The East Avenue Murders (The Maude Rogers Crime Novels Book 1) (5 page)

She slid the chair across to the closet, wai
ting for Joe to get back, intending to use his youthful flexibility to explore the area above the storage shelf. The hinges were stiff the same as the front door. Maude figured that the windows allowed morning and night-time humidity which would cause the rust and paint peel.

The same held true when she moved the chair to the kitchen cabinets. They were as bad as the hinges on the door. Alt
hough the air conditioning unit pumped chilled air slowly into the room, most tenants probably opened their window to help with cooling and save money. That could also explain how the flies got at the bodies.

Looking out of the solitary window from
her elevated height Maude could see that the glass opened outwards. Five stories above the pavement the two feet by three feet window was slick on the outside of the building. Not even a hint of a balcony to hang onto. It was a sheer drop from the narrow sill placed higher than standard windows because of child safety rules. The stairs within the building had been approved by the city as the necessary means of egress in an emergency. There was no outside metal fire escape. Maude concentrated on that thought for a minute as she entered the small bathroom, taking more time today to look it over. She heard the front door open with its noticeable creak, and drew her weapon, hoping it was Joe coming in with good news about the landlord. It could also have been the killer returning.

“Is that you, Joe?” she said, waiting behind the bathroom door. “If it is, holler up and get in here
.”

Joe’s dark hair showed up along with his “Yes
ma’am, it’s me”, easing Maude’s tension. She put the gun away but said “I guess you really do want me to shoot you.”

“Maude, I’m sorry. It
’s my mama’s raising. Being polite to ladies was always important to her, so it might take me awhile to stop my good manners.”

Maude smiled to herself, understanding the young man. Her own grandmother had been the same.
Yes ma’am
and
No ma’am
were strictly enforced in the family, but she liked giving Joe a few gouges. He seemed such an innocent. She hoped he had good news.

“Find out anything?” she asked him.

“Real Estate records show that Jackson Enterprises houses in Austin, a major player in the housing industry there. No real owner, a consortium. Man named Alex Bathgate runs the day to day business, a hard man to catch up with.” Joe shook his head and continued, “The thing is, Jackson Enterprises has been skipping around Federal Court because of consumer complaints of unsafe construction. There was been some accidents with renters, like patios falling down, and ceilings crashing through onto the floor below-one person dead and some injuries. Got a bunch of big time lawyers keeping them out of court, so, maybe we need to see for ourselves who runs the place.”

Maude thought for a minute and nodded her head. “Good idea,” she said. “Let me get with
the Boss in a while,” she said. “Right now I need for you to climb up in that chair and see what’s in the closet, if it has a chase that goes to the roof. Our man may have used it for his entry or getaway.”

“Uh, Maude, I don’t like heights.
They say I have acrophobia. Do I have to do it?”

“Sorry Joe, but yeah, you do
. I can’t bend my knees enough to get up there if it does lead anywhere. Besides, if it is what I think it is, you won’t know you’re up high, you’ll be inside some kind of tunnel.” Maude felt a little sympathy for the young man, but not as much as he would have liked.
Part of the job, my young friend
, she thought.
If you weren’t here, I’d have to do it.

The shower in the bathroom was black from fingerprinting
, adding to the black marks that were already there. If Almondera had lived in this dive he never picked up a scrub brush or any other cleaning tool. The small cabinet in the room had once held medications but now it was empty of anything but slivers of soap and an old disposable razor. Maude looked at the razor closely wondering how the techs missed it. There might be some DNA on the blade. At least it was something. She put the item in one of the envelopes from her pocket, hoping the killer had used the blade or handled the razor for some purpose.

She left
the bathroom and went straight to the bed or what was left of it. The boys from the lab had taken the mattress and the coverlet and were probably testing it for fluids. That could take several hours because of all the tenants who might have slept on the bed over time. Police work was slow, she thought, the work happened in real time, not like the fast paced television show results.

The dried blood on the floor under the bed
had been scraped in places, evidence of the lab’s work, the odor of the blood and tissue still strong on the bed frame and throughout the room. Maude found nothing more of interest and returned to Joe to see how he was getting on with his climb.

“You u
p there Joe?” she yelled. “Yes ma’am,” he returned. “There’s a kind of attic up here, not really an attic, more like a crawlspace. Kind of spooky.”

“Get some pictures so
we can look at it later.” she yelled again, deciding to ignore the ma’am since she found out about his mother. “See anything up there?”

“Nothing, no, wait, there’s something
ahead of me. Some white powder in a plastic bag, a fair amount.”

“Use gloves Joe”, she yelled. “Don’t foul it
.”

“No
ma’am,” he answered. “I won’t mess it up.”

“What else Joe, w
hat else is up there?” she yelled again, her neck starting to hurt from holding her head up looking at the top of the closet.

He
didn’t answer, what she got back was shuffling above her head, and an ‘ouch’.

“What’s
the matter Joe, are you hurt?”

“No
ma’am, I bumped my head against a metal pipe. This crawlspace goes out onto the roof. Want me to follow it?” 

“Yes, but be careful.
The man who killed those women might have used that way out of the building and left a piece of evidence in his hurry to get away.”

Maude glanced at the chair in front of the closet, realizing she had no other choice but to follow
her trainee. Or at least, she thought she was training him; could be the lieutenant was thinking of retraining her. Either way, she owed it to the young detective to cover his back. Stepping up into the empty chair was harder than it looked. Her knees rebelled and began burning across the cap, threatening to buckle if she put her weight on them. Disregarding her physical pains, she secured her weapon and began climbing into the upper part of the closet, groaning with each movement.

