Final Justice boh-8 Page 16

  No problem like that tonight. He tied the left tie to a curve in the wrought iron, then reached across the bitch for her right hand.

  Cheryl started to sob.

  Homer slapped her, hard.

  “Not a sound, bitch!” he said.

  Once he had the second plastic tie in place, he jerked on it to make sure it wouldn’t come loose, then jerked on the other one.

  Then he knelt on the bed, sat back on his heels, and ran the blade of the Jim Bowie replica down Cheryl’s body, from the neck between her boobs to her crotch.

  She whimpered again.

  He tied her right ankle to the wrought iron at the foot of the bed, and then the left ankle. Then he ran the blade up her body again.

  “Not a peep, you fucking bitch!”

  He went to the light switch by the door and flipped it on.

  Cheryl’s eyes were wide with terror.

  He leaned over the bed and put the blade of the Jim Bowie replica under her pajama top, and one by one cut the buttons off so that it could be easily opened when it came time for that.

  He took the digital camera from the coveralls and took Cheryl’s picture.

  Then he leaned over her and pushed the left side of her pajama top off her breast and took a picture of that.

  Very nice. Her nipples had become erect.

  Homer became aware that he had a hard-on. A real hard-on.

  He reached into the coveralls and took it out and waved it at her.

  “This is for you, bitch!” he said.

  He walked to the bed and pushed Cheryl’s pajamas off her right breast, and then took a picture of her like that.

  Then he went and knelt on the bed so that he could rub the head of his penis on her nipples.

  That was very exciting, so exciting that he knew he was going to have an orgasm, and since that was the case, he might as well have a good one, so he put his hand on it and pumped rapidly until he ejaculated onto her breasts and face.

  She turned her head and whimpered.

  As fast as the camera would permit, Homer took three pictures of that, and then had an artistic inspiration. He took the Jim Bowie replica and carefully scraped some of the semen from Cheryl’s breast on it, and then laid it between her breasts, with the tip just under her chin. And he took two pictures of that, looked at them in the camera’s built-in viewer, and then put the camera on the bedside table.

  “I’ll be right back,” Homer said. “We’re just getting started.”

  He went into the bathroom, and first urinated, and then, standing over the washbasin, washed his genitals, toying with them, thinking that when he went back in the bedroom, he would be able to get a shot of his sperm on her breasts and face.

  That was an exciting thought, so exciting that he felt himself begin to grow hard again, and he thought that’s what he would do, get it up again, so that when he went back in the bedroom, she would see it and get a hint of what was in store for her.

  When he went back in the bedroom, the goddamn bitch had somehow got her right hand free from the plastic tie. That had given her enough movement to twist onto her side, and to pull her telephone from the bedside table. She was punching in a number.

  “You goddamn fucking bitch!” Homer said, angrily. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

  He moved quickly to the bed, made a fist, and punched her as hard as he could in the face. He turned her on her back again and punched her again. He reached for the telephone, to pull the line free from the socket. It wouldn’t come at first and he pulled harder, and then the line snapped, and the phone came out of his hand and flew across the room and smashed into the mirror mounted on the wall. The mirror broke into three large pieces, and two of them fell to the floor, where they shattered into small pieces.

  Jesus Christ, that made enough noise to wake the fucking dead!

  “That’s going to cost you, bitch!” he said, menacingly.

  He realized he was breathing heavily and took a moment to calm down.

  Then he looked down at Cheryl.

  There was a little blood on her face, running down over her lips, and she was looking at something on the ceiling.

  He looked up to see what she was looking at. There was nothing but the ceiling and the light fixture. He looked back down at her, and she was still looking at the ceiling.

  He waved his hand in front of her eyes. There was no reaction.

  “Jesus Christ!” Homer said, softly.

  He reached down and slapped Cheryl on both cheeks.

  “Goddamn you, wake up!” he said.

  There was no reaction.

  “Oh, shit,” Homer said, softly, and waved his hand in front of her open eyes again.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” Homer said.

