Time of Death

by Shirley Kennett

  Schultz answered his cellphone, and it was clear right away that it wasn’t a social call. It irritated PJ that she regularly got news second-hand from a subordinate because she wasn’t as plugged into the police pipeline as the rest of her team. Shouldn’t whoever was on the other end of that call be talking to her? The silent phone on her desk said it all.

  To derail those thoughts, PJ refreshed her coffee, even though her mug was half-full. She was out of creamer—Dave practically ate the stuff. She wondered what would happen if she bought individual packets. He’d probably rip open dozens of them. Sarcasm didn’t work on him either—she’d tried. PJ had been driven to buying the stuff at a warehouse club. The sugar had been disappearing at an alarming rate, too.

  After waiting for a few minutes as Schultz listened and interspersed a few “yeahs” and “no shits” on his end, she was getting impatient. Something that was said caused him to raise his eyebrows, and she wondered what that could be. She tapped her pencil rapidly on her desk, drawing a frown from Schultz. Anita’s eyes were closed. PJ wondered if the woman could fall asleep that fast. At last, Schultz folded his cell. With that nearly imperceptible sound, Anita’s eyes popped open and she was as attentive as ever.

  Handy trick. She must be able to take twenty naps a day.

  Schultz sat back in his metal folding chair—upholstered chairs for her office were perpetually on order—and puckered his lips. Her pencil resumed its tap tap tap, but he waited until he’d collected his thoughts.

  “As far as ID goes,” Schultz said, “there’s been a missing persons report just filed that generally matches this man physically. Guy named Arlan Merrett was supposed to be looking over some business deals in Chicago since last Wednesday. His wife got home from Kansas City this morning. She expected him to have gotten home Saturday night, but he wasn’t there. She checked his hotel and he never showed up. Never kept his appointments, either, according to a couple of pissed-off clients. She says he’s never done anything like this and there has to be something wrong.”

  “Any chance he just ran out on the marriage?” Anita said.

  “Not according to June Merrett, his wife. She says they were happily married. ‘Ask anybody,’ she says, ‘they’ll tell you.’ Of course, wives always say that shit.”

  “He’s out of town for several days and she never tries to call him at his hotel, not even once?” PJ asked.

  Schultz’s right shoulder went up in what passed for a shrug but looked more like a muscle spasm. The twisting motion pulled his worn leather jacket, already gaping slightly across his belly, far enough apart that she cringed, expecting to be hit with a flying button. They all held.

  “Some people aren’t clinging vines,” he said. “They can be out of each other’s sight and not freak out.”

  “This whole business of the Missing Persons report falling in our laps just when we need it seems way too convenient.”

  “I’ll take any coincidence I can get. There’s probably a shitload of homicides out there that get solved because the killer gets a parking ticket or something.”

  “Or maybe the wife didn’t try to contact Arlan because she wanted time for some hanky-panky of her own,” Anita said. “What about this trip to K.C.?”

  “Shopping at Country Club Plaza,” Schultz said. “Mrs. Merrett likes the Christmas lights. Went to some kind of conference while she was there, she says.”

  “Lots of hotels around there,” Anita said. “Wifey will play while hubby’s away.”

  “We’re getting ahead of ourselves, aren’t we? We don’t even know if the victim is Arlan Merrett,” PJ said.

  Schultz waved his hand dismissively. “A patrol car’s picking her up now. She’s coming in for identification.”

  PJ imagined a cheerful woman, arms filled with Christmas gifts from a pleasant shopping excursion, fresh from hearing motivational speakers at a conference, coming home to an empty house. Not too worried at first, figuring her husband just got delayed on a business trip. Then in a matter of hours, she’s on her way to the morgue. PJ’s heart went out to June, if that was her Arlan who’d been bounced up a slope on a gurney. She allowed herself to slide into June’s despair, just a little.

  Her pencil snapped in two.

  “Easy, Doc,” Schultz said. “That’s city property.”

  Dave came in, cold air hitching a ride in the crevices of his coat, bringing a bit of winter to PJ’s stuffy basement office.

