The Harry Starke Series: Books 1-3: The Harry Starke Series Boxset

by Blair Howard

  Good lord. Now those are two good old boys, that’s for sure.

  “Did you move anything; take anything off the body?” I asked.

  “No sir,” he said, shaking his head, vigorously. “Ah jus’ cut the plastic, ‘an then Ah jumped outa there and called 911. They tol’ us to stay put, an’ we did. Dint we, Chester?”

  Chester nodded enthusiastically, chewing vigorously on something nasty. He turned his head, spit a stream of dark brown fluid onto the boards beside him, and looked up again, still chewing rapidly.

  “Then you won’t mind if we search you, right?” Kate asked.

  They both looked warily at her, then slowly shook their heads.

  “Stand up. Both of you,” Kate said. “Lonnie.” She twitched her head in Chester’s direction.

  Lonnie stepped forward. “Do it!” he growled, and they did.

  He’s an intimidating presence, is Lonnie Guest; a big man, not big tall, big fat. He’s maybe five feet eleven and could probably do with losing fifty, maybe even sixty pounds. He’s obnoxious, arrogant, and an enigma. He’s not quite as stupid as he would have you believe; he’s often given to rare and always unexpected bursts of brilliance. He doesn’t like me worth a damn, but he tolerates me. Mostly because he knows Kate wouldn’t have it any other way. He’s useful, sometimes, when he’s not wearing his perpetual shit-eating grin.

  So, the two would-be floorboard thieves stood quietly while Lonnie slowly and thoroughly searched them. By the time he’d finished, they were standing before us wearing nothing but socks and filthy underwear, shivering.

  “Nothing,” Lonnie said, stepping away from them.

  “Get dressed and get out of here,” Kate said. “And be quick about it.”

  “Whut about our wood?” the big man said, through chattering teeth.

  “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,” she said. “The wood is not yours. It belongs to the property owner, and I’m sure he, or she, has plans for it. If you’d been caught stealing it, you were looking at a couple of years in Silverdale. As it is, you can go, and be thankful. Oh, and we’ll need to borrow the generator. You can pick it up at the lot tomorrow morning.”

  “But, but, but....”

  “No buts, dickhead,” Lonnie said. “Just go take the genny out of the truck and leave before the lieutenant changes her mind. Gimme your full name, address and phone number, and I’ll see the supervisor at the lot has it when you go pick it up.”

  They shambled off, along the landing toward the stairs, muttering to each other.

  “That was a little harsh, don’t you think?” I said to Kate. “After all, they did call it in. God only knows when and what we would have found if they hadn’t.”

  She didn’t answer. She just shrugged and walked back across the room to the hole in the floor where the techs were easing the fragile package out from between the joists.

  They laid it gently on the floor and stepped away. We all stood in a circle around it, looking down upon the pathetic little bundle that once had been a young woman, full of life, and maybe dreams of something special. It never failed to affect me.

  How do they do it? I’ve seen it so many times. How does someone intentionally take the life of another human being? Assuming it was murder, that is.

  I looked at Kate. Her face was pale, her lips clamped tight together, and her brow furrowed. She must have felt me staring at her, because she looked at me, turned the corners of her mouth down, and shook her head.

  “C’mon,” she whispered. “Let’s get out of here. I need a drink.”

  Chapter 2

  We didn’t feel much like eating, but we were cold, so we headed to the Billiard Club on Jordan Avenue. The drive took less than ten minutes, and it was still early when we arrived. The place was almost deserted. Kate parked the unmarked in the lot, and I parked beside her.

  “When are you going to get yourself a decent car, Starke?” Lonnie asked as we walked across the lot. “Hell, you should be driving a Porsche instead of that piece o’ shit Maxima.”

  Kate smiled, and so did I.

  “You’re right, Lonnie. I could have a Porsche if I wanted one, but I don’t. They attract too much attention. The piece of shit Maxima would surprise you — zero to sixty in five point three seconds — and it’s low profile; nobody notices it. Ever tried surveillance in a sports car, Lonnie? Once is enough, let me tell you. Besides, I never did put much stock in expensive automobiles. Quickest way I know to throw money away.”

