The Beholder, a Maddie Richards Mystery (7 page)

In accordance with the ancient philosophers who taught that men were warriors and women nurturers, Maddie added a word of caution. “This is a high-profile case, BB. Don’t get on our wrong side.”

“So now its high profile,” BB said, coming out of his slouch. “Now that some rich, white bread got toasted.”

“Save the civil rights speech for an audience,” Maddie said, standing as tall as she could, her forehead at his chin.

BB chomped down hard to bust an unpopped kernel before beckoning his appointments’ secretary from the end of the bar. She got off the stool and moved toward them, her too-tight red dress resembling a one-hundred-pound gunnysack lumpy with two-hundred-pounds of pinto beans.

“Give ‘em what they want,” he said. Then to Maddie, “We worked Angel only by phone. She took all her assignments from Scarlett there.” He nodded toward the lady in red.

“Brackett’s report says you told him that Folami’s parents were dead and that she was an only child. Not many twenty-two-year-olds are without any living family. Flesh it out for us.”

“Her momma done run off with some horn player. After that her daddy became a steady customer in here. Angel … ah, Folami, was raised by her father’s mother. You already know about Angel’s old man kidnapping the girl when she was ten. The crazy jerkoff held her in the basement of some old vacant house.”

“Where was this?”

“A few blocks over where they put in that big-ass gas station. Listen, I ain’t gonna do your job for you, Sergeant, for Christ’s sake. Look it up, eleven, twelve years ago. You all got the file. The cops found her after they put her old man down permanent. The crazy fuck had killed his own momma—Angel’s grandmother. Beat her to death with a hammer. Them who don’t buy the skinny about the horn player, says he killed his wife, Angel’s momma, too. I hope there lots of cheap whores in hell, ‘cause that man never got enough of ‘em up here, try as he did.”

“After that what happened to Folami?”

“She bounced around. One foster home, then another, then another, like that.”

“Where were you the night she was killed?” Jed asked.

BB, who had been leaning onto the bar, flopped one arm sideways like a bird with an injured wing. “What? Me hurt Angel?” His beer breath invaded Maddie’s air space. “That’s bullshit! Angel was a cash register with legs.”

Maddie stood tall to match the pimp’s attitude. “Answer my partner.”

“Right here!” He plopped his forearms back onto the bar. “I was right here. I got witnesses. Okay? You want their names, too?”

“She have any regulars who had to get rough to get hard?” Jed asked.

“The slappers pay extra, but they don’t get near Angel. Like I tol’ ya, we saved Angel for the sweet guys. The ones who cry about what their old ladies won’t do, and only them whose got a fat wallet. I’d be a fool to let some sicko dickhead damage that face.”

Well, some sicko dickhead did, Maddie thought, feeling she had just enunciated a police equivalent of Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.

BB twisted the little wheel on the toothpick dispenser and put the pick to work hunting husks.

“Angel took about ten or fifteen service calls a week,” he said while the toothpick danced across the piano keys in his mouth. “They’ll all be on that there pad Scarlett’s working up. Angel wouldn’t do no women. Every Thursday afternoon she had a soft touch for a couple of hours with some old man. Angel spent Monday nights with me, a slow night for business. We usually had dinner and went to a movie, then to my place.”

After a smug smile, Maddie said, “And who said a man can’t mix business with pleasure.”

BB appeared to have a point, though. Given his perspective, Folami had been all about revenue and private pleasure. On the surface he didn’t have reason to kill her, but he was a player in the city’s soft underbelly of sexual perversion.

Maddie would send Brackett back to brace the pimp, push him into getting mad, hoping he might say something that could point them somewhere. Brackett was the right man for that job. Brackett would third degree his own mother, and probably like doing so.

Maddie pulled a three-foot piece of clothesline from her bag while Jed tilted one of the tavern chairs forward until the back touched the floor. Maddie looped the rope through the rods on the back of the chair.

“Tie a knot,” she told the pimp.

“What’s this shit?”

“Patronize us, BB,” Maddie said. “We’re on the same side on this. Right?”

BB rolled his eyes and said, “Whatever.” He reached down and tied the knot the same way the murderer had tied Folami Stowe’s and Abigail Knight’s legs.

