Chapter 8

On our way back to the office, Jones and I decided to grab some lunch. Neither of us was very hungry, but we knew once we got back to the precinct, we were in for a long evening.

“Pizza?” I asked.

“Yeah, that works.”

“I never asked you, did you find out anything about that Sims woman?”

“She’s clean. Squeaky clean,” Jones said. “I thought this case would be easier to close. We have to get those other two women in to talk to us.”

“Sims said she’d talk, but she couldn’t commit to a time. She said her job has her schedule all jacked up. I’m not buying the job excuse; I think there might be something else,” I said.

“Stay on her. Tell her we can come to her if that will help her.”

I pulled in to the parking lot and we exited the car. My feet hit the pavement with hard thuds and I let out a loud sigh.

“You alright over there?” Jones looked at me just as I caught myself shaking my head.

“Yeah, man, I’m fine.”

“Kind of not sure I believe you, but if you say so.”

“My mind is racing, dude. I’m trying to figure out what we do next if these two women don’t give us anything. Which way do we turn then?”

“Fuck if I know. We’ll go back to the drawing board to see what we’ve missed, I guess. Or, we go to the college where this guy taught. There may be something or someone there who can tell us about Effridge. Maybe he was cozy with some female there, too.”

“That’s a good idea. I want to go back by the apartment while we have the place secured. We need to look at everything again.”

We each finished eating our slices, then got back into the car. Mrs. Dupree, Carlotta, wasn’t doing anything with the apartment until we gave her the go-ahead to clean everything up. She was hoping we wouldn’t need more than a week to make sure we had everything we needed before the cleaning crew would be brought in. I couldn’t imagine wanting to move back into the place where my spouse was murdered. Especially since she had another residence somewhere. But maybe she would just clean it and sell it off.

When we walked up the steps, we saw the neighbor I’d talked to when we got the initial call. He was walking down toward us.

“Good afternoon, Detectives.”

“Hello,” Jones replied. I nodded my head in the gentleman’s direction. He stopped on the step right in front of us.

“Any luck finding the killer, yet?” he asked.

“Our investigation is still in progress,” I said. I was trying to skirt the issue. It felt really funny saying we hadn’t arrested anyone yet. Hell, we didn’t even have a clear idea of who we should be targeting.

“I would have thought for sure you’d have someone locked up by now.” His round belly shifted when he moved the brunt of his weight from his left to his right foot.

“We’re working on it. I don’t remember if you told me or not, sir, but were you home Friday morning?” I asked.

“I was here early in the morning. I saw that she-devil leave.”

“And who is the she-devil?” Jones asked. He tried desperately not to let the smile take over his face.

“Carlotta. His wife. She’s a real piece of work, that one.”

“Did you see anyone else come in the building that morning, or after Carlotta left?” I jumped back into leading the questioning.

“I just so happened to look out the window and saw her secretary walking across the street toward the building close to eight-thirty. She didn’t stay long, maybe ten minutes, tops.”

Jones and I both looked at each other. I’m pretty sure we were thinking the same thing: we definitely needed to talk to her.

“I saw another woman walking in when I was leaving, too.”

“Do you remember what time that was?”

“Well, let’s see. I was on my way to my podiatrist appointment. That was scheduled for eleven o’clock.” He stopped for a moment and looked around the hall, as if his answer to my question would appear out of thin air for him. He continued, “I had to catch the ten thirty bus to go across town, so it was probably close to ten o’clock. Maybe a little after ten.”

“Do you think you’d recognize the other woman if we showed you a picture?”

“I sure would. She was a cute little thing. Really cute. A carrot-top, or at least she had hints of red in her hair. If only I were about, oh, ten or fifteen years younger…”

I couldn’t help but wonder if our McKenzie Sims was a red head. From what Calhoun had said, Effridge was seeing her, too. “We’ll make sure to stop back with some photos for you to look at. Hopefully you can tell us if you recognize anyone. What time did you return to the building that day?”

