Through the wall of light from the four patrol cars setting in the middle of the street and facing me I saw the nightmarish silhouette of my partner walking toward me. A figure straight out of a B-movie horror flick. A freaking giant. Like a miniaturized Hulk dressed in a massive looking trench coat covering a pair of slacks and a sport coat that were about ten years out of style. Not that he cared, mind you. Frank Morales was one of those iconoclastic oddballs that couldn’t care less about his attire. A big, red headed facsimile of a human who happened to be a damn good homicide detective. And my partner for the last decade or more in the detective division of the South Side Precinct.
+++++Tonight, in the cold, even he decided to wear a trench coat. Usually cold weather didn’t bother him. But for the last week the temp had been hovering around the -10F range. Cold. So cold I would have sworn every time I exhaled a breath of air the water vapor in it instantly froze and turned into snowflakes. So cold the leather of my shoes cracked and snapped every time we stepped out into it. So cold my joints ached. Especially my right knee. Like a sonofabitch.
+++++Cold, brother. Too fracken cold for my old bones.
+++++Me? I’m Turner Hahn. Another homicide detective. Just another cop. As tall as my partner but not nearly as massive. Nor as ugly. But really I’m as odd a duck as Frank is in my own right. Frank looks like a humanoid freight train with short, stringy red hair and a permanent scowl on his face. I look like some dead movie actor from out of the 30′s. When he was alive; not being dead for last eighty some-odd years.
+++++And rich.
+++++Yeah, I’ve got a bank account as large as Fort Knox. I earned it the honest way. I inherited it from a grand father I didn’t know was still living. Money coming out of the blue suddenly after I’d been working as a cop for ten years or more. Go figure.
+++++The movie star looks and the wads of cash in a big bank account weren’t going to help us tonight. We had a dead body leaning up against a corner mailbox down on Erin and 10th streets with a hole in his forehead from a .45 calibre semi-automatic. The stiff was sitting upright, with arms crossed across his chest, his legs stretched out, his chin smack on his sternum, his big blue eyes staring off into infinity. Sitting there like he was taking a little nap before deciding to get up and move on.
+++++But there was a problem. There was no blood. No brick work with bullet holes carved into it. No sign of a scuffle. No empty shell casings. Meaning our dead friend had seen his last days somewhere else and someone had deposited him here.
+++++Turning my attention away from the stiff I watched Frank slump toward me, hands in the pockets of his trench coat, head down and looking definitively pissed.
+++++“You want the good news or the bad news first?”
+++++“Let’s go with the good news,” I said, with half a smirk on my face.
+++++“The good news is with have a print on the gun and it’s in the system. A guy by the name of William Goodrich. Gun’s registered to him. And we have his last known address.”
+++++“That is good news,” I nodded, the grin widening. “Now what’s the bad news?”
+++++“The bad news is William Goodrich has been dead for the last eight years. His last known address is the Fairview Cemetery out on Ridge Road. And just to answer your next question, Sherlock. No, the guy isn’t a zombie and his grave is still intact.”
+++++The grin widened. Through the clouds of steam our breaths were generating and hanging motionlessly over our heads I could see the dour smudge of my friend’s face. Beat officers, over dressed for the cold, were moving around us still looking for any evidence to process. A couple of officers were waving flashlights around directing an ambulance, red/blue lights a whirling, into the crime scene. It was a fracking madhouse here standing in the cold. I couldn’t feel my toes anymore. Nor my fingers. And my right knee was killing me.
+++++“Let’s go. The boys can finish up here. The morgue’s picking up the body. There’s no need to be around any longer. Whatta say we got get a cup of java and maybe a bowl of chili or two. While we’re eating we’ll figure out our next move.”
+++++Frank didn’t say a thing but turned on a heel and started walking toward the dark red CTS-V Caddy station wagon . . . yeah, that’s right; a station wagon . . . sitting quietly beside the street curb underneath a blacked out street light. Climbing in the car I quickly kicked over the engine and got the monster humming and grinned.
