Beneath a Buried House (Detective Elliot Mystery Book 2) (4 page)

Salt had been scattered in front of the building. A front had moved in during the night and coated the city with a thick layer of snow and ice. Some of it was still coming down. “Let’s go,” Elliot said. He and Dombrowski made their way across the short walk. As they pushed through the door, a delivery truck crawled out of the alley.

Elliot glanced around. No one guarded the entrance. Not many doormen made their living on this side of town. They stepped into a small lobby, which was nothing more than a wide place at the foot of a set of stairs. Some of the residents crowded around the uniformed officers there. Beyond that was a hallway with numbered doors, marking the first-floor apartments. The place smelled of rotting food and mildewed carpets.

 Dombrowski pushed through the crowd, but Elliot stayed behind, watching the entrance door closing behind him, the journey back to its original position slowed to a crawl by a somewhat noisy hydraulic assist. Someone could gain entrance that way without a key if he were attentive to such things.

“Anything on that delivery truck that came out of the alley?” Dombrowski asked.

Sergeant Conley stepped forward. “Just a couple of computer techs working on a problem up the street.”

Elliot took off his hat then slid out of his overcoat and hung it over his arm. “Is the front door usually locked?”

A short, stout man with a two- or three-day growth of beard came forward, a cell phone stuck to his ear. “Yeah, it’s locked. I had it undone ’cause I knew you guys would be coming in and out.”

“And you are?” Elliot asked.

He continued talking into the phone, as if what was happening here wasn’t near as important. “Bob Davis. I manage the place.”

Elliot walked to apartment 3 and ducked under the yellow police tape stretched across the doorway. Dombrowski and the apartment manager followed.

Elliot managed to hold his expression in check when the stench hit him. In the middle of the tiny living room, stretched out in a recliner, the victim appeared to be watching his favorite television program. Perhaps he had been.

“What time did you find the body?” Dombrowski asked.

Bob Davis rubbed his chin. “It was around eight, I think. Stella Martin was complaining about the television noise. I knocked on the door a couple times then used my key.”

“Everything here just like you found it?”

“Yes sir, except for the television. It was pretty loud. I took the liberty of turning it down a bit. I hope that’s all right?”

Dombrowski gestured toward the body. Elliot immediately understood what he wanted him to do. Reluctantly he searched the victim’s clothing, finding a wallet with two hundred-dollar bills inside, but nothing else; no identification.

“Any idea who he is?” Dombrowski asked.

Bob Davis shook his head, cell phone still to his ear.

“So who rents the apartment?”

Another shake of the head, still talking into the phone.

“Sir,” Elliot said. “We’re trying to conduct an investigation.”

The man nodded, but kept talking. Without another word, Elliot reached over and took the phone from the manager, folded it, and stuck it in his pocket. “We need your attention,” he said.

Dombrowski frowned. Again he asked, “Who rents the apartment?”

The manager shrugged. “It’s been rented for months.”

“Let me get this straight,” Dombrowski said. “You let somebody move in here but you didn’t get his name?”

“Hey, he had cash. Paid more than the room was worth. Most of my clients ain’t the kind you’d want to do background checks on anyway. Besides, this ain’t him.”

“You’re telling me this isn’t the same person who rented the room?”

“Yeah, that’s it, that’s what I’m saying.”

Dombrowski shook his head. “Would you recognize who did if you saw him again?”

“What, you got a lineup or something?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of photos at this point. Maybe you could come down and take a look, see if anything jogs your memory.”

“I don’t know. I guess I could do that. I’m kinda busy, though. Anyway, what good would it do?”

 “There’s a good chance that whoever rented the place is involved somehow,” Dombrowski said. “At the very least, maybe they know something about what happened here.” He turned to Elliot. “What do you think, kid?”

