The Almost Perfect Murder

When I got the call from Dispatch, it was about seven in the morning. Since I was on my way to the precinct and only about ten blocks away from the house on the corner of West Elm and Liberty, I was there in less than five minutes. I was surprised that the EMT's hadn't beat me there because the call said a possible shooting had occurred. If that had been the case, the responding officer would have called for the EMT's.

When I pulled up at the curb, two uniformed officers were still standing outside the front door. That was odd too. I figured they would have already been inside, cleared the place, and were in the process of setting up a perimeter to keep out the press and any inquisitive neighbors. I saw Kent Majors, another uniformed officer, talking to a man in front of the house next door.

I walked up to the two officers at the door and asked what was going on. Tim Beason had a frown on his face when he answered me.

"Damned if I know. The neighbor called 911 at around six and said he thought he'd heard gunshots in the house next door. When we got here, all the doors and windows were locked and we couldn't see anything through the windows. Without a warrant, we can't go in.

"The owner is Phil Jacobs. Todd got his name from the neighbor along with the owner's daughter's name and number. She gave it to him in case he noticed her father doing anything strange. She's supposed to be on her way now with a key.

"Todd ran Jacobs through the system after he called the daughter. He's seventy-one, and he's been in the system before, once for selling weed when he was twenty-two, and once for threatening one of his neighbors about a week ago. He spent two years in prison for the weed, and the neighbor got a restraining order against him after the threat."

About then, a red SUV pulled into the driveway and a woman about forty got out. I was surprised at how she looked. I remember how my ex looked early in the morning and it wasn't pretty. This woman looked like she'd dressed up for work or for shopping at a high-class store. Her dark auburn hair was styled and she was wearing makeup. She ran up to the three of us standing at the door and she sounded worried.

"Has something happened to Daddy?"

I shrugged.

"Miss, we don't know because we can't get into the house without a warrant."

She held up a key chain with a peace sign on it.

"I can open the door for you."

I shook my head.

"Miss, we don't know what we're going to find in there." I pointed to Todd. "You give me the key and Officer Wilson here will take you to his car to ask you some questions about your father."

"But I need to go in to make sure Daddy is all right. He might be sick or something and need me."

I shook my head and said she couldn't go in until we figured out what was going on.

I'd been on cases like this in the past, and the daughter or son always insisted they go in with me. I always refuse that request for a couple of reasons. The first is it's not safe. For all we knew, the shooter, if there was one, might still be inside the house and waiting for us. The second is if the woman's father had been shot, the last thing we needed was somebody walking around and touching things, especially the person who was shot. Doing that would destroy or alter evidence we'd need to find out who did the shooting.

I took the key and stood to the side of the door with my weapon drawn and off safe. Tim did likewise on the other side of the door. That's standard procedure so if a person inside decides to shoot through the door, nobody gets hurt.

It was an older house so there was no deadbolt, just the lock in the doorknob. I slipped the key in the lock and turned it and the door opened slightly. Tim nodded when I looked at him, and swung the door open from his side. I yelled, "Police. Put down the weapon and get on the floor."

There wasn't a sound from inside the house, and nothing we could see looked out of order. Tim went in first with his pistol ready. Once he'd checked behind the door, he motioned at me and I followed him in. The living room was clear.

Tim and I split up then. Tim went to the kitchen and I went to the hall that I figured probably led to the bedrooms and bathroom. A minute later, Tim came down the hall and whispered, "Kitchen's clear and back door is locked".

In the first bedroom, the master judging by its size, we found Mr. Jacobs. He was lying on the double bed on his back and didn't appear to be breathing. His T-shirt was soaked in blood in the front, and that blood had run down over his belly and soaked his pants and the sheet and blanket under him. I checked for a pulse and didn't find any. Tim left to check the bathroom off the bedroom. He shook his head when he came back out.

We checked the other two bedrooms and the other bath and they were clear too. Once we'd established that, I radioed for the coroner and crime scene techs. It was about then the EMT's showed up. While I went out to tell the woman her father was dead, Tim led the EMT's to the bedroom

The woman started to cry when I explained we'd found her father in the bedroom and the EMT's were checking on him. She sobbed, "Is he dead".

