First Murder (32 page)

He’d do that at times—say something lofty or poetic-like out of the blue. Or quote some song lyric. I turned back from the ghost trains.

“I got your chaos and I’ll raise you a pair of offals, but I do not see any beauty, exquisite or otherwise,” I said. In the nine months we’d been partnered I’d been working on my witty comebacks. “Where’d that come from?”

“Just something I read somewhere,” he said.

We were stalling, no doubt about it. Someone had seen what they thought was a dead body on the shore of Pigs Eye Lake. Another three hundred yards downriver and it would have been the BCA’s problem. That’s the state’s investigative arm—the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. They’re pretty good at it too—they make a lot of criminals apprehensive.

If it had foundered on the other side of the river it would have been South St. Paul’s worry. You would think it would have been West St. Paul’s problem, but South St. Paul is west of West St. Paul. Go figure. Another half mile further and Newport P.D. could have had it. But no—it came to shore in our jurisdiction, that is to say the St. Paul Police Department’s, and by rights it was probably our case anyway. If it was the guy.

We were standing on that ledge, both of us with fists on our hips looking out over the fetid backwater. To the south, our left, row upon row of massive rusting barges were either waiting to be unloaded or taking on cargo. I assumed the rail yard behind us was capable of servicing either enterprise.

Diesel fumes spewed from yawning stacks atop the tug boats as they churned the brown water white, goosing barges into position, tiny man-figures scrambling over them like ants with strings, lashing them together for their journey downriver.

There was dust everywhere. Dust from the busy highway hidden behind the busy rail yard. Dust from the rock plant down near the river itself. Dust from the dry sparsely grassed ground on the hillside.

Directly across on the other side of the roughly oval shaped lake the skeleton of a barge poked out of the water. Dozens of white birds traded places on it while we watched. The rusted sides were streaked with gray-white guano. More offal. I looked up and saw a half dozen big black birds circling overhead.

“Buzzards?” I said.

“Turkey vultures,” Ray said, adding, “they’re related to bald eagles.” Like I gave a hoot.

Behind the Jurassic barge and over a small spit of land downtown St. Paul loomed over the north shore of the river. Not the biggest city in Minnesota—that distinction belongs to Minneapolis and they are welcome to it—but it was our city, practice freeway, politicians, and all. I coughed out some dust.

The river was alive with traffic. Tows were herded together, sorted out, I suppose, and readied for a long trip downriver. No Huck and Jim here. They’d ‘a died. Wouldn’t ‘a made it five hundred yards. It made me wonder about the trip our guy had made over the last five days—not all that far—if it was the guy.

A white boat with flashing light bars winking over the cockpit nudged up to the near shore a few yards from looked like a dead body to me. It lay sprawled out like it had been crucified. A cooling light breeze from the west fluttered our jackets. Ray’s was a stylish Italian cut, with the two vents at the back, part of his summer-weight wool gray suit. Brooks Brothers. He’d been educating me on attire since the night we met. That’s how I know about the suit. I was wearing the lightest weight blue cotton windbreaker I could find over a tee shirt. J.C. Penney.

“Did I mention that I
hate
floaters?” Ray said.

Another thing he’s schooled me on since night-one was to be respectful of victims and most civilians. For him to use the word ‘floater’ was significant. Almost as significant as cussing.

If this was the victim from the 911 call Saturday night the body had been in the water for five days. In my six-plus years patrolling in radio cars I’d dealt with a number of drowning deaths, some by accident, some by violence and intent, but none that had been in the water more than a couple of days.

“That’s okay,” I told him. “No way in hell are you going down that bank. Just hang out up here and coordinate.” As I said this I looked down at his shoes. They were tasseled cordovan loafers—city shoes. Florsheims. I was wearing real shoes with laces and waffled soles. Red Wings. “It might not even be the guy. Could be some drunk that fell off a houseboat.”

“No missing persons reports,” he said, a factoid we’d discussed when driving out.

He’d pointed out that no one had filed a MPR on anyone except a couple of kids since Saturday. If there
was
a shooting Saturday night under the Wabasha Street Bridge no one had reported an adult, male or female, missing since then. It opened the door to our discussing homeless people, vagrants, and towboat crewmen as possible victims, and we didn’t even have a case yet. I study at the feet of the master. Death by misadventure is his life.

