I had never vomited after visiting a crime scene. I certainly had never vomited a liter of blood that resembled bubbly orange soda, from mixing with gastric acid. Maybe my thermos had gotten too warm. I convinced myself the blood was the culprit and made a mental note to pack icepacks around the thermos in the future.
Headlights drew closer, and I tore the passenger door open and crawled inside. Circumventing the console, I fought another surge of nausea, threw the car into drive, and punched the accelerator. The temptation to ignore the stop sign altogether passed, and I brought the car to a transitory stop. The headlights—I assumed belonging to the sheriff—lit up the rear window, further illuminating my pale blond hair and the ashen fingers gripping the steering wheel. I turned left and continued down another country road plagued with potholes and deep and wide crevices—the result of heavy farm machinery—and hit the brakes more than once to avoid small game pursued by either a red fox or a mange-ravished coyote.
My stomach churned, threatening a spewing encore as I left behind the headlights tailing me and turned onto Interstate 49. Ten miles down the highway, I had to pull over again. Three more times before I passed the first exit to Grandview, Missouri. Dispatch alerted me to a one-eight-seven—a reported homicide—midtown. Activating the lights and siren, I stomped the accelerator and took the off-ramp, veering onto northbound US Route 71.
Boarded-up windows testified to the city’s blight. The car screeched to a stop at a busy intersection as I attempted to avoid a homeless man pushing a lopsided shopping cart. Once I’d assisted him across the intersection, I dove back inside the vehicle, minutes later curbing it between a dark alleyway and a crumbling driveway attached to the midtown property. The house was dark, the only movement a flap of screen mesh fluttering its objection to the gentle breeze that intermittently rattled the screen door. I was nearly to the porch when Reed’s Mustang rumbled to a stop behind the Dodge.
“Have you called the ME?” she asked, detouring around broken glass, a discarded refrigerator, a rusty bicycle, and several abandoned toys as she approached.
“I haven’t found a body yet.”
I watched her stalk the perimeter. She stayed low to the ground—minimizing her silhouette, gun hand braced by the other, while employing catlike movements that required precision, experience, and muscle.
“Over here,” she called soon after entering a backyard sentried by wire fencing usually relegated to a chicken coop.
Dispatch hadn’t offered any details to include the body’s location on the property. Reed was intuitive, impressive, and annoying.
Standing over the body, I said past a burp, “This doesn’t appear to have been a drive-by.” After slipping on a pair of gloves, I checked for a pulse.
Reed shrugged. “Maybe the vic lived here.”
“Maybe. But it looks as though he was running away from the house when someone shot him in the back. If he lived here and someone was giving chase, why wouldn’t he seek safety inside? There’s no sign of lividity, so he hasn’t been dead long.”
She shrugged and delivered an apathetic stare. “Too bad dead men tell no tales. But if they did,” she said smirking, “I guess we’d be out of a job.” She showed me her back and radioed a request for the ME and forensics. The radio squawked a shots fired announcement a few minutes later, the address just a couple of blocks east.
She clipped her radio back on her belt after stating her intent to respond. “You got this?”
Before I could formulate a response, she sprinted toward her car and left the scene.
ME Romano arrived ahead of the team from the forensic department, sporting a floral scarf that failed to obscure meticulously arranged rows of hair rollers. In the dim light cast by a neighboring house, her face glowed beneath layers of night cream. Silk pajamas peeked beneath a utilitarian robe, which suggested “Juice” Romano had not detoured from her bed en route to the crime scene and that she had a soft side. Two forensic officers slugged alongside moments later, one rubbing sleep from her eyes, the other failing to pump his slumped shoulders.
After commandeering a pair of sterile tweezers from her kit, Romano lifted the victim’s plaid shirttail and honed her flashlight on his lower back. “You see this?” she asked me. “If I’m not mistaken, that’s a 9mm bullet wedged between his lower vertebrae, fired by someone with a whole lot of hate for our victim. Someone who wanted to incapacitate him and watch him suffer. Second one this month. Don’t quote me—my memory isn’t what it used to be—but I think the first victim’s name was Barstow, if that means anything to you. And to confirm a connection with our other victim,” she began, while gripping the corpse’s nondescript black ball cap, “let’s see what’s hiding under here.” Slipping the cap from his head, Romano revealed a bald head and an upside-down-crucifix tattoo.
The ME responded to my prolonged gasp with a quizzical expression, the oily sediment accentuating the well-earned frown lines spanning her broad forehead.
“He have any identification?” I asked.
“Why? Do you recognize him?”
I shook my head. “No, but the tattoo corresponds with witness testimony pertaining to the kidnapping and subsequent murder of a Drexel woman.” And possibly a Belton teenager.
Romano slipped a gloved hand into the victim’s back pocket and tugged a wallet free. She nodded at one of the investigators who in turn maneuvered a bright lamp, illuminating the driver’s license. “Jacob Cahill. Born December 9, 1990. Looks like his cell phone is missing, too,” she said, gesturing toward an empty pouch.
It was possible he had lost the phone while running, ditched the phone earlier, or the killer had taken it from him. “How about a receipt for the phone? Maybe there’s one in his wallet.”
She dug through his wallet. Coming up empty, she searched all his pockets. Tugging a scrap of paper from a coin pocket, she said, “This could be it, but because of heat transfer from the body, it’s mostly illegible. I’ll ask forensics to work their magic. If they’re successful, they’ll give you a call.”
I cocked my head in the direction of the house. “He live here?”
“Nope. But if I thought he was involved in your Drexel homicide, I’d secure a warrant to search the property anyway. No one has come out, so I think it’s safe to say the house is either vacant or whoever lives here isn’t at home.”
Thanks to my preternatural vision, I’d already scanned every nook and cranny. The only inhabitant was a scrawny old calico cat that appeared to be abandoned and on its ninth life. I intended to make Animal Control aware before my shift ended. I inched a notepad from a blazer pocket. “Can I have his address? I think I’ll start there.”
“You’re the detective. If it’s current, up until tonight he called 4545 Gladstone Avenue home.”