There were no bloodstains on the victim’s clothing, no visible wounds had been inflicted. His left hand rested in his lap, while his right arm hung limply over the chair arm, the hand nearly touching the floor. The sleeve of his dress shirt was rolled up past his elbow. Beneath it on the carpet was a syringe. Elliot suspected the fruition of his premonition of bad things to come was upon him. This wasn’t exactly what it appeared to be, plain and simple so they could wrap things up and go home and forget about it. It wouldn’t go down that way. He knew that just as surely as he knew Detective Dombrowski was standing beside him. Elliot hadn’t been a detective for long, and many of his daily experiences were new to him, but there was nothing unfamiliar about the sinking sensation in his gut. He’d had this feeling before, this unequivocal sense of
not-right
. “I don’t know,” he said. “Why are there no other needle marks on him?”

Dombrowski shrugged. “Maybe it was his first time.”

“Maybe,” Elliot said, “but he doesn’t have that look about him, like he would do something like this.”

Dombrowski gestured for Elliot to follow him across the apartment to the kitchen table, where an empty carton of milk and a box of cereal rested. Some sort of symbol had been carved into the wood of the tabletop. “What does the room tell you?” he asked.

It seemed as if Dombrowski had caught on to his apprehension about the case and was pressing him for answers. He wanted to say it looked straightforward, short and sweet, to the point, but what he said was; “It looks a little too generic to me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like a stage play, all set up for the audience to suspend their disbelief.”

Dombrowski shook his head. “Sometimes you worry me, kid. Have a look around, see what else you can find.”

Elliot nodded, but there wasn’t much to see. It was a one-room apartment, not counting the bathroom. He walked to the only window, which was along the outer wall, and ran his fingers across the pane, a thick piece of frosted glass reinforced with chicken wire. The lock was engaged, and several coats of undisturbed paint showed that the window hadn’t been opened in a while. He found nothing in the closet, and the bathroom yielded only an old razor and a pack of blades.

Elliot went back to the kitchen table to have a better look at the curious design that had been carved into the wood. He brushed aside the spilled cereal, revealing what looked like the head of a goat carved into a star with a couple circles around it. “What about this?”

Dombrowski shrugged. “What’s your assessment?”

Elliot took a final look around the room. The forensic team had arrived and they were busy going about the place. Bob Davis had pulled out one of the kitchen chairs and was watching whatever program was on the television. “No signs of forced entry,” Elliot said. “And it doesn’t appear as though any kind of a struggle took place.”

“There might be hope for you after all,” Dombrowski said. “We can rule out robbery, too. Nothing seems to be missing.”

“Except for the man’s identification,” Elliot said.

Dombrowski gave Elliot a curious look then said, “Mr. Davis?”

Bob Davis got out of his chair. “What is it now?”

“You mentioned that a Ms. Stella Martin might have overheard something. Could we have a word with her, please?”

“That won’t be a problem. If there’s anything Stella likes to do, it’s to talk.”

Elliot and Dombrowski followed Bob Davis out of the room and into the hallway where the manager began to knock on the door of apartment 4. When it opened, Dombrowski stepped forward. “Thanks for your help, Mr. Davis.” He motioned to Elliot. “Give him his cell phone back.” After Elliot had complied Dombrowski said, “We’ll let you know if there’s anything else we need.”

The apartment manager shrugged. He looked a little put out. “Suit yourself. I’ve got other things to do anyway.”

Stella Martin kept her little piece of Windhall clean, and she’d tried to make a home of it, draping doilies over the chair arms and throwing rugs across the floor. “Can I get you anything?” she asked. “Some coffee, perhaps?” She moved gracefully for her size, and her demeanor reflected a tough kind of friendliness. Elliot found himself wondering if she had children.

Dombrowski shook his head. “This shouldn’t take long. Just tell us exactly what you saw and heard last night.”

Stella Martin dropped into a chair and folded her hands across her lap. “I didn’t see anything last night, but the night before, that’d be Friday, I saw a few things. There’s something strange goes on in that place. I’ve told Davis about it, but he don’t pay me no mind.”

“Why did you wait until this morning to report it?” Dombrowski asked.

“Like I said, nobody ever pays me no mind. People are in and out of that apartment all hours of the night, and strange voices come through the walls. It’s a damn zoo around here. It was different that night though. The voices were more like conversation, and the TV was blaring. Don’t usually hear the TV.”

“Do you remember about what time all of this started?”

“It was early in the evening, around seven I’d say. That TV went on all night and it’s been going ever since.”

