Absolute Instinct Read online

  Marcus located the phone, having left his cell downstairs. By now the superintendent had stepped into the apartment and he’d gone ashen white and was shouting in Puerto Rican, “Oh, aye dios mio!” Behind him a small crowd of the curious pressed the doorway. Several took him for the killer, and Marcus realized he still had the bloody claw hammer in his hand.

  Furthermore, he was no longer a police detective—hadn’t been for almost a year now. He was a failed cop and now a failed private eye standing with a murder weapon in hand over the body of a dead man. “Shit,” he muttered. Then he shouted, “Did you call the authorities?”

  “Jess, Jess, they coming.”

  An eyewitness in the making, Rydell thought as his eyes bored into the superintendent, whose eyes registered terror.

  “Hey, amigo, I didn’t do this!”

  The super and others now who gathered behind him like a lynch mob only saw the bloody hammer.

  # # #

  Marcus called 9-1-1 only to learn that someone in the building had already alerted authorities. The dispatcher calmly assured him. “Help is on its way, Mr. Rydell.”

  Rydell then turned to stare at the crush of neighbors now staring in at the bloody heap of flesh at the center of the room.

  Some stood crossing themselves, while others fought for a better look, only to look away. The crush of faces reminded him of the people standing about the parade route taken by Christ as he carried the cross through the streets. How often had Marcus heard the rumor that mankind was on a march toward evolving into the caring, gentle most compassionate creature in the known world, left in charge of overseeing all the so-called lesser beasts? Some things never changed.

  Then he saw one face in the crowd that caused a blip in his chest, a beautiful young woman, a dead ringer for Lauren Bacall in Key Largo. This one pushed past the gapers, shouting “I’m a doctor! Let me through.”

  “Finally! ’Bout time you guys got here,” Marcus said to her.

  “I live in the building,” she replied.

  “You’re not here with a paramedic team?”

  “Just me.”

  The young woman quickly assessed the situation as Marcus stepped around the blood spatters. “Thought I might be of help,” she began, “but apparently not.” She’d gone to her knees over the dead man.

  “Doesn’t look too good, does he?” Marcus dryly replied, realizing only now that he’d rushed from his apartment directly below without any shoes or socks. He thought of the man’s dying words, cursing the child when the despicable child molester ought to’ve been asking forgiveness.

  “He’s suffered multiple fractures to the skull,” she said.

  “So I noticed.”

  “No longer breathing.”

  “Tell me something I don’t already know, doc.”

  “I’m pronouncing him dead, Mr. Ahhh . . . Rydell, 48-B, right?”

  Marcus nodded. “Hail, hail, the wicked one is dead.” Marcus stood a head taller than she.

  “I’m an intern at Atlanta Memorial,” she said, “and you, you’re 48-B, right?” she repeated.

  “Right below, yep. Heard the screams.” He shrugged. “Came running.”

  “And I called 9-1-1.”

  “Oh, that was you, was it? Thank you.”

  The sound of an ambulance rose up from the street. “I’m Katrina Holley, Kat,” she said, extending a hand to Marcus.

  “Marcus . . . Marcus Rydell.”

  She nodded, eyes downcast. “I’ve heard about you.” She said it in a sultry voice. “As for this guy,” she indicated the dead man at her heels, “I knew he was bad news. So where’s his supposed sister’s adopted daughter he’s been baby-sitting for?”

  “That the story he told you?”

  “Me and the cops, yeah.”

  “Did they check it out?”

  “They’re getting around to it. So where’s the kid, Kim?”

  “Kim, yeah. Where is she. ’Round here someplace. So you called the cops on this guy earlier?”

  She answered while walking away from him. “’Course I did.” She turned on him, eyes daring him to suggest otherwise. “You think anyone else in this place’d bother?” She began searching the apartment for Kim, going into the bedroom, seeing a bloody pillow that made her gasp.

  “Creep must’ve slipped the cops tickets to the Brave’s game tonight,” he cynically said in her ear.

  “I reported them—got their names and badge numbers.”

  “Reported them, eh?”

  “For doing a half-assed job, yes.”

  “And got no answer, I imagine.”

  “Heard nothing back. You oughta maybe look into it. Wrongdoing on a police force. Might be a headline in there somewhere.”

  “Not my call.”

  “Then who’s call is it? Hell, I even called Child Protective Services again.”

  “Let me guess. Overworked and underpaid, eh?”

  They both heard the bathtub shower kick on. Dr. Holley’s eyes became blue beach balls. “Tell me she’s not in the shower.”

  “She’s washing off, and I can’t blame her.”

  “You’re a cop! You oughta know better.” She went for the bathroom door, the layout of the apartment a match for her own. “That’s evidence in a crime washing down the drain. If she’s been raped, and I suspect she has—”

  “Look, lady . . . Doctor, I told her to stay out of the shower, only that she could wash her hands and face.”

