The Greeks of Beaubien Street (4 page)

On Monday morning, an officer from Detroit called and said that Gretchen had been positively identified by her fingerprints. She was dead and in the morgue. They needed to come down and identify her, to see her one more time and then make arrangements to have her body moved to a funeral home. Jacob had answered the phone. He felt like he was on stage playing a role, the lead. He was a character answering questions, responding to the voice on the phone. Someone would speak to them after they viewed the body. Some questions needed answering. It was all part of the investigation. She had been murdered. How was it possible that his daughter was dead?
She was the sweetest child. She loved people. She cried if she had to kill a spider.

No longer able to stay in character, Jacob fell to the floor in grief. The wailing that came from his throat didn’t sound human. Marianne grabbed the phone from him and demanded that the speaker repeat what they’d said to her husband. Without mercy, she nudged Jacob in the chest with the toe of her shoe, mouthing “shut up!” to him as he cried out. They would be questioned, Marianne was told. It was protocol to find out exactly where and what Gretchen had been doing the last day of her life. “Okay, we’ll be on our way,” Marianne replied, and hung up.

Chapter 3

After watching the video a third and fourth time, Jill viewed the 3-D scan. She sat in the darkness for a few seconds, but didn’t linger. She was anxious to begin the task of finding Gretchen Parker’s murderer. There was a path from her last resting place in the alley off of Cass Avenue to the prim bungalow in west Dearborn that would be turned upside down in search of clues to the last hours of her life. Albert would make the call to the Parkers. He was perfect for the job: unemotional and detached, with a respectful demeanor. He would be able to say the tough things:
you need to come now to view the body, choose a funeral home, tell us what she was wearing the last time you saw her
. Off the record, they both wondered why a twenty-six year old female would still be living at home, observing an early curfew.

Jill left the viewing room and took the stairs back down to the office. She could see Albert talking on the phone. Was he making
the call
or fighting with his bank again? She hoped it was the bank; she could use a breather from the intensity of the case for a moment.

Together, they would do the face to face interview with Gretchen’s parents. She had a list of questions to ask with a typed suggested narrative. Talking to the family of victims was easier for her if she had an outline to follow. The biggest concern Jill had was finding the murder location. Where was Gretchen when she bled to death? Who washed her body off and took the time to brush her beautiful hair? Was it the same person who tore her vagina, leaving a laceration two inches long? Put a gun to her chest between her nubile breasts and blew her heart in two? Officers were conducting a door to door in the neighborhood where her body was found, but it was unlikely to turn anything up. It was mostly hotels and businesses, not a big foot-traffic area. She suddenly wanted to go there herself. When Albert got off the phone, she told him she was going to walk the scene.

“Her parents are on their way,” he said, looking at her. “Do you want me to talk to them alone?”

“No, no I don’t think so,” she replied. “I want to be there. There’s something not gelling here. Do you feel it?” Albert shook his head
no
. He was an
all about the facts
kind of guy and didn’t try to pretend otherwise.

“I don’t have any intuition, you know that,” Albert admitted, turning to dig through his desk for the small recorder he would use during the interview.

“Sam felt it too,” Jill said, thinking of of the medical examiner. His report would help solidify the facts of the murder. They should have it by noon. “Look, would you call me when they get to the city? You mind going into view with them? I’ll come right away.” She wanted to see the scene before she spoke with the parents. They agreed that Albert would go to the hospital to wait for the Parkers and call her when they arrived.

