Retirement Plan (16 page)

“I’m sorry,” the dispatcher said. “We only got one bus overnight and we’ve been busy.”

“When does the day shift come on?”

“Seven thirty.” The woman popped gum in Morgan’s ear. “Now if this is life or death…”

Morgan sighed. “It’s not.”

“Then I’d suggest you call a cab.”

Morgan hung up. The call to the nursing home earlier had gone about the same.  The night nurse was upset that a patient was missing and relieved that she was found. She apologized several times—didn’t know how Mrs. Holiday could have gotten out of a locked ward, unless at shift change she followed the orderly through the door. They were shorthanded. It could have happened.

“Don’t you do an occasional head count?”

“Well, yes. But we had several call-offs tonight. We had someone over there who doesn’t normally work that ward.”

Although the night nurse hadn’t asked, Morgan said, “She isn’t hurt too bad. Some cuts and scrapes on her feet. Probably got a chill in the rain.”

“I am so sorry,” the disembodied voice said. “I’ll call the DON and see if we can get some antibiotics ordered, just in case.”

“Can you pick her up?” Morgan asked.

“Call an ambulance.”

“I did. They haven’t come.” At this point Morgan still hoped that they would.

“Do you have a car?” the nervous voice asked.

“I can’t handle her if she has a panic attack.”

“But the chances of that—”

“It’s happened to me twice.” Once on Mother’s Day in a restaurant and once in the car.

“I wish I could send someone. Honest, I do. But no one’s here to do it this time of night. Can you get through until morning?”

“How am I supposed to keep her calm?” When Morgan got off the phone, her mother was still asleep.       

Morgan heard the newspaper hit the porch at ten till six. She’d nodded off in the recliner. She double-checked the time, then picked up the phone and dialed a number from memory.

“Yeah, what?”

“Did I wake you?”

“Nah,” Henry said. “I got my nights and days messed up lately. Been watching
Leave it to Beaver
reruns. My nephew got me the whole first season as a retirement gift.  Comes in a lunch box.”

“I need your help.”

“Sure, babe. What’s up?”

Not many people would answer that request without asking what the problem was. Morgan appreciated Henry more since he retired than she ever had. She let out her breath slowly. “It’s my mother.”

*

Morgan pulled off her jeans and wrinkled T-shirt, showered quickly—no time to wash her hair—and got dressed. This time with underwear.

When Henry arrived, Morgan met him at the door. “She’s still asleep.”

“Good. She might stay groggy.”

“We can hope.” But Morgan doubted it. “Come on. Let’s get her up.”

It started right away. “Where’s George?”

Henry was driving and Morgan was in the backseat of Henry’s Explorer with her mother. They were less than halfway across town when for some unknown reason she caught on. “Take me home.” She said it three times, each closer to a scream than the last. Morgan’s assurance that they were taking her home didn’t calm her. She didn’t recognize Morgan and didn’t seem to notice Henry. In the end, Morgan had to put her arms around her and hold her firmly while she struggled.

Two orderlies that Morgan recognized were waiting in the lobby. A frazzled- looking nurse came running toward them and said, “Hello, Mrs. Holiday. Say good-bye to your daughter. You’re home now.”

Morgan’s mother turned to her. “Take me home. I don’t like this place. Please.”

Morgan tried to respond with another lie, but it caught in her knotted and aching throat. The two orderlies grabbed the old woman, one on each side, and lifted her, still upright, at least a foot off the floor. Morgan could hear her screaming, “Morgan! Morgan! Morgan…” even after the locked door of the Alzheimer’s ward slammed shut. She wasn’t aware that she’d been crying until she felt Henry’s hand on her shoulder.

Softly, he said, “Suck it up, sis.”

She smiled. He’d told her that on her first murder scene after she’d vomited. She sniffed. “I really love her, you know?”

His lips were closer to her ear. “I know. Everybody knows.”

Another nurse came toward them. “The DON just came in. She’d like to see you in her office.”

Henry said, “She’ll talk to her later. Right now she needs some time to herself.”

The nurse protested.

But Henry guided Morgan back out the door to his waiting Explorer. Inside and fastening their seat belts, he passed Morgan his cell phone. “Call work. Tell them you’re taking the day off.”

