Wrath (The Lieutenant Harrington Series Book 1) Page 4

  Detective Garcia walked into the kitchen. He wore a dark suit with a black tie—he wasn’t much for wearing color. Outside of work, Garcia’s attire consisted of khaki shorts, a motorcycle-related black T-shirt, and a black-and-white bandana over his short black hair. Sometimes he added black sunglasses to his outfit. I’d never really seen him in anything else.

  “LT,” Garcia said.

  “What’s up?”

  “We have a neighbor with some information,” he said.

  I put my back to the counter. I’d asked him to talk with the woman across the street who had originally called it in. I wasn’t sure if that’s what he meant. “The woman who reported this?”

  Garcia shook his head. “Nah, the woman right here. The house next door,” he said and pointed.

  “Okay. What’s she got?”

  “She says she saw the woman who comes here leave around midnight last night.”

  The time was right on our TOD estimate. The phrasing of ‘she saw the woman who comes here’ made it seem as if she was familiar with our victim’s houseguest. It was worth going next door to see firsthand what she had to say. “The house right next door here?”

  “Yeah, Garcia said. “I’ll walk you over there.”

  I motioned for him to lead the way and followed him from the garage. The scene outside had grown by a couple of more patrol cars, more officers milling about, and more people from the neighborhood who were standing around gawking. In the driveway next to Colt’s pickup truck was the dark blue Dodge van that Skip had come in. The word Coroner was written in white block lettering across the side. Garcia and I made a left at the base of the driveway and walked to the neighboring house—the same one that I’d parked my Bronco in front of. I followed him up the driveway to the sidewalk that led toward the front door.

  Garcia spoke over his shoulder. “The woman’s name is Maria Gaines. Middle aged. She likes to watch the neighborhood out of her windows, apparently.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  We followed the sidewalk from the driveway to the front entryway. A neighborhood watch sticker was plastered to the glass of the small window in her front door. The blinds in the big bay window beside the door shook, and the front door opened a split second later.

  A barely five-foot-tall woman with short gray-and-black hair stood in the doorway, staring at us. “Are you the boss?” she asked.

  “Ma’am,” I said. “I’m Lieutenant Harrington from the Miami-Dade Police Department.” I tried to leave out the Homicide Bureau title whenever possible. Official name or not, the word bureau just made everyone either think FBI or not real police. “My detective here tells me that you saw a woman over here last night?”

  “I figured after I told him that, someone else would come over. Yeah, I saw her. She left at midnight. She flashed her headlights while she was backing out of the driveway. It was what made me go to the window and look.”

  “What do you mean flashed her headlights?” I asked.

  “High and low beams on and off a couple of times. They shined into my windows so I went and looked. Nick was standing in the driveway waving to her as she left.”

  “You saw him as she was pulling away?”

  “Yeah. He was seeing her off or something.”

  “And at midnight?” I asked.

  “Right around there. Within minutes,” she said. “The show I was watching was just ending.”

  “Do you know what kind of car it was?” I asked.

  “Newer, gray. I’m not real good with cars, but it looked nice.”

  The color matched what we had registered to the Grace Mercer whose prescription receipt we’d found.

  “How do you know it was a woman in the car?” I asked.

  “I’ve seen her and the car around here a handful of times. I’m not sure if it was Nick’s girlfriend or what. Blond woman. Tall and skinny. Maybe thirties.”

  “Okay. Now, after she left, you didn’t hear or see anything going on over at the neighbor’s house?” I asked.

  “No,” Ms. Gaines said. “After she left, I laid back down and went to sleep. I didn’t hear a peep. I didn’t know what happened until the cops showed up this morning. When I saw the patrol cars, I walked outside and talked to one of them. The officer told me what happened to Nick over there and asked me to go home. He said that someone would be over to talk to me when they were ready.” She shook her head. “It’s horrible. To think something like this can happen right next door to you. I mean, this is a nice neighborhood with nice people. You don’t think that woman came back and did it, do you?”

  “We’re just starting the investigation, ma’am,” I said. “You don’t have any idea what the woman’s name was, do you?”

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “No problem.” I reached into the pocket of my suit jacket and fished out a business card from the little holder that I kept. I passed it to the woman. “If you happen to think of anything else, just give me a call.”

  “I will.”

  “Thanks for your time,” I said.

  “Ma’am,” Garcia said. He gave her a nod, and we left her doorstep. Garcia followed me down to the street.

  “So we know she left around midnight. Rough description and car color match the woman we found the prescription for,” I said.

  “Sounds like she’s the next person to get ahold of,” Garcia said. “Her and whatever family this guy had.”

  I grunted a confirmation as we walked back to the Ludwig house, and our scene. I stopped at the base of the driveway and watched Skip, the short, round, balding county coroner. He wore a long-sleeved blue shirt with the word Coroner across the back. He pushed the bagged body on a gurney into the back of the van. I looked left and right up and down the block. Beyond our patrol cars and the uniformed officers keeping everyone at bay, neighbors were lined up and watching. I was fairly surprised that I had yet to see any news vans, but it was only a matter of time—they always came.

  Garcia started up the driveway and entered the garage. I went to Skip.

