Diamond in the Rough

Vito Mercotti navigated the moderate traffic of the high class part of town like a pro racer. I had just stopped by his house to notify his wife of her sister’s brutal murder, and he offered to take me, in his Italian sports car, to where her dad, Carmine Gorman, and his, Mauricio Mercotti were having some sort of meeting.

I would have accepted even before I knew what car we would be taking, but it being the Lamborghini was the icing on the cake. We pulled up to a small but beautifully appointed office building, and Vito opened the door and whistled. A young man in a cheap gray suit ran up, took his keys, motioned for me to get out of the car, and sped off to a parking structure nearby as Vito escorted me inside the building. There was a massive, empty lobby - by the sign on the wall, only two tenants had space here, and he sped me past before I could read either name.

We went up a small flight of stairs and into a huge conference room. Two men were seated at a large table, while a third stood behind and between them. A fourth man sat nearby in a very fancy looking wheelchair. I knew the two seated men on sight - Mauricio Mercotti with his silver hair and his left eye a mass of scar tissue from his days growing up in a rough part of Sicily. He wore a perfectly tailored burgundy suit from some famous designer or another. Seated next to him, the nearly bald gentleman in the pin stripe suit that he probably bought from Sears or K-Mart when they still existed, was the father of Linda and Carol Gorman, Carmine. His thin features always reminded me of a vulture.

The man behind them had to be Daniel Carver, Mauricio’s chief of security. The guy had a lot of electronics on his person and nearly as many concealed weapons, but, from his build and his stance, the odds that he ever used any of those weapons outside of a practice range were slim to none, despite having an allegedly high body count to his name. I felt I should recognize the white haired, portly gentleman in the wheelchair but my mind was drawing a blank.

Vito came to the rescue: “You already know dad and Mister Gorman, right, Jack? This is Morgan Price. Morgan, this is Detective Diamond,” he said to the man in the wheelchair.

Morgan extended a slightly shaky right hand, and said “Detective Jack … you are not Bill’s kid are you?”

I accepted his hand - his grip was firm despite his unsteadiness. Cold but firm. “Only known son of William and Mallory Diamond, that is me.” I replied.

He chuckled at that. “Fitting; I knew Bill, he did tend to sow his wild oats. As far as I know Mallory never even looked at another man until he died, though.”

Morgan Price owned an antique shop in the higher class end of town but made most of his income from a series of pawn shops in the cheaper parts of the city. My TV came from one of them, as did my microwave.

“Is Detective Diamond here about the, ah, disturbance at the restaurant?” Mauricio asked. His voice was deep but a little thready.

“Yes, We found a corpse there,”

There was a moment of silence around the room. Guess I know how to make a shocking revelation?

Then, Gorman asked: “Were you able to identify the body?”

I hesitated for a second and then decided blunt honesty was the best bet: “the actual body was a mess, but the head was almost entirely intact, almost like the killer wanted us to ID the vic,” I replied, and a very nasty thought crept into my head.

“Well who was it?” Price spoke for all the others in the room.

I looked straight at Carmine and said: “Your youngest daughter, Linda.”

He looked as if I had just slapped him. Oddly, nobody else in the room reacted immediately, though Mauricio stood up, walked over to him and placed a comforting hand on Carmine’s shoulder. I did not expect the bodyguard to react and Dom already knew but Price seemed almost bored by the news. Interesting. “Look, I just remembered something I need to check with my partner on. Give me a minute and then I can answer whatever questions you might have and that I am allowed to.”

Mauricio spoke up:”By all means, and thank you for letting us know.”

I stepped out of the room and dialed Milt’s cell. He picked up on the third ring. “Hey, partner, I just had a nasty thought - given the state of the rest, the head seemed too perfect. Have we tested the parts to make sure we only have one corpse we are dealing with?”

“I thought of that about five minutes ago and was walking down to the Medical Examiner’s office to ask in person. There right now. You want me to put it on speaker?”

I heard “Hey Karen,” and tried not to groan. Paul Ellis is our usual examiner but his assistant, Karen Grant takes over when he’s out of town or at a conference or whatever it is that medical examiners do when they are not examining things medically. She may be a better doctor than Paul, truth be told, but when she is on duty, Milt spends more time flirting with her than he does investigating the case. Noth that I can blame him. If the smell of medical examiner chemicals did not cling to her outside of the office, I might consider hitting on her just for those legs that did not seem to stop. Not sure how she could wear short skirts in that refrigerated lab, but I was not going to complain one bit.

“Hey Milton,” I heard her velvety voice say. “Was just getting to your present. Want to help me unwrap it?”

It was bad enough when she played dumb; this time she was playing along. Very annoying. First, it was unprofessional. Second, it had been two years since I had last been with a woman that I was not about to arrest for something or other or pay for something I should arrest her for.

I heard the body bag unzip - at least I hoped that was what was unzipping, as they were both oddly silent. “Wow, that is a mess,” Karen said after a brief pause. I was still unsure if they were discussing the contents of the body bag or something else…

There were some unpleasant noises and then Karen’s voice: “did the victim have an unusual number of fingers, because I am seeing eleven…”

“No. Well, unless she grew one in the last six years,” I said.

“Oh, Hi, Jack! You knew her?” How someone could sound so chipper with that mess on the table before them was a mystery I had no desire to solve.

“Yeah Doctor Grant. I dated her sister for a while,” I replied.

“Need to do some testing but my guess is that she bit a finger off of an attacker.”

“An attacker? You suspect more than one?” I asked.

“Yeah, at least two, maybe more if we do not find evidence of power tools. Damage is too much, unless we are looking at some kind of super human killer,” she replied.

“Well, I should get back to the family. Keep me in the loop, okay?” I asked.

“Sure thing, partner,” Milton replied and the line went dead.