How many Caddy wagons have you ever sat in that has a six speed manual transmission and 580 horses under the hood? Kicking the tranny into second gear I turned and glanced at Frank.
+++++“A station wagon, for chrissakes. You gotta be kidding me,” he growled, shaking his head and then turning to look at the leather seats and the spacious back end. “Still, betcha this tub can smoke the tires. How fast so far?”
+++++” ‘Bout one eighty five,” I said, shrugging. “But that’s before the cold and snow hit. The dealer said it should do one ninety five easy. We’ll see.”
+++++Okay. So I like fast cars. I collect’em in fact. Got a whole ground floor of a warehouse filled with Muscle Cars from the 60′s and 70′s. But I broke down and bought the Caddy when it came out. A station wagon that could do almost two hundred miles per hours was just too much to pass up.
+++++Forty minutes later we were sitting in a corner both at our favorite all nighter warming our hands wrapped around big cups of coffee in front of us and waiting for Dewey’s unique brand of chili to arrive in oversized bowls. Between the coffee and the chili it was guaranteed you would thaw out in a matter of minutes. Or develop ulcers. Whichever came first.
+++++Eyeing Frank sitting across the table from me in the booth I watched him grunt a few sounds on his cell phone and then shake his head in disgust as he dropped the phone in an inside pocket of his trench coat.
+++++“You won’t believe this. The dead guy? Forensics just ran his prints. He’s in the system as well. Tobias Yates. Used to own a jewelry store up in the Heights. Was suspected to be a fence for most of the cons who worked the jewelry trade. Died eight years ago of a heart attack at home one night while eating supper. The wife buried him in . . .wait for it . . . the same Fairview Cemetery our Richard Goodrich occupied.”
+++++“Really,” I said, lifting an eyebrow quizzically. “Who died first?”
+++++“Goodrich apparently by a week before Yates. Why?”
+++++“How did Goodrich die?”
+++++“Oh. You’ll love this. Caught a bullet in the head. From the gun that was used on Yates.”
+++++“Killed with his own gun? Who killed him?”
+++++For an answer Frank lifted hands, palms up, and shrugged.
+++++“There’s gotta be a connection somewhere in this. Both the trigger man and the victim died roughly at the same time? What do we know about Goodrich? Was he a jewel thief? Did he do business with Yates? You gotta admit, brother. This is getting to be interesting.”
+++++Dewey, the guy who owned the all aluminum camper trailer styled eatery we liked to frequent, slid two big plates toward us. Each one occupied with a large bowl steaming hot chili and general amounts of crackers. Reaching up, sliding the toothpick from between his lips, he used it to point into the parking lot in front of the plate glass window beside us and at the red Caddy wagon.
+++++“Turner, you getting domesticated or something like that? Coaching little league hockey? Maybe delivering hot meals to the elderly? What the hell are you doing driving a station wagon, fer chrissakes!”
+++++The corners on Frank’s lips twitched . . his definition of laughter . . . as he reached for some crackers with his big hands and started crumbling them into a fine powder into his chili. I smirked, glanced at the wagon, then back at Dewey.
+++++“It has lots of horses. Goes faster than a stripped assed ape. And it’s got disk breaks big enough pull the asphalt off a highway in China. So what’s the big deal?”
+++++“Oh, nothing. Nothing at all,” the pot bellied, badly needing a shave owner of the eatery answered, sticking the toothpick in his mouth and mumbling to himself as he walked back to the kitchen. “But who’d a thunk it. A freaking station wagon, for chrissakes!”
+++++With the smirk still on my lips I lifted the spoon up and began digging into the chili. Frank, already about half way through the spicy dish, lifted a bushy eyebrow and glanced at me.
+++++“How the hell do two people die within a week of each eight years ago, go through the system, get planted in the ground, and then get murdered all over again?”
