Bloody Mary (2005) Read online

  I smirked. I met Latham Conger, head accountant at Oldendorff and Associates, ten months ago, through a dating service that Herb had conned me into joining. Latham was pleasant, attractive, attentive, employed, and heterosexual. Which, for a forty-something woman in Chicago, was like winning the lottery. He also loved me, and wasn't put off that I didn't return the sentiment yet.

  I liked Latham, a lot. And I might love him someday. But my heart muscle atrophied when Alan left me, and I haven't been able to get it up to speed since.

  I pulled on an old T-shirt and climbed into bed. Latham's cologne clung to the pillows, and I hugged one to my chest, thinking about his phone call.

  I have an important question to run by you.

  What could that mean?

  As if I didn't have enough on my mind.

  Rest, as expected, defied me. I tossed. I turned. I did deep breathing and relaxation exercises that brought me close to sleep, and perhaps actually into sleep for short periods of time, but I always jerked myself awake after a few minutes.

  I felt immense relief when my alarm went off and it was time to go to work.

  After showering and changing into a yellow blouse, a tan jacket, and matching slacks, I did a quick makeup job with extra attention to eye concealer and headed for work.

  Eight in the morning, and already the temp hovered in the nineties. Chicago, a city that didn't smell good on average days, reeked in heat like this. I had to pass an alley on the way to my car, and the smell from the garbage cans hit me like a punch.

  Kitty-corner to the 26th District, a gourmet coffee place had set up shop. I got a Colombian dark roast, black, for myself, and almost ordered a double chocolate hazelnut cappuccino for Herb until I remembered his diet. He also got a dark roast.

  Caffeine in hand, I entered my building and was surprised to find it cool. In fact, it was downright chilly.

  Violent Crimes Division was on the third floor. Herb sat in his office, hand in a box of fat-free chocolate cookies. He brightened when he saw me.

  "Jack? Why aren't you in Florida? Is your mom okay?"

  Rather than get into it, I nodded a yes and handed him his cup.

  "Coffee, thank God. I'm freezing."

  "I see they fixed the air-conditioning."

  "They did, but the temperature regulator isn't working. They can't shut it off."

  "Feels good."

  "Give it ten minutes, and you'll start seeing your breath. I tried opening a window, but I can't handle the Dumpster smell. This is just what I needed." Herb took a sip, then made a face. "What's this?"

  "It's coffee. That's what it tastes like without cream and sugar."

  "It's supposed to be this bitter?"

  "Yeah."

  Herb dug through his desk and pulled out a fistful of little pink packets.

  "Well, I'm glad your mother's okay, and it's good that you're back. Index got a match on the prints."

  As Herb added carcinogens to his brew, I leafed through the reports on his desk.

  The arms belonged to Davi McCormick of 3800 North Lake Shore Drive. Arrested once for solicitation, but clean for the last five years. Mug shots were known to be unflattering, but hers looked good enough to print. Davi was an attractive woman, much more so than the average prostitute.

  I read her case details and it made sense. At the time of her arrest, she'd been working for Madame Pardieu, a high-class escort service that charged up to a grand a night. That would account for the nice neighborhood.

  "Does she look familiar?" Herb asked. His jowls were stuffed with fat-free cookies, giving him a chipmunkish appearance.

  "Yeah, she does."

  "You've probably seen her a few dozen times. When we got her name I cross-reffed with Missing Persons, and found a report from yesterday, called in by her agent. She's Sure-a-Tex Girl."

  Sure-a-Tex was a brand of tampon marketed to the younger crowd. Sure-a-Tex Girl, wearing a not very subtle red cape, flew to the rescue of women who started their period in extreme situations, such as mountain climbing or white-water rafting. The product came in a variety of designer colors, including neon green and hot pink.

  "Did you contact the agent?"

  "He'll be here any minute." Herb took a sip of coffee and searched his desk for more saccharine.

