A Smudge of Gray (9 page)

As Brian walked down the hallway, candlelight
bounced off the wall across from his bedroom. At first, the light baffled him,
but as he smelled the sweet scent of burned lavender, he realized the meeting
he missed. Anne Marie sat on the bed with black lingerie hugging her feminine
figure. Her legs, freshly lotioned, were bent at the knee as she hugged them
like a college girl awaiting her boyfriend. Brian entered and kicked his
slippers off.

“Who were you talking to?”

Brian stared at the lifeless fold
in his 500 thread count sheets and expelled the air in his lungs.

“Honey, I’m so sorry. But I have to—”

Anne Marie turned her head and her back on
her husband. Her perky grin transformed into a depressed frown. Her inviting
stare faded into a rejecting glare. And the passionate thoughts of her husband
vanished into a void.

“It’s not like that. The captain—”

“I don’t want to hear it.”

“I’m doing this for you and Jonathan.
All of this. Everything.”

“You’re not doing this for us! Wake up,
Brian! Look at yourself in the mirror and you’ll see that you’re definitely
not
doing this for us.”

Brian didn’t know what to say, so he
said nothing.

“Just get outta here,” Anne Marie
continued.

“I’m sorry,” Brian whispered, but it was
too late for apologies.

Brian grabbed dress shoes from the
bottom of the closet. If he had the time to contemplate the best match to his
black slacks, time to get his wife’s opinion, he would not have selected the filthy
brown imitation leather footwear beyond their miles. But he did, and he would
be mismatched for the rest of the night.

Chapter 14

The city streets flowed with traffic. The
tires of the vehicles hurled water from their grooves. Night dwellers dodged
puddles on the sidewalk. Some knew where they were, and some knew where they were
going, while others were lost in the loneliness of night. It was nearly
midnight, a time when one day died and another was born.

An American-made SUV cruised in the
middle of traffic, a mass-produced vehicle seemingly straight from the assembly
line. There were no markings on its body, only the blankness of white. On
further inspection, the vehicle’s high-grade tires, dual exhaust, extra leaf
springs, and glow from the computer monitor inside proved it to be more than
just generic. The police interceptor package fitted the sport utility vehicle,
a package selected by all of the city’s police-ordered vehicles. Inside,
Detective Brian Boise commanded the machine as he traveled through the
darkness. The SUV blasted a puddle, but Brian failed to flinch, putting faith
into his machine. He kept his speed up, but a traffic light mocked him with
red. He pressed his right foot on the brake pedal, and then reached his right hand
into the center console. Brian juggled a red police light to the roof. After
flipping the switch, the cars spread.

As Brian drove, he thought about what
his wife had said inside his bedroom. He wondered what his motivations in life
really were. He knew he was slaving at this job, putting his life on the line
day and night, for his family. But perhaps he was just fooling himself. Perhaps
he was hiding from something or someone. Perhaps he was hiding from his
subconscious and the secrets buried deep inside.

 Thirteen minutes later, a doorman stood
under the cloudy sky wearing his trench coat and protective hat. He was the
same doorman who had helped Janice into her building, and the same doorman who
also helped an army of the city’s finest to enter to clean up her corpse.

Brian trekked down the sidewalk
with his brown shoes battling the dank concrete, his SUV holstered in the
neighboring parking garage. He saw the doorman see him. Brian removed his
badge, but the doorman knew exactly whom the approaching man was and where he
was going.

“Excuse me, what floor—”

“Seventh Floor.”

“Thank you,” Brian responded with a sad grin
as he entered.

Down the hallway on the seventh floor
and inside the room marked “717,” police filled the two-bedroom condo like a
viewing for an Italian grandfather. Lt. Foster stood tall as he directed the
Crime Scene Investigation team in front of van Gogh’s masterpiece. Only one body
in the condo knew who painted it, and she was on the floor with a hole in her
head.

“…make sure all blood stains are
marked—” Lt. Foster ordered, but then a shadow near the door caught his
attention.

Brian stopped at the doorway as yellow
police tape mocked him. A bulky patrolman stood guard. Brian flipped his badge.
The brute simply nodded as Brian entered.

“Boise. Over here,” Lt. Foster shouted
from his perch. “Excuse me,” he said to his subordinates.

