A Star is Dead

by Elaine Viets

  ‘She told me she works as a cleaning lady, scrubbing floors six days a week. He’s an unemployed construction worker. She was wearing a T-shirt and jeans. Her arms are scrawny, but corded with muscle. I think she hit him more than once. That kitchen looks like a slaughterhouse.’

  ‘Was the decedent taking aspirin or blood thinners?’ I asked. ‘That could account for the blood.’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘I’ll check his medications,’ I said.

  ‘We had Mrs Murphy change clothes so we could bag what she was wearing. We swabbed the blood on her to find out if it was his or hers. She was barefoot and there are bloody footprints everywhere. After we swabbed and photographed her, we let her wash her feet and put on socks.’

  ‘Any signs of violence to her?’ I said.

  ‘No bruises or black eyes that I could see,’ Jace said. ‘Mrs Murphy said her husband was going to punch her in the face when she hit him with the frying pan. Nitpicker is about finished in the kitchen.’ Our top CSI expert was on the case. I felt better already.

  Jace went back into the living room and sat on the overstuffed couch across from Tara Murphy. His voice was soft and respectful. ‘Would you repeat what happened, please, from the time your husband came into the kitchen this morning, Mrs Murphy?’

  ‘I just told you,’ she said with a resentful whine.

  ‘I know,’ Jace said. ‘But I need to hear it again. We’ll ask you these questions many times.’

  ‘He got up about five a.m. – said his sciatica was bothering him – and started taking pain killers and drinking beer.’

  ‘What kind of painkillers?’ Jace asked.

  ‘Oxy,’ she said. ‘You can see he drank a whole six-pack by the time I got up, and he was mean as a rattlesnake. This was my morning to sleep in – I don’t have to clean the Millers’ house until noon – and he wanted breakfast. He was mad that I slept until 9:30 and he demanded food. I started frying up home fries. I was gonna make him bacon and eggs, the same breakfast he always has, when he started mouthing off. He said he was tired of my greasy cooking. He wanted Belgian waffles.

  ‘I said, “I ain’t no short order cook. I’ll have to get the waffle maker out of the top cabinet.”

  ‘He called me a lazy bitch, cussed up a blue streak, and tried to punch me in the face. I ducked. He ran to pick up the kitchen chair – and I knew he could really hurt me with that. I grabbed that skillet and swung hard. Grease is splattered all over my new wallpaper. I meant to stop him, not kill him. But I’m afraid of him, Detective. He weighs one-eighty-two and I’m ninety-seven pounds.’

  ‘How many times did you hit him with the skillet?’ Jace asked.

  ‘Once.’

  ‘Just once?’ Jace said.

  ‘Maybe more.’ She looked confused. ‘I can’t remember. I was so scared. He was gonna kill me.’ Great tears ran down her wrinkled face. ‘It was self-defense.

  ‘We’ve been married twenty-seven years and he never used to be like this. After he broke his arm and couldn’t work, he got hooked on pain pills and started drinking heavy. That’s what changed him.’ She was sobbing too hard to talk now. I knew opioid abuse did not respect any class. I’d found it in the rich and poor.

  I opened my iPad, called up the ‘Scene Information’ form, and wrote down the case number Jace had given me. Tara’s beige carpet was protected by heavy plastic runners, which made it easy to roll my DI case. ‘Have you photographed these footprints on the runner?’ I asked. Jace nodded, and I followed the bloody footprints to the kitchen.

  I’d braced myself for an ugly scene, but this was worse than I’d imagined. The kitchen looked like someone had tossed a gallon of dark red paint at it.

  The decedent was supine – face-up – on the beige linoleum kitchen floor, his battered head facing the east wall. Bunched-up beige throw rugs exposed the worn spots in the linoleum near the stove and sink areas. The rugs were thick with drying blood. There was even blood on the ceiling. Head wounds bleed like crazy, and this one was no exception.

  Dark red had spattered the kitchen wall next to the stove as if someone had hosed it down with blood. Mrs Murphy must have really clobbered her husband with her frying pan. More blood dripped down the stove like spilled paint. It appeared to be alongside an oily substance that I guessed was cooking fat, and sliced fried potatoes.

  The kitchen wallpaper – an old-fashioned pattern of grapes, cherries, pears and apples – was spattered with blood and grease. A bloody fried potato was stuck to a ripe red wallpaper apple near the stove.