  He snorted. “I had your kinda money, I’d be drivin’ a Ferrari.”

  I smiled, but didn’t answer.

  We ordered burgers and fries all round, a Bud each for the two cops, and a Blue Moon for me, no orange slice. As the lunchtime crowd had yet to arrive, we were able to find a small, round table in what we hoped would be a quiet corner.

  I felt a little uncomfortable, sitting at the same table as Lonnie, especially with Kate, but there was no other choice.

  We go back a long way, Kate and I, more than fifteen years, in fact, since she was a rookie cop. We’d been more than just associates, too, until I screwed things up. We were still friends, and we still worked together, now and then. I was a cop before I was a PI, and she sometimes called me in as a consultant, unpaid of course. This was one of those times, although I have a feeling that Kate’s boss, Chief Johnston, would have put a stop to it if the collaboration wasn’t so productive.

  “So, Harry, what do you think?” Kate asked, over the neck of her beer bottle.

  “About the body? I have no idea. We need to wait and see what Doc Sheddon finds. How long has Hill House been vacant?”

  “A long time,” Lonnie said. “Seven or eight years, at least. A skanky woman crackhead broke an arm when she fell down those basement stairs a few weeks ago, so the council decided it was a danger to the public and an eyesore, and that it should be demolished.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I knew that. I saw it in the Times a couple of weeks ago. Shame. It must have been quite something in its day. If that body has been under the floor for ten or more years, she must have been put there when the house was occupied. We need to find out about its owners, who they were and where they are now. We also need to know exactly what the house was being used for over the last twenty years or so, and when it became vacant. I heard it was some kind of shelter, or rehab.”

  “Some organization for battered and abused women, I think it was last,” Lonnie mumbled, through a mouthful of burger. “Before that it was a homeless shelter. Before that... I dunno.” Christ. Didn’t anybody ever teach him any manners?

  “Well,” Kate said. “That’s a start, but we’ll need specifics, firm dates, names, and so on. Lonnie, when we get out of here, I want you to go to the records office and get everything you can. I want it all, so do a good job. Take my car.”

  “But....”

  “Yeah, I know,” she said. “You wanted to be present at the autopsy. Wow, you really are a morbid son of a bitch. I wish I could trade places with you, but I can’t. So you’re it. Just suck it up and do it.”

  He grunted something and took a huge bite of his burger. He chewed noisily, washed it down with a huge pull from his beer, and then stuffed a huge handful of fries into his mouth. He reminded me of a pig at the trough. Nasty!

  He shoved his stool away from the table, rose to his feet, belched quietly, adjusted his belt, and smiled benignly at Kate. “Okay, then. I’ll take the car and head on down to the courthouse, right?”

  She nodded. “Yes. I’ll ride with Harry to the Forensic Center. Don’t take all day, Lonnie. I’ll meet you back at the office, say... at four.”

  He nodded and shambled away. Somehow, in a confined space, Lonnie appeared larger than life and, dressed as he was in a quilted cold-weather jacket, he looked enormous.

  “How the hell do you put up with him, Kate?”

  “Oh, he’s not so bad. He tries hard, most of the time. He can get on your nerves, though.”

  “He’s a
slob,” I said.

  She looked at her watch. “Time to go. We don’t want to keep the old man waiting.”

  The old man was just finishing his lunch when we arrived. He was seated at his desk, eating from a box of McNuggets and sipping something through a straw from a blue plastic cup with a picture of a happy Fozzie Bear. Seated across from him was Carol Owens, the center’s forensic anthropologist. She was nursing a cup of coffee.

  Carol — Bones, as Doc Sheddon insists on calling her — is a sweet lady in her late forties, a bit of a geek, with an inordinate sense of humor. I suppose you’d need one if you spent your days sorting through the bones of the dead, as she does.

  “Hey, you two,” Sheddon said, flapping a hand in the direction of two chairs. “Come on in and sit you down. I’ll be finished in minute. You want coffee? No? Okay.”

