Lady 52: A Jack Daniels/Nicholas Colt Novel

by Jude Hardin

  Witnesses wouldn’t be a problem. He had a plan for that.

  Shooting wouldn’t be a problem either. He had plenty of firearms experience in El Salvador and Columbia, and had practiced with the revolver yesterday, shooting a pigeon sitting on a fire hydrant.

  Five bullets left. More than enough.

  Then he would burn down the abandoned house with Shorty and Lawrence, ship the faces back to Mendoza via Federal Express, and get on the next flight back to Columbia to begin his new job as a lieutenant in Señor Mendoza’s cartel.

  Papa would be so proud.

  While he waited, he read a newspaper someone had thrown in the garbage. Sergio looked for details of the murders, to see if the stupid police had a clue what was happening. But he found something very disturbing on the front page.

  DEFACER KILLED IN SHOOTOUT?

  It said the man who had stolen the faces was named Terrance Rush, and he’d died in a shootout with police.

  No. No no no. This would not do at all.

  Sergio was The Defacer. Not this Terrance Rush gringo.

  What if Señor Mendoza saw the paper? Would he think Sergio was lying?

  No. Sergio had the faces. The IDs. That would be proof enough.

  Besides, everyone knew the American media lied. Even the Americans knew that.

  COLT

  SUNDAY, 10:16 A.M. CST

  The county morgue was in a boxy two-story concrete building with shiny black recessed windows and some flags out front and a large rectangular sign that said Office of the Medical Examiner. It had the hard cold look of a place you weren’t supposed to get into. Or out of. The only thing missing was an eight-foot electrified barbwire fence topped with razor ribbon. But of course they didn’t need it. Nobody in his or her right mind wanted to be admitted to a place like that, and the residents already there weren’t in any condition to attempt an escape.

  My contact there was Dr. Raymond Hitchcock.

  Hitchcock. Like the movie director. He even looked like him a little bit, although I couldn’t remember ever seeing the director in a long white lab coat.

  The plan was for me to get some work done while Laurie caught a matinee of the Nicholas Sparks movie. Then Jack was supposed to pick her up, and the ladies would go shopping. We were supposed to meet for dinner later. They left me the rental car in case I needed to go somewhere else. Civilians weren’t allowed to carry weapons into the morgue, so I’d stowed the gun Jack loaned me in the glove compartment.

  Dr. Hitchcock led me down a long dimly-lit corridor, our footsteps echoing against the shiny white tiles.

  “It’s usually pretty laidback here on Sunday,” he said. “We have some people on call, but there are only two of us on duty here in the building. Gets kind of lonely sometimes.”

  “I bet. Not to mention kind of spooky.”

  He guided me through a set of swinging doors that were plated with strips of stainless steel to absorb the impact of gurneys being shoved through them.

  Gurneys loaded with stiffs.

  The space we entered was about the size of a standard high school classroom, only there weren’t any desks or chalkboards or pictures of historical figures. In fact, there weren’t any furnishings of any kind. The air conditioner was set to a temperature somewhere between bone-chilling and freeze-your-ass-off.

  The main morgue area was filled with stainless steel racks, the dead stacked four high. It smelled like junior high science class, when we were forced to dissect frogs.

  Hitchcock flipped on the rear light. Dozens of rectangles lined the walls, each with a handle and a number. He walked to one of the drawers and pulled it open, revealing what was left of Wanda Crumley, my client’s mother.

  And it wasn’t much.

  “Her initial designation was Unidentified Missing Female Person Number Fifty-Two,” Hitchcock said.

  “That’s a mouthful.”

  “Right. That’s why we always shorten it with these types, the John and Jane Does who come through here. In casual conversation among the staff, she was Lady Fifty-Two.”

  “Lady Fifty-Two.” It sounded like a card game. Or a drink.

  “Until her daughter called and got the ball rolling on positive ID, of course. Now we use her full name.”

