It would be days before I realized how unprofessional and just plain ridiculous I had appeared at the scene.
My lieutenant was a tall, wiry black man named Arthur Kincaid. He had twenty-four years in, the last three as one of the two lieutenants in Homicide. He was a good loot. Knew how to balance the cop work with the administrative and political bullshit that goes with wearing a bar on your collar. He had the respect of his men and the confidence of the brass. Lieutenant Kincaid showed up at the scene around four thirty.
He looked at the huge perimeter that I’d had patrol tape off. He took in the number of radio cars – five – parked in the area. He knew I had called Homicide and requested more men because he was the one who had told me no. He had sent Trevino and Woods to help me when they returned from their bunny – around three – and now he was here, wanting to know just what the hell all the fuss was about.
“She worked this hot-dog cart,” I told Kincaid. “Somebody gutted her for no reason.”
The lieutenant looked at me a moment before asking, “How do you know there wasn’t a reason?”
I blinked. “Well, there’s no sign of robbery. Her cart’s still here, everything’s in it, including her wallet, her DL, and sixteen dollars.”
“Maybe the doer was expecting more of a take?”
“She had a jacket,” I said, and watched Kincaid’s dark eyes widen a touch. “I know her, Loot. Used to buy dogs from her on the way in to work.”
“You live in Belleville,” he said, probably thinking I must pass five or six similar carts that weren’t out of the way like this one. I decided not to respond. He moved on to other matters, asking me about the need for all the manpower. I embarrassed myself by saying the first twenty-four hours after a murder was the best time to catch the doer.
“Yeah, I’ve heard that,” he said. “Are you good for this, Dandridge? Is there anything about your relationship with the vic I should be aware of?”
“I didn’t have a relationship, Lieutenant. I just bought hot dogs from her.”
He gazed at me a few more seconds, then got into his Crown Vic and drove off. The golfers walked up. Jerry Trevino was a few inches shorter but must have had forty pounds on me. He spent every off-hour in the gym, trying to compensate for his lack of height. Albert Woods used to delight in people telling him he looked like Denzel Washington. But in the last few years, he had taken up golf, started wearing only clothing with a Nike Swoosh on it and talking about how he was distantly related to Tiger Woods. Few of us believed him.
“We did what canvas we could,” Trevino said. “This hour, this weather, not much more than a couple of homeless.”
“Couldn’t you and Park have handled this one?” Woods asked.
“Park’s got the flu,” I said.
“Oh, yeah. January.”
I thanked them for their help and let them get on home.
I looked down at Kayla’s body again. I tried to hear her laugh, but all I could hear was the rain.
THE CRIME-SCENE TECHS had found nothing at the scene. They said there were so many prints on the hot-dog cart, it’d be impossible to get through them all. I had originally argued to lift any and all regardless of how many but came to my senses quickly. I spent hours at the corner of Delmar and Jefferson, asking every passerby if they knew the girl who worked the hot-dog cart there. I took down the name and address of anyone who said yes, mostly city workers and a few businessmen.
I ran every person who said they’d bought dogs from Kayla through the system. Nothing jumped out at me, but that didn’t mean one of them hadn’t killed her. I wanted to bring each one of them in, put them in the box, and make them talk. Lieutenant Kincaid nixed that idea – told me they weren’t suspects simply because they admitted to buying a hot dog from the victim. I knew that. Kincaid suggested that if I really felt the need to speak with all of them, I should go to them, do some casual interviews.
Roland Park showed up around eight on the second night, carrying a box of Kleenex. Said he was feeling better. I brought him up to speed on the case. He blew his nose and said, “Booking some OT, sporto?” referring to the fact that I had been working right through the day shift.
“I didn’t put in for it.”
“Why the hell not?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Just never occurred to me.”
Roland squinted his Korean-American eyes at me and laughed, which turned into a cough. “So where are we?”
“Nowhere. I’m about to head over for the autopsy. Want to come?”
“Nah. My stomach ain’t ready for a young girl’s autopsy. Where are we on the Rickards thing?”
Rickards was the name of a shooting victim we had caught a couple of nights before. A young kid from England, he’d gotten into a beef with a bartender who refused to serve him and, in the ensuing brawl, wound up with a bullet in his head. Though there were more than a dozen witnesses, no one saw the shooter. It was one of three active cases when I caught Kayla’s murder.
“Supposedly the bartender’s sister is back in town,” I said.
“You go to the cut, I’ll work the sister,” Roland said, then sneezed three times.
I nodded and left.
The medical examiner told me that Kayla Lightfoot was killed with a serrated blade, not unlike certain steak knives. Approximately four and a half inches long. She managed to find some microscopic filings from the blade that had lodged inside Kayla as the killer twisted and turned the knife.
The ME went on to say that the killer was most likely right-handed, had grabbed Kayla from behind, and had stuck her in her right side, between her kidney and oblique muscles.
The ME continued, but I didn’t hear the rest. I was staring at Kayla – now laid out on a stainless-steel table, her eyes closed.
I was glad she was missing this.
I leaned down and kissed her forehead. “I’ll find him,” I whispered.
“What was that?” the ME asked.
“Nothing,” I said, and walked out.
AFTER MY THIRD day with almost no sleep, after I had requested that Lieutenant Kincaid put me back on day shift, after Roland Park and I had a shouting match in the middle of the squad room over my wanting to go to every restaurant in St. Louis and check what type of steak knives they use, I was sitting in the lieutenant’s office. He stared at me, palming his Ozzie Smith autographed baseball, the ink fading from the constant rubbing by his waxy brown fingers.
“You need to come correct, Dandridge.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
He set the baseball down and leaned forward. “Were you sleeping with this girl? This Lightfoot?”
“No, sir.”
“Were you doing anything with her? Was she doing anything with you? To you? Hot dogs and blow jobs to start the day?”
“No, sir.”
“Then what the hell is it? Your partner says you’re ignoring your other cases, you two are fighting in the squad room, you’re spending fifteen hours a day on this thing and not putting in for any OT. Something ain’t right.”
I looked out his window. Down on the street was a hot-dog vendor closing up for the night. “I met her back around Thanksgiving. Nothing between us. No sex, nothing. She was just…” I searched my mind for the right words. “She was just decent. Not a jaded bone in her body.”
“And a tight little body she had,” Kincaid said, letting me know he didn’t believe there was nothing going on. “You need to put this case in the proper order and the proper perspective. Innocent girls get killed in this city every day. Sometimes we put them down, sometimes we don’t.
“You got the shit luck that night and caught one that can’t be put down.” He picked up the baseball again. “Don’t let it consume you. You’ve had a nice, solid clearance rate since I’ve been here. One of the better ones. But we all get these now and then. The ones we have to just chalk up to ‘shit happens.’