Last Call

by Allyson K. Abbott

  Chapter 2

  I’d been brought to the murder scene by Duncan, who was with me in my apartment when he got the call. Knowing it was the anniversary of my father’s death, he had made it a point to be with me. And because of the day it was, he had offered me an out when he got the call, even though my presence in my new role as a consultant had been requested. It took me less than ten seconds to decide what I wanted to do. I welcomed the distraction.

  We drove to the site together in Duncan’s car. I was encumbered by a cast on my left leg, the result of a car accident that had delayed me from making it to one of my stalker’s locations. It was a delay that Gary Gunderson had paid for with his life. The cast was a nuisance in many ways. Not only did it make negotiating the icy winter streets a dicey prospect, my leg itched like mad underneath it, an annoying sensation that left me with a near-constant taste in my mouth of what I can only describe as salty dirt. It also smelled odd, which triggered a crunching sound that provided background noise all day to everything else. Fortunately, I was hoping to get the thing off soon. It had been just over five weeks with it so far, and I had an appointment with the doctor in the morning to see how well the bones had healed. For now, I was stuck with the thing and the crutches that went with it.

  The home Duncan drove us to was in an upper-middle-class neighborhood that consisted of houses built during the first half of the twentieth century that had belonged to well-to-do German American families in their heyday. During the 1980s, the neighborhood had become a hotbed of crime, and many of the homes fell into disrepair. At the turn of this century, much of the crime was pushed out, the streets were cleaned up, and many of the homes were bought by people who intended to fix them up and restore them to their original glory. Now, fully gentrified, the neighborhood had become a popular one for young families, and it served as home to a mix of ethnic and economic groups.

  The particular house Duncan steered me toward was a midcentury ranch-style built of brick. A large picture window in the front had blinds drawn across it, and the front door was a solid slab of wood. Though it was bitterly cold outside, the sun was shining, and when Duncan opened the door and steered me inside, I was temporarily blinded. It was dark, with only a lamp on in the living room and an overhead light in the dining area off to the right. As my eyes adjusted to the darker interior, I realized we were standing in a large, open great room: a combined living, dining, and kitchen area separated by a pony wall and counter between the living room and kitchen. The furnishings were Danish modern style, and the color scheme was blandly neutral in varying shades of beige.

  While the visual impact of entering the house was a mild one, I was immediately assaulted by the sound of shrill, high-pitched notes that sounded like they came from a trumpet. I recognized the sound right away as my synesthetic reaction to the smell of blood, and I knew then that the crime scene would be a messy one.

  There was a bag by the door that contained paper booties and two boxes of gloves, one large and one medium. Duncan helped me put a bootie on my casted foot—which only had a heavy sock covering it because I didn’t have a shoe that would fit over it—as well as my other foot, and then he handed me a pair of latex gloves.

  “Do I have to bootie my crutches?” I asked him. I was making a joke, but Duncan seemed to consider the question seriously.

  After a moment, he shook his head. “I think it will be fine,” he said.

  There were five people—all of them men—standing in the dining room area next to a table, and Duncan steered me toward them. One by one they all turned and stared at me: two uniformed officers, two guys in casual street clothes, and one man in dress slacks, a dress shirt, and a tie. Their expressions as they watched us approach ranged from curious to suspicious. All but one of the men were still wearing their outdoor coats, and they looked uncomfortably warm. I had a feeling I’d be joining them soon. Dressing for the single-digit temperature outside left one seriously overdressed for the toasty warmth inside. But I supposed it was a discomfort one would have to bear because removing our coats would have risked contaminating the scene.

  Duncan made the introductions. “Gentlemen, this is Mack Dalton. I suspect most if not all of you have heard about her in some form or another. She is here today because the Milwaukee PD has hired her on as a consultant to help us in assessing and analyzing both our crime scenes and any persons of interest related to those crimes. Mack has some unique abilities in this regard, and I promise you, she will enhance our efforts. Today is her first official day on the job as a consultant for us, so please be kind.”

