Whisper in the Dark (A Thriller) (2 page)

“Collect her? Last I saw, she was up on her own two, more or less.”

Solomon and Clarence exchanged looks, and Clarence immediately stopped crying. “She’s alive?”

“Stood right where you’re standing,” Billy said, then nodded to the jeans in Solomon’s hand. “I don’t know what she was on, but she was ripping off them rags like they were burning her skin. Had me wishin’ I had a handful of dollar bills.” He grinned at the memory.

“Don’t you be playin’ with us, Billy.”

“I ain’t playin’ with nobody. Watched her stumble on up that hill, naked as a goddamn prairie bird. Looked like she was on a mission.” He chuckled. “Maybe she needed some new shoes to match her ensemble.”

Solomon turned, looking at Clarence. “You hear that? All that crying for nothin’.”

“No way,” Clarence said. “She was dead. I know dead when I see it.”

“Yeah, and I know dumb when I’m lookin’ at it.”

Solomon nodded thanks to Billy, returned the magazine page to Myra’s pocket, then gathered up the rest of her clothes and hooked a thumb at Clarence. “Let’s go round her up before the cops do.”

As they headed up the embankment toward Main Street, Billy said, “You find her, let me know what she does for an encore.”

B
ETTY BURKUS FOUND
the body.

She was an old woman who had trouble sleeping, the extra weight and the constant heartburn and the sleep apnea making life twice as miserable as it should have been. She had rolled out of bed a little after one A.M., hoping a glass of ice water would kill the fire in her stomach.

Standing at the refrigerator in her small courtyard apartment, she glanced out her kitchen window and noticed that, across the way, the Janovic door was hanging wide open.

She sighed. Carl Janovic had been a pain in her backside since the day he moved in. The way he and his friends paraded in and out of that apartment, she might as well have had a revolving door installed. It was times like this Betty wished to God she’d never agreed to take on management duties. A two-hundred-dollar rent reduction was hardly worth all the fuss and bother.

Moving to her phone, she picked up the handset and pressed number three—she had Janovic on speed dial, that’s how much trouble he was—then listened to it ring and ring. Not too surprised when she didn’t get an answer, she sighed again, cradled the phone, then threw on a robe and headed into the courtyard.

She was halfway to the Janovic apartment when she started to reconsider this little excursion. It was, after all, well past bedtime for most normal human beings, and an open front door at almost one-thirty in the morning was not a sign of welcome. Especially when you factored in the complete lack of lights. No porch light, nothing in the foyer, the place as black and silent as an abandoned mine.

But despite her complaints, Betty had always believed that if you take on a job you should
do
that job, so she soldiered on, trudging up to the open door and peering inside. “Mr. Janovic?”

She waited for an answer and got none. Also not a surprise. Chances were pretty good that Janovic had gone out with one of his light-in-the-loafers boyfriends and was so busy playing grabass he’d forgotten to close his door. Not that Betty had anything against his type. They could do whatever they wanted in the privacy of their own homes, but did they always have to flaunt it?

She leaned past the doorway. “Mr. Janovic?”

Still no answer. She was about to say to hell with it and pull the door shut when an odd smell wafted into her nasal radar. Betty frowned, sniffed. It smelled like . . . well, to be frank, like someone had fouled his pants.

Was it a plumbing problem? Had Janovic gone and clogged up his . . . Oh, God, the visual popping into her head right now was too awful to even contemplate.

Yet that smell was unmistakable. And if the plumbing
was
clogged, that meant it was up to her to get it taken care of.

Betty sighed again. Why, oh why had she ever taken this stupid job? Stepping into the foyer, she fumbled for the light switch. There wasn’t much point in saying anything out loud, but she nevertheless tried a third time: “Mr. Janovic? Are you home?”

She flicked the switch, half expecting to find a pile of excrement in the middle of the polished wood floor.

What she found instead was Carl Janovic, lying faceup in a pool of blood, wearing only a bra, panties, and a shiny blond wig, his eyes wide and lifeless, his bare chest and abdomen covered with dark, gaping puncture wounds.

That was when Betty Burkus backed out of the apartment and vomited a night’s worth of antacids, thin mints, and leftover Hamburger Helper into the ficus tree on Janovic’s front porch.

