Charity Kills (A David Storm Mystery) (3 page)

“Well, we got to work about midnight and by the time we were done with the stadium it was about four in the morning. I was down on the docks for awhile, then started to carry things out here where I filled up that one first,” pointing to the dumpster next to one where the young girl lay. So I guess it was about 4:30 when I found her.”

“Have you touched or moved her since you found her?” asked Storm.

“No, Boss, I don’t. I told you it scaid me and when I came back down here I brought the boss. I didn’t want to be alone with her ‘til you police showed up.” After a momentary pause and a sideways glance, he continued, “But, Boss, them policemen did pick her up and move her some, not much, but some.” Ernie quickly darted his eyes toward a group of police still standing near the girl’s naked body, ogling her.

“What do you mean they ‘picked her up?’” Storm asked.

“Well, Boss, when she came out of that thing she fell out face down, and well, they rolled her over to look at her,” Ernie said nervously.

Beat cops ignoring procedure was nothing new to Storm. In his experience with HPD, what cops did or didn’t do didn’t surprise him anymore. More than once he had seen policemen on the scene move or roll a body, especially if it was a young woman, so they could see her exposed breasts or some other exposed part of her body. Storm never ceased to be amazed by the perverted behavior of the human race, but most especially, the police. When he asked the policemen who had moved the body no one took credit.

“Who moved this girl?” Stormed directed his questions to the cops standing closest to girl still looking at her.

Sheepishly the men turned their heads as if they didn’t hear his questions. “I said, ‘who turned this girl over?’ Did you?” Storm stood in the face of a big black officer standing next to the dumpster.

“No, didn’t touch that white girl, none of us did.” The patrolman was visibly angered at being spoken to this way, but Storm wasn’t backing down.

“Then who did? How long you been here?” Storm’s voice was getting louder and his face showed his distaste for the men.

“Me?” asked the officer.

“Yes, you dumb ass, were you first on scene?” asked Storm.

“No, I just got here a few minutes ago,” answered the patrolman.

“But you felt you needed to come over and look at a naked dead girl?” Storm was barely able to control his anger. The black patrolman and other officers slowly turned, lowered their heads and began to walk away. Storm was pretty sure he had made his point.

Hebert had heard the conversation and started to voice his objections to Storm talking that way to his men, but before he could Storm got in his face. “If I ever come to another crime scene where your officers have gotten their jollies off looking at a dead girl and I find out they have moved the body I am going to arrest them for interfering with an investigation and since you are in charge of them I might just file charges against you, too.”

All Hebert could do was sputter; he knew his men had turned the girl over; he knew they had been looking at her, but that was what cops did. “OK, Detective, OK. My people were wrong, but you yelling at them ain’t gonna do any good. We are at your direction now.”

From the lack of blood in the area it was obvious to Storm the girl had bled out somewhere else. It didn’t really hinder the investigation that her body had been moved, but the fact they had stood there ogling her pissed Storm off. This girl was a human being and she deserved some final respect and dignity in death. Storm removed his jacket and covered the girl’s naked torso until the forensics team could arrive.

After calming down Storm turned and asked Hebert “You found any clothing, shoes, panties, anything else?”

“Nope. We’ve looked through the dumpster. Nothing, zip.”

The morbid interest of the loitering police officers was over but they still had to wait for the M.E. to declare a preliminary cause of death and move the young woman’s body from its resting place. Storm would retrieve his jacket then.

A Slip of the Tongue

By the time the crime lab folks and M.E. showed up, it was almost 8:00 AM. This morning was already dragging by and Storm had still not had coffee. Hunger was setting in, causing his stomach to rumble, it crossed his mind.
I could eat the north end of a south-going skunk.
Storm shook off the hunger pangs and the growing desire for coffee, finding it, as he always did, amazing he could still think of food after seeing a young pretty girl lying dead in a heap of garbage with her throat cut, but he did.

The M.E. and crime lab crew didn’t take long to pronounce the girl dead and report they had found no clothing or ID in the dumpster where her body had been discovered.