She walked to her cruiser and drove the short distance to Cass Avenue. The street was empty. Parking the car but waiting to get out, Jill wanted to survey the scene in the quiet of the cruiser. The area was a study in contrasts. Although she could hear a trash compactor in the distance and the roar of traffic a mile away, the neighborhood itself was quiet and empty. She got out of the car and walked to the alley. Pausing at its entrance, she could see the interior was dark, even in the light of the morning with the bright blue sky and shining sun. It smelled of trash and rotting food; there was a dumpster filled to overflowing a few yards down. Jill thought she saw a rat. She wondered how long the body had been there before it was discovered and felt eager to get her hands on Sam’s report with the estimates for time of death and exposures. She walked to the area where Gretchen’s body had been thrown. The crime scene tape was fluttering in the breeze; there was a small piece of it attached to the building on the west side of the alley. She stared down at the ground, able to see in her mind’s eye a faint outline of where a young woman might have laid. Jill imagined Gretchen still there. As she saw in the video, Gretchen’s arms were cockeyed at weird angles to her body, as were her legs. The left leg was stretched out straight out in front of her but the right one, thighs together, was bent awkwardly - the knee facing inward and the heel out at a right angle to the body. Jill shuddered. There was something glistening in the sliver of daylight that penetrated the gloomy alley. Squatting down to exam it, she saw a single piece in the sea of glass that had a drop of something red on it. It looked like blood. She reached into her pocket and drew out a pair of latex exam gloves and a zip lock bag. She picked up the piece of glass, smaller than a dime, and placed it in the bag. She spent the next fifteen minutes sorting through the rest of it and found another piece with the red substance on it. There was also visible blood on the concrete underneath. Taking her phone out of her pocket, she snapped a picture. Then she got out a small pocket knife and scraped the red substance off, placing the scrapings in a separate baggie. She stood up and called into the precinct to the CSI division, telling them her findings and that she needed to meet the victim’s family in a few minutes; would they please come back out and re-examine the area? It wasn’t unusual to find more evidence in the light of day. They had each other’s backs.

Jill walked further into the alley toward the back. She felt strong waves of some kind of energy coming over her that buffeted her eardrums, making them feel as though she was underwater. Something more than a body dump had taken place there. She felt unsure of where the feelings were coming from.
Was it intuition or an overactive imagination?
Had the combination of the rat and the bloody glass, the dumpster and the darkness, made her lose her common sense?

The service doors of a hotel were located here. Five ratty chairs were placed in a semi-circle: the smoking area for the employees. She would check to see if the nightshift workers were among those questioned. Someone could have been hiding out here smoking when the body was dropped off.

Her phone vibrated, sending her jumping in the air. She chuckled and answered it. It didn’t take much to scare her when she was deep in thought. The vibrating phone did less damage than the ring tone, which could produce a yodeling scream from her. It was Albert.

“They’re here,” he said. Jill walked back to the cruiser and got in. She’d be there in minutes. The sensations she was getting from the alley had stopped for the time being. She would take the opportunity to regroup on the way to the morgue, wanting her first impression of the parents to be without the influence of her feelings in the alleyway. She didn’t want pity or compassion to muddy anything she might get from the initial meeting.

Jill pulled the cruiser up to the front of the hospital and parked in a
no parking
zone. It was the one luxury she allowed herself as a cop. She grabbed her tote with her notebook inside and went up the granite steps to the entrance of the hospital. Albert and the parents would be waiting for her in the private office off the main lobby, a special place set aside for bereavement. Jill hated the room, thinking it reduced the shock and sadness of an unexpected death to a storybook caricature with the stained glass cross and the fake flowers, the boxes of generic tissues and the stained cushions on the pews. Who was this supposed to comfort? She would request that they move to a more sterile place to interview. The Parkers jumped up at the opportunity to get out of the horrible room. Albert didn’t seem to notice they were uncomfortable. He caught her eye while they were walking and she knew what the look on his face meant; he had noticed the
something else
.

Jill led the way into the cafeteria, allowing the Parkers to get their own coffee and fix it the way they liked while she paid for it. They thanked her. Then, she took them into a private dining area designated for the doctors. It was empty, the hour between breakfast and lunch. They would have the solitude they needed. They went to a far corner table overlooking the city to the river. They all looked out at the view, silent. Jill looked at the man and woman sitting across from her. They were an unattractive couple. She wondered if Gretchen could have been adopted. Despite their palpable pain and anxiety, Jill needed the pair to focus now. She was ready to move forward.

“I’m going to have to ask you questions that will be painful to answer, and want to apologize in advance. Unfortunately, you’re the only source we have.” She could see they were nervous. Mr. Parker looked like he wanted to fly off into the air, as if it was taking every muscle in his body to keep him seated in his chair. It was normal for parents to be inconsolable, even hysterical. But this was something more. She could practically smell the danger.
What’s going on here?
“I’m going to record our conversation so I don’t forget anything you have to tell me. Is that okay with you?” They both nodded
yes
. “Why not start by telling me about Friday? Did Gretchen work?” Mrs. Parker blew her nose and began talking.

