Croaker: Kill Me Again (Fey Croaker Book 1)

by Paul Bishop

  The magazine-perfect decorating theme was continued on the townhome's upper level. Fey thought it was beautiful, expensive, and charming, but impersonal. There seemed to be no mark anywhere of the owner's individual personality other than to say she didn't have one. The fact there was no pattern was a pattern in itself.

  All the doors to the rooms leading off the landing were open except for one. Fey realized the closed door, having been shut by Reeves, hid the crime scene. She walked to the door and looked at the door handle. Any chance of prints on the doorknob had probably been screwed up by Reeves, but she didn't want to compound the error. Taking a Swiss army knife from the satchel, she selected the longest blade and shimmed the door with all the adroitness of a professional burglar.

  The door swung open and Fey felt the electric charge of anticipation, fear, and discovery zip through her. The room was picture perfect—a murder captured on canvas by an old master—another leaf from the decorator's handbook. This time it was an illustration of the use of white. Every shade from stark to eggshell to lace was represented by either the carpet, the chairs, the bed, the lampshades, the comforter, the walls, or the ornate plastered mantel across the white fireplace bricks.

  Sunlight streamed through a large open window, highlighting the pale white body of the victim as it angled across the four-poster bed. The head and right arm were off the mattress, pointing toward the floor. The acute angle of the head exposed the ragged wound across the side of the neck. The hand at the end of the long, graceful right arm touched the floor in a pool of congealing blood.

  The impact of the white-on-white-on-white was heightened by the dramatic slash of dark red, which arched like an angry brushstroke from one side of the bed, across the white wall and the off-white window sheers, to speckle out across the flat white ceiling.

  A trail left behind by the soul as it fled the body.

  Fey felt Colby behind her, not touching her, but still pushing her to enter the room.

  “What's the matter?” he asked, when she still didn't move. “Not scared of dead bodies, are you?”

  “I've seen more naked dead ones than you've seen naked live ones.”

  “You picking out your lovers from the morgue again?”

  Fey grunted, but still did not budge. “Hold your water and try to learn something.”

  “What's to learn?”

  “There is something alive in this room, and it isn't the body on the bed.”

  Colby stiffened. “A suspect?” His voice was disbelieving.

  Fey shook her head. “No. I don't think it's human.”

  “What are you talking about? Ghosts or something?” The tone in Colby's voice had turned from disbelief to ridicule.

  “Give me the clipboard.”

  Colby handed the board over Fey's shoulder. She took it from him without taking her eyes off the scene in front of her. Using the pencil attached to the board by a length of twine, she began to sketch the crime scene on a clean sheet of paper. She worked fast with sure strokes, creating almost a piece of art—a still life of death—as opposed to the more typical drafting floor plan, which she would leave to Colby. When she was done, she handed the board back to her partner.

  “Well,” he said.

  “Well, what?”

  “What about this nonhuman presence?”

  “It's not ready to come out yet.” Fey smiled to herself. She knew she was getting to Colby.

  “You're weird,” Colby said, forcibly pushing his way into the room. “Are some kind of witch or something?”

  “Thanks for using a W instead of a B.”

  “Not much difference,” Colby said.

  “Follow me and take your notes.” Fey started to move toward the body. Her eyes scanned the floor and she was careful to touch nothing. When she reached the body, she began talking softly and slowly, giving time for Colby to write it all down.

  “Victim is female, white, red hair. Approximately five feet four inches, one hundred twenty pounds. No obvious scars or tattoos visible. Lots of freckles. Emerald green fingernail and matching toenail polish. The body is naked and there are no obvious signs of bruising or other contusions or abrasions. There are no apparent foreign objects protruding from the body. The mouth is open slightly and is smeared with red lipstick. The smear appears to have occurred before death, possibly through a kissing motion, as opposed to a smear consciously applied by the suspect.”

