The Last Collar

Chapter One

Discarded lottery tickets: Mega Millions, Powerball, and scratch-offs of every variety littered the desk behind which the body of Jessica Lynn Shannon was found. They may not have been winners but the lottery tickets got a second chance at usefulness as bookmarks and notepaper. It didn’t stop there—she had fashioned the cardboard scratch-offs into airplanes and the Powerball receipts into miniature macramé animals, giraffes and swans mostly. Her other creations lacked a long elegant neck but they too were masterpieces in their own right.

Me, I was born with ten thumbs and could never fashion anything as intricate as the victim’s macramé creations. My dexterity began and ended with popping the top off a cold one.

My partner Matt Winslow was a regular kind of guy, affable and easy-going, with a swelling belly he was constantly trying to hide from our CO. Not quite a run of the mill detective, but then with twenty-four years under his belt...well, who could blame a cop who had the finish line in sight. If it were me, I’d be wolfing down bagels and getting afternoon massages. Sometimes I envied the simplicity of his life: a doting wife, a rugged jock son, and a daughter who always had her nose in a book.

He glanced up at me. Someone was hoping to get lucky, he astutely diagnosed.

Yeah, I don’t know, these things are a gigantic waste of time. I just hand the cashier a twenty and then chuck the ticket in the garbage before leaving the store.

Winslow wrinkled his nose. You’re kidding, John? You don’t bother checking ’em?

Nah. Who needs all that money anyway? It only causes problems. Half of it gets taxed right off the bat. Then long lost relatives crawl out of the woodwork and you find friends you didn’t know existed. Forget about the charities, they’ll slither so far up your ass you’ll need a coat hanger to yank ’em out. Look at all the trouble it brought this poor woman. I could see from the expression on his face that Winslow was secretly hoping I had saved all the lottery tickets and was going to bequeath them to him, an untapped fortune just lying in an old cigar box. Of course I check them. You think I’m some kind of schmuck?

Bastard, Winslow muttered, only half serious.

We turned back to the victim. Jessica Shannon was much too young to die. I’d already fished through her pocketbook and knew that she was just thirty-two years old, a little bit of a thing wrapped in Nike spandex, wearing well-worn running shoes, with a figure capable of bringing the most devoutly faithful husband to his knees.

The poor thing, Winslow lamented. Pretty face.

I was wondering how he could tell. Bruises mottled the victim’s throat, faint dabs of purple and yellow where finger pressure had bruised the tender flesh on her elegantly slender neck and rendered revealing ligature marks. Her eyes bulged from their sockets, a telltale sign of asphyxia, and her face was frozen, a sardonic sculpture that told a story even a fledgling investigator could recognize. Her tongue was extended and hung from the side of her open mouth. Still, I understood what Winslow was getting at. Her fixed stare eyes were still the most intense shade of emerald green I’d ever seen. She must’ve been absolutely stunning before asphyxia caused the corneas of her eyes to swell with ugly red blood vessels. Her skin was porcelain white and her hair...yes, of course, it was an intensely deep shade of red like an animal whose pelt fetched thousands. This Irish sod must’ve been one fair lass.

And she had some hot bod, huh?

"Really? A woman is dead of asphyxia, her face looks as distressed as Han Solo’s when he was sealed in carbonite, and that’s the next thing to pop into your head? I sighed a manly sigh. But you’re right. Calories probably slid through her GI tract like they were coated with Teflon."

You’ve got some way with words. They ought to name you the unofficial poet of Brooklyn South, Mocha. Winslow was tall; he knelt to get a better look at the victim—actually, with his growing midsection he was still an arm’s length away. Think she already went for her run?

I don’t know. Why don’t you give her armpits a quick sniff so we know for sure?

Very funny, dickhead. He raised his finger and pointed at a spot just below the bra line. See that. She already finished.

Winslow was perceptive. There was a white stain on the hot pink Lycra fabric where her sweat had dried and left the slightest residue of salt. Maybe she fell behind on the laundry.

Women don’t do that, he scoffed. Only guys wear their shit more than once. A woman wears something for ten minutes, changes her mind about the outfit, and chucks it straight into the hamper. I’ve got two of them of them at home and believe me I know.

"Well look at you getting all Vogue on me. Who knew you were such an expert on women’s hygiene. What do you use for vaginal itch?"

He grabbed his crotch. I got the cure right here.

More like the cause, ain’t it?

He flipped me the bird, which was well deserved and long overdue. Enough. Mocha, a woman is dead here.

Hey, you started it.

Well, time to get serious now.

You’re my conscience, Winslow. I’ve always relied on your quiet inner strength to keep me on the straight and narrow.

The hell does that mean?

We’d been partners way too long and had seen more than our fair share of cooling corpses. Humor was our defense mechanism. It kept us from going bat shit crazy when we were knee-deep in cadavers. Okay, let’s get down and dirty. She’s fully dressed so sex doesn’t appear to be the motive.

We can’t rule out oral.

No, Matt, we can’t but I don’t see a woman getting strangled over a crappy BJ—if such a thing even exists.