Maddie knew that thousands of other people in town would have tied the knot that same way. So did this make BB a suspect? If he was the killer, would he have intentionally tied it differently? If he was the killer, would he tie the knots on his next victim differently?

“How does a guy with the name Clarence Clark Johnson end up with the nickname BB?” Maddie asked while Jed went over to check on Scarlett’s list of Folami’s customers.

“That’s easy, Sergeant. The place was BB’s Tavern before I bought it—prior owner. Folks was used to calling the boss man BB, why change what folks is used to.”

***

On the way back to the station, Maddie asked Jed, “Did Scarlett know the name Rex Bronson?”

“She struck out on that pitch, and she checked her book back fifteen months. Folami never had a john with the name Rex Bronson, and Scarlett said, ‘Ain’t no black Arnold Schwarzenegger coming ‘round here, sweetcakes. I’d know.’”

“Sweetcakes! I like that. It fits ya.”

“I don’t.”

“Well, you’ve never watched yourself walk from the backside … sweetcakes.”

“Can we get back to work, Sergeant Richards?”

“If you insist, Sweetcakes.”

Maddie had never worked vice, but learning about Folami Stowe had made her realize something about which she had never given any real thought: hookers were more than just mindless depositories. They had their dreams just like the rest of us.

***

At the station, Maddie used the computer to check BB’s story about Folami’s father kidnapping his daughter, murdering his own mother, and being killed by the department. It had gone down like BB said.

She hit the blinking message button on her phone. The first message had been left by the crime-beat writer for the Arizona Republic. The second and last message had been left by an old beau she hadn’t heard from in months. The man had magic hands and outward charm, but it was all backed up by a lot of nothing. His favorite topics were his aerobic workouts, a new pair of designer jeans, and whether or not he was having a good hair day. She deleted both messages.

Before leaving, Maddie researched the name Folami. In the language of the Yoruba region of Nigeria, Folami meant: “Respect and honor me.”

“I hope finding your killer will count,” Maddie said quietly.

***

After a quick stop at the supermarket, Maddie went home to find Bradley playing catch with Gary Packard in the street.

“Hey Maddie,” Gary shouted. “Brad’s got quite an arm.”

“It’s Bradley,” Maddie replied sharply, “not Brad.”

“Whoa, Mom, Gary’s like awesome. He played one season in the minor leagues.”

She put her hand over her mouth. His father had called him Brad. “Sorry, Gary, didn’t mean to snap. Bad day.”

“No problem. Hey, Bradley, I’m done in. Why don’t you help your mother with one of those grocery bags? We’ll play some more catch another time.” When he looked back, Maddie tossed him an apologetic gesture. He smiled.

“Mom, the kids on my team all call me Brad, the coaches, too, it’s cool.”

“Sure it is, Bradley,” Maddie said. “I mean … Brad.”

Later, the boy helped his mother prune off the offending ocotillo branches to stop their early morning wind dances across her bedroom wall. In appreciation, Maddie fixed beans and weenies, Brad’s favorite, and after cleaning up, the three generations of Richards played Monopoly. At nine-thirty, after tucking her son in bed, Maddie looked in on her mother who had retired to her room to watch Kirk Douglas in
Lonely Are the Brave
.

Six months ago, Maddie bought Bradley three goldfish that lived in an aquarium in the family room. Sometimes when she couldn’t sleep, she’d sit in the dark house with her thoughts, turning on only the tank light. Whenever she did, the smallest of the fish would endlessly swim up and down the front of the glass. The graceful movements helped her relax while she tried to make sense of a particular case or man.

She went back to her bedroom, dropped a white chemise over her head, and held the envelope from her attorney. She had been afraid to read it, but not knowing what it said had driven her crazy all day.

The Petition to Modify Child Custody had been filed by the most expensive family law attorney in Phoenix.

Family law, bull, seems more like anti-family law.

Her hand shook as she slowly opened the envelope, afraid it contained a notice that her life had been cancelled. Holding it as if it weighed more than she could handle, she read: THERE HAVE BEEN SIGNIFICANT CHANGES IN CIRCUMSTANCES THAT MAKE A CHANGE IN CUSTODY NECESSARY FOR THE GOOD OF THE CHILD.