Brian slid past two examiners who were analyzing
the broken heel from Janice’s shoes. The place bustled with morbid activity, a
playground for a mad scientist. The stench of sweat hit Brian’s olfactory
nerve, but his thoughts prevented any physical reaction. His mind switched into
its highest clock speed. His eyes swept the area—blood on the wall, glass on
the carpet, bullet shell on the couch, flat-screen still on the wall, body on
the floor.

“What do we got?” Brian asked Lt.
Foster.

Both stared at Janice’s corpse as two
examiners snapped pictures. Her face, once soft and sexy, was now hard and
hideous. Every man used to yearn to have a taste of her sexuality and to enter
one of her holes with his hard dick. But now, that man would turn in horror, go
flaccid without even thinking, because the newly created hole in her head, a
dark hole filled with fragments of skull and brain matter, was the last place
he would want to enter. A look of terror permanently toughened the muscles in
her face as her once clean and perfect pores were now filled with blood that
had seeped from the largest pore on her face—the bullet hole into her brain.

“Looks like our perp again,” Lt. Foster
finally revealed.

“God…”

“
God
is right.”

“Is the ballistics report back yet?”
Brian asked.

“Same silenced nine millimeter. Three
shots this time. Two to the shoulder and…you see the last one.”

“There he is. Detective Brian Boise,” a
boisterous voice roared.

Brian looked up at
The Starry Night
as his mind registered the voice. A knot constricted deep within his belly, an
all-too-familiar knot. He knew whom the voice belonged to because he was
anticipating this moment ever since the lieutenant had lowered his voice on the
phone. Brian turned and set his eyes on the captain, the man feared by most and
envied by all who carried a shield.

“Hello, sir,” Brian replied as he stole
a glimpse of the two-bar insignia reflecting the condominium’s spotlights.

“We’ve got ourselves a madman. And
this person, rather, this piece of
shit
, is ruining our image,” the
captain growled, moving closer.

“I totally agree, sir.”

The captain leaned in and lowered his
voice.

“I think solving this case will be good
for you. Your father would be proud.”

Brian stopped breathing for a moment.
Thoughts of his father’s badge and his father’s deadpan stare scratched his
mind. He knew his father would be proud, wherever he was. But then the last
moment that Brian had with his father, the last moment on the cusp of ten years
ago, stopped his heart. “I’m working around the clock. I have some leads to
follow up on,” Brian forced himself to say.

“Well, you better follow up quickly
before this fuckup blows some more brains out,” the captain said as he stared
at the deceased Janice. “It’s a shame, such a nice pussy wasted. I’m going to
leave you with this one, Boise. She’s
mighty
pretty…from the neck down.
I hope you’re not one of those people who fuck dead bodies. What’s that called?”

“Necrophilia, sir,” an examiner said.

“Yeah. Necrophilia. Hell, if I had one
too many, I’d just put a bag on her head and shake her real good. Ha! It’s past
my bedtime.”

Lt. Foster and Brian stood at attention
as they watched the captain stroll toward the door. The bulky patrolman removed
the tape as the captain and his entourage exited. Only two examiners remained,
which limited the life in the room.

“You heard him. You solve this one and
you’ll be promoted to my pay scale,” Lt. Foster said, breaking the silence.

Brian felt the knot tighten in his gut.
He looked at the corpse again as his focus transferred from his stomach to his
brain.

“Looks like close range again,” Brian observed.

“The two in the shoulder probably
injured her. We found a blood trail through the apartment,” the lieutenant
explained.

Brian looked down the hallway as squares
of yellow tape covered the floor and wall.

“The suspect got her with the last shot
right here… Oh, I got some news back from the lab regarding the strange smudge
of gray,” Lt. Foster added.

“And?”

“Dried shoe polish.”

“Hmm.”

“A real expensive brand. The interesting
thing is it’s a unique shade of charcoal gray only produced by certain European
tailors,” Lt. Foster explained.

Brian stopped and analyzed her lifeless
hands.

“Already checked. We didn’t find
anything on her or in the apartment,” Lt. Foster said. “Or at least my guys
didn’t.”

“I was researching the past murders and
found that both victims were prosecuting attorneys. I have a strong hunch she
was an attorney as well,” Brian explained.

Lt. Foster thumbed through his notepad.

“Miss Janice Davis, age twenty nine,
occupation…attorney. Hey, you’re fuckin’ right. We found copies of her paystubs
in the kitchen.”

“I’d like to do some analysis of the
area,” Brian said, as he knew his night would be long and his mind would be sore.

