Authors: Eileen Dreyer
Head Games (9 page)
Molly wanted to yell and apologize at the same time. “I was just hoping ⦠I mean, the first time you were at the house was the only time that night Magnum barked until the police came. You might not have been the only one around.”
Another too-quick change to earnest sincerity. “I swear, Aunt Molly. If I knew anything, I'd tell you.” He shuddered, hands shoved in pockets. “I mean, Jesus, it's just creepy.”
Molly couldn't have agreed more. Sighing, she resettled her purse on her shoulder and turned for the door. “Oh, what the hell, Patrick. Let's you and I go get some hamburgers.”
He grimaced. “Do we have to?”
And that was the worst of it. Somehow God had burdened her with the only teenage boy in North America who did not appreciate the spiritual value of junk food.
Some days she just couldn't win.
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A cold front had swung through sometime during the evening. An Alberta Clipper, they called it. All Molly knew was that she was freezing her ass off as she gingerly stepped through the frozen grass of Forest Park at seven in the morning in her moss green pantsuit and battered boots to assess a freshly found body.
What was it, suddenly, about people coming to the park to die? she
wondered. Couldn't they die in their bathrooms, like they were supposed to?
wondered. Couldn't they die in their bathrooms, like they were supposed to?
But the poor parks crew had stumbled over another one, and it was up to Molly to climb down and deal with it.
“That's it,” one of the guys cried in real distress when Molly showed up. “I'm gonna get me a job in a sewer. No bodies in sewers. Just alligators. I can
deal
with alligators.”
deal
with alligators.”
At least this body was routine. A homeless guy just trying to get some warmth in the woods. Curled in on himself like a hedgehog, he'd died in his fatigues and the five coats he'd cadged from Sal Army.
“I don' know,” the homicide detective offered as Molly approached. “I heard about that stuff you been gettin'. Could be, this guy donated somethin' for ya.”
For just a second, Molly's heart caught in her chest.
“What do you mean?” she demanded, only able to see the jumble of coats that lay frozen against the long grass in the ravine.
The cop, a grizzled veteran with three stripes and a giant handlebar mustache he waxed like a surfboard, grinned and bent over.
“Well, look. He's missing a part or two. Any of them yours?”
She didn't want to, but Molly bent over.
Then she smacked the cop so hard his homicide fedora went flying. “If anybody's comin' across this guy's spare parts,” she retorted, assessing the single lower leg and foot that peeked out from beneath that nest of coats, “they're doing it on the Korean peninsula. That leg hasn't been attached since Truman was president. Besides, Wilson, before you get excited, make sure it's the right part. He's still got the bone we're looking for.”
“He got eyes?”
Even though Molly shouldn't have been creeped out by one cop's lousy humor, she checked anyway. First thing.
“He's got eyes.”
“Well, hell,” Wilson groused. “And here I thought I'd caught me a big red ball.”
“You caught you a poor son of a bitch who couldn't get into a shelter last night,” Molly retorted.
Molly checked the body, saw he was frozen as solid as the pond behind him, and estimated his time of death to be some ten to twelve hours earlier. No obvious injuries, no sign of struggle, no reason to think that John Doe number fifty-eight had done anything but crawl into the woods to die. The good news was that he'd tattoo'd his rank and serial number on his left forearm. They'd know within a day who he was.
Not like the last body they'd found here. It had taken a week to identify poor Sharon Peters. Another two days for her distant family to claim her. It had been up to Molly to tell that taciturn farm couple that their little girl had been raped, strangled, and left half naked in a public park. There sure as hell hadn't been anybody laughing that night.
“You finished?” Wilson asked forty minutes later as he clapped his gloved hands together for warmth.
“Yeah,” she said, closing the case that held her equipment. The transport team was already zipping the bag over their John Doe. “We'll take him back and ID him. But I think he just died of homelessness, like you thought.”
“Well, then, if you're finished, you have a gentleman caller up by the road.”
Molly turned to look and scowled. “Oh hell. And here I thought I was going to spend my day with adults.”
Instead, it seemed she'd gotten Doogie Howser, homicide detective.
Standing there by her Celica with his homicide fedora in his hand, as if he really was a potential suitor, was Rhett Butler himself.
Tall and gangly as a half-developed teenager, Rhett had bought the homicide persona whole cloth with his appointment to the squad. Homicide suit, skinny tie, and snap-brim hat that were so traditional in the older homicide coppers in St. Louis. He even had the homicide mustache, trimmed with military precision to the corners of his mouth. All it did was make him look as if he were collecting candy on Halloween.
The mopes he investigated seemed to think the same thing, which was why they tended to tell him things they never told anybody else. After only eight months in homicide, Rhett was setting confession records to rival the local archdiocese.
And he was here to look into Molly's little correspondence.
She wished Winnie had talked to someone older than Molly. Maybe as old as Molly. Molly just couldn't feel comfortable confiding in a junior explorer, no matter how good he was.
“You got a minute to talk?” he asked as she slogged up the hill.
Molly accepted his hand to help her the last few steep feet, and punched the trunk on her Celica. “Please tell me you just needed some fresh air, Rhett, and that you didn't come out into this deep freeze because you found something significant.”
“No, Molly. I was just in the neighborhood and heard you were here. Thought I'd catch you before you had to go into work.”
She lifted an eyebrow at him, now. “I
am
at work.”
am
at work.”
He blushed. He actually blushed. “Your other work. The one with all the bodily fluids. I'm, uh, not good with bodily fluids.”
