Naked She Died

"Justice is incidental to law and order."

~ J. Edgar Hoover

1

Mike McKay liked the sound of the morning rain on the roof of his Mustang 2001 Bullit GT. He had the window slightly down, listening to the faint, echoing rumble of thunder in the west over the lake. His sleek, Dark Highland Green was parked in front of Dooley’s Diner where he had just had a breakfast of scrabbled eggs, hash browns and toast.

Sipping on his take-out he scrolled the window back up and shifted the Mustang into gear. On his way he got the call from dispatcher: a body had been discovered by some kids on Logan Drive in a vacant lot.

Logan Drive was in the derelict section of town. Abandoned warehouses, factories, rubble strewn lots and waist high weeds. He left pavement near the outskirts of the city limits. The rest was a muddy mess. He shifted to a higher gear when the Mustang began to slip.

After a minute or two he came to a high plank fence, weathered and leaning, running parallel to the road. Boards were missing here and there. Faded advertisements from a bygone era were peeling from its gray sides.

Up ahead he could see a few Crown Vics and a black and white Jeep Cherokee. A handful of cops in yellow slickers were milling about. A fat man, with a slightly jaded look, was leaning against the Jeep. He held his arms folded across his chest, a cigar fixed in the corner of his mouth.

McKay pulled up next to the Jeep and picked up his beige, canvas raincoat off the passenger seat as he got out.

“How’s it hangin’, Mike?” the fat man said in a high pitched voice.

“Freddie.” McKay nodded. Freddie was the coroner.

The rain fell steadily, but gently.

Freddie took the stogie from his mouth and tossed it.

“Paid three bucks for that.”

His balding head glistened through the thinning, blond hair. His brown eyes appeared large behind the rimless bifocals. He was wearing a green raincoat. The buttons strained over his belly.

“Whatda we got, Freddie?” McKay asked as he finished slipping on his raincoat.

“Female. Been dead three or four weeks. Naked. Didn’t see any clothes around. Wrapped in plastic. You gonna check her out?”

McKay nodded.

“Yeah, I figured so, but there’s not much point.” A grimaced formed on his chubby face. “With all the rain we’ve been having in the last few weeks there’s not much left.” He glanced at McKay’s dress shoes. “You got rubber boots?”

McKay nodded. “In the trunk.”

He also took out a gas mask and a pair of rubber gloves.

After ten years on the force, he knew better than to play the macho role: going without a mask, as some detectives did, to impress the lower ranking officers with how tough they were. The smell of a dead body is gross and can get into your sinuses and stay there for days. And that can play hell with any love life you might have -- not that he had one. Still, he was reluctant to put the mask on right away and instead held it in his hand as a cop led him to a warp in the fence.

Seen through the opening, the ground dropped away suddenly on the other side into a depression about twelve feet deep covering an area of five or six acres. Once sublevels of some vanished buildings. He stepped through the opening pushing rotted boards to the side. Below he could see the body wrapped in clear plastic.

The drop was too steep for a direct descent. Staying close to the fence, he walked along a narrow, weed-trampled ledge until he came to a place where the ground sloped down more gently.

He managed to keep from slipping by stepping on half-buried tires and the rusty frame of a box spring mattress. When he reached the bottom he put on the mask.

The corpse was barely recognizable as a woman it was so badly decomposed. Places in the plastic had been ripped away by rodents and the flesh eaten. The face was completely gone. Only a skull with a few strands of lank, red hair clung to it.

McKay put on the latex gloves and pulled the plastic back from the skull. All the teeth were missing. No sign of blunt trauma. No bullet holes. He took out a pocket knife and cut away the lower portion of the plastic -- it was thicker than drop cloth -- and examined the hands. The flesh sloughed off as he touched it. One finger still remained fairly intact except for where the print should be. He searched for any jewelry that might have been overlooked but found none. Several fingernails had flaked off. He picked one up. It was long and finely shaped and painted a deep purple. Nothing had adhered to it. He put it back.

He glanced up at the opening in the fence and motioned to the EMT waiting there to come down. He didn’t bother searching the surrounding area. It was plain the body had been dumped from the opening in the fence.

While the EMTs bagged the body, McKay threw away the latex gloves and climbed back up the slope, taking off the mask when he reached the fence.