  “So,” Carol said. “How is it with Samson and Delilah? Haven’t seen you two in a while.”

  Samson and Delilah? That’s a first.

  Kate looked at me and smiled. Then she looked at Carol and shrugged. “Okay, I guess.”

  The small talk went on for several minutes more until Doc Sheddon finally popped the last of the nuggets into his mouth, pushed everything away from him, and stood up. His seat scraped the floor noisily as he shoved it away with the backs of his knees.

  “Let’s go take a look, then,” he said.

  The remains were on one of the stainless steel autopsy tables. Carol had opened the plastic sheeting and exposed the bones. They were a pathetic sight to be sure: blackened, some of the ribs were broken, scraps of mummified material still adhered to some of the ribs and long bones, matted hair around and beneath the skull.

  All of a sudden, I felt very depressed. This poor soul was someone’s daughter. How the hell does anyone cope with something like this?

  “As you can see, there’s not much left of her,” Sheddon began. “The environment was nice and dry, at least most of the time, so the corpse is partly skeletonized and partially mummified. Many of the tendons and ligaments have decayed, thus some of the bones have separated. The jawbone is no longer attached to the skull, and some of the teeth have come loose. She’s not much more than a pile of bones. That being so, there’s not much I can tell you, other than that she was strangled to death, probably manually. The hyoid bone... there, you see?”

  He pointed with his pen to a U-shaped scrap of bone, barely distinguishable among the debris.

  “It’s damaged, cracked in two places, by someone’s thumbs, I shouldn’t wonder. Other than that, there are no obvious signs of blunt or sharp force trauma.”

  He paused, shook his head, obviously saddened.

  “I don’t think she was much more than a teenager, probably sixteen or seventeen, maybe even eighteen, but no more than that. Five feet six inches tall. She hadn’t finished growing. African-American. Black hair. Weight? Hard to tell, but probably between 120 and 140 pounds. PMI? I dunno... at least not with any specificity. The plastic wasn’t wrapped tightly, so air, insects, and atmospheric conditions played a part in the decomposition. I’d say nine to twelve years.”

  “What about identification?” Kate asked. “DNA, surely?”

  “Yes. The teeth are intact, so we have enough material for a DNA analysis, so that might help. We’ve also taken care to preserve the integrity of the plastic. When we’ve finished with it, I’ll have it sent for fingerprinting. Maybe you’ll catch a break. There’s not enough material left on the fingers to print, so that’s not an option. Teeth? There are a couple of fillings that might come in handy — numbers thirteen and fifteen — and there’s an old scaphoid fracture of the left wrist; a fairly common injury, especially among young and athletic folk. As I said, not much to work with, but it’s something. Good luck to you both. Oh, one more thing....”

  He picked up a small evidence envelope from the table and handed it to Kate. She opened it, peeked inside, and then looked questioningly at Sheddon.

  “She was wearing the necklace, and the ring was on the middle finger of her right hand. It’s a man’s signet ring. Gold, I think, with what looks like the letters RJ engraved on it. The necklace is silver, tarnished, almost black. Might help, if you ever figure out who she is.”

  Kate handed the envelope to me. Inside were two small, plastic baggies. One held the ring, the other the necklace, a slim chain with a tiny cross.

  “She’s African-American?” I asked. “How can you tell? What I see there looks barely human.”

  “People of African descent often have slightly curled surfaces on the rear edges of their jaws... here, you see?” He pointed with his pen, looked up at me, and then shook his head. “No, of course you don’t,” he said, reasonably. “You’ll just have to trust me. Caucasian jaws are more likely to have a flatter edge, and there are other slight differences, too.”

  “So,” Kate said. “We have an average-sized, African-American teenage girl, strangled, dead at least ten years, maybe more, a couple of fillings, a broken wrist, fully healed, a man’s gold ring, a silver cross and chain, and that’s about it, right?”

  “Yup. Sorry I can’t be more specific. If you can come up with something... maybe I can do better. As it is....”

  “How about a reconstruction?” I asked.

