Crime Scene
By Rick Clarke
I was looking for any possible sign of homicide at the apartment of a recently deceased gentleman. It was a rough neighbourhood, which I knew well, and I was expecting trouble. As I approached the front door to the apartment block I noted that it was still broken. I opened the door to the block and was hit by the familiar smell of rotten garbage, piss and drug addiction.
The space was grey concrete and dirt. I walked up the first set of steps to the next level and turned right down a corridor which felt like a prison; an enduring gift of 1960s architecture.
The dead guy had lived at number fifteen, and when I got there I found that someone had beat me to it. The door to the apartment was ajar and I heard someone inside making a mess of things. I took out my piece and moved through the front door as quietly as I could. If whoever was in the apartment had a gun, a wrong move could easily turn burglary into homicide - with me as the body.
It was a small, below average, one bed apartment. Junk had been tipped everywhere by the intruder, who was searching through the contents of the bedroom.
I moved into the room with my gun raised. Standing there, turning out the pockets of the dead man's trousers was a kid of maybe eleven. The kid was small and mean, and was showing the sort of teeth normally found on a chained up rottweiler, but he stopped moving when he saw the gun.
‘Put everything down and back up against the wall’ I said as I slowly lowered the gun.
It didn't take long for the kid to shake out of it.
‘Who the fuck are you’ he said.
‘Police detective. Who are you?’
The kid eyed me up and down.
‘Like fuck you're a detective’ spat the kid.
‘I am. So live with it.’
The kid squinted. ‘Fuck you. You're just here to rob the place’.
‘This place is a potential crime scene. I'm here to investigate’.
The kid surprised me by laughing.
I didn't waste anymore time on small talk. I moved quickly towards the kid. He was ready for that. I wrapped his arm round his back, took out some cuffs and locked him to an old stern looking radiator. He wasn't laughing then. In the end it came down to the fact that I was stronger. As unfair as that is, often that's how life sorts out these little problems.
Standing back up again, I moved away from the kid who was thrashing his legs about trying to kick me in the groin.
‘Crime scene’ I said again, whilst lighting up a cigarette. ‘I’m having a look around’.
As I left the room the kid’s mouth was a well of profanity. But he was still young, and I let it slide.
Despite the kid doing a real fine job of roughing up the joint, there were no signs of foul play. There were plenty of old betting slips and a good few empty vodka bottles, but I already knew the old guy had been a serial gambler with an alcohol problem, so this was nothing unexpected. I went back into the bedroom to finish what the kid had started, but all I found was a handful of loose change and a bunch of old family photos.
The kid by this point had gone all quiet and sullen, occasionally pulling the arm cuffed to the radiator, as if to test it was still there.
‘This guy wasted his life and died with nothing’, I said directly to the kid. ‘Don't let that be you’.
The kid spat on my shoes and I was less inclined to share my wisdom, even less inclined to uncuff him.
Gut instinct and experience made me walk to the end of the bed where the old man had rested his head, and I lifted the mattress. It was a cliche, but cliches came from somewhere. Laying under there, directly under where head would have been, was an gold watch, a Rolex. It was a bit worn looking, but well looked after, with a leather strap. I picked it up and turned it over. It was heavy for a watch. There was an inscription.
Happy Birthday Bill. Your loving wife, Marge xxx 1931
So the old guy hadn’t always been this way I thought to myself. I wrapped the watch around my wrist. It was a good fit. Then I slipped it into my top pocket.
There were eyes on the kid that were half boiling.
‘I knew it’, he jerked out, ‘thief’.
‘It’s not your size, so don’t sweat it kid’.
‘When I get a gun in my hand you won't look so big’, he replied.
If I was smiling before, I wasn’t any more.
I turned round and shut the door to the apartment, leaving the kid chained to the radiator.
As I walked back down the concreted stairs I could hear the kid yelling out blue murder, but no one on this block was going to take any notice, no one was sure stupid enough to look for trouble.
*
I shut the door to my car and took a last look at the neighbourhood. Half the neighbourhood kids were staring back at me, some of the adults too, it was a pretty tough place. I picked up the police radio and called in that a kid needed to be cut free from a radiator. The operator was Jessie, a blonde from the precinct who was pretty friendly. She laughed a little and began to ask too many questions. I simply gave her the address. She stopped asking questions.
‘Isn't that your grampa’s place?’ she half whispered, ‘I heard about what happened to him...I’m so sorry Joe’.
‘Just tell the guys who turn up not to expect too much in the way of thanks’.
I put the police radio back onto the cradle and turned on the car’s ignition.
*
