The Book of 21 Read online

  “Christ,” he sighed, “I’m going to be doing paperwork for a week. Is that puke?”

  Fanelli nodded and replied, “Yeah, after I got here it looked like an overdose kicked in.”

  “So, some crazy drug addict doped himself up and whacked that poor bastard?”

  “Well, I’m not sure. The young guy didn’t have much blood on him when I got here.”

  “Were any footprints leading out of here?”

  “No, Detective, but there weren’t many footprints in the room, either. The only ones in there, other than mine on the left side there, went from the chair where the young guy was hiding, over to the spot where he is now.”

  “Well, if there were no tracks out of here, then the drug addict had to be the killer. It’s pretty cut and dry. He probably needed some drug money.”

  “Well, you should look at this.” Fanelli held out two Pennsylvania driver’s licenses and two Pennsylvania Commonwealth University identification cards.

  John took the cards and realized their photos matched the faces on the corpses. The severed head belonged to Richard Dunglison, a faculty member at Pennsylvania Commonwealth University, which was also known as Penn Commonwealth. John assumed the assorted body parts were all his as well. The young man was Ted Hallman, who apparently was a student at the university. John knew at that moment, that it was unlikely this was a random act of violence.

  He swallowed back an expletive, took a deep breath, and asked, “Is the CSA unit here yet?”

  “Yeah, Dr. Mulgrew’s upstairs, in the bedroom.”

  John clenched his jaw and handed the ID cards back to Fanelli. “Tell him I want to see him when he’s done up there.”

  Fanelli tucked the ID cards into his pocket and then headed up the stairs.

  The other officers stood in silence. After a few seconds, they slipped away, one by one, leaving John alone in the doorway of the office.

  He squatted and stared at the young man lying in the pool of vomit and blood. Then he reviewed the assorted pieces of the dismembered corpse. Though his eyes focused on what was before him, his mind replayed what he had just done.

  “Crap,” he growled.

  Anger at his own stupidity welled up in him; this was his first case since his mentor, Frank Peluno, had passed away, and he had started it by looking cavalier to the patrolmen who had put their lives on the line to clear the scene. He knew he should have suspected there was a connection between the victim and the perpetrator, as that was most often the case, but his frustration over losing his night off had caused him to try to wrap up the case before he had all the facts. He swore that he would not be so eager to jump at the next convenient solution.

  Heaving a sigh, he started thinking about the possible reasons a student would kill a professor. Most of the academics that John knew were more prone to talk than to action. Even though college students were an odd lot when it came to their precious GPA, murdering someone over a bad grade seemed too dramatic.

  He also began to realize there were a few other problems with the idea that Hallman was actually the murderer. First, Hallman’s trail went directly across the bloody floor—from the blue chair where he hid to the desk where he died. Second, Hallman seemed to only be bloody at the places he contacted the floor. He reminded himself that Fanelli had pointed out both of these things earlier, and he had dismissed them.

  Moving his gaze to Dunglison, he found himself looking at the machete. The weapon was another issue; it was simply impractical. A pistol, or a plain old knife, would be just as effective and much easier to use. A big, unwieldy blade was the last thing John would pick to murder someone.

  Not only was the machete awkward, its appearance was alarming. To avoid the immediate flight response that the sight of a machete would invoke, Hallman would have had to conceal it from Dunglison until he was close—very close. Yet, there was no wet raincoat or windbreaker lying around that would have allowed Hallman to conceal the weapon. The machete would have been very noticeable; there should have been a chase and struggle, but instead it looked like Dunglison sat in the den and simply waited for his doom.

  Though these things were peculiar, John thought that there were possible explanations. Maybe Hallman knocked the old man out, proceeded to look around the house for a fitting tool with which to hack the old guy up, and found the machete. Maybe they had an argument, and the big blade was in the room for some reason not yet apparent.

  His mind fixed on one thought—too many maybes.

