Death of the Black Widow Page 3

  Before Walter could reply, Nadler turned and crossed back out of the room, carefully stepping around the body, lamp, and broken glass on the floor. Walter heard voices out in the hall, which grew muffled as Nadler pulled the damaged door shut behind him.

  He and the girl were alone then, and the apartment went oddly still.

  Why is it so cold in here?

  For the first time, Walter heard an air conditioner running. When he turned, he spotted an ancient window unit spurting out air cold enough to see even in the dim light.

  It’s maybe twenty degrees outside. Why is this guy running the air-conditioning?

  “Amy,” she said so softly that at first Walter wasn’t sure she’d spoken at all. “My name is Amy Archer.”

  He cleared his throat. “I’m Walter. Walter O’Brien.”

  “I killed him, didn’t I?”

  Walter saw no point in lying to her. He nodded.

  She tried to shrink deeper into the alcove, but there was no place to go. Her bare feet only slipped on the filthy floor, leaving streaks.

  “He would have killed me if I didn’t…”

  “It’ll be okay, Amy. Nobody will fault you for self-defense, I promise,” Walter assured her again. His gaze fell on the half eaten loaf of bread. Mold was growing on one side, built-up moisture creating a haze on the plastic. “How long have you been here?”

  She shook her head. “I’m…not sure. Two weeks, maybe three?”

  “Can you tell me what happened?”

  A tear slipped from her eye and rolled down her cheek. “He’s a taxi driver. Or at least he said he was. He picked me up downtown, near Eastern Market. I gave him my address, but instead of taking me home, he headed north. When I told him he was going the wrong way, he pulled over and sprayed something in my face. I don’t know what it was, but I blacked out, and when I woke up…” Her voice dropped off, and she looked at the handcuffs dangling from the water pipe. “He kept me in here when I wasn’t on the bed.”

  “Did he…?”

  She understood what he meant, hesitated, and nodded softly.

  She was holding his hand. Walter wasn’t sure when that had happened. He didn’t remember reaching for her again, didn’t recall her slipping her hand into his. She felt warmer now. That was good. “How about you come out of there?”

  She looked at the side of the toilet and the sink, her gaze lingering on the handcuffs for another moment, before finally nodding.

  Walter helped her out of the small space to sit on the edge of the bathtub.

  She glanced down at her naked body, crossed her legs, and pulled the jacket tighter. A blush filled her cheeks, and she turned away from him, looking embarrassed.

  “Where are your clothes?”

  “I don’t know what he did with them.”

  Wondering how long Nadler would be, Walter looked back over his shoulder. “If I look for them, will you stay here?”

  “Can’t I go with you?”

  “I’ll be right outside the door where you can see me. It’s better you stay in here.”

  Her hair had fallen back in her face, and he brushed it away, tucked it behind her ear. She pressed her cheek into his palm, and for one brief instant, her mouth formed a smile. The color had returned to her lips. They were a deep red. She had an exotic look about her, European or maybe Mediterranean. Walter couldn’t put his finger on it.

  He didn’t find her clothes, but he turned up a pair of red sweatpants and a faded Detroit Lions T-shirt, both extra large.

  He crossed back into the bathroom and handed them to her.

  She shrugged off the jacket and quickly got dressed.

  When finished, she stood there and glanced up at him, a grateful look in her eyes.

  Walter wiped a speck of blood from the side of her face. He couldn’t help himself.

  Chapter

  5

  “His name is Alvin Schalk. Thirty-one years old. Unmarried. Loner. No priors. Cab driver for Detroit Metro Taxi. His residence is listed as 83 Cambridge, not this place. According to the landlord, nobody lives here. My guess is he just used this apartment as a sex den.”

  Walter and Nadler were standing over the body in the bedroom with Detective Freddie Weeden of Detroit Homicide.

  Walter couldn’t help but look over at Amy.

  The detective had asked her to stay in the bathroom until paramedics arrived. They’d take her to the hospital soon, where they’d perform a rape kit exam and see to her injuries.

