Fine Art of Murder Page 25

  “Next time when you say you're bored, remind me to stay home,” said Janice. “This was not what I imagined when we set out this morning.”

  “Next time you want to go on a volunteer vacation, remind me to have my knee fixed first,” moaned her sister. “When it comes to running away from criminals, I'd prefer to pass.”

  “Well, at least I can say I know how to throw a Peruvian pot,” Janice chuckled, as the empty mini bus rolled to a stop and opened its door.

  Graffiti and Street Art

  Stephen Terrell

  Graffiti and Street Art—those often brightly-colored words and images that adorn walls, schools, street signs and railroad cars—are often used interchangeably. Others see a distinction.

  One difference between graffiti and street art is permission. The Herron School of Art website states that there are “strong differentiations between the two forms of expression as well as the types of people that create them.” Graffiti is usually the product of quick, surreptitious action—a late night location, a quick look around, and a flash of spray paint. It is often an act of vandalism, sometimes a gang demarcation, and sometimes simply youthful expression.

  But in the late 1970s and 1980s, a new type of graffiti appeared. The work of self-trained Jean-Michel Basquiat and Al Diaz appeared under the name SAMO. Their work gained immense popularity. Basquiat's work made its way into galleries, and he became one of the most celebrated artists in the New York art scene until a heroin overdose took his life. Other street artists and commercial successes followed, including Banksy, the subject of the 2010 movie Exit Through the Gift Shop; Morley, a classically trained artist; and Retna, an L.A. artist who works with an alphabet of his own creation.

  No longer is street art simply a quick act of vandalism with a spray can or the refuge of frustrated unemployed graphic artists. It is often well-planned, complicated art that is put together in advance, and then erected in locations by permission. There is even a museum of street art in Brooklyn and an annual conference in Atlanta called “Living Walls: The City Speaks.”

  Street Art

  Stephen Terrell

  The first body was found on one of those warm days of early spring. The kind of day that makes you glad to be alive.

  I got the call at my desk just after my first cup of coffee. I headed to the scene near the old Muncie Central Trade School in my city-issued, six-year-old p.o.s. Chevy that I still had to drive due to budget cuts. At forty-nine, I was the second most senior detective in the Muncie Police Department, but I still was stuck with a car that was best described as two-tone, sun-faded blue over rust.

  Alexis James, a petite patrolwoman in her early thirties, met me at the scene just off 8th Street. She seemed swallowed up by all the gear attached to her utility belt, but if the weight was a burden, it didn't show in her manner. She worked the midnight to eight swing shift where we crossed paths occasionally on domestics, bar fights, and periodic homicides. She was ex-military and still carried herself with military precision. She didn't bother with pleasantries. Joe Friday would have liked her.

  “Detective Rigsby, I found the body over in that deserted parking lot,” she said, pointing. “Hispanic male, probably mid to late twenties. From the tats, likely a gang member. Looks like a double tap to the back of the head.”

  “When did you get here?”

  “I caught the call just before the end of my shift. Arrived at the scene at 7:58,” Alexis said, consulting her notes for accuracy. “Found the body a few minutes later. Didn't take long. The 911 caller pretty much said where to find it.”

  “Who called?”

  Again she consulted her notebook. “Anonymous woman called from a pay phone. 911 center showed it was in front of Frank's Bar. Dispatcher thought the caller sounded drunk.”

  The look on my face must have betrayed my thoughts.

  “There are still a few pay phones around, sir,” Alexis said, without a trace of a smile.

  We walked across the broken pavement and shattered glass that had once been a parking lot for perhaps two hundred workers. After the Chevrolet assembly plant closed, there was no more need for the parts manufactured at the factory, and it shut its doors. It was like the whole damn town. The jobs were gone to Mexico, or China, or who knows where, leaving behind the rusted factories and deteriorating cities that were once the lifeblood of America—big-shouldered tool makers, hog butchers, and stackers of wheat no more.