  Fey moved around the bed to get another view. She noted a pale green nightgown on the floor and pointed it out to Colby. He flipped the pages on the clipboard and made a note of the position on his crime scene drawing.

  Fey continued her dialogue. “The victim's legs are slightly spread open and there appears to be a white discharge seeping out of the vaginal area. There are no apparent foreign objects, and there are no visible signs of a struggle.”

  Returning to the side of the bed where she'd started her examination, Fey crouched down and examined what she could see of the body's sides.

  “Postmortem lividity appears normal for the position of the body,” she said, knowing lividity was the bruising occurring in a dead body when the blood settles. She knew if a body had been moved, the lividity would not be consistent with the body's new position. She reached out and touched a pale white arm. “Rigor is present.”

  Next she turned her attention to the wound. “The victim has an approximately two-inch gash on the right side of her neck appearing to have severed the carotid artery.” The autopsy would come later and give the official cause of death, but Fey's observations would start the ball rolling. “The wound appears to have been made by a sharp object other than a knife because of the tearing of the skin. Possibly an icepick-type weapon.” Fey looked up at Colby. “You getting all this?”

  “I'm a happy little stenographer. Want me to sit on your lap?”

  “Shuuuush...” Fey held up a hand.

  “What?”

  “Shut up.” Fey's voice was quiet, but insistent.

  Silence.

  Colby shuffled his feet. Fey shot him a dirty look.

  A cry sounded faintly, like a baby with a pillow over its face.

  “What the hell…” Colby said.

  The noise sounded again.

  “Where is it coming from?”

  Fey slowly crouched beside the bed. The dust ruffle at her feet moved slightly.

  “I think we've found ourselves a witness,” she said as a sleek white cat suddenly jumped into her lap.

  Colby shook his head in disgust. “You and your inhuman presence. How did you know about the cat?”

  “Experience.”

  “My ass.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Come on.”

  “I used my eyes, Colby.” She was pleased she'd got his goat. “I saw the cat hairs on the tiled floor downstairs. They were the only things not left behind by the decorator in this entire place.”

  “But how did you know the cat was in the room?”

  “Because I know cats.”

  The animal was really yowling now, as if it were trying to tell Fey everything it had seen. Fey wrapped her arms around it and stood up. She thrust the bundle of fur at Colby. “Take him down to the car and secure him.”

  Colby fumbled with his clipboard as the cat squirmed around. He'd been so shocked when Fey handed the cat to him, he'd accepted it automatically.

  “Leave a window slightly cracked so he can get air, but don't leave it down enough so he can get out. Then see if the photographer has arrived and send him up.”

  “I'm not an errand boy, Frog Lady.” Colby was indignant. Pressing the squirming cat and clipboard to him with one hand, he tried in vain to brush cat hair off his suit jacket with the other. Frustrated, he raised his voice. “I ain't no freaking cat sitter.”

  Fey turned slowly to look at him. “Consider yourself lucky.” She smiled evilly. “This is probably the closest you're going to get to a pussy until this investigation is over.”

  Chapter 4
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br />   Who shoved a burr under your partner's saddle?” Eddie Mack asked as he came in through the bedroom door. Camera gear sprouted from his body like fruit on a tree. “He looked like he wanted to strangle the cat.”

  Fey laughed. “Adversity is good for him. It helps build character.” She turned from her study of the body to greet the new arrival. “How are you, Eddie? Busy shift?”

  “I'm okay, but busier than a set of jumper cables at a Mexican wedding. I had a triple over in Newton. Before there, I handled a drive-by in Seventy-Seventh.”

  “Welcome to Los Angeles where we treat you like a King,” Fey said, cynically referencing the Rodney King incident. The sentiment had become a catchphrase for the continuing explosion of violence in the city.