  The gurney clanked as he shoved it the rest of the way into the back of the van. Nick Ludwig’s body bounced inside of its black bag. Skip locked the gurney into place and looked back over his shoulder at me.

  “Nash,” he said. “How are you doing?”

  Skip was one of the few people at work who called me by my first name—for everyone else, it was some form of the word lieutenant or Harrington.

  “Another day, another body,” I said. “What’s the status here?”

  “One second.” Skip swung one of the rear van doors closed then the other. He turned, faced me, and ran a stubby forearm over his brow to collect some sweat. “Not a ton going on back at the office. I figure I’ll be back there with him in about forty-five minutes. Probably get someone started on him shortly after that. Maybe by early afternoon I should have something ready to send over to you.”

  “Okay. That should be fine. He had a wallet upstairs,” I said. “There was a health insurance card in it.”

  “That would make things easier for finding next of kin. Did you want to show me that quick?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  Skip and I walked inside the house through the garage. Garcia and Ryan stood inside, talking in the kitchen. We looped around toward the front door and took the stairs up. At the back of the hall, we entered the master bedroom where Steve stood with Colt, who was snapping photos.

  “All the wallet contents are on top of the dresser,” I said. “Health insurance card is there.”

  “All right,” Skip said. He walked for the dresser.

  Steve came to me.

  “The neighbor woman says she saw a female who matches the description that we pulled for the woman on the prescription receipt,” I said. “The neighbor saw her leave here last night at midnight.”

  “That lines up,” Steve said.

  “And the homeowner was still alive when she did,” I added. “The neighbor saw the guy outside when the woman’s car p
ulled away.”

  “All right. So unless she came back, we have to think we have another responsible party out there,” Steve said.

  “Right. But we still need to go and find this woman and see what she says.”

  “Agreed,” Steve said. “Did you want to do that now?”

  “Yeah, the sooner the better. What do we have left here?” I asked.

  “Colt is getting a few more photos, then he has to print the entire place,” Steve said. “I figure Ryan and Garcia can go through the neighborhood then get started on finding out whatever we can on the deceased.”

  I nodded. “Colt,” I called.

  Colt, standing with Skip at the dresser, turned around.

  “How long are you going to be out here?”

  “A few hours,” he said.

  “We need to get going on that cell phone ASAP,” I said.

  “Yeah. I’ll get Gomez to take it back to the lab right away. He can get it printed up and pass it off to the tech center so they can get going on pulling whatever information they can get.”

  “Appreciate it,” I said. “We’re going to shoot out to try to make contact with the woman we believe was here last night. After that, we’ll be heading back to headquarters, and I’ll come over to the crime lab to see where we’re at.”

  “Works for me,” Colt said.

  I looked at Steve. “Ready?”

  He gave me a nod.

  “All right, Colt. We’ll see you in a bit. Skip, give me a ring when you have a report set.”

  “Will do,” Skip said.

  CHAPTER 6

  Chris tilted his coffee cup toward the ceiling and gulped what remained. He set it down next to the empty bowl of oatmeal that he’d just finished.

  He pulled in a big breath and let it out. “I suppose,” he said. “I better get this crap cleaned up.”

  Chris slid off the barstool, stepped over his wife’s dead body, then walked to the garage. Grace’s Acura was parked nearest him inside of the garage. A tennis ball hung from a string on the ceiling and touched her windshield. It was her signal that she’d pulled far enough into the garage and should stop. Chris had hung it after she’d closed the garage door on the rear of her car multiple times and smashed into the washer and dryer that were directly in front of her car—twice.

  Beyond her car was his year-old Chevy pickup. On the other side of the truck, past his boat—which took up the third garage bay—was a big stocked wire-shelving unit that was bolted to the wall. On the unit’s shelves were miscellaneous cleaning and painting supplies. Gallons of various paints cluttered the top shelf. Most were almost empty but had enough paint inside to keep for touch-up jobs. Below the paints were the paintbrushes, rollers, and trays. Next to the trays was a box containing a big roll of plastic —the item Chris wanted. He grabbed the roll and returned to the house. Chris set it down in the kitchen, just a few feet from where the blood from Grace’s neck had pooled.

  Chris grabbed Grace by the feet and pulled her farther away from the breakfast bar. Her blood smeared across the travertine tile. Chris unrolled seven or eight feet of plastic and went to the kitchen drawer for a pair of scissors and a roll of duct tape. Supplies in hand, he returned to Grace, cut off the unrolled section of plastic from the box, and began to spread it flat across the tile of the dining room. Chris stood up straight, stretched his back, and went to his wife. He dragged her to the unrolled plastic. He heaved her body onto it then folded the plastic around her. Chris tore off some of the tape to seal her up before repeating the process again. He hoped the double wrap job would suffice to contain some of her scent that was sure to form.

  Chris crouched, took his wife’s wrapped body in his arms, and carried her upstairs. He walked into the master bathroom and dumped her into the garden tub, where she’d remain. If he had any thought that he might get away, he would have taken her out in his boat and dumped her in the bottom of the ocean. Yet Chris knew the police would come looking. They would connect her to the man he’d killed. Then they’d connect him to the scene of the murder via his cell phone’s GPS. He was pretty certain he’d left blood at the scene. It was just a matter of time.