2

“
HIYA, FRANKIE BOY
. Where’s your partner?”

“I’m dining solo these days.”

“Yeah? There’s a nice little after-dinner snack waiting for you inside.”

Detective Frank Blackburn was in a surly mood. The crime scene was an upscale courtyard apartment complex called the Fontana Arms and the crime tech wagons had beat him there. He was still half-asleep as he approached the gated entranceway, where Kat Pendergast, a cute, coltish patrol officer, was waiting for him.

“You the first responder?” he asked.

“Me and Hogan, yeah.”

Kat opened the gate and motioned Blackburn past. They moved together into the courtyard, where a platoon of crime scene techs flowed in and out of an open apartment doorway. Across the way, a fat woman in a faded bathrobe watched the proceedings from her kitchen window, hand clutched to her throat in horror.

Blackburn turned to Pendergast. “How many units this place have?”

“About ten.”

“You scare up any witnesses?”

“Not so far,” Kat said. “Hogan and a couple of the backup boys are shaking ’em out of bed as we speak.”

They moved up to the doorway, Blackburn taking in the glassy-eyed twenty-something who lay in the middle of the floor.

Jesus, what a mess. The bra, panties, and wig were a nice touch—and the reason they’d dragged him out of bed. Even a hint of sexual assault and it was his squad’s catch.

Special Victims.

“Lovely,” he said. “Who is he?”

“Carl Joseph Janovic. Twenty-four years old. Moved in about three months ago. Landlady thought it was important to let us know he’s a high-octane butt pilot.”

“Looks like somebody was afraid to fly.” Blackburn stared at the dark wounds and the blood, which had splattered just about every surface within a three-foot radius. He sighed. “Why do I always get stuck with the nasty ones?”

“Because nobody likes you.”

Blackburn shot her a look and Kat threw her hands up. “Don’t kill the messenger. Just ask Carmody.”

“Carmody can kiss my ass,” Blackburn said, then offered just enough of a smile to let her know he was kidding. Which he wasn’t.

Truth be told, Blackburn had never been a particularly popular addition to the unit, a fact he attributed to his unbridled insensitivity and severe lack of social skills.

His ex-partner, Susan Carmody, an uptight Republican Goldilocks who was more suited to a career with FOX News than a detective squad, seemed to take offense to his occasional remarks about her rear end—which, Republican or not, was quite formidable.

Blackburn had grown up with four older brothers, in a household where such lapses of decorum were not only encouraged, but served as a measure of your masculinity.

So could she really blame him?

Apparently so. Six months after they partnered up, Carmody stopped just short of filing a grievance against him and transfered to Homicide. Rumor had it she was already screwing a White Shirt and was up for promotion. Seemed she had no trouble
using
the rear end she didn’t want Blackburn making remarks about, but that was neither here nor there.

Bottom line, the unit was short a body and he was an army of one right now. And when it came down to it, that was just fine by him. That way, he didn’t have to spend every ten seconds wondering whether he was properly navigating the battlefield of political correctness.

Besides, Blackburn wasn’t here to win a popularity contest. All he wanted to do was work the case and make a collar.

He looked at the body again. “I can already see this one’s gonna be loads of fun. You got a cigarette on you?”

“I thought you quit.”

“A temporary solution to a long-term problem.”

“Uh-huh,” Kat said. “You know what they say, don’t you?”

“What’s that?”

“It’s just an oral fixation.”

Blackburn grinned. “You speaking from experience?”

She rolled her eyes. “Why don’t you chew on a carrot or something.”

“You got a carrot on you?”

Pendergast shook her head, stifled a smile. “You’re too much, Detective.” Starting back across the courtyard, she said, “I’m gonna go give Hogan a hand.”

Blackburn watched her go, his eyes fixed on what was, without a doubt, another formidable rear end.

Careful, big guy.

Sometimes they bite.

D
ETERMINING TIME OF
death was a science that Blackburn had no real interest in understanding.

Oh, he had learned the basics: body temperature, corneal cloudiness, potassium leak rate, parasite infestation, but anything beyond that was a foreign language to him and he’d never been good at geek. All he was interested in was the final determination, and preferred to be spared a detailed road map of how the medical examiner got there.