  Amy must have felt Walter’s eyes on her—she glanced up and caught him watching.

  “We also found an unplugged freezer in the basement with two bodies inside, wrapped in quilts. Decomp so bad I couldn’t tell you if they were men or women. They’d been there awhile. Won’t know cause of death until the medical examiner gets a look.” He nodded toward the bathroom. “She’s not his first, that’s for damn sure. This guy had a system in place. That comes from practice. I wouldn’t be surprised if we find more back at his house. I’m waiting on a warrant. His cab is MIA, but I’m sure we’ll find something there, too, when it turns up.”

  Evidence markers littered the apartment, and they’d brought in some lights. A photographer was systematically documenting the scene, the bright flash of his camera going off every few seconds. He was leaning over the bed now, capturing images of the ropes, particularly the frayed one, the one that looked chewed. Evidence marker 43. Weeden had asked Amy about that rope, but she hadn’t answered. Instead, her face had filled with horror, her eyes with tears. He’d let her be after that.

  “How do you know the freezer is Schalk’s?” Walter asked.

  Weeden rolled his eyes and looked at Nadler. “First day?”

  Nadler nodded. “Yep.”

  “Fuck you both,” Walter muttered.

  Weeden said, “Educated guess. We’ll tie it to him with prints. This isn’t the best neighborhood, but it’s still pretty rare for residents to stash stiffs in their basements, kid. Frankly, most have no problem shooting each other in the street right out in the open and leaving ’em there. Hiding a body takes time, means this guy planned.” He nodded toward the bathroom. “I tried to interview her but she clammed up. She say anything else to you?”

  Walter shook his head. “Only what I told you.”

  “She’s still in shock,” Weeden surmised. “Lucky for her, you two yahoos showed up and distracted him by beating on the door. She would have ended up in that freezer if you hadn’t. No doubt about that.” With the toe of his shoe, Weeden nudged the broken lamp on the floor, inches from the man’s cracked skull. “She saved the taxpayers some dough.”

  Walter thumbed the dog collar in his pocket. “Where the hell are those paramedics?”

  If the girl was listening, she made no indication. She was looking off to the side, either lost in memories or attempting to forget them.

  The broken apartment door swung open again. Half the building seemed to be standing in the hallway, trying to get a look inside. Nadler kicked it shut and braced it with an evidence case.

  “She shouldn’t have to sit in this place. We’ll take her,” Walter told Weeden.

  “Huh?”

  “To the hospital. We can take her. Do we really need to wait on an ambulance?”

  “Rookie might be right,” Nadler agreed. “Why waste a bus? They got better things to do.”

  Weeden thought it over, then said, “I need one of you on that door. Can’t spare you both.”

  “Looks like you’re on door duty, O’Brien,” Nadler said flatly. “I’ll go.”

  “She likes the rookie,” Weeden pointed out in a low voice. “They keep making googly eyes at each other. I vote he goes. Might open up to him, tell him something we don’t know yet. Three weeks locked up with this creep, who knows what he said to her. Might lead us to his cab, more bodies, who knows.”

  Nadler was shaking his head. “He’s only been on the job three hours. I don’t need the ass chewing that’ll come with him fucking up on my watch.”

  “She’s not going to talk to you,” Weeden replied. “You’ve got the same hair and beer gut as our dead guy. You might as well be his long-lost brother. Hell, I don’t even want to talk to you.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “I’ll take her,” Walter interjected. “It’s two miles. Not even.”

  “I’m not—”

  Weeden clucked his tongue impatiently. “A hundred years ago, you were a rookie, too, Herb. Give the kid a break. My crime scene, my call. If he can get her to talk, I want to give it a shot.” Before Nadler could respond, the detective pulled a microcassette recorder from his pocket and held it out to Walter. “She says anything, get it on here. Take her directly to Emergency and ask for Dr. Lomax. I’ll call ahead and tell him you’re bringing her in.”