  John stood up, stretched two latex booties over his shoes, and covered his hands with rubber gloves. He stepped over to the young man’s corpse and knelt down. From his new vantage point, John noted that a single large gash scarred the floor between the two dead men.

  From the hall behind him, a voice whined, “I wish you hadn’t gone in there.”

  John turned to see Harry Mulgrew, who led the Crime Scene Analysis unit. Harry rubbed his balding scalp and, after a heavy sigh, twisted his face in disapproval. The grimace accentuated the winkled lines beneath Harry’s tortoise-shell glasses. Flecks of unshaven gray razor stubble sparkled on his drawn cheeks. John was happy to see him; Harry was good at what he did.

  “Well,” Harry said, “I took two sets of prints off of the headboard of Dunglison’s bed. Given the size and span of the overall handprints, I would assume they both are male.”

  John raised an eyebrow, looked at the two corpses before him, and replied, “I’ll give you one guess to name who left those prints.”

  “I was thinking the same thing.”

  “This gash in the floor seems to be fresh,” John said, pointing at the cut in the floor between the bodies.

  “According to what Fanelli was telling the others, the younger man was holding the machete and talking to the head. The kid dropped the blade right about there. You really should hear his whole story.” After a few seconds, Harry continued, “Give him a few minutes, though.”

  “Yeah, I will. How soon until you get down here?”

  “Not long. I’m going to the bathroom next.”

  “Do you need something to read while you’re in there?”

  “I’m not—” Harry cut the sentence short, started toward the bathroom, and mumbled something unintelligible that ended with the word “bastard.”

  John wished Harry would start by processing the room with the actual murder victim, but he knew that asking Harry to do so was pointless. Long ago, Harry decided that the best way to process a crime scene was to start with what he called the “cleaner” areas of the house. That way, he would not carry any trace evidence that he might have inadvertently picked up while inspecting the victim, into the rest of the house. There was no changing Harry now; that dog was too old.

  A drop of blood fell from the ceiling, passing just beyond the tip of John’s nose and demonstrating Harry’s point about picking up trace evidence quite effectively.

  He shook his head, donned his baseball cap, and mumbled, “Wonderful.”

  Thinking back to the gash in the floor, he started to slowly look around the room. Something was missing. He just found yet another problem with the whole scene; if Hallman dissected Dunglison in this room, John would expect to see more cuts in the hardwood floor than this single gouge.

  While John stared at the mess, Kim Wohlford appeared in the doorway with a leather bag in her hand. Kim was the junior medical examiner, so John had guessed she would be the one stuck with the call. The fact that they were both the junior staff members in their positions had resulted in the opportunity to commiserate with her over drinks a few times, but nothing ever resulted from it. He smiled and tried not to be too obvious as he ran his eyes over her. With her brown, shoulder-length hair cinched back into a ponytail, her almond eyes appeared to be even larger than normal. A baggy sweatshirt failed to conceal her feminine form. Old blue jeans hugged her toned legs. John fought off the urge to linger too long on any single body part and watched as her jaw dropped at the sight before her.

 
“How do I get in there without stepping on anything?” she asked.

  John shrugged. “You don’t”

  “That’s great.”

  “Yeah, better yet, Harry’s still upstairs.”

  She tilted her head and raised her voice so that her message would carry up the stairs. “Will someone tell him to start with the actual crime scene instead of the ‘cleaner’ areas next time? I hate standing around waiting for him.”

  A faint echo from the toilet bowl on the floor above calmly answered, “They’ll still be dead when I’m done.”

  Kim shook her head, sat her bag next to the door, and sighed, “Nothing says ‘genius’ more than a man who sticks his head in the toilet.” She looked at John. “Well, if you are in there, one more won’t hurt.”

  Kim tiptoed into the room with long strides, taking as few steps as possible, and squatted beside Dunglison’s cut-up carcass. She cocked her head to the side and looked up at John. “This shoulder joint looks like it was sawed with some kind of serrated blade. That machete is used to hack, and it’s not serrated.”

