J Mark Bertrand

by Back on Murder (v5)

  His mouth twists into a maniacal grin, like he’s just bungee-jumped for the first time and is ready to go again. I shine the light along his head, making sure it’s water plastering his hair down and not blood and brain tissue.

  “What happened to you?”

  “You gotta come see,” he says, starting for the door. He stops, finger lifted, remembering something. “Oh, yeah. Hey, do you have any plastic bags – you know, like trash bags or something? I need to cover some stuff so it doesn’t get any wetter than it already is. I don’t know, maybe we should try to carry some things down.”

  “What are you talking about?” I ask, not waiting for a reply. I bolt through the door, lighting a path up the garage stairs. Everything looks normal to me. He follows me up, panting with excitement. I pass through the door and into the living room, noting nothing.

  He leads the way into the bedroom. “In here.”

  The moment I cross the threshold, my breath catches. My face is a foot away from a shimmering oak branch. Gazing upward, I see the jagged hole in the roof, another thick branch halfway in, and a torrent of rainwater blasting through the opening. A wad of shingles lies on top of Tommy’s bed.

  At first, I can’t say anything. We look at each other, and his manic thrill jumps the divide, setting off a tingle along my spine.

  “Cool, huh?” he says.

  “You were in bed when this happened?”

  His head shakes. “I heard this loud crack – must have been the trunk snapping or something – and my body just took over. I reached the door right when it hit.”

  I run the light over him again, hardly believing he came through this unscathed, but there’s not a scratch on him. He starts jogging in place, like he’s cold, or maybe brimming with nervous energy.

  “Let’s move what we can move,” I say, “then you can spend the 286 rest of the night in the house.”

  “Maybe I’ll sack out on the couch. I kind of don’t want to leave.”

  “You’re leaving,” I say. “Don’t even think about staying up here.”

  We leave the furniture in place – the bed and dresser – just taking the drawers out. Everything from the closet ends up on the living room couch. When we’re finished, I go outside for a look at the damage. The tree came from next door, smashing the far side of the garage, which is why I couldn’t see anything from my bedroom window.

  Seeing a tree like that upended, a hundred years thick, its earth-clotted roots naked to the rain, at first I can’t take my eyes off it. It didn’t break so much as it was uprooted, leaving a muddy crater rimmed with St. Augustine grass, super green in the Fenix light, as if the storm brought all its chlorophyll to the surface, the way grass might look if it could blush.

  Through the roots and down the length of the trunk the whole tree seems intact. Severed power lines crisscross the horizontal canopy as if, once it began to teeter, the tree reached out and tried to steady itself, grabbing hold of the fragile cables, bringing them down with it. I’ve seen branches break off in high wind and even trunks split by lightning, but never anything like this. One of the lines lies dormant in the neighbor’s yard. Another snakes across the garage roof. I’m happy all the sudden that the power’s out.

  To be on the safe side, I back the cars out of the garage and move the essentials – our rarely used bicycles, the generator, the fuel and water, my tools – onto the back deck. With the weight of that oak still resting on the roof, there’s no point in taking chances. Back inside, I throw some sheets on one of the couches, but Tommy’s too wired for sleep. He darts through the house, front windows to back, like he’s rooting for more damage and doesn’t want to miss anything.

  Giving up on sleep, I rummage through the fridge, which already feels lukewarm. We’ll need to get the generator started pretty soon. But for now I grab a bottle of still-cool water and imagine the phone call I’ll have to make later today.

  The bad news, Charlotte, is that your garage has a new skylight. The good news is, your tenant’s going to need a new place to live.

  In her mind, it’ll seem like a fair trade.

  Just after daybreak, the empty water bottle still resting on my chest, I hear Tommy above me and open my eyes. I installed myself in a chair, not meaning to nod off. He hunches over, speaking in a whisper.

  “Hey, Mr. March. The cops are outside.”

  “The cops?”

  “There’s one coming up to the door, and another one in the car.”

