. It was a suburban church. There was only so much you could do before relying on faith to fill the house.

  Steve found the purse within minutes. It was down a storm drain, beneath a drainage lid. He called the guys over so that they could see it, then got on his knees, lifted the lid and picked it out. It was small, rectangular, smooth and blood red, with a yellow metal clip and shoulder strap.

  He opened it. There was a wallet inside. He opened that and found it full of ten, twenty and fifty dollar bills. With the two uniforms, he counted it out. She had been busy before she died.

  He gave the purse to Jameson to hold while he went and got a bag from the car. Jameson dropped the purse in there and Steve sealed it up.


  He thanked them for their help, then went back to the car.

  It was almost too hot to sit in it. The windows had magnified the heat of the sun and made everything inside too hot to touch. As soon as his back made contact with the seat he felt his shirt cling to him.

  He put the evidence bag on the seat next to him. He would drop it off at forensics on the way back to the precinct, then he would let the Captain know what he had found.

  Kelly Peters wore trousers. This was what Steve noticed when she came into the office. She had on some navy blue trousers and a navy blue jacket. He called it power dressing. A woman trying to show that she had a bigger dick than the man to whom she was talking.

  She had short auburn hair in what he’d heard Val call a ‘wedge’. It was, apparently fashionable. He thought that perhaps she may be a lesbian. Either way, he disliked her.

  She took a seat and accepted coffee and a cigarette from the Captain. He never did that with the men. If they wanted a drink, they helped themselves. If they wanted a cigarette, they could damn well use their own.

  A ring of red lipstick, clearly applied a very short time ago, probably to lower the Captain’s defences, covered the filter of the cigarette.

  ‘Thanks for coming by, Miss Peters,’ said Emmet.

  ‘Ms,’ said Ms Peters.

  ‘Ms?’ said Emmet.

  ‘Yes,’ said Ms Peters amiably. ‘Whether I’m married or not has no bearing on my abilities.’ She smiled as she spoke and clearly intended no offence. ‘I find it’s better to remain neutral. That way I come without any baggage, any preconceptions.’

  Steve felt himself bristle. ‘You don’t find that calling yourself Ms has preconceptions right there?’

  ‘What? That I might be a lesbian, Detective Wayt? That problem lies with the owner of the preconception, not with me. And, if I were a lesbian, would that make me any less able to carry out my duties?’

  She saw Emmet squirm out of the corner of her eye. She felt the small giddiness of delight that one could feel when dropping a hand grenade into the trifle. ‘Or do you have images of me lying on the slab in flagrante delicto with the wife of the recently deceased?’

  She let the words sink in. She was used to this, the hysteria of men to the smell of perfume outside the bedroom and the use of intellect outside of the recipe book. ‘If you prefer you can call me Dr Peters. Or Kelly, if that makes you feel less…intimidated.’

  ‘Kelly is fine,’ interjected Emmet before Steve could respond. ‘And I am Emmet and this slightly open-mouthed detective is Steve.’

  She nodded her head in greeting. ‘Now, before we get to the bones of it, there are a couple of requests I have, Emmet.’

  The Captain sat up. She had him. ‘By all means,’ he said.

  ‘Could you ask your men not to smoke at a crime scene? It creates extra work for an already overworked forensics department.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Emmet.

  ‘And if one of your men is going to revisit a crime scene,’ she looked sharply at Steve, ‘perhaps they could carry some disposable gloves with them. Every fingerprint is an extra five minutes work.’

  Of course,’ said Emmet again. ‘I’m sorry. We will put that into action forthwith.’

  He liked her. He was reminded of his daughter, now eighteen, who displayed the same certainty and forward thinking that Kelly Peters showed and who had also decided to go into a predominantly make profession – the law.

  ‘About the case, Kelly?’ He ventured carefully. ‘Anything?’

  ‘Oh, yes. The victim’s name is Charlene Astle. She was twenty-three years old and, as if you didn’t know, was a sex worker.’

  ‘You mean a hooker,’ stabbed Steve.

  Kelly Peters paused. She was mentally biting her lip as she had needed to do so often before.

  ‘The reason we know that,’ she continued, ‘is because she had a driver’s licence in her purse. The same purse that had Detective Wayt’s fingerprints all over it.’ She raised her thin, sculptured eyebrows at Emmet. Her eyes, he noted, were emerald green. They were shocking against her pale, unblemished skin. ‘Shall I bill you for that wasted hour?’

  ‘Again, I can only apologise,’ said Emmet. He cast a heavy glance at Steve. ‘We will ensure that the changes you have requested will be instigated as soon as possible.’

  He had said that line a thousand times, Steve could tell. He was metamorphosing from a cop to a politician. One day he’d be Chief of Police, Mayor, Senator. Every day that he sat in that chair was a day closer to the annihilation of his true identity.

  ‘A slightly curious note here is that we had gone over that property with a fine toothed comb. All the drains had been lifted and examined. The team is very thorough. I can’t believe they missed the purse first time round.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Steve quickly, ‘the purse had been hidden previously, slightly further up the grate. Maybe it had been disturbed and dropped into view.’

