I crouched in front of the sink. “Did you check the roach motels?”
“Are you crazy? This building is like a cockroach sanctuary. Like a homeless shelter for the little suckers. Wilson has traps under the sink and behind the toilet and in every crevice in the kitchen. I feel like I’m crawling with them already.”
I reached under the sink-the dark, damp environment that was so welcoming to these creatures-and pulled out one of the large boxes of Black Flag that was clustered in there.
“Your gloves are gonna need gloves if you touch that,” the sergeant said.
I opened the first box. “No vacancy at this motel.”
“How many days’ catch you figure that is?” the sergeant asked, leaning over my shoulder. “Not such a good housekeeper, that Mr. Wilson. Guess the roaches are lured right in by the smell of those hormones.”
“Pheromones,” I said, reaching for the second box, a few inches behind the first one. “Not hormones, Sarge. They’re pheromones.”
“Must be another fifty in there. You got a thing for them, Chapman?”
“Nope. I’ve just got a hunch.”
The first three cardboard boxes of stiff roaches would be off-putting to most people. The fourth and fifth cartons were far more attractive.
Someone had removed the chemical compound that invited the hardy bugs inside to die, and lined the boxes with three layers of aluminum foil. Wrapped inside the foil were hundred-dollar bills, dozens and dozens of them. That seemed to be how Wilson had protected his money from all kinds of unwelcome visitors.
TEN
I left the boxes on the kitchen floor in front of the sink when I heard Lee Petrie’s voice. He’d been working the Crime Scene Unit longer than I’d been on the job.
“Open up a trash bag before you even try to kiss me,” I said, stepping out into the hallway to remove my vinyl gloves and replace them with a fresh pair, holding the dirty ones out in front of me till Lee’s partner got ready to receive the garbage.
“That bad?”
“That good, actually. The deceased is a longtime local. Got recruited a few years ago to do some of Hal Shipley’s cash pickups-from the grateful worshippers and the ne’er-do-wells who think Hal’s influence can help sway bribable politicians.”
“I heard this one was easy. Gunshot wound to the back of the head. Prime suspect already in the wind, but with enough connections to locals and to law enforcement that you’re likely to find her before too long.”
“Slam dunk, like the sergeant says. Come right inside and pay your props to Wynan Wilson,” I said, stepping back so that Lee and his partner could enter with their camera equipment. I asked the sergeant to wait for us outside the front door.
“Where are the Baskervilles?” Lee asked. “I can sure as hell hear the hound.”
“That’s the vic’s daughter, Angela Wilson. She’s next door till I get there. Found the body and didn’t get along with the girlfriend at all. She pointed the finger at Takeesha from the minute she walked in.”
“What do we have?” Lee said as he crossed the threshold.
“I guess you’d call this Wilson’s living room. I haven’t poked at anything in here yet,” I said, looking around at the sofa, love seat, table lamp, and large-screen television.
Lee walked behind me into the bedroom. I stood at the foot of the bed while he approached the body for a closer look.
“Damn, this one really is the big sleep, isn’t it?” He was taking in the blood that had blown out the front of Wilson’s forehead along with gray matter and skin particles that had plastered themselves on the wall. “Any sign of a bullet?”
“Didn’t look. I’m guessing from the size of the exit wound that it blasted through and lodged into the wall, behind that flap of scalp that’s stuck to it. Left the digging to you guys.”
Lee leaned in to study the deceased’s head. “I’ll start with some photos. Where’s the doc?”
“A few minutes behind you.”
“I’d really like to roll this dude over. Hope the ME moves her ass.”
“When you’re doing the pictures, would you get me some close-ups of those scrapes on the torso?”
“You got it,” Lee said, studying the mottled wall above the body. “She sure took away his pain.”
“Pain? What pain did he have before his head exploded?”
“‘Livin’ la Vida Loca.’ The crazy lover who takes away your pain, like a bullet to the brain. You know, Mike. Ricky Martin.”
“I get the crazy-lover bit. Seems to be the case here.”
“Ask Alex. She does a killer imitation of Ricky’s dance moves. She loves that song.”
“She does?”
Amazing the things you learn about someone you think you know so well, when you hear about her from the perspective of others.
“Yeah. She rocks it. You must have been working the night of Nan’s birthday party. A few too many Dewar’s and Alex was putting on a show with Ryan Blackmer. The girl has moves,” Lee said. “What other rooms we got?”
“Bathroom. Seems the sergeant and his rookies were eager to get in the game. He tells me nothing was touched, but I’m not betting on it. And a tiny kitchen. That’s where I struck oil.”
I waited while Lee checked out the bathroom and then crossed back to the kitchen. I couldn’t dance to save my life, yet I knew Coop liked it almost as much as she enjoyed cross-examining every lying scumbag she’d ever faced.
“Roach traps? You moved them to get to the oil?”
“Took them out from under the sink. You can still see the footprints of each of them from the liquid that leaked onto the cardboard and left a stain.”
We were both on our knees, my flashlight beaming into the dark hole. “I took these five boxes out and left the rest in place. The first three? Enough cucarachas to line up head to toe, string them to Jupiter and back.”
“No kidding? I’ve got to text Alex a picture of the roach mortuary.”
“She’s sound asleep, Lee.”
“Tomorrow, then. That girl’s lived a charmed life. I think she saw her first cockroach when she showed up at the scene of a homicide we had together in the projects ten years ago. Like they didn’t migrate to the fancy part of Westchester where she grew up. Lucky thing.”
“Yeah.” Lee was right about Coop’s charmed childhood. I had wasted way too many hours wondering how her background and mine could possibly find common social ground.
“How about the next two boxes, Mike?”
“Hundred-dollar bills, my man. Lots of them. Maybe more once we toss the place.”
“Bingo! I thought the broad killed him for his money.”
“Maybe so. But she didn’t get all of it-that’s for sure.”
“We’ll start shutterbugging. Why don’t you go to the wailing wall and calm Wilson’s daughter down?”
“Have a heart, Lee. It’s her pops lying here with a hole in his head.”
“You want me to snap the green before you go next door?”
“Keep it where it is for the moment. I want to see what the daughter knows. I want to see if she claims the missing loot was her father’s or the property of the not-so-right reverend. Give me thirty minutes.”
Lee and his partner were setting up their equipment as I walked out the door of Wynan Wilson’s small crib. His daughter, Angela, was in the adjacent apartment. I didn’t need a floor plan. I just followed the sound of the sobs.
The door was unlocked. I knocked lightly and twisted the knob. She and the neighbor, a slight elderly woman in a blue chenille robe, were sitting on the sofa. There was a cup of tea on the table in front of Angela, but it was still full.
“Hello, ladies. I’m Mike Chapman,” I said, extending my hand with the gold and blue shield of the NYPD detective division to show my proper ID.
“We’ve been expecting you,” the older woman said.