  John nodded and pointed at the floor next to her. “That’s not the only weird thing here; among a few other things, I just realized the scallops on the blood spatter all point away from the door. So I don’t think we are in the place that man died. I think you will tell me that he wasn’t even dead when he was hacked up.”

  “Great,” Kim said through a sarcastic smile. She pulled on a rubber glove and then placed two fingers on Hallman’s jugular vein. “Well, I think I can pronounce these two dead. Once I get them back to the lab, I can tell you more.”

  John moved behind the desk and found an old Rolodex. It was open to a tan business card that contained a picture of a waterfall printed in black ink. This card was free from the rungs that held the others. He pulled a pair of tweezers from his coat, lifted the card, and placed it in a plastic bag.

  Kim stood up and looked at the card. “You don’t think the killer left his business card do you? The victim’s house is not somewhere you get a lot of references for more work.”

  John gave her a blank look, pursed his lips, and shrugged.

  From his new location behind the desk, he scanned the room. It was just as bloody from this perspective as it was from the door. As he looked at the blue chair, his gaze immediately fixed on the word Hamlet scrawled in blood on the wall.

  “Get thee to a nunnery,” he chanted.

  Kim’s face screwed as she shot him a look. She followed his gaze, and then said, “Oh.”

  “I had to read that book four times. Every teacher had his own take on it. Well, actually I read it three times. By the time the fourth class rolled around, I pretty much knew it inside and out.”

  “Well,” Kim groaned, “if you weren’t smart, at least you were persistent.”

  “Thanks for that,” John said dryly.

  Kim was unsure of how to break the awkward silence. She was about to speak when an officer appeared at the door and captured her attention.

  The officer’s strawberry blond hair warmed his steel-blue eyes. A chiseled jawline and athletic build completed the package. He looked at John and said, “Detective, the woman who phoned this in is outside.”

  “OK, did you take her statement?”

  “I think you may want to see this.”

  John headed for the hall. When he reached the doorway, he stripped off his booties and asked, “What’s up?”

  “It’s just strange,” the cop answered. “By the way, Fanelli was right about those footprints.”

  John turned and looked the officer’s nametag. “Oh yeah?”

  The cop, named Jake Moore, nodded. “Yeah, I was first to get here on backup. There were no footprints coming out of there.”

  McDonough and Moore stared at each other for a second.

  “How shook up was he?” John asked.

  “Not too bad, considering what he saw.” Moore glanced upstairs to make sure Fanelli was not there. “I believe he told us it was ‘about fucking time’ we got here, twice. He was pretty pissed at that point.”

  He understood what the cop was telling him; when the danger was over, Fanelli transformed his fear into anger. It was a coping mechanism, which John had seen often in the world of law enforcement. It could lead to hyper-efficiency, where the person countered his moment of infirmity with sharp and adrenaline-driven decisiveness, but it could also lead to hyper-stupidity, where the person dug himself into a hole through a series of increasingly idiotic actions. From what Moore said, and did not say, John hoped it was the former in Fanelli’s case.

  He gave Moore a nod and went out the front door.

  Out on the sidewalk, a patrolman waived to John and nodded toward a short, obese, old African American woman gnashing her lips as if she was chewing something. She wore a pink paisley housecoat. Her head tilted back to align her eyes with the center of her black plastic glasses and allow her to look through her Coke-bottle lenses.

  As he reached her, John gave her a smile and a nod. He motioned her away from the crowd, leaned in, and quietly asked, “Did you phone this in, ma’am?”

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “What did you see?”

  “Nothin’ was what I saw.” She looked nervous and stopped gnashing her lips for just a second. She started to gnash again and then continued, “I heard somethin’ and called.”

  “You heard something? It must have been pretty loud to call the cops. Where were you?”

  “I was over there, walkin’ my dog.” Gnash, gnash. “I heard… ooh, I heard this howl.”

