A Bleak Prospect, Page 2

  A day after I submitted the drawing to the media, John Gallagher walked into my office and tossed a copy of the Knoxville News-Sentinel onto my desk.

  “You see this, Boss?”

  “No, not yet.” I snatched up the paper and unfolded it.

  “Look at page one. That cowboy, Lew Schmecke, gets all the ink, and our sketch of the murder victim is only in a single column on page three.”

  “What the hell is Schmecke doing in Tennessee?”

  “Read it, but before you do, I’ll tell you. The sheriff hired him to assist with the Riverside Strangler task force.”

  “Oh, for chrissakes.”

  “Yeah. What makes him so special?”

  “Special? He’s a carnival act. I’m glad we never worked with him.”

  John and I had gotten louder than necessary in our conversation. Bettye stepped into my doorway to see why we were cutting up.

  “Are you gentlemen having another argument, or are you just acting crazier than normal for a good reason?”

  I shrugged and blew out a puff of air in frustration. “We’re talking about the famous Lew Schmecke, private eye.”

  “And this Lew Schmecke makes you angry?”

  “He’s a loser, Sarge,” John said. “We remember him from back in New York.”

  Bettye tilted her head to the right and gave me the eye. That meant she wanted an explanation. When I didn’t respond immediately, she swung her hips to the left and rested a hand just below her gun belt. Bettye conveys a message with body language better than most.

  “Sit down,” I suggested.

  She planted her lovely backside in one of my tan leather guest chairs.

  “Former Detective Lew Schmecke used to work for NYPD. He was coming up as John and I were finishing our careers. We first noticed him when he was assigned to a robbery task force at Manhattan South. We, of course, worked out on the Island.

  “Don’t get me wrong. There were some good cops working there, but Schmecke wasn’t necessarily one of them.”

  “More like some politician’s pet gopher,” John added.

  Bettye did the head tilt thing again. Her shoulder-length blonde hair swayed slightly. She raised her eyebrows and blinked her hazel eyes—her way of saying, ‘Keep talkin’.

  “Schemcke was a relatively new detective,” I said, “and what we didn’t like about him, we learned from cops who were there, trustworthy guys who we knew had no reason to lie. When other people did something newsworthy, little Lew grabbed the notoriety by jumping in front of a TV camera as often as possible. He was only another cog in the PD’s wheel, but he made it look like he was chief cook and bottle washer at the task force.”

  “And now the sheriff’s hired him,” John said, sounding exasperated.

  Bettye wrinkled her forehead. I needed to elaborate.

  “I haven’t read the entire article yet, but it seems that chubby little Lew is here to assist in finding the Riverside Strangler.”

  “Oh, my.”

  “Exactly,” I said.

  John added more fuel to the fire. “This guy didn’t even do twenty years at NYPD before he put in his papers to retire, Sarge. Then he started his own detective agency using all kinds of computers and electronic gadgets. He’s just a showman. A phony.”

  “How could he retire with less than twenty years?” Bettye asked.

  “The city system allowed for someone with fifteen years service to declare a vested interest in their pension and retire. On their twentieth anniversary, they would start collecting checks. That’s what Schmecke did. And then he started peeping into keyholes.”

  “Haven’t you seen him doing commercials for that potato chip company, Sarge?” John asked, his exasperation not even close to subsiding. ‘Our chips have that real barbeque taste.’ They call him the legendary detective.”

  It looked like a light went off behind Bettye’s eyes. “Ah, that stubby little guy who always needs a shave?”

  I nodded. “That’s him. A legend in his own mind.”

  “Darlin’ I’m thinkin’ you two are not lookin’ forward to working with this Lew Schmecke.”

  “You think, Betts?”

  Chapter Three

  The day after our plea for assistance showed up in the papers and on the four networks, we received a phone call from a Mrs. Iris Wakefield who said she saw the facial drawing in the Maryville Daily Times. Bettye forwarded her call to me.

  “I cain’t be sure,” she said, “but the pitcher in the paper looks like my Rosanna.”

  “Rosanna is your daughter?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Her voice sounded strained, as if her throat had constricted, afraid to ask and terrified to hear my response.

  “When did you see Rosanna last, Mrs. Wakefield?”

  “She hasn’t been home for a few days now. Is she really—?” She couldn’t make the word dead come out.

  “I’m sorry you had to read that story and see the sketch. There’s just no easy way to say it, ma’am, but the girl we found was murdered.”

  There was a protracted period of silence. “Mrs. Wakefield?”

  “Oh, Lord have mercy. Are you sure it’s her?”

  “No, ma’am, I’m not certain of anything. The girl we found had no identification on her person.”

  “Oh, Lord. How can I be sure?”

  “How old was your daughter?”

  “Twenty-one, last February.”

  “About how tall was she, and how much did she weigh?”

  “I think about five-foot-four. She weighed more’n me. Maybe a hundred and fifteen, twenny.”

  That sounded close enough for me. “Can you look at the girl, Mrs. Wakefield? It’s the only way you can be sure.” I carefully avoided using the words dead, body or victim.

  She sniffed a couple times and finally answered. “I guess. How would I do that?”

