Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

I took the call a little after midnight, and yes, it was a dark and stormy night, but I guess in my line of work they usually are -- in one way or another. Dispatch called just as I ran across an ex-wife in a bad dream, but the sleepy voice on the other end of the line had no way of knowing that, and even if she had, there wasn't a damn thing either of us could have done about it. Sometimes late night calls are just the luck of the draw, some nights you end up in the wrong place at the right time, and everything goes to hell from there. No one's fault, you know what I mean? But still, some calls are like a stone skipping across a pond, they ripple through time. This one sure would.

I slid out of the berth up forward and looked at the puffy-eyed stranger in the mirror, threw on some clean pants and ran my belt through the loops, then hooked my badge over the left front pocket and strapped my old Sig P-220 into the crusty leather shoulder holster a wife had given me twenty years and several divorces ago. Funny how some things from marriages last longer than others, even if the joke turns out to be on you. On second thought, maybe it isn't so funny.

I hopped off the boat -- another consequence of one wife too many -- and walked through the fog-shrouded marina to the car in the parking lot, checked 'in-service' with dispatch and groaned when the light rain turned heavy. As if losing another night's sleep wasn't enough, I'd forgotten my raincoat, something you do in Seattle at your peril. Oh well, it's only water, right? Just like water under the bridge. You live and learn; at least, you're supposed to, anyway.

The windshield wipers beat like drums in a funeral march; lightning rippled inside clouds just overhead, and city streets drizzled by in tired mechanical cadence. My mouth tasted like crud, too, and I'd felt a sore throat coming on last night, but that didn't matter: sick, well, or dead, this was my call and I had to take it. Mine to make or break, to seriously fuck-up, or for whatever I found out there to seriously fuck me up. You just never know, and that's the real fun of police work. Hell, at least the rain was supposed to let up later in the day. But would it? I've heard some rains last forever. That's why there's Prozac, and bourbon.

The address didn't mean a thing to me, neither did the run-down apartment building I parked in front of: both were in a pretty bleak area south of downtown -- an area full of docks and warehouses -- home to a lot of broken dreams and burned out souls. Three squad cars were already parked out front, their red and blue strobes pulsing through the waterfront fog. The frenzied light created strange moving shadows on the walls of this brick canyon, and it was unsettling, even to my jaded eyes. An ambulance was out front, too, and a couple of firemen sat in the brightly lighted back of the box; they looked bored -- tired and bored. Still, those two guys looked as though they were sitting in an island of intense light, and that kind of clarity looked out-of-place here in the lightning and foggy rain. Out-of-place because this part of the city is a land of shadows, and clarity isn't really welcome in the shadowlands. Truth is a painful subject to the down-and-out, a reminder of all the wrong turns some people make along the way to where they are. I guess it can be kind of rough to turn around and everywhere you look you're reminded how far you've fallen. Like that pain in your gut where hunger used to live isn't enough?

A medical examiner's rain-streaked van, dull blue with official looking white letters on it, pulled up behind my old Ford right as I got out of the car; Mary-Jo something-or-other was behind the wheel writing on a clipboard but she looked up and waved at me as I walked by. I nodded and wished I'd worn a hat; no one ever told me when I was growing up that cold rain on a head with three hairs left on top could be such all-consuming fun.

Anyway. Mary-Jo something-or-other and her assistant got out of their van (both wearing rain coats and hats, by the way) and followed me into the building; we made it to an elevator just before the door closed and squeezed in.

"Messy night," her assistant said. "Gonna rain for a week."

"No shit. Welcome to Seattle."

"Hey, Woody, you still on the boat?" Mary-Jo asked.

Funny, but I couldn't remember telling her I lived on the lake, but that's just another one of the joys that go along with white hair and old hemorrhoids, and I'd known Mary-Jo through work for more than a few years. She was cute in a thirty-something kind of way, but the work had taken a heavy toll on her. She'd filled-out a little too much over the last few years, yet she wasn't what I'd call fat, either. She was like everyone I'd ever met on the M.E.'s staff: puffy circles under her eyes, cigarette ashes on her blouse, and the requisite weird sense of humor. Working around dead people does that, I guess. Even so, working around victims of violent crime sucks the humanity from the marrow of your bones and leaves most people pale and dried up. Having worked homicide for fourteen years that's a statement I feel I can make with some authority. You just don't get used to some things.