“Here’s what we’ll do,” I said. “I’ll shinny down there and take a look. If it
is
the guy you drive back over to Red Rock Road and I’ll make that boat driver go over and pick you up. It’s only a quarter mile or so.”

“Think you can handle the scene yourself?” he asked me. In the early days of our relationship I’d have taken offense. Now I knew it was just Detective Sergeant Rayford Bankston being thorough—that and mildly obsessive.

“Ray, it’s not even the crime scene, if this is the guy. It’s just where he washed up.”

He was thinking about it. I could tell.

I tried to imagine what was running through his mind. He’d be thinking, if this is the guy it isn’t the actual crime scene. We’d been there already and found a pair of .22 caliber shell casings under the bridge. Ray deduced that the killer used a semi-automatic pistol.

I suggested that someone could have been down there plinking at pigeons—also a crime, I pointed out. That’s the way we work, tossing ideas around, exploring alternatives, like that.

Anyway, there was no blood, no fibers, and no body to be found under the bridge. Not much of a crime scene.

He’d also be thinking it was maybe more of a formality for the homicide investigators to get a first look at the body—that the real work that immediately lay ahead was for the Crime Scene Team and our pal Jonny Kumpula, the best in the business. And he said he hated floaters. He wouldn’t want to go along with my suggestion but he’d come around.

“Go on then,” he finally said. “And be damn careful, Tony. I don’t like the looks of that slope.”

I didn’t either and as I eased myself down the first few feet I nearly gave up. Nearly. I’m no kind of country boy. My idea of a nature hike is a jog around Lake Como or an occasional round of golf. My idea of roughing it is a cabin on the north shore, preferably with Sue Ellen along. She’s a lot more fun than Mother Nature.

There was no way I was going to get down that slope skidding forward. I turned around and started using the scruffy grass and bushes for hand holds while digging my toes into the crusty earth. While I was descending I thought back to my SWAT training. I’d gone through the whole course, even been on the team for a brief time until I realized they were way too enthusiastic for me.

But they’d taught me to rappel and I was wishing for a rope and a harness more and more as the slope got steeper and slipperier. After sixty or seventy yards the incline became kinder, though, and I kept at it.

As the slope leveled further I noticed that the hillside was littered with massive iron objects—they looked like axles and steel wheels and who knew what, and I realized it was junk from the train yard above. Some of them were heavily rusted and ancient looking. Some still had stinky globs of weathered axle grease on them.

I thought about littering and the EPA and what the environmentalists would have to say about the debris field, but looking around at the bleak landscape, the tortured grass and stunted trees and shrubs, and the slashes of rock showing through in places I reckoned they just said fuck it. Chaos and offal. Call it sculpture.

As soon as it was level enough to walk upright I was lost in a jungle of brambles of some kind with evil stickers—tiny trees called ‘buckthorn’, and could no longer see the white boat. Swamp gas and diesel fumes mixed with the smell of rotting vegetation and dead fish. The closer to the shore, the more the muck tugged at my shoes and threatened to really piss me off. I was swimming through the undergrowth, literally, toward the voice of the deputy who had driven the boat over.

“That was about the dumbest thing I ever saw anyone do,” the deputy said in greeting. I didn’t punch him. I was already making plans to have him drive me out of there in his big white boat.

“Tony de Luca,” I said. “SPPD.”

“Garret Sundstrom, Ramsey County Water Patrol.” We shook hands and turned out of the breeze toward the body.

“So that’s it?” I said. It was a body all right.

Five days in the muddy Mississippi had not been kind to it. The corpse was still clothed. Jeans. Boots. A leather jacket still zipped or snapped up—I couldn’t tell which because it was face down and about ten yards distant. It was bloated to several times its original size. The clothes were stretched to bursting. Some of the seams already had.

Most of the body was covered in a brown-grayish film of river, oil, sewage, and mud. Offal. I could tell it was a white guy. Well, the skin was a pasty grayish color, what I could see of it. His long black hair was tangled and snake- like. His puffy hand closest to me looked like it was swollen over a big ring and what must have been his watch formed a puckered line across his wrist.

Not robbery. Murder.

I started toward the body. The deputy grabbed my arm.

“I’ve done this a time or two, de Luca,” he said, friendly like. “What you want to do is wait for the CSIs and let them mess with it.”

