Frank Zafiro - Some Degree of Murder

I sipped the last of my beer and put the glass on the side of the table. “I did some time.”

“I know. I read the papers after you left.”

“They made me sound worse than I am.”

“You almost killed a man.”

“I did what I was supposed to do.”

Catherine, the bar maid, walked over to the table. “You need another Guinness?”

I smiled at her. “That’d be great.”

She looked over at Angie who stared wide-eyed at me. “Another Cabernet?”

Andie bobbed her head without taking her eyes off of me. Catherine gave a small nod before walking away.

“You okay?”

She nodded.

“I did three years for that. I haven’t done any more time.”

“Are you still working for that man?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“He held up his end of the bargain. I wanted to keep working for someone who kept their word.”

Catherine came back with our drinks. After she put Andie’s wine down in front of her, she popped another can of Guinness and poured it into a fresh glass. She winked at me before she walked off.

“I’m going to find who hurt Fawn. You know that, right?”

She stared at me over the lip of her wine glass.

“I’m doing this for me but because you asked as well, right?”

She emptied her glass and put it on the table. “Yes,” she said softly, her lips wet from the wine.

“That means you’ll be part of it. You can’t tell anyone. Not Steve. Not the cops. No one.”

“I understand that.”

“Was Fawn using?”

“Using?”

“Dope. Drugs.”

She shrugged. “I think she smoked some marijuana occasionally.”

“No, not weed. Something harder. Maybe crank. Probably crack.”

“Crank? Crack? What’s the difference?”

“Crank is methamphetamine. Crack is jacked-up cocaine.”

“No way. She was a good girl.”

“Did she have a boyfriend?”

“She didn’t have a steady boyfriend.”

“Who’s her best friend then?”

Andie thought for a second. “That would be Natalia Romanov.”

“Is she Russian?”

“Yeah.”

“Where can I find Natalia?”

Andie pulled out pen from her purse and wrote the address down on a napkin.

“Are you going to talk to her?”

“Yeah.”

“Want me to call her for you?”

“No.”

She checked her watch and looked up at me.

“I’m good,” I said to her.

Andie slid out of the booth and put her hand on my shoulder. “Thanks,” she whispered in to my ear.

I watched her walk out of the restaurant before turning back to my beer.

“She’s pretty,” Catherine said as she came over to collect Andie’s empty glass.

“Yeah.”

“Your wife?”

“Nah. Old girlfriend.”

“I see,” she said with a smile and walked off to the bar.

I got up and followed her to the counter where I asked her for the tab. She wrote it quickly up and slipped the check to me. From my pocket, I pulled several bills and dropped them on the hardwood counter.

“What are you doing later tonight?” I asked her as she collected the money.

Catherine tilted her head. “Going home to my husband.”

TOWER

I tapped the pen on my notepad. It was filled with scribbled lines and question marks. I kept staring at the words, waiting for that magic moment when inspiration would leap off the page.

So many dead ends, so early in the case. Fawn Taylor was a poor little rich girl who had ran away from home because her parents had a few rules and they had the guts to stick to them.

No useful forensic evidence whatsoever. The crime scene may have been next to a dumpster, but it was clean of any meaningful evidence. All I got from the M.E. was that she was strangled to death and appeared to be sexually assaulted. No word back on the workup of her clothing.

I reached for the coffee cup and took a sip. The cup was three-quarters full, but the coffee inside was cold. I put it down with disgust.

Usually, after the physical evidence, it was the victimology that helped the most. But in this case, even that wasn’t very helpful.

Who was she? A fourteen-year-old runaway whose parents live in a small mansion.

What did she do? No idea. Once she took off from home, she was no longer a student. What did she do for those two weeks after she ran away?

Who did she know? Her parents, who gave me no indication of being involved. Her friends, all of whom turned out to be little prom princesses in the making. None had any idea where Fawn had been spending her time once she ran away.

Essentially, Fawn Taylor was a ghost for the last two weeks before her murder. My canvass of the East Sprague strip came up empty. No one knew a thing. Big surprise there.

And now I had another ghost to deal with. At least with this latest one, I could hope for an AFIS hit on her fingerprints to give me a jumping off point.

“My Lord, Tower,” Ray Browning boomed from the other side of the cubicle wall. “You’re tapping your pen so hard that it sounds like road construction over there.”

“Sorry.”

Browning peeked around the cubicle, a half-eaten sandwich in his hand. I didn’t have to ask what kind it was. Even if I couldn’t smell it, I’d have known. Every day, for the last twenty years, he eats a tuna sandwich for lunch. Mustard, no mayo.

“Case giving you problems?” he asked, taking a bite of his foul concoction and chewing.

I shrugged. “Running low on places to go with it.”

“Little rich girl have a boyfriend from the wrong side of the tracks?”

“Not as far as I can tell.”

“Diary?”

“Typical teenager crap.”

“Parents?”

“Mom and step-dad.”

He raised his eyebrow. “Step-dad? That sounds promising.”

I knew what he was thinking and shook my head. “I don’t think so.”

“Any signs of it?”

“Some.”

“Like?”

“Like she was an early bloomer. She was probably sexually active at thirteen. Sharp downturn in grades. Marijuana use. Hated her parents.”

Browning nodded, chewing as he listened.

“He just doesn’t seem the type,” I offered.

“What’d you get from Forensics?”

“Very little.”

“Sexual assault, right?”

“Probably.”

“So no fluids?”

I shook my head.

“Hairs?”

“Nope. But I asked Cameron to double-check.”

“I wouldn’t count on getting anything out of that,” Browning said. “He’s pretty thorough.”

“I know. But the M.E. did the comb and comparison.”

“What?” Browning’s eyebrows shot up. “Why?”

“I dunno. But Cameron’s going to double-check the work.”

“That’ll piss off the M.E., no doubt.”

“He’s doing it off the books.”

“That’s fine, as long as he doesn’t find anything.” Brown took a deep breath and let it out. “It’d be nice to have something physical to either eliminate or link the step-dad, wouldn’t it?”

I agreed. “A lot of things would be nice. I’m batting about.037 on this one.”

“Not even good enough for the minors.”

“Not even good enough for little league.”

“Be careful,” he warned with a grin. “Crawford’ll send you back to patrol. Take your detective’s shield away from you.”

“At this point, he’d be doing me a favor.”

Browning chuckled as he tossed the last bite of his sandwich into his mouth and chewed it up. He wiped the corners of his mouth with his thumb. “Keep working it, John,” he said. “Something will break.” Then he disappeared around the corner of the cubicle.

I tossed my pen onto my desk and leaned back in my chair. I put my hands behind my head and stared down at my notepad.