  My stomach turned.

  It would be a long time before I would eat fried potatoes.

  The cast-iron skillet, upside-down and painted with blood, was on the floor next to Mr Murphy’s right arm. Small bloody footprints crisscrossed the floor.

  Sarah ‘Nitpicker’ Byrne was dusting a heavy wooden captain’s chair that had been overturned near the table. Her hair was blueberry and she wore a white hazmat suit for protection.

  ‘I’m finished over there,’ she said, her voice low.

  ‘Did you find his shoe prints in the blood?’ I asked.

  ‘No. I’m guessing she hit him once or twice, then cold-cocked him and beat the crap out of him while he was out. Check out the low spatter and cast-off on the stove and kitchen cabinets. I bet once the body is moved, I’ll find more blood under the cabinets. Once he was out cold, she pounded this poor dude to hamburger.’

  We both knew the ME would have to confirm Nitpicker’s theory, but she knew her business.

  I took the ambient temperature. The room was fairly warm – seventy-five degrees. I took the temperature again on the floor near the body, then photographed the hall thermostat. They were all within a degree or two.

  I photographed the scene with my point-and-shoot camera – wide shots, medium, and then close-ups. I was ready to begin the body inspection.

  I measured the decedent’s height at five feet, five inches and estimated his weight at one-eighty. I started my examination at the top of the body. Examining the head was the worst part. It looked like Mrs Murphy had hit him once or twice, then felled him with a mighty swing to his left temporal bone, just above his ear. I guessed that he’d fallen, and there appeared to be repeated blows to the left side of his head while he was out cold. At least two other bones on the left side of his head – the frontal (forehead), parietal (the top) – were battered, and there was blood leaking out of his nose and mouth.

  The repeated blows caused his blood to transfer to the skillet and become spatter on the walls, stove, fridge, table and just about every other surface – including a drip down an open can of Crisco.

  There were burns on the decedent’s face, neck, and hands. He had fried potatoes in his short gray hair and on his thick neck.

  He was wearing a white sleeveless undershirt, the kind called a wifebeater, and blue-patterned boxer shorts. His undershirt was hitched up and I saw an enormous bruise on his abdomen from his collarbone down past his navel. The yellow-green bruise measured fourteen inches long and ten inches wide. It disappeared around to his back and into the waistband of his boxers. I pulled the waistband out and saw the bruise was another three inches to the top of his graying pubic hair. His only jewelry was a plain yellow-metal ring on his burned, blood-spattered left hand. I saw what looked like defensive wounds on his hands and wondered if he’d put up his hands to cover his face when she’d swung that hot skillet at him.

  Murphy’s right arm had a healed surgical scar one inch above his elbow. There were fading yellow bruises two inches wide on the undersides of both arms. Both arms had bright red burns, probably from the grease. The burn on his right arm was three inches long and half an inch wide, and six red grease spatters striped his forearm, along with pieces of fried potato.

  I checked and then photographed the bottoms of his bare feet. There was no blood on the soles. More proof that he had not walked around during this so-called fight.

  I took a clean, sterilized sheet
from a plastic bag in my kit and spread it out on the floor, then said, ‘Nitpicker, help me turn him over, please.’

  We rolled the heavy body onto the sheet and one strap on the man’s undershirt slipped down. ‘Holy shit, what’s that on his back?’ Nitpicker said.

  ‘Looks like a burn mark in the shape of an iron,’ I said. ‘It’s scabbed over and covered with some kind of cream. Jace needs to see this.’

  I called the detective into the kitchen and showed him the burn on Murphy’s back.

  ‘Jeez, that poor guy,’ he said.

  ‘He’s got a huge, healing bruise on his chest,’ I said, ‘two on his arms, and one on his shin.’

  ‘That corroborates what the neighbors told the uniforms,’ Jace said. ‘They described Thomas Murphy as “a big old teddy bear” and said his tiny wife beat him up. He refused to fight back. At Thanksgiving, the fight was so loud the next-door neighbors called the police.’

  There was a commotion at the front door, followed by a man shouting, ‘Let me in! That witch killed my son. I know she did.’

  I followed Jace into the living room as a short, stocky man tried to force his way past Rick, using his black cane. His bald, liver-spotted head was flaming with fury.