+++++“Somebody’s lying,” I said between spoonfuls of chili. “Obviously neither Goodrich nor Yates died eight years ago. So that means they had reasons to fake their own deaths. And needed help doing it.”
+++++Wind rattled the plate glass window adjacent to our booth. The cold just got colder since the wind was coming off the Little Brown river. Underneath the mercury vapor lights of the parking lot outside even the red Caddy wagon looked like it was shivering in the cold.
+++++“Let’s finish up here and get back to the precinct. Do some digging in the forensics records. We ought to find something.”
+++++We did.
+++++This will come as a surprise, I’m sure; but cop work isn’t glamorous. Ninety percent of the time it’s pure drudgery. You ask questions. Lots of questions. And then you listen. An idea forms in your head. So you ask a lot more questions. And listen some more. Eighty percent of the questions is pure horse manure. They get you nowhere. But procedure says you have to ask them. So you do. It’s the other twenty percent of the questions that go Bingo! on you. Most of those come out of the blue. You have no idea why you asked them. You just do. And the answers sometimes surprise you.
+++++The question that was the ice-breaker for us was asked by Frank while he sat at his desk with a phone stuck into his ear and hanging precariously off one shoulder as he talked to our man down in the evidence room.
+++++“So who claimed Goodrich’s shit after the trial?” I heard him ask as we sat at our desks.
+++++While I was the Yates’ case files from eight years ago I head a voice speaking over the phone partially stuck in Frank’s ear. It sounded bored. But glancing at my partner I could see he was far from that emotional response.
+++++“Oh . . . . really,” he said, one eyebrow going up in surprise. “You sure about that?”
+++++The bored voice spoke again. Frank, listening for a second or two, said ‘thanks’ and hung up and turned to look at me.
+++++“Guess who picked up Goodrich’s stuff.”
+++++“Who?”
+++++“Tobias Yates’ wife. Who happens to be, I might add, the current Richard Goodrich’s ex-wife.”
+++++“So both Yates and Goodrich were married to the same woman at one time,” I repeated as I tried to wrap my limited cognitive powers around it. “And now she is Yates’ widow.”
+++++“Right,” nodded Frank, the corners of his lips twitching. “A regular fracking Days of Our Lives horny-fest if you ask me.”
+++++I nodded, rubbing a hand across the fuss for a mustache underneath my nose, and glanced at the case files lying in front of me.
+++++“Well, I got news for you too, kiddo. I don’t think our Mister Yates died of a heart attack. Reading the autopsy reports kinda sounds like the guy was poisoned. Screw the bad ticker diagnosis. Autopsy report is sloppy. Sloppy and full of holes. So I’m thinking poison. Especially after I read this. Six weeks before Yates died he took out a life insurance policy for twenty million dollars. Two weeks after that he and his lovely wife divorce.”
+++++“Let me guess. Even after the divorce the ex is left on as the primary beneficiary.”
+++++“Bingo!” I said, grinning wickedly.
+++++“So we need to go over and talk to the lovely Mrs. Yates. See if she can shed some enlightenment on this quaint conundrum of horse shit.”
+++++A shot a grin at Frank as I got up. The giant had a way with words, and insults, which always made me smile. Rumbling down the stairs to the ground floor we stepped out into the frigid cold and fired up the Caddy. Thirty minutes later we were pulling up into the circular drive of a mansion. A mansion with no lights on. No streaming ribbons of steam rising up into the cold sky from the many chimney vents in the roof. No signs of life whatsoever. Even the snow was virgin white and without a single human track in it. Nor any tire tracks. As we climbed out of the Caddy underneath the portico in front of the main door both of us were scanning the house, the snow, the wooded grounds surrounding the house and not feeling the least bit comfortable about it.
+++++Definitely something was wrong.
+++++That feeling magnified tenfold when we found the heavy dark mahogany front door of the mansion partially open. Pulling out weapons out from their shoulder holsters we cautiously entered the cold, dark house expecting either trouble or something gruesome. We found gruesome.