And these cheap apartment buildings are all the same, too: rickety old elevators spit you out into dingy, dimly lit hallways, and why the hell are the ceilings so goddamn low in these shit holes? Virgil's "Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here" should be carved in stone over the entry to these hovels, because that's exactly what happens to the poor souls living in them. And man, did it feel that way now, looking down to the open door at the end of the hall. The walls even smelled like this was a place people came to die, to give up and drop dead on the floor, even if it took them years to get around to it. This was a world of frayed carpets, of peeling, cracked linoleum, and of bare light-bulbs hanging from broken fixtures -- like the necks of old men after a trip to the gallows. If I had to write building code violations for a living, I could have made this place into a career.

Still, the essential truth of places like this is simple: nobody cares whether you live or die. All you need to do is make rent and everyone will leave you alone. That's just the way it is when you live in the shadows: life is all the shit that happens to you before you die.

Up on that third floor it was the same story: dim grunge everywhere you looked, haunted eyes looking out through cracked doors, maybe a little curiosity -- but a whole lot of fear. Just ahead, down there in the gloom, I could see the door to Apartment 333 stood wide open, and I saw the indirect light of a camera flash pop off -- so someone from forensics was already up here, photographing the scene. A patrolman stood outside the door looking bored, because, I guess, some things never change. A couple of nervous neighbors had gathered in the gloom across the hall and were hopping around like birds in a cage, but there was no place to fly to now, and they knew it. Life had trapped them and now held them fast to their despair.

I walked past the patrolman and into the room and -- stopped dead in my tracks.

The victim was a middle-aged man and he was a shattered wreck; the sight of so much blood still got to me. The M.E.'s assistant walked-in -- but turned away, too late. I watched him stagger back, watched as he flashed hash all over the hallway; within seconds the poor guy fled to the safety of the elevator, retching as he went.

"Fuck a duck," Mary Jo said quietly.

"I don't think so, Ma'am," I said in my best Joe Friday. "No duck did this."

The guy was sprawled out on the living room floor, the worn green carpet under him had been unable to absorb all the blood there, and vast pools of it had already coagulated under his head and torso. His throat had been cut and he'd been stabbed in the chest and belly too many times to count, and for good measure his penis had been cut off and stuck in his mouth.

"Jealous wife?" Mary-Jo said as she bent down beside the guy.

"Or boyfriend," one of the techs from forensics said.

I bent down to have a closer look, saw something odd under the blood on the guy's belly.

"Somebody get me a wad of four-by-fours and some saline."

A paramedic brought me a wad of gauze pads and a one liter bottle; and I popped the cap and poured a little on the guy's stomach right below his sternum, then I wiped away the coagulated mess and just had to shake my head at the sight.

"What does it say?" Mary-Jo asked, looking over my shoulder.

"Love me," I said absently. Whoever had killed the guy had taken something really sharp and carved the two words into his flesh, even taken time to underline them with a nice, bold slash.

"Well, sometimes love hurts, I guess," Mary-Jo chuckled.

See, I told you working around dead people sucks.

Mary-Jo had her tackle box open and was taking samples from under his fingernails a minute later when I saw something in his hair.

"Better take a look here," I said.

She came up, her gloved fingers sifting through the victim's hair: "Semen?" she thought out loud.

"Well, I sure ain't gonna smell it! Tell you what? Why not take a sample and do some of that science shit and tell me just what the fuck it is? Okay?"

She chuckled: "Maybe he shot his load all the way up here..."

I rolled my eyes: "Mary-Jo? You need to get your fat ass laid. Bad."

"You volunteering, Woody?" she said as she removed some of the stuff with a sterile swab. She held it up and looked at the gunk in with a UV light, then put it in a vial, before turning around and saying: "Cause, ya know, I swallow..."

I just had to get away from her then. Even the dude from forensics stepped back and looked at her all wide-eyed. I didn't quite know what to say. Neither did he. Mary-Jo just laughed and laughed, before she looked at me and licked her lips.

+++++

I was in the bedroom poking around, trying to make sense of this senseless crime scene. There were ligature marks on the guy's wrists and ankles, and a few deep, small cuts inside his thighs -- like the victim had been tortured before he was killed -- and the things I'd seen so far just weren't adding up to a routine murder. The evidence was contradictory. Tied-up but no signs of a struggle? So had this thing started out consensually? And if that was the case, then this had to have been some kind of sexual encounter. A paid encounter? Some kind of hooker?

