Pernicious (2 page)

                          
Chapter 1

         
The phone rang.

         
“Homicide,” Bob said, and his face contorted into a grimace. “It’s her again.”

         
Tasha, just returning from two-weeks vacation, stared at her partner, puzzled. “Who?” she whispered.

         
Bob handed her the receiver. “Deal with it.”

         
“Detective Montgomery. How may I help you?”

         
“Are you a sister?” the caller said.

         
“Yes, ma’am. I’m also a detective. How may I help you?”

         
“Thank God!” the caller exclaimed. “Finally someone who can help.”

         
“Ma’am, how may I help you?”

         
“My son…he…was murdered!”

         
Tasha reached for a pen and pad. “Ma’am, may I get your full name?”

         
“Doris Davis.”

         
“Okay, Mrs. Davis,” scribbling the name, “you say your son was murdered, correct?”

         
“Uh-huh, he sure was.”

         
“Your son’s name?” Tasha looked up at Bob in front of her desk, shaking his head emphatically. She cuffed the phone. “What’s the problem?”

         
Bob ran a finger across his neck.

         
“You hear me? I said Willie Davis.”

         
Tasha started to ask for more info when Bob slid a note across her desk. It read: She’s a kook.

         
“My boy,” the caller said, crying now, “never hurt nobody…never…not once. I raised him well. That so-called wife of his killed him. She’s a low-down--”

         
“Mrs. Davis, why don’t I take your number and get back with you?”

         
“Yeah, sure. You know how many times you people have told me that?”

         
“Mrs. Davis, I’ll be in touch. Good-bye now.”

         
“Detective, do you have kids?”

         
This subject was off limits; Tasha didn’t discuss her personal life on the job.

         
“Obviously you do,” the caller said. “Imagine how you would feel if someone bamboozled your son into marriage and then murdered him. Imagine you telling the police and they not lifting a finger to do anything about your son’s murder. Can you imagine all that, Detective Montgomery?”

         
“Good-bye,” Tasha said, and terminated the call. She stared at Bob, now at his desk, avoiding her gaze. “What was that about?”

         
“How was your vacation?”

         
Tasha didn’t answer.

         
“Just a grandma. She’s convinced her boy was murdered by his wife.”

         
“Was he?”

         
“Hell no. His mother can’t handle the truth, calling every day, three times a day, the last two weeks. She was pestering the detectives in county and they sicced her on us.”

         
“She sure seemed convinced. Had me wanting to investigate. You’ve already looked into it, right?”

         
Bob gave her a look. “For your information, Detective Montgomery, her boy died in a boating accident. He was fishing in Fourche Creek at night without a lifejacket.”

         
“Calm down, Bob. Don’t knot your hemorrhoids. The woman sounds convincing.”

         
“Yes, she does. The autopsy report and the investigating detective’s report sound just as convincing.”

         
“The wife wasn’t with him when the accident occurred?”

         
“According to her statement she was at home.”

         
“I guess someone will have to convince the mother.”

         
“She’s delusional.”

         
Captain Franklin, the shift commander, stepped into the office. “I’ve got one for you guys,” he said. “Thirteenth and High Street.” He started out, stopped. “Why are you two still here?”

         
The two detectives rose immediately, Bob holstering a revolver, Tasha inserting a pen and pad in her jacket.

         
Bob said, “Tash, what if Cap asks where’s your weapon?”

         
“I’ll tell him the truth.”

         
“You left it at home.”

         
“The truth.”

         
Minutes later they were inside a brown Taurus, Bob driving. “I hope this is a dunker,” he said. “We’re ten and one right now. It’ll be nice to go eleven and one. Would break our old record.”

         
Tasha nodded in agreement, though she no longer kept score. She’d had too many sleepless nights worrying about cases that simply couldn’t be solved. Her mindset now: If she and Bob cleared a case, great; if they did not, not good, but no reason to seek therapy, as long as they did everything humanly possible to solve the case.

         
“You know,” she said, staring at a small crowd waiting at the bus stop, “that woman really had me convinced her son was murdered.” A Central Arkansas Transit bus pulled up and blocked her view.

         
“Yeah,” Bob said. “Me, too. At first.”

         
“I think we should take another look, see if anything was missed during the initial investigation?”

         
Bob groaned. “Geez, Tash, you just got back from vacation and you’re ready to jump feet first into a frivolous investigation.”

         
“Relax. I just think we should check and make sure all the dots were connected, that’s all. We don’t have to put it into our official record book.”

         
“
You
look into it. If you find anything interesting, call me.”

         
“Play-it-safe Bob strikes again.”

         
“You know my motto: If it ain’t broke, claim credit for it.”

         
Tasha laughed. Bob had said this two years ago, when she was a rookie homicide detective, when it was unlikely the two would survive one day as partners.

         
The second she laid eyes on Bob, Tasha thought the brass were deliberately discouraging her from joining the ranks of homicide.

         
He was her exact opposite: white, grossly overweight, rude, chauvinistic,
and
he chewed tobacco.

         
Within the hour of their pairing, Tasha told Bob, “I’m not your gal, and the next time you call me that I’m going to stuff that Stetson up your fat butt!”

         
At Fourteenth and High, a block short of the crime scene, Tasha got out of the car and started toward the small crowd converged on the scene.

         
Someone, she hoped, was experiencing a bad case of diarrhea of the mouth. Through the legs of several onlookers she could see only the victim’s legs, one resting on the street, shoeless, the other propped up on the curb.

         
That can wait.

         
Death disturbed her. Senseless murder gave her migraines.
  

         
Often the vic was a young African American male, mired in drugs or gangs, leaving behind small children and a host of friends and family who well knew the ultimate conclusion of his lifestyle, yet expressed shock and disbelief when told their son, brother, father, partner, husband, boyfriend was murdered.

         
The endless, indefensible carnage unsettled Tasha’s worldview, made her wonder if the notions of race, religion, and human kindness were inane ideals, Pollyanna pulp and mental malarkey glossing over the fact man routinely and inexplicably behaved badly, like animals, and maimed and killed each other.
  

         
Investigating countless homicides had also caused her self-doubt: could she pull the trigger? Send a tissue-damaging round through a human being? End someone’s life?

         
Each night she prayed the situation would never arise.

         
Each day she left her weapon at home.

         
Tasha glimpsed Bob through the crowd, meticulously inspecting evidence, mentally photographing everything and everyone on the scene.

         
“What’s up?” Tasha asked no one in particular.

         
A fat teenager with a thick gold chain around his neck said, “What does it look like?”

         
“You tell me.”

         
The teenager rolled his eyes and moved toward the front of the crowd blocked by yellow tape.

         
“A girl was killed,” said a young boy on a bicycle, working a toothpick in his mouth.

         
“Who was she?”

         
“Linda Fay, neighborhood crackhead,” the boy said. “She lives down thata way. You the police, ain’t you?”

         
Tasha nodded. “What’s the word?”

         
“Nothing much. She was riding with Babyboy and Jenno earlier. Babyboy’s tax refund came in. Looks like they dropped her off here.”

         
Wow, Tasha thought, this kid should be on the force.
 

“Tell me where you live and I’ll stop by later. No one will know I talked to you.”

         
The boy chuckled and removed the toothpick. “Who I look like? Elmer Fudd?”

         
Tasha smiled at him, not wanting him to get loud.

         
“Tell you what I’ll do,” he said. “I’ll ride through the neighborhood on my bike. I get to Jenno’s house I’ll pop a wheelie.”

         
Tasha wanted to hug him. “Let me get a car.”