  Then he went to the door, turned the lights in the bedroom off, and made his way back through the apartment to the kitchen, and let himself out, taking care to make sure the screen door’s latch had automatically locked after he pushed it shut.

  He went quickly to the De Ville, and was halfway down the block before he remembered to take the black ski mask off.

  And then Homer had an at first chilling thought.

  I don’t have the fucking camera!

  He patted his pockets to make sure.

  Shit, shit, shit!

  Oh, fuck it! I never took the rubber gloves off, so there won’t be any fingerprints, and they can’t trace it to me. I bought it in that store with the Arabs in Times Square in New York, the time I picked up the silver-gray Bentley. I paid cash. I’ll just have to get another one. It was getting pretty old, anyway.

  SEVEN

  On the other side of Cheryl Anne Williamson’s bedroom wall in her second-floor apartment on Independence Street was the bedroom wall of the apartment occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Herbert McGrory.

  There was a mirror on that wall, too-the apartments were roughly mirror images of each other-and when Cheryl’s bedside telephone slipped out of Homer C. Daniels’s hand and flew with sufficient velocity into her mirror to cause it to shatter, it also struck the plasterboard behind the mirror.

  At that point on the wall, behind the plasterboard, was one of the two-by-four-inch vertical studs, arranged at sixteen-inch intervals along the wall. Between each stud, insulation material had been installed, more to deaden sounds between the two apartments than for thermal purposes.

  Technically, this was a violation of the Philadelphia building code, which requires that living areas be separated by a firewall, either of concrete or cement blocks. The building inspector somehow missed this violation. Over the years, a number of Philadelphia building inspectors have been found guilty of accepting donations from building contractors for overlooking violations of the building code.

  Many-perhaps most-of these corrupt civil servants have been found guilty and fined or sentenced to prison, or both, but it was obviously difficult for the city to reinspect every structure examined and passed by the inspector caught not looking, and it wasn’t done.

  The stud moved, not far, but far enough to strike the back of the mirror on the McGrorys’ wall. The mirror bent, then cracked, and then a large, roughly triangular piece of it slid out of the frame and crashed onto the floor.

  The noise woke Mrs. Joanne McGrory, a short, rather plump thirty-six-year-old, who was in bed with her husband, who was tall, rather plump, and thirty-eight years old.

  She sat up in the bed and exclaimed, “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!”

  She looked around the dark room, and then down at Mr. McGrory, who was asleep on his stomach.

  “Herb!”

  After a moment, without moving, Herb replied, “What?”

  “Get up, for God’s sake!”

  “Why? What’s happened?”

  “Get up, Herb, damn you!”

  Mrs. McGrory turned on the lamp on her bedside table as Mr. McGrory sat up.

  The first thing Mr. McGrory noticed was the shattered mirror.

  “Jesus, what happened to the mirror?”


  “How would I know?”

  “It’s busted.”

  “I can see that. What happened?”

  Mr. McGrory ran over the possibilities.

  “It could have been a sonic boom,” he theorized.

  “Sonic boom?”

  “You know, when an airplane goes faster than sound.”

  “Oh, God, Herb! Sometimes…”

  “Well, you tell me,” he said.

  “Get up and see if anything else is wrong,” she said. “Don’t cut your feet on the broken glass.”

  “Jesus!”

  “Do it now, Herb!”

  Two minutes later, after taking a cautious tour of their apartment, Mr. McGrory returned to announce that the only thing that seemed to be wrong was the mirror.

  “You didn’t hear anything?” Joanne asked, significantly, nodding toward the wall with the broken mirror.

  Several times, the McGrorys had heard the sounds of Cheryl Williamson entertaining gentleman callers in her bedroom. Once they had had to bang on the wall to request less enthusiasm.

  Mr. McGrory smiled and said, “Could be…” and then made a circle with the thumb and index finger of his left hand, into which he then inserted, with a pumping motion, the index finger of his right hand.