  He’s talking like we might be in trouble with the law, like maybe it’s time to bolt out the back. I pry myself out of the chair, the bottle dropping to the floor. I peer through the front window, then open the door. Sergeant Nix is shaking off his rain poncho on the porch. He looks up, smiling awkwardly.

  “How ’bout you get yourself dressed and take a little ride with me?” he says.

  “What’s the deal?”

  He glances back to the patrol cruiser on the curb. “I’m bending the rules as it is, but I figure I owe you after the other day.” His eyes drop to the bandage half-exposed by my shorts.

  “Yes, you do,” I say, patting his arm. “Give me five minutes.”

  My mind racing with possibilities, I head up the stairs, ignoring Tommy’s whispered questions. I pull on a pair of cargo pants, a black T-shirt, and a lightweight raincoat to keep my gear dry, then I’m out the front door, trailing Nix, who opens the back of the cruiser for me, ushering me in with an ironic bow.

  “This is Webb.” He motions to the uniform behind the wheel.

  Webb takes us down Durham, across Interstate 10 and the Allen Parkway, until it becomes Shepherd. Though the storm has passed, the wind gusts remain strong enough to lift the wiper blades off the glass. Condensation spider-webs the edge of the windows. We turn on West Gray, passing between the two Starbucks locations that sit like Scylla and Charybdis on either side of the street. Onto Montrose, heading back to the neighborhood where I left Carter Robb, near Joe Thomson’s Morgan Street studio.

  Nix gives verbal directions at every intersection, but Webb anticipates most commands, leading me to suspect that we’re returning to someplace they’ve just come from.

  We drive the rain-slick streets, avoiding side turns where water’s risen higher than the road, and the power lines snapped free and coiled through severed branches. As the sun rises, we see a few people emerging from shelter for their first look at what the hurricane has done.

  “Are you going to tell me where we’re going?” I ask.

  Nix shakes his head. “I’m gonna show you.”

  Ahead, a side road is blocked off by a parked hpd cruiser. Nix tells Webb to turn and then to pull to the curb. Soon he’s out the door, advancing toward some debris strewn across the road, motioning for me to follow. A derelict building off to the right has come apart under the pressure of wind, giving up the scraps of plywood that have long sealed its windows and doors. Out of them poured the structure’s long-abandoned contents, mainly soaked boxes and broken-down furniture, a refrigerator door, a lidless cooler with rusty stains inside.

  I know these blocks pretty well, and no doubt I’ve passed this building a thousand times before, never taking any particular notice. On the opposite corner, a sleek modern three-level house is going up, or was until the storm knocked a padlocked trailer sideways against the cantilevered porch.

  A long spool of plastic sheeting has unwound, too, running across the derelict’s yard and into the street. It snaps like a sail in the wind. As I approach, the plastic glistens, streaked with mud and leaves. Lumps of debris are caught up inside. It makes me think of a distended intestine. The tail end, right across the middle of the road, swells like the body of a python after it’s swallowed something whole.

  Nix hunches over the unspooled plastic, lifting corners as he edges along its length toward the swollen end.

  He grins. “Nothing like a decomp first thing in the morning.”

  The plastic is opaque, the kind of sheeting used on construction sites to s
eal openings. I kneel beside the swell in the plastic, which is in fact a swaddled corpse. Discolored clothing, an emaciated and withered shape, a brownish husk of a human being, gender indeterminate, age indeterminate. Small enough that it must be a woman, though, or maybe a child.

  My eyes trace the long spool of plastic back to its source, the derelict building, yet another square two-story structure in brown brick, a former business or maybe a duplex but now just a rotted shell waiting to be rehabbed or more likely demolished. Ten blocks or so east of Montrose, ten blocks or so north of Westheimer, tucked into a neighborhood without sidewalks where time-blackened bungalows sit cheek by jowl with the kind of glass and steel architecture projects going up across the street. The yard is overgrown, the windows boarded up, the doors inaccessible, a place so forgotten its plywood coverings aren’t even tagged by spray paint.

  “Why am I here? You could’ve just called this in.”

  “Yeah,” Nix says. “But come take a look inside.”

