Fred Limberg - First Murder

“Help you?” she said and took a sip from the glass. Tony traded his shield for the notebook.

“Just a few questions if you’ve got a minute.”

“Is this about the car?”

Tony didn’t want anything to do with the car . He smiled and shook his head. “Do you know a Sean Stuckey?”

A door opened down the hallway. An old woman with frizzy gray hair peered around the jamb. Angela gave her the finger and the woman retreated back inside her apartment. Then she grabbed Tony’s jacket and pulled him inside, muttered something that sounded like ‘nosy fuckin’ bitch’, and slammed the door.

“Why do you guys always say it like that?” Angela was drunk, or stoned, or maybe both Tony figured. She tried to take another hit off the drink and frowned. It was empty. “This way.”

She walked through a jumbled living room toward the kitchen. Tony took a quick look. She’d either emptied or hidden the ashtray with the joint in it. The pot smell was strong in the apartment. He had no choice but to follow.

“Say what like what?” he asked when he caught up to her in the dingy kitchen.

“Like, do you know ‘ a ’ Sean Stuckey? How many could there be?” She was leaning against the counter now, arms crossed beneath heavy breasts. She tried to take a sip from the empty glass again. Tony didn’t take any pleasure in her nervousness.

“I guess I could have asked if you knew the Sean Stuckey, but I didn’t know that he was famous.”

Angela laughed and scratched her backside. “More like infamous . Yeah, I know him.”

She turned and reached above the stove for the vodka bottle that was on a shelf up there. Tony looked away, embarrassed. Angela wasn’t wearing anything but the tee shirt. He remembered Sue Ellen flashing him like that two nights ago, reaching for his shirt behind the sofa, the white sheet riding up, the laughing. That was sexy. This was just sad.

“Was he here with you Sunday night?” He watched her struggle with the ice cube tray. Tony took the tray from her and cracked the cubes himself to help move things along.

“Sunday night?”

Angela went off somewhere looking for Sunday night. She splashed vodka in the glass and took a thoughtful sip. Tony noticed she didn’t wince or grimace when she swallowed the straight warm liquor. Kharkov. Cheap stuff. Sunday night seemed to be hiding across the room somewhere above the refrigerator.

“Sure. Sunday night.” She nodded thoughtfully and then smiled, like she had earned some small victory. “Sean was here Sunday. Monday night, too. God, I’m still sore.” She giggled. Tony held the ice cube tray out. Angela studied it like it was a box of chocolates before picking out two for her drink.

“Sunday, was he here all night? Did you see him in the morning on Monday?”

“You want a drink?”

Tony shook his head. He remembered Sean teasing him when he asked for her number. He remembered him saying she was hot. Angela looked like she should have been in her twenties, but it would take some work to sell the deal. Her skin was grayish. Wrinkles were already hinting at the corner of her eyes and at the corners of her mouth. She looked to be a haggard thirty. Maybe she was. She wasn’t hot though. Not by a long shot.

“Monday morning?” he reminded her. She’d gone off somewhere again. Probably working her way up to Monday.

“Why do you want to know?” She was braver now, hiding behind her vodka.

“I’m with the Homicide Unit, Miss Arkwright. We’re just trying to clean up some loose ends.”

Angela started laughing, head thrown back. It was a mean raucous laugh that tailed off in a coughing fit. “He finally killed someone with that fucking spear?” she asked, once she was done hacking.

Tony was confused for a minute. Then he remembered the odd conversation with David Hong. They had a laugh about…damn it. He couldn’t pull it out.

Angela looked over her glass, bleary-eyed but serious. “Did Sean kill someone?”

“No. I don’t think so.” Tony caught himself. He’d been puzzling over what Hong had said that cracked them up and what Angela had said. He’d answered without thinking.

“Maybe an accident?” She giggled again. Then Tony remembered what had embarrassed the big Samoan kid.

“Miss Arkwright…”

“Angie.”

“Angie. What am I missing here? Did Sean say something? Something about a murder?”

“I’m sorry.” She took another big swallow. The vodka seemed to compose her some. “Private joke. Murder, huh? Who got killed?”

“Monday morning?” He tried to get it back on track, get his answers and get the hell out of there. Tony finally figured out what the other smell was. It was sex and body odor, a desperate feral musk.

“He might have been here. I was sleeping. I slept in.” Tony bet she slept in a lot of mornings; that and woke up with a hangover more often than not.

“So you’re not sure?”

“He was gone when I got up.”

“Which was what time?”

“I don’t fuckin’ know. Maybe ten?” The drink was empty again. Tony stared hard at his notebook when she reached up for the bottle. She was slurring her words more now, getting a little belligerent. “You too good to drink with me?”

“I’m working.”

“Whatever.” She ignored the ice cubes this time. Kharkov. Neat. Maybe she was saving them for later.

Yeah right.

He flipped the notebook shut. He had what he’d come for. Angie Arkwright couldn’t positively alibi Stuckey for early Monday morning. A phone rang in the living room. It took three rings before Angie was aware of it. The answering machine kicked in on the fourth.

“Do you need to grab that?”

Tony had already plotted his escape. She waved her free hand, dismissing his question, when he heard Sean Stuckey’s voice coming from the living room.

“Well, thanks for your time.”

He headed for the door. He wanted to hear what message Sean was leaving and caught the tail end of it.

“…I was there Monday morning. See you later, babe.”

Tony hesitated at the door. He wondered if he could ask Angie to play the recording for him. He wondered further if he could make her play it. She snuck up on him at the door, wrapped his arm in both of hers. She pressed it tightly to her body, warm and naked under the rank tee shirt.

“Do you really have to go?” She gave him a drunken leer, rubbed her breast against his arm. Tony carefully untangled himself and got the door open.

“Sorry, I’m working.”

He used the excuse again, not that he was in the least bit tempted, but he saw a sadness and loneliness behind the alcoholic haze and didn’t want to hurt her. He suspected that she’d been hurt plenty, used and hurt. He felt like he was about to do it again and took a step back inside.

“Could you play that message back for me?”

“What message?”

“The last one. The one that just came in. I think it was Sean.”

Angie looked over at the battered Code-A-Phone and shrugged. “Knock yourself out. I gotta pee.” She set her glass on a thrift store coffee table and weaved through the living room and down a dimly lit hallway.

Tony figured out the buttons on the ancient machine and punched up the message.

“Hey Ang, some cop is gonna come see you tomorrow asking if I was there Monday morning. You were kinda out of it. Just tell him I was there Monday morning. See you later, babe.”

On his way down the hallway he caught a brief glimpse of the gray haired woman as she closed her door and made a note of the apartment number…just in case.

There was an empty chair in the hallway next to Sue Ellen’s door. Tony guessed it was for Marco or another agent from the BCA. It was empty and that made him nervous until he heard a booming laugh. It was Marco. His laugh was as big as he was. Tony knocked. The laughter skidded to a halt.