Morgan checked her watch. She’d forgotten about work. She dialed Captain Ward’s office, but the secretary answered. “He isn’t in yet.”

“Tell him I’ll be late—” But before she could finish the sentence the secretary had transferred her into the Homicide office. Robert Redick picked up.

“This is Morgan Holiday. I’ll be late,” she told him. It galled her to be reporting this to a subordinate.

“A call just came in.” He sounded upset.

“I can’t help it. Go on yourself. Give me the details and I’ll meet you there.”

“Women,” he said with contempt.

She shouted, “Give me the goddamn address.”

“Get it from dispatch.” He hung up.

*

Before Morgan entered the building, the uniform at the door told her, “We got a ripe one up there.”

Morgan nodded and turned back to the car. She took off her coat and blazer and laid it across the front seat. The slacks and blouse she wore were washable. The smell might come out—sometimes it did and others it didn’t. She’d had to throw out a new outfit once. She dug in the glove box for her jar of Vicks.

When she got off the elevator at the fourth floor, the CSI tech waved to catch her attention. It was Rachel, still getting the crap jobs. Morgan stopped next to her.

“You got a problem in there.” Rachel pointed toward the open doorway.

“What?”

“Your partner. I think he’s about to lose his breakfast.”

Morgan said, “Thanks,” and hurried forward. With each step the smell grew stronger. At the doorway, she saw Redick kneeling over the body, or what was left of the body, of a woman. His eyes were closed. His head was weaving. She rushed to his side, took him by the arm and helped him stand, then led him to the door. They’d just stepped into the hall when projectile vomit splattered on the walls.

Then Redick leaned over in surrender and let the rest go.

Morgan was so angry with him for all the things he’d said and done over the last several months that she wanted to humiliate him. But she remembered Henry on her first nasty crime scene, which was by far less repugnant than this one, and she patted his shoulder. She could settle the other stuff any time. If he was ever going to be any good, he had to know that he’d get used to it, that he would learn tricks, like the Vicks in each nostril. “Easy there, buddy,” she said. “Sit down a minute. It’ll be better now.”

Redick groaned.

“Why don’t you go out front? Get some fresh air.”

He reached for the chair rail that ran along both sides of the hall and steadied himself, then managed to pull himself to a standing position. “I’ll be all right.”

“You can take a break if you need to,” Morgan said. “Everybody goes through this. You’ll get used to it.”

“Actually, the puke smells better than what’s in there,” he said, making an effort to smile.

“I agree.”

They stepped over the vomit and went inside. Rachel started talking. “Look of things, she’s a junkie. Haven’t found any ID.”

Morgan glanced at Redick. “Go tell the officer out there to talk to the front desk. She may not have registered with her real name, but at least we won’t have to call her Jane Doe.”

Redick left the room and headed toward the elevator.

Rachel watched him, then asked, “His first?”

Morgan nodded. “In the months since he’s been a detective, we’ve had a shooting during a gas-station robbery, a homeless man beaten to death by another homeless man, an Iraq-veteran wife murderer, and a drug-related drive-by. This is his first stinker.”

“Poor guy.”  

Morgan stood over the fly-and-maggot-covered corpse of a woman. Her skin was ebony, close to the color of what little dried blood they could see. Thin braided brown and maroon extensions spilled in a tangled riot around her head. “Who found her?”

Rachel looked at her notes. “Oscar Crenshaw. Landlord. Tenants complained of the smell. Her rent was past due.”

“Did anyone interview him?”

Rachel nodded. “First officer on the scene. Willows.”

“Do we know if he touched anything?”

“He told me he didn’t even come in. Just opened the door, saw the body, and closed it.”

“Looks like a gunshot wound,” Morgan said. “You find any casings?”

“I don’t think the shooter was in the apartment.”

“Why not?”

“Over here.” Rachel beckoned.

Morgan followed her to one of the two windows that faced the street. Glass lay in ragged shards. In the center of what remained of the window was a large hole with cracks spidering outward. She leaned close. The fire escape hung by a single screw. No one could have shot from there. Looking down at the street, she said, “What the hell? We’re on the fourth floor.”

“My guess would be the roof of the building across the street.”

