Strip Search (17 page)

“This is Gabe. Doc wanted me to call him.”

The voice sounded disappointed. “He ain’t here now.” Then, as it had apparently been told to do, “Is there a message?”

“Just tell him I called.”

“Sure. What was the name?”

Wager spelled it for her and then hung up, yawning again widely enough to crack his jaws. All this extra fun was beginning to catch up with him, but there was no rest for the wicked: he’d pulled the weekend roster and in six hours would be on duty again. He’d try Doc then.

Even if he had remembered, he wouldn’t have had the chance. At nine-thirty, a call came in for Homicide to report to the alley in the south 1800 block between Washington and Clarkson. A body had been found in a trash dumpster. When Wager and Axton arrived, the usual cluster of cruisers and uniforms filled the narrow concrete way, and the medical examiner was striding quickly back to his car.

“Finished certifying already?” Axton asked him.

“Not very damn difficult. Bullet in the back of the head.”

A horn tooted once behind them and Wager looked over his shoulder to see a glistening black van trimmed in silver nose cautiously through the small crowd of civilians. A stereo boomed loudly for a moment before it was turned off, then the van eased into a wide spot in the alley, and the black-clad husband and wife got out. He waved familiarly at Wager and the woman smiled, too. Then they leaned against the shady side of the van to wait until they were needed.

“Man, when I go, I do not want them people toting my carcass. Definitely.” Officer Blainey, shaking his head, met Axton and Wager. “One time I saw them drive up with their kid—about eleven years old. They’d been to a drive-in movie in that thing and got called out. This kid’s still eating popcorn out of a box and he’s dressed all in black, too!”

“Maybe he thought it was just another movie,” said Wager.

“I bet they even do their grocery shopping in it.” Blainey swabbed a handkerchief across his face. “Here’s all we got so far.” His pen ticked off the items concerning the victim: white male, about forty-five, one shot to the back of the head with a small-caliber weapon. No ID yet, and they didn’t want to look for one until the Homicide detectives came or the scene was recorded by the police photographer, who hadn’t yet arrived. The victim had been discovered a half-hour ago by a man collecting aluminum in the various dumpsters and garbage cans lining the alleys.

“That him?” Wager nodded toward a shabby figure in a stained military overcoat standing by himself at the fender of a police car.

“Yeah. He keeps trying to wander off. I told him to stay right in that spot or I’d park the car on his goddamned foot.”

The man wagged a skinny hand at a fly circling his head.

Max said, “I did the interviews last time.”

Lifting his notebook, Wager went over to him. Axton went to peer into the dumpster.

“You’re the one who found the victim?” Wager showed his badge.

“Yeah. Listen, officer, how much longer you going to keep me here?” He had the seamed and puffy face of a wino, but his bristly jaw showed little gray yet—somewhere in his thirties, Wager guessed, though he looked closer to fifty. He kept his coat buttoned despite the heat, and, from the odor, Wager figured he suffered from the chill that came with filth.

“What’s your name, please?”

“Polk. Jerry Polk. I mean it, officer. I really got to get going.”

“What’s your big hurry, Jerry?”

He gave a shake to the gunnysack at his knee. “Cans. If I don’t get them, the trash collectors will. It don’t do them no good—I’m the one needs them. And I only got half a sack yet. They’ll be here soon!”

“You make this route often?”

“Every Saturday. Every one I’m not in the tank, leastways.”

“What’s your address, Jerry?”

“Larimer Street.”

“Anyplace in particular on Larimer?”

“No.”

“Where do you get your mail?”

The man shook his head. “I don’t.” He frowned with thought. “I like the Juarez Bar a lot. Just ask for Jerry.”

Wager wrote that down. “Tell me what happened.”

“Not much. I opened it up to look for cans and there he was. I didn’t even know it at first. I mean, I saw it and all, but I didn’t even think it was somebody for a couple seconds. I almost touched him before I knew it was somebody.”

“You knew he was dead?”

“I saw his head.”

Wager asked a couple more questions, but Polk had seen no one leave the area, had seen no suspicious vehicles, had no idea who might have done it or even who it was. “I don’t know, officer. I never saw him before.”

