Who is dead, and why, are the fundamental questions at the bottom of every homicide investigation. What terrible passions and connections drive human beings to kill others and then turn the murder weapons on themselves? I know from firsthand experience that the answers to those questions, once we unravel them, wreak havoc among the living long after the dead are buried and decaying in the ground.
For some unaccountable reason, as I stood looking out at the glistening city, the lyrics from that old Ethel Merman song came bubbling into my head. It’s from Annie Get Your Gun, I think, and the words say something to the effect that you can’t get a man with a gun.
You can, actually, but if you do it with a. 38 Special, what’s left over won’t be good for much of anything.
Chapter 2
Seasoned old-timers on the homicide squad know all too well that there is a time to approach Doc Baker and there is a time to leave him alone. As he talked to his assistants, I heard him mention that he believed the man had been shot in the reception area and then dragged into the closet, where he subsequently died. I looked at the shiny granite floor. Someone had taken the time to clean it very, very thoroughly.
As the irascible medical examiner bustled around the crime scene that bitterly cold morning, rumbling orders at the hapless woman photographer whose misfortune it was to draw this particular assignment, I knew enough to keep a very low profile. Detective Paul Kramer didn’t. Relatively new to Homicide and already saddled with a reputation as a headstrong go-getter, he showed up late and immediately started rocking the boat.
Pausing barely long enough to stomp the layer of crusted snow off his shoes, Kramer, bullnecked and bullheaded as ever, charged up behind Doc Baker with his feet still wet. The medical examiner was still totally involved in working one-on-one with the police photographer.
Seeing the bodies, Kramer whistled. “What were they doing, getting it on in the janitor’s closet?”
Doc Baker reacted like an awakened bear summoned too early from his darkened winter cave. He’s a big man, one who requires far more than the average amount of personal space not only because of his girth but also by virtue of personal preference. He doesn’t like to be crowded, physically or mentally.
Angered now by what he must have regarded as gross impertinence on the young detective’s part, Baker turned and erupted out of the closet in one surprisingly fluid motion. The crook of his elbow caught Kramer full in the midsection, and the younger man doubled over in pain. It could have been an accident, I suppose, but then again…
“Your shoes are still wet, Kramer. Anybody ever teach you to watch out for trace evidence, for Chrissakes? Now, go dry those damn shoes and stay out of my way until I’m ready for you. Understand?”
Diplomacy has never been one of Baker’s long suits, nor is he known in local police circles for professional courtesy. Chagrined, Kramer turned away, glancing around the room to see exactly how many other people had witnessed Baker’s sharp-tongued put-down. There were several.
When Kramer caught sight of two uniformed officers exchanging knowing grins, the detective’s face turned several shades of red. Without a word he retreated to the rubberized mat near the door and, as ordered, thoroughly dried his shoes. Finishing that, he spied me standing near the window. He was seething with suppressed anger as he strode over to me.
“So what the hell are we supposed to do, stand around here all day? Wait with our thumbs up our asses?”
“You’re damned right we’re going to wait,” I counseled reasonably. “Until hell freezes over or until Doc Baker gives us the go-ahead, whichever comes first. The last thing we need to do in this investigation is to get crosswise with Baker at the outset.”
The already florid color of Kramer’s face darkened appreciably. Frowning, he scanned the room until his eyes stopped abruptly at the quietly weeping woman sitting in the corner. Her hyperventilating sobs were slowly subsiding. An emergency medical technician had just walked away, leaving her alone.
“Who’s she?” Kramer asked, directing his curt question at me, but nodding in the woman’s direction.
I shrugged. “A secretary or receptionist, I presume. From her reaction, my guess is that she’s the one who discovered the bodies.”
“Your guess?” Kramer demanded irritably, his tone laced with sarcasm. “Don’t you think we ought to start by finding out for sure?”
She wasn’t going anywhere. “Suits me,” I told him. “Until Baker gets freed up, I don’t have anything better to do.”
Kramer glowered at me and then started off toward the corner where the woman was sitting.
Little more than a girl, twenty or twenty-one at the most, she was a study in contradictions, a walking-talking-breathing oxymoron. She was small and pert, cute almost, despite the muddy tracks left on her face by smeared and smudged makeup. Her shoulder-length straw-blond hair was frizzed around her face in that uncontrolled, finger-in-the-electrical-outlet look affected by so many younger women these days. She wore a high-necked lacy white blouse that would have done a straitlaced Victorian lady proud, but two shapely knees showed several fetching inches of nylon-swathed flesh beneath the hem of a black imitation-leather miniskirt and above the tops of matching winter boots. The tiny skirt left little to the imagination, but the exposed knees and thighs were primly glued together.
Like the paradoxical lace and leather, the tearful shudder that passed through her body as Kramer approached was at the same time both genuinely grief-stricken and poutily sexy. She examined Kramer with a none-too-bashful appraisal that he clearly read as an invitation.
“I’m Detective Paul Kramer,” he said, holding out his identification long enough for her to glance at it. “And this is my…”
Motioning vaguely toward me, he started to say partner and then backed off. At least we were agreed on that score. We may have been stuck working together temporarily, but partners we weren’t.
“This is my associate, Detective Beaumont,” he continued after a somewhat awkward pause. “We’ll be handling this case together. Mind if we ask you a few questions?”
She shook her head. “Okay,” she said huskily. “Go ahead.”
“Detective Beaumont here is under the impression you’re the one who discovered the bodies. Is that true?”
She nodded, vigorously.
With a reluctantly acknowledging glance at me, Kramer took out notebook and pencil. “What’s your name, please?”
“Jennifer,” she replied. “Jennifer Lafflyn.”
“And you work here?”
“I’m the morning receptionist. In the afternoons, I’m a traveling secretary. I go to whichever department needs help at the moment.”
“This is your desk?” I asked.
She nodded and glanced uneasily toward a desk that faced the front door. The side of the desk was almost parallel with the open closet door, and it stood less than five feet from it.
“That’s where I usually sit, but today…” She broke off, and I nodded understandingly. I wouldn’t have wanted to sit there right then, either.
“Where do you live, Miss Lafflyn?” I asked.
She didn’t answer at once. Her eyes became instantly brittle and surprisingly hostile. Despite the virginal blouse, I had the unmistakable impression that this was a young woman with some heavy-duty mileage on her.
“It’s a routine question, Miss Lafflyn,” I added quickly. “We need your address for your incident reports.”
“Ms.,” she corrected sternly. “It’s Ms. Lafflyn, not Miss.”
So that was it. I had unwittingly stumbled into the mystifying Miss/Ms. quagmire.
Old habits die hard, especially those rocksolid edicts of polite behavior that mothers pour into their sons’ innocent minds along with the daily doses of equally solid bowls of oatmeal they pour into growing bodies. Unfortunately, the things mothers brainwash sons into believing don’t necessarily change with the times.