  “You’re disgusting,” Joanne said, and then added: “This time, it’s too much. The mirror is busted. I’m going to go over there and read the riot act to her.”

  “No, you’re not,” he said.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Then I’m going to call the cops. I won’t have this!”

  “Call the cops? What are you going to say, ‘The lady next door’s boyfriend screwed her so hard the mirror fell off our wall’?”

  “Unless we do something about it, we’re going to have to pay for that mirror,” Joanne argued.

  “Okay,” Herb said after a moment’s thought. “Go tell her what happened.”

  “If I go over there, what she’s going to say is that she doesn’t have any idea what I’m talking about. Would you?”

  “Would I what?”

  “Say, ‘Gee, I’m sorry my scre… lovemaking broke your mirror, and I’ll write you a check’?”

  “And what good do you think calling the cops is going to do?”

  “It can’t do any harm, can it?” Joanne asked reasonably. “Maybe something is wrong next door-with her. And I don’t want us to have to pay for the mirror.”

  Joanne went to the telephone on the bedside table and punched 911.

  At 1:57 A.M., a call went out from Police Radio:

  “Disturbance, house, 600 Independence Street, second-floor left apartment.”

  Officer James Hyde, a tall, thin, dark-haired young man of twenty-four, reached for his microphone in his patrol car, pushed the button, and replied:

  “Thirty-five twelve, got it.”

  A moment later, there was another response, this one from Officer Haywood L. Cubellis, a 210-pound, six-foot-seven, twenty-five-year-old African-American from his patrol car:

  “Thirty-five seventeen, I’ll back him up.”

  Whenever possible-in other words, usually-two cars will respond to a “Disturbance, House” call. Such calls usually involve a difference of opinion between two people of opposite-or the same-sex sharing living accommodations. By the time the cops are called, tempers are at-or over-the boiling point.

  If two officers are present, each can listen sympathetically to the complaints of one abused party vis-a-vis the other, which also serves to keep the parties separated. One lonely police officer can be overwhelmed.

  Both cars arrived at 600 Independence Street a few minutes after 2 A.M., although neither-there was little traffic- had used either siren or flashing lights.

  While it might be argued that neither Officer Hyde nor Officer Cubellis was a highly experienced police officer-Hyde had been on the job three years and Cubellis four-they had enough experience to know that it was better for officers responding to a “Disturbance, House” call to bring with them calm, reason, and order, rather than the heightened excitement that howling sirens, flashing lights, and screaming tires produce.

  “Hey, Wood,” Jim Hyde called as both got out of their cars and started into the apartment complex.

  Officer Haywood Cubellis waved but did not respond.

  He followed Hyde to the second-floor door of apartment 12B, and stood to one side as Hyde both knocked with his nightstick and pushed the doorbell.

  Mrs. McGrory answered the door, in her bathrobe, with Herb standing behind her in trousers and a sleeveless undershirt, looking a little uncomfortable.

  Both Hyde and Cubellis made a quick analysis.

  Nice people. Looked sober. No bruises or signs of anything having been thrown or overturned in the apartment.

  “You called the police, ma’am?” Hyde asked.

  “Yes, I did.”

  “What seems to be the trouble?”

  “I like to think of myself as a reasonable person,” Joanne said. “Live and let live, as they say. But this is just too much.”

  “What is it, ma’am?”

  “Come in and I’ll show you,” Joanne said, and motioned the two policemen into the apartment. Both nodded at Herb, and Herb nodded back.

  Officer Hyde looked at the broken mirror.

  “What happened?”

  “That’s what we would like to know,” Joanne said. “That’s why we called you.”

  “You don’t know what happened to the mirror?” Hyde asked.

  “Herb, my husband, and I were sound asleep when it happened. ”

  “I told her I thought it was probably a sonic boom,” Herb said.

  “That’s nonsense,” Joanne said. “It came from in there.”

  She pointed at the wall.

  “What’s in there?”