  The body was face down, head slightly turned, arms splayed wide. Drying blood collected around what appeared to be two small caliber holes in the back of the victim's head. Except for the blood, the man looked as if he was asleep, bothered only by a troubling dream.

  I pulled a pair of latex gloves from my jacket pocket and snapped them on. Using a thumb and forefinger, I eased a wallet from the victim's back pocket and flipped through it. The driver's license was for Miguel Zayas, age twenty-nine. It listed an address on West Adams, an area now populated by Mexican immigrants, mostly illegals with fake green cards, earning below minimum wage and living eight to a room in houses long ago fallen into disrepair. I was surprised to find more than six hundred dollars in cash still in the wallet. The Little Mexico community operated mostly on a cash basis and apparently Miguel's bank was his back pocket.

  “Doesn't look like a robbery,” I said out loud.

  “Excuse me, sir?” Alexis said.

  “Not a robbery. Guy's got almost two hundred dollars in cash in his pocket.” Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that crime scene techs had arrived. As I walked toward them, I slipped four hundred dollars into my pants pocket.

  * * *

  Nearly an hour later, just as we were getting ready to remove the body, I heard an all-too familiar and unwelcome voice call out from the edge of the parking lot. “Hey, Hammer, whatcha got?”

  My given name was Patrick Rigsby, but most called me Hammer, a nickname earned as an all-state linebacker in high school. The annoying voice belonged to Tess White, the crime and court reporter for the local newspaper. In her mid-thirties, she survived the newsroom cutbacks, most likely because she was at the low end of the pay scale. Her hair was dyed fire-engine red and hung in a stylish cut that was long in the front and tapered severely toward the back. She was a pert fireplug, slightly over five feet tall with thick legs and hips and large breasts. She carried some extra pounds, but it wasn't unattractive on her. She always dressed in snug clothes that emphasized her breasts, which may have been another reason she survived the cutbacks in the male-dominated local newsroom.

  I walked over to Tess, knowing that if I ignored her, she would traipse into the crime scene to ask her questions. “Male Hispanic,” I said, preempting her question. “Tentative ID is Miguel Zayas, age twenty-nine. Address we have is Muncie. But none of that is official yet, so hold off until we get a positive I.D. and notify the family.” While I wasn't fond of Tess, experience taught me that she could be trusted not to publish a victim's name before family notification.

  “Sure,” she said, making notes on the tablet computer she held in her hand. She confirmed the spelling of the victim's name. “Shooting?”

  “Yep. Two shots in back of the head.”

  “Robbery? Gang? Drugs? Any idea?”

  I self-consciously let my hand feel the bills in my pocket. “Doesn't look like robbery,” I said. “Victim has what looks like a gang tattoo. I'm going to check with Lacy Ringger in the gang unit. We really don't know. And before you ask, no witnesses that we know of.”

  Tess looked over my shoulder and nodded as if to point past me with her chin. “What about the painting on the wall? Is that connected?”

  “What painting?” Before the words were out, I was cursing under my breath for being so stupid.

  “That graffiti on the wall over there. Looks like someone painted the murder scene. Is that what that is?”

  I turned, still cursing. Maybe eighty feet behind the body on a pockmarked, brown brick wall, there was a graffiti mural in vibrant pu
rple, orange, green, yellow, and white. It was a gruesome, cartoonish image of a man on his knees falling forward, his face contorted in agony and terror. Blood and brains exploded from the back of his head. Smoke curled from the barrel of a handgun held in a black-gloved hand.

  “Shit.” I said it to myself, but it was loud enough that Tess heard.

  I looked back and there was a smile on her face. “Didn't see the forest for the trees?” she said.

  I ignored her comment and started walking back toward the painted wall. Behind me I heard her giving instructions to her photographer, telling him to get a photo of the graffiti with the body in the foreground.

  * * *

  The next morning, I sat at my desk talking with Lacy Ringger. Tall, athletic and with midnight black skin, Lacy was an imposing presence. For the past four years, he had headed the department's gang unit. He was effective in building relationships in black and Hispanic gangs and the communities where they thrived, but the growing white supremacist gangs on the city's East Side were beyond his reach. I showed Lacy several photos of the victim with close-ups of the tattoos on his neck, chest and arms.