“Analyze all you want. You heard the captain.
This is your case. Don’t fuck it up and don’t fuck her,” Lt. Foster said with a
pound on Brian’s back. “I’ll let you do your thing.”

Brian didn’t respond.

The lieutenant walked a few steps
toward the exit, and then turned. “Hey, Boise. One question. What the fuck is
up with your father?”

Brian’s bodily functions halted. If time
had stopped, even just for a microsecond, Brian would have been considered
dead. But luckily for the detective, time was not dead. “I need to get started,
sir.”

“Come on, Boise. I hear all these
rumors. Set ’em straight,” Lt. Foster pressed.

“I don’t wanna fuckin’ talk about it!”
Brian yelled, transferring his deadness into rage.

“Whoa, don’t get your panties in a
bunch, Boise,” Lt. Foster said, as he witnessed a side to his subordinate that
he didn’t know existed.

Brian felt a group of brain neurons
trying to fire, trying to claw at his mind and to resurface memories buried
inside pits of fire. He focused on
The Starry Night
on the wall, the
swirls pacifying the evil. As Brian’s mind mollified, the lieutenant walked out
of the condo. Brian watched his immediate supervisor glide coolly, glide like a
man who just handed his problems to another. As Brian looked around and saw the
bloody mess, he realized the lieutenant, in fact, did just that.

The pale green abstract flowed over
Brian. It removed him from the morgue for only a moment—a moment that he
needed. The detective grabbed a pair of latex gloves from an examiner’s kit.
Then he removed a small notepad and pen from inside his suit jacket. He opened
it to a fresh page and drew a rough map of the room, a map that would fill his
eyes and his brain over the course of his investigation, even more so than the
smile of his wife. He numbered different locations in the room that contained
the various pieces to the puzzle, and then he made a small legend at the bottom
of the page.

Brian walked around the corpse like a
sculptor appreciating his masterpiece. The only problem for this sculptor was that
he was out of clay. The two examiners were parked near an end table in the
living room and were filling out paperwork. Brian studied the fallen shards of glass.
He saw a stain of brown on the carpet. Although the ice had melted, the cubes
left a discoloration on the rug that even a novice detective could deduce. To
its right, another glass rested on its side—the glass that was offered to the suspect.

“Were there any other prints found?”
Brian asked without taking his eyes off the glass in front of him.

“We found about two dozen different
prints,” one of the examiners yelled.

Brian looked up.

“All in and around her bed. Plus there
was more semen inside the room than inside a Maytag at a donor clinic,” the
other one added.

“Well, run the prints,” Brian
instructed.

“They were all more than two days old.”

Brian looked around the floor
searching for a clue,
the
clue—a smudge, but nothing pulled him. Brian
refocused and lurked toward a splatter of blood on the wall. The dried bodily
fluid had no effect on him. He shifted toward the kitchen, his movements slow, his
eyes wide. The tile reverberated Brian’s brown shoes. He stopped just past the
entryway and drew another map labeling it with more items of interest—groceries
on the table in a bag marked “Al’s Natural Foods,” stainless steel
refrigerator, a red bowl in the sink, blender, coffeemaker. Then, Brian rested
his gaze on an open bottle of alcohol. He prowled toward the object, keeping
his focus on it as it grew in size with his advancement. He wrote “Christian
Brothers Brandy” in his notepad. He left the alcohol in its resting place, but
lowered his head and took a sniff of the poison. It smelled bitter, yet it
enticed him. The booze triggered a memory in his mind buried not in a pit, but
in a hole deep enough to hold a teenager’s self-aborted fetus. It was a dark
time ten years ago when alcohol not only invaded his nose, but also his taste
buds, numbing them to the world around him.

Brian left the kitchen and continued
down the hallway. He kept his hand on the pen as he added to his third-grade
drawing. A picture on the wall of the beach painted with oil-based paint caught
his attention, but then Janice’s handprint painted with blood quickly trumped
it. Police tape circled the blood as Brian studied the intricate ridges and
valleys of the unique thumbprint—the thumbprint from a thumb that would never
again touch.

The open bathroom was to his right, but
Brian continued down the hallway toward the open room. He followed the trail of
blood. The bottom of the door looked clean. Brian entered the bedroom. He added
to his map as the blood trail curved into the bathroom. But before Brian left
the room, he studied a photograph on the nightstand. It showed a smiling couple
in their fifties sitting on a picnic bench, the parents of the deceased by his
guess, parents who just lost their daughter.