“Told you you wouldn’t find anything,” Freddie said, puffing on a cigarette that he kept cupped in his hand. “Just some fuckin whore nobody’s gonna give a damn about.”

2

Back at his desk in homicide, McKay went through a list of local missing persons, posted by the NCIC, for the last month on his computer. There were two women in their thirties with red hair, but when he punched up the Dental Society Database neither woman was entered. Although the victim’s teeth were missing they might have been able to run a match on the jaw bones.

One of the women was a housewife with three kids. She had only been missing ten days. The other was a hooker by the name of Ann Wilson, with several priors. A mug shot accompanied the report. A woman by the name of Alice Mason, 136 Alcorn Ct., Apt. 3-B, had reported her missing three-and-a- half weeks ago.

136 Alcorn was a three-story brownstone located on a tree-lined court next to a small park with tennis courts. Stone cupids frolicked in a large fountain on the grassy median separating two lanes of parked vehicles. A pair of lions covered with a coat of verd-antique guarded the entrance to the court in Sphinx-like positions on waist-high, limestone bases. Early in the previous century the court had been the residence of wealthy merchants. Now the grand old homes, with their carriage houses, had been converted into apartments for college students and working class people on their way up, or down.

McKay went up a concrete drive to a side entrance and up a flight of wide stairs to the second floor. Apt. 3-B was to the left at the end of a high-ceilinged hall. He shook beads of rain from his raincoat and knocked firmly. After a pause he heard someone moving about.

“Just a moment,” a woman’s voice called out.

There was the fumbling of a lock, and the door opened on a tousled blonde with an interesting face and a hand to her mouth as she tried to stifle a yawn. She wore a blue terry cloth robe. Her feet were bare.

“Yes?” she said, softly, raising the hand farther up to brush back a lock of hair from her eye to stare up at him.

“I’m Inspector McKay. I’m here about the missing person report you filed several weeks ago.” He took his badge out and showed it to her.

She looked at his ID, her expression anxious.

“Have you found Ann? Is she all right?”

“Sorry, she hasn’t been located officially -- yet,” McKay said. “But I need to ask you a few questions, if it’s convenient?”

Her expression became withdrawn. She sighed and nodded. Stepping back, she held the door open, then closed it behind him when he entered.

“Would you like some coffee?” she asked, motioning for him to take a seat on a plum-colored sofa. It was adjacent to a French window that opened onto a small balcony overlooking a brick-paved alleyway. Beyond tall oaks partly obscured a chained-off parking lot of an imposing stone cathedral with a crenulated high tower.

“Sure, if it’s no trouble.” He took off his raincoat and hung it on a coat-stand by the door.

“No trouble.” Her voice was pleasant, friendly. She excused herself for a minute and disappeared into another room. When she came out her long, blonde hair had been brushed to a glossy smoothness down her back.

The kitchen was separated from the living room by a counter. McKay watched her as she moved about opening the refrigerator door, reaching into cabinets, making dings and clinks as she brought cups and spoons together.

The area that was visible was spotless. One wall was neatly lined with books. In the corner was an easel with a canvas of an abstract painting half finished. The room smelled faintly of honeysuckle. Then, suddenly, the aroma of buttery cinnamon toast and strong coffee filled his nostrils as she brought a tray out and set it before him on a glass-topped coffee table.

“You looked hungry,” she teased.

McKay grinned faintly.

“I called earlier, but there was no answer.”

“Yes, I work nights, at Cricket’s . . . as a stripper or, as it states on my resume, exotic dancer. I keep the phone off so I can sleep late. Then I usually go for a jog in the park around noon.”

“You were friends with Miss Wilson -- Ann?” he asked taking a bite out of the cinnamon toast.

“Um hmm.”

“How long have you known her? This is good.”

“About four years, thanks, since I started to college. She helped me get my footing on the mean streets. I couldn’t have survived without her. She taught me the ropes. I was just a naive country girl from a hick town. She’s the one who got me into stripping so I would have money to attend college. I wanted her to go with me, but she said she was making too much money hooking to waste her time studying dead languages or cutting up smelly frogs. She wanted to be rich, to travel and see the world while she was still young enough to enjoy it.”

McKay nodded.

“Was there anything odd about her behavior before she disappeared . . . anything out of the ordinary?”

Alice Mason took a sip of her coffee, a thoughtful look on her face as she tried to recall.