  I arranged to pick up Iris Wakefield and take her to the morgue later that day. Without a Mr. Wakefield or anyone else to accompany her, I asked Bettye to tag along. She’s great at offering sympathy and moral support.

  Next to a shootout against overwhelming forces, there is nothing more miserable for a cop to do than make death notifications or accompany family members when they identify their dead loved ones.

  This was an especially tough job. Iris Wakefield was a pathetic creature. The Department of Safety driver’s license files showed her as thirty-nine years old—she could have passed for sixty. Iris was of medium height, but painfully thin, pale and unhealthy-looking. She told us that she worked on the assembly line at the Rubbermaid plant in the southern part of the county. Her fine medium brown hair lacked luster and body, and her skin had the color of a cancer patient. Her clothes made me think that she shopped more often at Goodwill than Dillard’s.

  We walked in through the main entrance of Blount Memorial Hospital and escorted Iris to the lower level and a viewing room next to the morgue where Earl Ogle brought our victim’s body.

  A small fifteen-watt red bulb popped on over the wide window telling me that Earl was ready for us to begin the identification. I pushed a button, and a screen lifted for us to see Earl standing behind a stainless steel gurney holding the unmistakable shape of a corpse covered with a sage green hospital sheet.

  I tapped the glass twice, and Earl folded the sheet down to Jane Doe’s shoulders.

  “Oh, sweet Jesus have mercy,” came out of Iris Wakefield as her knees gave way, and she began to crumble. Standing to her right, I wrapped my left arm around Iris as Bettye grabbed for her arm. Together we righted her and led Mrs. Wakefield to the upholstered bench placed along the side wall of the viewing room for just such situations.

  “Can I get you something, Iris,” Bettye said. “Water, maybe?”

  Once her eyes snapped back to their normal position, Iris gingerly shook her head. “No, ma’am. I couldn’t keep nuthin’ down.”

  Tears began trickling out of the inner corners of both eyes. “Poor Rosanna. My poor, silly, li
ttle girl. She never shoulda done that.”

  It took Iris Wakefield a few minutes to regain her composure and the strength to walk.

  “I think I can manage now,” she said.

  “We’ll be right beside you,” I offered. “Take it at your own pace.”

  “Yes, sir, I’ll be fine.”

  “Are you able to talk to us about Rosanna?”

  She didn’t answer immediately.

  “We’ll need your help to find the person who did this to her.”

  “I unnerstand.”

  Iris wasn’t overly talkative. I looked at Bettye who raised her left eyebrow half an inch. I’ve always wondered how she could move them independently. Mine only operate in tandem.

  “Would now be all right, Iris?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am, we could do that.”

  “The café looked pretty quiet when we passed,” I suggested. “That might be a good spot to sit and talk.”

  “Yes, sir, that’ll be fine.”

  We found the Atrium Café a few feet from the elevators when we landed on the ground floor.

  Before we entered, I asked, “Can I get you anything, Iris? A drink or something to eat?”

  “Just some sweet tea, please. I’m not hungry.”

  I nodded and looked at Bettye. “Coffee?”

  She nodded back. “Iris and I will find a table.”

  The women retreated toward the back of the room, while I stepped up to the counter and ordered our drinks.

  I placed two mugs of coffee and a glass of tea on the table. The big tumbler looked like it held enough liquid to fill the radiator of a Kenworth Class 8 trailer truck. The tea looked like it had enough sugar in it to give the entire UT defensive line enough energy to sack a quarterback ten times during the final quarter. I hoped Iris wouldn’t slip into a diabetic coma.

  I sat and tried the coffee. It was extremely hot, but fairly weak.

  “Sam,” Bettye said, “Iris was just telling me that she last heard from Rosanna the day before you found her.”

  “On the telephone?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “When did you actually see her last?”

  “Day b’fore that.”

  “She lives with you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did she often stay away from home for days at a time?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Where did she go when she wasn’t at home or at work?”

  “With friends.”

  Iris was a woman of few words. The only one with less to say might have been Marcel Marceau.

  “What did you talk about on the phone?”

  “She told me she’d be late if she got home at all.”

  I needed stronger coffee to fortify my patience.

  Bettye must have sensed my frustration and took a shot.

  “Iris, what did Rosanna do?”

  “For a livin’?”

  Bettye nodded. “Uh-huh.”

  “Used to work for someone, but now works for herse’f.”

  I gave my head a slight shake. “Doing what?”

  Iris held the big glass in place on the table with both hands and moved her head and entire body to the straw and took a very long sip. Then, she shifted her eyes from me to Bettye and back to me. But she didn’t answer for another long moment. “Um, she would go to parties and functions and such with people.”

  I began to get an idea what Rosanna did to occupy her waking hours.

  “Who were these people?” Bettye asked.

  “She called ’em clients.”

  I didn’t want to create more heartache for Iris Wakefield by getting overly blunt about her daughter’s activities, but I also didn’t want the conversation to last forty-eight hours. “Iris, I know some things may be difficult to discuss, but to help us find the person who did this terrible thing to Rosanna, we’ll need as much information as possible.”