I was careful about what I said next so I didn't give her reason for hope, but I wasn't pronouncing him dead either.

"Miss Jacobs I'm not a doctor so I can't say for sure, but it looks to me like he is."

She sniffed and blew her nose, then looked up at me.

"Call me Lisa. Do you know what happened to him? Did he get shot?"

I shook my head as that bell in my head that says something's not right tinged in my head. I hadn't said anything about how her father had been hurt, and I knew Todd wouldn't have either. Per procedure, he'd have only asked her to come and open the house so we could do a wellness check on her father.

"No, and we won't until the Crime Lab and the coroner get here. Why would you ask if he'd been shot?"

Lisa frowned.

"About a month ago, Daddy told me he'd had an argument with the neighbor across the alley. The neighbor's dog had done his business in Daddy's yard, so he went over to complain. Daddy said he told the neighbor the next time he saw the dog in his back yard, he was going to shoot it. He said the neighbor told him if he did, he'd shoot Daddy."

I wrote all that down, and then asked Lisa if anyone could have gotten into the house somehow since all the doors and windows were locked from the inside. She shook her head.

"No. As far as I know, I'm the only one with a key to the house except Daddy. Daddy was a little paranoid after he got robbed one day about a year ago and he kept all the doors and windows locked all the time. He gave me a key so I could get in if he was asleep or something."

She blew her nose again and then said, "If you say Daddy's dead, I believe you. When will they take Daddy to the funeral home?"

I tried to be consoling even though other than a few tears, she didn't seem to be upset at all.

"Miss Jacobs, I understand that you want to take care of your father, but given the circumstances, it's going to take several hours before the coroner can remove his body and then probably at least two days before the coroner finishes the autopsy to determine cause of death."

"Then can I go home now? I need to call the funeral home to arrange his funeral."

I didn't have any reason to keep her there even though I had my suspicions about if she was telling me everything she knew about her father. She seemed to be upset, but not really that upset, at least not like I'd seen before.

"Yes, you can go now. I'm sorry we had to question you like we have, but it's standard procedure. I'm sorry for your loss."

She didn't thank me or say anything. She just walked to her car, got in, and drove away. Very strange behavior, I thought, for a woman who just lost her father. I'd met people like that before, though. I suppose at some point they do grieve, but they didn't show much emotion when I told them someone they knew was dead. The psychologist who taught part of a class on interrogation techniques said some people have a self-protection reaction hard-wired into their brain that won't let them show grief until they're alone. I figured Lisa Jacobs was one of those people.

The coroner showed up about a minute later and like I already knew, pronounced the guy dead. Sam was pulling his thermometer out of Mr. Jacob's belly when I walked into the bedroom. I asked if he had a cause and time of death yet. He looked at me and smiled.

"Walt, you ask me those same questions every time and I always give you the same answer -- I can't be sure until I get him on my table back at the morgue. What I can tell you is he's been dead for at least eight hours and that he has a small caliber gunshot wound to his belly, just under his rib cage. It's my guess he was shot while he was on his back, just like he's laying here. I'll know for sure when I pop the hood and have a look at the damage."

The Crime Lab team showed up then. I knew I'd just be in their way, so I went outside to see if Todd had learned any more than I had. He looked at his notes and frowned.

"No, not much. Mr. Jacobs wasn't her biological father. Her mother was married to a different guy and divorced him when Miss Jacobs was three. She married Mr. Jacobs a year later, and he adopted her. Lisa's been married twice, but changed her name back to Jacobs after the last divorce. She didn't go into why she's been divorced twice, but she seemed a little cold to me.

"Mr. Jacobs also adopted her brother, Michael. He lives in Atlanta. The wife died of cancer three years ago. Since then, Miss Jacobs has sort of taken care of Mr. Jacobs. She said he sometimes forgets things, like paying his electric bill, so she checks on him every day. She told me Mr. Jacobs is the only father she remembers.

"I asked her if she knew of anybody who would want to hurt her father and she said the neighbor across the alley might. I gather they had an argument over the neighbor's dog crapping in Mr. Jacobs' back yard. Mr. Jacobs threatened to shoot the dog if he saw him doing it again, and the neighbor made the same threat to Mr. Jacobs. That's about all we talked about before you came out of the house."

