Second Hand Susan

The alley behind the apartment building was known as a place the girls who hung out on the street at the end of the alley took their johns. Every so often, our guys would drive a patrol car down that alley just to keep the girls on their toes. They'd only caught one there in two years, and that was only because the john had the girl laid back on the hood of his little sports car at the time. He couldn't get his dick out of her and his pants up before the uniforms got close enough to see what was going on and flipped on the lights on the patrol car.

That morning about six in the alley, they found something they didn't expect. It was another guy, and he was naked, but there was no girl and it didn't look like the guy had been having a very good time.

I pulled my unmarked sedan up beside the coroner's van about seven thirty. It's funny how sometimes you remember things from the past when you can't remember what you did yesterday. It's age catching up with me, I guess. Anyway, as soon as I saw the guy's face, I knew who he was.

His name was Alfred William Justice, and I'd arrested him eleven years before. I remembered him because of how smart he played the traffic stop and because of how stupid he really was.

I was still wearing a uniform then, and Alfred had made the mistake of running a stoplight right in front of my patrol car. Alfred had done everything right that afternoon. He'd pulled over into a gas station and stopped his car, just like he was supposed to do. He sat there with his hands on the steering wheel and didn't move until I asked him to roll down his window.

He did that and then put his hands back on the wheel. I'd already run his plate and came up with no wants or warrants, and no prior convictions. I'd probably have let him go with just a ticket if the cloud of beer breath hadn't hit me in the face when I leaned down to ask him for license. I stood back up and asked him to get out of the car. When he did, a half full can of beer fell out of his lap and onto the pavement and I saw three empties on the floor.

I asked him to lean against his car, and when he did, I spread his legs.

"Mr. Justice, it's illegal to carry an open container of alcohol in a moving vehicle. Did you know that?

"Yeah, I know that."

"Well, that can of beer that fell out of your car and those empties tell me that's what you were doing. I'm going to arrest you for that, and maybe for DUI, but first I need to search you. You don't have anything on you that will cut or stick me, do you?"

He said he didn't and he was telling the truth. He evidently didn't think it was necessary to tell me about the little baggie with three coke rocks in it I found in his hip pocket.

I handcuffed him and walked him back to my squad car, put him in the back, and then continued my search of his vehicle. I found two more baggies, each with three rocks, wedged between the seat and backrest of the passenger seat. There was five hundred and sixty five dollars in cash in the glove box.

Alfred's lawyer negotiated a plea from a Class I felony down to Class II but Alfred still spent the next eleven years in prison. I didn't know what he got into when he got out, but it was evidently some pretty serious stuff. The only thing Alfred was getting into that night was a body bag.

I was fourteen days from retirement as a detective that night and it pissed me to get handed a case like this. If I couldn't find the perp in a couple of days, it might take months before he was behind bars. I never liked getting second hand cases, and I didn't want some first year detective to get one of mine. This one didn't look like it was going to be one of the easy ones.

The coroner was just starting to zip up the body bag when I walked up.

"Whatcha think, Walt?"

Walt finished closing the zipper, then stood up and pulled off his latex gloves.

"His name's Alfred Justice according to the license in his wallet. As for what killed him, I don't have a damned clue. The guy is dead, has been for several hours judging by his temperature. I didn't find any injuries, but it's still pretty dark back here behind this building, so it's hard to see anything. I'll have to get him on my table and pop the hood before I can tell you anything more."

Walt and two uniforms put Alfred in the coroner's SUV and Walt headed back to the morgue. The coroner's techs were still searching the area using flashlights. There wasn't much of a crime scene, but I stuck around until the techs got done. All they found in the alley besides Alfred was a gum wrapper with an address written in pencil and two condoms that had obviously been used quite a while before. I thought it was odd that Alfred's clothes weren't somewhere in that alley, but they weren't. The techs bagged everything and headed back to the lab.