  Kelly Peters turned her body round to him. ‘Disturbed? By what?’

  Steve shrugged. ‘A rat?’

  ‘A rat would make sense,’ said Emmet. ‘They’re as big as cats down there.’

  ‘Well then,’ sighed Kelly. ‘I pity the cat that meets the cat sized rat in the fat darkness of night.’ She smiled tightly.

  Steve and Emmet exchanged glances.

  ‘There’s a lot of heavy traffic goes by,’ offered Steve. ‘One of those great lorries could cause vibrations.’

  ‘Whatever the reason,’ said Kelly. ‘We didn’t miss it. It wasn’t there.’

  ‘That you could see.’

  Kelly sighed and closed her eyes. She could see why Milt liked it up here. It was like bathing in testosterone. She would walk out of the precinct trailing that attractive smell of sweat and semen that pervaded the men of America’s locker rooms.

  She pressed on regardless.

  ‘Also, if you are trying to connect this with the recent spate of murders that Milt told me about, then it’s inconsistent.’

  ‘In what way?’ asked Steve. He was beginning to get pissed now and it was starting to show.

  ‘He hasn’t stolen before.’

  Steve laughed dismissively. ‘Apart from a wedding ring, a heart, a shoe and a couple of eyes, you mean.’

  ‘No,’ said Kelly patiently. ‘I’m not talking about trophies. Those are trophies. What I mean is, according to the information Milt gave me, nothing of value was stolen, until today.’

  ‘Of course it was,’ said Steve. ‘It doesn’t matter what you call it, be it trophy taking or theft…’

  ‘No,’ said Emmet firmly. ‘She’s right. As I recall, Robinson Taylor still had his wallet on him when he we found. It still had a hundred and twenty bucks in it. The white girl in the deserted offices, she still had a bracelet, a watch and a necklace on her. You make a good point, Kelly. His motive, whatever it may have been, was never theft. So why would he suddenly take her purse?’

  ‘Well, technically, he didn’t,’ said Steve. ‘He hid it.’

  Emmet locked his fingers and rested his chin on them. ‘Why?’

  ‘To come back for it later?’

  ‘That’s still theft.’

  ‘To hide her ID.’

  ‘He didn’t care about ID. He left Robinson Taylor’s wallet behind with his driver’s licence and his video club card in it.’

  ‘Maybe he panicked,’ snapped Steve.

  ‘He panicked?’ Emmet snorted derisively. ‘You’re talking about a man who opened up another man with a knife and then dumped him in the middle of Brooklyn in broad daylight. You’re talking about a man who towed a dead girl wrapped in Saran wrap from God knows where to a deserted office space, dumped her body and then calmly walked out, got into his car and drove away like he was leaving church. You’re talking about a man who, in the middle of an apartment block, threw an old lady’s body down four floors just to see if it bounced. He dissected a fat man and took the time to squeeze him into a furnace for Christ�
�s sake!’

  He lit a cigarette and rubbed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. He was tired. He pointed his fingers with the cigarette in at Steve. ‘He doesn’t just not panic, he’s brazen. He doesn’t give a damn. In a city where life is cheap and the worst things happen to the nicest of people, he knows he can get away with almost anything and no one will see him. Jesus Christ, he’s a rotten tree hidden in a rotten wood.’

  He fell back in his chair. His hands shook. He was mad as hell with Steve. In the past twelve hours the man had done nothing but screw up.

  He sighed deeply. ‘Go home, Steve. Go and see Val and have some time together.’

  ‘She’s still at her mother’s place.’

  ‘Then go home anyway. Get your head straight.’

  ‘You can’t just…’

  ‘I can. I am,’ said Emmet evenly. ‘Christ knows, I won’t be long after you.’

  Steve picked up his jacket and, with a cursory nod, left.

  ‘I’m sorry, Kelly,’ said Emmet. ‘We’re all feeling the stress.’

  ‘That’s okay.’ She crossed her legs and relaxed. ‘Milt says you have some first class hooch in here. Fancy sharing?’

  Emmet smiled. ‘I knew there was a reason I liked you.’

  He opened the draw, pulled out the bottle and poured some into a couple of mugs.

  ‘Here’s to strong women,’ he said as he raised his glass.

  Kelly narrowed her eyes. ‘I’m inclined to think you may mean that, Emmet.’

  ‘I do. I have a daughter just like you. And she takes after her Mom. I’m the soft touch in our house.’

  ‘Well then, here’s to the soft touch,’ said Kelly.

  ‘Do you think it’s the same guy?’ asked Emmet.

  ‘No. She was killed at the scene. It’s my understanding the others weren’t.’

  ‘Damn. I was hoping…’

  ‘You were hoping it was the same guy so your Detective Matto would be in the clear?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Emmet tiredly. ‘I mean, I’m certain he is in the clear, but…’

  ‘I know. Milt told me.’

  ‘Milt tells you a lot.’

  Kelly leaned forward. ‘You know what else? Everybody thinks Milt’s gay. I’m here to tell you he’s not.’