Yeah. Probably not. Winslow stood and backed away while keeping his eyes trained on the victim. Can I make an observation?

Her position?

Exactly. She’s sitting back in the chair—it’s almost as if she was positioned that way. Common sense would tell us that she should be slumped over but she’s not. Instead, she’s sitting right up against her desk, almost as if her chair had been pushed in for her.

I swept my gaze over the scene. He was right.

And you know it’s damn near impossible to strangle someone from behind. Not unless the doer has incredibly strong hands.

He was right again. It’s not easy to keep adequate pressure on the arteries long enough to cut off blood flow to the brain with the thumbs behind the head. The other fingers tire too quickly. It’s the thumb that has all the strength. He could’ve used his forearms. Like the choke hold they taught us at the academy.

Winslow shook his head. Look at those ligature marks. Those are definitely finger marks.

Right a third time. Winslow was on a roll.

So with the posed position here, you figure she was murdered elsewhere and placed at her desk for a reason?

Yup.

Like a tableau?

Yeah, Matt, like that.

The house faced Marine Park in a high-rent section of Brooklyn. A girl with physical attributes like hers, I’m sure any number of red-blooded men noticed her running through the park. Let’s get a detail out on the street right away...and check with her neighbors, too.

Her sister had stopped by to pick her up for lunch and had discovered the body. She let herself in and walked around the house when the doorbell wasn’t answered—she found her sister motionless in the chair.

All the lottery tickets made me think. What’s a place like this worth, Matt?

Buck and a half. I don’t know, maybe higher. He shrugged, considering further. In this area...maybe two million.

So what’s with all the lottery tickets? You think maybe a rich woman was down on her luck?

Very possible that she fell on hard times. The economy isn’t exactly chugging along these days.

Or maybe she owed someone a lot of money.

Winslow made a doubtful face. Someone who got tired of waiting for repayment?

Yeah, I know. Maybe not. But I think the money angle is still a good one. Look at that old clunky computer monitor on her desk—I don’t see someone with disposable income working in front of a relic like that, you?

Winslow shook his head. I wonder if she was working on something. He walked around behind her and clicked the mouse with a glove-clad hand. His eyes grew wide.

What’s there?

He motioned for me to join him. A solitary word was typed on an otherwise blank page. In bold type, red letters, and caps it read: BITCH!

Chapter Two

Bernie Collier stared at the screen for a few more seconds, then pushed up his glasses, and turned to us. It’s a word processor document.

I know.

Microsoft Word, to be precise. Pretty ubiquitous.

I suppressed a frown. Bernie and his hundred-dollar vocabulary. Look, I know that’s what it is. I just—

Yeah, asshole, Winslow interjected. We know about computers. We aren’t idiots, or—

Troglodytes?

Another C-note word for the Bernster.

We’re looking for anything you can recover, I said. For starters, forensics can dust the keyboard and maybe we’ll get lucky on prints there.

Bernie gave me a doubtful look.

I shrugged. We gotta try. But we need a forensic review of her system, both on her local drive and any online activity.

I assumed that’s why I was summoned on my day off, Bernie said.

Your day... Winslow’s mouth fell open, and he looked over at me. You believe this guy?

Bernie ignored him, and reached into his large equipment bag. I was no computer whiz, but I knew enough to get the gist of what he was going to do. He’d get an imprint of the entire system on another external drive, one that was forensically sound and met the evidence standard for court. Then he’d save all open files, power down the system and seize the desktop. The equipment back at the lab would do a better job of exploring everything on the hard drive, even deleted files. Same was true for investigating Jessica Shannon’s online footprint.

I pulled Winslow a few feet away to let Bernie work and keep my partner from smacking him.

Son of a bitch, Winslow muttered.

I know.

The girl’s dead, Mocha. Murdered. And he acts like he’s missing something more important. Probably a goddamn Dungeons and Dragons tournament.

Yeah.

Asshole.

Without a doubt.

Winslow turned his gaze to me. Don’t do that.

Don’t do what?

You’re patronizing me.

No, I’m not.

You are. You definitely are. Stop it.

All right.

I mean it, man. I have a wife to do that for me. I don’t need you pitching in.

I shrugged. Sarah didn’t patronize him, as far as I could tell. Nagged him a little about his weight, but only from a health perspective. She loved him and, okay, I guess she was a bit of a nudge but if I had a grain of rice for every time she told him how good looking he was, I could feed the world.

That made me smile. Maybe she actually did patronize him a little.

"Now you’re smiling. What?"

Nothing, you ugly prick. Let’s get back on point here.

I was never off. You were.

Fine, I said, in the most patronizing voice I could muster.

I could tell Winslow really wanted to flip me off again, but with all of the forensic unit techs working the scene and the patrol rookie standing at the door with a log sheet, he resisted. "Well, Detective, let’s backtrack."

My thoughts exactly. Go ahead.

Even without the computer message, you know this thing had to be personal, right?

Sure. Strangulation is almost always personal.

So I’m thinking someone close to her somehow.

"Odds are, yeah. But that doesn’t necessarily mean she knew they were close."

Stalker?

Can’t rule it out.