“All right, we’ll have to look for her personal effects.” At that point Storm summoned the same cops he had chewed out. “Now, listen up,” Storm directed the policemen waiting for instruction. “Search the grounds around all entries and exits and all other dumpsters in the area. Be looking for girl’s clothing or a purse or wallet with some type of identification so we can give this unfortunate girl a name. Keep your eyes peeled for a possible bloody crime scene where the attack might have actually taken place. Bag anything you find and keep the evidence pristine. Got it?”

Storm left the killing field to drive downtown to police headquarters and check in with whatever superior was working the shift today. Sundays were normally days off for many of the force, but those responsible for overseeing the workings of a police division took turns rotating once a month to handle the weekend shift. Even if not physically onsite, they were on call twenty-four hours a day over that time period.

I also need to pay a visit to the M.E.’s office, Storm decided. I’ll go after I’m sure she’s received the body. Maybe the staff will be able to shed more light on the events leading up to the girl’s death.

On the way downtown there was going to have to be the obligatory stop at a new Starbucks in the West University area for his much required and overdue cup of coffee. Although it was still early when he made the stop, the coffee bar was already full with a long waiting line that stretched to the front door. Storm despised lines and couldn’t imagine why so many people would get up so early to get a cup of very expensive coffee with steamed cream in it. However there he was, too, begrudging the wait to get his “Grande” and head on to his office.

The extra large cup of specialized coffee did satisfy a small portion of his void but his stomach wanted more—hopefully he’d find a few of the much maligned donuts in the coffee room at Homicide Headquarters. If he really got lucky he might find someone had brought in
kolaches
, baked rolls of dough filled with meat or fruit, a local breakfast treat that probably originated in Slovakia and his personal favorite. The consumption of coffee and thoughts of kolaches at least momentarily diverted his mind from the image in his mind of the dead girl lying there with her throat cut.

He parked and headed for the entry of “59 Reisner Street,” Houston police headquarters and office for his division of the homicide department. Ever since 9/11, procedures for entering a city, county, state, or federal building had changed. All entries and exits were now miniature mazes that would allow the guards at the door the ability to handle one person at a time. Non-law enforcement personnel entered the maze waiting their turn to unload any objects that might set off the metal detectors and to open for the guard’s scrutiny any briefcases or file boxes they might be carrying. Law enforcement personnel entered through another opening where they had to display credentials indicating they were allowed to carry weapons on their bodies without unloading personal side arms and ammunition magazines. They, too, would be scrutinized and often requested to open any container they might be carrying.

Storm pulled his ID and badge and slid them across the table at the guard. The guard nodded his head. “OK, sir, proceed,” he said, handing the credentials back. Storm crossed the lobby to the elevators and rode up to the third floor of headquarters to check in.

His immediate boss, the man who would have normally not been in on a Sunday , was sitting in his office waiting for Storm and motioned him in with a wave of his hand. Call it respect or old-fashioned manners, but Storm always stood in the boss’s office and never sat unless invited to. The boss might have been younger than Storm but protocol prevailed. Storm was one of those who believed that in the presence of a superior you didn’t sit or relax slumping in a chair.

His boss, Lt. Ralph Flynn, was a young black police lieutenant who had made grade faster than most. He was almost ten years younger than Storm and rumor suggested him to be very attached to the mayor’s office. Lieutenant Flynn, well educated in Eastern schools, had worked on Richard Lemay’s staff in New York City when he was chief of police there and had followed Lemay to Houston when Lemay had returned and become mayor.

Flynn had only been lieutenant for a year now, but he had made it clear to Storm he was aware of the detective’s reputation. He had made it no secret to Storm about what would happen if he screwed up again. Storm merely shrugged it off—he knew he had made his own bed and there was nothing to do now but lie in it. His only other option was to retire, but he was too young and he wasn’t ready for that yet. Besides, the lieutenant was only calling it like he saw it. Flynn seemed fair so far, so Storm had no problem working mundane cases and doing follow-up work.