  “Miguel Zayas,” Lacy said after flipping through the first three photos. “Small-time drug dealer with the local branch of LRN—La Raza Nation. That's a Hispanic gang out of Chicago.”

  “Any thoughts on why someone would want him dead?”

  Lacy shook his head. “Who knows? Zayas wasn't a big time player. He sold a little dope, small time thefts. There was street talk that he did low-end enforcement for LRN, making sure people pay up. I think he did a little time. But he's not someone that gets targeted. He's not worth it. That doesn't mean he couldn't have pissed someone off. Obviously he did. But just may have been a bad drug deal, or maybe he messed with somebody's woman. No way of knowing.”

  “Keep your ear to the ground. Let me know what you hear.”

  As Lacy got up to walk away, the phone rang. “Rigsby,” I answered.

  “Detective Rigsby, this is Alexis James. I'm the officer who caught the call on that homicide yesterday morning.”

  “I know who you are,” I said. “Call me Hammer. Everybody does.”

  “Uh, Hammer,” her voice was a bit uncertain. “I did a little snooping around on my shift last night. Went down to Frank's Bar. That's where the 911 call came from. Seems there's an old hooker who comes in there sometimes. Name's Annie Waldron. She was in there night before last getting trashed. Told Frank that she saw a guy get killed. I guess Annie is prone to exaggerating when she's drunk, and most times she's drunk, so Frank didn't take it too seriously. Might be worth checking out.”

  I thought for a moment, then asked, “Any idea where I can find this Annie?”

  “Frank said she's a regular. He doesn't let her hit on his customers, at least that's what he says. She comes in and drinks before she hits the streets, and then sometimes after she's turned a trick or two. Best time to catch her is between seven and nine, or after midnight.”

  I made some notes on a scrap of paper. “Thanks Alexis,” I said. “Good work.”

  * * *

  I found Annie Waldron just after 8:30 that evening, sitting by herself at the end of Frank's well-worn bar. Even in the dim yellow light, the hard-life lines on Annie's face were evident. Her hair was a dull drug-store bottle blonde with inch-long gray roots. It hung to her shoulders in unwashed tangles. She wore a flimsy stained shirt open to just above her naval, revealing several inches of a white bra. Her black mini skirt rode up nearly to her crotch as she sat on the barstool. She reeked of cigarettes, body odor, and cheap floral perfume.

  Annie finagled a double shot of house whiskey from me before she told her story. She downed the drink in a single unflinching swallow, then ordered a second. I held up my hand toward Frank. “Not until I hear the story.”

  Annie took a deep breath. Her voice was thin and raspy, her words slightly slurred. “I had this new john. Don't know his name. He picked me up on Madison there by where that old hardware store used to be. He drove me to this deserted spot over by the trade school. It's a place I've used before.” Annie spoke with the matter-of-fact casualness of a clerk describing the sale of a pair of shoes. “Gave him a blow job. He paid me and let me out, then drove off.”

  I wanted to ask how much someone like Annie could get on the street from someone desperate enough to use her services, but I let the question go. “What time was that?”

  Annie shook her head. “Don't know. Maybe midnight.” She broke into a small smile that showed a line of broken, yellowed teeth. “Don't punch a time clock.”

  “Just answer the questions,” I said sternly. “What happened then?”

  “After he drove away, I needed a drink. Clear the palate. Ain't that what they say on those fancy cooking shows on TV?”

  I barked a short laugh, but tried to cover it with a cough. “Go on. Just tell me what you saw,” I said.

  Annie stared up toward the row of whiskeys behind the bar. “Girl gets kinda thirsty talking this much,” she said. “Hard to talk with a dry mouth.”

  I signaled Frank and he brought another shot glass filled with amber liquid.