“It was after noon. I don’t remember the exact time. By the time I got back everything was quiet around here.”

“You’ve been very helpful. Thank you.”

“The name’s Buckley. Jordan Buckley, up in apartment twelve.” He took another step down. “You can come by tomorrow morning, if you like. I’ll be home. Bring all of your pictures and I’ll tell ya if you have any of the cute little redhead I saw.”

“Thank you, Mr. Buckley.” We let him pass us as he continued his descent. And we continued what we had set out to do.

Jones and I entered the apartment as carefully as we had the morning we were called here. We both inspected the entry door, particularly around the hardware. There was no sign of forced entry. We inspected everything inside the door and the door handle. I didn’t expect we’d find anything new, but desperation was setting in and we had to exhaust every possibility.

We split up with the sole purpose of making sure we hadn’t missed anything in the living room, dining room, or kitchen.

It felt weird being in the home, looking for evidence to collect, behind the more than capable medical examiner’s crew. But we had to take any and all measures to try to solve this case.

Our first pass through the residence had us walking around the blood-stained area where the body had laid face up just between the dining room and living room. That had me thinking they probably weren’t in the kitchen. And if they were, it wasn’t for very long. So I made the kitchen my first stop to see if my hunch was correct.

A half-consumed cup of coffee sat on the table. Jones walked into the kitchen.

“I remember Calhoun saying he left Effridge drinking his coffee. If that were true, and Effridge didn’t charge after Calhoun, then he would have been sitting right here in this chair when Calhoun left,” I said.

Being careful not to tamper with the possible evidence on the outside of the mug, I lifted it using my pen, carefully made my way to the sink, and dumped the remaining cold coffee out of it. Then I carefully placed it in a paper bag to give to the lab.

Everything in the kitchen seemed to be in its place – nothing overturned, no missing knives, no dirty dishes sitting in the sink. I opened the dishwasher door and pulled out the drawer to reveal one cup. I bent to look at the writing and saw ‘Carlotta’ printed upside down. Had to have been a special order. I carefully placed that one in a paper bag, too.

“Let’s go check the bedroom,” Jones said.

I glanced around the kitchen just before I made my way down the hall and took a quick second-glance inventory of the knives that were in the butcher block on top of the counter. All knives were in their slots. The killer must have brought their own knife to the party, I thought. They had thought out the killing of the poor guy.

I made my way into the bedroom and saw Jones looking at the unmade bed. He extracted a pen from his pocket and used it to move the sheets and comforter around.

“No way am I touching that bed,” I said. He looked up at me and his lips turned up in the corners.

“Me neither,” Jones said. “But I wonder if they came in here to scour it for any evidence.”

“I’d like to think so.”

“Then they missed this.” Jones pointed at a long medium-brown hair. “Let’s bag it and take it back, but they need to go over this room. I hope that’s the only thing they missed.”

I made a mental note.

Next stop was the dining room. As I stepped into the room, the large blood stain on the carpet and blood droplets that splattered on the walls were all that remained.

I carefully scanned the carpet, searching for a hair, a lint ball, anything that could provide a clue.

After scouring the carpet for over an hour, I felt like my eyes were crossing. Judging by the scrunched features on Jones’ face, he must have felt similarly.

“I’m not seeing anything new here. Did you see anything yet?” He looked up at me when he spoke.

“Nothing, man. Nothing. Well, except for the couple of coffee cups in the kitchen and that hair in the bedroom.” I wiped my free hand across my forehead, wiping the sweat that was close to dripping into my eyes. “Let’s get out of here. We can stop by the lab to see if they have anything new and I’ll give them the mugs and hair to process.”

“While you do that, I’ll call the college to find out what’s taking so long to get the professor’s schedule to me. We can meet back up in the office later and compare notes.”

“Gotcha.”

We walked to the door. As if we both were thinking the same thing, we stopped, turned, and took in the scene again, letting our eyes scan as far as we could see. Jones patted me on the back. “There’s probably nothing else here.”