Caught Red-Handed (2 page)

“Stay here.” He took two steps and felt her touch his ass.

He whirled to face her. “What the—”

She drew back quickly and blushed all the way up to her curlers. “Oh, Officer Harriman! I'm so sorry! It's just that . . . it's just that . . . well, sir, look at the seat of your uniform!”

“Lady, please never do something like that to someone who's armed!” he said in some exasperation. He craned his neck and caught a glimpse of what she was talking about. He brushed at the seat of his pants, then looked at his hand. A white, powdery substance covered his fingers and palm. “That white streak goes all the way across?”

She nodded.

He looked toward the patrol car. Bear was weeping with laughter.

Frank's dad had warned him of the tricks likely to be played on a rookie, which only made him feel twice as embarrassed. He knew that when he got back to the car, he'd find an open, small plastic bag full of flour stuffed down in the crevice between the back and bottom of the car seat. It was set up so that when Frank sat down in the passenger seat, a little puff of flour would escape and stripe his dark pants white. No wonder Bear had insisted on driving today.

Mrs. Erkstrom was a quick study. “That was a mean and childish trick. He's old enough to know better.”

“A rookie is not allowed to think such thoughts, ma'am,” he said.

Her eyes narrowed and she marched off toward the patrol car. Bear stopped laughing.

Frank used the opportunity to go up the metal stairs at the trailer's front door. As Mrs. Erkstrom had said, a television could be heard in the background, the volume down too low for Frank to hear more than voices and a little music. Standing on the small platform in front of the door, he tried knocking. He tried rapping on the door with his nightstick. He double-checked that the door was locked—it was. He called loudly for Mr. O'Keefe.

That meant taking in the reeking air. His stomach began to rebel.

He made himself think of something that smelled good, like the honeysuckle growing on the back fence at home, and went down the stairs again. He walked around the trailer to the farther end, the one that housed the bedroom. The sound of the television was slightly louder there, but was still hardly more than background noise. He glanced toward the “Tomcat” trailer, which was filthy by comparison. It had once been white, but its windows and siding were dust-covered, and some seams showed signs of rust. There were cobwebs and dead leaves underneath it.

Although there was a little dust on O'Keefe's trailer and windows, it was easy to see that it had been more recently washed than Tomcat's. The windows were smaller at this end of O'Keefe's trailer and were placed too high for Frank to manage a look inside standing at ground level. He was just hunting around for something he might stand on when Mrs. Erkstrom approached. She was using the fingers of one hand to pinch her nose shut. In the other hand, she was carrying a small stepladder.

“Thought you might be able to use this,” she said, her voice altered to something between Lily Tomlin's Ernestine and Minnie Mouse.

He thanked her.

Flies were thick on all of the windows, buzzing around between the glass and the curtains, but there were more of them on the window at the back of the trailer. Those curtains were closed but not drawn together perfectly, so he positioned the ladder below that slight opening.

A brief look told him most of what he needed to know for the moment. A nude male lay sprawled across the bed. His skin was distorted and discolored. His body appeared to be in an advanced state of decomposition. Light flickered from a small color television on top of a dresser. On the screen, a couple in a soap opera were having an argument.

Frank stepped down off the ladder and closed his eyes for a moment.

Maybe it helped, growing up around cops, hearing stories about some of the worst cases they had come across—those had certainly included catching calls for “stinkers” and “floaters.” But if it helped, it didn't help enough. He again fought down nausea.

He also fought down a set of emotions that ran twisting through him in rapid succession. He felt shaken at the sight, despite the slide shows he had seen at the academy. Sadness for O'Keefe's lost battle with despair. An uncomfortable sense of having invaded his privacy in the worst sort of way. Anger that O'Keefe had given up. Anger that he had left the job of cleaning up the messy end of his life to the Bakersfield PD. Dread of talking to Mrs. Erkstrom or anyone else. And a desire to wring Darryl Cross's neck for handing off this call.

Mrs. Erkstrom asked,
“Is he in there?”