“I gotta check and see if it’s the guy from Saturday night,” I told him.

“It has to be,” he said. “I got no overboards since last week, and from here, I’d say you got a DB that’s been in the water about five days. Makes it the guy from the 911 call.”

“I still gotta check,” I said.

“Suit yourself,” he said.

I wondered what the big deal was until I got to about three feet from the corpse. Sweet Jesus! I’ve never smelled anything so bad in my life. I crabbed backwards trying hard not to lose lunch…or worse.

“Way I figure it,” the know-it-all deputy said, “Bob there drifted into the lake yesterday, maybe the day before. Either the wind or maybe a tow wake pushed him over this way.”

He pointed at the shoreline. A thin slice of land crooked out into the lake.

“Last night the corps drew down the pool—drew it down a good bit because of the lack of rain down south of us,” he said. I had no idea what that meant.

“Pool?”

“The water between the dams on the river, they’re called pools,” he explained. “This is pool number two all the way down to Hastings. When they need water to keep the channel at navigable depth downriver they let more water out up here.” Interesting but useless information.
Wait a damn minute.
“Bob? I said. “You ID’d this guy already?”

The deputy chuckled. “Sorry. River Rat humor. We call all the floaters ‘Bob’.

“That’s cold, man,” I said, but we have our own macabre humor in the big city.

My cell rang. Without looking at the screen I knew it was Ray, trapped up there with the trains ready to pee in his pants for word of what was going on. He could see us, kind of far off, and he could see we weren’t hovering over the body. That probably ticked him off.

“Tony de Luca. St. Paul Police Department. How may I help you?” I answered.

“Is it our guy?” Ray asked. He sounded impatient.

“Don’t know yet. Come to think of it Ray, how the hell am I supposed to tell if it
is
our guy?”

“Two head wounds, Sherlock,” he said. He’d taken to calling me Sherlock sometimes. Maybe because I’m a hell of a detective, or maybe because Ray doesn’t cuss much and what he actually means ‘shit head’. I’m going with helluva detective.

“I knew that,” I told him.

“Well get to it. I’ve got Kumpula gearing up anyway, but we need to know what we’re dealing with. And be sure to go over the area thoroughly—at least a fifty yard radius.”

“Yes sir, Sergeant Bankston, sir,” I said. If he was going to start giving orders I guessed I’d have to start saluting pretty soon.

“Tony?” he said.

“Yes, Ray?” I replied.

“Don’t make me come down there.”

It was all said in teasing. I knew what needed doing. I just didn’t want to do it. Sundstrom was fooling around with something at the back of the boat, a Boston Whaler with two big black outboards on the back. I watched Ray pacing at the top of the incline. It looked like he was talking on his cell to somebody else. Ray doesn’t do a lot of sitting around. The man is always in motion.

Here,” Sunderson said, holding a scrap of cloth out. It reeked of gasoline, but it was far superior to
Eau de Dead Guy
. I put on a pair of latex gloves and took it. I knew it would screw up my sense of smell for a week, but it was better than the alternative.

“If you start getting woozy just back off,” he said. “Bob isn’t going anywhere.”

With the gas rag in my left hand held near my nose I approached the body slowly, trying to take in as much detail as I could. There was a nasty gash on the corpse’s left shoulder. Whatever hit him cut through leather and fabric and skin and maybe even bone. I noticed a bulge in his jeans pocket. His wallet. That would save a ton of work.

Then I noticed his fingertips. Check that. Then I noticed the ends of his bloated fingers and that they were stringy pink stubs. I smiled at the wallet bulge on his hip.

I took a pen out of my pocket, knelt next to the body, and raised the scraggly mass of hair to inspect his head. There was nothing that looked right on the left side or the back or the top of his head but just behind his left ear Bob had what looked to me like two small caliber bullet holes. The two wounds were very close together. Less than an inch apart.

Something about that started niggling at my brain. Before I got a handle on it my left hand started tingling. The gasoline had dissolved the thin latex glove and was now trying to melt my skin. I stood, shucked off the gooey shards of the glove, and walked back over to the deputy. After eyeing the tepid muddy lake and the mud by the shore I asked him if he had a jug of water on the boat. I had just started sluicing water over my hand to wash off the gasoline when we both whipped our heads around at the sound of a scream.