  “And you’re sure about the cause of death?”

  “No, not really. We’re sure she was severely burned. See these markings on the left side of the skeleton? They’re indicative of intense heat. Whether the burns actually killed her, there’s no way to know. She might have died of smoke inhalation before the flames actually reached her body. That would be the more likely scenario, but of course we don’t have any lung tissue to analyze, so it’s only an educated guess.”

  “Could the body have been burned after death?”

  “Possibly.”

  “My client did some research on her own before she called me,” I said. “And I’ve verified her findings since then. Twenty-six years ago, there was a house fire in Northbrook, in Chipilly Woods about fifty feet from the location where Ms. Crumley was found. Would it have been possible for her to crawl that far after sustaining these types of injuries?”

  “Highly unlikely. An animal might have dragged her, or even a person if foul play was involved. But the thing is, you can’t assume that particular fire and Ms. Crumley’s death were even connected. The date of the fire might have been documented—”

  “It was,” I said.

  “But Ms. Crumley’s death was not. She might have died years before, or years after.”

  “But the house I’m talking about was so close to where she was found, and the time of the fire so close to the time she disappeared. You think all that’s just a coincidence?”

  “All we know for certain is that she got burned somewhere, at some time, twenty-five to thirty-five years ago.”

  I pulled my notebook out of my pocket, showed Dr. Hitchcock the address of the house Doris Green had told me about.

  “Were detectives assigned to the case?” I said.

  “Yes. In Northbrook.”

  “Do you have their report?”

  “All five sentences of it. What were they supposed to do? Her bones were brought here because Northbrook doesn’t have the facilities to adequately process remains this old. The truth is, neither do we. Ms. Crumley would be better suited to an archaeologist, not a coroner. The only reason we’ve kept them here this long is a curiosity. She should have been interred by the state already. But seeing as how she has a next of kin, I suppose arrangements will be made.”

  “So they didn’t question anyone? Didn’t follow up on the fire?”

  “Mr. Colt, I believe both detectives weren’t even alive when the fire you mentioned happened.”

  That wasn’t helpful. Not at all.

  “Ms. Green said that a gold necklace was found along with her mother’s skeleton. Would it be possible for me to take a look at that as well?”

  “I don’t remember a necklace,” he said. “But anything found with the corpse would be in the evidence locker. We’ll take a look. Have you seen enough here?”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  Hitchcock closed Drawer #52, and he switched the light off as we left the room.

  We took the stairs to his office on the second floor. He opened the case file on the computer, and found the address Doris Green gave me. There was a police report, but Hitchcock had been incorrect. It was only four sentences long.

  Hitchcock clicked on a scanned copy of the Fire Department’s report from twenty-six years ago. It was signed by Dylan Wexler, Cook County Fire Marshall. On the section that addressed the cause of the fire, Wexler had scribbled the words probable lightning strike.

  “Which is pretty much meaningless,” Hitchcock said. “The house was in a rural area, and it hadn’t been lived in for a while, so probable lightning strike was an easy sign-off. These days, of course, the matrices for determining cause are much superior, so the word probable wouldn’t fly. Back then, they were basically just gu
essing.”

  “Do we know who owned the house at the time?” I said.

  “We can find out.”

  He accessed the database for the county tax appraiser’s office. A man named Kevin Ward was listed as the property owner at the time of the fire.

  I wrote the name in my notebook.

  “Is that area still rural?” I said.

  “I believe it’s a forest preserve now. Why do you ask?”

  “I was just wondering if the house was ever rebuilt. Or if anything else was ever built on the property. Apparently not.”

  Hitchcock logged onto something called Google Earth. It allowed you to zoom into any area on the planet and see the details.

  “That’s incredible,” I said.

  “Funded by the CIA, just released to the public. Lots and lots of satellite photos. Here’s the spot.”

  I watched Hitchcock zoom into Northbrook, into the woods, to a concrete foundation overgrown with weeds, all that was left of the place.