It was still pretty dark in that alley because the building blocked the sunlight and there weren't any streetlights back there. There weren't any lights I could see inside the apartment building either. When I drove around the block to the front, I saw why. The sign on the entry door said "CONDEMMED BY THE HEALTH DEPARTMENT". On a paper stuck on the inside was the citation that stated the building had an infestation of roaches and rats and the plumbing system didn't work. The citation was dated two months prior, so nobody had lived there for at least that long. There wouldn't be anybody there for me to question.

On the other side of the alley was a high, chain link fenced area full of semi trailers. It was a sort of warehouse without a building. For less than a hundred a month, you could rent a trailer to store stuff. The company would pull the trailer out to your house or business and after you loaded it, they'd pull it back and park it until you wanted it again. Businesses used it to store excess inventory and equipment, and some individuals stored the extra stuff we all accumulate but can't bring ourselves to throw away or sell.

There wasn't really any type of office. There was just a small building at the gate. When I rolled up to that gate, a white-haired man looked out the window and then came out and up to the gate. He smiled.

"We're closed until nine so you'll have to come back then. I don't do anything but watch the gate. If you want to rent a trailer, you'll have to do that downtown. The number and address are on the gate."

I showed him my badge.

"I'm looking to find out if you might have seen anything happening at the back of the lot any time during the night."

"Nope, but like I said, I just watch the gate and the lot from here. I don't get paid to walk around. I'm just supposed call the cops if I see anything. Wouldn't do anymore anyway. I'm seventy-six, and I don't get paid enough to get my ass whipped."

I asked if he might have seen a car drive down the alley.

He took off his Vietnam Veteran's ball cap, scratched his head, then put the ball cap back on.

"No...no cars. There was a truck I saw when I went outside to take a leak. That was, let's see, that was right after I got here and relieved Joey, so it was probably about midnight. It was too dark to see very well, but I figured it was just a garbage truck. I see 'em once in a while dumping the dumpsters at that apartment building across the alley. Haven't seen one in months though, but I figured they just changed their route to a different time. Something happen back there?"

"No, not really. We just got a report of a guy picking up a girl on Mason and taking her back there. I'm just checking to see if that happened or not. We try to keep the girls off the street, but if we can't catch them in the act or get the guy to tell us, we can't arrest them."

He chuckled.

"Yeah, I see that sometimes. Hear 'em once in a while too. There's this one that screams, "Oh, your cocks so big" every time she takes a guy back there. I never go back to watch. I got this heart thing, and the doc says I shouldn't get too excited. That'd probably do it, seeing some guy fucking a girl."

He grinned.

"I might be seventy-six, but I ain't forgot how that feels. Wish I could feel that again at least once before I check out."

I thanked the guy and made a note to find out if any garbage trucks had been down that alley that night.

The only other information I could check out was the address I'd copied off the gum wrapper. After using the laptop in my car to find out it was the address of a corner bar down in the older part of town, I drove by the place. According to the hours posted on the door, Harry's Den didn't open until two in the afternoon, so I didn't try the door. I'd come back before the end of my shift to talk to who ever was there.

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When I got back to my desk, there was a note from Walt asking me to call him when I got back. Instead of calling, I walked down the hall to his office. Walt smiled when I knocked on the door and waved me inside. He told me to have a seat and then fished through the pile of folders on his desk.

"Ah, here it is. Jerry, your stiff must have met a martial arts expert in that alley. I couldn't see it there because of the light, but he's pretty blue like he'd stopped breathing for some reason. The X-rays show he suffered a crushed larynx. He also has a bruise on his solar plexus like somebody jabbed him there. If it was hard enough, it would have caused his diaphragm to spasm and made it difficult to breath for a couple of minutes.

"I figure what happened was he was hit hard in the solar plexus and couldn't inhale and then took a hit to the throat that crushed his larynx. His larynx swelled shut before he could take another breath and he basically suffocated. The petechiae I found in his eyes confirms that.

"I did some research because I've never seen a larynx crushed so badly before. What I found is it's possible with a three-finger finger punch in exactly the right place with a significant amount of force. The larynx gets pushed in and crushed and then swells up and cuts off airflow to the lungs.

