I took a shower to wash the plaster from George Web’s ceiling out of my hair. As I was drying off, the phone rang. I wrapped the towel around my waist.
“Yeah,” I said in my usual amiable tone, not being in the mood for any presumptuous conversation.
“I hear you shot a ceiling tonight. Where’d you learn to shoot?”
“Whadda ya want Harry?” I replied.
“Just checking in with you to make sure you are alright and to let you know Robbery wants your fat butt down here tomorrow morning to go through some mug shots to see if you can ID the perp.”
“The ferret was just a kid. Probably have to look for his picture in a high school year book. What time do they want to see me?”
“As soon as you can crawl outta that piece of crap you call a bed, or are you bunking with Eloise tonight?”
“I’ll be down around nine,” I said.
“Any head way on our lady friend?”
Ignoring my pun, Harry replied, “Detective Williams tracked down the guy who owned the place where the body was found. Some Polack living in Miami now, who leased it to a guy named Paul Godfrey. Seems nobody has seen or heard from this Godfrey for the past few months. We got an APB out on him so if he is in the area, we’ll find him. Chief Meier is all over me on this one. Guess he is already catching some heat.”
“I already talked to the guy in Miami.”
“Yeah, he said some asshole already called him,” Harry replied. “I figured it was you as you’re the only asshole I know.”
“The Chief has contacted the Cleveland Police Department to get the name of the guy who did the blood analyses at that Sheppard trial to see if he can read the spatter pattern of the blood. I wish the bastard would have left something like finger prints or bite marks for us to follow up on. If he is smart, he would have disposed of the clothes he was wearing by now. Of course, these deficient half wits aren’t always the brightest bulbs on the tree. So maybe we’ll get lucky, who knows?”
The Sheppard trial Harry was referring to was coined “The Trial of The Century, the murder trial of Dr. Sam Sheppard, a wealthy surgeon in suburban Cleveland Ohio, who was convicted of murdering his wife back in 1955. It was the first case where blood analysis was used to help convict someone of murder.
“Yeah, well, good luck. Marcello has Mildred checking on rumors that Godfrey was spotted down in Chicago. She has been in touch with Marcello’s ex partner and asked him to do some looking around. Hopefully he can dig something up. I’ll keep you posted. See ya tomorrow.” I hung up before he could respond. I knew that would irritate him as he always enjoyed being the one to hang up on me, usually while I was in mid sentence asking him a question.
I threw down my towel and slipped on a fresh pair of blue jeans and t-shirt. After strapping on my shoulder rig, I put on my jacket and slipped into my Dan Post boots and walked to the car. Crossing my fingers, I turned on the ignition and started to pump the pencils. The old girl fired up right away and I pulled out into traffic heading to Rocco’s and Eloise, thinking about what kind of guy would do something like beheading a woman and why. There was the famous Black Dahlia case in Los Angeles back in the late ‘40’s. That one was never solved but it is highly unlikely that the same guy did this. Or was it? From what I could recall from that case, the body was found in a field but the body hadn’t bled out there, meaning she was killed somewhere else and dumped there.
This lady was definitely killed in that bedroom. There was enough blood on the floor to satisfy a vampire convention. I would welcome a warm body next to mine tonight; a warm live body that is.