shrugged. “I dunno how the hell to pronounce it. Starts with a K and it’s got some Z’s and W’s in it.”
The ambient temperature inside the house wasn’t much different than it was outside. In fact, it was probably exactly the same. The only thing that made it feel warmer was the shelter itself and thus a reprieve from the wind chill factor.
“So how is it spelled?” I asked as I buried my hands in my coat pockets and worked my fingers to jump-start the circulation.
“Why?”
I shrugged.
He pulled out his notebook and flipped through it for a second. “Shit. Can’t read my own handwriting. Hey Deck,” he called across the room. “You got a spelling on the victim’s name?”
Saint Louis County Homicide Detective Carl Deckert was best described as everyone’s grandfather. He was a thick, round man, aged somewhere in his mid to late fifties. A trimmed crop of fine, grey hair covered his head, and that was often sheltered beneath a fedora with the brim neatly snapped over his brow.
His attitude, forged in a different time, was one filled with manners and kindness. His eyes never lacked the mischievous twinkle of a youngster nor his ruddy face a friendly smile. He usually had something good to say-even under less than perfect circumstances.
His overall appearance and demeanor had to be advantageous in his line of work, because to be honest, if I didn’t already know him, I would never suspect he was a cop. Even if I did, he still came across as someone to whom you could bare your soul.
Presently, he was several feet away from us with the virtually omnipresent fedora pushed up high on his forehead as he carefully studied the room. At his side, he held tight to a bag that might have been a sack lunch. I didn’t ask.
“K-A-S-P-R-Z-Y-K-O-W-S-K-I.” The older county detective offered the string of letters from memory. “You pronounce it, kasper-kush-kee.”
I mentally aligned the letters and then silently repeated the name back to myself, placing the proper “ksh” emphasis on the ZYK combination and allowing the W to remain silent. “Slavic, obviously,” I said aloud.
“Yeah,” Deckert agreed. “It’s Polish. Means something like ‘the place of Kasper’s son.’”
“You get that from the next of kin?” Ben asked.
“Still haven’t found any yet,” Deckert told him with a shake of his head.
“Nobody?”
“Nope. Not so far.”
“So, what’s up with you and the genealogy lesson? You been eatin’ a bunch of kielbasa or somethin’?”
“My babcia was originally from Poland.”
“Your what?” Ben asked.
“Grandmother,” he explained. “She was a first generation immigrant.” He then gave his head a quick tilt to the side before adding, “But since you brought it up, she did make a pretty mean kielbasa and kraw.”
“What’s a ‘kraw’?”
“Sauerkraut.”
“Oh, okay. I love that stuff, but it kills me every time I eat it.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“Hey, she make those pierogie things too?”
“Yeah.” Deckert nodded. “Pierogies, kluski, golabki, krupnik, you name it. Babcia was a hell of a cook.”
“That what’s in the bag?”
“I wish.”
“Too bad. Jeez, I guess we better stop talkin’ about food,” Ben said. “I just realized I haven’t had anything to eat since dinner last night.”
“Hey,” I interjected. “Is this really the appropriate time and place for this discussion?”
I suppose there was some level of disdain in my voice that was readily apparent because both of them looked at me with somewhat apologetic expressions on their faces.
“Coppers do this shit, Row,” my friend told me. “You know that. It’s how we keep from goin’ nuts.”
“Yeah, I know,” I replied. “Sorry… I’m just… I don’t know.”
“It’s okay, Rowan,” Deckert offered.
Ben shifted the subject back to what had originally led down the culinary path. “So why were you askin’ about his name anyway, white man?”
“Curiosity I guess,” I told him. “Trying to make sense of everything.”
“Well I hate to sound crass.” Ben tossed in his two cents, “But his name could be Smith. Doesn’t really matter. He’s dead.”
“You’re right,” I returned. “But he was alive once.”
“Uh-huh. ‘Bout two weeks ago,” Deckert offered and then explained. “According to the M.E., he’d been deceased for approximately a week when he was found, and that was a week ago itself.”
I nodded. “So I’ve heard.”
The wholly unmistakable funk of death still lingered on the gelid air, and the lag time between death and discovery Deckert just mentioned explained it. Fortunately, it was faint as there had been some time for the place to air out; which also explained why every time I spoke I could see my words as well as hear them. Still, it was nowhere near as bad as it could have been.
I let my eyes roam and slowly scanned the area around me, getting a visual feel for the place. We were actually standing in the partially finished basement of a house that sat just inside the municipality of Wood Dell. Recently hung sheet rock formed a wall to our right and was marred at intervals by wide vertical swaths of joint compound. Bare studs to our rear formed a half-wall return that separated one section from the next. At the far end of the room, a doorway led deeper into the basement and presumably the ongoing remodeling project.
My gaze eventually came to rest on the centerpiece we’d surrounded-a set of well-seasoned sawhorses, age-greyed and paint-spattered, that were occupying the middle of the room. A hardwood one-by-ten was stretched across them with the beginning of a decorative edge routed into one side. The smoothly tapered cut ran for approximately ten inches then suddenly degraded as the careful craftsmanship vanished into an arcing gouge that hop-scotched across the surface of the wood.
On the bare, plywood sub-floor beneath, a chalked outline stood out against the sawdust and construction detritus. At a bulbous point in the scribed profile that was obviously where the man’s head had been, dried blood stained the wood a rusty brown. It had pooled in a haphazard pattern that in a bizarre sense resembled a fuzzy map of Italy, morbid as that observation was. Additional stains spread outward from what had probably been the early stages of purging and putrefaction.
The coppery scent of the old blood blended with the nasal bite of sappy lumber, adding themselves to the potpourri of odors. Even as faint as it was, in the back of my mind I wondered if I would ever be able to forget the sharpness of this smell.
My friend took notice of where my focused stare had fallen, and he cleared his throat.
“You slippin’ into la-la land?” he asked.
“No,” I returned, breaking my intense gaze away from the outline and turning to Ben. “Just thinking.”
“Coroner’s report says he bled out,” Deckert told me as if he felt a need to explain the bloodstain. “Looks like the wacko came in while the guy was working, picked up a hammer, and jacked him in the head. Poor bastard just laid there and bled to death. Of course, he probably would’ve ended up being a vegetable if he hadn’t.”
“Lesser of two evils,” I muttered.
“Something like that,” he agreed, then continued. “Anyway, from what we found it looks like the asshole might have lived here for at least a couple of days after he killed him. Maybe a week.”
“So Porter’s been in town for at least two weeks?”
“Yeah,” Deckert answered. “Looks that way.”
“I still don’t understand why you didn’t tell me about it until now,” I contended.
“Albright was already running things, Row,” Ben spoke. “She made it pretty clear that you weren’t to be involved.”
“But you called me this morning about Randy, and that was before you even knew who the victim was.”
“Yeah, and I got my ass chewed for it too.”
