Grabek stared like he held Neuschwander personally responsible and had more to say, as usual. Doc kept the conversation on track.
“Let me get this straight. What the hell kind of burglar walks into the bedroom not too late at night with the TV on?”
“Home invasion,” Grabek said. “He might like the idea of someone home. Might even have looked for a place with the lights on.”
Neuschwander shrugged and opened his hands. “Could be. No rational burglar would do it that way. Even a cat, some guy gets off creeping rooms with people in them, even he’d do it in the dark. No burglar likes to be seen.”
“You really think it’s a home invasion, Willie?” Doc said.
“I can’t say for sure, but I’ll see if there’ve been any others in the area.”
Neuschwander closed his equipment case, said, “I don’t have anything argues against it. Anyway, he comes in, she sees him, they fight. Hell of a fight, from the mess and the scratches she must have given him. Bruises on her neck say he choked her. After that I’m not sure. She either gets away and he beats her with this piece of glass,” he held up the evidence bag, “or he got tired of choking her, or pissed, or whatever, and bashed her head in. Autopsy should tell us more.”
“Sexual assault?” Grabek said.
“Not that I can see.”
“Anything else?” Doc said.
“He’s done this before.” Neuschwander paused while both detectives looked away from the body to his face. “Not the murder, I don’t know about that, but the theft. He knows his jewelry. See this mess spread around the room? All paste and cheap shit. The good stuff was in the closet.”
Grabek leaned in for a view of the closet. “He still left a lot of cash and stones behind for a pro.”
“Maybe something startled him. Maybe he figured he’d been here too long. All this damage took time and made noise. Could’ve thought he’d been heard.”
Zywiciel stood in the doorway. “Examiner’s here with the wagon.”
The Allegheny County Medical Examiner talked with Neuschwander for a few minutes before bothering with Carol Cropcho. Bagged her hands, took some notes, told them what he thought. Coming from the big city didn’t make him any smarter than Neuschwander; he taught them nothing they didn’t already know.
Patrol officers canvassed awakening homes as first light crawled over the tops of the eastern hills. Doc and Grabek walked to their separate cars.
“You want to hit the Clarion for the two-twenty-nine breakfast before we go see Stush?” Grabek said.
“It’s two-sixty-nine now,” Doc said.
“Since when?”
“At least a week.”
“Bastards. I knew I made a mistake coming here.”
Here’s a sample from Frank Zafiro and Eric Beetner’s The Shortlist…
1
CAMERON
Time never moves slower than when the guy you’re supposed to kill is late to the appointment for his own death. So I sat in the corner table listening to yet another forgotten hit of the seventies and eighties and took baby sips on my beer. Couldn’t get sloppy on a job night.
I kept my eyes on the door and on Bricks as she sat at the bar, empty stool beside her. Every time someone would come up and try to sit she’d say she was waiting for a friend or that her girlfriend was in the bathroom. If this guy didn’t show soon the people standing at the bar top elbowing in for drinks were gonna start to get pissed.
It had been more than nine months since Bricks and I began working together, about the length of a pregnancy and our little murder-for-hire business was about to be delivered a stillborn. Yeah, business was slow.
Since our blood-soaked exit from the family, she and I thought there would be a ton of work mopping up the turf war between the New England factions and the Florida douchebags intent on squashing them. Not so much. We seemed to have done such a good job of beheading the New York office that very little stood in the way of a Florida takeover and, brother, they invaded like a swarm of those big flying palmetto bugs they got down there.
We took the occasional cheating spouse job, two corporate jobs—Wall Street, of course—and a whole lot of nothing. This jackass about to arrive at the bar would be maybe the last step between us hanging up our gun belts or staying locked and loaded for the next call to come in.
We even took our show on the road for this one. Boston. A good town, if you can deal with the most obnoxious sports fans this side of Philadelphia. Or if you can get past the accent. Give me a good dose of Brooklyn or Staten Island twang any day over the dropped Rs and nasally whine.
This guy was in international finance. A real piece of work. Swiss, I think. At least he was in town on business from Switzerland. He had a long list of fetishes and sexual deviances, so the way to set him up was through his crotch, which led to Bricks and me working as a team for the first time. Usually when we got a client we would split it up. One person would help with the legwork and setting up the how and where of a hit, but we’d let one of us alone go do the job. We’d both come from a solo career and that’s where we felt comfortable. At least, I did. I think Bricks wanted to stay out of my line of fire, to be honest. I had a history of, shall we say, jobs that required cleanup. I’d been much better since she and I went into business together. Maybe the old gal was rubbing off on me.
So the setup was this: Bricks parks herself at this swanky Copley Square bar right next to the hotel where Mr. Swiss is staying. We got here a few days early and noticed he stops in almost every night for a few drinks before heading to bed, usually with the intent on finding a woman to bring upstairs with him. He was batting zero from what we’d witnessed. This was good for us. He’d be horny.
Look, I’ve grown to love Bricks like a sister, but Paula Brickey is not a traditional beauty. She’d tell you the same. But for this horny Swiss bastard, all we needed her to be was available.
At first she was definitely not excited about the plan, but she came around when we both realized it was our best bet to get him away from a crowd. She was sitting at the bar like a spider perched on the edge of a freshly made web. All we needed was for him to walk into it and get trapped. See, Mr. Swiss had a thing for dressing in women’s underpants—I’m telling you, the file on this guy read like soft core porn—so all Bricks has to do is flirt like hell with the guy, convince him she’ll come up to his room with him but only after he slips on a pair of her panties. She hands him a pair she’s already got stashed in her bag and when he goes to the john to change, I follow him in and…
One more job down and hopefully we’ve got a repeat client.
A waitress came by and asked me if I wanted another beer. I waved her off, showing her the two fingers of pale ale still in my bottle. She didn’t look pleased and who could blame her. Probably a college girl living off her tips, and slow drinkers are lousy tippers by nature.
The conversation level was giving me a headache, along with the shrill synthesizer noises on the latest one hit wonder from the 1980s. This was the kind of bar I’d normally never be caught dead in, but it was good enough to make someone dead in, I supposed.
Foursomes and sextets of twenty-something weeknight drinkers seemed to go out of their way to announce to the whole place what a great goddamn time they were having by laughing like they were drinking with George Carlin. A group of guys in the corner with matching Red Sox hats made it sound like there were in a contest with each other for who could laugh the loudest. If this Swiss guy didn’t show soon I was still gonna get my kill that night. If those overgrown fraternity assholes only knew.