Leaving the Scene Page 3

  “And her lying here on the ground doing what? Taking a nap?”

  Mansfield’s expression showed no matter how low his opinion of the locals had been, now it was worse. “I have no idea what she was doing there. I’m here about the vehicle.”

  “Fair enough. Let me ask you this: Given what you see and your considerable experience as a traffic investigator, what would you say the odds were whoever drove the car accidentally ran this woman over?”

  “I’m not here to speculate.”

  “Off the record. One cop to another.”

  Mansfield sighed to show the burden placed on his patience. “Far as we are from the road, close as this pipe is? I’d say it’s unlikely this was an accident. Especially taking into consideration the driver didn’t call it in. Most citizens run someone over and it’s an accident, they call it in.”

  “Is that what you’d tell a jury?”

  “I want to finish my report and read the autopsy first. I don’t expect it to change too much.”

  “You are willing to go so far as to say whoever did this definitely left the scene of an accident? No way he didn’t know he hit something, given the kind of car he had to be driving.”

  Ice formed on the lenses of Mansfield’s aviators. “Yeah. All else fails, you got a dead bang case on leaving the scene.” Shouldered his way between the two Penns River cops and walked to his car.

  “What do you think?” Neuschwander said as Mansfield drove away.

  “The way Sally likes to plead cases out? I think we’ll be lucky to get leaving the scene. Too bad whatever happened here didn’t wake any of the neighbors. We might’ve had a shot at disturbing the peace.”

  11:52 a.m.

  Nancy Snyder didn’t think assigning Chris Trettle to work traffic at St. Margaret Mary’s annual summer festival was too much of an ask. Not hard work so much as a pain in the ass. On your feet all evening with nothing to do but make sure cars turning onto and off of Leechburg Road killed as few kids as possible while keeping Friday evening traffic from becoming gridlocked, the casino half a mile up the road. Dave Wohleber on vacation. Skip Speer worked a double yesterday. George Augustine on light duty after he cut his forearm eleven stitches’ worth breaking up a domestic. Sean Sisler worked it Thursday, Trevor Boston had it Saturday afternoon, and Kathy Burrows Saturday evening. Trettle was off on Saturday. He was the best of her limited options.

  Trettle had other plans; he didn’t say what. Nancy suspected they involved going to the fair with his and his brother’s kids instead of wearing the bag. Police work was the life he’d chosen, so Nancy insisted. Trettle said something as he left. Hard to make out. “Families” was in there. Maybe something about dykes.

  No one else around. Not an example of open defiance. Not Trettle’s first offense, either. Nancy decided she could draw the line without anyone losing too much face. “Officer Trettle. In my office.”

  Nancy led him in. Sat behind her desk. Waited until Trettle’s ass was half an inch from the seat of one of her visitor’s chairs. “Officer Trettle. You did not request, nor did you receive, permission to be seated.”

  Trettle gave Nancy a good look at the expression that cemented his reputation of not being someone to mess with on the street. She held his gaze without upping the ante until he rose.

  “At ease,” she said before he could assume a posture. “You and I never had any trouble when I worked patrol, but this is not the first time you have been openly disrespectful to me as deputy. You can have what feelings you want about me, but you will respect the rank.” Took a counseling form from a drawer. “We’re going to see if the loss of a day’s vacation clarifies it for you.”

  Trettle went from pissed off to amazed in one second flat. “You can’t take a day for that.”

  “For what? For the record, describe what you said.” Held a pen ready to write.

  “You’re docking me for something you didn’t even hear?”

  “I’m giving you a chance to clarify.”

  “I was muttering to myself because I had plans. Nothing directed at you.”

  “Explain how the word ‘dyke’ figured into your monolog.”

  The glare lessened a notch. “That’s not what I said.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I don’t remember exactly. Something about how I had plans with my family.”

  “And dykes don’t have families?” That left a mark. “Be grateful I’m only docking you the day and not writing a reprimand for uttering a homophobic slur.”

  “It’s only a slur if you are one.”

