The flophouse was in one of the poorest sections of Scarletsville, not far from Main Street where the hookers, drug addicts and pimps made their living. Three quarters of the buildings had been boarded up for years, but that didn’t stop those who were down on their luck or spaced out on drugs from making them their own. Rusted out vehicles and garbage adorned many of the front yards, sagging porches drooped precariously, and peeling paint rippled on the cheaply made wooden structures. The stench of backed-up sewers assaulted their senses as they screeched to a halt in front of the address Jenny had given them.
They had to be careful walking the cracked sidewalk, choked with tangled, out of control weeds. Someone had shoveled the width of a ten-inch shovel blade, but left patches of ice that could easily throw someone sprawling onto their rear.
“I’m so glad you’re here!” Jenny announced, opening the door as soon as they got up to the porch.
“What time did you get here?” Gwen asked, pulling out her notebook.
“Fifteen-fifty-eight. Uh, about twenty minutes ago,” Jenny answered. “The screen door was unlocked, the inner door wide open. I walked only as far as the living room calling for Cyndi. I checked for a pulse, and when I couldn’t find one, I called you. I’ve been waiting at the door so I wouldn’t contaminate anything.”
“Good girl,” Gwen complimented her.
“Uh, if you don’t need me, I’ve got paperwork to catch up on back at the station.”
She looked greenish. Finding a dead body was not an easy matter even for veteran cops.
“Sure,” Gwen said kindly. “And thanks. You handled this very well.”
“Thanks,” Jenny said, hurrying out the door, just as the coroner’s assistant and evidence tech entered. Gwen had called them on the way over.
The coroner’s assistant was already inching forward, gazing intently at the floor as she walked, and was pulling tweezers and evidence bags out of her backpack simultaneously. She and the evidence tech had bagged three mysterious items by the time they reached the body.
“Hello, Doctor Lindsey,” Gwen greeted her. She had worked with this woman a few times before. The short, heavyset Lindsey looked like the grandmotherly type with close-cropped steel hair and a double chin, but she was anything but pleasant. She grunted in return and kept working. The tall, Hispanic, gangly evidence tech was unfamiliar. After introducing himself as Javier, he raised his eyebrows and followed his boss.
Cyndi was an emaciated black female with beautiful, unblemished cocoa-colored skin. Her smudged makeup had been applied generously—dark red lip gloss, thick black eyeliner. An unnatural red blush with tiny sparkles glistened on her cheeks. Long, manicured nails were painted the same deep red as her lips. Her glossy black hair was braided into tight dreadlocks, with copper-colored beads woven into the knots of hair. Purple and green bruising was starting to deepen in color around her neck and a small trickle of blood oozed from the back of her head. Lindsey had the tech take several pictures before carefully turning Cyndi’s head. Gwen saw that she had a triangular wound at the top of her skull where the hair had been ripped away, possibly caused by hitting her head on the wooden crate in front of the ripped, green vinyl sofa.
The room’s furnishings were what Gwen liked to refer to as “junkyard style”—old, worn and battered. A wooden desk in the corner was deeply scarred and the bottom shelf of a four-shelf bookcase had a hole in it large enough to put her arm through. There were no pictures on the walls or any knickknacks, which would have lent a personal touch to the surroundings. A dirty, lime-green overstuffed chair had lost much of its padding and tilted to the right with one of its wooden legs missing. The dull brown parquet wooden floor was partially covered with a dirty area rug with a paisley pattern in green, brown, red and black.
Cyndi was wearing a long-sleeved, oversized denim shirt over a pair of red bikini underpants. Her legs and feet were bare. It was hardly dress one would wear to answer the door to greet guests. She had to have been surprised by her attacker while getting ready to meet with Jenny at the diner down the street, unless she was familiar enough with her attacker to have let him in half clothed.
“I always find it hard to imagine that people actually live in these kinds of surroundings,” CC said grimly. “This place is filthy.”