"That type of punch is taught in most advanced martial arts classes, but it would take an expert with a really fast, really hard punch as well as an accurate one to do this because the spot that would cause this much damage is pretty small. Anywhere else, he'd have problems breathing, but it wouldn't kill him.

The guy's larynx looks like it was mashed flat. He would have passed out in less than a minute. It probably took him a few minutes to die, though he was effectively dead when he hit the ground. He couldn't have survived without an immediate tracheotomy."

I asked if there were any other injuries that might indicate Alfred was being restrained or had been resisting. Walt shook his head.

"No, no bruising other than that one, no cuts, no scrapes, no defensive wounds, no nothing except his larynx looks like it was put in a vise and squeezed flat. I figure that punch must have caught him off guard. If he'd been fighting with someone, his chin would have been down to protect his throat. That's an instinctive reaction most humans have when threatened. If he wasn't doing that, he didn't feel threatened."

"Walt, he was naked when the uniforms found him so I didn't think he was threatened. I just thought he might have fought back. Any guesses as to why he didn't have on any clothes?"

Walt grinned.

"I did find traces of latex on his penis and he'd ejaculated recently. It doesn't match the condoms the techs found, but I'd bet he had a condom on sometime before he was killed. I can't say he had sex before he died. Sometimes a man will leak semen when he dies, but I didn't find anything but a trace on his thigh, so I'd bet he did. That'd be a hell of a way to go, wouldn't it -- blow your load and not be able to enjoy the feeling because you're suffocating?"

Walt said he'd send me a full report as soon as he finished his autopsy. I thanked him and went back to records to pull Alfred's case file. I hoped there was something in it like a past acquaintance or incident that might lead me to his killer.

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After an hour of looking through Alfred's file, I'd found only two known acquaintances, a Julia Winslow and a Thomas Straiter, and I'd run them through the NCIC database.

Julia Winslow had served three years of a five-year sentence for possession of less than two grams of coke with the intention to distribute and had been released two months earlier. Her parole officer gave me her address and place of employment.

Thomas Straiter was deceased and had been since a few months after Alfred went to prison. He'd been playing with the wrong people, and developed a sudden case of lead poisoning brought on by two.22 caliber slugs that got lodged in his brain. The shooter was never caught but since his playmates all hailed from Mexico and given the choice of weapon, it was a logical assumption the shooter was imported talent. That's what the investigating detective concluded after talking with a couple guys who would rat out their own mother for twenty bucks.

I'd also made two more phone calls, one to Alfred's parole officer and one to the city sanitation department. Alfred's parole officer said Alfred had been working at an oil change place and hadn't been in any trouble or missed any meetings. She gave me Alfred's address. I gave that to Walt and asked if he'd have his tech's go over and see if they could find anything relevant.

The city sanitation department said they hadn't sent a truck to the apartment building since it shut down, and they didn't have any trucks in that area that night anyway.

I was stuffing everything back into Alfred's file when Walt called me. He sounded excited, but I guess when you deal with dead people all day, every day, about anything seems exciting.

"Hey, Jerry, guess what I found?"

I chuckled.

"Walt, how the hell would I know what you found? I'm at my desk."

"I got a print off your stiff that probably belongs to the killer."

"How'd you do that? I thought that was pretty much impossible."

"Well, not impossible, but really difficult even for me. The city finally let me buy an RTX kit. That made it a lot easier."

I knew I'd have to play Walt's game before he told me any more. He was always like this, a little goofy and making me guess because he wanted to explain what he'd found and how. I didn't mind. Walt was one of the best and he'd solved more than a couple cases for me.

"OK, I give. What's an RTX kit."

"Oh it's just one of the only reliable ways to get prints from skin, that's all. It's been around for a long time, but it wasn't really safe. See, ruthenium tetroxide, that's what RTX stands for, works great, but the shit's dangerous. It tends to explode at room temperature, so obviously it wasn't something I wanted to fuck around with.