  Eddie swiveled the strobe on one of the cameras slung around his neck. He was a short man made ugly by thick black hairs blossoming from his nostrils, and a tennis-ball-sized lump on his neck. He was stuffed into a mishmash of clothing even a thrift store would reject, but his equipment was state-of-the-art and in pristine condition. He'd bought all the equipment himself, knowing the city would never pay for it. “You want the usual shots with an extra set?” He'd worked with Fey before and knew what she expected.

  “Yes,” Fey said. “Make 'em sharp, Eddie. I want to crack this one fast.”

  “When have I ever given you anything but my best work?” Eddie sounded wounded.

  “Never, Eddie.”

  “Exactly.”

  “How about sticking around and shooting anything the print people come across?” Fey asked. Taking photos of prints before they were lifted made sure you still had a usable piece of evidence if the print disintegrated during the lifting process.

  “No problem.” Eddie looked up from fiddling with his equipment. “Oh, I get it,” he said, realizing why Fey was being so careful. “This is your first stiff of the new year.”

  “It won't be the last.”

  Eddie guffawed then glued his eyes to a view-finder. Without waiting any longer, he started triggering film. “Nice set of gazzongas for an old broad,” he commented, viewing the body from behind the defense of his lens.

  In the bursts from the strobe, Fey looked at the dead woman with the big gazzongas. It made her sad. Even in death, the woman was not safe from the vicious bite of sexual innuendo.

  Who were you? Fey silently asked the body. Who were you?

  Backing away to the door, deep in thought, she almost collided with the coroner, Harry Carter.

  “Sorry,” she said, stepping aside.

  “Getting a little too wrapped up in your work as usual,” Carter said.

  Fey smiled. “Trying to solve this one without any clues. Cart-before-the-horse time.”

  “Coming up with answers before you know what the questions are? If anybody can do it, you will.” Carter was an older man and enjoyed the role of father figure. He also liked Fey and was one of her big supporters.

  “What's the head coroner doing here anyway?” Fey asked him. “I thought you'd become too much of a big shot to come out in the field anymore. I expected Simms or Wiley.”

  “Simms is out with the flu, and Wiley got himself caught stealing gold fillings. Big investigation going on.”

  “Really?” Fey said, slightly shocked.

  Carter rolled his eyes. “Down at the coroner's office we're no different than police officers. We're our own worst enemies. The political-damage-control types have been trying to keep it out of the papers, but the story is going to leak eventually.”

  “Good grief. So, as a result you get to come out and play with the common folk.”

  “It makes a nice change. Beats the pressures of doing celebrity autopsies.”

  “You won't get a book out of this one,” she said.

  Carter had made a big splash with a nonfiction book recounting the stories behind the deaths of numerous celebrities on whom he'd conducted autopsies.

  Carter shrugged. “Who needs to write another book? The publishers have got some hack to grind out a new series of mysteries featuring a coroner as the main character, some kind of high-priced Quincy. They're going to publish them under my name. I talk to the hack a couple of times on the phone and then sit back and rake in the hefty advances and royalties. When the books come out, I make the book-signing rounds as if I wrote every word, assure everyone the next installment is well under way, and then leave the public and the talk-show hosts thinking I'm some kind of Renaissance man. I don't even have to read the things.”

  “Sounds sweet.”

  Carter shrugged expressively. A smile split through his beard. “It's a living.” He hefted his black bag. “Better get to work.”

  Fey smiled back and let him slip by into the crime scene. Two men from SID, the department's Scientific Investigation Division, followed through behind him. One would be a latent-print expert, the other would be a specialist in biological stains. Fey didn't recognize the stain specialist, who was lugging around a huge Woods lamp, but she did know the print man. He nodded a greeting.

  “How are you, Steve?” Fey asked.

  “Can't complain. Nobody would listen anyway even if I did.”

  “Let Eddie Mack follow you around and pop a few flashes before you lift anything.”

  “You want anything else special?”

  Fey smiled engagingly. “I know it's a big place, but can you give me a top-to-bottom?”

  “You got it.”

  Fey smiled again, said, “Thanks,” and left them to it.

