Chapter 2 #2
But it wouldn’t leave her alone. She stared at it for a long moment, shook her head, made a note of it, and then, unable to help herself, took a quick photo of the stain before walking back out into the main hallway.
A number of neighbors stood around, talking in whispers.
She turned to Rodney and stated, “I’ll take the first group.
You take the second one.” They split up, and, as soon as she walked toward her target group, several of the neighbors tried to disappear.
Kate held up her hands, calming them down. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
Several of them froze, looked back at her, while a few scrambled. “I have a few questions I need to ask. Either we do it now, or I’ll come back later—and later again until I talk to each and every one in this building. If needed, I can haul you all downtown.”
One of them, an older lady, stared at Kate with a bright, inquisitive look. “Did you really think we were running away?”
“Yes,” she declared. “From my experience, one group of people who hang around crime scenes want to be involved in these things. However, then another group just wants to watch from a distance. As soon as a cop approaches, they run.”
The lady flushed. “I wasn’t trying to run, but obviously you were about to do some police business, and I didn’t want to be in your way.”
Kate smiled at her, but it was a grim smile. “A man has been murdered.” At that remark came gasps of horror, and she nodded. “That seems to surprise you.”
“Of course. John’s always been super friendly and kind to all of us,” the older woman shared. “What a waste. It’s a shock.”
Kate came closer. “I’m Detective Morgan.”
“Lisa Hanson.”
“Lisa, … how well did you know John?”
“I didn’t really know him well, but he’s lived here a couple years. So, as any good neighbor does, we have some knowledge of each other and what’s going on.”
“And did he live alone?”
“Now he did, yes. He had an ex. They broke up about maybe six months or so ago.”
As Kate glanced at the crowd, she singled out one of the other ladies beside her. “And your name?”
“Nancy.”
Kate asked, “What do you think, Nancy?”
Nancy nodded. “I would say it was about that,” she began. “He wasn’t the kind to bring home strange women every night, but he certainly wasn’t celibate. If you ask me if I know any of them, then no. I wouldn’t know any of them except for the ex-girlfriend who lived here for about a year.”
Kate made a note on the names and the time frame and asked the group, “And do you know any of his other friends that we could contact?”
Nancy replied, “Hopefully that’ll all be in his phone.”
Lisa nodded.
Kate replied, “That could be a source of information, but anything you guys can corroborate is helpful too.”
Lisa shrugged, looked back at her friends, and added, “John was the guy you could call on if you needed help moving a piece of furniture or if you needed somebody to watch your place because you were going away for a few weeks or so.”
“In my case, I had new appliances delivered,” one of the women shared simply, “and he let the installers into my apartment for me.”
“And you are?”
“Maureen.”
“And you had absolutely no compunction about giving him the keys to your place?” Kate asked her directly.
Maureen, who was approximately fifty years old, flushed ever-so-slightly, then shook her head. “No, of course not. And it wasn’t like that.” Her voice went an octane higher as she continued. “That’s an awful thing to say.” She was an attractive woman in her fifties, and that stood out.
Kate’s eyebrows shot up as she studied her. “I didn’t say anything other than the fact that you let some neighbor have a key to your apartment. John wasn’t a family member, I presume. So, your relationship to John is now, however, of interest.”
“We were friends,” she snapped. “That’s all, nothing more, nothing less.”
Kate didn’t say anything. Her gaze slid over to the two women who had been quiet up until now.
She quickly got the names and addresses for all of them.
They all lived on this floor, including Jill and Lora.
And, of course, nobody had heard or seen anything.
“So, none of you have any idea who might have been with John for the last few days? You haven’t seen him at all? ”
“No, I haven’t,” Jill confirmed.
“We haven’t seen him.” Lora shook her head.
“I haven’t seen him either,” Maureen stated stiffly, still biting from the insinuation earlier.
Kate certainly wouldn’t take responsibility for that as Maureen had brought that on herself.
She was still a good-looking woman though.
And John was a good-looking man. So, anything along that line would have been a reasonable suspicion.
As her final questions, she turned to the women and asked, “Do you know why John and his current girlfriend broke up? And what was her name, by the way?”
“Norma,” one of the women offered. “It’s such an old-fashioned name.”
