A Murder of Justice

TWENTY-SIX

I came up here to smoke,” the slender nut-brown man named Alem said.

“Up here” was the rooftop of McKinney’s Auto Storage, a grim four-story garage of time-stained raw concrete on Half Street, just down from the DMV inspection station.

“You see, the manager will not let us smoke in the office.” Alem said it almost apologetically. “So I came up here to smoke, and then I notice…” The man paused delicately, as though worried he might offend. “I notice,” he repeated, “the odor.”

A dust-covered Trans Am squatted in the headlights of a squad car. Off to the side, a Forensics van and a meat wagon from the M.E.’s Office. The slightest wisp of breeze carried a pungent rotten sweetness to Frank and he noticed that the techs and the uniformed officers were standing upwind from the car.

“I then call nine-one-one.” Alem looked at Frank and Jose anxiously. “I hope I do the right thing.”

Jose took a breath and exhaled loudly. “You did, Mr. Alem. How long’s the car been here?”

“It will be on the ticket… under the windshield wiper. I smell that”-he pointed to the Trans Am-“I do not touch the car. I do not touch it anywhere.” His anxious look returned. “I do right? Yes?”

“Yes,” Jose said. “Nobody notice it before? Anybody say anything? About the smell?”

Alem shook his head. “Up here is long-term storage. There is no elevator, so…”

“Thank you, Mr. Alem,” Jose said.

“Blessingame answered the nine-one-one,” Frank explained to Jose as the two walked toward the Trans Am, “ran the tag through DMV.”

Two forensic techs were going over a checklist on a clipboard placed on the hood of the Trans Am. The older of the two looked up as Frank and Jose approached.

“We’ve done the outside,” the tech said. “Considerable latents. Picked up soil samples out of the fenders, off the tires. Tread casts made.”

“You satisfied?” Frank asked, knowing what was next and not really wanting to know.

“I said we’re done,” the tech answered crossly.

“Okay,” Frank told Blessingame, “open it up.”

With screeching sideways motions, Blessingame worked the edge of the pry bar deep under the trunk lid. He paused to gather strength, then with a massive effort heaved downward on the pry bar.

With a metallic protest, the trunk popped open.

The death smell rolled across the rooftop-thick and putrid, violating the night air, instantaneously filling the lungs with dread.

A collective gasp from the techs and the cops. Mixed curses… “Jesus Christ” along with “motherfucker.”

It was the smell of just beyond. Of that which waited around the corner. You came on it, you knew it. Even the first time, you knew it for what it was. The inevitable. The end.

The Trans Am’s alarm warbled, then climbed into a satanic screeching.

“Mornin’, Pencil,” Frank heard Jose saying.

Crawfurd lay faceup, legs drawn up, knees to chest. His throat had been cut ear to ear. His tongue had been pulled through the opening, and it hung obscenely down his chest.

The digital clock in the autopsy suite said four forty-seven a.m. when Tony Upton snapped off his latex gloves and tossed them into the waste receptacle. Pencil Crawfurd lay on a stainless-steel table. The noisy overhead hood was working hard, but it failed to pull the odor away. Frank found himself wishing he hadn’t given up cigarettes.

“Time of death?” Upton surveyed the corpse before him. “Preliminary estimate based on putrefaction, blowfly larvae, staphylinidae… I’d say about three days. Looks like somebody worked him over before. Be able to give you a better fix after the examination. You staying?”

Frank exchanged glances with Jose. He turned back to Upton. “No. Hoser and I are going to check out his place.”

“I could send out for ribs after,” Upton offered, a damper of disappointment in his voice.

Jose shook his head disbelievingly. “Don’t see how it is-”

“How it is I can be hungry?” Upton interrupted.

Jose laughed.

“How it is, Tony, you always ordering ribs. Never any pizza?”

The sky hinted dawn soon, with rain later. A breeze had blown advertising flyers, scraps of paper, and miscellaneous bits of street trash against the front door. A dim light came from a second-floor window.

Jose knocked, waited, then knocked again. Several blocks away, a truck ground through its gears. Down the darkened street, a dog barked once, twice, then fell silent.

“Look around back?” Jose asked.

Accompanied by sounds of scratchy scurrying and glimpses of retreating rats, Frank and Jose made their way down the litter-strewn alley behind the row of houses.

Crawfurd’s back door opened onto a small porch on which stood two plastic garbage cans and a plastic carton emblazoned “DC Recycles!” Frank climbed the three steps. He stopped right before knocking and played his flashlight on the door.

“Hoser.”

Jose joined him.

“Window.”

Frank’s flashlight beam focused on a missing pane in the door, the pane nearest the deadbolt. Stepping forward, he angled the light through the opening.

The broken pane lay inside on the floor. Duct tape held the glass shards together.

As the two detectives slipped on latex gloves, Jose said the necessary words. “Indications of felony breaking and entering.”

Before Jose finished, Frank had turned the knob and swung the door open. He eased his pistol out of its shoulder holster. Without looking, he knew that Jose had switched his flashlight to his left hand and had his Glock in his right. Frank stepped through, into the kitchen.

Drawers had been dumped, cabinet shelves swept clean. Scattered across the floor were knives, forks, and spoons, pots, pans, and broken crockery.

The wreckage conveyed a savage intensity, not the mindless, universal destructive energy of a tornado, but the focused precision of a human hunter.

Avoiding as much of the debris as possible, Frank and Jose picked their way across the kitchen. Near the doorway into the hall, they switched off their flashlights and stood stone still.

Frank felt his pulse beating in his throat, then his stomach contracting.

At first he thought it might be something off his clothes, a leftover from the garage rooftop or Upton’s autopsy suite. Then he knew it wasn’t. Leaning close to Jose, he whispered, “Smell that?”

In the dimness he saw Jose nod. The two stood quietly another few seconds, then switched on their flashlights. Down the hallway toward the stairs, they passed the living room, with its furniture turned over, upholstery slit, stuffings spilling like the intestines of some gutted animal. At the end of the hallway, Frank ran his flashlight beam up the stairs.

Again the scratching sounds of small scurrying feet. The flashlight stopped on a hand frozen in the act of reaching out over the top of the stairway.