  “Can we look at the necklace now?”

  “Sure.”

  He logged off of the computer. We left his office, walked to the end of the hallway, and took a right. The second door on the left said AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Hitchcock inserted his ID card into the electronic lock, and the LED went from red to green. We walked in.

  There was a short Formica countertop with a computer on it, and a vacant stool where the evidence clerk would have been sitting if it hadn’t been Sunday. Behind all that there was a wire cage protected by a second electronic barrier, this one requiring a thumbprint scan and a numerical code along with the badge swipe.

  “Serious business,” I said.

  “Oh, yes. Some of the items in here end up as evidence in murder trials, so we have to make sure nothing is tampered with.”

  “How many people have access to this room?”

  “I’m not sure, exactly. Physicians, department heads, ranking police officers. Everyone else is required to have an escort.”

  We entered the cage, and Dr. Hitchcock closed the door behind us.

  With the stark fluorescent lighting and painted steel fixtures, the evidence room reminded me of a supermarket, a miniature version, only there weren’t any boxes of cereal or cans of soup. No toothpaste or deodorant. Instead, alphabetized plastic bins lined the shelves from floor to ceiling, each with a computer-linked button you had to push if you wanted to take it down. Hitchcock explained it to me as we made our way down the Ck-Cz aisle.

  “Every time a container is removed from a shelf, the action is recorded in a statewide computer network known as TRACKERS. It’s an acronym for Telemetry-Routed and Computer-Keyed Evidence Retrieval System. It’s quite remarkable, really. As soon as I pull one of these plastic boxes, a guy sitting at a desk in Springfield is sent a notification with my name, the facility’s name, the case number, the time and date, and a brief description of each item in the bin that was taken down.”

  “So if something disappears, there’s a record of who touched it last.”

  “Exactly. Of course, the system isn’t foolproof. Each item has to be keyed in properly for it to show up on the inventory. So, like with everything else, there’s the human element, but by and large TRACKERS works pretty well. We even have some other states interested in obtaining the software.”

  “Sounds pretty sophisticated,” I said.

  Hitchcock found the bin he was looking for. He reached up and pushed the corresponding button and slid the container down from the shelf.

  “Would you mind grabbing that cart?” he said.

  There was a wheeled library caddy at the end of the aisle. I walked down there and rolled it back to where Hitchcock was standing. He set the plastic bin on top of it and started fingering through the pile of zip-lock bags, everything from crack pipes to diamond tennis bracelets. Sunglasses, guitar picks, pocket calculators, every bag labeled and numbered and sealed with a red strip of breakaway tape that said POLICE on it.

  No gold chain with a locket.

  “It’s not here,” I said.

  “Sorry. I was here when they catalogued Ms. Crumley’s remains, and I don’t remember any sort of necklace.”

  “My client saw a picture of it on your website. That’s how she identified her mother in the first place. It has to be here somewhere.”

  “Did you see the photograph yourself?”

  “No. It was gone by the time Ms. Green hired me, because her mother was no longer considered an unidentified missing person.”

  “Well, it should be on file. Let’s just take a look.”

  Hitchcock opened another program, typed WANDA CRUMLEY into the search bar. When that didn’t work, he typed in UNIDENTIFIED MISSING FEMALE PERSON NUMBER 52.

  “There she is,” I said.

  Dozens of photographs catalogued the various sections of Wanda Crumley’s skeleton from a variety of angles and lighting conditions. We looked at every one. No gold chain, no locket. Nothing but bones.

  “I don’t know what to tell you, Mr. Colt. The only thing I can do today is document the discrepancy. There will be an investigation, of course, and an attempt to locate the missing item, but that can take weeks sometimes.”

  “What about that TRACKERS thing? Can’t you just look up the last person who pulled the bin?”

  “That will be part of the investigation, but I can’t do it from here. That particular segment of the program is password protected. They have special IT people in Springfield who handle all that.”