  “Of the head, you mean?” Sheddon asked. “I don’t see why not. The skull is in good condition; no damage. They have some talented folk at UT. Why don’t you look into it? Carol can make a cast for you. Here she is. Why don’t you ask her?”

  “Hey, Carol,” I said. “What are the chances of you making us a plaster cast of the skull? I’d like to see if we can get a reconstruction done.”

  “Quite good, I would think. As soon as Doc gives the all clear, I’ll get right on it.” Carol looked at him.

  He shrugged, shook his head. “Not today. We should be through here early this evening. Then you can have at it.”

  “It shouldn’t take more than a day or two,” Carol said. “Whom do you have in mind for the reconstruction? If you don’t have anyone, I know a very good artist, and she’s quite reasonable.”

  “I’ll bear that in mind, Carol,” I said. “In the meantime, I need to check one or two other options. Let me get back to you on it. And the cast? You’ll call me when it’s ready?”

  “Of course.” She turned to the table and began gently to strip away the plastic sheeting. I could see by the way she was teasing it off the bones and mummified material that it would be a long job.

  I handed the envelope back to Sheddon, who placed it back on the table. I looked again the remains. Bastards. Who were you, sweetheart?

  I shuddered. It was as if someone had dropped a cube of ice down my back.

  “I’ve seen enough,” I said. “Let’s get the hell out of here.” I didn’t wait for an answer. I was angry. No, I was pissed off, big time. I turned and walked out of the lab, out of the building, got into my car, turned up the radio, and waited for Kate.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” she asked, as she slammed the car door.

  “Christ, Kate. What the hell do you think is wrong with me? Did that not have any effect on you whatsoever? That was someone’s daughter. Some lousy, godforsaken bastard stole the poor kid’s life, not to mention what he did to her first. And then he stuffed her under the floor, like a piece of garbage.”

  Her face was somber, set, her lips clamped together, pale and bloodless. “I’ve seen too many of them, and so have you. You get used to it; you know that. Lighten up.”

  I heard it, but I knew she didn’t mean it. She was as pissed as I was, but she wasn’t going to admit it; not to me.

  Chapter 3

  At four o’clock, we were seated together in Kate’s office, Lonnie Guest included. He with his usual stupid grin on his face, Kate looking decidedly down in the dumps, and me... I was thoroughly depressed.

  “So what did you find out, Lonnie?” Kate asked.

  He rifled through several grubby pages of a small spiral-bound notebook. �
��The house was built in 1843. It was used as a Union Hospital during the siege of Chattanooga in 1863. Since then, it’s changed owners many times. Right now, the property is owned by the Clermont Foundation. They purchased it in June of 2005 and used it as a shelter for abused women and children. It was a dump even then, too far gone and too expensive to properly renovate. They moved out in October of 2008. They still own it, but the house has been vacant ever since, except for bums, druggies, and the like. A demolition order was issued three weeks ago, and they are actively taking contractor bids.”

  “Who and what is the Clermont Foundation?” I asked.

  “It’s a charitable organization run by a doctor and his wife. They still run the shelter, but now it’s located in a bigger, more modern building off East Brainerd Road. Dr. Draycott, his name is. I have contact details for you.”

  “And before that?” Kate asked.

  “From 1946 until the Draycotts purchased the house, it was owned by the Vickers family. Mrs. James Vickers moved out when her husband died in 1969, and it became a part of the Vickers’ family trust, which was administered by Turnbull and Turnbull; a law firm. They employed a property manager, Wilson Jennings, who rented the house to a Mr. William Dickerson, who ran it as a kind of... I don’t know what to call it. A sort of homeless shelter, maybe. No official standing. He just took folks in and financed the thing by charitable donations. He did that until the trust sold the house to the Draycotts in June 2005.”

  “Damn it,” I said. “So we have a double window of opportunity.”

  “What do you mean?” Lonnie asked.

  “He means,” Kate said, “that if the girl died ten years ago, give or take two or three years; it could have happened on either watch; when it was a drug rehab or the shelter. She could have been killed prior to or after June 2005, when the property changed hands. That complicates things.”