Murder is Our Business

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Murder is Our Business - book excerpt

Roscoe

I hesitated,turned to look over my shoulder, and eyed the little man sitting with his hands clasped together atop the battered looking conference table. Just a small man. No jaw to speak of. Narrow nose. Stringy brown hair plowing toward utter baldness. Plain looking. So plain he was beginning to blend into the dull white paint of the wall directly behind him. I got the impression a couple of more minutes sitting in the wooden chair alone in the interrogation room and he'd simply vanish into thin air.

Vanish like a bad taste in your mouth. Or maybe a bad idea. Just slowly fade away.

Closing the door behind me, I stood in the hallway, looked at my monolithic nightmare of a partner, lifted an eyebrow, and waited. He turned, glanced at me, saw the face I make when something's bothering me, and sneered openly at me.

"That's our killer?" Frank grunted, turning to look at me with those little brown points for eyes as he ran a hand through the mop of carrot-colored hair. "That guy put four rounds of a .357 magnum into Rick Burns' chest and then two in the face? Him? Sweet Jesus. You gotta be kidding me."

"He said he did it. We found Burns' body where he said we'd find it. Burns' blood is on the guy's shoes and trouser cuffs. Evidently the prints on the gun are his.What else do you want?"

"I want to know who killed Rick Burns," growled a mountain gorilla wannabe for a partner, jabbing a pointed finger into my chest gently. "Just like you do, buddy. I know you don't believe the guy's story either."

The problem was Roscoe Tanner, accountant, said he did it. Said he struggled with his boss for the gun he knew Burns always carried and then shot him six times. Just like that. Like it was an everyday thing. Point blank range. Two .357 rounds in the face. Made the guy's head explode like a bowl of tossed jello.

I threw a smirk in his direction and nodded.I agreed with Frank. There was no way a Roscoe Tanner, accountant extraordinaire for one big time slime ball like Rick Burns, could take Burns' own gun, a Smith &Wesson .357 magnum, and then fill Burns full of holes and Burns not do a damn thing to defend himself. But that's what the forensics team at the crime scene confirmed. That's what Roscoe said happened. That's what the district attorney was going to use the moment he got his hands on this case.

If Roscoe was lucky, he might get Life in prison. If not so lucky . . .

"So, what do you want to do?" I asked, pushing hands into my slacks, and staring at my friend,eyeball-to-eyeball.

Frank and I stand about six feetfour apiece. He's fifty pounds heavier and about twice as strong. He looks like a reject from a madman's deranged genetic lab experiment. On the other hand, I've been told I look like a dead man. A handsome dead man, mind you. But still, a dead man.Apparently, I'm almost the spitting image of some dead movie actor from out of the 30s.Yes. He wasfamous. And no. I'm not mentioning names.

We make a good team as homicide detectives. I look like a half remembered handsome stiff only a movie buff would remember. He looks like a biological nightmare no one wants to remember. My name is Turner Hahn. His is Frank Morales. And for the last ten years we've worked the homicide desk out of the South Side Precinct.

"I'm thinking we've got witnesses over at Burns' place who are keeping their mouths shut. We should go over and talk to a few of the employees. You know . . . persuasively. Like only we can."

When some red-headed giant about the size of Bigfoot sits you down in a chair and leans over you so closely his breath sends a shiver down the back of your neck, and in your ear, he says in a gruff voice, "Tell us about the shooting," you have a tendency to tell him about the shooting. I'm not suggesting Frank can be intimidating when he wants to be. I'm saying that, unless you know Frank as well as I do, he is always intimidating. Just his physical presence alone makes atheists suddenly become religious.

So, we drove across town underneath an early evening sky threatening to open up and dump on us a biblical style deluge. It was that time of the year.Late spring. Humidity so thick you could cut the water vapor hanging in theair with a dull set of pliers. Towering white/grayish thunder cells visibly climbing for the stratosphere in ominous anticipation. The rumble of thunder constantly talking to you off in the distance. The kind of weather where the static electricity in the air makes mousey looking housewives reach for a shotgun in the bedroom closet, or maybe a butcher's cleaver from out of the kitchen counter knife setand do a little house cleaning of their own. That kind of weather.