  Phil Blasky's postmortem report was the shortest I'd ever read, due to the amount of material he had to work with. An elevated histamine level and platelet count indicated the victim had been bleeding prior to her arms being severed. Tests for several dozen drugs came back negative. Lipid levels normal. No evidence of heart disease, STDs, or pregnancy. Everything else about the arms was unspectacular.

  Phil noted that the handcuffs were put on after death; axe marks indicated the swings came from the front, with the arms splayed out crucifixion-style.

  Officer Dan Rogers knocked on my open door. I invited him in.

  "Got the GC results from the burned skin samples." He handed me a file. "My tongue was correct. The arms were diluted with bleach."

  "No trace of anything else?"

  "Nope. Bleach will clean up just about anything. That's why it's used by HazMat teams. Hey, Lieut, you got any aspirin? I've got a headache that's making my eyes water."

  I found a bottle in my desk and tossed it to him. He shook out five, and swallowed them dry.

  "Thanks, Lieutenant. Call me if I can be any more help. I like CSU, but Detective Rogers has a nice ring to it too."

  Rogers left. Herb made a grunting, satisfied sound, and tossed his empty cookie box into the garbage, on top of three other such cookie boxes.

  "Herb, not that I want to question your dieting efforts, but how many boxes of those cookies have you eaten today?"

  "Why?"

  "Let's just say you could hibernate with all I've seen you eat in the last ten minutes."

  "So what? They're fat-free."

  "Chocolate syrup is fat-free too. Look at the calories."

  He fished out the box he'd tossed and squinted at the nutrition panel. "Ah, hell. No wonder I've gained four pounds on this diet."

  "You need to watch the carbohydrates, not the fat."

  "Oh. These only have fifteen grams of carbs."

  "Per serving. How many servings per box?"

  "Ah, hell."

  A knock. I turned to see Officer Fuller in the doorway. Fuller was an ex-pro football player, tall and wide, and he towered over his companion, a short, balding man wearing Armani and too much Obsession for Men.

  "This is Marvin Pulitzer."

  Marvin smiled, his caps unnaturally white, and offered his hand to me. I took it, and discovered he was palming something.

  "Pulitzer Prizes Talent Agency. Very pleased to meet you, Miss . . . ?"

  "Lieutenant. Jacqueline Daniels."

  He held on to me a moment longer than necessary. When I got my hand back I saw he'd given me his card.

  "You've got great bone structure, Lieutenant. Do you model?"

  "I did Vogue a few issues back."

  Pulitzer narrowed his eyes, then smiled again.

  "Joking. I get it. Funny. But seriously, I just landed this new account. They're looking for distinguished, mature women. You should come in, take some test shots."

  "What's the company?"

  "Ever-Weave."

  I confessed to never hearing of them.

  "They sell protective undergarments. You know, adult-sized diapers."

  Fuller chortled, deep and throaty. I dismissed him.

  "Think it over. You wouldn't have to pose wearing the product. You just have to stand there, looking embarrassed."

  No kidding.

  "I don't think I'm quite ready to delve into the glamorous world of modeling, Mr. Pulitzer. Come in and have a seat."

  Pulitzer and Herb exchanged greetings, and then he sat in a chair between us on the right side of the desk.

  "So, where's Davi?"

  Herb handed Pulitzer the mug shot.

  "This is Davi McCormick?"
/>   "Yeah. Oh, Christ, she's in trouble, isn't she? What did she do? Has she called a lawyer yet?"

  Pulitzer pulled out a cell phone the size of a matchbook and flipped it open, dialing with his pinky.

  "She doesn't need a lawyer, Mr. Pulitzer. The county medical examiner found Davi's severed arms in the morgue yesterday morning."

  "Her . . . arms?"

  Herb handed him another picture. Pulitzer lost all color.

  "Oh shit! Those are Davi's? Shit! What the hell happened to her?"

  "When was the last time you spoke with Davi?"

  "Four days ago. We did lunch at Wildfire. Right after that I had to catch a flight to New York."

  "What did you talk about during lunch?"

  "The usual stuff. Upcoming gigs. Auditions."

  "Did Davi seem nervous, or afraid?"

  "No, everything was completely normal."

