Anything You Say Can and Will Be Used Against You (18 page)

I could have cried, but it wasn't in my job description.

 

Watson and Kirk were packing up the CSD van, and both the ambulance and the assistant coroner had arrived. So had the Lieutenant. I stopped at my unit and retrieved my hat, fitted the back down over the hunk of hair I had bobby-pinned up into a bun, then pulled the brim firmly down on my forehead, and tucked the stray strands up
under the hard plastic band. The edges of a headache came on immediately.

“Sarah,” Kirk called out as I walked up. Kirk went by the nickname of Fat Baby, which I'd never figured out as he was skinny as a nightstick. Maybe it was his nearly bald head, much larger than the rest of his body, or the frequent jovial expression on his face. He was madly in love with his wife of ten years, and they had about six kids with another one on the way.

“Hey,” I said. “Y'all find anything useful?” I liked both of them, as I did most of the CSD cops, even though I thought they spent way too much time drinking coffee at the Denny's on Acadian. Most uniforms viewed them as odd ducks, but I figured anyone who worked every god-awful crime scene in the city—Watson was up over eight hundred murders—needed to be odd simply to survive.

“Too much, and never enough.” Watson sighed. His black-rimmed glasses perched precariously on his nose, and his thick, wavy hair was past regulation length. “He beat the hell out of her back and legs with that racquet before he used it elsewhere. Bruising along the margins of most of the wounds, so probably the perp used multiple objects. Cigarette burns on her buttocks. Strangulation attempts. White lines indicate two rings missing, one off the ring finger.”

“Find the missing finger?”

Watson tugged at one side of his mustache. “Kitchen sink. The disposal. Sick bastard.”

My stomach squirmed. “Any prints?”

“A partial-palm bloodstain transfer on the wall and a thumbprint on the racquet. One bloodstain transfer on the floor near her body, a boot looks like, squared-off toe,” Kirk said. “Bunch of others throughout the house, probably nothing we can use. We'll see what Fingerprint can do with it, put a rush on it through AFIS, and we'll have an answer by tomorrow if the perp's prints are in system. God, I love high-tech law enforcement.” He grinned like a happy Labrador.

“Any surprises?”

Watson choked off a snarled laugh. “Besides the tennis racquet?”

“And the mutilation? Sure rockets this one up to the top-ten list of scenes I've worked,” Kirk said. “Definitely a crime of passion,
someone who knew her. Lot of simmering rage. I've seen torture before, but never like this. Cowan's going to try to track down the husband through the trucking company.”

“Think it's the husband?” I asked.

“Bet my pension on it.” Kirk slammed the back door on the van. “Sometimes this job makes me want to puke.”

“By the way, your boy radioed us. He's headed out this way,” Watson said.

“Dubois?”

“Dubois, she asks, all innocent like.” Kirk tossed an exposed film roll up into the air and caught it with his other hand.

I rolled my eyes at them.

“When you gonna leave that boy and come give me some sugar?” Watson poked me in the ribs with his index finger.

“When you leave your wife,” I said, tapping him on the arm. This had been a running conversation between us for years. I had a hunch he was half serious. Sometimes, I thought, so was I.

Inside the house, the paramedics, Barker, and the assistant coroner were crowded into the bedroom doing the bagging routine: Jeannette's hands were wrapped in paper bags; each piece of torn, stained clothing on the floor was placed in a plastic bag and tagged as to the contents; her body was being readied to slide into a white body bag. Cowan was on his hands and knees looking under the kitchen sink, still muttering to himself in a gee-whiz, golly tone; the assistant DA watched him silently. In the living room, the Lieutenant was trying to look as if he belonged. Tracy and Mosher stood in a corner near the front door, their thumbs looped inside their gun belts.

“Officer Jeffries,” the Lieutenant growled through a toothpick he was rolling between his teeth. I steeled myself. I despised the man. He was an overweight bully intimidated by intelligence. Especially female intelligence. He was every negative stereotype of a cop come to life.

“Sir?”

“You called this in?”

“I did.”

“And you came in this window?”

“Yes sir. Smelled it from outside.”

“The one with the screen still on it?”