  Duncan then pointed to the two uniformed officers, a Hispanic fellow who looked like he was barely out of high school and a big African American guy who looked like a linebacker. “This is Miguel Ortega, and this is Hank Johnson,” Duncan said, gesturing toward each of the men in turn.

  “Pleasure to meet you,” Hank said with a nod, his voice as deep and rumbly as an earthquake. It tasted like potatoes. “I heard about you from Nick Kavinsky,” he went on. Then he smiled. “He says you da cat’s meow.”

  Nick was one of the uniformed cops who participated in the Capone Club on a regular basis. I’d been told by others in the group that Nick had something of a crush on me, and I wasn’t sure what to make of Hank’s repeated remark. So I smiled back at him and said, “Thank you, I think.”

  “That guy over there is Wesley Donovan, one of our evidence technicians,” Duncan went on, pointing to the only person not dressed for the frozen tundra, a thirtysomething, short fellow holding a computer tablet of some sort. Duncan then pointed toward a tall, balding, older man in street clothes, who had his parka unzipped but still on. “And that’s Charlie Hammerman, another one of our evidence techs.”

  Finally, Duncan gestured toward the guy in a suit and tie, a somewhat portly fellow in his late forties or early fifties with a heavily lined and wrinkled face that I suspected had seen lots of life, sun, and cigarettes. “And the overdressed fellow over there is Mike Linz, a detective from this district. This is his case.”

  No one said anything once Duncan was done, so I smiled at all of them and said, “I’m mostly here just to observe. If I do anything that interferes with your jobs in any way, or if you have any questions for me, please don’t hesitate to speak up. I’m here to help, not hinder you.”

  Linz shifted his narrow-eyed gaze from me to Duncan and said, “Just what, exactly, is she supposed to do?”

  His voice was hoarse and gravelly and tasted like raisins. I didn’t miss the fact that he asked his question of Duncan, effectively dismissing and ignoring me. Before Duncan could provide an answer, I jumped in.

  “I have a neurological disorder called synesthesia,” I explained. “It’s a complex and complicated disorder, but I can sum it up best by telling you that I have extremely heightened senses and can see, smell, hear, and feel things that other people can’t.”

  Linz’s eyes narrowed even more, but he said nothing.

  Duncan jumped in and said, “It will make more sense if you just let her show you.”

  With that, the men shifted, turned, and separated, milling out around the table and allowing me my first glimpse of the victim.

  The dead man was lying face down near the wooden dining table. The top of the table was covered with a spray of blood, and there were spatters of it on the back wall of the room and the drapes hanging in a window there. There was an expensive-looking wool rug beneath the table, a concession to the large expanse of hardwood floors. The original colors in the rug were black and white, a speckled pattern that reminded me of the static one used to see on a TV screen in the precable days once a station signed off. This pattern was now marred by a large splotch of dark red blood emanating from around the victim’s head, with smaller specks of the same red spattered outside its circumference.

  These observations were my first impressions, each one accompanied by a secondary sensory experience. I had known as soon as we entered the house that there would be a lot of blood
because I could smell it, and I also knew that a gun had been fired because I could smell gunpowder, too. Each of these smells came with an accompanying sound: those shrill, high-pitched notes of a trumpet in the case of the blood, and something akin to a plucked string on a ukulele in the case of the gunpowder. These smells and sounds were in addition to numerous other smells I picked up on, including the various aftershaves used by the men in the room, the scent of their laundry detergents, the smells of the house itself, and the odors from the various soaps and shampoos used by those in the room. And this covered just one of my senses.