  “But Detective—”

  “I’m not a cop anymore, but I’m curious how you knew?”

  “I believe everyone in the building knows you’re a cop—or were at one time. Now outta my way.”

  He held an index finger to her eyes, slowing her down. “Look, she needed some time alone, and besides, her attacker here is dead, get it? Proving her rape won’t be an issue. She was his hostage, and she fought back.”

  “I get that much but—”

  “The dead guy’s not going away for anything he’s done, not in this world. Frankly, I’d like to see her spared the inside of a courtroom or a jail.”

  “The man’s name’s Quinn, Don Quinn, and all things equal, if Kim’s charged with his murder . . . ahhh manslaughter, exculpatory . . . or is it extenuating circumstances?” Katrina hesitated, eyeing the bloody claw hammer beside the victim. “We need to show—”

  “Christ, thanks to Law & Order everyone’s an expert nowadays.”

  “I’m-this-minute-right-now-damn-it going in to see her.” The doctor might just as well have said: And no one is standing in my way. “Kim’ll recognize me from before. She needs a friend, a woman, and a professional.”

  “I suppose you’re right, Doc.”

  “That’s the most sensible thing you’ve said since I arrived.” Dr. Holley slammed the bathroom door in his face, cutting him off.

  In another half minute, medics came pouring in with a stretcher and life-support. “Too late, my friends,” said Marcus, “but if you wanna shoot me some extra oxygen, I’ll take it.”

  TWO

  Members of the Atlanta Police Department now came rushing in, immediately stopped by the sight of former detective Marcus Theodore Rydell pacing like a trapped bull.

  “Hiya, Denny Hodges isn’t it?” asked Marcus, a crooked smile for the first uniformed cop on the scene.

  His partner, Janine Dobbins, all but dropped her teeth even as she asked, “What’re you doing here, Rydell? You involved in another . . . I mean—”

  “Murder? Killing, you mean?” he replied, the quirky half smile lifting his laugh lines, the wrinkles around the eyes.

  She pointed at the bloody victim with her nightstick. “If you say so.”

  “Yeah, arrest me, Dobbins!” He jammed his hands out. Ready for the cuffs. “A danger to myself and others.”

  “Knock it off, Rydell and tell us what’s happened here?” asked Hodges, showing a modicum of respect for the former police detective turned private eye.

  “I live just below. He
ard the screams. Came runnin’. He was already dead.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah really!” He pointed to his bare feet. “Walls’re pretty thin. Ceiling even thinner.”

  A jackhammer and the wrecking ball down the street sounded; in fact, they sounded as if in the next room.

  Adjusting to the noise, Dobbins shouted, “Heard the killing as it occurred, you saying?” Dobbins stood with hands on hips, curvy and plain-featured, her hips sporting a radio, a gun, and the scabbard for the nightstick she continued to punctuate with.

  “Heard a little child’s high-pitched voice after the plaster started raining down on me,” Marcus replied, his voice so strong he needn’t shout. “I came like a comet.”

  “He did!” shouted one bystander from the crowd around the door.

  “But . . .” continued Marcus, “but it was too late for Mr. Quinn here.”

  “Too late?” asked Dobbins like an accusation. He knew she was thinking, too late again.

  “Too late for this sick-o, child-molesting sonofabitch, yeah, but not for the kid.”

  “You saying a kid did this?” asked Hodges.

  “Hey kids’ve been known to kill for a variety of reasons, not the least being revenge on a scumbag who’s held ’em captive. The girl defended herself; picked up a hammer the bastard threatened her with.” He indicated the hammer alongside the body. “’Fraid I picked it up, too. Sorry.”

  “How old’s this kid?” asked Dobbins in the tone of an interrogator.

  “Eleven, maybe twelve’d be my guess,” he lied. “Dunno for sure. You’ll have to ask her, but then she may not know herself.”

  “Where’s the girl now?” she pressed, looking about.

  “Bathroom and she has a doctor from Memorial in there with her.” He indicated the bathroom door. “Weapon she used to defend herself with—” he was careful to not call it a murder weapon and to keep repeating the term self defense in all its permutations—“is there.” He knew from experience that DA’s picked up on the wording of a police report. If the cops used the right wording, the DA would not be going out of his way to prosecute a murder of a defenseless man killed in his sleep. Not here, not today.

  “So you handled the weapon?” asked Denny, jotting down Marcus’s remarks in shorthand.

  “I had to get it outta her hand; kid was traumatized. And hey, don’t misquote me, okay?”

  “Not a chance, Mr. Rydell.”

  “Give me a moment with the girl, will you?” Marcus then asked.

  “Don’t know if that’s a good idea,” countered Dobbins, her eyes flashing at Denny’s.