  We follow the unwound plastic back to its source, the sheet overlapping in vine-like rings. The body must have been tightly wrapped. The wind, knocking through, snatched the bundle up and unraveled it, bringing some long-hidden secret out into the light. Although, in this heat, it wouldn’t have to be hidden long to reach such a state.

  Glancing through the doorway, I see the interior walls are gone, leaving a vast dark cavity with a feral reek. A stack of wooden pallets is scattered across the floor, more plastic caught up in the slats.

  “The body must have been against the far wall,” Nix says, “with the pallets stacked in front. Then the wind came through and vomited everything out.”

  Underneath the pallets I spot something pink and shiny that doesn’t belong, a surface too pristine and fresh. Nix stands still, letting me advance alone. Whatever it is, he’s already seen it. A faux leather purse almost untouched by the surrounding filth, its surface glinting dully, zippered shut and waiting.

  “Everything’s just how we found it. Only I did check inside.”

  I slip on a pair of gloves, then pull the zipper open. A slim wallet nestles up top. I lift it gingerly and place it on the floor, using the edge of my finger to pop the strap. The wallet falls open. Behind the plastic id window, there’s a Texas driver’s license.

  “No way.”

  Back at the entrance, Nix smiles grimly. “Murder will out, right? But I’ve never seen it happen like this before. I thought you’d want to get in on it, all things considered.”

  I stand up slowly, blinking at the light outside.

  “You better put everything back how you found it,” he says.

  I obey, operating on muscle memory, my thoughts elsewhere. Numb with disbelief. No feeling of accomplishment, certainly no closure. The usual exhilaration a big break induces, utterly absent. Tommy’s maniacal grin flashes in my mind. The tree on top of my garage, the translucent winding sheet out on the road. The wound in my thigh starts to throb.

  “I’ve got a call to make,” I say.

  “I bet you do.” He walks forward, gazing down at the purse. “So we’re even.”

  “Right.”

  Back outside, I’m limping, advancing in tiny increments, stopping to look around. I half expect the sergeant to come after me, laughing, saying it’s all some sick joke. Approaching the body once more, I get down on my knees. My hand goes to the plastic shroud, then hesitates, as if my touch had the power to profane. I decide not to look again. Instead, I put a little distance between myself and the corpse, the object of so much hope on the part of so many people.

  After a storm like this, cellular reception is spotty. Houston rain showers have been known to bring a network down. But the line is crystal clear, the ringing so loud I hold the receiver away from my ear.

  “March.”

  Cavallo’s voice comes out like a yawn, but I don’t apologize for waking her. Instead, I give her the news, flat and detached, and she receives it in the same spirit.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Not from the body,” I say. “It’ll have to be tested. But her purse is here, with her identification, so it seems like a safe bet.”

  “We’ll see,” she replies. Her words aren’t a form of denial, just a professional insistence on checking off the necessary boxes. “If you’re right, then I guess it’s finally over.”

  Spoken like a Missing Persons investigator, but I don’t correct her. What looks like an ending to her, though, is just a start. We have a body at long last, and a body is not an end but a beginning.

  “Just get over here.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  After I hang up the phone, I dial another number. I don’t have to. I’m under no obligation. And it’s doubtful there is anything constructive Carter Robb can do. An identification – even from someone who knew her, even if I was perverse enough to pull back that plastic and ask him for one – isn’t going to be very easy, given the state of decomposition. Maybe the clothes would be recognizable, though Cavallo will have an inventory of what she was last seen wearing.

  I call anyway, not for the sake of the case, but because I know how I would feel, just blocks away, already consumed with guilt, finding out how close I’d been without realizing. I don’t owe it to him, but I can’t help feeling that on some level I do, maybe in the way we all owe each other everything, every possible courtesy, on account of what life puts us through.

  He arrives first, the officers at the end of the road flagging down his car. He’s dressed like he was last night, only he’s wearing the wadded T-shirt he used to wipe his sweat. I motion for him to come through, but he approaches slowly, stopping a good distance back, cupping his hand over his mouth, closing his eyes. And then he crumples to the ground.