"Did she seem upset?"

Todd shook his head.

"She did to me, but not very. She kept wiping her eyes and blowing her nose but she didn't start sobbing. It wouldn't surprise me if she wasn't very upset though, not if he treated her like she said he did."

"How was that?"

Todd looked at his notes again.

"She said they never did anything together like a real family. If she and her brother got to go anywhere, it was always with the wife. On weekends, she and the brother were basically banished from the house. She said Mr. Jacobs would send her and her brother off to play with the neighbor's kids after lunch on Saturday and Sunday and tell them not to come back until dark. She figured he and her mother were in bed then. Once she and her brother got old enough to know what they were probably doing, he'd give them each twenty dollars and tell them to go to the mall for the afternoon. When they got back from the mall, she said her mother usually was just wearing a housecoat.

"She said she figured they were just having sex and that her mother must have really loved him. That's why she's been taking care of him since her mother died. She thought her mother would have wanted her to."

Todd looked up at me and grinned.

"I'll have to try that. Gina and I have three kids and it's damned near impossible to get in a good fuck once in a while. It's usually ten before we get the oldest in bed and by that time, Gina's too tired."

I understood his grin because I'd met Gina at the Christmas party a year before. She was one of those women who've had kids but don't look like they have. The other thing about Gina was she had cleavage even when she didn't try to show cleavage. If I'd been married to her, I'd have been tempted to send the kids out to play too.

I asked Todd to copy me on his report and then went to talk with Kent Majors, the officer who'd been talking with the neighbor.

Kent didn't have much to add. The neighbor just said he'd heard what sounded like a gunshot coming from Mr. Jacobs' house and had looked out his upstairs window. He hadn't seen anybody coming out of the house and hadn't heard anything else. He'd only called 911 because he knew about the feud between Mr. Jacobs and the neighbor across the alley.

"The neighbor is Mr. Clarence Abbott. He said he got along OK with Mr. Jacobs, but they weren't really friends. He is a good friend with the neighbor across the alley. The neighbor across the alley is Mr. Wilson Taggert. He said Taggert's a Vietnam Vet who has all kinds of guns in his house, and that he and Mr. Jacobs had an argument last week. He figured maybe Taggert had taken a shot at the house."

As I'd done with Todd, I asked Kent to copy me on his report and then drove around the block to talk with Mr. Taggert.

When he answered my knock, Mr. Taggert didn't look like he could kill anybody. He was at least eighty and walked with a cane. I showed him my badge, introduced myself and stated my reason for being there.

"Mr. Taggert...Mr. Wilson Taggert?"

"Yeah, that's me. That asshole Jacobs call you on me about last week?"

I shook my head.

"No. Mr. Jacobs is dead. Someone shot him and in talking with his daughter and one of the neighbors, I learned you two had an argument a few days ago. I want to understand what the argument was about and what each of you said."

Mr. Taggert yelled back into the house.

"Louise, Honey, get some coffee ready", then opened the door the rest of the way.

"Might as well come in and get comfortable, Detective. I got a lot to tell you."

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Mr. Taggert wasn't kidding about how much he had to tell me. He didn't like Mr. Jacobs for several reasons, not the least of which was he considered Mr. Jacobs to be a traitor to the US.

"When I was in 'Nam and getting my leg shot to hell, that bastard was still in high school and protesting the war. Didn't know that until his wife told me about it. She seemed proud he'd done it. I told her he shoulda been sent over there armed with his fuckin' peace symbol and see how far he got, either that or just stood up against a wall and shot like the traitor he was. I guess when you get old like me, you don't give a shit what people think and you say what you think.

"That's what started it all. She went an' told him what I said and it pissed him off. After that, he bitched about everything me and Louise did.

"He bitched at us 'cause we put our trash out in the alley on Tuesday instead of Wednesday. He bitched at us because Louise likes to hang our clothes out to dry instead of using our clothes dryer. He bitched when I painted the house blue instead of white like all the other houses. He bitched because I built a fence across the back yard so he couldn't see what we were doing. Said all those things made the neighborhood look bad.