Dombrowski paused, and Elliot took the opportunity to ask a question. “You mentioned people coming and going. Could you tell us a little more about that?”

“Honey, I know that hallway and the sounds it makes. Nobody goes up and down those old boards without my knowing about it.”

Ms. Martin sounded confident, leaving Elliot not only inclined to believe her, but also wondering just how well her eavesdropping skills were honed, and if she might in fact be able to speculate on the size and weight, even the gender of her hallway trespassers. “Do you suppose they were residents of the building?”

She shook her head. “Ain’t nobody lives there.” She pointed to the wall, meaning apartment 3, where the body was found. “But Friday was different. There was this man, but he didn’t look like anybody I’d ever seen around here. He had a hooker with him, too.”

“How do you know she was a hooker?” Elliot asked.

“Cause she looked like one.”

“And how is that?”

“Jesus, Detective. Do I have to draw you a picture? You a cop, or a Baptist minister, don’t know what a hooker looks like.”

Dombrowski didn’t even try to hide the smirk on his face.

“Could you be a little more specific?” Elliot asked.

“She had on high heels, tight leather pants, and one of those shirts that shows your belly button.”

“Was she tall?”

“Hell yes.”

“Was she thin or heavyset?”

“She was thin all right, and her skin had no color to it. Probably a drug user.” She paused, then continued, “She had bushy black hair and a tattoo, some kind of funny-looking symbol sticking out of her pants, just below her navel.”

Elliot nodded. “You mentioned that the visitors were different this time. What kind of people usually go in and out of the apartment?”

“Oh, they’re a weird bunch, mostly skinny white guys with long hair, like bikers or hippies or something like that. Maybe twenty-five to thirty years old. Sometimes they play music, but never the television. They’re usually pretty quiet, except for tramping up and down the hallway. Guy last night, he’d seen fifty some time ago, and he was dressed like a businessman.” She paused and leaned forward, as if she were telling Elliot a secret. “I think the place is rented just to buy and sell drugs.”

Elliot glanced at Dombrowski, and the expression on his face said he wasn’t paying much attention to any of this because he was heading to the same conclusion he’d been heading to since their arrival at Windhall Apartments: He thought the victim was a transient who’d simply had too much of his style of pain relief. Dombrowski turned and headed for the door. “Thank you, Ms. Martin. You’ve been most helpful.”

Elliot followed Dombrowski out of Stella Martin’s apartment and into the hallway, where several reporters had gathered. Dombrowski smiled. “I’ll question the other residents. You take care of this.”

Knowing he had no other choice, Elliot turned toward the reporters. There were only three of them. The media must have shared Dombrowski’s conviction; there wasn’t much to this. One of them, a nicely dressed man accompanied by a cameraman, stepped forward, identifying himself into the microphone as Gary Myers. “Could you tell us what happed here, Mister . . . ?”

“Elliot. Detective Elliot. A body was found inside one of the apartments. We haven’t identified the victim, a white male, probably in his late fifties.”

“You used the word victim. That usually indicates foul play. Will a murder investigation follow?”

“A slip of the tongue,” Elliot said. “I meant to say deceased. It appears he died of a drug overdose, heroin, we suspect.”

The reporter’s face grew serious. “There are rumors of a drug war in Tulsa. Could this be related?”

“No,” Elliot said, “Nothing like that. The victim’s history—” He paused. There was that word again. “The deceased’s history might reveal something other than what we think we see here, perhaps a hard-luck story of some kind.”

Elliot stopped, realizing he’d said too much. He glanced around but didn’t see Dombrowski. He was thankful for that. Then again, Dombrowski would see it on the broadcast. Elliot wondered if he might convince Mr. Myers to edit that part out, then figured it wouldn’t be worth the try. “There will be a thorough investigation,” Elliot said, “but we don’t expect to find much.”

A few questions later, the reporters gave up. Elliot caught up with Dombrowski.

They questioned the other residents but didn’t get much information. The crime scene investigators had already gotten what they needed, so Elliot and Dombrowski talked with the uniformed officers until all of the team members were out of the building, then they gathered their overcoats and left as well, stepping out into the snow.