“It’s like this and much worse when they’re desperate, especially when they’re hooked on drugs,” Gwen replied. “It’s hard to imagine Kathy staying in this place. I mean, she always seemed like such a clean freak.”
“I guess you’re right. The drugs give you a whole new perspective on things and what’s important to you,” CC agreed.
“I’m going to vacuum her shirt and the carpet around her,” Javier said, letting them know they were in his way.
Javier pulled a tiny, battery-powered vacuum from his backpack and carefully covered every inch of the shirt’s front. Doctor Lindsey helped hold the body at an angle so he could access her back. Javier then skillfully placed the filter into a plastic evidence cylinder, labeled it for the lab, and repeated the process with the surrounding carpet.
While they were finishing their examination, Gwen got up to check out the rest of the house. The walls leading to the bedroom were a dirty yellow, streaked brown in places where the roof had leaked rain and melting snow. The only items in the tiny bedroom were two single mattresses on the floor with rumpled gray sheets and blankets, and three cardboard boxes filled with clothes. There was a small bathroom with sink, shower, and commode to the right of the bedroom. It was the only room that looked like anyone had attempted to clean, except for rust stains embedded deeply into the yellow, faded porcelain surfaces. The counter next to the sink was stacked with an assortment of makeup in every brand and color—lipsticks, blush, foundation, eyeliner with matching eye shadow, nail polish, facial creams. On the floor in the shower were several brands of shampoo, hair rinse and scented soaps.
Gwen opened the wooden cabinet next to the sink. Under a stack of towels was a shoebox filled with drug paraphernalia—pipes, rolling papers, needles and syringes. A plastic baggie contained only a thin film of white powder. She left the box on the counter, and made a note to have the techs test the baggie for what she was certain was cocaine.
When she returned to the living room, Gwen found Javier and CC examining with a magnifying glass a locket embedded in the folds of the dead girl’s neck. It was a gold necklace with a heart-shaped charm about the size of a dime.
Javier looked up and said, “The doctor had to leave, so I’ll continue gathering evidence. She said she’d e-mail her report.”
“Okay,” Gwen sighed, wishing she had been able to talk with the doctor before she’d left so quickly.
“Do you know Kathy’s birth date?” CC asked softly.
“Uh, late October. I remember in school we teased her about being born so close to Halloween.”
“There’s a beautiful opal mounted on the front. That would be the right birthstone, and the name Kathy is inscribed on the back.”
“My God, she’s wearing Kathy’s necklace?” Gwen asked, momentarily dazed.
“Looks like it.”
Gwen remembered Kathy’s smooth, creamy skin and suckling at her earlobes, running her tongue down her neck. Kathy had never taken that necklace off. The sturdy but delicate metal links were 24-carat gold and the opal a perfect oval. When they’d taken a break from their lovemaking and finished eating bagels with cream cheese and orange marmalade in bed, Gwen had stuck her finger in the sweet and sticky jelly and swirled it around Kathy’s breasts, licking them clean afterward. Kathy had jokingly scolded her for soiling her precious pendant.
“Gwen, are you okay?” CC asked, breaking her reverie.
“Oh, ah…yeah. Sorry. It does look like the one Kathy always wore. Find anything else?”
“I have two short hairs I discovered stuck to the sole of her right foot. They look silver gray in this light, but they could be eyelashes powdered with her makeup. Doesn’t look like there are roots, so I doubt we’ll be able to get DNA, but we should be able to confirm pretty easily whether or not they’re Cyndi’s or someone else’s,” Javier volunteered.
“Well, at least that’s something. At least we have something to go on. Do you need more time?” Gwen smiled.
“You two can leave if you’d like. I’m used to working alone,” Javier said brusquely. “Besides, I’m sure the doc will be sending me some help. We can’t be too careful.”
“Take as long as you want. Here’s my cell number if you find anything I should know about immediately,” Gwen said before she and CC headed out the door.