  Herb and I took turns interrogating Pulitzer. We confirmed his trip, and asked several dozen questions about Davi, her friends and family, her state of mind, her life.

  "She has no enemies. Not one. Which, in a competitive business like this, is amazing. She's just a nice girl."

  "You called in a missing person's report yesterday."

  "Yeah. She missed a shoot two days ago. Davi never missed a shoot. I called her. Even dropped by her place. She just disappeared. Jesus, who could have done something like that to her?"

  Pulitzer had to take a time-out to reschedule his afternoon appointments. While he was on the phone, Herb and I conferred.

  "Davi was a celebrity. She may have had stalkers."

  "We'll call Sure-a-Tex."

  I added it to my notes.

  "We also need to call Davi's parents, check with her friends, and try to pinpoint her movements for the last week."

  Pulitzer finished his call and asked where he could get some water. I pointed him to the washroom.

  Herb took a sip of coffee, then reached for more sweetener. The pile of pink wrappers on his desk was almost as high as his cup.

  "If it's someone who knew Davi, where do your handcuffs come in?"

  "Coincidence? They could have fallen out of my pocket, someone picks them up and pawns them?"

  "I don't buy it."

  "It's thin. But the only people with access to my office are cleaning people and cops."

  The maintenance staff was carefully screened during the hiring process, and cops were, well, cops. I didn't know anyone working out of the two-six with a grudge against me, and I especially didn't think I had any murderers on my squad. The process to become a police officer included psych profiles, mental evals, and endless personality tests and interviews. Wackos were supposedly weeded out early on.

  "Maybe someone pinched them."

  That seemed more likely. I didn't carry a purse, and most of my outfits had oversized pockets to hold all of my essentials, cuffs included. Even a mediocre thief could have gotten them from me without much effort.

  "But why me?"

  I used Herb's phone to call Fuller back into the office. He'd been particularly helpful on the Gingerbread Man case, and I needed an extra man.

  "Officer, I'd like you to cross-reference my previous case files with the names from County's sign-in book. You know how to build a database?"

  Fuller snorted.

  "You think because I can bench three-fifty I can't work a spreadsheet?"

  "You can bench three-fifty?" Herb asked. "I almost weigh three-fifty."

  "It's not that hard. Just a combination of diet, exercise, and supplementing."

  "Maybe that's why I'm not getting results. I'm not supplementing."

  I thought of a hundred things to say, but managed to keep a lid on them.

  Fuller walked next to Herb and leaned against his desk. The desk creaked. "I stack to boost my metabolism. Plus I use chromium, L-carnitine, CLA, and I protein-load before working out. If you want, I could take you through my NFL routine sometime."

  Herb beamed in a way that he usually reserved for chili dogs. "That'd be great! Can I get a list of those supplements you're taking?"

  "Sure. See, an ECA stack is a combination of--"

  "Officer Fuller," I interrupted, "we could really use that database."

  "Gotcha, Lieut. I'll get right on it."

  Fuller left. Herb gave me a frown.

  "What's wrong, Jack?"

  "I wanted to stop the conversation before the two of you started flexing."

  "Too much guy talk, huh? Sorry, didn't mean to exclude you."

  Herb said it without sarcasm, but the comment chafed. Being a woman in the CPD meant constant, unrelenting exclusion. It didn't matter that I was the number-one marksman in the district. It didn't matter that I had a black belt in tae kwon do. Herb wouldn't ever think to ask me about my workout routine. Unconscious sexism.

  Or perhaps I was just being overly touchy because of the situation with my mom.

  Pulitzer returned, looking a little better.

  "I thought of something, but I don't know if it will help or not."

  We waited.

  "If Davi was doing anything illegal, it wouldn't matter now, right? Because she's gone? It's silly, but I still feel protective of her."

  "Drugs?" I asked.

  Pulitzer's shoulders slumped.

  "Cocaine. Recreational, as far as I knew. It didn't affect her work."

  "Do you know where she got her drugs?"

  "No idea."

  Again, we waited.