A few years ago, some Japanese guy figured out how to make it safe to use. You put some ruthenium chloride hydrate and some cerium ammonium nitrate in the right concentrations in a container and voila -- you have safe ruthenium tetroxide vapors. You just release them in a sealed chamber or like I just did, use a squeeze bottle and puff the vapors onto the skin and it'll develop any prints that are there.

"I tried it on the guy's throat in hopes I'd find a finger print, but all I was finding were smudges. I missed with one squeeze and blew some under the guy's jaw. I saw what looked like a partial so I kept puffing the vapors around that area. Right where I'd put my fingertip to check for a pulse in his neck was a print. Whoever killed this guy was not just very skilled in martial arts. He also had a good knowledge of anatomy. Most people would have checked for a pulse on his wrist. I didn't find anything there.

"I took a photo of the print and then dusted it with black print powder and lifted it. It's not a great print, but I found nine markers so the FBI should be able to get a match. I sent them a request and the picture a little while ago. I should hear something back tomorrow unless they have to do it by hand. Then it might take a few days."

Well, maybe I'd have a name in a day or so, but there were a lot of things that were pretty confusing. I figured Alfred had decided to unwind a little that night, but that wouldn't explain why he was naked. Our street girls never want to take that much time. They'd much prefer the guy just unzip and plug in. I also couldn't figure out why the condom he'd been using wasn't in that alley along with the other two. Any hooker knows the DNA on the condom would be traceable to her but it never bothered any of them before. They just tossed them aside. That might mean the hooker was also his killer, but I didn't think any of our girls were martial arts black-belts as well.

There weren't any clothes at the crime scene either. I doubted Alfred walked down that alley from the street naked. For whatever reason, he'd stripped or been stripped, gotten himself killed, and the killer made off with his clothes as well as the condom. The only thing I could think of was the killer wanted to leave a message for someone else. I had no idea of what that message might be or who it could be for.

The truck was another problem. The girls always had the guy drive them down the alley and bring them back to the street in his car. I couldn't find that Alfred had any vehicles registered in his name. He could have borrowed the truck, but where was it now? I seemed more likely the killer had driven the truck to the alley, killed Alfred, and then drove off, but how would the killer have known Alfred was going to be there? The hooker would have had to be in cahoots with the killer. Since all I had was one man who said he saw a truck but no more description than that, that lead was going to be pretty difficult to investigate.

The biggest unknown I had was motive. As far as I could tell, Alfred had been clean since he got out of prison. I couldn't figure out how he'd managed to piss off somebody enough they'd kill him.

It was about three by then, so I drove over to Harry's Den to talk to the bartender and anybody else who might know something.

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Harry's Den was a typical corner bar that had probably done a pretty good business in the fifties. On the outside, it looked like all the other buildings on the block-long set of storefronts. Only the beer sign in the window said it wasn't just another resale or antique shop. Inside, it was like what you see in old movies.

Unlike some of these little bars I'd been in, Harry's Den was pretty clean. The floor was hardwood and there were stains here and there from when someone spilled a drink, but it had been recently cleaned and polished. There were more beer signs on the walls along with a few pictures. Most of the pictures were of GI's coming home from WWII. A couple were of the outside of the bar with people standing in front and smiling.

I smelled several years accumulation of cigarette and cigar smoke, and the once-white ceiling was stained a sort of tan from those years of smokers puffing away. The bar proper had a brass foot rail and a padded rim. Behind that bar was a rack of liquor bottles with a big mirror over them.

When I showed him Alfred's picture, Dan, the bartender, said he didn't recollect ever seeing Alfred. He could have been lying to me, but I didn't think he was. Harry's Den was a good fifty blocks from Alfred's apartment. I doubted Alfred would travel that far just for a drink. Alfred had the address for a different reason, and that reason was probably because he was meeting someone there.

The other people in the bar were all older men. I figured that they were regulars from the area. That's the case with most of these small bars. In their heyday, they were the Friday and Saturday night meeting place for the people on the blocks within walking distance. Now, the younger crowd wants loud music and a lot of girls showing a lot of skin so they head downtown to one of the big clubs. The older people who still live in the area keep coming to the corner bar. I asked Dan if he'd had any new customers lately.