Flip Your Wig by Roy Chaney

Author:Roy Chaney
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Roy Chaney

Eighteen

INSPECTOR LOU CRANDALL stood silently beside an open window in a back room of the former Greek restaurant at 1733 Haight Street. The window looked out on an alley that was, right now, bathed in the whirling red of an SFPD prowl car roof light. The features on Crandall’s pale round face were obscured by the smoke from his howitzer cigar.

Nash stepped further into the room. He’d found three more prowl cars and two unmarked SFPD vehicles parked out front when he arrived. Belcher told Nash to see Crandall, inside the charity kitchen.

Belcher didn’t say much else.

Nash stepped over to where the corpse lay. The bare hands of the deceased male Caucasian were tied behind the victim’s back with electrical cord. The dead man’s torso had fallen forward, but it was clear that he had been on his knees, possibly with his head bowed, when he was killed. What remained of the man’s neck was a bloody mass of torn tissue and exposed vertebral bone.

The man’s head had left a dark red trail on the floor after being kicked aside, presumably by the murderer. The head now rested under a wooden chair next to a metal cabinet that held large boxes of powdered milk, instant rice, Malt-O-Meal. The severed head faced outward from the shadows under the chair, stealthily watching the room from a hiding place. Except that the eyes in the head had no spark of life in them.

Nash had grudgingly left the warm embrace of Tina Gone to show up here. He’d helped her find the clothing she’d vacated, promised to call her as soon as he could. He told Tina only that he was needed at a crime scene, he didn’t mention where. She’d left the apartment with him and climbed into her sports car. Nash watched her drive off. He wasn’t happy about it.

Pre-coitus interruptus was never agreeable.

It was Crandall who broke the silence. “What do you think, Nash?”

Nash didn’t have to think too hard. “It looks like an execution.”

Nash listened to Crandall clear his throat. The sound had a loose wet edge. Crandall removed a black leather billfold from his jacket pocket, tossed it to Nash.

The victim’s wallet. It contained two hundred dollars, mostly in tens and twenties. The victim hadn’t been killed for his money, but Nash hadn’t been in much doubt on that point. A common stickup isn’t normally concluded with the forcible removal of the victim’s head.

There was also a driver’s license, issued by the state of Louisiana to William Donald Slocum. Oddly, the washed-out photograph of Slocum looked very much like the dead face under the wooden chair across the room. As everyone knew, photographs taken at the Department of Motor Vehicles never looked true to life. It had never occurred to Nash that they might look true to death.

Slocum had resided on the quaintly named Tickle Street in Shreveport. Thirty-eight years old. The wallet also contained Diner’s Club and Texaco credit cards, and the business card of a men’s clothing shop at Market and Stockton, near Union Square.

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