  Nadler stared at Weeden for a moment, then angrily fished the keys from his pocket and tossed them to Walter. “Drop her and come right back. No bullshit.”

  Walter gave him a quick salute, led by his middle finger. “Sir, yes, sir.”

  Chapter

  6

  Although Amy rode in the back, her eyes found Walter’s in the rearview mirror, and the strange grayness of them only seemed to intensify in the dark. Each time they passed under a streetlamp, the light washed over her like a brush, repainting her on a canvas of shadows.

  Walter fumbled with the microcassette recorder, managed to hit the red Record button, and set it on the seat beside him.

  “Are you okay back there?”

  She looked back at him but said nothing. She was still wearing his uniform jacket, now over the T-shirt and sweatpants. One of the investigative techs had found her an old pair of tennis shoes. Not a perfect fit, but close enough. Better than no shoes at all on a night like tonight. It was
cold and growing colder by the minute as angry gusts came off the Detroit River. The snow was coming down sideways and only getting worse.

  Something about her seemed oddly familiar.

  Walter cleared his throat. “This is going to sound a little crazy, but have we met before?”

  As soon as he said it, he wished he could take it back. It sounded like a bad line at a bar.

  In the rearview mirror, she gave him the same look he’d probably get if he asked that question in a bar, then a gentle shake of her head.

  They passed through three more intersections in silence.

  “What’s going to happen to him?”

  Walter slowed and changed lanes in order to get around a Volkswagen Bug going half the speed limit. “Who?”

  “The dead guy.”

  “Once they’re done processing the scene, they’ll transport him to the city morgue.”

  “Will he be autopsied?”

  He met her eyes in the mirror. “Probably. Why?”

  “Just curious.”

  Walter weighed his words. He didn’t want to spook her. “They tend to do one anytime a death isn’t ruled accidental. In a case like this, it’s just procedure.”

  “I didn’t mean to kill him. I was only trying to get away.”

  “I know.” He made a left on Wilmont and eased into the middle lane. “Were there others?”

  “Other girls, you mean?”

  “Yeah.”

  She shrunk a little lower in the seat and looked out the window. “That first night, I smelled perfume on the bed. Not much, but when I said something to him about it, he bagged up the sheets, the only pillow, and took it all out of there. Said he dropped everything in the incinerator. Someone carved J.K. into the bottom of the sink, too.”

  “J.K.?”

  “It looked like it had been there awhile. I saw a bra next to the bathtub the first night he locked me in there, but it was gone the second night.” Hesitating for a second, she added, “Do you think that’s who they found in the basement freezer? Was it J.K.?”

  “You heard that, huh?”

  “That detective was very loud.”

  “We’ll know more after we identify the bodies.”

  “More autopsies…”

  “Fingerprints, most likely.”

  Her eyes met his again in the mirror. “Is that possible? That detective said they were…bad.”

  In training, Walter had learned how a medical examiner could sometimes remove the skin from the hand of a deeply decomposed body and wear it like a glove in order to obtain prints, which he’d found fascinating at the time—but it wasn’t the kind of thing you told a girl who might have been days from ending up in that freezer herself.

  That realization must have come to her anyway. When Walter glanced back, Amy’s face had grown pale and she’d covered her mouth with her hand.

  “Oh, no, are you—”

  She nodded quickly. “Pull over—I think I’m gonna be sick.”

  “Shit—hold on…”

  With the snow growing heavy, traffic was moving particularly slow. Fumbling the switches on the dash, Walter gave the siren a quick chirp and flicked on the red and blue flashers. In the back seat, Amy shrugged off his jacket and grasped the door handle. She quickly discovered you can’t let yourself out of the back of a cruiser.

  Walter jerked the wheel to the right, crossed the lane at a sharp angle, and slid to a stop against the curb. He jumped out and stumbled through the snowdrifts left by the plows the night before to tug open Amy’s door.