  “Not true. You don’t believe me, check the regs.” Nancy wasn’t a lesbian. Debating her sexual orientation could only make her appear defensive and imply she had a problem with gays herself, which she did not. “Do you have anything else to say?”

  Trettle made it clear he had plenty more to say but had found the good sense not to. Nancy finished the paperwork and slid the form across her desk. Trettle scrawled something in the signature block and turned on his heel.

  “Office Trettle.” Trettle not the only person in the room who’d learned a few things on patrol. Nancy’s command voice could stop a train. “You are not dismissed.”

  Trettle turned to face her. Stood at attention with a glare that made his previous effort look like a mother welcoming a child home from Afghanistan. Nancy signed her name. Separated the carbons. “Pick up your copy, and you are dismissed.” He closed the door with half an ounce less force than a slam.

  Nancy let out a breath. Tilted back her chair and checked out the ceiling while the adrenaline seeped away. Wondered what she could have done to keep things from going this far. Came to recognize this was on Trettle. If anything, she’d let things go too long in the hope he’d figure it out for himself.

  She had an agreement with Sullivan: she could patrol a few hours a week so long as she only provided backup and supervision. Sullivan reserved the same right for himself. The ability to get out of the office and be real police once in a while a not inconsiderable perk of being the brass in a small town.

  Hat in hand when two light knocks sounded. The door opened and Brendan Sullivan stuck his head in. “You have a minute?”

  “Sure. Your office?”

  “Here’s fine. Have a seat.” Waited for her to get back around the desk. His impish smile showed what he must have looked like as a kid. Nodded toward her visitor’s chair, still warm from Trettle’s red ass. “You mind?”

  “No. Please.”

  Sullivan sat. “I just encountered Chris Trettle in the hall. He’s not happy about pulling traffic duty at the fair tomorrow night. What happened?”

  Nancy’s stomach sank an inch. Took a deep breath and described her order, Trettle’s insubordination, and the confrontation. No editorializing. No embellishment. The smile grew in Sullivan’s eyes as she went, though not on his lips.

  He waited until she finished. “Okay, then. Looks like I did the right thing.” Let her suffer a few seconds longer. “Officer Trettle complained about how you took an innocent comment and blew it into a disciplinary issue because, he suspects, it might be your time of the month. We exchanged thoughts as I tried to clarify what he believed had so unjustly provoked your hormones. I found his answers to be unsatisfactory. I encouraged further clarification. He proceeded to clarify his way into two more lost vacation days and well on his way to a full week before his better angels took control of the situation.”

  This was not at all what Nancy expected after the way Sullivan began his spiel. He must have seen the look on her face. “I know how new you are in that chair. This was as good a time as any for me to show you and I are on the same page. Also a chance for me to see how you’d handle it.”

  He left it there so long Nancy couldn’t help herself. “And?”

  “Not exactly how I would’ve done it, but I have no complaints. Trettle earned the day you gave him even more than the two I added on.”

  “If you don’t mind me asking, how would you have handled it?”

  Sullivan shook his head. “There is no right or wrong. You did fine. Better yet, the way you did it shows you’re developing a command style. Everything I know about you says you were a hell of a patrol officer. Command is different. Everyone adapts to it in their own way. You’re finding yours.” Pointed to her hat on the desk. “Going somewhere?”

  “I was thinking of patrolling for an hour or so.”

  Sullivan nodded. “Sometimes you need some street time. We’ll walk out together. I want Trettle and maybe a couple of his buddies to see the command structure here stands together.”

  2:51 p.m.

  Ten messages on Doc’s voicemail by the time he got back to the shop. Two were for other cases. One promised Medicare would pay for a revolutionary new brace to ease the chronic back pain he didn’t have. Seven were tips on the hit-and-run in the Flats even though the only news available was whatever Katy Jackson had put on the Internet. Doc took a minute to check her story. She’d done a nice job. Then he called all seven to verify their information against things he’d held back. He knew going in it would be a waste of time.