  Annie took it down in one swallow. Then she continued. “When I got over by the old Thomas Machine plant, I needed to pee. So I found a few bushes and crouched down. That's when I seen ’em. This guy was down on his knees, and another guy was standing behind him, holding a gun pointed right at his head. They was talking. I mean, it sounded like the guy on his knees was really upset. But you know it ain't my business. I watched just long enough for me to pee. I was pulling up my panties, and I heard this ‘pop, pop.’ I looked over and the one guy was sprawled out on the ground. The other guy was standing over him holding the gun.”

  “What did the guy with the gun look like?”

  “It was dark. There ain't no lights out there. He wasn't very big, but that's all I could tell.”

  “White? Black? Young? Old?”

  “Don't know. Couldn't see. I just got the hell out of there as fast as I could.”

  “If you saw the guy again, would you recognize him?”

  “Shit, he could sit down right next to me and I wouldn't know him.”

  I continued to ask questions for another ten minutes, but Annie didn't have anything else to offer. I signaled Frank, who brought a third drink, and called it a night.

  * * *

  The second body was found in mid-July, just after I returned from vacation. This time it was an overweight black woman in her mid-twenties discovered on the northeast side of the city. An elderly black man discovered the body at mid-morning as he was walking from his apartment in a nearby senior housing project to a Dollar General Store. The body was lying in a pool of blood behind a long-closed K-Mart.

  This time, when I arrived at the scene, I immediately saw the graffiti. Across the whitewash blocks of the abandoned building was a spray-painted, cartoon-like image of a big, black woman, her back turned, getting her throat slashed by a knife held by a black-gloved hand.

  “Looks like you got another one, Hammer.”

  I turned to see Joe Marcum, a career uniform officer I had known since my first day on the force. He stood with his thumbs inside his belt, his cap tipped back. “Gonna be a hot day to be working a stiff,” he said.

  I nodded a greeting and asked about his upcoming retirement. While we talked, the photographer and crime scene techs arrived. I told Joe where to set up the crime scene perimeter, then pulled on a set of latex gloves. The body lay in a near-fetal position two feet in front of the wall painting. Her throat had been sliced deep enough to expose her cervical vertebrae. Blood covered her oversized yellow T-shirt and tight spandex shorts, forming a now-sticky river where black flies were feasting. Where the skin wasn't covered in blood, there were large, blue-ink tattoos. I wasn't sure any of the marks were gang related, but I knew who would be able to tell me. I called Lacy Ringger.

  I kneeled and took a close look. Even in the distortion of death, I could te
ll that I knew this woman. I couldn't remember from where or how, but I knew our paths had crossed.

  Lacy showed up a half hour later as the crime scene techs continued their work. It took him only a single glance at the body to know who it was.

  “Bren Taylor,” Lacy said. “She's connected with the Broadway Killaz. She's got a short record—hooking, shoplifting, possession, that type of thing. Nothing violent I know of. Got three, maybe four kids. Lives in that new public housing across from the Hoffer Center, if I remember right.”

  The name clicked somewhere in my distant memory, but I still couldn't place her. I kept trying to sort through my mental files to find the connection, but was pulled out of my thoughts by a too-familiar voice.

  “Another victim of the Graffiti Killer?” Tess White yelled from behind a yellow crime scene tape barrier.

  “No comment,” I shouted over my shoulder.

  “Looks like the same style. You can't deny that this is connected to the murder you had a couple of months ago.”

  I turned and looked directly at Tess. “What part of no comment do you not understand?” I then walked over to her, strides long and purposeful, my jaw set and eyes focused directly on her. “And I don't want to read something in that rag of yours that says I did. Understand?”

  I didn't wait for a response, just turned sharply and walked away.

  * * *

  Late the next morning I sat at my desk, drinking coffee and eating a second cream-filled Long John from Concannon's Bakery. Powdered sugar from the pastry lightly dusted the murder scene photos that were scattered in front of me. My phone buzzed with the distinctive sound made by internal calls. When I picked it up, Police Chief Brad Smith was on the line. He was not happy.

  “Have you seen what's in the paper this morning?”

  “No,” I said. “I don't read the paper.”