  John smiled and looked at the patrolman standing a few feet away.

  The patrolman looked at John and shrugged. “A lot of the old folks in this area call us quite a bit. Things in this neighborhood aren’t as quiet as they used to be.”

  “I know,” John sighed.

  “You just hush, both of you,” the old woman barked. “Look, I ain’t crazy. I heard something. You know I did or you wouldn’t be here talkin’ to me, would you now?” Gnash, gnash.

  John sobered his expression and replied, “No, ma’am, we wouldn’t be. What did you hear?”

  Gnash, gnash.

  “Did you hear a scream?” he prodded.

  Gnash, gnash, nod, gnash, gnash.

  “Was it loud?”

  The old woman’s jaw stopped its perpetual motion. She tilted her head back to look John in the eye, and then said, “It was unholy.”

  Chapter 2:

  A Stop for Breakfast

  DiFlore’s Diner was John’s usual greasy-spoon hangout. The place was a typical diner car. Chrome fixtures, red-vinyl bar stools, cozy brown booths, and a faux-marble Formica counter filled its interior. The staff was friendly and knew him by name.

  After spending the night in Dunglison’s bloody office, it was just the place for John to unwind and grab a bite before heading over to Penn Commonwealth. At six o’clock on a weekday, the place was still awaiting the morning rush. A couple sipped their coffees in a booth. The girl behind the cash register waited for an old man to dig a coin out of his blue rubber change purse. The old man calmly looked at her hand as if he had forgotten the type of coin that he was looking for, and he then went back to digging. The lack of hubbub was what John liked about the place and what he needed right now.

  He made his way to the counter and perched himself on a stool. After placing his newspaper on the counter, he leaned forward and rested his head in his hand. He watched the woman who tended the counter make her way towards him with a pot of coffee and a cup.

  The woman, Effie, was in her mid-fifties. The bright lipstick drew attention away from the faint lines around her lips, the red dye in her hair hid her gray, and the fire in her bright blue eyes covered the sorrow she had seen in her half century of life. John guessed that she was probably quite beautiful in her day, and he knew that she still showed a lithe frame and lively swagger to those that cared to look.

  “Coffee this morning darlin’?” she asked, l
eaning in to expose her cleavage to him while staring him in the eye.

  John smiled and nodded. “Can I get a spinach and mushroom omelet with some hash-browns?”

  “You sure can. You want any cheese on that?”

  “Yeah, American.”

  “Comin’ right up.” She did a double take on his face. “Up late last night?”

  “Just awake very early, unfortunately.”

  Effie attached his order to the carousel, spun it toward the kitchen, and yelled, “Grass and fungus special, Vin.” She turned back to John, and scolded, “You need to sleep more.” Without a second of delay, she raised a pitcher of orange juice from below the counter and asked, “Juice?”

  John nodded and watched her start to pour, then muttered, “If it were up to me, I would be in bed right now. Duty called.”

  “I understand. You should think about getting other duties before these kill you.” She sauntered away with her usual smile.

  John wished he could. He was a cop in a big city, and he was good at it. It might not have been a great reason to stay, but positions for homicide detectives did not grow on trees. He could not just take off and try something else for a few months, then find another homicide position just waiting for him whenever he wanted. Besides that, even for all its bad points, his job was still a lot better than selling cigarette’s at Mahmud’s Stop-n-Go, or asking people if they wanted fries with their burgers.

  He would not tell that to Effie, though.

  When John left Dunglison’s house, Harry was still collecting specimens. Kim had been fuming in the hallway, angry that she had to wait to perform the simple service of loading up the carcasses and taking them back to the lab. John knew it would take a few more hours to collect everything, and a few days after that until Harry could make sense of the material he collected.

  Since there was no need to stand there while Harry crept about with tweezers, John decided he might as well start chasing down the few leads he had. Until Pennsylvania Commonwealth University opened up and the superintendent of Hallman’s apartment building was located, however, he had some time to kill.