  Before she retraced her steps to the front door, she made a quick search until she located a covered cat litter box in the small downstairs bathroom. Fortunately, it had been recently emptied. She lifted the covered litter box by the plastic handle on the top and carried it with her.

  As she passed by the living room, she heard Colby call out to her.

  “Look what I found.” He held up a woman's handbag.

  Fey shook her head. She shouldn't have let Colby off the leash. He was like a two-year-old who keeps getting into the kitchen cupboards. There was a lot more they should have done before starting to root through handbags and wallets.

  She kept her temper in check. The damage was done. Getting pissed would only make things worse.

  She walked over to stand next to the formal dining table, where Colby was laying out his finds. She set down the litter box.

  Colby handed her a California driver's license.

  “Miranda Goodwinter. Like the maid said,” he told her.

  Fey took the small card and looked at the flash-flattened picture. There was no doubt it was the woman upstairs on the bed. The harsh photo had brought out all of the age lines relaxed by the death repose.

  “Did you find an address book?” she asked, flipping the license back onto the table.

  Colby riffled through the pile of items from the handbag – wallet, makeup, short-handled brush, hair clip, assorted papers, matches, cigarettes, checkbook, keys.

  “No address book, but there's some other ID in the same name,” he said. He handed Fey a stack of plastic and cardboard rectangles taken from the wallet.

  “Any photos of friends, relatives, ugly babies?” Fey asked as she shuffled through the stack.

  “Not in the purse. And I didn't see any on the walls or furniture. It's something I always check for.”

  Fey raised her eyebrows.

  Colby cut loose his maddening grin. “Ease up, Frog Lady,” he said. “You might not like me, but it doesn't mean I'm a bad detective. If you'd loosen up a bit, you might find I'm not too bad at other things either.” His implication was clear, his grin turning into a leer.

  “Come back and see me when you reach puberty, Colby,” Fey told him.

  Colby laughed, unoffended. “Everyone tells me you're a tight-ass.”

  “I'm as water-tight as a duck's ass, Colby. Don’t forget it.”

  “Yes, ma'am.”

  Fey shook her head at Colby's sarcastic tone. It was another one of the many irritating things
about him. One second he could display the professional sense all top detectives develop, and the next moment, he acted as if he'd never outgrown the phase of male development where sex was a dirty joke and women were something to snigger about while smoking cigarettes behind the school gym.

  The combination of traits did not sit well with Fey. She liked people to either be one way or the other. It made them easier to deal with. With someone like Colby, she didn't know which way to jump. She could rely on him in some areas, but had to keep her defenses up in others. It was a stress inducing situation. So, rather than attempt to walk a tightrope between the characteristics, Fey simply distrusted Colby in all areas, making it very hard for her to be objective about him.

  Fey looked down at the cards in her hand again, shuffling through them for a second time. “Did you notice anything strange about this ID?” she asked.

  “It's all current issue,” Colby replied, back in professional mode. “The driver's license, the credit cards, the Auto Club card – all of it is fresh.”

  “Good answer,” Fey said. “You get to move on to the bonus round.”

  “It's as if this babe was brand-new,” Colby continued. “If it weren't for her stretch marks and wrinkles, she could have just popped out of the womb.”

  “Interesting analogy, but not far off,” Fey agreed. “New condo. New ID.” She surveyed the room. “All the furniture looks new.”

  Colby agreed. “Even the television has a protective covering on the screen.”

  Fey walked over to the coat closet and pulled it open. Inside the closet, several expensive coats hung on the rack. Fey checked the sleeves. Two had the manufacturer's tags attached. “Fresh from the boutique,” she said.

  Picking up a checkbook from the pile on the table, Colby looked at the balance. “She opened this account with ten thousand dollars.” He looked further. “Two checks are gone. They're the ones you have to fill in the name and address part until the printed ones arrive.”

  “Does she have a car?”