  “The next apartment,” Joanne said.

  “What do you think came from in there that broke your mirror?”

  “You tell the officers, Herb.”

  “This was your idea. You tell them,” Herb said.

  “Sometimes you make me sick,” Joanne said. “You really do.”

  “Why don’t you tell us what you think happened, ma’am?” Officer Cubellis suggested.

  “Well, all right, I will. So far as I know, she’s a very nice girl. Her name is Cheryl Williamson. But she… every once in a while she entertains in there, if you know what I mean. Most of the time, there’s absolutely no problem, but once or twice-more than once or twice-she, they have gotten sort of carried away with what they’re doing, and it gets a little noisy, if you take my meaning.”

  “What’s that got to do with your mirror?” Officer Hyde asked.

  “It broke,” Joanne said, as if surprised by the question.

  “And you think the people next door are responsible?”

  “Well, Herb and I certainly aren’t,” Joanne said.

  “Jim, why don’t I talk to the lady next door?” Officer Cubellis suggested.

  “Why not?” Hyde said.

  “Maybe something happened to her,” Joanne said.

  Officer Cubellis left the McGrory bedroom.

  “I don’t know how much it will cost to replace that mirror, but it won’t be cheap, and I don’t see why we should pay for it,” Joanne said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Officer Hyde said.

  Five minutes later, Officer Cubellis returned and reported that it didn’t appear anyone was home in the next apartment. He had both rung the bell and knocked at Cheryl Williamson’s front door, and then gone outside the house, up the side stairs, and knocked at her back door. There was no doorbell button there that he could find. There was no response from either place, and he could hear no sounds from inside the apartment, or see any lights.

  “I know she came in,” Joanne said. “I woke up when she came in. Her screen door squeaks. It was a little after midnight. ”

  “Possibly she went out again,” Officer Cubellis said.


  “Or maybe she knows the cops are here and doesn’t want to answer her door.”

  “Why would she want to do that?”

  “The mirror, of course,” Joanne said. “Somebody’s going to have to pay for it.”

  “Ma’am, you’ll just have to take that up with her yourself in the morning,” Officer Hyde said.

  “Can’t you just go in and see if she’s there or not?” Joanne asked.

  “No, ma’am, we can’t do that.”

  “For all we know, she’s in there lying in a pool of blood,” Joanne said.

  “Ma’am, why would you say that? Did you hear any noises, anything like that?”

  Joanne thought it over before replying.

  “No,” she said finally, with some reluctance. “But that doesn’t mean anything. The mirror did get busted.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Officer Cubellis said, patiently. “But that doesn’t give us the right to break into that apartment. Think about this: You and Mr. McGrory are in here, watching a Stan Colt movie on TV. Lots of shooting, women screaming, explosions. Particularly at the end. The lady in the next apartment hears this and gets worried and calls 911. When the movie is over, you and Mr. McGrory go out for a hamburger. So when the police get here, there’s no answer. And they break in. And then you come home, and find the police in your apartment, and the door broken in.”

  “Who would have to pay for the broken door if something like that happened?” Joanne inquired.

  “The police…” Officer Cubellis began, and then changed his mind about the ending, “… would have to make the lady next door pay for the broken door,” he said. “Because she was the one who wanted the police to break in.”

  “Jesus Christ, Joanne!” Herb McGrory said. “Officers, I’m sorry we put you to all this trouble.”

  “No trouble at all, sir. That’s what we’re here for,” Officer Hyde said.

  “I’m sure you’ll be able to work things out about the mirror, ” Officer Cubellis said.

  Officers Cubellis and Hyde left the McGrory apartment, got into their patrol cars, and put themselves back into service. Officer Hyde filled out a Form 75–48, an initial report form for almost all police incidents. On it he stated that the McGrory mirror had been broken, and that Mrs. McGrory believed the occupant of the adjacent apartment was somehow responsible. An initial investigation of the adjacent apartment revealed that there was no response at that location and the premises were locked and secured.