  “What’s this?” Nix asks.

  I shrug, then start off toward Robb. “I guess we all have favors to pay back.”

  CHAPTER 24

  “This was an act of God in every sense of the word,” Cavallo says from behind her mask, speaking to no one in particular. Wanda Mosser glances my way, lifting an eyebrow, but I make no response out of respect for the dead.

  We gather around the autopsy table, waiting for Bridger, who enters with a set of X-rays in hand, pegging them up against the light table. The enlarged negative image of a chest cavity, ribs translucent against the black background, and next to it a side view of the skull. He uses a pencil eraser to point out the light-colored blemishes.

  “Here and here,” he says, indicating two cone-shaped anomalies, one in the chest and one in the abdomen. “And here we have a third.” Touching the eraser against another white cone inside the cranium.

  Mosser clears her throat. “So that’s two to the chest and one to the head? Like an execution?”

  A Mozambique Drill is the term she’s looking for, but I don’t correct her.

  “Not exactly,” he says, moving to the body. “The angles are very different. Your people will be able to tell you more, but it looks to me like one of these chest shots was fired head-on, and the others at a steep trajectory, like she was on the ground. The head shot, as you can see from this stippling, was a contact wound, probably a coup de grace. But based on the two chest wounds, I’m guessing some time passed before the second shot, at least enough for her to fall to the ground.”

  I go over to the X-rays for a closer look. “The bullets look small.”

  “My money’s on .22 caliber,” Bridger says, “but we’ll know for sure in a minute.”

  The official identification was made this morning using dental records. Wanda and Rick Villanueva prepared the release, but it was the chief who held the actual press conference. Thanks to the power blackouts all over the city, most people in Houston still won’t know that the body of Hannah Mayhew, the girl whose disappearance riveted the nation, is now on a slab at the medical examiner’s office where, powered by generators, her autopsy is proceeding.

  Wanda wanted to be here, as did Cavallo, but by rights I’m the only one obligated. T
his is a homicide investigation now, and thanks to my captain’s dogged insistence on protocol, it belongs to me, the first detective on the scene. Considering my experience on the task force, the decision makes sense. Not that anybody else on the squad sees it that way.

  “Time of death?” I ask.

  Bridger pauses, then begins the Y-incision, ignoring my question for the moment. A technician steps forward to cut the ribs, lifting the sternum free. Next to me, Cavallo’s breath seems to catch.

  “I’m only speculating,” Bridger says, “but based on the amount of decomposition, it wouldn’t surprise me if she’s been dead pretty much since the day she disappeared.”

  Cavallo adjusts her mask. “Sixteen days.”

  “Give or take. And based on the postmortem lividity, I’d say the body was moved after death. So she wasn’t killed in that house, I’m guessing, just dumped there.”

  The plastic sheeting probably came from the work site across the street, and access to the building itself wouldn’t have been difficult. It was boarded up so long ago that the panels would have been easy enough to shift. The question is, who would think to place a body there? I’ve already canvassed the neighborhood, interviewing everyone I could find, and the contractor from the house across the street has promised me a list of employees as soon as he can find a way to charge his laptop. Of course, the killer could have driven by on a whim, noticed the location, and taken advantage of it.

  By the end of the autopsy, Bridger confirms what the X-rays suggested. Hannah was killed by a .22 caliber gunshot to the head. The bullet entered at the temple. She’d already been shot twice before, once in the chest, collapsing a lung, and once in the abdomen, the second shot probably fired while she was in a prone position or possibly propping herself up.

  “There’s no indication of a sexual assault?” Wanda asks.

  He shakes his head.

  “Well, thank God for that.”

  It’s hard to muster much gratitude in the face of the desiccated husk of Hannah Mayhew, but somehow I find myself agreeing.

  Out in the corridor I peel off my mask, happy to breathe freely again. Cavallo leans against the wall, then sinks down on her haunches, clenched arms extended over her knees. Wanda pats her absently on the head, then starts to go.