  She was hunched over, one hand still over her mouth. He tried to help her as she scrambled out, but she shrugged him off. He stepped aside, clearing her path to the bushes—as Amy brought her left shoulder up into Walter’s gut, knocking the wind out of him and sending him tumbling into the snowbank. The toe of her borrowed shoe connected with his lower back, and Walter felt a sharp pain in his kidney. He rolled to the side, both hands up, ready to block another blow. But Amy was no longer standing there. She was darting across Wilmont, dodging the slow-moving cars.

  Scrambling to his feet, Walter tried to shout but coughed instead. He ran after her, narrowly missing a green station wagon and black sedan in the street. On the other side of Wilmont, he spotted her again, nearly a hundred feet down the sidewalk already. How was she so fast? Amy pushed by several pedestrians and ducked down an alley, running between a laundromat and a Chinese restaurant.

  The alley was about fifty feet deep and ended at a brick wall. He reached the opening in time to see her scurry over some crates onto a dumpster.

  “Amy, stop!”

  She didn’t even turn. Pushing off with both hands, she swung over the top and disappeared behind the wall.

  Walter followed after her, but by the time he scrambled over the crates and reached the dumpster to peer over the wall, there was no sign of her. The falling snow made quick work of any tracks she’d left behind.

  NOW

  Chapter

  7

  The passenger-side door of the patrol car flew open, and a female officer leaned out low. “Get in the back, now!”

  Walter didn’t look at her. His gaze remained on the pavement. “I’m not going to do that. You don’t understand what this is.”

  “No? Get in the car and explain it to me, before you get yourself killed!”

  Two shots rang out.

  Hard cracks.

  Both wheels on the driver’s side of the car went flat.

  A third shot pierced the hood, and the engine seized and went silent.

  Someone tried to squeeze out the front door of the club, and another shot hit the brick inches from their head, sending dust into the air. They quickly shuffled back inside.

  The bouncer was huddled behind the brick valet stand to the left of the club’s door, his eyes searching the rooftops across the street, the direction of the shots.

  The driver of the patrol car yanked the microphone from the dash. “Twelve eighty-four. Vehicle disabled. Multiple shots fired. Establish—”

  Another shot. Red’s expert marksmanship. The bullet tore through the windshield, the dash, and the center of the radio. Sparks rained out, and the officer dropped the microphone with a squeal of profanity.

  Through all this, Walter kept his eyes on the pavement.

  When he spoke, his voice remained calm. “Both of you need to exit that vehicle, walk over to your friends, and send back whoever is in charge.”

  The female officer’s name badge read RODRIGUEZ. Sinking low in her seat, she glared at Walter.

  When she didn’t move, Walter turned to her. “If you don’t do as I’m saying, the next bullet from my snipers will split your partner’s skull in two.”

  “Your snipers?”

  Walter looked back down at the pavement and fought the tickle in his throat. “Five…four…three…two…”

  “Okay!” her partner blurted out. “Okay!” He unfastened his seat belt, clicked open the driver’s-side door, and slid out to the blacktop as if melting from the seat, as low as he could get without crawling, his head turned up toward the surrounding buildings. “They won’t shoot!?”

  “Not if you hurry.”

  He took a deep breath and looked back at his partner through the interior of the car. She was still in her seat. She gave him a soft nod but didn’t move.

  He was gone then, scrambling across the intersection in a low crouch. Barricades had gone up on Woodward. When the officer reached them, he dove through and vanished into the growing crowd of first responders.

  Rodriguez remained in her seat.

  “Don’t make me kill you. Go.”

  “I could hit her in the arm or knee,” Red said in the earbud. “It doesn’t have to be a kill shot.”

  “If she doesn’t exit the vehicle, she dies,” Walter said calmly.

  Her head swiveled and she quickly took him in, spotted the earbud, then looked from him to the buildings. “What are you doing?”

  Walter just shook his head. “Go. Send over your supervisor.”

  This time she did. Unlike her partner, though, she unfastened her seat belt without any sign of panic. She climbed out of the disabled car and went to where the other officers waited, not at a run, but at a slow walk, stopping at the midway point to look back at Walter, then at all the surrounding roofs and windows.