Chapter 5

The heavy fog invaded every pore clutching me in a cruel grasp, dulling my senses, and my mind slowed. Molasses running down a jar, my thoughts moved in a dense vapor inside my mind. I sensed I lay on the floor where I fell. Although, I believed I’d been moved. Somewhere in the dim recesses, a vague recollection of falling on my face sprang to my intellect. How I came to be on my back didn’t understand. But what the devil was the noise?

Thumping, a steady hard tick-tock echoed. Matching the battering on the back of my head. I wished the fog would consume the pain. Eyes refused to open, the mist so murky I couldn’t peer through.

“Miss Drummond,” a voice, a sweet angel, intruded on my pain. Her voice was so lovely. I wished she would take the sting away. Why so much fog in the place?

The dense fog persisted, rolling over me. I couldn’t think, couldn’t move. The mist held me, clutching to me like some treacherous predator. Refusing to release me, holding me down, and threatening to devour me. Dear Lord, my head ached, tick-tock, the gnawing hammered in my brain. Tick Tock, the clattering traversed my spine. Tick-tock one explosion after another, tick-tock, like a clock hammering away, while fog swirled about me. Some urgency required me to move forward. Somehow, I needed to move. But I was afraid to do so.

“Miss Drummond,” The angel spoke again.

My eyes fluttered open. The cloud churned inside my head. Also, I localized the torture to the back of my head. A wet sticky kind of throbbing with each pump of my heart, with something warm oozing with each pulse. Everything was a blur, but I made out the office but not Aaron.

Some fog cleared while my poor brain burned. The thought crossed my mind, Joe Louis was doing his thing using my head for his speed bag.

Watching Aaron picking up the spilled items of my handbag. Putting them back, he gave me a sheepish smile. With a pained, wolfish grin, I returned his gaze. The blood on his clothes screamed, holy cow, was he hurt?

“Don’t worry, ain’t my blood, and I’m not sure who’s blood this is.” The room sharpened but not quite all the way.

“Miss Drummond,” Effie Patrick spoke to me with thoughtful slowness. Oh, not so much an angel of light as a black angel. Kneeling above me, a bloody towel in her ebony hand.

“Miss Theo, you took a wicked blow to the head. Aaron’s injury’s not so bad, a bump on his hard noggin.” Helping me to my knees. The dark angle, Effie, cautioned me to move slow.

In the end, I stood on my two wobbling feet. The broken heel added to my instability. I might only speculate what happened while Aaron and I were unconscious. Glancing around the room, nothing from the night before remained.

No dead body, no naked woman raped on the office couch. Not a trace of blood anywhere except for the blood on Aaron’s coat and shirt. A little of my blood around where my head hit on the floor. They left us not a shred of evidence.

Nothing left at the scene, other than our own wounds, testified anything out of the ordinary happened. I determined not to say what I knew since I understood so little of what happened. To speak of Estell and her girl was a pointless burden if I gave them the details I had.

Ring, ring, the wrenching clatter as the phone rang. Effie answered, “Office of Theodora Drummond Private Investigator and Associates.” Effie listened. Holding her hand over the mouthpiece, said, “The calls for you, Miss Drummond, medical examiner’s office.”

Stumbling to Effie, reeling, weaving, and limping, on one heel, and took the phone.

“Yes,” I said, trying to sound as normal as possible. Wishing the crown of thorns would go away!

“Miss Drummond’s, I need you to come down and identify the body of a woman,” the familiar voice asked for my assistance.

“Who is she?”

“If I identified who she was, I wouldn’t need you to come to the morgue.” The doctor sounded a tad pissed. “She had your business card in her, umm, bra, ma’am, if you’d please be of assistance.” The irritation in his voice calmed down as he asked for help.

“I’ll be over as quick as possible,” after hanging up the phone, I made my way to my office, where I changed clothes and shoes. After I changed, Effie cleaned my wound and dressed the cut with the office first aid kit, and the bleeding at last stopped. Pulling the bottle out of a drawer on my desk, I raised the bottle, swigging down a healthy amount. I brushed my teeth and touched up my makeup.

What now, I wondered as I rode the elevator down, my head crashing to the rhythm of pure anguish. The operator stared at me with concern and curiosity. I sensed the attendant’s gaze. In vain, I hoped he would say nothing.

