Dinah McCall - White Mountain

White Mountain.

For as long as she could remember, it had been the backdrop for her life. Somewhere in the ancient past of this land, a massive shift in the tectonic plates below the earth’s surface had created heat and pressure beyond man’s imagination, resulting in the birth of the mountain range of which White Mountain was a part.

She had often wondered why it was called White Mountain, because it was black as a witch’s heart, with a thick stand of trees halfway up its steep slopes. Her father had suggested that it must have been named during the winter months, because then it was usually covered with snow.

It was some time later before Isabella noticed she’d eaten all her food. As she stood, she also realized that part of her melancholy had eased. She wanted to smile, but her heart was too sore to allow herself the notion, although her father would have been pleased. He’d always said that the world looked far too grim on an empty stomach.

With one last look at the overpowering peak, she went back in the house, quietly locking the door behind her. She set her plate in the sink and then started back to her room. It wasn’t going to be easy without her father, but she accepted his death as an inevitable part of life. The uncles were all of the same generation as her father, and she didn’t want to think of the days when she would eventually have to give them up, too. The saddest thing was knowing that Uncle Frank had yet to learn of her father’s death. He was going to be devastated that he hadn’t known, and guilt-ridden at not being here to help her through the ordeal. Isabella just wished he would come back, or at least call. He’d never been away this long before.

A few moments later she entered her room and went back to bed. It wasn’t long before exhaustion claimed her and she finally fell asleep.

Detective Mike Butoli swung his sore foot over the curb and stepped up with a hop as he headed into the crime lab. The coroner’s office had yet to perform the autopsy on his latest case, and he was chafing under the delay.

An unidentified stiff in a Brighton Beach alley was not high priority, nor was it the only unidentified victim awaiting dissection, but for some reason the case was weighing heavily on Butoli’s mind. They’d put the stiff’s fingerprints into the system, hoping for a match, and at Lieutenant Flanagan’s suggestion had sent them to Interpol, as well. With the high concentration of Russian immigrants in Brighton Beach, it stood to reason that one or the other would result in an identification.

He had been a cop for almost twenty years, the last twelve as a detective. He’d seen far more of the evil and depravity of the human condition than anyone should be exposed to and couldn’t remember the last time he had taken a case personally.

Until now.

Maybe it was because his headache was competing with the pain in his foot to see which could rack up the most misery. Maybe it was the guilt he was feeling for having fallen off the wagon after six long months of sobriety. But whatever the reason, yesterday, as he stood in that alley looking down into the old man’s face, he kept wondering what journey the man’s life had been on would cause it to end in an alley in Brighton Beach.

Today he had a dead man with no identification, no witnesses to the crime, and he wanted answers to both. Information from the coroner’s office would have to wait, but he was coming to the crime lab with more optimism. If he got lucky, the analysis of the crime scene evidence would give him something to go on.

Since he was expected, he walked into the lab without knocking and headed toward the small middle-aged man who was feeding information into a computer.

“Hey, Yoda, what have you got for me?”

Malcolm Wise had long ago accepted his nickname, but not without some disgust. It wasn’t his fault that nature had doomed him to look more like the famous character from the Star Wars series than he did his own parents. He turned to see Detective Butoli coming toward him and hit Save on the keyboard before giving him his full attention.

“Why are you limping?” Wise asked.

“Broke my toe.”

Wise smirked. “I won’t ask how.”

“Well hell, now I am disappointed. I thought Yoda had all the answers.”

“Can the crap,” Wise said. “Short and balding is sexy to some women.”

“Then thank God I was born a man,” Butoli countered. “About my stiff…got anything that will help?”

Wise moved toward his desk. “The knife in his chest that was found in a Dumpster was Russian-made.”

Butoli rolled his eyes. “Damn, Yoda. This is Brighton Beach. It’s full of Russian immigrants. Give me something I can use.”

“The skin under his fingernails isn’t his own.” Butoli stifled a curse and popped a couple of breath mints in his mouth.

“Anything that might help me put a name to the man?”

Wise grinned as he lifted a plastic bag from a box and slid it across the table.

Butoli caught it before it slipped off onto the floor.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“The victim’s shirt.”

“What’s so special about a shirt?”

“Maybe the name underneath the tag might help you.”

Butoli’s eyes lit up.

“His name? As in a laundry mark?”

“At least part of it,” Wise said. “F. Walton. Now all you have to do is find someone missing a man named Walton and your mystery is solved.”

“Only part of it,” Butoli said, thinking of who had put the knife in the old man’s chest. “Anything else that might help?”

Wise shrugged. “You’re the detective. I just got through faxing a preliminary report to your office. It should be on your desk when you get back. Some of the tests will take longer. I’ll let you know when the lab work is done.”

Butoli slapped the little man on the back.

“Thanks, Yoda. This is the first good news I’ve had in two days.”

Wise smirked. “May the force be with you. Now go away. I have work to do.”

Butoli left the crime lab with a bounce in his step that had little to do with his sore toe. Finally a name to go with the face—at least most of a name. He was going to swing by the office, pick up Marshall and a picture of the victim, and then take a ride back down to Brighton Beach. Maybe someone would remember a man named Walton. Hell. Maybe he was kin to John Boy. Wouldn’t that be a kick in the pants?

Five hours later, Butoli slid into the passenger seat as Larry Marshall got in behind the wheel. They’d been in and out of every place of business within a fifteen block radius of the area where the old man’s body had been found, with no response. It wasn’t until they’d gone into a small Russian restaurant adjacent to a thrift store that they’d gotten lucky.

The manager had frowned at their badges as he stubbed out a roll-your-own cigarette, glanced at the picture, then shook his head without looking up.

But Butoli had persisted.

“Come on, buddy. Look again. Somebody stuck a knife in his heart and left him to die in an alley alone. Somewhere he’s probably got family who are worried sick. I’m not asking you to ID a killer, just the man. It’s the least he deserves. Now look again. Have you seen him before?”

The manager looked up with a distrustful glare. His experience with public authority had begun at the age of seventeen, half a world away in a Soviet prison. He felt no need to cooperate. But the look on the cop’s face seemed less threatening than most, so when Butoli shoved the picture back toward him, he shrugged, then looked down.

“Yeah…maybe I see him before…two…three times. He liked my borscht.”

“Is he a local?”

“Nyet,” the manager answered, then qualified the Russian “no” with a negative shake of his head.