When Storm’s wife Angie had been killed and the sparse leads had gone nowhere, Storm had gone off the deep end. Angie had been coming home from one of her numerous trips out of town, this time to Latin America. She had been negotiating a deal for oil tools manufactured by her company with Latin American offshore drillers. Her plane had arrived back to Bush International Airport around 5:00 PM but by the time she had retrieved her bags and cleared Customs it was closer to 6:00 PM and already dark in the Bayou City. As a company executive Angie knew she had the clearance to use a limousine service to pick her up and take her to the airport. Similarly, on her return she could call the service, and by the time she cleared Customs, a driver would be waiting to carry her home.

Storm had worked late that night on a murder/suicide, a case involving a husband who had accused his wife of cheating and then killed her and himself out of remorse. Excited to see his wife after her trip, Storm cleaned up the paperwork related to the homicide and hurried home, hopeful of finding his wife waiting for him.

He found her, all right—lying just inside the front door in a pool of her own blood, shot twice in the back of the head by what appeared to be a small caliber gun. From the looks of things he could not have been more than thirty minutes behind her. She was dead and her blood was soaking the foyer.

In a state of panic he called 911 and then Russell, his best friend, but there was nothing anyone could do for Angie. Arriving patrol cars and the emergency ambulance personnel found Storm sitting in the doorway holding Angie’s bloody head in his lap, sobbing like a baby. Russell, his staunch ally for so many years, arrived shortly after the police; all Russell could do was comfort his friend, who went from shock and depression to outright rage. “I will kill whoever killed my Angie,” he swore to Russell. ”I will hunt him down. And I will kill him.”

As in any homicide, the first person you look at is the spouse, but Storm’s alibi was air tight. He had been working on the night’s murder/suicide with other detectives at the time that Angie had been murdered. Angie had no known enemies, and even with Storm and her employers racking their brains, no possible scenario except for robbery could be deduced.

Since her purse and money had been found with her, the motive of robbery was out of the question. No leads were uncovered and the investigation stalled, although it was never out of the minds of Storm’s friends or fellow police officers. It downright haunted him, but nothing had turned up to implicate anyone.

Angie’s murder was sent to the unsolved cases file, and only a fluke would ever reopen it again. After her death Storm often didn’t show up for work at all, or if he did, he would be drunk or drinking. He developed a penchant for screwing up some high profile murder cases and was replaced on them. His drinking and wallowing in self-pity made it necessary he be put on administrative leave for a period of time to sober up or lose his job. When Storm would drink, if one drink was good, then a bottle was better. That approach to his depression left him aimlessly lost in a fog of regret and doubt. Administrative leave and the threat of losing his job was the only thing that brought him back to reality; he had to stay on the force if he wanted to pursue Angie’s killer.

Storm’s mentor and old boss, Lieutenant Bob Smith, had gone to bat for him. “I know you’re not handling Angie’s death well,” he had told his former protégé. He and Smith had known each other since Storm had entered the police academy. The lieutenant had been an instructor when Storm had entered the academy and he had recognized Storm’s true potential. As he had watched his former student sink deeper and deeper into depression, he had warned him, “I don’t want the force to lose you, David, but you gotta get a grip.”

When Storm got out of the academy years earlier he was like any other new uniformed patrolman in some ways, full of piss and vinegar, out to save the world from bad guys. But he was also smart, a lot smarter than most, and had a way about him that let him work with anyone, in any ward (a
ward
was an imaginary geographical line that divided neighborhoods laid out years ago in Houston). In addition, Storm was half Cherokee, tall, athletic, and handsome, all traits that worked for him with the Hispanics in town. It also made him not totally “white” when he was working with black citizens who lived in the inner city.

Being an ex-jock in the “Great State of Texas” had not hurt him, either. Many of the people from the community remembered when he played high school and college football. “Oh, yeah. He’s that Indian kid who played linebacker for Yates High School in Houston and later went on to play for the Texas Tech Red Raiders,” they’d say to each other. He had been good enough to play in college but wasn’t big enough or mean enough to play pro ball.