Fred Limberg: First Murder

Wait a damn minute. Uncle Ray?

Tony jogged the short hop from Sue Ellen’s downtown condo to police headquarters. The brisk air and pace helped cut through the brain-fog. He’d deal with his car later. He checked out one of the unmarked Crown Vics. He also checked with the dispatcher to get the address again and his watch. It was already 4:40. He was going to be late. Tony decided to go Code 3, stuck the blue strobe light on the car’s roof and toggled the siren on.

Traffic was light, no surprise at 4:45 in the morning. He blew through two lights, heading generally west and south to Victoria Street. When he made the last turn he realized the house was a block up, near the next corner where a discotheque of blue, red and yellow lights danced, lighting the street and throwing weird disconcerting shadows over houses on both sides of Victoria. Tony killed the siren a block from the house…not soon enough.

“Hey de Luca, what’s the hurry?” one familiar patrolman shouted. That was Tim.

“Hey Tony, you’re out of uniform,” another added, laughing behind him.

It was still dark. Cops in black leather and nylon huddled together by the cars, their breath-fog rising in the street light lit pre-dawn. It was chilly but not cold this early in October. Tony shrugged off the taunts. Just a week ago he’d been in a uniform, riding in a radio car, working with these people.

He noticed a man sitting sideways in the back of one of the black-and-whites flanked by two uniformed officers, his head down, hands in his lap. Tony couldn’t tell if the guy was cuffed. He wondered if the crime had been solved before he’d even arrived. That’d serve him right.

Further up the drive, he saw a solitary thin figure in a suit silhouetted by a light over the side door of the brick house. Tony turned at the sound of an approaching car. It was the crime scene guys, the first of them anyway. He noticed the coroner’s van just up the street. No ambulance. He sighed and walked up the drive.

“Glad you could make it.” Detective Sergeant Rayford Bankston looked Tony up and down with a critical eye. Ray was wearing a dark gray suit and a tie, wearing it very well for 5:00 in the morning. He was a tall thin black man with short graying hair. He held a small digital recorder and a pair of latex gloves in one hand and shook Tony’s with the other.

“I’m not that late, am I?” Tony wasn’t sure what to expect from his new partner. Bankston had a reputation of being a loner, kind of aloof.

“Not really, considering.”

Tony cocked one eyebrow, wondering if Ray knew about the party, about Sue Ellen.

Uncle Ray?

“So what have we got?” Tony turned to the door, eager to go to work.

“The man in the car there is Scott Fredrickson. He says he got in late from a business trip, went in the back door here and saw his wife dead on the floor. Stabbed. Says he grabbed the phone, called 911 right away, and here we are.”

“No one’s been in yet?” Tony knew some street cops were better than others at a crime scene.

“The responding officer went in-carefully, she assures me. She saw the body on the floor, and checked for a pulse. But the lady was gone, way gone she said, and backed out. The scene’s untouched.”

“That’s good.”

“So here are the ground rules, detective. Touch nothing. Move nothing. Observe. Take notes. I prefer to use this recorder.” Ray held it up before sliding it in his pocket. As he worked the latex gloves on he added, “Something I picked up from the coroner.”

Tony nodded and looked off, wondering how he was going to explain that he’d forgotten to grab any gloves, or his notebook, or a pen, or a flashlight.

Ray recognized his rookie partner’s dilemma. “What I do is I keep a kit, actually several of them. One in the car, one in the desk, like that, so I never show up at a scene without my tools.” He smiled, holding out a pair of gloves to Tony. “It’s embarrassing not to have your tools. Unprofessional.”

“Thanks, Ray.” Tony noticed the gloves were powdered inside, more comfortable when you would be wearing them for a while. Professional. “Won’t happen again.”

“What say I go in first? I’ve done this a time or two.” Ray’s twenty-five years on the force, most of it as an investigator, guaranteed that Tony wasn’t going to argue. “You’ve got what, five years on?”

“Six and a half. Last year I was with Narcotics. Eighteen months, actually. Undercover. I liked it, took the exam, and here we are.”

“Narco-that would explain why you look scruffy.”

“It’s four in the fucking morning, Ray. What’s with scruffy?”

“Hair. Beard. Clothes. Sock.” Ray held up one finger. “Scruffy. And I’d prefer that you save your cursing for more appropriate circumstances.”

“And what would a more appropriate circumstance be?” Tony bottled his anger when he replied but his words still dripped with sarcasm.

“Hammer versus finger comes to mind. Looking into a gun barrel comes to mind. Husband comes home early? Hit a deer in your new car? Now that definitely deserves a good cussing. You’re not on patrol anymore. Please get in the habit.” Bankston turned toward the door. “You ready?”

Tony nodded. “Lead the way, Sarge.”

“It’s all in the details, Tony. Remember that.” Ray pulled the screen door open and led the way. “And don’t ever call me ‘Sarge’ again, okay?”

“Got it… Ray .”

Hot damn, Tony thought. Here we go. My first murder.

The only light in the kitchen came from a ceiling fixture. Ray and Tony focused on the body sprawled in the middle of the room. The woman was on her back, one leg tucked under the other. One of her shoes, a black leather slip-on with a low-heel, rested on its side a few feet away. She was wearing a skirt, collared blouse and jacket. The skirt was navy blue, calf length. An embroidered jacket was splayed open. A once white or ivory colored blouse was stained red-black from the blood. Her head was turned to the left side. One arm was outstretched on the floor. The other arm lay across her torso near the knife but not touching it.

The handle of a knife stood erect from her chest, just below her left breast. In life, she had been a pretty woman-strikingly attractive, in fact. In death, the settling of blood and degradation of tissue had already begun to betray that beauty.

Her long brown-blonde hair was fanned out on the tile floor. The blood pool had crept up from beneath and around her and had soaked one side halfway. Her eyes were open. Tony thought she looked surprised, as if she had been asking ‘why are you doing this?’ at the moment someone had pierced her heart.

She had been dead for a while. The blood was blackened and tacky. House flies whirred about. Some hovered and swarmed about the body and the blood. Some investigated and feasted. Her bowels and bladder had let go. The smell of urine and feces mingled with the coppery tang of blood.

Tony had seen death before but it had been recent death, immediate death, always accompanied by sirens and flashing lights and screaming. The blood had been red in those deaths. It had been gunshot death and slashing death and sometimes metal-rent accidental death. It had been loud rap music death, rock and roll dying and shotgun murder. It had been meth-fuelled death, whisky and beer soaked slaughter. In this quiet kitchen with a once-pretty woman lying on the floor wearing a surprised sad look on her face he found himself listening for organ music-a hymn or a Celtic chant or something.

Ray, kneeling by the body and talking softly into his recorder, said, “The victim is middle aged, Caucasian female. Death appears to have been caused by stabbing. One wound is visible. A knife is still imbedded in the victims left chest. Death was not immediate as evidenced by the size of the blood pool. I see no spatter, no blood trail.”