“You're a homicide officer, Rhett. Bodily fluids are a big part of that job description.”
“Yeah, but usually they've finished ⦠uh, being fluid.”
“Uh-huh. Well, you got a car?”
“I got dropped off. I figured you could ⦠you know ⦔
Molly sighed and slammed her trunk shut. “Get in.”
So they sat there, on a side street in a frozen park, and talked murder while her windshield defrosted.
“First of all,” Rhett said. “I checked to make sure that all the bodies that have come through our shops went out intact. Well, as intact as ⦔
“I understand.”
He nodded, ironing his hat brim with his hand. “Dr. Harrison thought that maybe this guy was getting his ⦠uh, stuff from medical supply houses. Is that really possible?”
“Sure. At least with bones. Heck, there's a place called Bones on the Internet that sells complete skeletons. I'm not sure about the eyes.”
Blue eyes.
One blue eye, which still seemed to stare at her when she tried to sleep.
Rhett shook his head. “Go figure. Well, have you had any more ideas about who could want to do this to you?”
Keeping her gaze fixed on the pristine winter landscape outside her
window, Molly shook her head. “No. I've had the normal number of crazies and cranks from work, but nobody I'd finger for that kind of problem.”
window, Molly shook her head. “No. I've had the normal number of crazies and cranks from work, but nobody I'd finger for that kind of problem.”
“Any crazies in particular?”
Molly shrugged. “Oh, you know. Bob from Atlantis, Milly who thinks the microwaves at Wal-Mart are talking to her, manic depressive twins with an enema fetish. The regular assortment of hookers with clap and johns with the drip and all our lonely little people who just come in for some lunch and a shower.”
“Nobody seriously mad at you.”
“You tell me how to tell the serious ones from the just stressed ones, Rhett. I had three people punch holes in the quiet room wall this month, but then each one of them had just lost a kid. I'd punch walls, too.”
“No gang problems?”
She grinned. “The yos around here don't do notes and body parts. They just show up with their equalizers.”
“What about this job?”
“The death investigations?” She shrugged again, leaned against the seat, and closed her eyes. Suddenly she just felt tired. “I don't know. I don't think so. I'd have to go over my records. Unless it's Wilmetta Wilson trying to spook us into not finding Latesha's real killer.”
Rhett perked up a little. “Wilson. That little girl they found in the basement.”
“The very one.”
“I'll do a little checking.”
Molly smiled. “I'm sorry I can't be more help. I'm afraid nobody's vocalized anything more particular than âYou slow, stupid bitch' lately. And ya know, on a busy Friday night I only answer to âYou slow, stupid bitch.'”
Rhett closed his notebook and pocketed it before grabbing his hat. “Well, let me take a peek into it.”
“Better you than me.”
“I still need that list Dr. Harrison asked you for.”
Molly put the car in gear. “Where can I drop you off, Rhett?”
Rhett settled his hat back on his head. “The station. You'll let me know?”
“I'll let you know.”
“Until we can get anything more solid, Dr. Harrison asked me to keep this fairly confidential. You have a problem with that?”
“You mean more confidential than the entire homicide department?”
“She means, like, no talk shows or anything.”
“Oh, yeah, Rhett. I've just been dying to get myself on a talk show.”
He smiled, a little boy smile that was supposed to make her feel better. “Well, with any luck, this guy'll give himself away, and we can wrap this long before Christmas.”
“And he'll just be a med student with delusions of Warhol.”
“A performance artist you took care of in the ER.”
“A hospital pathologist who can't figure out how to write a real love letter.”
Rhett patted her hand. “Exactly.” Then he climbed out of the car, and Molly was left with a still-cold car and a case of the shivers.
Because she knew they weren't dealing with anybody funny.
They weren't even dealing with anybody nice.
Molly was very afraid that who they were dealing with was going to be very, very bad. He was already very scary.
And he had her name.
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It was ten-fifteen. Kenny held his beer in his hand as Donnatheanchor extolled the virtues of mammography by showing just enough of a young woman's breast to get a guy hard. It was raining outside, and out beyond his house an ambulance was screaming up some highway. But Kenny didn't really notice.
He was so confused. He didn't know what to do.
Nothing.
Not a word. Not a hint. And if anybody was going to find out about it, it would have been Donnatheanchor. He'd taken such care tonight, because he'd known he would finally see what he'd done on the television. He'd prepared himself just as meticulously as he did everything else in his life. Just as carefully as the last five nights he'd waited.
He'd cleaned himself up, combed his hair and put on a good shirt. He'd straightened out his living room and placed his grandmother's doily right in the center of the coffee table to hold his beer so there wouldn't be rings on the old cherrywood. He'd even invited his friend Flower, because she was so much a part
of his triumph. And then, as the montage of St. Louis flashed on the screen at nine fifty-eight, he'd popped the top on his beer and set it in the perfect center of the doily, the chalice on his altar of fame.
of his triumph. And then, as the montage of St. Louis flashed on the screen at nine fifty-eight, he'd popped the top on his beer and set it in the perfect center of the doily, the chalice on his altar of fame.
And he'd waited, almost not breathing, for the moment Donnatheanchor would look wide-eyed into the camera and say, “Today, a grisly story unfolding in the city ⦔
But there hadn't been a word.
After all the work he'd gone through, the timing, the symbolism, the detail. After all that wasted anticipation, there had not been a whisper in the news about what St. Louis city death investigator Molly Burke was getting in her backyard.
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