He broke a rule and nodded.

He thought she might start babbling at him again, but to his surprise, she turned away and went inside her trailer without another word.

He walked back to the car and sat down.

Bear was quiet for a long time, then said, “Bad one?”

Frank nodded.

“You never forget your first one.”

“That's the worst news I've had all day.”

Bear made the radio call. Detectives and the coroner would be called out. They were given further instructions.

Bear turned off the mike. “So, the body snatchers will bring the meat wagon whenever they get a moment, but in the meantime, we're supposed to make sure no one else is in there, maybe wounded.”

“Someone
alive
?”

“Yeah, I know, you're thinking, ‘only if they can breathe through their ass, like a maggot.' But you'd be surprised. One time, when I was about as new on the job as you are, I was sent inside a stinking apartment. I go in, find an old man dead on the bed and rotting away. I step closer and I hear a moan
.
I just about shit myself.

“I hear another moan, look over on the far side of the bed, and there's the guy's old lady, on the floor between the bed and the wall. I get a closer look, see that she was wounded but alive.”

“She make it?”

He hesitated and then said, “For a while. But that's all any of us do, really.” Then he grinned and said, “Harriman?”

“Yes?”

“Before you break into that trailer, you may want to dust off your ass. You forgot about the bag of flour.” He made no attempt to stifle his laughter as Frank stepped out of the vehicle. Cussing as he removed the bag, Frank was tempted to toss it in Bear's face.

Bear grinned knowingly, then relented. “Check under the metal steps for a key holder. People are idiots. Especially old men.”

So Frank caught a break. Searching under the steps, he saw a magnetic key hider. He put on a pair of gloves and pulled it loose. It contained two keys. One was clearly a post-office box key. The other unlocked the trailer. He glanced back at Bear, who flashed him a peace sign.

Bear was a clown who didn't know that no one flashed the peace sign anymore—or did know and thought he was being funny—but he wasn't an idiot. And he wasn't old, either—not really. He was a little younger than Frank's dad, in his early forties. And unlike some of the guys with twenty years in, Bear was in good shape.

Opening the trailer door let out a cloud of flies and stench, although he was almost getting used to the smell. He had heard stories of detectives putting a pan of coffee on the stove at a scene like this, heating it until its aroma masked the odor of decomp. He was the rookie here, though, and didn't dare mess with anything. He reminded himself that he was just here to take a quick look around, to make sure there were no additional victims.

Insect life and bad air aside, the inside of the trailer was beautiful, lined with curving honey-colored birch that gave it a golden glow. O'Keefe kept the place clean and neat. There was a small living room, then a kitchen, a bathroom, and the bedroom beyond. Frank steeled himself and made his way toward it.

The heat inside the trailer was punishing. He was drenched in sweat by the time he made the short walk to the back.

O'Keefe looked even worse up close and personal, but Frank had expected that.

He turned away, toward the television. It was louder here, distracting. How would he hear anyone sigh over that? He noted the volume level and channel and turned it off. He might get in trouble, but he couldn't think with it on.

In the ensuing silence, he listened for a moment, but all he heard were flies and a crackling sound. After a second, he realized the crackling sound was being made by maggots. He again managed not to let nausea get the better of him, then tried to keep his thoughts clear, detached. It was a struggle.

He glanced around the bed and peered into the bathroom and the front closet. No wounded spouses, gagged hostages, or other living individuals who might have needed his help. There was a closet in the bedroom he hadn't checked. Did he really need to do that?

“You want to work homicide?” he murmured to himself. He forced himself to do what he'd been avoiding—to go into the bedroom again and look at the victim.

O'Keefe's head and face were a mess, but there were two oddities he noticed having to do with O'Keefe's right arm and his left hand. His right arm rested behind his head—O'Keefe had apparently propped his head on this arm, which seemed an odd position to be in to commit suicide. It would have been a natural one for watching television, though. Why would someone who's committing suicide have the television on? It hadn't been on at a volume that would have covered a gunshot, if that was what he had intended.