+++++A dead man.
+++++Setting on a leather sofa, arms splayed, a small .380 caliber automatic in his right hand. His eyes were open and looking definitely frozen. There was a bullet hole in his right temple. A hole that looked roughly the size of a .380. Around the entry hole was the distinctive burn marks. We found him in a small library in the back of the house. Sunlight now, well past dawn, flooded in through a set of French doors that opened out into the back yard. In the snow starting at the doors were a set of footprints . . . the footprints of a woman . . . relatively fresh and heading straight for a large detached three car garage.
+++++Frank, frowning, pointed to the dead man and glanced at me.
+++++“Betcha that’s Richard Goodrich. The original Richard Goodrich. And he didn’t kill himself. This was murder.”
+++++“How do you know that?” I asked.
+++++“Richard Goodrich was left handed. This guy’s left handed. See . . . he’s got his wristwatch on his right hand. There’s an ink pen in his right shirt pocket. Like a left hander would naturally do when reaching for a pen. So a left hander wouldn’t use his right hand to pull the trigger. Ergo; murder.”
+++++“And the women’s prints outside?”
+++++“Mrs. Yates. She’s running. As you would too if you shot your ex-husband and made it to look like a suicide.”
+++++I nodded in agreement and dug out my cellphone. As I thumbed in the precinct’s number I glanced at Frank.
+++++“Call the airport. Ask’em how many planes are departing in the next hour.”
+++++Frank nodded and reached for his phone.
+++++I knew it was a long shot. But sometimes . . .
+++++We nabbed Betty Tobias, once Betty Goodrich, at the airport. She was a mousey looking woman with brown hair, a flat face, and long red fingernails. She was sitting at a small table in a small bar inside the airport terminal with a beer in front of her and nervously checking her watch. The moment Frank and I walked in, accompanied by a couple of uniform officers, she slumped in her chair like a balloon suddenly losing all its air.
+++++Two hours later we had her in an interrogation room sitting in a hard wooden chair in front of a small wooden table with me sitting opposite of her and Frank looming over her like Dracula ready to pounce. Her cheeks were scarred with black streaks from tears ruining her mascara. She had been quietly weeping for the last two hours. Beside her was her lawyer. A lawyer we knew personally and liked. He looked ashen faced and tight lipped. Signs that told us his client was guilty and was willing to talk.
+++++“Mrs. Yates, run us through this. I admit we’re at a loss as to dotting all the dots and crossing all the T’s. But we have more than enough evidence to prove you killed Richard Goodrich. I’m sure your counselor advised you to open up and cooperate. It certainly will go easier on you. So tell us. How did this all begin? And why did it end like the way it did?”
+++++She glanced at her lower, who nodded silently, before folding hands on the table in front of her and looking at us.
+++++“Eight years ago Richard Goodrich came to my husband with a plan. Back then I was married to Tobias . . . Tobias Yates. Tobias was looking for a way to get out of the business. To get out of fencing stolen jewelry for the mob. He wanted a clean break. He wanted a way to completely disappear. Richard had the plan.”
+++++“Let me guess,” I said. “You take out a twenty million dollar life insurance policy on your current husband. That finances the whole deal. Tobias gets ten million and Richard gets ten million. How am I doing so far?”
+++++She nodded in agreement, lifting a hand up to wipe a stream of teams sliding down one cheek.
+++++“Richard said he knew two patsies who looked vaguely like himself and Tobias. His idea was to kill the two, make it look like it was him and Tobias who had died, collect the insurance money, and disappear. At first Tobias was totally against it. The idea of killing innocent people just to get away with a boat load of cash. But Richard was good. He was smooth. He had this way with words. In the end he convinced Tobias the plan was perfect and they could get away with it.”
+++++“So who does the killing? Richard or Tobias?” Frank grunted from behind the sitting Mrs. Goodrich. “And why did you divorce Tobias and marry Goodrich?”
