than fifteen seconds to locate her. I found her in the bedroom, face-down in the carpet, left arm splayed, right arm outstretched as if reaching for the bed. There was blood here, too, a lot of it. She was nude, her clothes, bra, and panties, strewn along the side of the bed. She’d been dead for a while, bloated and in bad shape, gravity having forced her blood to pool in the parts of her body close to the floor. I didn’t step into the bedroom, nor did I step into the bathroom. I only saw what I could see from the hallway. That was plenty. Yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right. Yeah, I know. There was a dead woman, probably a murdered one, not ten feet from where I stood, but it wasn’t that. I turned and left the apartment to wait for the cops. By the time I closed the door behind me, I could already hear the sirens.
CHAPTER NINE
My old badge came in handy for once. It bought me some respect and a little less bullshit from the two 9th Precinct uniforms who responded to the scene. They didn’t treat me like a moron or a civilian even if, by their reckoning, I was as old as dirt. I explained to them who I was and what I was doing there, and they didn’t seem to give a crap about my having contaminated the crime scene. They left that part up to the pair of detectives who’d caught the case.
“Fuck,” said one uniform to the other when he saw the detectives stepping out of the elevator. “It’s Frovarp and Shulze.”
“Yeah, you got the shit end of the stick, Prager,” the other uniform agreed. “Them two are real ball busters, especially Frovarp. Watch yourself with her.”
Frovarp was a willowy woman in her mid-forties with short gray hair and a
don’t-fuck-with-me
demeanor. Shulze, tall and thin, had a kind of hangdog smile and an “aw shucks” manner about him. It wasn’t hard to figure out who played good cop and bad cop when they interviewed suspects. Neither of them seemed to like me very much. That made three of us, but they were pretty unpleasant about it.
First they made me wait for over a half-hour before they even acknowledged my existence.
“Him, he stays here until we’re ready for him, okay?” Shulze told the uniforms without making eye contact with me.
I watched the Crime Scene Unit and the guy from the ME’s office go in while I sat in the hallway, waiting my turn with the Inquisition. I’d thought about calling Nancy, but I still couldn’t get a finger on the feeling that something wasn’t right about this whole situation. No matter. Siobhan wasn’t going anywhere. I wanted to make sure that when I called Nancy, I had as much information as possible. The last thing relatives of a victim want to hear is
I don’t know
. Relatives want answers, explanations. With murders, especially, they want to know as much as possible.
“What the fuck, Prager? You could smell it out here like the vic was in front of the damned door. Why the fuck did you go in there and mess with the crime scene?” Frovarp barked at me when she came out of the apartment.
“I didn’t know the smell was coming from her apartment. I’m not a fucking beagle.”
“C’mon, man. That’s bullshit and you know it,” said Shulze.
“Thing is, I had keys. I went in hoping the smell wasn’t from inside the apartment. When I found the body, I called it in. I was careful not to mess up the crime scene.”
Frovarp didn’t buy it. “You wanna merit badge for that, Boy Scout?”
“No, I’d like you two to tell me what’s going on so I can call my client.”
“You’re not calling anybody about anything until we go over the preliminary statement you gave the responding officers,” Shulze said, looking down at his notes. “You say the vic is Siobhan Bracken, aged thirty-one. That she—”
“Sorry, Detective Shulze, but that’s wrong,” interrupted the ME, a guy named Dougherty, popping his head through the open door. “You’ve either got the wrong vic or the wrong age.
CHAPTER NINE
My old badge came in handy for once. It bought me some respect and a little less bullshit from the two 9th Precinct uniforms who responded to the scene. They didn’t treat me like a moron or a civilian even if, by their reckoning, I was as old as dirt. I explained to them who I was and what I was doing there, and they didn’t seem to give a crap about my having contaminated the crime scene. They left that part up to the pair of detectives who’d caught the case.
“Fuck,” said one uniform to the other when he saw the detectives stepping out of the elevator. “It’s Frovarp and Shulze.”
“Yeah, you got the shit end of the stick, Prager,” the other uniform agreed. “Them two are real ball busters, especially Frovarp. Watch yourself with her.”
Frovarp was a willowy woman in her mid-forties with short gray hair and a
don’t-fuck-with-me
demeanor. Shulze, tall and thin, had a kind of hangdog smile and an “aw shucks” manner about him. It wasn’t hard to figure out who played good cop and bad cop when they interviewed suspects. Neither of them seemed to like me very much. That made three of us, but they were pretty unpleasant about it.
First they made me wait for over a half-hour before they even acknowledged my existence.
“Him, he stays here until we’re ready for him, okay?” Shulze told the uniforms without making eye contact with me.
I watched the Crime Scene Unit and the guy from the ME’s office go in while I sat in the hallway, waiting my turn with the Inquisition. I’d thought about calling Nancy, but I still couldn’t get a finger on the feeling that something wasn’t right about this whole situation. No matter. Siobhan wasn’t going anywhere. I wanted to make sure that when I called Nancy, I had as much information as possible. The last thing relatives of a victim want to hear is
I don’t know
. Relatives want answers, explanations. With murders, especially, they want to know as much as possible.
“What the fuck, Prager? You could smell it out here like the vic was in front of the damned door. Why the fuck did you go in there and mess with the crime scene?” Frovarp barked at me when she came out of the apartment.
“I didn’t know the smell was coming from her apartment. I’m not a fucking beagle.”
“C’mon, man. That’s bullshit and you know it,” said Shulze.
“Thing is, I had keys. I went in hoping the smell wasn’t from inside the apartment. When I found the body, I called it in. I was careful not to mess up the crime scene.”
Frovarp didn’t buy it. “You wanna merit badge for that, Boy Scout?”
“No, I’d like you two to tell me what’s going on so I can call my client.”
“You’re not calling anybody about anything until we go over the preliminary statement you gave the responding officers,” Shulze said, looking down at his notes. “You say the vic is Siobhan Bracken, aged thirty-one. That she—”
“Sorry, Detective Shulze, but that’s wrong,” interrupted the ME, a guy named Dougherty, popping his head through the open door. “You’ve either got the wrong vic or the wrong age.
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