  Jace hurried into the front room. ‘Are you in charge here?’ the old man demanded when he saw Jace.

  ‘Yes, I am, sir,’ Jace said. ‘And you are?’

  ‘Nick Murphy. Thomas is my son. A neighbor called and told me she finally killed him.’

  ‘I did not!’ Tara screamed. ‘He was high on oxy and tried to kill me!’ She leaped out of the recliner and ran straight for Nick Murphy, her bony fists clenched. Jace caught her. ‘Whoa, Mrs Murphy,’ he said. ‘Settle down.’

  She struggled in his arms and screeched, ‘That old bastard has hated me since the day I married Tom. He’s ruined our marriage.’

  ‘I told Tom not to marry her,’ Nick shouted. ‘I was right.’

  ‘Quiet!’ Jace said.

  Nick shut up, but Tara screamed louder. ‘I will not be quiet! He’s the cause of all our trouble.’ She struggled in Jace’s arms, trying to hit Jace and attack her father-in-law.

  ‘Officer Samuels,’ Jace called, and Rick appeared. ‘Please escort Mrs Murphy to a patrol car. If she gives you any trouble, cuff her.’

  Tara went quietly outside, but her glare singed Nick Murphy.

  ‘Sit down on the couch, Mr Murphy,’ Jace said. ‘I’m sorry about your son.’

  ‘I knew she was beating up on him,’ he said. ‘She’d attack him with anything she had in her hand. He got that broken arm when she hit him with a vacuum cleaner at Thanksgiving. The neighbors heard the fight and called the cops.

  ‘Tom refused to testify against her. He said he loved his wife and it was his fault and they’d both been drinking. Missouri’s got some good domestic abuse laws and the prosecutor is the one who files charges – even if the battered spouse won’t testify. The prosecutor had a talk with Tom and the responding cop and Tom begged them not to charge her. He said they’d get counseling and work it out. My son broke down and cried.’

  Now Angela could hear the tears in the older man’s voice.

  ‘The prosecutor said he’d hold off, but if there was another incident, he’d have her arrested and charged. Those two were lovey-dovey for a month and then she started up with her mean ways. That big bruise on his chest was a Christmas present. She hit him with a floor polisher. When he was asleep, she burned his shoulder with an iron. She kicked and tormented that poor man and he did nothing. I should have had the guts to kidnap him and take him to a shrink.

  ‘But I didn’t, and now I’ve lost my only son.’ His voice was thick with tears. ‘Well, that prosecutor’s going to get to file those charges after all, but this time it’s murder.’

  Now the old man put his big head on his cane and wept hard, harsh tears.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Nick Murphy’s tears turned to anger when he saw a uniform carefully prying the cloth front off a black speaker.

  ‘Why are you monkeying with my son’s stereo speakers?’ he asked. No, Nick wasn’t asking. He was demanding an answer. He pounded the coffee table in the living room so hard I jumped. All Nick’s frustrated grief and anger was poured into protecting his son’s prized sound equipment.

  ‘We’re looking for his oxy supply,’ Jace said.

  ‘Did that liar say my son took oxy? He quit,’ Nick said. ‘He was going into rehab in Oakville on Monday. He—’

  Nick stopped in mid-sentence as the uniform pulled out a Ziploc bag filled with round yellow and red tablets. Oxy. The yellow tablets were stamped ‘40’ and the red ones were ‘60’ – the highest dosages available.

  ‘She planted those!’ Nick said. ‘My son swore he’d quit taking oxy. That’s why he was going into rehab.’

  ‘Tests will show us if he’d quit, Mr Murphy,’ Jace said.

  The transport van had arrived to take Tom Murphy’s body to the medical examiner’s office.

  ‘Would you like to step outside, Mr Murphy?’ Jace asked.

  ‘No, I want to see my son.’ He shook his liver-spotted head, but his entire body was shaking with grief and anger. He leaned on his heavy black cane.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, but the kitchen is a crime scene.’

  ‘I have to see my son.’

  ‘It’s better to remember him the way he was.’

  ‘I want to remember him the way he is now! I want to hunt down that bitch and kill her!’ he shouted. ‘She’ll pay! She’ll pay!’

  ‘If she’s guilty, I promise she’ll pay,’ Jace said. ‘Please let us do our job.’