“And all the flies,” I said. “It was loose. Came off when I jiggled it.”

“When you jiggled it. That so?” The Lieutenant shifted his considerable bulk to his other foot and took the toothpick out of his mouth and pointed it at me. “You think I'm stupid, Officer Jeffries?”

“No sir.” Yes sir, dumb as dirt. I did exactly what six of us standing outside this house would have done. One or six, didn't make any difference.

“And those scratch marks on the screen?”

“I don't know, sir. It just came off when I was checking the window. The window was unlocked; I announced myself and entered the house.”

“You announced yourself?”

“Yes sir.”

We stared at each other for a second or two. And then I smiled at him. Sweetly. Big mistake.

“You have an attitude problem, you know that, Officer Jeffries?”

“Yes sir.”

Barker walked in from the back bedroom, stripping off blood-and body-fluid-stained surgical gloves. “Nice job, Jeffries. No contamination that we can tell. Got lucky with some fingernail scrapings. Anything from the woman next door?”

“Nice job, my ass,” the Lieutenant muttered, his doughy face set in a scowl.

I handed Barker a piece of paper with Doris Whitehead's name, address, and phone number. “She's expecting you. You find the papers from Metairie Trucking on the desk in the other bedroom?”

“Along with the letter.” Barker glanced at the Lieutenant then me. “We got a problem here?”

“No problem,” said Mosher.

“Nope.” Tracy unfolded her arms, tried to catch my eye.

“What letter?” I said.

The Lieutenant's scowl deepened farther into folds of flesh. He could have easily won best in show for ugliest shar-pei.

Barker gestured toward the window. “I would have dropped the screen too, Lue.”

The Lieutenant grunted.

“Yep.” Tracy grasped the back of my arm, fingers digging deep, and pushed me toward the door. “She'll write this all up in her report. Everything you saw and did and why, right, Sarah?”

I nodded all the way out the door.

“You sure push it,” Tracy said once we hit the driveway.

“He's an asshole.”

“He's also the Lieutenant. I can't keep covering your butt when you leave it wide open. Write yourself a good report, hear me? Now put yourself 10-8 and get back out there.”

“Gotta pee first.”

She smiled. “After that.”

“What you think?”

Tracy took off her hat and brushed back her hair. A thin red line marked her forehead. “Whoever did it should be hung by his balls and fried over a long slow fire.”

“We can call the group on it?”

“I don't know, Sarah.”

“What do you mean?”

“Something about this one doesn't feel right.”

“How so?”

“Just doesn't. Maybe we can do it somewhere else, up the levee.”

“Here,” I said firmly. “This is where it happened; it needs to be here.”

Tracy shook her head. “All this shit with Darcy; the perp's still loose. Maybe we should lay low for a while.”

“For crissakes, Tracy, the perp's not coming back here.”

“Everybody's jumpy.”

“That's not a good enough reason.”

She toed her boot into the ground. “Lemme think about it. Old woman next door going to be a problem?”

“Nah, she's got window units. Can't really hear much over there, see anything either. But she's got a gun. Claimed she'd shoot the husband if he came back.”

“She said that?”

I shrugged. “More or less.”

“I don't know.” Her fingers worried the snap on her speed loaders.

I watched her, debating how far I could push, wondering how much of this was really about Darcy. Tracy was tough and no-nonsense 95 percent of the time, but she also had an indecisive streak I'd seen surface occasionally, and it always spooked me. I couldn't stand fence-sitters. Make a decision and live with the consequences was my motto.

I pulled my hat off, tucked it under my arm, and rubbed my temple with the edge of my wrist. “She deserves it.”

“They all deserve it, Sarah.” The wrinkles around her mouth and eyes deepened. “I'll call you tonight.”

I nodded, but I'd already made up my mind. Alone, or with others, I was coming back here.

 

I drove up the road a ways, in the opposite direction of Doris Whitehead's house. The next house sat about five hundred yards away and across the street, hidden by three huge magnolia trees with limbs that almost touched the ground. A wide empty lot bordered the under-growth north of her house. Unlike the suburbs, the houses here weren't stacked one against the other with no room for breathing or privacy.