  My first task was to sort through all my reactions to determine which ones were real and which were synesthetic, and to determine what exactly I was reacting to. This parsing of my sensual data is something I’ve learned to do over the years. When I was younger, it didn’t take much in the way of jeering remarks and scathing looks from other kids before I learned to keep my reactions to myself until I could determine which ones were what the other kids considered normal. Over the years I have become accustomed to my synesthetic reactions enough to know what each one is related to most of the time. However, my work with Duncan has exposed me to a lot of new experiences and situations, and as a result I have a whole host of new reactions to deal with and interpret.

  One of my regular customers at the bar, as well as a founding member of the Capone Club, is helping me with this. Cora Kingsley, a single, fortysomething, man-crazy tech wizard is my right-hand man, or in this case woman. Cora owns her own company, one that deals with computer hardware and software, providing consulting services to individuals and other companies. Like me, Cora is a redhead, though her color comes from a box whereas mine is natural. Cora has taken it upon herself to create a database of my synesthetic reactions to everything in the world around me. It’s been an eyeopening experience for both of us, and although it’s an overwhelming task at times, it has proven useful.

  In addition to helping me better understand and track my synesthesia, Cora is also the closest thing I have to a sister. I have no family of my own anymore; my father’s death essentially left me alone. But I have an adopted family of sorts that includes Cora, as well as two elderly brothers, Joe and Frank Signoriello. The brothers have been coming to the bar every day since my father opened the place. Both made their living as insurance salesmen, but now that they were in their seventies, they were retired. They, like Cora, are my most trusted confidantes, and now that my father is gone, they do their best to fill his role, like two doting, elderly, dear uncles. I’ve grown close to other customers who are regulars in my bar, but none are as close to me as Cora, Joe, and Frank.

  Then there’s Duncan. Our relationship has been a confusing one, complicated by several things, including the edict issued by my letter-writing stalker to stay away from him at all costs. To appear to comply with this demand but still ensure my safety, Duncan had arranged for a friend of his, Malachi O’Reilly, to step in and serve as my pretend new boyfriend. Since Malachi—or Mal, as most of us called him—was also a cop currently working an undercover assignment, this little subterfuge came in handy. What didn’t come in handy were the very real feelings that had developed between Mal and me. He laid his cards out on the table, letting me know how he felt, and giving me time to weigh my own feelings. I liked Mal a lot; I would even say I cared for him a great deal. But there was something between me and Duncan—a spark, a thrill of excitement, a depth of feeling—I didn’t have with Mal. To his credit, Mal took the rejection well, and I knew I could count him among those I called close friends or even family.

  The men in the room watched me, standing around and waiting for me to do or say something. I had no idea what they might be expecting but figured I should probably get with the program sooner rather than later. So I started talking, explaining aloud about the various synesthetic reactions I was having to the scene before me.

  “In addition to having highly acute senses, I also experience every sense with at least one other one. For instance, I hear a lot of shrill, high-pitched trumpet notes right now, and I know that sound goes with the smell of blood. I also hear a note that sounds like it’s being plucked on the strings of a ukulele over and over again. That sound I recognize as going with the smell of gunpowder. So I can tell a gun was fired in here recently.”

  Linz smirked and nodded toward the floor beside the dead man. “I don’t need any special senses to tell me that,” he said. “There’s a gun on the floor here, and a bullet hole in the back of this man’s head. It doesn’t take any kind of genius or special talent to figure that out.”

  The older of the two evidence techs snorted back a laugh, and Duncan shot him a dirty look.

  “I knew there would be blood and a recently fired gun the minute I walked into the house and before I saw any of this,” I said, gesturing toward the dining room table and the dead man on the floor.

  “So you say,” Linz said dismissively.

  “Come on, Linz,” Duncan said irritably. “I’ve seen what Mack here can do. She’s the real thing. Give her a chance.”

  “It’s okay,” I said, putting a hand on Duncan’s arm. “I’m used to the cynicism, and I understand it. We’ll get there eventually. Did I mention that the blood in here is from more than one person?”

  This question was met with silence and a few exchanged looks of skepticism. After an uncomfortable period of quiet, Duncan finally spoke. “What makes you say that, Mack?”