“I really have to go back to the gym,’ she thought
aloud. “I hope I don’t have cancer in my joints, hope it’s just arthritis.” The crawl space was small and tunnel like, but even though her legs were long, they were skinny, like her butt, so she didn’t get hung up in the small enclosure.

Joe was too quiet and she
was worried. He hadn’t called to her for a while, not since he offered to climb to the roof.

“
Hey, where are you,” she yelled. ”Are you alright? Just hold on and I’ll be right there.” His lack of response was bothering her, making her wonder if he had been really hurt. The tunnel she crawled through housed some of the wiring for the building, and the ductwork of the air conditioner. She removed her flashlight from her belt, shining it ahead of her, brightening the way. The metal crawl space reflected the light back in her face, blinding her at times. Maude’s elbows were raw from the crawl; she wished for long sleeves instead of the tucked in tank top and over-shirt.

There was light ahead of her, independent of her flashlight,
and she hoped it was sunlight on the roof. She didn’t see Joe and hadn’t heard from him. Maybe he had climbed out already and was waiting for her.

Maude realized two things during the last five minutes of the crawl through the construction tunnel. One
realization was that cigarette smoking was really messing with her breathing. The other was that she really needed a cigarette. That epiphany only added to her desire to get out of the long metal coffin she had been crawling through. She was not yet ready to face the fact that she might be forced to go back through it to get out of the building. She had answered her own question though,
could a man travel back and forth through the crawl space carrying items with him to room 507? The answer was yes. It could be done
. For a really motivated person it would be a simple task.

The tunnel opened up in the middle of the roof where it merged with other similar passageways. Maude crawled out, and stood, holding onto the metal pipe that led out of the tunnel. The area was cove
red with a metal top and sides making it a small room of pipework and ductwork, protected by a door that opened outside. Inside the pipe room, opposite where she stood, was a set of metal stairs leading down and into the building, connecting with the main staircase through a large metal door attached to the building.

Anyone entering or exiting the building through that door could be observed by any of the residents.
The room was unlocked, allowing unauthorized traffic inside. She looked for Joe and not seeing him, decided he must be outside looking things over. Whatever happened, Maude decided, she was going down the stairs on the way back.

Besides the stairs, t
he room housed several lines of ductwork and tunnel-like crawlspaces. Maude marked the place she had just come through then hurriedly began looking for her newly assigned partner. She found him just outside the door, lying on his side clinging to a vent pipe, bleeding from a large cut on his forehead.

“Joe,
” she said, “What happened?”

“Someone got me Maude, just as I was coming out the door
. A tall man grabbed my arms and began forcing me to the edge of the roof. I thought I was a goner.”

“Who was he?
Did you see his face?”

“No”, Joe said sadly, “I didn’t see anything. I don’t know how he did it but he cut me. I thought I was going over
, but I held onto the vent pipe as hard as I could until the blood started getting in my eyes and I had to wipe them. He ran off while I was trying to get to my feet.”

“We n
eed to get you to a hospital. I’m calling the medics. How do you feel about helicopters?” Maude asked him, pulling a handkerchief from his pants pocket. She knew he would have one, because his mother would have taught him to carry it.

”Here,” she said, “hold this against your head to stop the bleeding.”

The young detective groaned with the thought of flying, of crashing into one of the high rise buildings near the hospital, and bleeding to death, while the rotary blade plowed into a large picture window of someone’s office.

Joe p
ressed the fabric of the handkerchief against his head and leaned back, waiting for the inevitable.

“I’m going to look around while we are waiting on the bird to get here. Relax Joe. Everybody has to die of something.” Maude saw her partner’s green eyes open wide with fear
. “It’ll be okay.”

She had about five minutes before the helicopter would arrive from the city hospital, precious time to take
another look at the rooftop, where Joe had fought his attacker and survived. There was little there, other than some old cigarette butts that might have been left by kids crawling from their sleeping places, on a lark to meet with friends from the building. Some old soda cans lay faded and crushed against the north wall, blown there during a summertime wind. She saw light shoeprints on the dusty roof floor in the direction of the place where all the tunnels converged.

Before
following the shoeprints to their destination, Maude took time to measure the length and width of the shoe soles outlined in the durst, noting that the person who left them had walked through the metal doors beside the tunnel room. The same prints were light, but visible, on the landing of the one long staircase that served the building. The attacker had either left the building through the double doors leading onto the parking lot, or else, he had entered one of the apartments to conceal himself from his pursuers.

The man
had traveled to the roof through the fifth floor’s ductwork. It had to be someone who had access through one of the crawlspaces above one of the apartment’s closets. Maude had an idea but needed a little time to work it out. Groaning with the effort, she got down on her knees at the edge of the rooftop where Joe had indicated he almost went over. The view over the edge was frightening, but would have been terrifying to someone afraid of heights. It was troublesome to her that Joe’s attacker was so desperate in his need to escape he would attempt to throw a police officer off the five story roof to his death.

There
might be fingerprints near the crawlspaces. Maude hoped that the attacker had screwed up and touched something with a thumb or finger. They might get lucky. She had notified the techs at the crime lab to send someone on the chopper. They needed a break. She was getting ticked off more and more at the unknown assailants who had attacked them.