  "I really have no idea. I want to help, but I'm not into that scene. I could put you in touch with some of my other models who might know, but I wouldn't want them getting into trouble."

  Pulitzer reached up to rub the back of his neck, exposing a bandage beneath the cuff on his right wrist.

  "How did you get that?" Herb asked, pointing it out.

  "Hmm? Oh. Mr. Friskers."

  "Mr. Friskers?"

  "Davi's cat. I hate that damn thing. Mean as hell. I went over to Davi's apartment before I called the police. She gave me a set of keys. I figured, I don't know, maybe she had a heart attack, or fell and broke her leg so she couldn't get to the phone."

  I felt Herb's eyes on me. I kept focus on Pulitzer.

  "We'll need to check the apartment. The keys would save us some time."

  Pulitzer dug into his pants and handed me a key ring.

  "Be careful. That thing is like a little T. rex."

  After assuring Pulitzer we wouldn't pursue any narcotics possession charges with his models, he gave us the names of three who used coke.

  "Is there anything else? I wasn't able to reschedule my afternoon meeting. Big client. I want to help Davi, but I really can't miss this."

  "Thank you, Mr. Pulitzer. We'll be in touch."

  We shook hands.

  "Please catch the guy that did this. Davi is -- was -- a real sweetheart."

  After he left, I stood up and tried to stomp some blood back into my toes, which felt frostbitten.

  "You up for a drive, Herb?"

  "Hell, yes. My nose hairs have icicles hanging from them."

  "We can only hope those are icicles."

  Keys in hand, we headed for his car to check out Davi's apartment.

  The summer heat felt wonderful for the first five minutes. Then Herb cranked the air-conditioning.

  Chapter 6

  It's a bad one.

  He looks around his office, a knuckle jabbed against his temple, trying to will the pain away.

  Does anyone notice? They must. His neck muscles are tight enough to strum, he's drenched in sweat, and he can't control the trembling.

  He's never experienced pain this intense. Not even his injury hurt this much. It's as if his head is in a vise, being slowly tightened until his eyes are ready to pop out. The pills he took earlier aren't doing a damn thing.

  Maybe his wife is right. He should see a doctor. But the idea terrifies him. What if the doctor finds something seriously wrong? What if he needs surgery? He'd rather de
al with the pain than let some quack poke around in his brain.

  "You okay?"

  A coworker. Female. Plain-looking, heavy hips, short brown hair in a spiky Peter Pan style.

  "Headache." He manages a sickly grin.

  "Do you need some aspirin?"

  He decides to kill her.

  "Yeah, thanks."

  She walks to her desk. He imagines her, kneeling on the floor in his plastic room. She's crying, of course. Maybe he's taken a belt to her first, to loosen her up. Leaving marks on this one will be okay. Since she works with him, he can't allow her body to be discovered.

  "Tylenol?" she calls over the cubicle wall.

  "Fine."

  How should she die? Her haircut inspires him. He will draw his knife across her forehead, pull back the skin to expose the bone. Work a finger in there, then two and three.

  Skin stretches. His hands are large, but he should be able to get his entire hand between her skull and her scalp.

  "Like a warm, wet glove," he says, shivering.

  "What's like a glove?"

  She's holding out the Tylenol bottle, one eyebrow raised.

  "I want to thank you for this."

  "No problem. I used to get migraines. I would have killed somebody to take the pain away."

  Me too.

  "You know, Sally, we've worked in the same building for a few years now, and I don't know anything about you."

  She smiles. Her front teeth are crooked. He can picture her mouth stretched open, screaming and bloody, as he practices some amateur dentistry with a ball-peen hammer.

  "I'm married, with two kids, Amanda and Jenna. Amanda is eight and Jenna just turned five."

  He forces a grin, his hopes shattered. Who would have guessed an ugly thing like her had a family? He doubts he'll be able to get her alone, and even if he manages, she'll be missed.

  "How about you? Married?"

  "Yes. No kids, though. My wife is a model, and she doesn't want to ruin her body. You know, hips spreading, stretch marks, saggy tits."

  Ugly Sally's smile slips a degree.