Hard Evidence. Susan Peterson
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the drawers were open, their contents dumped onto the narrow strip of cracked linoleum.
The door on the tiny apartment refrigerator stood open; food and beverages, mostly opened bottles of beer and a pitcher of orange juice, dripped down off the racks. The putrid smell of spoiling food, probably tuna fish meant for Sweetie Pie, filled the tiny area.
“Damn!”
I jumped. The expletive had come from the bedroom. Jack had taken off on his own. I turned and ran in Jack’s direction, a burn of anger at his stupidity eating at the lining of my stomach. He didn’t have a weapon and he could have put himself in a great deal of trouble.
As I rounded the corner to Charlie’s bedroom, I realized fairly quickly that someone other than Jack was the one in deep trouble. The kind of trouble you don’t ever get out of.
Chapter Three
In the center of the cramped bedroom, near the closet, sat a wooden, straight-backed chair. But it was what was tied to the chair that almost made me lose the PowerBar I’d scarfed down earlier that afternoon.
The guy didn’t fit the overall decor of Pop’s apartment. He was too uptown for that. His expensive three-piece suit looked as though it might cost in the range of a two years’ salary for me. Unfortunately, he’d bled out all over the front of the suit.
The multiple stab wounds to his neck and chest looked as if someone had taken their sweet time inflicting them. A puddle of congealed blood pooled at his feet.
I almost gagged, but I held on. I told myself I’d seen worse, and I had. Maybe not murders, but car wrecks in the steep Adirondack Mountains could produce some pretty horrific scenes.
Jack swore and I could see him shoot me a quick assessing glance. He was probably worried that I was going to take a header directly into the middle of the crime scene.
I clenched my teeth and swallowed hard. I nodded my head to let him know that I was okay. No way would I give him the satisfaction of falling apart. I was the cop on the scene, not him.
“Do you know him?” he asked.
I shook my head, going for the casual look. “You?”
“Nope.”
I stepped forward and pulled a rubber glove out of my back pocket. Pop always taught me that a cop was always prepared, on duty or off.
I donned the glove with a quick snap of rubber and then carefully lifted the man’s jacket to extract the victim’s wallet and flipped it open.
“His name is Craig Gibson.” I couldn’t keep a touch of surprise from filtering through my voice.
Jack gave me a sharp glance. “So you do know him?”
I nodded. “Kind of. Shawna said that Pop’s lawyer wanted to meet with me tomorrow. She said his name was Craig Gibson.”
“Guess your meeting won’t be going off as planned.”
I closed the wallet and slid it back into Gibson’s pocket.
Reaching into his pocket, Jack pulled out a cell phone and quickly punched in a number. “Yeah, my name is Jack O’Brien. I’m at 354 Pine St., third-floor apartment. Number 3A. Notify homicide they’ve just caught a new case. And tell ’em to bring the coroner.”
He rattled off a few other details as I backed out of the room. I retreated to the kitchen and leaned over the battered metal sink. Turning on the tap, I splashed cold water on my face.
I’d seen enough gruesome car accidents to typically handle the blood and gore without any real show of emotion, but for some reason seeing that guy tied up and tortured that way affected me more than I’d figured on.
When I came up for air, I found Jack standing next to me, regarding me with that familiar, quietly assessing look of his.
“You okay?” he asked.
A sharp retort hovered on the tip of my tongue to cover up how off-kilter I really felt, but I kept quiet because I knew he’d be able to see right through me. So I simply nodded.
“The locals aren’t really going to let you get involved in this case,” he said. “You wanna wait downstairs with the sisters until they want a statement?”
I thought about the current condition of my stomach and the combined smells of Ben-Gay, sausage and sauerkraut leaking out from beneath the Stanziki sisters’ apartment door. “I’m fine. Just got a little shaky there for a minute due to an empty stomach.”
He shrugged those broad shoulders. “Fine by me. Just don’t touch anything. Homicide gets a bit touchy when people fiddle around with their crime scene.”
“I’m not an idiot, Jack. We do have crime scenes up there in the wilds of northern New York.”
Before he could respond, I turned on my heel and marched out into the drafty hallway. I figured I’d spend some time poking around out there, see if Pop’s guests had left anything interesting.
The window at the end of the hall was open partway and a cold breeze touched the side of my face, sending a chill through me. The Stanziki sisters wouldn’t be too pleased to see that. Precious heat was slipping out beneath the window sash like water over a dam. But it might have been how the perp got into the apartment if there was a fire escape attached to the side of the old house.
I walked over to the window and bent down to take a look. An indignant screech greeted me. Careful not to touch the sill and mess up any fingerprints, I leaned out the window.
A huge beast sat hunched on the railing of the ancient fire escape. Yellow eyes glared accusingly into my own.
“Awww, Sweetie Pie,” I cooed. “We forgot all about you in the ruckus, didn’t we? What are you doing out there in the cold?”
He blinked and then let out another indignant yowl. Obviously, he was royally perturbed. But then, anyone who knew Sweetie Pie knew that was a permanent condition.
I leaned out farther and gathered his mangy, hairy body into my arms and pulled him inside. He latched on to my slick, nylon jacket with his claws, their sharpness shredding the nylon and letting loose a few feathers.
His oversize head, with its mangled, gnawed ears, bumped the bottom of my chin, and he nestled closer, shoving his head up against the hollow of my throat. His fur felt cold in my hands, his body heavy. I couldn’t help but wonder how long he’d been sitting out there waiting for someone to come home and rescue him.
I moved back to my position outside the front door of the apartment, stroking Sweetie Pie’s bulky body as a way of reassuring him that everything was okay. He was pretty tense, his fur standing on end, but after a few minutes I could feel him begin to relax.
I leaned up against the wall again, sliding down to sit on my heels. Some of Syracuse’s finest had arrived and they swaggered into the apartment, a thick wave of testosterone following them in. A few nodded in my direction, but most were focused on what was going on inside Pop’s place.
As I sat cooling my heels in the hall, I itched to get in there and get involved. But I knew police etiquette. I needed an invitation, and none of the guys in there seemed to recognize me. Not that I could expect them to; I’d been gone a long time.
As my tension rose, my hands tightened around Sweetie Pie’s plump body, and he gave me a quick nip on the tip of my thumb as a warning. I concentrated on taking slow calming breaths and slipped a hand beneath his collar to keep him from jumping down and taking off in a huff.
The soft leather of the collar caught my attention and I glanced down. An unexpected lump of hot emotion filled the back of my throat. It was a hand-tooled collar, with clever cat prints lovingly carved into the leather and painted black.
I knew without question that it had been one of Charlie’s creations, a favorite hobby of his—leatherwork. From a metal ring, a tiny pie charm hung off the collar and the name Sweetie