I was almost to River Road when I saw Ricky Dubois's black Jeep turn the corner and head my way. I pulled onto the dirt shoulder and waited. Ricky was a photographer for
The Advocate
and a sweet mix of lighthearted and serious—extra emphasis on the lighthearted. He'd majored in philosophy at LSU, something he claimed was redundant because he was Cajun. He also cheated at tennis.

“Hey you,” he said, grinning back at me. “Rough morning?”

“Kind of.” I reached my hand out the window and laced my fingers through his. He had the largest hands of any man I'd ever known. And the smallest feet.

“Kind of?”

“Let's see, the Lieutenant jumped all over my ass, I've only had three cups of coffee, one cigarette, I need to pee, and,” I checked my watch, “I still have five hours left on shift.”

“Poor baby. You want a lollipop?” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a purple Tootsie Pop. My favorite.

“That's not going to work.”

“Boiled shrimp for dinner?”

I tugged at his hand.

“Massage?”

“That's cheating.”

“You gonna tell me about it?”

“Nope.” I removed my hand and pulled up the Velcro flap of my pocket for a cigarette. I smelled Old Spice on my fingers. “Ask Watson and Kirk.” Watson and Kirk were Ricky's closest friends. I had a hunch that Ricky harbored a secret desire to become a crime scene investigator but hadn't quite admitted it to himself yet. He quivered like a hound dog whenever he arrived on a scene and started taking pictures.

“Damn,” he said, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

“Yep.”

“Where you headed now?”

“Back out there.” I leaned my head against the headrest and watched the sunlight catch the little bit of black still left in his curls. He was only twenty-six, nearly five years my junior, but going gray in a decidedly sexy way. “Write up my report.”

“Coffee later then?”

“After you talk with Watson and Kirk.”

He laughed, but it wasn't a happy one. “You're a mystery,
cher
.”

“No, I'm not. Just a few basic rules, is all.” We'd had this talk before, dozens of times. Other cops told Ricky about their cases, even though officially no one was supposed to talk to the press except the PIO, so he figured I should too. But I didn't want anyone accusing me of handing Ricky info just because we were sleeping together.

“This is a stupid one.”

“Makes sense to me.”

“Only you.”

I looked at him. “Does this mean no shrimp for dinner?”

“2D-76.” The dispatcher's voice cut through the radio chatter. “I'm holding. You available yet?”

“So much for peeing, he's holding,” I said to Ricky. “Something special probably, like that loose-snake-in-the-house call last month. Or
maybe,” I grinned with mock enthusiasm, “a wreck. On the bridge.”

He sighed and put the Jeep into gear. “Lemme go before they load up the body. I assume you can confirm there is a body?”

I nodded. “One.”

“Dead?”

I cut my eyes at him. Nodded slowly.

“That earns you this and nothing more.” He tossed the Tootsie Pop through my open window. “Later.”

“2D-76,” I responded to HQ dispatch. “Put me 10-8. Whatcha got?”

“2D-76, got a 35 on the Mississippi River Bridge. Can you copy?”

Lovely. A suspicious person. On the bridge. I hated the bridge. I hated heights. Could be an idiot jogger. Could be a suicide attempt in the making. Could be a figment of some motorist's imagination. Then again, maybe it was that sumabitch Vince.

 

Of course it wasn't. There wasn't anyone there once I got up on the bridge. I delayed clearing myself from the call and took the exit ramp into Port Allen then cut back up across the bridge, watching the ribbons of water below and the sun bounce off the white dome of the LSU Assembly Center to the south and the tall, tapered-at-the-top monolith to the north that was the State Capitol, fondly referred to as Huey's Penis by most of us female cops.

I stopped at a convenience store just east of the river to use their bathroom, grumbling as I unsnapped the four keepers holding my gun belt to my pant's belt, slid them out and stuffed them in my pockets, unhooked my gun belt—heavy and awkward with gun, holster, flashlight, portable radio, speed loaders, two handcuff cases, and a key ring—and put it on the floor by my feet, unbuckled my pants' belt, unzipped my pants, and finally, thank you God, peed. Then I had to put it all back on again. And male cops wondered why it took us so long to use the bathroom.