“Um, no. Nothing that I can remember.”

“Has she ever mention having trouble with anyone? Threats from a disgruntled client maybe. Someone stalking her?”

“No. She would have told me. Ann is sweet, but she’s a pretty tough cookie. She knows how to handle herself.”

“Street wise.”

“Yes.”

“Does she work for a service?”

“She did at first, Annie’s, but she liked being independent and developed her own client list, after a year or two, which she kept in a diary, I believe."

McKay asked a few more questions, then finished his coffee and stood. He looked out the rain-beaded French window.

“Must be nice.”

“Yes, I like to sit out there when the weathers nice, especially in the evenings, and smell the honeysuckle, listen to the wind in the trees, the chatter of squirrels, the singing of the birds. I even enjoy the sounds of the traffic coming and going, the snatches of conversation as people pass; and on Sundays the church choir is beautiful . . . .”

McKay moved toward the coat-stand.

“What will you do now?” she asked, following him.

“See if I can get the super to let me in her apartment.”

Alice Mason smiled.

“I have a key. The super, Larry, knows me and won’t say anything if I’m with you. I paid up her rent for this month in case --” She didn’t finish her thought.

McKay nodded.

“I’ll wait for you in my car.”

3

Half an hour later she came down the drive wearing a gray raincoat and holding a black umbrella over her head. Her blonde hair was fixed in a bun.

She folded the umbrella and got in the car.

“Sorry I took so long,” she said glancing at him apologetically.

McKay pulled the Mustang slowly away from the curb. The high flow mufflers and quad exhausts made their signature, throaty rumble. A small boy hugging a skateboard in a bus shelter stared out sadly at the world.

She gave him an address, then sighed softly.

“ Inspector?”

“Call me Mike.”

“Mike . . . . Is there something you’re not telling me? I mean, it’s been almost a month, and I’ve heard nothing from anyone. Now, all of a sudden, you show up on my doorstep asking questions.”

“We found an unidentified homicide victim this morning. I’m just checking all possible leads. If I discover anything for sure I’ll notify you personally, I promise.”

“Thanks, Mike.” She gave him a wistful smile, then gazed out the side window at the rain-soaked streets, twisting a silver ring on her finger.

1254 Baxter St. was a six story, yellow brick probably dating from back in the forties. Alice used her key on the entrance door, bypassing the buzzer. They rode an elevator to the top floor. The hall had a thick, spongy carpet and was silent as a tomb. Alice stopped in front of a door with the number 62 and opened it with a second key.

They entered a large living room with a stark, furnished look. A kitchen entrance to the left and farther along a door which probably opened on a bathroom. A closet door stood to the right. The textured sofa had a tweedy look and was the kind that would open into a bed.

The silent room had a hollow, depressing feel about it. A couple of glassed-in generic prints hung on the wall. The kind you see replicated everywhere in lobbies, offices and hotel rooms. A TV and stereo stood in one corner, on a large console, nudged against a writing desk and a tall, live rubber plant next to the only window. A small stack of beauty magazines lay on the coffee table. There were no knick knacks or cutesy stuffed animals that one might expect to find in a woman’s apartment. No photographs of family or friends. Nothing personal.

“Did she leave the apartment like this?” McKay asked.

“There wasn’t much to clean up. I tidied up the sofa bed and washed a few dishes.” Alice sat down on the sofa and began to cry softly, her shoulders jerking with faint spasms. After a moment she composed herself. “She always left the stereo playing so she wouldn’t feel so alone. I wanted her to move in with me, but she couldn’t because she was always entertaining.”

“The super didn’t mind?”

“Not as long as she was discreet. She only handled a higher-class clientele. The kind that doesn’t want publicity, or who would be unlikely to cause a disturbance. And I believe she gave Larry something extra a month to look the other way.”

“You mentioned a client list in a diary?”

“Something like that, yes, she mentioned having one, once; I think she kept it on a lap top.”

“OK, Alice, I want you to do me a favor. Go in the bathroom, and don’t come out until I tell you to.”

“What’re we doing, playing hide-and-go-seek?” she said, pursing her lips.

“McKay gave her a slightly jaded, wry look.