  “Those high-pitched trumpet notes I mentioned? I hear two slightly different and distinct notes, one when I look at the pool of blood around the victim and another when I look at these spots over here.” I pointed to some drops of blood a small distance away from the dining room table heading into the kitchen.

  Charlie Hammerman walked over to the more distant blood drops and knelt down to study them. “She may be on to something,” he said. “The shape of these drops indicates they fell from above, as opposed to being spatter from our victim here.”

  Linz frowned, and after a moment he shook his head. “So you noticed the differing shape of the blood drops,” he said, looking at me. “Again, it’s not a huge leap of logic if you know anything at all about the physics of blood drops. Plus, it’s pretty unlikely our victim here could’ve gotten up and walked into the kitchen after being shot in the head the way he was. So while I’ll admit you’re a keen observer, one who has apparently picked up some knowledge from hanging around Duncan here, you haven’t uncovered anything we wouldn’t have figured out eventually on our own.”

  “I haven’t studied or been taught anything about the physics of blood spatter,” I told him. “I just know that those blood drops over there smell different from the ones closer to the body. The logical conclusion is that there were at least two people bleeding in this house.”

  “If you say so,” Linz said with a roll of his eyes.

  Duncan let forth a perturbed sigh and started to say something, but I beat him to it.

  “Detective Linz, have you examined that gun yet?” I said.

  He shook his head, looking bored but exasperated.

  “I’m pretty certain you’ll find several fingerprints on it,” I told him.

  “Another brilliant deduction,” he said in a tone dripping with sarcasm.

  I bent down closer to the gun and stared at it. “More than one set of fingerprints, in fact. I detect several flaws or disturbances on the surface of the thing, and they appear to smell slightly different, suggesting they are not identical.”

  The two evidence techs exchanged looks; Linz just stared at me in silence for several seconds. “Wesley,” he said finally, not taking his eyes off me, “see what you can get from that gun.”

  Wesley nodded and handed the tablet he was holding to Charlie. Wesley then retrieved a camera from a tackle box on the kitchen floor and snapped several pictures of the gun where it was. When he was done, he picked up the gun with his gloved hands, taking care not to touch the surface any more than he had to. He released the ca
rtridge and looked at it. “There are three bullets gone,” he announced. He then slid back a cover on the barrel and added, “And there’s one in the chamber.” He tipped the gun, dropped the chambered bullet into his other hand, and handed it to Charlie, who put it into a small paper evidence envelope.

  “So there were two shots fired?” Linz said, but before anyone could answer, he went on, his eyes scanning our surroundings, focused mainly on the floor. “The victim was only shot once, and I only see one casing here. Its position is consistent with the head wound on our victim and the theory that someone shot him from behind. So perhaps that other bullet was fired sometime in the past.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. My senses were picking up on some sort of odd dust in the kitchen area. The kitchen was separated from the living area by a breakfast bar, and the cabinets and appliances ran along the back wall of the house and around to the left of the breakfast bar if you were looking in to the kitchen from the living room. The bar seating was actually in the living room section, and on the kitchen side of the bar countertop was a built-in stovetop with an exhaust hood that hung down from overhead. Across from this, against the back wall of the house and bordering on the edge of the dining area, was most of the cabinetry and other appliances. On the end near the dining room, the counter had been converted into a small desk area with some overhead cabinets on the wall above it. Right next to this was the refrigerator, which had smaller, overhead cabinets above it. It was this area where I sensed the odd dust was present. “I think you should look at those cabinets around the desk and refrigerator,” I told Linz.

  “For what?” he sneered, clearly irritated.

  “I’m not sure, but something is irregular over there.”

  Ortega walked over and shone a flashlight around and under the cabinets. He didn’t have to look long. “She’s right. There’s a hole in the wall right here at the bottom of this cabinet.” He pointed to the overhead cabinet above the fridge that was closest to the desk area. “It looks like a bullet hole.”