  “No blood on the street, but there was some on the cobblestones, not a lot, in a pattern that indicates the body was rolled,” he said. “You know, like a tire with a patch of mud on it that leaves an intermittent track as it spins around.”

  PJ caught Dave up on the development with June Merrett.

  “How is she going to identify him for certain?” he asked. “The guy’s face has got to be hard to recognize.”

  “That’s where things get interesting,” Schultz said. “The clincher might be a scar he has on his back, high on the left shoulder, same place we saw one when the ME turned the body. That is, those of us who were here when the ME arrived saw the scar,” Schultz said, keeping his eyes away from PJ, the object of his scorn. “The wife says a horse kicked him. We’ll know after the autopsy. She’s got a photo of the scar.”

  “What, she has a scar scrapbook or something?” Dave said. “Sounds fishy to me.”

  “Yeah. Of course, we could be looking for a jilted male lover,” Schultz said. “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and I don’t think it matters what sex that woman is.”

  PJ noticed him looking pointedly at her—Huh?—and gave him a shrug of her own. None of her buttons shot across the room, although the extra twenty pounds on her frame tried their collective best.

  “Hey!” Anita said. “What about a sex change operation gone really, really bad? Bad enough that the so-called surgeon got rid of all traces of the botched work, and the patient, too?”

  “There could be something to that,” PJ said. “There are known cases of transgendered people who didn’t make it through the rigorous pre-surgical program at clinics. Driven to change, they’d do anything for sex reassignment surgery—even put their lives in the hands of an amateur.”

  “Shit,” Schultz said. “So they got a few inches of dick they don’t want. Maybe I should do a little Dumpster diving behind one of those clinics, check out the leftovers. Hell, I can sew on a button. I oughtta be able to sew on a dick.”

  That’s it. That’s absolutely it. What exactly do I see in this guy?

  PJ smacked her hand down on the desk, rattling her Mickey Mouse clock. Her hand smarted a little, but it was a righteous pain. “Leo, that has to be the most insensitive and crude thing you’ve ever said.”

  “Amen, sister,” Anita said.

  The office door swung open a foot, and Lieutenant Howard Wall, PJ’s boss, made one of his lightning appearances. His face poked through the opening. If he’d tried to squeeze the rest of himself in, the contents of the office would be at critical mass.

  “The scar matches. Plus June Merrett ID’d her husband at the morgue. Claimed she recognized his eyes,” Wall said, with a roll of his own. “ME wants another source of ID, but her word will do until we get dental records. Mrs. Merrett seemed subdued when she saw her husband, a lot less heated up than she was acting earlier. Then it hits ’em about three in the morning, and they fall apart.” The door quickly closed, leaving PJ’s mouth open. She’d been about to give Schultz a scathing lecture.

  “Catching flies, Doc?” Schultz said.

  “Play nice, kids,” Dave interrupted, before she could respond. “What’s the matter with you two lately, anyway?”

  PJ felt heat on her cheeks and hoped the blush wasn’t too obvious. As a psychologist, she should know better than to let Schultz get under her skin, especially in her work environment.

  There was something wrong between them. Meanwhile, though, the sex was great. Schultz had hidden talents.

  PJ cleared her throat. “Th
at was a remarkably fast ID. Doesn’t it seem like June Merrett was anxious to have her husband declared dead?”

  “So she could take center stage with lover-boy?” Anita asked. “I mean, really, a scar photo?”

  “So if it turns out to be Scarman, where’s he been for four days?” PJ asked.

  “He might have been killed right away and stashed someplace cool to slow down decay,” Anita said. “Or maybe he really was alive all that time, and the killer took four days to do that damage.”

  The conversation fizzled as everyone considered what Anita said. PJ tried not to turn her vivid imagination loose on what could have happened to Scarman during four days of captivity.

  “I don’t think he was killed immediately,” PJ said. “I noticed enough stubble on his chin that I think he’s been alive for a few days without shaving.”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Anita said. “The skin shrinks after death and exposes more of the hair shaft that was buried in it. So hair appears longer, especially in the beard area, but there hasn’t been any real growth.”