Burns owned a hotspot called Valentino's Grotto.It was a dance club for the under thirties set who were just breaking into good money professional wise. Down in the warehouse district. The old warehouse's ground floor was covered in black tile. The small tables and chairs surrounding the dance floor were virgin white in color. The far wall of the warehouse was nothing but gigantic speakers and a raised dais where, apparently, the DJs did their magic nightly. We were told by those who knew the place it was a thriving cash cow. Thursday through Sunday nights the place was packed. Money, both legally and illegally earned, dropped into Burns' pockets by the dumpster loads.

Everyone agreed Rick Burns was a festering boil on the ass end of humanity. Nobody was lamenting his passing. No one was surprised in the way his debit card was cancelled. But interestingly . . . no one believed for a moment Roscoe Tanner, accountant, and trusted employee of Rick Burns, had the gumption to swat a fly off his ledger books, much less take Burns' gun away from him and plug him six times in the chest and head.

Rick Burns was brutally murdered. But Roscoe Tanner didn't do it. Or, at least, that's what the ten or so people we talked to in the empty club told us.Roscoe was just too nice of a guy to harm anyone.

We stood in Burns' private office, where the murder was committed, and stared at each other. We'd just interviewed everyone who was there that night Burns was shot. Everyone had alibis. No one believed Roscoe was a murderer.Obviously, he was being framed. By whom nobody could say. The list of potential suspects, they said, was almost the entire city.

Like I said. Rick Burns wasn't a nice guy.

"What do we have right now proving or disproving our man Roscoe's guilt or innocence," I said, leaning up against the office door and sneering at my partner casually.

"One," Frank nodded, lifting a hand and one finger to begin the discussion. "We have a murder weapon, Burns' own .357, freshly fired and with Roscoe's fingerprints all over it.If the little guy wasn't the shooter, whoever did pull the trigger was smart enough, and cool enough, to wipe prints off the gun and then somehow make our little man pick up the gun and grip it firmly enough to add his prints."

"Two," I went on, lifting a hand up with two upraised fingers flying. "Everyone knew Burns was here in the office all night long. But no one heard the shooting because of the damn music outside. It was so loud everyone went home completely deaf."

"Three," Frank chimed in. "The only person anyone saw coming into or leaving the office was Roscoe Tanner. The only one."

"No one," I said, shaking my head and smiling. "But there's another door leading into the office. It goes out to an alley behind the building. Someone could have come in that way and plugged our beloved departed."

We turned together and stared for a moment or two at the second entrance. And then we decided to check it out. The door led to a flight of stairs leading down into the alley. The alley would be, at the time of the shooting, as black as a closed Pennsylvania coal mine at midnight. But interestingly enough we found something. A small glittering piece of plastic lying on the cement right beside the bottom step of the flight of stairs. A small tube of lipstick.

We stood in the alley looking down at the tube of lipstick. It was Frank who broke the silence.

"What would make a faceless little man admit he killed a man with the man's own gun and not give us a motive as to why he did it?"

"A woman," I said offhandedly.

"It's always a woman," Frank said as we eyed the lipstick lying beside the steps.

"That, my friend, is a very sexist attitude to take.You should be in a deep fit of profound angst for uttering such a thing," I said, looking at Frank and grinning.

"I know. I should be," the red-headed giant nodded solemnly. "But I don't give a rat's ass about angst. Or whatever the hell you said."

"Problem is," I pointed out quietly. "Who? This place pulls beautiful women in every night. There's no security cameras out here. So, who are we looking for?"

Police work. You ask questions. You dig for clues. You slump into your chair back at the station and mull over things.You put the pieces of the puzzle together one way. And then you try it in a different direction. Finally, you get lucky. Something happens. An off the wall idea pans out, and suddenly you’re staring at a possibility.

The off the wall idea was to check out possible security camera tapes from establishments that flanked Valentino's Grotto. Maybe something would pop. What popped was a tape from an auto parts store facing the street a half block away from the murder scene. Just around the corner from the street running past the warehouse nightclub. The camera faced down the street and had a clear view of the alley entrance. The same alley that ran directly behind the club. At around the time of the murder a car came roaring out of the alley, the driver of the car sawing at the wheel to make a screaming right hand turn before blasting away at full throttle.