  I didn’t have any particular need to see the necklace, but it bugged me that it wasn’t there.

  Or maybe I did have a need to see it.

  Technically, if the necklace didn’t exist, then Wanda Crumley didn’t exist. It was the only means her daughter had of identifying her.

  And if Wanda Crumley didn’t exist, then she never could have been murdered.

  DANIELS

  11:25 A.M. CST

  I knew this day would come. You just couldn’t stay away.” Harry McGlade grinned at me in his doorway. “Did Nick tell you about my supply of experimental Viagra?”

  I winced. “First of all, yuck. Second, I’m here to talk about a former client of yours. Brenda Shipman.”

  “I don’t disclose client information, Jackie. Unless I’m bribed.”

  “Her husband was murdered, McGlade.”

  “It wasn’t me. I have an alibi. Six people saw me someplace else.”

  I sighed. Dealing with Harry was often like dealing with a mentally disabled child, except that mentally disabled children invoked sympathy and a desire to help. Harry provoked a desire to shoot him in the face.

  “Let’s pretend, for a moment, that I actually didn’t sign my name to that television release form,” I said.

  “I saw you.”

  “You saw me sign a name. Not my name.”

  “What name did you sign?”

  “Susan B. Anthony.”

  “Who the hell is that?”

  “Have you heard of women’s suffrage?”

  “Sure. I’ve got a lot of suffrage porn. Mostly bondage and spanking.”

  “She was a crusader for women’s rights, McGlade.”

  “If she was such a big deal, why wasn’t her face ever put on US currency?”

  “It was. On the silver dollar.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Oh, that chick? She was hot. I would have tapped that.”

  I sighed. “This point is, I didn’t sign my name, so the contract is worthless.”

  Harry studied me. “I can’t tell if you’re lying.”

  “Go ahead and check.”

  “I already turned the form in.”

  “But you never looked closely at my signature, did you?”

  McGlade made a face like he smelled something terrible. Then he broke into a grin. “I admire your determination, Jackie. Susan B. Anthony would be proud.”

  “Tell me about Brenda Shipman.”

  “She was hot. I would have tapped that.”
/>   “You’d tap anything.”

  “True. Do you know about my supply of experimental—”

  “Brenda Shipman.”

  “She hired me to follow her husband. See if he was cheating on her.”

  “Was he?”

  “Not sexually. Platonically, maybe.”

  “With whom?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “With whom? Or with who?”

  “It’s whom.”

  “You sure? I thought it was who.”

  I began to turn around, “I’m calling my lawyer. I bet we can have your TV series shut down by tomorrow.”

  “Easy there, Ms. Suffrage. Shipman spent a lot of time with his two doctor partners. I mean a lot of time. Time at work, and time after work. Those three were attached at the hip.”

  I considered that. “Gay?”

  “No. I mean, I did a bit of experimenting when I was younger…”

  “Shipman and his doctor partners, McGlade.”

  “Not that I could tell. But they would really go at it. Arguing, I mean. They kept it cool in public places, but when they were out on the sidewalk, or in the parking lot, they would scream at each other.”

  “What were they screaming?”

  McGlade shrugged. “Got me. I was hired to see if Shipman was cheating, not to prove he was fighting with his partners.”

  “Did it ever get violent?”

  Harry shook his head. “Nope. They fought like a family fights. You know, heated, but there was always a layer of love and respect there. Or so I assume. Did you know I’m an orphan?”

  “You may have mentioned it a few dozen times when we were partners.”

  “And yet you never gave me a sympathy blowjob. You’re a hard one, Jackie.”

  “What was your impression of Mrs. Shipman?” I asked, then interrupted Harry before he could speak. “Other than you wanting to sleep with her.”

  “Something cold about that woman. Not frigid cold. Distant cold. When I gave her the results of my investigation, she didn’t seem happy, or sad. Just distant. Also, she paid cash, which I like.”

  “How many days did you watch Shipman?”