  Noises from the men’s room across the hall intruded. Four people in the converted utility closet that served as PJ’s office overtaxed the space’s air handling capability. There was a layer of cold, uncirculated air at floor level. Starting about knee height, the temperature gradually increased. At the level of her face, it was enough to bead sweat at her hairline. She hated to think how hot it was at the ceiling. Smells were trapped at different levels, too. Doughnuts past their prime—long past. Stale coats tossed on a folding chair in the corner. Mud and something else of questionable origin on Dave’s shoes. Remnants of sausage biscuits imported from Millie’s Diner by Schultz. On the positive side, there was a clean soap and herbal shampoo smell drifting over from Anita’s spot.

  PJ wished she could say the same for herself. She’d gotten up, tossed cold water on her face, thrown on yesterday’s clothes, left a note for her fourteen-year-old son Thomas, and yes, fed the cat before leaving. She was suddenly conscious that others would be picking up the room’s odorous mix, and she might be a contributor to it.

  “Flip on that fan, would you?” she said to Dave.

  “Officer Leeds had something to say about that scar business,” Schultz said.

  So that’s who was on the phone. The buddy network. She was relieved that her boss hadn’t bypassed her in favor of Schultz.

  “He was there with Wall at the morgue. Mrs. Merrett said they had taken pictures of each other’s bodies, all over. They’d have a little champagne, then take turns flipping through the photo albums, paint melted chocolate on whatever part showed up in the picture, and lick it off.”

  “She actually told Wall that?” Anita said.

  “Scout’s honor. How about that, Doc?”

  “Not too surprising,” she said. “Lots of couples have sex rituals that get them in the mood. In some cases, the ritual becomes so much a part of the act they might have trouble separating one from the other.”

  “Shovel on the shrink talk. Transgendered. Sex rituals.”

  She narrowed her eyes at Schultz, but he was unfazed.

  “Get this. Mrs. Merrett offered to show the rest of the photos to the lead detective in the case. Wall told her that would be me, Dee-tective Leo Schultz. You think she’s gonna come on to me?” Schultz said.

  Dave burst out laughing.

  “Hey, is that so funny? I hear she’s not a bad-looking broad.” Schultz ran his hand over the top of his head, a gesture left over from when there was some hair there to smooth.

  Dave said, “Take along a camera. She’ll probably want to get started on a new album.”

  “Damn straight.”

  “Could we get off this subject? Schultz, you and Dave get with Missing Persons and see what information they’ve got on Arlan Merrett. Also, check out the results of the door-to-door in that hotel and see if any witnesses have turned up. Anita and I will take on June and her body photos. Come back to my office when you’re done. Wall’s going to want an update. After that, I’ll want to get started on some simulations.”

  “No fair about the photos,” Schultz said. “June asked for me first.”

  Chapter 4

  SCHULTZ SWUNG THE DOOR closed with a satisfying bang on his way out and headed off down the hall without a word to the others. Talking things over was useful—sometimes—but he needed time to process his own thoughts. He had a little time before meeting up with Dave, who was going to make the calls to check on possible hotel witnesses.

  PJ sometimes complained about her office, but at least it was better than his situation. Three decades of mostly-devoted work and he didn’t have an office to call his own. Maybe if he’d gone the administrative route, he’d be sitting in an office with a view of the Arch or at least the parking lot of the Municipal Courts Building. His work area was in a large room, desks bumped edge to edge, and there was no privacy. Worst of all, he shared his desk with a detective who usually worked nights. The man’s name was Samuel Vinnert, but his strong southern accent and good-looking ass—or so the women said—tagged him as Rhett Buttler, with two t’s.

  Rhett accused Schultz of getting the whole “Buttler” thing started, which was true. It was his way of retaliating because Rhett left behind the scent of his aftershave on everything he touched on the desk.