  A tear rolled downward from the corner of her right eye. She wiped it with the back of her hand and sniffed away the congestion sorrow creates in the head. “Won’t nuthin’ ever bring Rosanna back though, will it?”

  I shook my head. “Of course not. But just maybe the three of us can do something to keep the same thing from happening to someone else’s daughter.”

  Iris nodded slowly but didn’t speak. She again bent over the glass of tea and sucked on the straw, her eyes now focused on the tabletop.

  “Was Rosanna in the escort business?” Bettye asked.

  After a long pause, Iris answered. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Rosanna was twenty-one,” I said. “But in the recent photos you showed us, she looked much younger. She was a very pretty girl. Did she dress up when she went to meet clients?”

  She nodded. “Yes, sir.” And again attacked the straw and glass of tea.

  “Will you show Sergeant Lambert where Rosanna kept her clothes?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I assume Rosanna drove a car in her business, but we haven’t found one yet.”

  “Yes, sir, she did. Little silver one.”

  “What kind of car?”

  “Ford, I think. I’d have ta look.”

  I tried another sip of the scalding coffee and wondered why I bothered. “Finding her car will help us. Was it registered in her name or yours?”

  “Mine. The in-surance was cheaper that way.”

  “You have an extra key?”

  “Not on me, but I know where it is.”

  “Okay, good. You said Rosanna now worked for herself. How did she meet clients?”

  “One of those computer lists.”

  “You mean classified advertisements, not a dating site?”

  “Yes, sir. Charlie’s List.”

  “Did she take phone calls or make arrangements on-line?”

  “Both.”

  I still needed a pry bar to get the information from Iris.

  “Is Rosanna’s computer at your house?”

  She nodded. “In her room.”

  “Did she use a home phone?”

  “No, sir, her cell phone.”

  “Have you seen the bills from her phone company?”

  “I seen them in the mail, but don’t read them.”

  “We’ll need a recent one.”

  “We can look in her room.”

  The conversation went on like this for another twenty minutes. Although it was difficult to extract information from Iris Wakefield, she did provide us with helpful facts and one very interesting item.

  “During your last phone call,” I said, “did Rosanna tell you anything specific about where she might be going?”

  Iris again drank from the bottomless vat of sweet tea.

  “She said she didn’t want to work that night, but claimed she had ta.”

  “Because she needed the money?” Bettye asked.

  Iris closed her eyes tightly, but not tight enough to prevent several tears from escaping. Her mouth quivered, but she finally answered. “Last thing she said ta me was, if I don’t show up on time, they’ll kill me.”

  Bettye and I exchanged looks again.

  “Iris,” I said, “do you think that meant there was more than one person?”

  She sniffed, and her lips quivered again. “I don’t know.”

  Chapter Four

  We returned Iris Wakefield to her home on Tree Top Lane in Prospect, picked up a small laptop, the spare key for Rosanna’s missing 2009 Ford Focus and documentation on her phone carrier, auto insurance, bank and credit card accounts, a recent visit to a walk-in clinic, school history and even bills from where she had her car serviced. From this and the public records we could access, we’d conduct a complete background investigation on our victim that even the CIA couldn’t beat.

  On our way back to the PD, I asked Bettye a big question. “You know what bothered me most?”

  She answered as if she’d like me to think she could read my mind. “Certainly do, darlin’. What do you think about that?”

  “Who know
s? It might have been a common enough grammatical error. Or not. Maybe Rosanna had problems with her use of pronouns, or they meant more than one client.”

  She raised that eyebrow again. “Multiple jobs or two at once?”

  “Good question. Maybe the computer will hold all kinds of information, and we’ll see if she scheduled several johns back to back or an elaborate ménage a trios.”

  “I tried to look at her documents quickly in her room but got stopped. It’s password protected. Who do you plan on gettin’ to crack open the computer?”

  “I thought you could do that.”

  “I still ask Little Donnie when I’ve got computer questions.”

  “I guess we can’t have a thirteen-year-old investigating the memoirs of a sex worker, can we?”

  “No, Samuel, you may not use my son to read the life story of an on-line prostitute.”

  The next day, after a Mexican lunch at El Jibarito, a classy cantina only a quarter mile down the road from the Justice Center, John and I showed up for the combination press conference and Riverside Strangler task force meeting.

  The sheriff’s department houses two conference rooms. Both, like his personal office, are on the third floor of the Justice Center. A receptionist pointed us toward the larger of the two rooms.

  More like a mini-auditorium, the room held an oval table about the size and shape of a broad-beamed, ocean going, double-ended cat boat. I lost count of the number of black leatherette swivel chairs that surrounded it. Behind the table were rows of posh easy chairs for onlookers not directly participating in the dog and pony show.

  John and I found our place cards and took seats close to the end where the podium stood—like the wheelhouse on this ship of state.

  In the ten-foot space behind the spectator’s seats, several TV cameramen and newspaper still photographers stood prepared to record the event for posterity. I immediately recognized WNXX TV’s cinematographer, John Leckmanski. When I caught his eye, he shot me a gunman’s salute. I winked and assumed he’d like to see me after the festivities concluded.