  He typed up his preliminary report while Neuschwander flew through getting his forensic ducks in a row so he could get home and pack the van for tomorrow’s 5:00 a.m. departure. Teresa Shimp came back from taking a witness statement for another case. Doc got her attention before she had a chance to sit. “How busy are you?”

  “I’m working on those burglaries in Coxcomb Estates and that liquor store robbery downtown. Leads are still turning up on a couple of other things, plus the usual. Why?”

  “How many Coxcomb burglaries now?”

  “Five.”

  “Over how long?”


  “A little over a month.” Then, before Doc could say it, “I’m starting to think the guy lives there.”

  Doc checked his comment. He held no rank on Shimp. She deferred to him more often than not based on his experience. He sensed a teaching moment. “What makes you think so?”

  “This close together in both time and location? Plus they’re nighttime jobs? He knows the area and feels comfortable there. Maybe he’s a family friend who knows who won’t be home and how late they’ll be out.”

  “I was starting to wonder about that myself. What’s your plan?”

  “I’m thinking of going back to the victims and chatting them up about their friends. See if I can find someone they all have in common who hasn’t been hit.”

  “I don’t want to put you behind on Coxcomb, but do you think you can spare a few cycles to help me with this hit-and-run? Ricky’s abandoning me in the morning, and it looks like it might be a homicide.”

  “It is a homicide,” Neuschwander said without looking up.

  “You don’t know?” Shimp said.

  “The ME is pending it, and the traffic investigator from Troop D is noncommittal,” Doc said.

  “Extremely noncommittal.” Neuschwander still not looking up. “Excessively noncommittal. Superlatively noncommittal.”

  Shimp turned to Doc for an explanation. “The guy was kind of a dick. Made us pull information out of him while we had better things to do. Anyway, I may need a little help running down leads while Mr. Baywatch there goes to the beach.” Neuschwander typed with one hand, flipped Doc off with the other.

  “Sure. Whatever you need.”

  Doc’s phone rang. He said, “Assuming we get any leads,” as he reached for it. “Dougherty.” Listened. “What makes you think so?” More listening. “I’ll be right there.” Turned to Shimp. “Val has a woman in the lobby might be a relative of our victim. Says the woman is distraught. That’s the word she used: ‘distraught.’ Not to get all Mars and Venus about it, but you’re way better handling emotional people than I am, especially emotional women. I’d consider it a favor if you sat in on this one.”

  “Distraught” wasn’t the first word Doc thought of when he saw the woman in the lobby. “Distressed” was right up there; “frazzled” also a contender. Mid-twenties, five-five or -six with light brown hair grown out of any recognizable style. A tattoo of a butterfly high on her left breast, a rose with a barbed-wire stem on her right arm. She talked ten words a second all the way from the public lobby to the interview room. Doc stopped paying attention when he realized no three consecutive sentences related to each other. Maybe this was what distraught looked like. Or cranked.

  The woman’s name was Melody Rushnock. Doc seated her; Shimp gave her a bottle of cold water. Doc said, “Ms. Rushnock, you told Ms. Peters you’re here about the body found in the Flats this morning. What do you know about that?”

  “That body yinz found down the Flats? Up from the Dairy Queen, right? In that old gas station an’ ’at.” Doc nodded. “What’s she look like?”

  Doc still looking for a way around describing the victim’s face when Shimp spoke up. “Ms. Rushnock, who do you think it might be? We can’t say much right now except to confirm or deny what people tell us.”

  “I’m scared it’s my aunt. Patty Polcyn. She dint come home last night and everyone’s worried sick about her.”

  “What does your aunt look like?”

  “About my size ’cept her tits is bigger. She got a chipped tooth in front and a hump in her nose where she got it broke a few years ago. Blue eyes and blonde hair.”

  Shimp hadn’t seen the file or the body. Knew only what Doc had time to tell her before Melody Rushnock showed up. Looked to Doc, who opened his hands, palms up.