  “I’m the one found her like this; I just want her to know she can call me any time for help, day or night. Besides, she doesn’t like cops. Says a cop sold her to this creep.”

  “An Atlanta cop? No way,” replied Denney Hodges. Dobbins looked equally dubious.

  “Says a cop sold her to this bag of shit Quinn.” He then brushed past them, ignoring any objections. He next rapped on the bathroom door and heard the doctor from inside say, “Just a minute. Toweling off.”

  Marcus hesitated a moment. “I’m comin’ in.” He stepped inside to find that the pretty, young Dr. Holley had the shivering girl cocooned in a huge towel. “Listen up, the both of you,” he whispered, automatically gaining their attention. “Things could go badly for you, Kim, unless we all keep a secret.”

  “What secret?” asked Dr. Holley.

  “Don’t tell anyone—no one—ever that the first blow to the head of Mr. Turd in there was while he was sleeping, understood?”

  “He was sleeping,” Kim managed.

  “No, he was raping you again. Held the camera over you. While raping you, you got hold of the hammer. Understood?”

  “Are you asking the child to lie?” Dr. Holley held Kim against her. “That’d be wrong.”

  “Keep your voice down.” He met the doctor’s lovely eyes. “Sometimes it takes a lie to prove a truth.” Rydell squatted to be eye to eye with the girl. “Look, Kim, so far as anyone need know, Pigman in there was awake when you defended yourself against him. Nod if you understand.”

  Kim nodded successively.

  “Say it.”

  “He was a-a-awake.”

  “When you struck him, yes, he was awake and attacking you. Understand, Kim?”

  “He attack me.”

  “Not for the first time.”

  “No, not first time.”

  Rydell caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, and he thought, how terrible I look. He’d not slept well for months.

  “You expect me to stand by while you coach the child?” asked Dr. Mallory at his shoulder.

  “Otherwise, they can put Kim behind bars.”

  “Not for what she did.”

  “Yes, for what she did.”

  “That’s crazy,” said Dr. Holley. “The man was molesting her.”

  “I know the law, and the law will jail her or juvvie-hall her if she doesn’t do exactly as I say.”

  “But—”

  “The detectives and the uniformed cops’ll be sympathetic to the girl’s abuse. They’ll do a rape kit.”

  “I know all that but still—”

  “Kim’s what, fourteen, fifteen? They’re going to have to rule out consent, and it’ll muddy the waters if they think she’s a runaway and a prostitute. Her innocence’ll be questioned, whether she was kidnapped, held against her will, or came here willingly.”

  Kat Holley watched Rydell fill the washbasin with water, throw gobs of it into his face and eyes and then towel off. She watched him reach out then with a calm hand to touch and reassure the girl by fingering her cheekbone. “Remember, Kim, be brave and don’t volunteer any information, and once you tell a story don’t change one word. (Omitx: ever waiver from it, not an inch.) And at some point, I’m going to want you to describe the policeman who sold you to Mr. Turd in there.”

  “His name is Quinn. He tell me his name is Quinn. Mr. Quinn.”

  “No need to be polite to a monster. He doesn’t deserve the respect of being called Mister. Just remember, you defended yourself against the turd in there?”

  “Yes, Quinn,” she reminded him.

  “Sounds like a name for a troll. Fits, doesn’t it? So did you ever hear what he called the other man, the one who sold you to him?” For the first time in months, Rydell felt alive inside.

  “Smith . . . Mr. Smith.”

  “Of course, Smith. Makes perfect sense.”

  “Whataya think?” asked Kat.

  “I rather doubt his real name’s Smith.”

  “She frowned at this. “Thanks for your taking the time to advise the girl. I’ll stick with her through the hospital procedure, and I’ll get social services involved.”

  “Like before, huh?”

  “It’s the only game in town, sorry.”

  He put on a smile for Kat Holley. “I know some people over there; I’ll send someone who gives a damn to meet you at Memorial.” Rydell, gave the child a big thumbs up. “There’s a stretcher outside, Kim. You want a ride? Ride like an Empress? Big strong men carrying you, like on a magic carpet ride?”

  “I thought the stretcher was for the dead turd,” said Dr. Holley.

  “Nahhh . . . he can walk,” joked Marcus. “Besides, CSI team has to come in, do their thing before the body’s removed. We’ll let Kim take the stretcher.”

  Dr. Holley touched his hand, the one that’d reached out to Kim. “You’re a good guy, you know that?”

  He was taken by surprise at this. “Not really.”

  “World needs more like you.”

  Marcus thought about his sad dance with his depression and his Glock only a half hour before. He jokingly indicated his puffed up chest, beating it as an ape might. “I strong like bull.” He managed a weak smile.

  “Make light of it if you like, but I know better.”

  “Take care of the girl, Doc, and follow my lead, or you’ll be visiting Kim here in prison where her cess
pool education continues.”