Three

 

Pilgrim did another slow walk about the woman’s body, looking at it with a new perspective. He was convinced that the placement in this park, in that exact position had something to do with all this.

He needed to find out what she was looking at with those blank eyes.

He headed back for the coolness of the limo and crawled into the back just as Carrie hung up. “Detectives and crime scene crew on the way. Benson said he would be here in fifteen minutes and we’re not to move.”

“Yeah, I bet,” Pilgrim said.

“So,” Carrie said, “any idea on The Case of Miss Smallwood’s Goodies?”

Carrie loved to give each of the investigations they did with a strange case name that almost always stuck.

“Some,” Pilgrim said. “Search the area data bases for a woman of that height and size and age being reported missing in the last month. Might want to go all the way down to San Francisco and up to Seattle as well in the search.”

“Got it,” Carrie said.

She was sitting with her back to the front compartment and a large computer complex of keyboards and screens opened out of the seat beside her, sliding out to almost surround where she was sitting with a keyboard on her lap and a large screen in front of her.

Pilgrim was on the seat near the wet bar. He turned and punched a hidden button on the bar, letting it turn into another computer center with a large screen and two small screens where the drinks had been.

He loved this limo. He felt like a super hero at times. The car was the most sophisticated computer center on wheels that he knew of. He loved it and never once questioned the costs to build it and keep it completely outfitted with any new device that would help him with a case.

In this car he could almost see through walls, hear something whispered two hundred yards away, and tap into any phone line he wanted to. This was a dream car for any private detective.

He immediately typed in the address of the apartment complex the woman statue was looking at.

Then on one screen he pulled up a floor plan of the building and on the other a list of tenants.

The landlord, a man by the name of Steven Frome lived in a large apartment on the main floor with his wife, Sue. It was the only apartment on the first floor, the rest of the space was filled with a large lobby and entrance area. He had been right, the building had been an old hotel at one time in the past called The Wellington Inn. It had been converted to apartments in 1962 and Frome had bought it in 2001.

There was nothing in the full basement that showed on the floor plan and four apartments per floor from the second floor through the fifth, all fairly large.

Pilgrim couldn’t see anything at all odd about any of the tenants or the building or the landlord.

“No missing person meets her look size or shape,” Carrie said, “anywhere in the Pacific Northwest in the last six months.”

“Yeah, that would have been too easy,” Pilgrim said, shaking his head.

“So why would someone do this to a person and put them in this park?” Carrie asked as outside the first police car arrived on the scene.

“Figure that out and I bet we find Miss Smallwood’s goodies,” Pilgrim said. “I’ll go talk to the police. Bring up pictures and background checks of anyone in that building there. I’ll bet anything there is a reason she’s looking in that direction.”

Carrie nodded and went to work as Pilgrim crawled back out in to the heat.

“Where’s the body?” the dark, heavy-set policeman asked. His name on his uniform was Wells.

Pilgrim pointed at the shiny, blue statue that seemed to be glistening in the sunlight as if she was sweating, even with the big cowboy hat and revolver.

“You’re kidding?” Officer Wells asked. “That statue?”

“I wish I was,” Pilgrim said.

Pilgrim went back to staring at the statue for a moment as Officer Wells started to tape off the area. More than likely the hat and gun the woman had were clues as well, but damn if Pilgrim could even figure out how to start on them.

At that moment Chief of Police Benson pulled up and got out into the heat.

“You’re telling me that’s a body?” he asked, as Pilgrim met him halfway across the lawn toward the statue.

“Sealed in resin and disguised, yes,” Pilgrim said.

“You mean like that traveling science exhibit where bodies were frozen in movement in some sort of resin. The one that showed all the body’s muscles and other parts most of us didn’t want to see or even know about?”

“Might be like that,” Pilgrim said, shaking his head. “I didn’t know you were into science, Chief?”

“The kid loves the Omsi Center. That exhibit just grossed me out and I’ve seen a lot of bodies in my day.” Chief Benson stopped a few feet from the statue. “What happened to her nipples and crotch?”

“The killer must have wanted to keep them. Or thought them too private to show,” Pilgrim said.

Suddenly he realized what he had just said. The missing parts were the answer after all.