The evidence said some of the wounds might have been the result of aggressive -- if consensual -- foreplay, before things went way south anyway, so the guy probably didn't really know his assailant all that well. But what if he had? Then he didn't know the perp well enough to have trusted her (or yeah, him) with his life. Probably, but then again, what if he had? But then, there was the explosive nature of the wounds on his torso, the penis stuffed in his mouth, the carved words on the guy's gut...and those added up to evidence of pure rage. The murderer, or even murderers, were uncontrolled or consumed with blinding rage at this point, either wild with rage or completely off-the-wall in some sort of frenzied lust.

Then there were the basic questions. Was the 'perp' a woman? Some kind of 'Gay' encounter? Maybe a threesome, some kind of 'bi' thing gone wrong? Envy? Jealousy? Still, without much to go on, I was grabbing at straws now, because there just wasn't enough evidence.

"Yo! Woody!" Mary-Jo called out from the living room. "Better come take a look at this."

What else was I missing? I looked at the bed again before I turned to the living room.

"What you got?"

"Semen. All over the external anus."

"Swell."

"We'll have to wait until autopsy," she said as I bent over to take a look, "to sample what's inside."

"Peachy. Can't wait."

"Woody? You ain't going all soft on us down there, are you?"

The woman was merciless, just annoying, and merciless. Hell, it would probably be a month before my poor dick would get up again after seeing her smile while shining a light up that guy's ass. "You know, M-J, if I have to listen to anymore of your shit I'm going to go somewhere and join an order. Maybe the Benedictines."

"Yeah, sure thing Woody. You'll get all you want there!"

"You're a twisted bitch, you know that, don't you?"

"Yeah, ain't that the truth? But I know you still love me."

I looked at the words carved on the guy's belly and shook my head, then walked back into the bedroom with my back to her laughter. "Very punny," I said over my shoulder as I disappeared around a corner.

I went back to the bedroom again and poked around the head of the bed; a pillow was stained and still wet with what looked like some sort of clear fluid, and not semen from what I could smell. Urine? There was a length of discarded rope on the floor, and in the corner a pair of pantyhose: "Johannsen! Did you get these yet?" I called out to the photographer shooting in the bathroom.

"What? The rope and stuff?"

"Yeah. The pantyhose. Did you get those?"

"Yeah. You ready for me to beg 'em?"

"Let the M.E. have 'em, see if they can get some hair or fluid. Maybe we'll get some DNA."

"You got something in there for me, Woody?" Mary-Jo asked suggestively as she came into the room. There are days when I wish my last name wasn't Woodward, and this was one of them. When I heard Johannsen snickering in the bathroom I'd have gladly settled for Smith. I guess I should be grateful my folks didn't name me Richard. Dick Woody. Yeah. That would have been just the thing on a night like that.

+++++

The sun was coming up, the rain had tapered to a drizzle and paramedics were loading the stiff's body in the ambulance; Mary Jo's assistant would ride in back with the body to the lab, then get it logged-in for autopsy. Forensics had a pile of evidence to log-in at Central and I had a headache -- like I'd just come out of a bad movie. I rubbed my eyes while Mary-Jo joked with one of the patrolmen, then groaned when I saw her headed my way. I rolled down my window as she walked up.

"You hungry?" she said.

"You're like, kidding, right?"

"No, not at all. Seeing a guy's severed cock stuffed in his mouth always makes me hungry."

"Brings out the man-eater in you, does it?"

She looked down at that. "Woody, I need to ask you something. Some serious shit."

"I could use some coffee," I said, nodding. "If you'll stop with all the creepy jokes for a while."

"Right. Pike Place?"

"Sure. Starbucks? The alley? There ought to be a place to park on Pine or Stewart this early in the morning. Oh, and be sure to park that heap in front of a good restaurant. Good PR. Know they'll thank you for it."

"Gee, Woody -- that's nice," she said, looking at her Medical Examiner's van. "And you call me creepy?"

I beat her there, made my way to Post Alley and followed the scent of roasting beans and got a table; rain had given way to fast-scudding clouds over the sound, and now the tops of the Olympics were all aglow in the sunrise.

Cool, clean air, roasting coffee, fresh pastry...life suddenly felt good again, and Mary-Jo showed up a few minutes later and I got a couple of two-liter quadruple-shot espressos. Nothing like a slight buzz to start the day, I always say.