He let the man go, watching briefly as he hustled past the first half-dozen garbage cans to put in distance before the cops could change their minds. Then Polk veered toward the rust-colored dumpster at the end of the alley and hauled himself up to its lip, the gunnysack clinking against its side. Wager turned toward Axton, who stood noting something down.

“Archie Douglas is on his way over from the lab—Jones is off today,” said Max.

“Any identification?”

Axton showed a wallet, one of those nylon kinds with a Velcro lip that snarled when you opened it. “It was empty—possible robbery. Driver’s license says it’s Lewis Rowe, 1258 Pearl.”

“That’s not far away.” Wager peered in at the body, which looked oddly comfortable on its bed of stuffed trash bags, miscellaneous household scrap, newspapers and cardboard boxes, discarded clothes, and ripped-up letters. The dumpster had one sign warning against playing on it, and another to scare away people who did not live in the Emerson Arms Apartments. The sign hadn’t worked for the murderer. Wager turned from the sticky tangle at the back of the man’s head and the sound of busy flies that had found something tastier than grapefruit rinds. On each side of the alley, rows of apartment windows overlooked the dumpster. Here and there, faces peered down at all the excitement.

“There’s a hell of a lot of doors,” sighed Max.

They would have to knock on every one, asking the routine questions: Did you see anything? Did you hear anything? The autopsy would tell them for sure whether the man had been shot here or elsewhere, but only knocking on doors would tell them whether anyone had witnessed something. “A hell of a lot,” agreed Wager.

“Here comes Archie. He said he’d bring the warrant.” The dumpster was private property. Any evidence found on private property had to be covered by a warrant.

The stocky man lugged a large red tool kit in one hand and a Speed Graflex in the other. He was sweating in the morning sun and when he saw the dumpster, he shook his head. “You want me to dust this thing? Oil—rust—dirt: why bother?”

Wager knew what Archie was saying: it was a hell of a lot harder to get scientific evidence in real life than it was on television. “Do what you can.” He watched as the lab man took a light reading before starting his photographic record of the approach to the scene.

“No television today?” asked Max.

“The cameraman’s not in on Saturday, and I don’t trust myself with that thing. We’ll televise the autopsy, though—you can take that home for your Beta, Max. Ha.”

Wager hadn’t thought it was funny the first time he heard it, but Max laughed politely. Douglas said, “Oh, here,” and handed Max the warrant in a narrow brown envelope. Then he took stills of the alley approaching the dumpster, writing down the details of each picture: location, compass heading, time, distances. Then he moved to the dumpster, taking a series showing the approach, and finally the interior with the body. When he pulled back out of the open door, his face was red and he seemed to be clenching his mouth to hold back a spurt of saliva. “Okay—call the disposal people.”

Max went to deliver the warrant to the apartment manager; Wager beckoned to the black-clad team. They pulled the gleaming van past the police tape and down beside the dumpster. The man hopped out of the truck and briskly opened the back. The wife was ready inside to slide a gurney out the rear. When it was unfolded, the man and woman paused to put on disposable rubber gloves and white industrial masks. Then the man crawled into the dumpster and the woman handed him a black rubber bag. After a few minutes of rustling and occasional resonant thumps against the steel walls, Wager heard the zipper wrestled shut. Then the man’s head, slightly disheveled, popped up. “Ready, Wanda?”

“All ready.”

The small end of the bag slid over the metal lip like an eyeless slug. The woman, sprayed blond hair catching the sunlight, guided it onto the gurney. With a stifled grunt, the torso flipped out, Wanda expertly bracing it against her forearms and bouncing it heavily to the pad. A moment later the man clambered out to hold his pants crease in one hand and slap the clinging garbage off with the other. Wanda strapped down the bag. The industrial masks dangled at their necks like stethoscopes.

“Ready, Wanda?”

“All ready.”

They unlocked the gurney wheels and pushed it quickly to the van, collapsing its stand as they slid it in. The man peeled off his rubber gloves, took Wanda’s, and tossed both pairs back into the dumpster. Then the van glided away, a sudden burst of stereo music hanging in the hot air behind it.

“Definitely,” said Blainey, “them body snatchers will not haul my ashes.”

Douglas went back for final photographs of the site after the body’s removal. Max returned, followed by a worried-looking apartment manager clutching the brown envelope. He grinned at Wager. “I’m too big to get through that door.”