When the bathroom door closed behind her, McKay opened the closet, pushed the clothes aside, going through the pockets; he shifted through boxes on two shelves and found a small cache of floppies, each with a name printed on a white label. He pocketed them. In the kitchen he found a lap top on the table and removed the floppy that was in it. Then he went through the refrigerator and freezer and the cabinets one by one, examining anything that might conceal anything important. He examined the stereo and found it contained a hidden spy camera hooked to a VCR on a lower shelf in the console. When he was through, he called out for Alice.

When she emerged from the bathroom, she gave him a tongue-in-cheek look and sat back down on the sofa.

“I have to pee,” he said.

Going into the bathroom and looking around he noted a bottle of purple fingernail polish. He examined his face in the mirror and smiled.
4

McKay was wearing a gray sharkskin suit, black tie and a blue shirt. He was leaning against a filing cabinet idly watching his partner, Pol Andersen, who was standing next to the late Julian Blakemore, a prominent defense attorney, studying the bullet holes.

Blakemore was slouched down in a swivel chair behind his desk, his head thrown back, face toward the ceiling.

The right side of his face and shoulder was covered with dried blood. A dime-sized spot of blood stood out in the middle of his chest.

“Took one in the temple up close, flash burns. Muzzle must’ve been almost touching. .38 maybe. The one in the chest, near the heart, was farther away, six or seven feet.”

Andersen, a big, broad-shouldered Swede, was chewing on a toothpick as he moved around to the front of the desk. He turned to face the corpse holding his hand up as if it were a gun and stepped back until he was beside McKay.

“Way I figure it, Mike, the shooter stood about here. He came in when he knew the secretary would be gone to lunch. Entered the office door and fired the first round, then he walked over to the body and administered the coup de grace with one to the head. Has all the marks of a mob hit.”

“And the room is sound proof so nobody would have heard the shot,” McKay added.

“That’s it -- pure and simple.”

“Mm, I don’t know. Not so pure and not so simple.”

“Whatdaya mean, Mike?” The Swede folded his thick arms across his chest and turned to look at McKay who continued leaning nonchalantly against the oak filing cabinets.

“The chest shot wouldn’t have been immediately fatal.”

“Well, so?”

“Where’s all the blood?”

The Swede glanced at the corpse and shrugged.

“If the heart was still pumping after he was shot, there should be blood all over his chest. But there isn’t any. But there is plenty of blood coming out of the head. It’s all over his right side.”

“OK then, where does that get us, Mike?”

“The head shot had to come first. The heart was pumping blood out of the head wound but by the time the second shot was fired into the chest the heart had stopped beating.

“Assuming you’re right, Mike, why would someone pop him in the head then step out in front of the desk and pop him again?”

“To make it look like a mob hit, maybe?”

McKay walked around behind the desk. There was a bloody puddle on the top of the desk, about where the head would have rested if someone had been napping. Most of the drawers had been pulled out. Some papers and folders were strewed about on the floor. The center drawer remained closed, begging to be opened. Careful not to disturb the body, he pulled it out. Inside was a video tape. There were some freshly dried red smudges on one corner.

The tape was a blank. The right spindle was empty. He flipped it across the desk to Andersen.

“What about prints?”

“I wouldn’t worry about that. I have a feeling what’s on the tape is what this is all about.”

The Swede put the tape in a VCR next to a wall of expensively bound legal texts.

The scene opened on a man and woman having sex doggie style.

“Holy shit,” Andersen exclaimed. “Mike, isn’t that David Corelli, Nick Corelli’s son, the one who announced his candidacy for mayor?”

McKay nodded distractedly.

“I told you it was a mob hit,” Andersen gloated. “Blakemore was blackmailing Corelli and Corelli, or one of his boys, whacked Blakemore.

McKay stared at the rubber plant next to the window and the tweedy sofa and shook his head slowly.

~ ~ ~

Blakemore’s pretty, brunette secretary was seated behind her desk sniffling into a handkerchief. A dour-faced female police officer was standing by the hall door blocking the curious from entering.

McKay sat down on the edge of the desk and waited for her to compose herself.

After a moment she glanced up at him, a sad, sweet smile, eyes glistening.

“I’m sorry, Mary,” McKay said, reading her name off the nameplate on the desk, but I need to ask you a few questions.”

She nodded, arching her back and squaring her shoulders.

“What time did you go to lunch, Mary?”

“At twelve. I have an hour, until one.”