Winslow half-shrugged. Maybe. But I don’t think so.

I didn’t either. I only brought it up so we could look at it, bat it around, and probably set it aside. Every investigation is a dance, and you can’t leave out the steps. Because no forced entry?

Yeah. And no sex. Those stalker types, it’s almost always sexual for them. Even if they can’t get it up or follow through, at least the pose is sexual. But here? He gestured toward Jessica Shannon’s body. Still dressed, and posed in a way that’s...how would you call it? Simple?

Mundane, Bernie interjected.

Winslow scowled. No one asked you, Scrabble-head.

Bernie seemed to ignore him, instead tapping a few keys. His shoulder was only a foot away from the victim’s. Then he said, Words are important, Detective. They have power. He glanced up, first at Jessica, then at Winslow. And not just for clerics in D&D.

Winslow opened his mouth to reply but I pulled him further away. This is getting us nowhere, I told him.

Little IT weasel, Winslow muttered.

Leave it alone.

He gets under my skin. I hate it when someone can do that.

I thought about what Bernie said. If the word on the computer screen had been something unique, I’d have agreed with him on the importance. But bitch wasn’t very imaginative. It was...well, it was mundane.

If it wasn’t a stranger stalking her, a boyfriend is the best bet.

The sister would know about that.

Hope so.

So how do you want to go at this? Winslow asked.

Your call.

He shook his head. Nope. You’re lead.

No, I’m not. You’re up next on the wheel. It’s your turn.

Uh-uh. I had the last one. The Ferguson widow.

That was a ground ball.

It was more like a slow roller to the mound. But every one counts. So you’re lead, and it’s your call. What do you want to do?

The beginnings of a headache pulsed behind my left eye. I clenched my jaw and rubbed my temple while I thought about Winslow’s question. We’ll talk to the sister, and see what the canvass gets us. If nothing there, we can check into the rest of the family and close associates while we wait for the forensics to come back. Get a subpoena for financial records, too.

The executor can give us permission for those. We don’t need a subpoena.

Winslow hated paperwork.

Maybe so, but a subpoena or even a search warrant is ironclad in court.

Fine, he conceded. You type it up, though.

I always did, but I resisted saying so. We do all that, and somewhere in there, we ought to catch a loose thread.

Winslow sighed. Why do I even ask? Same approach, every time with you.

Something works for me, I stick with it.

Winslow didn’t argue. He couldn’t. I was a case-solving motherfucker, the be-all-and-end-all of homicide investigation, with a reputation known so far and wide that perps would line up at the station house steps just to turn themselves in. Okay, now I’m just talking shit but you’ve gotta love a cop with bit of swagger in his step.

The point is that I’m good, damn good, and Winslow knew it.

Let’s get coffee while they finish up processing the scene, I said. Then we can talk to the sister and do another walk-through.

I thought you wanted to canvass.

Let the uniforms do it. If they get anybody worth talking to, we’ll interview them.

Sounds good to me. There’s a diner six blocks over. We’ll drive over. It’s kinda old-school, though. They might not have your prissy little special coffee.

You talking about the Greek place? Niko’s?

That’s the one.

I gave him a grin. They’ve entered the twenty-first century, Matt. They know about mochas.

He sighed. The whole world is falling part. Why can’t you just drink it like a regular cop—strong and black?

"Like you’re regular? Why do we have this conversation every time coffee comes up?"

Because it ain’t right, Winslow said, but he gave up. You want to drive?

I didn’t, but before I could reply, a gravelly voice broke in behind us. You two limp dicks aren’t going anywhere.

Chapter Three

I’d recognize Coltrane’s bulldog rumble with my head submersed in a toilet. He had a voice so deep it could pulverize kidney stones. He was a dark-skinned Adonis, six-four with a polished noggin and muscles on top of muscles. Add a cape and mask and the man was a goddamn superhero.

Or more to the point, a super villain.

Lieutenant Coltrane worked out four times a week at a real-man’s gym, and ate the same healthy, boring crap every day: steamed chicken, brown rice, and broccoli from The Golden Dragon, the chop suey joint down the block from the precinct house.

The lieutenant and I got along about as well as any detective and his commanding officer, which is to say not great. But for some reason he really got to Winslow. Maybe it was Coltrane’s massive size. I’m not sure what triggered this reaction but whenever the lieutenant came around, my partner got this look on his face akin to if a surgeon was about to snip his vas deferens.

What’s with the coffee break shit? Coltrane snapped. There’s plenty of water in the bathroom sink. I wish he was just messing with us, and maybe somewhere in the bowels of his microscopic personality, he was. The man was a natural born ball-breaker, an ex-marine who had made his bones beating down street thugs in Bed-Stuy back in the days when you could still get away with that shit. Once he became boss, he was certain that we all still behaved that way but had simply become more adept at covering it up.

We’re at a natural break point, I said. Gotta let forensics do their thing.

Break point, huh? He eyed me suspiciously. Good. You’ve got time to run it for me, then.

We’re still waiting on Sergeant Gastineau, I said, looking around in vain for him. Just like the Ghost not to show up when