+++++“Richard killed the two. They really did look like them. As to the divorce . . . well . . . I guess you could say I knew Richard long before I married Tobias. Richard was my first love. I could never say no to the guy. He told me to dump Tobias and marry him. And like the idiot I am I did.”
+++++“Okay. The lookalikes are dead. You divorce your first husband and marry slick talking Goodrich. What happened recently that got the two of them dead?” I asked.
+++++“When the insurance money came Tobias took his cut and left the city. Surprised me when he said he’d divorce me without a fuss. Left town and I didn’t see him until about a week ago. When he came back to town and saw I was now Mrs. Richard Goodrich he went nuts. Threatened to kill Richard with that little gun of his. They fought several times and then Richard, coming to believe Tobias was serious about killing him, decided to play safe and kill Tobias. I . . . I guess that’s the way it went down.”
+++++“So why did you kill your current husband?”
+++++“I didn’t! Richard came back to the house and told me what he’d just done. He was crazy. Out of his head! He knew everything was falling apart. He knew the cops would come in and start investigating everything. Knew they’d finally figure out what had happened eight years earlier. He got depressed. Yesterday I saw him walk back toward the reading room and close the door. The next thing I hear is a shot going off. I ran to the reading room and found Richards slumped on the couch. He was dead. That’s when I panicked! I had to leave. Had to! So I ran. Ran to the airport and . . . and . . . that’s where you found me.”
+++++I glanced at the scowling red headed monster standing behind the woman and her lawyer. Frank’s eyes looked at me and silently he shook his head no. He wasn’t buying it. Neither was I. Looking back at the woman I sat back in the chair, crossed a leg over the other, and smiled.
+++++“Nice try Mrs. Goodrich. But it doesn’t work. It sounds like a great story. And it has a chance to maybe convince a jury you’re the innocent victim in all of this. I’m sure the counselor here is going to do his best to convince the jurors it’s true. But let me tell you how it really went down.
+++++Eight years ago you were the one who came up with the idea of getting out of the business. You were the one who came up with the idea of taking out a twenty million dollar life insurance policy. You knew an old lover who had no problem with morality issues who would do the dirty work. No sane man businessman like Tobias Yates would listen to a total stranger spew out some cockamamie get rich plan of killing two people in an attempt to disappear from the mob. The only way that could happen is if someone he knew, someone he loved and trusted, came up with the idea. That person was you, Mrs. Goodrich.”
+++++“Can you prove that?” the balding little attorney asked in a soft voice.
+++++“She is the one who took out the policy, counselor,” I said, pointing a finger at the woman in front of me. “She is the one who filed for divorce. Strong circumstantial evidence has convicted many a murderer. But we have a bit more evidence to make our case.”
+++++“What evidence?” Mrs. Goodrich asked, color draining from her face.
+++++“We know for a fact you and your ex-husband have been living together for years,” Frank growled from behind her. “We also found a security tape in a bus station showing Richard Goodrich arriving in town about a week ago. So you’re story doesn’t hold water. It was Richard who blew town once he got his cut of the money. But eight years later he’s dead broke . . . and yes, counselor, we can prove that. Richard comes back and begins to put the squeeze on you two. Give him more money or he goes to the cops. You panic. You decide there’s too many loose wires running around potentially threatening you. Quite coldly you decide to clean up the mess. Kill both Tobias and Goodrich. You use Richard’s gun on Tobias and Tobias’ gun on Richard. Nice touch, by the way. I liked that. A kind of poetic justice in a twisted, macabre fashion.”
+++++The woman’s eyes glared at me filled with rage and contempt. But she kept quiet. Her only chance to get clear of this mess was to remain silent and hope her lawyer was good in the courtroom.
+++++He was good. But not quite good enough.

B.R. Stateham writes hardboiled noir and the darker, meaner kind as well. Old enough to know better nevertheless he continues writing them for no particular reason other than he enjoys it.