  He managed to steer Nick to the door. The old man was outside when the attendants brought out his son’s black body bag on a stretcher. The metal stretcher clanked on the suburban concrete porch with a terrible finality.

  The old man’s howl of grief made the hair stand up on my neck. Jace shifted uncomfortably. Nitpicker, head down in the kitchen cabinet under the sink, stopped taking apart the plumbing down there, just for a moment.

  Nick’s haunting cry stopped and I began packing up my DI case. ‘Are you going to arrest the wife?’ I asked Jace.

  ‘The victim is dead on the scene and she admits to hitting her husband, so I could arrest her,’ he said. ‘But she claims his death was self-defense: He went nuts on oxy and attacked her first. And we did find a big stash of it.’

  ‘Do you think the father’s right and Tara Murphy planted the stash?’ I asked.

  ‘I had the bag printed. It had been wiped. So were the six empty beer bottles by the chair. No prints on any of them.’

  ‘Someone wiped the prints on six beer bottles? You gotta be kidding. Nobody’s that clean.’ I couldn’t keep the disbelief out of my voice.

  ‘I couldn’t believe it, either,’ Jace said. ‘That’s why Nitpicker is taking apart the sink trap. Tara Murphy might have poured the beer down the sink. I think she tried to set the scene to support her defense that he was drunk and high and attacked her.’

  ‘But won’t the beer be gone by now?’ I asked.

  ‘I hope Tara Murphy didn’t do a load of dishes or decide to clean the sink. If she poured a six-pack of beer down the sink it would remain in the trap until such time as a sufficient quantity of something else was poured down the drain to flush it. I’m thinking that the trap probably holds about five or six ounces of fluid. Nitpicker will know.’

  Nitpicker appeared on cue. She looked tired and flushed and her blue hair was wilted. ‘Here’s your beer, Jace, just as you suspected.’ She showed him a large Tupperware bowl filled with pale gold liquid. I smelled the sour stink of beer. A light skim of grease and a few grayish hairs floated on top the beer.

  ‘Nobody throws out that much beer,’ she said. ‘The sink wasn’t flushed with something else, so we found it.’

  ‘Amazing,’ I said.

  ‘Works for toilets, too,’ she said, and grinned. ‘It takes at least three flushes to completely get rid of a s
tash.’

  Thank God Greiman was too lazy to check the toilet traps when he searched Mario’s salon, or he would have found drugs for sure.

  ‘The wife can still claim her husband threw out the beer when he was crazy-mad,’ Jace said.

  ‘Can the autopsy be done today?’ I asked.

  ‘Katie said she’d do it as soon as the body arrives. I’m gonna keep the wife pigeonholed at the station until the assistant ME rules, then arrest her if he’s clean for drugs. I don’t want Tara Murphy claiming her husband was high on oxy and that made him go crazy. I’m playing it safe.’

  I was glad. I was used to Detective Ray Greiman, who held the world record for jumping to conclusions. I still remembered the case where Greiman found the husband dead in bed and decided the wife had killed him. He had her cuffed and booked, and was preening for the press an hour later. She sued the city for false arrest after the ME ruled that her husband had died of natural causes. Jace would never do that. I was glad he was making sure the suspect was guilty.

  I was ready to roll. As I left the sad little house, I saw Nick being comforted by a next-door neighbor, a gray-haired woman in her sixties, wearing a pale blue warm-up suit. Tom’s father was weeping on her shoulder. Poor man. He would spend the rest of his life blaming himself because he couldn’t tear his son away from his killer. Scrawny Tara Murphy was no femme fatale, but she’d had a deadly hold on her husband.

  Now the neighbor was leading a broken Nick Murphy inside her home. I heard the words ‘coffee’ and ‘cake.’ Maybe those would help him through this terrible day. To outlive one’s children is a curse. Nick Murphy had been doubly cursed – his son was dead and Nick believed he could have saved him.

  At home, I finished my DI report about two o’clock. Then I found the photo I’d taken of that pair of one-hundred-dollar bills under the dead Becky’s mattress, and dialed the Beverly Hills phone number on the one. A woman answered the phone with ‘Jorge Cantata Salon, hairstylist to the stars.’ That wasn’t hype. Jorge Cantata and his stylists did the hair of the rich and famous in Beverly Hills. But why would Becky need the name of a salon that had five-hundred-dollar haircuts?