Her hands dropped to her lap, her upper body falling back onto the bed. There was a lot more, but it was all about that first sentence, the one that hovered like a nail, ready to be driven through her heart.

Chapter 10

Disinfectant mixed with the aroma of coffee reached out for Maddie as she walked the beige vinyl hallway that lead to the back medical examiner’s workrooms. The smell intensified after she pushed through the double doors and entered the anteroom, the last barrier between her and heavy-duty repugnance. Autopsies had to be done and being a homicide cop made it necessary that she attend, but she didn’t like them.

The medical examiner’s chubby assistant, Steve Gibbs, was tying a lab gown over his standard wardrobe of black slacks, a black shirt and soft-soled black shoes. Next he smeared some Vicks VapoRub over his cleanly shaved upper lip. After wiping his finger on a towel, he ran the towel over the black stubby hair that rose from his head like coarse bristles rise from a scrub brush. A smock and surgical mask for his boss, Dr. Ripley, lay on the lab’s polished black granite countertop.

Maddie shook off Steve’s offer of ointment for her lip, and a mask sprinkled with oil of wintergreen before ducking slightly to pull the circular cotton band of an apron over her head. After tying it behind her, she pulled on a pair of little paper booties, the kind with elastic tops that gripped shoes. Then she placed a spearmint lozenge on her tongue.
Ready.

Through the windows in the double doors Maddie watched Dr. Ripley hustling down the hall toward them, the polished vinyl floor glistening around each of his steps. Rip, who had been the county’s medical examiner for nearly two years, had the same build as his assistant, Steve, chunky and a little on the short side. Both men walked like people who have been overweight all their lives, feet pointing outward with stiff arms swinging at a matching outward angle. Ripley’s brisk walk caused his unbuttoned white lab coat to flap behind his bulk like wings billowing in a current caused by the man’s own motion.

A few minutes later, the three of them entered the autopsy room and walked past two other cold, stainless gurneys patiently awaiting their next uninvited guests. They stopped at the table holding the remains of Abigail Knight, now naked except for a toe tag with a number.

“Thank you, Steve,” Dr. Ripley said after pulling close a rolling cart on which his cutting tools had been carefully spaced on a clean white cotton cloth. “As always, you’ve arranged everything meticulously.”

Ripley didn’t use the lapel microphone his predecessor had favored, preferring the older style foot pedal which made it easy to bifurcate his on-the-record statements from his off-the-record remarks. “Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to work we go,” he said with a cadence remarkably similar to the happy dwarfs.

The M.E. stepped under the overhead light and foot dragged the audio control to just the right spot, stepped on the pedal, and memorialized the date, time, place, and the names of those in attendance. He stated that no clothing was relevant as the victim had been found naked, and described the blood spatter near the torso and the lack thereof near the head, adding that he had completed certain preliminary procedures immediately after the body had been brought in. Those steps included the customary set of X-rays, the removal of the paper bags he had put over the victim’s hands at the crime scene, that no tissue, blood, or other useful materials had been found under the victim’s fingernails, and that he had drawn a sample of ocular fluid to learn the victim had ingested no drugs.

Through all these references to her, Abigail Knight’s eyes remained fixed in a stare, her face as hard and still as one sculpted in soiled ice.

“Oh,” Ripley said, “I also ran vaginal tests. I’ll comment on those later.”

Maddie noticed that the name of the most important person in the autopsy room had not been spoken. Once Abigail Knight died, she had stopped being a person and became a number.

“Medical-legal Autopsy Number 1766, an apparent homicide, is a mature Caucasian female measuring sixty-seven inches in length,” Ripley continued. “Weight is one hundred thirteen pounds. The condition of the body appears generally consistent with her reported age of thirty-two. The body is cold and unembalmed. Flaccidity has taken over the smaller muscles. The bigger muscles remain in a state of regressing rigor. The skin and muscle mass appear appropriate to a healthy female and from the body’s current condition, not considering the areas immediate to the attack, the skin at the time of death appears to have been healthy and well cared for.”

While Ripley continued with his fundamental comments, Maddie noticed the difference time had brought to Abby’s face. The corneas of her eyes which had started to cloud in a few hours were now opaque. The rest of her face flesh had the look of a piece of barbequed steak left in the refrigerator overnight, the fattier streaks having yellowed to the color of chicken fat.