It wasn’t much different from interviewing the witness. Wager, breathing lightly against the fetid smell, clambered onto the spongy mess and probed and dug with a stick for anything that might have fallen out of the pockets of victim or assailant. The only thing he came up with was a pale green slime over his shoe and a lingering odor in his sinuses.

“Well,” said Max as Wager wiped at the slime with a wad of newspaper, “it had to be done. I’m just glad it was you and not me. You ready for the next of kin?”

“Let’s stop by a gas station first. I want to wash my hands.”

Behind Max, Blainey was rolling up the fluorescent tape that guarded the area; at the end of the alley, a patrol car flicked off its bubble lights and swung back toward the busy morning traffic. The civilians began to drift off. From somewhere down the alley came the hiss and roar of an advancing garbage truck.

The victim’s address was in a block that, a couple decades ago, had started converting to large apartment complexes that had not quite taken over. Some of the multistoried buildings looked like old motels that had changed purpose. Others were newer, their floor plans angled to give each balcony a little privacy and as much of a view of the mountains as possible. Pinched between the blank walls of two tall complexes, the victim’s address was one of the few single residences left. Wager and Axton went up three steps to the small, shadowed front porch, their feet crackling on its concrete slab.

The heavy-set woman who answered their knock seemed to be in her mid-twenties. Her long hair was tucked behind her ears and hung straight down her back. She wore a thin cotton blouse that swung freely when she moved, and her skirt was one of those loose, pleated kinds that the Flower generation used to wear. She was barefoot and looked warily at the badge Wager showed her.

“Does Lewis Rowe live here?” he asked.

“Yes. But he’s not here right now.”

“Are you Mrs. Rowe?”

“No. There’s no Mrs. Rowe.”

“Are you a relative?”

“I live here,” she said. “He’s my old man.”

Axton glanced at Wager and then at the woman whose pale blue eyes were troubled now. “What’s your name, please?”

“Rosalyn Shiddel.”

“May we come in, Miss Shiddel?” Max asked.

The worry deepened into a frightened premonition—which, of course, was the purpose of the question. You prepared them a little for the bad news just by showing up. Then you hinted a little more by asking to come in. Most of them knew before you finally had to say it.

She stood back from the door, hands clasped in front of her hips. “What’s wrong? Something’s wrong, isn’t it?”

Axton told her, his deep voice a murmur.

“Oh God, no!”

“Does he have any relatives living here?”

“No—just me. I mean, I’m not a relative, but … Oh God, no!”

“We’ll need someone to identify him, miss. It won’t take long.”

She was numbly silent on the ride to the morgue that filled a basement wing of Denver General Hospital. Neither Wager nor Axton said much either. They pulled into a No Parking area; Axton flipped the visor to show its ID. Then they led the woman, now wearing straw sandals, into the cooler air of the identification room. The sheeted figure lay in the harsh medicinal light, a baggage tag looped to one toe. As usual, Wager went to the covered head while Axton quietly moved behind the woman to grab her in case she collapsed. He lifted the sheet to reveal the profile and was pleased to see that some orderly had thought to surround the seeping skull with a rolled towel that hid the blood.

“Can you identify the victim as Lewis Rowe of 1258 Pearl Street, Denver?”

“Oh God—Doc! Oh God, God!”

Wager stared at her. “Doc? Did you call him Doc?”

She nodded, wide eyes still fixed on the gray profile. Inside the open mouth, the teeth were the same color as the drained flesh.

Wager let the coarse sheet settle back and took out his little green notebook. In the back was a list of telephone numbers with cryptic initials beside them. He asked the woman, “What’s the phone number at your house, Miss Shiddel?”

Too much in shock to wonder why he had asked, she told him, each figure confirming what he already knew.

They interviewed the woman at Homicide. It wasn’t a good place during the workday, even on a Saturday: telephones rang, Assault or Burglary detectives wandered past with professional curiosity, the chatter of a dozen radios made a crackling background of restless noise, and someone was always coming through asking for someone else. But the surroundings served to stifle grief, if there was any, and to make a victim’s friends and relatives believe a little more in the importance of the questions the detectives had to ask.