“When did ya get here?”

“I came in before you got here,” I said, telling a small fib while answering his question. “Blast this headache, I think like this storm will last a month,” I told him without telling him any details. For a few moments, I vented my frustration into the air. “Like some chrome-dome flatfoot’s smashing on my head with a killer-diller Billy club. Throbs, first one side, with another blow on the other. A blow from the right and the left. What the blazes.”

Swaying like a drunken bum, holding my head with my hands. I pushed my back against the wall and slid down the mirrored wall until I sat on the floor.

“Well, I never...” exclaimed an older woman riding in the car.

“And I doubt you ever will,” the operator said, winking at me.

The Coroner held the sheet up for me to view her face. The spinning aggravation of my headache became worse, the floor threatened to move from under my feet. Dumb bitch, why didn’t you listen to me? Her face beaten, almost beyond recognition. And this is the shame of the thing, Josephine ended up dead, far sooner than I imagined.

“Her name is Josephine Moore. Her worthless excuse of a husband is James Moore.” I said with a blankness in my voice, imparting the information but not sure of the reason. “AKA Jimmy ‘Light Fingers’ Moore. The Light Fingers comes from his one skill ... picking pockets. The cut on her left cheek is from a diamond ring he wears on his right pinky finger.” Saying this without expression, as if detached from my emotions. Gut-wrenching helplessness, grief, and rage built inside me. What utter stupidity caused this turn of events.

What imagined slight caused James Moore to do this? What perceived wrong made him beat her to death rather than only beat her? Couldn’t help but wonder, giving her discomfort stopped pleasing him, so he went further? My objective aside, my efforts to understand were pointless, a waste of mental energy. Trying to understand the workings of an abuser’s mind is akin to asking a wolf why they bay at the moon.

“He’s most likely to be in Fat Lou’s Place, playing cards with his deadbeat friends. Hum, yes, how like him, playing cards after beating a person to death would be.”

Somehow, I was in the middle of a nightmare. All I wanted was to end the dream. Between heartache and headache, I needed to find a way to function.

“Do me a favor, call Frank Lange. Tell him I have gone to Fat Lou’s to bring in Jimmy ‘Light Fingers’ to him for the murder of his wife.”

Leaving the Coroner’s office without waiting on his response, I had a purpose, not a calling. Jumping behind the wheel of my Bearcat, I started the car and revved the engine. In all candor, my head didn’t appreciate the engine at the moment.

The trip was less than 10 minutes. I walked in like an owner, moved straight to the back room. The sign on the door read, “Private.” Pulling my .45 from my handbag, I dropped the latter to the floor. Pushing the door open, I moved through, without hesitation, closing half the distance between the door and the card table in a matter of a second or two.

Hot, humid air wafted in through an open, curtained window. Bringing with the gust of air, the flapping of the curtain, and a dull hammering from workers a block away, tearing up a sidewalk. A ceiling fan whirled, whisking a warm breeze over card players huddled around a table. A dim light illuminated the otherwise dark room from a white bowl, which hung underneath the fan.

Jimmy delt the cards, his knuckles bloodied and bruised from his mornings’ exercises. With his restless eyes, he glanced from the cards to me. In a heartbeat, Jimmy’s countenance changed from one of arrogant presumption to panic. Fast as a train, he grasped his hand in the game meant nothing anymore.

Wasting no time, Jimmy jumped up, the other men scattered for safety. In his haste, Jimmy knocked over the table, which tumbled forward. Cash and cards scattered across the floor as Jimmy’s friends dived for cover. A single silver dollar spun round and round, at last, losing speed, falling over, heads up. When I played games as a kid, I always called heads when we picked something with a coin flip.

“Heads, you lose, Jimmy boy,” I said without a thought.

Wheeling around, Jimmy grabbed a sawed-off shotgun from its resting place against the wall. Spinning back to me, he pointed the weapon at my chest. My .45 pointed at his chest, where his heart should’ve been, but he didn’t have one.

Courage failed Jimmy as fear turned to terror. I knew the son-of-a-bitch would surrender. The bastard never put his fingers near the trigger guard, much less a trigger. I saw him surrender. This is where I should have said drop it. I didn’t. And Jimmy obliged me when he didn’t drop the gun.

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