The driver was a woman. A redhead. Driving a red Camaro convertible. In the bucket seat beside her was a man. A man we instantly recognized. A guy by the name of Henry Rodriguez. One of Rick Burns’ disc jockeys.

A little more digging and we found out the woman's name was Samantha Carter. She was an employee of Rick Burns as well. A few more questions thrown out randomly and we find out Henry and Samantha were in a blazing inferno of a romantic fling with each other. We also heard each had recently heated exchanges, if not outright shouting matches, with their boss about a week before the murder. Over money. Lots of money. It didn't take long to find'em and have them brought down to the precinct.

"Found something curious about you two," Frank began, kicking a chair out from underneath the table, plopping down a size fourteen in the middle of the chair, and leaning forward to brace an elbow on the upraised knee. "Night before last almost a half million dollars was deposited in an account you two share. A half million. I gotta ask. Where does a DJ and a waitress suddenly come up with five hundred thousand big ones in the middle of the week like that?"

"Something else we found out," I threw in, standing across the table from them, casually leaning against the wall with hands in my slacks. "We've got eight witnesses who claim they heard Burns accusing you two were scamming thousands of dollars out of the till and had been doing it for years. They say they heard him yelling at you several times over the course of the last month. They even heard him telling you he was going to kill both of you if you didn't pay every cent back by the end of the month."

The two sitting behind the wooden table were poster children for the perpetually terrified. Both looked scared to death. Like they'd had seen the outskirts of Hell in their rear-view mirror and didn't like the sight, or smells, of the place. Rodriguez especially looked like he was going to pitch over from a coronary.

"Look . . . detectives," he began, lifting a hand up pleadingly. "That money isn't ours. We got up this morning and went down to the bank to draw out some money and that's when we get hit with the news we're half a million to the good. It doesn't make sense. We . . . we're scared shitless, fellas. Someone's trying to hang us for Rick's murder. So, we ran. Left the money in our account and just decided to skip out while we had a chance."

"Nick is telling you the truth. Rick went all crazy over the last few weeks," the redhead jumped in quickly. Her hands were shaking. The pupils of her eyes were nothing but pinpoints from the fear coursing through her veins. Her forehead had tiny little beads of sweat forming across it like a fresh crop of dandelions popping up. "He's accused us of stealing money from him. He's accused Roscoe. He's accused just about everyone who works for him! I'm telling you, we're innocent. We didn't steal nothing, and we sure as hell didn't kill Rick! We're innocent!"

I glanced at Frank. Frank, frowning, still leaning on one knee, eyed me for a moment but kept silent. We know what fear is. Know the genuine from the fake. Silently we both agreed. These two were scared to death.

"Did Roscoe skim the money off the top?" I asked, looking back at the lovers.

"I . . . we . . . really don't know," Rodriguez answered, grinning nervously, after glancing at the woman, and not sounding convincing at all. "I mean, come on. If anyone would know how to bilk money from behind Rick's back it would have to be Roscoe. I mean, you know. Roscoe was Rick's accountant. Jesus. He knew more about where all of Rick's bank accounts were more so than Rick, for chrissake!"

“Burns discovers who the real thief is, accuses him in his office, and this tiny little man takes Rick's gun and shoots him dead? Is that what you're telling us?" Frank rumbled, sounding obviously unconvinced.

The two in front of us glanced at each other and then back at us. Rodriguez had this look of a guy about ready to heave up this morning's breakfast. The woman, who called herself Samantha Carter, was trying to calm herself down. But she was too fidgety. She didn't know what to do with her hands. One leg kept rattling up and down like an errant jackhammer. Fear was making them as jittery as moths caught in a spider web.

"Come on," I said, grinning and looking directly at Rodriguez. "What are you hiding? You might as well talk. We're going to find out anyway."

"Listen, it wasn't our idea..It was Roscoe's." Rodriguez blurted out suddenly. Like a weak dam straining to let loose flood waters on an unsuspecting village. "All wewanted was ten, maybe twenty thousand and then we were going to split. Leave town and never come back. But then Roscoe . . . Roscoe caught us and . . . "