Kate wrote it down and agreed. “That’s not as common in the young people these days, is it?”
“Nope, sure isn’t,” she noted. “It’s also my middle name, so it was pretty easy to remember.” She smiled over at Maureen and asked, “Do you know why they broke up?”
“He mentioned something about they didn’t have the same ideologies anymore.”
“As in religion?” Kate asked.
“No, I don’t think religion had anything to do with it. Yet I guess it could have,” Maureen noted, “because I remember her heading off to church one morning, and she was in tears because John wouldn’t join her.”
Kate wrote that down and didn’t say anything for a moment as she studied her notes. Then she asked, “And I guess you don’t have any idea how to get a hold of her, do you?”
“Only that she went to the local church around the corner from here, but now that she’s not living here, I don’t know. You’ll have to track her down yourself.”
“And she was living here with him?”
“I don’t know that either,” she declared, her tone snappish. “She was just here a lot. They were in a relationship, so it made sense.”
“Of course.” Kate nodded. Keeping the thoughts bubbling up in her head to herself, she thanked the women, then turned and headed toward Rodney, who was just finishing off a conversation with the other group of men and women. Both crowds now dispersed.
As they compared notes, she asked Rodney, “Anybody in your group know anything about the girlfriend, Norma?”
He shook his head. “No, they didn’t really have anything to do with him. What about the ladies back there?”
“Apparently he was one of those really nice guys you could give your apartment key to and have deliveries made inside. Plus, if they were going away for a while, he would look after the apartment. That kind of a guy,” she shared, with a knowing look.
Rodney nodded. “I guess that makes sense. He had a girlfriend. Yet, according to my group, they split up about six months ago.”
“Yeah, that correlates with the information I got. And did anybody have any reason for the breakup?”
He shook his head. “Nobody seems to know anything about him, other than he was just a nice guy.”
“Right. So your normal, average, nice guy suddenly ups and gets murdered for no particular reason?” She snorted. “Somehow I don’t think so.”
“Oh, I don’t think so either,” he replied, “but finding out the whys and the wherefores will be a whole different story.”
“As always,” she muttered. “Anyway, let’s keep canvassing, and I’ll go talk to the manager.” The manager, thankfully, was deep into all the noise and commotion with the police, now finding out one of his tenants had been murdered. It was a great conversation opener.
The officer stood back, and he didn’t need to point out who she should talk to. “The super’s name is Hank.”
Hank just kept shaking his head, repeating, “He’s just not the kind to get murdered.”
She wanted to ask what kind of person got murdered because, in her eyes and with her experience, it really could be anybody. She didn’t want to bring up that question, except that she needed to know in what way John just wasn’t that kind of a guy.
“He’s nice. He never got into drugs or anything.”
“So, you knew him really well.”
“No, but … I’m a good judge of character,” he explained, almost as a last-ditch effort to justify his position. Then he frowned. “Surely you’re not blaming him for anything, are you?”
She frowned at him. “I don’t generally blame the victims for getting themselves killed.”
He flushed and shifted nervously.
She couldn’t tell whether his nervousness was due to something he knew and didn’t want to share or he was just uncomfortable talking to the police. She asked, “So what about the girlfriend living with him?”
Hank shook his head. “He did approach me at one point, asking if there would be a problem if he had somebody move in full time. I told him that the lease itself wasn’t affected, but that we would need to know for insurance’s sake.”
“Good point,” she stated, and he seemed to brighten at that. “And did he come back and tell you?”
“He did not. I did see her every once in a while, and I didn’t ask her outright if she was living there,” he admitted ruefully. “Maybe I should have. It never even occurred to me. The lease is in his name, so I do business directly with him.”
“And you didn’t ask John about it either?”
“No.” He shook his head. “And it seemed they broke up fairly quickly afterward,” he added, with an eye roll. “I’m assuming they did. I didn’t see her around anymore.”
“And maybe he was just playing the field.”
“I don’t know,” he said, his sadness evident in his expression. “The last thing I want to do is keep track of every single guy’s romantic adventures in this place.”
It was this place that made her stop and ask, “Why this place?”
He stared at her for a moment, as if he’d said the wrong thing. “Because most people here aren’t married,” he finally shared. “It’s not exactly a building full of families, is it?”