  Shimp gave half a nod. “Does your aunt have any distinguishing characteristics? Birthmark? A tattoo, maybe?”

  “She hates tats. Gave me a ton a shit when I got this one.” Pointed to her left breast. “Asked why I’d want to draw attention to something I ain’t got. Not bein’ snotty or nothing, just teasing. Aunt Patty’s a sweetheart.”

  Doc had a go. “Any broken bones? Besides her nose?”

  “Her nose ain’t enough? That guy messed it up pretty good.”

  She has no idea. “Most people break their noses at one time or another and don’t know it. She ever break an arm or a leg? Foot? Ribs? Fingers or toes?”

  Melody took her time. “Naw. I can’t think of nothing.”

  Shimp’s turn. “Any scars?”

  “She put her arm through a window once. Cut it up pretty good. A dozen stitches, I think.”

  “Which one?”

  “Up her brother’s cabin the other side of Brady’s Bend.”

  “Which arm?”

  Melody held out her arms and lifted her eyes toward the ceiling. “Left.” Doc’s cell phone already in hand. “She had her appendix took out once. That leave a scar?”

  Shimp continued the conversation while Doc stepped into the corridor and called Mike House. Got what he wanted and rang off. Stood where Melody Rushnock couldn’t see and gave Shimp a quick thumbs-up.

  Shimp said, “Ms. Rushnock, I’m afraid there’s a good chance the woman in the parking lot was your Aunt Patty.”

  “Aw, jeez. Can I see her?”

  “She’s not here. Homicides are taken to Pittsburgh for autopsy.”

  Took a few seconds for the penny to drop. “Homicide. That’s like murder, right? I thought she got hit by a car. You’re saying someone murdered her?”

  Shimp laid three fingers on Melody’s arm. “She was hit by a car. The driver left the scene and didn’t report it. That’s a crime. Any death resulting from a crime is treated as a homicide unless we find a reason not to.”

  “They gonna cut her open down there?”

  “I’m afraid they have to.”

  Melody looked to Doc, who tried to keep his face expressionless. It worked. Melody spoke to Shimp. “You mean like on TV and the movies where they make them—what do they call it?” Slashed a Y across her own torso to demonstrate. “Then they scoop out all her guts? Can they do that without asking the family first?”

  “Distraught” didn’t begin to describe Melody Rushnock now. She planted her head in her arms on the table and shook with sobs. Shimp laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. Melody turned to bury her face in Shimp’s chest. Teresa put her arms around her and rocked gently in place. Used the backs of three fingers to dismiss Doc, who left the room to start finding out what he could about Patty Polcyn’s final day.

  4:19 p.m.

  Jake Mroczka wasn’t distraught. Upset? Some. Pissed off? Goddamn right.

  “Was two of them. Come in together and went back where I keep the craft beers. I didn’t pay them no mind until I seen them coming back with those cheap-ass masks and carrying those cheap-ass guns. I thought about going for the .38 I keep under the counter here but they had the drop on me and a cheap-ass gun will kill you just as dead as something expensive, so I had to give it up. Son of a bitches. White guys, too.” Looked at light-skinned but no doubt African American Officer Trevor Boston. “No offense.”

  Boston wrote in his notebook. Never looked up. Three months into the job and he understood people under duress say things they might not mean. Of course, sometimes they said exactly what they meant but hadn’t meant to. Early in the shift and his balls still intact, Boston let it pass. “What did they look like, sir?”

  “They looked like two guys wearing masks so I couldn’t see what they looked like is what they looked like. How the hell am I supposed to know? You think I got some kind of mask-seeing-through X-ray technology back here for the one time in my goddamn life two assholes wearing them come in to rip me off?”

  “No, sir. I understand you couldn’t see their faces. What kinds of masks? Devils? Ghosts? Donald Trump? Whatever you can tell me.”

  It didn’t appear to have occurred to Mroczka Boston would care about the masks themselves. “Uhhh…had a face like a retarded dinosaur. Eyes up on little posts, like antennas. Sticking up above his head.”