  Schultz settled into a wooden swivel chair that was a tight fit. There were shaped indentations in the seat for someone’s posterior, but that someone wasn’t Schultz. The chair screeched whenever it swiveled, discouraging use of that function. Each man who shared the desk had a drawer reserved for his exclusive use. There were no locks, so it was done by the honor system.

  Yanking open his private desk drawer, he checked his box of Little Debbie Zebra Cakes. Sure enough, one cellophane-wrapped package was gone. It was a classic example of Locard’s Exchange Principal: “When two objects come in contact with each other they exchange trace evidence.” Rhett left aftershave and took Zebra Cakes.

  Morally freed by the man’s transgression, Schultz opened Rhett’s private drawer and pawed through the magazines.

  Crap. Nothing new. What’s a guy to do when he has to take a dump?

  He slammed the drawer loud enough to draw the stares of the younger detectives in the room.

  “Nothing to see here. Go back to your petty feuds and back-stabbing.”

  At the age of fifty-five, Schultz was a dinosaur to the up-and-coming, who wanted little to do with him.

  CHIP swept all that away. He worked with a team where his contribution was appreciated and nobody patronized him as though experience equated to obsolescence.

  He closed his eyes and let the images of the morning’s events flow across the screen behind his eyelids. Schultz had a way of working that presented a logical front, but on the inside, he relied on hunches taken one step further: he was often able to sense a connection between himself and the killer he sought. He pictured it as a shining cord making its way from him toward a sinister, unknown destination. Each hunch he made, each fact he gathered, extended that golden cord out further into the darkness until one final connection made the cord shoot forward like an arrow straight through the killer’s heart. Then all Schultz had to do was slide along the cord and he would land in a vat of evil masquerading as a human.

  He told himself it was only a visualization of detecting techniques, but he knew there was more to it.

  He tested the cord and found it coiled near his heart. Nothing to go on yet, so he reviewed the morning’s events.

  Driving downtown, mind clear, ready to work. Swirling fog, then the first glimpse of the body.

  As he got closer, he could see that the body was male, muscular, with well-developed arms and chest, trim waist, and a washboard abdomen. The raw flesh where the genitals used to be raised gooseflesh on his arms and made his own balls crawl up a little higher in their sacs. The face was a mess from the eyes down. Fingers that at first glance appeared to be painted with red nail polish turned out t
o be missing the tips of the phalanges.

  The killer trying to eradicate fingerprints to slow identification? The torn face could have resulted from a clumsy attempt to remove the teeth to prevent comparison with dental records.

  Sitting at his desk in the overheated room, Schultz felt a chill of the heart.

  He pulled a notebook from his back pocket and flipped it open to a clean page. He sketched a timeline and jotted down questions as he thought of them.

  A rage killer who had the presence of mind to cover his tracks by making the body hard to identify?

  Unless what appears to be a rage killing was cold and deliberate.

  The wife’s bullshit about licking chocolate—why wave that scar photo around if she was the one who tried to make the body hard to identify with specific mutilations? Another piece that didn’t fit.

  And another: where had Arlan Merrett been for the four days before he turned up on the levee?

  “Looking good, Ernestine,” Schultz said. He’d taken a walk over to Missing Persons to exert a little personal charm and make sure he got his hands on everything they had about Arlan Merrett. He was dismayed to see that Ernestine Bradlock was on duty, but it was too late to back out. She’d already seen him.

  “Uh, huh, where’s that book you borrowed?”

  Shit. She remembered. He’d borrowed an expensive textbook from a forensic science class from her.

  “Still reading it.”

  “You bastard, you lost it. I just know it. You’ve been avoiding me.”

  “I …”

  “That book cost a hundred and ten dollars and you’re going to pay every fucking penny of it.”

  “Hey, if I could just get a word in here,” Schultz said. He leaned heavily on the corner of her desk. Most people would have shrunk back, but Ernestine held her ground. She’d worked in the Department of Corrections for fifteen years, until her back went out. A desk job hadn’t sweetened her disposition. She was solidly built and could probably arm-wrestle Schultz to a draw. Even the short frizz of gray hair that topped her elegantly shaped head broadcast, “Don’t mess with me.”