  Chris went downstairs and looked at all the smeared blood across the kitchen and dining room. “Hmm,” he said.

  The cleaning was going to be a long drawn-out process. If the police came and tested anything, no matter how much he cleaned, they’d still find blood or traces of it. Yet not cleaning it at all presented other problems—anyone getting past the front would see the blood-soaked scene where he’d killed his wife. At least with her body out of view and a cleaned-up floor, no one would be the wiser until she started to stink—or until the police had put in the footwork to capture him. Cleaning everything up could buy him an extra day or more—more time to kill.

  “Okay,” Chris said. He went under the sink and grabbed a pair of yellow rubber gloves. He pulled them over his hands.

  He started with towels, sopping up blood and placing the soaked towels inside garbage bags. After the dry towels, he moved on to damp ones, which he also placed in the trash bags. Bleach was next on the agenda. Chris went back into the garage and scooped up a bottle from the shelf bolted to the wall behind the washer and dryer. He doused his entire tile from the kitchen to the dining room and used even more towels to scrub. Once the towels were soaked in bleach, he took them to the washer and started a fresh load. Using even more towels, he went back over everything with disinfectant.

  Not a fresh towel remained in his house. He’d used every last one. The repeated scrubbing had made his arms burn. The smell from the bleach and chemicals was making him dizzy. Chris opened the patio doors and walked into his backyard for some fresh air. The sound of a lawn mower droning away was about the only thing he heard. The lawn mower sputtered and stopped. Chris looked out at the huge pond behind his house and the homes far in the distance.

  “Morning, neighbor,” he heard.

  Chris’s head snapped to the right. His neighbor, John Stanley, stood in a couple-foot gap of shrubbery that separated the two property lines. John wore a blue #1 Dad shirt and held a hand up in a wave.

  Chris stared at him. “Ugh,” he mumbled and didn’t wave back. Chris wasn’t a fan of John, his nosy wife, or his creepy children. The guy had a pair of daughters who were just off. Chris didn’t know what exactly was wrong with the children, but they often stood side by side in the front yard, motionless, staring at people walking past. Weird kids aside, at that moment, Chris wasn’t very interested in forcing a fake smile or being neighborly.

  “My daughters are back on the play set.” John poked a thumb in the air over his shoulder. “Think you could maybe put on some pants if you’ll be out in the yard?”

  Chris looked down. He looked at his left and right hands. He wore nothing but white boxer shorts and yellow rubber gloves. He hadn’t even thought about what he was wearing. Chris gave himself another look, seeing no blood anywhere. “Nah,” he said.

  “Pardon?” John asked.

  “I’m not going inside to put on some pants. I’m in my yard. If you and your weird little kids don’t like it, take your ass back in the house. Or don’t look in my yard. Or go to hell.”

  “I’m sorry. Is there some kind of problem, Chris?” John asked.

  “My only problem is you not minding your own damn business right now.”

  “I think we have some kind of a mix-up here,” John said.

  Chris walked over to John. “There is no mix-up. You asked me if I would go inside my house and put on pants if I wanted to be outside in my yard. I told you that I wasn’t going to do that. I also told you that if you and your weird daughters didn’t like what I was doing in my yard, then you should go into your house or simply not look into my yard. Or go to hell.”

  John stood there looking at Chris but said nothing.

  “That is where we’re at right now, correct?” Chris asked.

  “I’ll be bringing this up at the homeowners’ meeting,” John said.
He turned. “Girls! In the house!”

  Chris walked back to where he’d been standing in the yard.

  CHAPTER 7

  Skip had said that he’d give my contact information to whoever he made contact with regarding Nick Ludwig’s next of kin. Steve and I had left the scene for the office a few minutes prior. Garcia and Ryan stayed put. They’d get with patrol to search the neighborhood for our murder weapon—checking yards, garbage cans, bushes. Garcia said they’d call me with any news, but as soon as they were done, they’d start digging in to information about the deceased.

  I looked into my vibrating and shaking rear view mirror and saw the black nose of Steve’s Grand National following in the distance. I worked the volume knob on the radio as I drove. My choices were whatever played on the two AM channels that came in. The stations did have call signs, but I’d renamed them—Sporadic and Iffy. Sporadic played sports, and Iffy played news. Thankfully, the Sporadic radio channel was coming in that day and gave me something to listen to aside from the truck’s exhaust. The DJ was talking about the upcoming pro football draft and who the Miami team was likely to choose with their early pick—an early pick they received for being awful once again the previous year. The DJ rambled on, and the familiar buzz from the AM station faded in and out.

  A few miles of thoughtless driving later, I passed the front of the Fred Taylor Police Headquarters Complex and Midwest District Building. The official name of our facility was a mouthful. Most of the guys just referred to it as the station, the office, midwest district, or headquarters. Our department took up a good portion of the main building’s second floor. Miami-Dade’s crime lab, records department, tech center, and just about every specialized unit and sub division were all contained inside our building, which, coming from the downtown unit— where we’d had to send out every last bit of evidence—was nice.