Angel Colón - No Happy Endings

“Shouldn’t have taken me that long if you had any talent. What do you need?”

“I know your guys did a quick canvass of this crew, names and addresses, basic statements.”

“Yeah. They’re searching the area now. We’ll get the other shifts out tomorrow to catch people when they’re awake.”

“I want to cut a few from this herd while I wait for Noosh to finish up with the scene. Anyone worth starting with?”

Zywiciel lit a cigarette, shook his head. “Uh-uh. Take your pick. No one here knows dick.” He switched to his generic “female citizen” voice, an octave higher, hinting at a room temperature IQ. “Oh my God, Carol’s such a sweetheart, Marty’s such a nice guy, what’s the world coming to?” Returned to his normal voice. “You know. The usual bullshit.”

“Yeah, I know. I’ll start with her.” Doc pointed to a forty-ish woman whose idea of bundling up didn’t include hiding her cleavage. “Looks like she might have a couple of guns in that housecoat.”

“I talked to her already. She has issues with authority.”

“She doesn’t like cops?”

“I don’t think she likes anybody. I get the feeling she’s only flashing her knockers to show us what we’re missing. You get up close and they’re not all that impressive”

Zywiciel was right: Michelle Prince didn’t appear to like anybody, and her breasts didn’t justify her high opinion of them. She didn’t have much to say about the Cropchos, not wanting to speak ill of the dead and Marty suffering like he must be. She didn’t spare anyone else. Doc could have kissed Grabek on the mouth for calling him back to the house.

They found Neuschwander in the bedroom packing up. “It’s all yours, soon as the ME’s done. I’ll get what I have here out to the lab soon as I get it logged and separated. When it comes back is anyone’s guess.” He held up a hand before Grabek could speak. “This ain’t the big city. We suck hind tit on this kind of stuff. I’ll give them the usual ‘violent offender at large’ spiel, so maybe you’ll get it in six weeks instead of eight. Except for the DNA. Jesus Christ couldn’t come down from heaven and get you DNA results in less than four months.”

“You have DNA?” Doc said.

“We should. She put up a hell of a fight. There’s skin, blood, and fiber under her nails. The ME will bag her hands and send what we find to the lab. If you luck into a suspect in the next few days, he’ll have scratches on him. Willie, you talked to the husband. Did he say anything about puking when he found her?”

“No.”

Neuschwander smiled. “Someone did. I’d guess he lost it when he got a good look at her. I see some swirls and a wipe pattern, so he tried a half-assed clean-up job, but I got a good enough sample to use.”

“What do you think happened?” Grabek said.

“I don’t know how it started, just how it ended. Television’s on and she’s dressed for bed, so let’s say she’s watching whatever HBO had on at ten.”

“I thought you didn’t have time of death.”

“That’s just a guess. The ME will take her temperature here and check her stomach contents at the autopsy.”

“Speaking of which, where the hell is the ME?” Grabek said. “This call went out a couple of hours ago.”

“Didn’t you hear? There was gang trouble down Wilkensburg tonight. Two dead for sure and a couple wandered off they’re not sure about. He’s been busy, but I just talked to him. He’s on the way.”

“What’s our guy doing in Allegheny County?”

“Allegheny County is our guy. We don’t do enough business here in Neshannock to rate a full-time ME, so we borrow whoever’s on call in Allegheny. Sometimes they get backed up.”

Grabek stared like he held Neuschwander personally responsible and had more to say, as usual. Doc kept the conversation on track.

“Let me get this straight. What the hell kind of burglar walks into the bedroom not too late at night with the TV on?”

“Home invasion,” Grabek said. “He might like the idea of someone home. Might even have looked for a place with the lights on.”

Neuschwander shrugged and opened his hands. “Could be. No rational burglar would do it that way. Even a cat, some guy gets off creeping rooms with people in them, even he’d do it in the dark. No burglar likes to be seen.”

“You really think it’s a home invasion, Willie?” Doc said.

“I can’t say for sure, but I’ll see if there’ve been any others in the area.”

Neuschwander closed his equipment case, said, “I don’t have anything argues against it. Anyway, he comes in, she sees him, they fight. Hell of a fight, from the mess and the scratches she must have given him. Bruises on her neck say he choked her. After that I’m not sure. She either gets away and he beats her with this piece of glass,” he held up the evidence bag, “or he got tired of choking her, or pissed, or whatever, and bashed her head in. Autopsy should tell us more.”

“Sexual assault?” Grabek said.

“Not that I can see.”

“Anything else?” Doc said.

“He’s done this before.” Neuschwander paused while both detectives looked away from the body to his face. “Not the murder, I don’t know about that, but the theft. He knows his jewelry. See this mess spread around the room? All paste and cheap shit. The good stuff was in the closet.”

Grabek leaned in for a view of the closet. “He still left a lot of cash and stones behind for a pro.”

“Maybe something startled him. Maybe he figured he’d been here too long. All this damage took time and made noise. Could’ve thought he’d been heard.”

Zywiciel stood in the doorway. “Examiner’s here with the wagon.”

The Allegheny County Medical Examiner talked with Neuschwander for a few minutes before bothering with Carol Cropcho. Bagged her hands, took some notes, told them what he thought. Coming from the big city didn’t make him any smarter than Neuschwander; he taught them nothing they didn’t already know.

Patrol officers canvassed awakening homes as first light crawled over the tops of the eastern hills. Doc and Grabek walked to their separate cars.

“You want to hit the Clarion for the two-twenty-nine breakfast before we go see Stush?” Grabek said.

“It’s two-sixty-nine now,” Doc said.

“Since when?”

“At least a week.”

“Bastards. I knew I made a mistake coming here.”

Time never moves slower than when the guy you’re supposed to kill is late to the appointment for his own death. So I sat in the corner table listening to yet another forgotten hit of the seventies and eighties and took baby sips on my beer. Couldn’t get sloppy on a job night.

I kept my eyes on the door and on Bricks as she sat at the bar, empty stool beside her. Every time someone would come up and try to sit she’d say she was waiting for a friend or that her girlfriend was in the bathroom. If this guy didn’t show soon the people standing at the bar top elbowing in for drinks were gonna start to get pissed.

It had been more than nine months since Bricks and I began working together, about the length of a pregnancy and our little murder-for-hire business was about to be delivered a stillborn. Yeah, business was slow.

Since our blood-soaked exit from the family, she and I thought there would be a ton of work mopping up the turf war between the New England factions and the Florida douchebags intent on squashing them. Not so much. We seemed to have done such a good job of beheading the New York office that very little stood in the way of a Florida takeover and, brother, they invaded like a swarm of those big flying palmetto bugs they got down there.