“She doesn’t know?” Ben looked over at me questioningly.
“No.” I shook my head. “Hadn’t gotten that far yet.”
“Know what, you guys?” She swung her glance back and forth between us. “And just what would you two be talking about?”
“Well,” he began, “the bum you tackled might not’ve been on the Ten Most Wanted list, but he had somethin’ in his pocket that we’ve been lookin’ for.”
“What?” she asked. “Come on now. Out with it.”
“A Bible,” I told her.
“Okay…” She looked at me and shook her head slightly, while giving me one of her trademark ‘so what?’ shrugs. “And?”
“Part of the killer’s M.O. has been ta’ leave behind a Bible with a verse highlighted and bookmarked,” Ben explained.
“Except for the second scene,” I continued for him. “There wasn’t one, and it’s been eating away at me ever since that day. It looks like the Bible this guy had in his pocket may very well be the one that was missing.”
“You don’t think this old homeless man is the murderer, do you now?” She searched my face with wide eyes.
“No, not at all,” I returned. “But I think he was at the second murder scene and picked up that Bible.”
“So I guess I’m still missing something,” she appealed. “What does having this Bible do for you?”
“Probably nothin’ in and of itself,” Ben answered her. “Considerin’ that all of the others have been clean, and especially since this one has been in the possession of this bum for a week. But…” He held up a finger. “It sure as hell places ‘im at the scene, and that makes ‘im a potential witness.”
“Miz O’Brien?” The same tall uniformed officer we had come downstairs with now injected himself into our conversation. “We need to get your statement now.”
“Go ahead,” I urged and gave her a quick peck on the cheek. “I’ll be here when you’re through.”
“Just have someone bring ‘er up to Homicide when you’re done,” Ben instructed the officer then looked over at Felicity and winked. “I’ll make sure he’s here. Oh, and by the way…”
“Aye?”
“Lovin’ the accent.”
“We haven’t been able to get anything out of him, not even a name,” the uniformed officer told us as we approached the door to the interview room. “We already took care of prints and pics. Booked him as a John Doe. PD’s office has been notified, and the on-call legal beagle should be on the way.”
“So is he waitin’ for the attorney?” Ben queried the patrolman.
“Dunno,” the young man shrugged. “He hasn’t said much of anything except for yammering about Tracy Watson every now and then. Mainly he just sits there and stares off into space. There was a bottle of booze in his pocket, and he blew about two points over the limit.”
“Great. So we got a liquored up JD runnin’ around tweakin’ television personalities tits, and he just happened to have that Bible in ‘is pocket.”
“That about sums it up,” the officer replied. “So I don’t know what you’re going to get out of him until he sleeps it off.”
“You pretty sure he understood ‘is rights?”
“He indicated that he did, but in his condition…”
“Yeah…” Ben nodded and let out a sigh as he gripped the doorknob and gave it a twist. “Wunnerful.”
The old man was still wearing handcuffs when we entered. They had endeavored to clean him up to some extent, but the telltale stain of his encounter with a large double latte was still drying on the front of his ragged overcoat. In actuality, the hot drink had succeeded in washing away some of the accumulated filth from his face, and a few weathered blotches of almost clean skin peeked through the dirt randomly. His chin was bristling with at least a month’s worth of scraggly beard, and his grey hair was matted and stringy.
Felicity’s comment about the old man being a bit rank had been a kind one. In the confines of the small room, the stench of stale urine and long fermented human sweat was almost overpowering. The smell of decaying garbage hovered about the bum like a halo, intermixing with the other putrid odors to form an invisible eye-watering haze of foulness. It was a small wonder she hadn’t picked up more of the offending scent than she had.
He didn’t even look up as Ben and I entered the room and pressed the door shut behind us. Instead, he continued vacantly staring at the wall through sunken, clouded eyes as he rocked in his seat. His hands, braceleted at the wrists, were held splayed alongside his cheeks, one finger crooked and tugging at his lower lip. Slowly he would slide them downward, smearing a small trickle of drool as he did so. Finally, he would press his palms together and steeple his fingers beneath his chin for a brief moment and then repeat the entire mannerism from the beginning. Every now and then a soft whimper would emit through his nose.
After a moment of watching the old man, Ben glanced over at me and cocked an eyebrow then looked back and cleared his throat. “Whatcha watchin’ there, Pops?”
The bum absently continued his introverted ritual and answered with nothing more than another low, nasal whine.
My friend let out a tired sigh and reached up to massage the back of his neck. “Sir, I’m Detective Storm and this is Mister Gant. We’d like ta’ ask you some questions, if ya’ don’t mind.”
A mixture of emotions was tumbling throughout the small room, the majority of which were emanating from the old homeless man. My empathic senses easily detected an undertone of love and lust, stunned betrayal, pain, and confusion. As would be expected though, primarily I felt his fear of the situation.
“Sir,” Ben spoke again while waving his free hand in front of the man’s face, “can you hear me? Do you understand why you’re here?”
Slowly, the bum turned his head and rolled his clouded eyes up at the imposing figure that was Detective Benjamin Storm. He continued to rock in place, but after a moment, he left his hands resting on his cheeks and began working his jaw as if to speak. Finally, after a raspy false start, he allowed his cuffed hands to fall to the surface of the table and his face spread into a chastened frown.
“Tracy is mad at me,” the old man muttered. “I shoodn’t have touched Tracy. That was wrong.”
“Sir, do you understand your rights as they were told you by the other officers?”
“Yes, I unnerstan I was wrong. Is Tracy okay?”
“Yes, she’s fine.”
Thus far the old man had seemed relatively lucid, though obviously not entirely sober. Ben fell silent and held his gaze, gauging by instinct whether or not he should press forward with more questions.
The odor of cheap bourbon and sour breath trailed along with his words, mingling thickly with the other unpleasant redolence. I caught myself searching the ceiling for the non-existent exhaust fan and trying to will one to appear.
After a moment, he continued, “Sir, would you mind answerin’ a few questions for us?”
“The other lady wuz mean,” the old man mumbled. “She hit me. But she had pritty hair. What questions?”
“We’d like to ask you about somethin’ you had in your pocket. A Bible.”
“Ex-oh-duss.” He nodded vigorously and proceeded to misquote the highlighted passage. “Whiches shall not live.”
“That’s what was bookmarked,” Ben agreed then urged him on. “Can you remember where ya’ got the Bible?”
“It wuz on the table,” he answered.
“Can you tell me where this table was?”
“By the fire,” he returned matter-of-factly and shrugged. The old man continued to stare at Ben as if he fully expected the answer to make perfect sense to us. Before the obvious next question could be asked, his face slackened, and his eyes seemed to lose focus for a moment. Leaning forward, he began to search Ben’s face, “Is Tracy okay?”
“I already told ya’, Miz Watson is fine,” my friend returned impatiently. “Now can ya’ be a little more specific about where ya’ obtained this Bible.”
“Tracy, Tracy,” the old man grinned sheepishly and began singing, “Tracy, Tracy, I love Tracy. Tracy with the big, big tits!”