"Geesh, I didn't know they made 'em this big," she said while she stared at the cup, daunted.

"Oh, sure. Gets the main pump throbbing."

"Really? My guess is your heart's going to explode one of these days." She looked nervous, like she didn't know how to say what she had to say.

"You know, I find it best to just spit it out, M-J."

"What?"

"You said you had a question. Some serious shit, I think you said."

"I got divorced, you know," she began, "a few years back..."

"Well no, M-J, I didn't know that. In fact, just to set the record straight, I'm pretty sure I didn't know you were married. Come to think of it, I don't even know your last name."

"What? Oh, shit," she said as she laughed. "Right. Kopecki. Maria Josephina Kopecki."

I held out my hand: "Ed Woodward. Nice to meet you."

"I'm sorry," she continued, "I just took it for granted, ya know, having worked around you all this time..."

"No problem."

"Well, see, I've been trying to hook up with someone for a while, like, through the internet. Well, see, I did, sort of, but it didn't really work out. Turns out the guy, the last one, was kind of creepy. I mean really creepy."

"Is that, like, 'really, really creepy'?"

"Don't make fun of me, alright?"

"Yeah. Sorry."

"Right, well, see, the problem is, the guy is a cop."

"Uh-huh. Define creepy."

"Well, see, he wanted to meet the first time at this club. A swingers' club."

"And?"

"Yeah, well, I did, see, and he had already hooked up with another couple by the time I got there. He wanted to go back to their place and I don't know why, but, well, see, I did."

"Really? Why?"

She looked down, just shrugged. "I dunno," was all she could say but it looked a little like an act to me.

"So, what's the problem?"

"Well, the guy has shown up a couple of times, like, see, at things where I was."

"Things?"

"Clubs."

"Clubs? You mean like..."

"Yeah, swingers' clubs."

"This is, well, see, your thing, then?" I was trying my damnedest not to laugh, or even smile for that matter, but the stupidity of young people sometimes leaves me breathless. And if she said 'well, see' one more time I was going to have to hurt her.

"I've done it a few times, yeah." She was speaking quietly now, very self-consciously. "It's fun."

"Yeah, well, whatever floats your boat."

"Well, see, I wasn't sure if he was following me, or if it was just a coincidence..."

"Well, see, I'm still not seeing the big problem?"

"Well, see, he's got a big tattoo on his chest. 'Love me.' That's what it says."

Now she had my attention. "Uh-huh. What's his name?" I asked as I took a notepad out of my shirt pocket.

"I don't know for sure."

"Oh?"

"Well, see, like I only know his internet address and his screen name."

"And how do you know he's a cop?"

"He, like, told me so."

"Uh-huh. Did he like show you a badge or anything?"

"No," she said.

Sometimes I wonder how people so fucking stupid could possibly live long enough to reproduce. Then again, maybe more than a few don't. "Can you describe him?"

"Tall. Six feet, maybe a little more. Not fat but like really buff..."

"Buff?"

"Muscular. Like a weight-lifter."

"How old?"

"Late-forties, maybe fifty. Red hair and freckles. You know, he's got like a faint scar on his right cheek."

She had just described Mark Tottenham, one of the department's assistant chiefs; Tottenham had been in charge of Internal Affairs for years, and while I'd heard rumors he was flaky, this was off the charts.

"Got an email address?"

She gave it to me.

"When's the last time you saw the guy?"

"Night before last."

I looked over my glasses at her, tried not to judge the kid too unkindly. "I'll see what I can find out. Where can I get in touch?" She gave me a number.

"Thanks, Woody. Maybe I could buy you dinner?"

"Yeah. Maybe." I flipped my notebook over and made a few more notes then put it away. "Well, see, like I got to go now. Do like some cop-like shit. I'll give you a call this afternoon." I made my way to the Ford, felt a little sick to my stomach. I checked in with dispatch, then made my way over to Tate's office.

Richard Tate had been a detective for almost thirty years; now he was doing the PI gig, doing sensitive background checks for corporations and taking photographs of cheating spouses. I wanted him to run down the internet stuff for me as I didn't want any traces of a search on department computers, or my private one for that matter. I gave him the run-down on what Mary-Jo had told me and he whistled, leaned back in a squeaky leather chair.