There was a gun in O'Keefe's left hand. His fingers were curled around the grip.

Frank frowned.

He was distracted by a whistling sound. The wind had come up, and he could hear whistling from windows and the vent above, and, at a different pitch—somewhere to his right as he faced the bed. He looked at the wall and saw a small circle of light and damaged paneling.

It looked for all the world as if someone had fired a bullet into the trailer.

He drew in a sharp breath,
regretted it, and made another check of the trailer. Certain no one else was inside, he left, locked the door, and went around to the other side of the trailer. There was a hole, and if he looked through it, he was looking at Donnie O'Keefe's head wound.

He turned around. There was a hole in Tomcat's trailer, directly opposite the one in O'Keefe's. Around the hole, the torn metal of the siding flared out.

When he walked back around to the patrol car, Bear was standing beside it, talking to Mrs. Erkstrom, who had reemerged from her trailer. They fell silent when they saw him approach.

“Just the one,” Frank said to Bear, then turned to Mrs. Erkstrom. “Do you know Tomcat's real name?”

“No. When I tried to introduce myself, he played deaf and ignored me. So I said to myself, ‘Well, nuts to you, buddy.' Most people here are really nice and friendly. Not him. He was a jerk. You act like that, one day you're in trouble, nobody's going to help you out. Even a saint will flip you the bird, and I'm no saint.”

“Sorry he was rude to you.”

“Now see, you—you're a polite young man.”

Bear snickered.

She turned to him with a frown. “You, on the other hand—”

Frank intervened with another question. “Mrs. Erkstrom, do you happen to know whether Mr. O'Keefe was left-handed or right-handed?”

“He was right-handed. At least, that's the hand he wrote with.”

“Thanks.”

Bear raised his brows. Mrs. Erkstrom watched Frank in anticipation. Fortunately, they heard the approach of a car, so he was spared explaining his question. It was an unmarked black sedan. As they emerged from the car, Frank recognized two friends of his dad, Detective Mattson and Detective Tucker.

They wore suits—although each had taken his suit coat off and left it in the car—and carried less equipment than Frank or Bear, but they looked nearly as overheated.

Some detectives snubbed uniformed officers once they were promoted. Mattson and Tucker didn't have that attitude. They had known Bear Bradshaw and Brian Harriman for many years, and they had each been to the Harriman house for parties and barbeques. Of the two, Frank knew John Mattson the best.

Ike Tucker was the one who initially spent time talking to Frank, while Mattson conferred with Bear. Other neighbors were now coming out of their homes, walking toward whatever excitement this promised.

“You're getting a baptism of fire,” Ike said, when Frank had given him the first few bits of information. “I thought the SOC was supposed to be out this way today.”

Frank tried unsuccessfully to hide his surprise.

“Oh yes, we all call the little son of a bitch that. As a matter of fact—”

Whatever else Ike was going to say was cut off when Mattson called to Frank from the far end of the Vagabond. Frank walked toward him, wondering if he should just let the detectives notice things on their own or point out what he had noticed. Would they resent it? Would they be mad about the TV being off? That he had been walking through the trailer, coming up with theories? Tucker knew he had been inside, but didn't seem upset about it. Frank decided that getting his ass chewed out wouldn't be as bad as not doing right by Mr. O'Keefe. If you wore a uniform and you entered a man's home and saw him in that condition, you ought to do what you could on his behalf.

Still, he knew that rookies were infamous for overstepping boundaries. He didn't want to act like a horse's ass before he had a month on the job. They might all come up with some awful nickname for him, the way they had for Darryl, the SOC.

“So,” Mattson said, “Bear tells me you've wanted to work homicide since you were twelve.”

“I know I can't do that right away,” Frank said.

“Of course not. But you're Brian Harriman's son, which leads me to believe you are no dummy, and besides, Bear seems to think you've noticed something.”

“How could he—”

“Bear notices things, too. Like your dad, he should have been promoted to detective a long time ago. While he and Tucker talk to the neighbors, you talk to me.”