“She worked. She was a teller at the Beechman Bank. It’s on Telegraph, about six blocks from our house. She worked the early shift Friday, from eight to three. I made her breakfast, her favorite: fresh fruit and a toasted corn muffin. We had coffee together.” Marianne Parker looked at her husband and started crying. He looked annoyed at her, shooting her a warning look. “I’m telling them everything, Jacob.” She looked back at Jill.

“Gretchen had a date Friday night with Mike. Mike Ahmed.” She dug in her purse and pulled out a small sheet of paper with an address on it, giving it to Jill. “I like him very much. He is educated and well mannered, owns his own home, and is an engineer at Ford Motor. What’s not to like? But Jacob here,” and she turned to her husband, “Jacob hates him because he’s Lebanese. Gretchen wasn’t allowed to bring him to the house. They had to meet somewhere else. I didn’t know where they were going, but we saw Mike on Saturday and he said they went to a movie at Fairlane Center Friday night. Jacob set a curfew for Gretchen of eleven and Mike said she left at ten-thirty. She never came home.” Marianne Parker bowed her head then and started to cry. Her shoulders shook. Jacob Parker sat watching her, stone-faced, silent and furious. Jill could see the muscle in his cheek quivering. He was either going to explode, flying all over the room like a balloon letting its air out, or throw himself on the floor like a child having a temper tantrum. She felt like provoking him, but wouldn’t.

“You don’t like him because he is Lebanese?” There was no challenge in her tone; she was asking him if it was true. But she allowed a hint of derision.

“No! God damn it, that isn’t all. He’s too old for her! She’s only twenty-six, for Christ sake. He’s almost forty. What the hell does he have in common with her?” Jill realized too late that Jacob’s temper made the hospital cafeteria a less than suitable place for questioning after all. She closed her notebook and caught Albert’s eye.

“Come to the precinct with us, please Mr. and Mrs. Parker?” Albert was ever the peacemaker. “It’ll be more comfortable than the hospital. The coffee is better there, too.” They all stood up. “You can come in my cruiser; we’ll bring you back to your car later.” They agreed and followed Albert out of the room. Jill was grateful for the chance to be alone, to assimilate all the facts and feelings she had accumulated in the past half hour. She was feeling the urgency about getting to interview the boyfriend, Mike Ahmed. He was probably at work; she’d ask Albert to go. She wasn’t done with Jacob Parker just yet.

Chapter 4

Gus Zannos was preparing his famous stuffed peppers for the dinner crowd. The number of workers in the area who picked up their dinner from his store was growing every week. He went to the Eastern Market before dawn and found the peppers on special. He bought ten dozen red and green, hoping that would be enough. Last Friday, he’d made lamb shish kebab and forty people came in for take-out. He saved Jillian’s dinner, but the rest of it was gone by six. He’d wanted to have enough made for the nurses who worked twelve hours and wouldn’t be able to get there until just before he closed at eight. He quickly made up some spaghetti and meatballs and the grateful nurses had their dinner after all.

He washed and dried his one hundred twenty peppers and cut the tops off, then scraped the seeds out and set the peppers upside down to drain on his late wife’s cookie cooling racks. The radio was turned to a classic music station, although a Greek language station was available and broadcast right in Greektown. He preferred the gentle classical music to the lively American music being played today on the Greek station.

Gus plopped lean ground beef into a big, stainless steel mixer with a dough hook on it. Using his mother’s recipe, he added raw white rice that he rinsed off first, small, sweet chopped onions, fresh mint, oregano, eggs, garlic, Worcestershire sauce, and a little milk, and blended it together. He used a ½ cup measuring scoop to fill the peppers. As he scooped the meat in and tapped it down with his fingers, he hummed along with the radio. He greased two large baking pans and lined up the peppers so they touched in the pan. When he was finished stuffing all the peppers, he poured two giant cans of tomato juice over them and sprinkled them with grated cheese. Sealing them tightly with foil, he put them in a 350 degree oven to bake for an hour. He liked the peppers to be soft and mushy, just held in shape by the mixture within them. He would also make mashed potatoes. That was an addition his Syrian American sister-in-law taught him; there was nothing better than a piping hot stuffed pepper served on a bed of hot mashed potatoes. His sister-in-law was proud she influenced him. He would call Anna later today. Peppers were served at the store in this way for the past thirty years. It was a tradition. On Monday, stuffed peppers from Greektown would be dinner all over town. Every day of the week he prepared a different entrée for his customers, so they knew what to expect.