"That thing last week was because of Seiger, our chihuahua. Seiger dug under my fence and went and shit in Jacobs' back yard. It's the only time he done it but Jacobs said he was gonna shoot him if he did it again. I got carried away and said I'd shoot him back if he did. I didn't really mean that. I've shot enough men for two lifetimes. He just pissed me off because of all the shit he'd pulled before. I'm pretty close to Seiger, and well...our kids have all moved out of state and we hardly ever see 'em. Seiger's all the family we got. I went to court and got a restraining order against him to keep him away from Louise and Seiger."

I asked Mr. Abbott where he was that morning, and he smiled.

"I was down at the VA hospital getting' my leg looked at and you can check that out. The Army stuck a rod in my leg bones and screwed it in with screws after I got hit, and some of them screws work loose every so often. They tightened me up this morning so I don't wear my shoes crooked."

Since I didn't have a time of death, that alibi still didn't let Mr. Taggert off the hook.

"Mr. Abbott says you have a lot of guns. Do you?"

Mr. Taggert smiled.

"Yep, I do an' they're all legal. Always liked guns, still do. Got me a nice collection if I do say so. Wanna see 'em?"

I'd expected to find several AR-15s and maybe an AK-47 or two along with some pistols. Apparently Mr. Taggert's passion was for antique weapons. None of them used any current cartridges and most were muzzleloaders from the civil war era or before. Most importantly, they were all large calibers, not the small caliber that the coroner had identified as causing Mr. Jacob's wound and probable death.

I thanked Mr. Taggert for his answers and then left. As I was walking out the door, he looked at me and smiled.

"Marines, right? I'm thinking Desert Storm?

"Yes, I was a Marine in Desert Storm. How did you know?"

He smiled again.

"Saw the tattoo on your arm when you stretched. You look old enough to have been in Desert Storm."

He held up his arm and showed me a tattoo identical to mine.

"Semper Fi, Detective".

I knew it was useless to ask the Crime Lab techs anything, so I went back to my desk to start a case file.

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I didn't have much in the way of anything pointing to who killed Mr. Jacobs, and there was one huge problem with everything I did have. That problem was the house was locked up tight as a drum from the inside. Tim and I had checked every window and both doors. The doors had locksets that could be unlocked from the outside, but only locked from the inside. It was possible to lock the door when it was open and then close it, but the killer would have had to have a key to get in unless Mr. Jacobs knew the person and let them in.

The only one of my possible suspects with a key was the daughter, but I didn't have anything resembling a motive for her. I had a motive for Mr. Taggert, but given their relationship it wasn't likely Mr. Taggert had a key or that Mr. Jacobs would have let him in. He could have had a small caliber weapon he hadn't shown me, but Mr. Taggert didn't seem like the type to kill his neighbor. Once you've had the experience of killing someone, you think long and hard about doing it again unless that person is trying to kill you. I know that for a fact.

The neighbor who'd reported the gunshot, Mr. Abbott, was also on my list. Mr. Jacobs would have known him, and might have let him in. It's not unusual for a killer to report the killing. They think that takes them off the list, but what it really does is mark them for further investigation. The problem with Mr. Abbott was also motive. He didn't seem to have anything against Mr. Jacobs.

As I reviewed my notes, I saw an issue that made Mr. Abbott interesting. According to the coroner, Mr. Jacobs had been dead for at least eight hours. That would make his murder happening at about eleven the night before, but Mr. Abbott hadn't called 911 until a little before seven the next morning. I made a note to talk with him again and ask him why as soon as Sam gave me a good time of death.

Tim and I hadn't really searched the house, but we hadn't seen any of the usual things that accompany murders. Given Mr. Jacob's conviction for selling marijuana, drugs were a possibility, but we hadn't seen any or anything that would indicate drug use or sales. There were no open drawers anywhere like somebody was looking for something. There was no sign that Mr. Jacobs tried to fight off his attacker. It looked like he was just lying on the bed and someone shot him.

It was five thirty then and my head was starting to hurt from thinking. I couldn't do much more until I got the Crime Lab and Coroner's report anyway. I went home to get something to eat and a couple of beers to relax.

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Home was a small post-war bungalow I bought ten years after the divorce. Alice got half of what we owned, and it took me a while to afford even a two bedroom house with one bath. It wasn't much, but it was a place to kick back after a day of investigating the worst our society has to offer.