Josie's Chronicle

Chapter 25: Oops

    The body of Danny Seawell  had been found, like in all classic movies, by the cleaning lady. It had been her desire to get in and out without having to encounter the rude man who'd inherented the apartment. He'd made lewd remarks to her about her services coming with the apartment.
  The truth that she was at least twenty-five years older than he was didn't seem to matter to him. She didn't like her new client, but her services were indeed attached to the apartment.
She'd seen many things over the years and had been paid lots of hush money, but this guy Seawell had been the worst of them. He wasn't tidy or clean by any stretch of the imagination, so when the faint sickening odor of decay met her nose, upon opening the alley door, she thought nothing of it.
She'd had to clean up after what she imagined to have been an orgy the first month he was there. There'd been used condoms, broken bottles, half eaten food, and trash everywhere. She frowned. Nothing smelled as awful as an orgy. Or at least that was what she'd been told by one of her earlier clients. "It's all those body fluids and pheromones mixing and dying at the same time." Madam Roxie had sad with a frown.

  The sight of his dead body slumped in the chair hadn't surprised her. She stood for a moment, looking at him. Someone had taken pleasure in killing him. The wounds spoke to her, especially the one between his legs. He was certainly ruled by his penis.
   The one between his eyes positioned directly between the eyebrows seemed to her,  an odd sense of mercy.
She wondered how much time had passed before he was put out of his misery.

It was then that she made the decision to aid and abet whoever removed him from the earth.
   She put on gloves and cleaned every surface the killer may have touched. She vacuumed, dusted, and emptied the trash in an attempt to make certain that the killer was never caught. She checked the security camera and the new camera Seawell had installed in the light fixtures. She checked only to see if they'd been recording. She didn't want the memory of his murder or the face of thw murderer in her mind.
She removed the tapes and the digital recorder and dropped them into her mop bucket. She replaced them with older ones he kept in the closet.
She was careful not to use anything that smelled of bleach or strong cleanser. She took off her gloves and touched things she'd normally touch while cleaning,  staying very aware of blood splatter. She used what she'd learned from watching crime shows.
She took the four stacks of one hundred dollar bills he kept stacked beside his bed and put them in her bag.
  It had taken all of two hours to do her job carefully. She she placed her bag and the bucket in the hallway cleaning closet and took only the minimum items into the apartment before running out of the building and calling the Police.

~||~

   Sgt. Knight was almost home for the night when the call came. The asshat had been murdered. She felt the weight of it truly lift from her shoulders. She'd been removed from his case, so the call had been out of courtesy.
   She thought about the hundreds of suspects they knew about, the few they'd cleared, and the untold numbers of those who had never registered on their radar.
  Daniel Seawell was murdered and the evidence, especially the lack of it, pointed to a professional hit or an angry rich spouse. The thought made her smile. She enjoyed television crime shows. They gave her hope that even the most difficult of crimes can and will be solved.
   She did not envy the person who caught that case. He or she would be retired before it was solved. Everything would now have to start at the beginning because murder is far more serious than attempted murder. She laughed quietly.
   Moments later, she was at the crime scene. She entered the building on the business side. It was business as usual. The office was humming along, meeting deadlines and such.
   She approached the receptionist. "Hello, I'm here to see Daniel Seawell, please." She spoke officially.

The young man  nodded and raised his finger in the universal sign for one moment, please.

   "Hello, Franci, someone to see Mr. Seawell." He nodded and pointed to the elevators, "Fourth floor." He said, dismissing her and moving on to the next call.