Some might say that made him a lousy investigator. And who knows? Maybe they’d be right. But Blackburn had proven more than once that he wasn’t all that concerned with what some might say. He’d cleared enough cases to shut most of them up.

The assistant M.E. assigned to the case, a chisel-jawed Swede named Mats Hansen, was something of a wiz at pinpointing time of death. He usually proffered a guess right there at the scene that, more often than not, proved to be accurate.

“So what do you say, Mats? What’s the magic number?”

Hansen was crouched over the body, staring intently at Janovic’s bloody chest. “This one’s pretty fresh. I’d say two hours, give or take.”

Blackburn checked his watch. “So . . . what? Around midnight?”

“Glad to know you can subtract.”

The world was full of wiseasses.

“I wouldn’t want to second-guess anybody here, but is it safe to assume he was stabbed to death?”

“Cardio-respiratory arrest is more likely,” Hansen said, then smiled. “Caused, of course, by the stabbing.”

Comedians, too.

“Thanks for the clarification. What kind of weapon are we looking for?”

Hansen leaned in for a closer look at one of the puncture wounds. “A single-edged blade,” he said. “I’m guessing a steak knife, about half an inch wide. We’ve got six fairly forceful hits to the chest and abdomen. At least two of them pierced the breastbone, probably ruptured the heart.”

“Wonderful,” Blackburn said. “He didn’t happen to spell the killer’s name in his own blood, did he?”

Hansen, being infinitely more adept at social niceties than Blackburn, chuckled politely and said, “Sorry, Agatha, no such luck. My guess is he was dead after the first hit. The rest were just for good measure. A lot of rage there. And check out the hands and forearms.”

Blackburn looked. “No defense wounds.”

Hansen nodded. “Happened so fast he didn’t have time to react. No sign of forced entry or a struggle of any kind. Front security gate wasn’t touched. This guy knew his attacker.” He gestured to a crimson smear on the floor. “And it looks like we have a partial footprint.”

“Oh?” Blackburn crouched down, studying the smear, but couldn’t make heads or tails of it. Or heels or toes, for that matter.

“And when I say foot,” Hansen continued, “I mean barefoot. Whoever left it wasn’t wearing shoes, and it’s most likely a woman.”

Blackburn stared at the smear a moment longer, wondering if Hansen had quit smoking too, because you’d have to consume a whole shitload of carrots to see all that.

But if Hansen was right, then the rather obvious theory that had been percolating in Blackburn’s brain—that this had been the work of a jilted gay lover—had just fallen victim to a busted pilot light.

Hansen launched into his usual disclaimer about providing a more definitive analysis once he got back to the lab, but Blackburn tuned him out. If the murder happened around midnight, then one of the other tenants might’ve been awake and seen something useful, like Cinderella fleeing the scene without her slippers.

Who knows, maybe he’d get lucky with this one. Not that he and Luck were on speaking terms, but you never knew.

No sooner had he thought this than his cell phone rang.

It was Kat Pendergast. “I’ve got two words for you and I think you’re gonna like them.”

“Don’t keep me in suspense too long.”

“Naked lady,” Kat said.

Blackburn paused. “There’s a couple ways I could respond to that. What exactly does it mean?”

“I just got a call from dispatch. Seems a cab driver almost ran down a naked woman about two blocks from here on The Avenue. She’s covered with blood.”

Blackburn felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. “You gotta be kidding me.”

“I kid you not,” Kat said. “And when the cabbie stopped to help her? She tried to stab him.”

3 

S
OLOMON AND CLARENCE
weren’t having much luck finding Myra. They tried the usual haunts: the strip mall that held a Rite-Aid drugstore, a Von’s supermarket, a fast-food Chinese joint, and a Taco Bell. Then they checked the 24-hour laundromat behind it, where a lot of folks gathered to get warm on chilly nights like this one.

No sign of her.

They wandered up The Avenue, checking the dark doorways of the discount dental offices and pawn shops. Still nothing.

Where the hell had she gotten to?

They were about to give up when Solomon spotted the flashing lights of a police cruiser and an ambulance up near DeAnza Drive, where The Avenue abruptly turned from brown-skinned working class to white yuppie paradise.