The voice came from behind her. “A sniper.” It was Redick.

“We’ll need to cordon off that building. Detective, get an officer over there right away. No one on the roof until the crime-scene tech gets her work done.”

“Right.” Redick turned to go.

“Wait. Either of you call body pickup?”

Rachel looked toward Redick.

He said, “I asked her not to call until you got here. I didn’t want to miss something important.”

Morgan didn’t comment, but she wondered how he could be so obnoxious to her two hours ago and afford this bit of respect for her skills now. She skeptically watched him leave the room. It was the fifth homicide they’d worked together, and for the first time since Henry’s last day, she felt like she had a partner. She said, “Good,” and jerked her chin toward the doorway. “Go on and get that building secured.” To Rachel she said, “How long you think she’s been dead?”

“Cool temperatures. Broken window. Fourth floor. I’d say a week. Not much more.”

“You print her?”

“Got a good set. We’ll run them, and if she’s in the system, we’ll get an ID.”

Morgan approached the corpse again. “Looks like a body shot.”

“A lucky one or a damn good one,” Rachel said. “Entrance front. Exit back. And look.” Rachel pointed to arterial spatter across the top of a messy coffee table and the edge of an unmade futon. “She bled out fast. Looks like she struggled a little. But not long.”

Morgan knelt beside the body and said softly, “Well, sister, just what’s your story?”

Chapter Eleven

Sophie had been looking for the ScumBuster all morning because the bathtub needed cleaning. This product was fairly effective if the batteries were charged, but they usually weren’t. The day they bought the ScumBuster, Lois had sworn they’d use it often. Despite those intentions, neither one of them had seen the gadget for a couple of years, but now Sophie just wanted the work to be easier. Probably, she thought, it would be easier to clean the tub the hard way.

Sophie liked to have things put away where they belonged, but Lois generally left stuff where she last used it—then couldn’t remember where. Lois had more tools than a carpenter but rarely knew where they were. So when Sophie went to use a hammer or a screwdriver, she had to look for one and sometimes buy one.

This day Sophie dragged the full laundry basket from the bathroom to the mudroom and began to sort. The two, now three, of them didn’t have more than two full baskets in a week, so she made only two piles—light and dark. She started the washing machine and poured in the detergent, then turned to the catch-all cabinet next to the cats’ litter box and opened the door. The stuff in the mudroom was usually Lois’s. Always trying to save money, Lois bought economy-size cleaning products and, when the bottles were empty, used them again for other things. So nothing was ever in the right bottle. The Tilex bottle contained bleach and water, a hair-conditioner bottle contained Febreze.

Lois also had some selective pack-rat behavior and wasn’t above pulling items out of the trash that she thought she might use someday. Sophie found three empty bleach bottles and some kind of clear liquid in the Windex bottle. She pulled out paint and cleaning rags, also known as worn-out underwear and holey socks that Lois had rescued from the trash. One Saturday a few years back, Lois had washed the truck. When Sophie went out to work in the yard, she found her dirt-stained, pink cotton underpants hanging on the railing, before God and everybody, drying. She’d pulled them down quickly and put them in the trash.  But they’d ended up back in the house a few days later.

Once Sophie had threatened to go through all of Lois’s stashes and throw the stuff away, but the task of getting any of it out of the house seemed insurmountable, unless she loaded it all while Lois slept, put it in the car, and drove down a dark alley to an open dumpster.  

In the back of the cabinet she found a box of empty bottles and old underwear that looked promising, and there in the bottom was the ScumBuster. She lifted it, carrier and all, out of the box. Beneath it she found a used toothbrush, then another that Sophie recognized as her own. The toothbrushes were color-coded in their household. Sophie’s color was green. She moved some things around and found several more. An image of Cool Hand Luke cleaning the latrine flashed in her mind.

Lois came into the mudroom and tossed a pair of jeans on the pile of dark clothes.

Sophie said, “Why are you saving all these toothbrushes?”

Lois shrugged. “They’ll come in handy. You’ll see.”

Sophie sighed and held the ScumBuster up to Lois and said, “Find the battery charger and plug this in.”

“What battery charger?”

“We have about six of them on top of the fridge. See if one of them—”