Murder In A Vacant Lot: A Detective Bass Mystery

By Stephen Randorf

Detective Bass earned his pay with this case. This was a crime committed at night in a vacant lot and not discovered until morning. She was an aspiring actress, who worked as a waitress in a nearby restaurant. Detective Bass determined her artist ex-boyfriend, rich and spoiled, knew more than what he said, and her restaurant co-workers had their own sad stories to tell. Only when the murderer's own life was threatened, did he call out for help. And it was Detective Bass who came to his rescue in that same vacant lot. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stephen Randorf
• Release date: Mar 9, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524248253

Stephen Randorf

Stephen Randorf grew up in the Midwest region of the U.S.  His education includes history and creative writing.  The Detective Bass Mystery novels and novellas specifically center around Detective Gilbert Bass, a middle-aged, desk-prone police detective who solves the low-profile cases of an urban city.

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Murder In A vacant Lot

By

Stephen Randorf

––––––––

Murder In A Vacant Lot

Copyright © 2016, 2020 by Stephen Randorf

Cover Designs by Jeanine Henning

All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual places or events now or in the future is coincidental.

Table of Contents

Murder In A Vacant Lot

I

II

III

IV

Epilogue

I

The young woman’s body was found stuffed inside a blue plastic recycling bin which was located in an alley across from a vacant lot. Wood-framed garages lined one side of the alley. On the other side was an open area filled with weeds. The city’s garbage crew found the body at 7:32 a.m. that morning: that was the recorded time called in. The cart had been blocking the alley, and when the trash collector rolled the cart to the side to let the garbage truck pass, he sensed that the cart contained more than recyclables.

The police arrived with screeching sirens and flashing lights. They quickly taped off the alley. The first detective did not appear until thirty minutes later and that was Detective Gilbert Bass. He parked on the street, halfway into the alley’s entrance, next to a squad car that still had its lights flashing in spite of the early morning sunlight.

Bass slammed his car door shut and slowly walked over to the group of uniformed officers milling around the garbage truck.

One officer remarked, You look like you’ve been in a fight. Did you catch the guy already?

Bass’s cheeks were nicked in several places and he unconsciously rubbed his jaw. He also felt the unshaved stubble on his chin because of his rush to the scene. The brown suit coat he grabbed off the back of his kitchen chair was rumpled and creased.

Another officer joked, Gil is our around the clock guy.

Sometimes it feels that way, Bass said, who saw himself as a detective of lesser valued crimes.

Isn’t this out of your area? the officer asked. Why are you in this district?

I ask myself that every day, Bass replied, and then for the officers who didn’t appear satisfied with his quip, he added, I was helping my partner investigate a burnt couch. I guess they thought since I was in the neighborhood . . . you know the rest.

Bass went over to the blue cart. The lid was down. A notch of four or five inches near the front of the lid had been chewed out by squirrels. He carefully lifted the cover. Inside was the body of a young woman. She looked like a clump of red fabric, fleshy limbs, and hair. The hair was auburn colored. Flies buzzed around the opening, attracted to the sweet residue of the soda cans lying beneath the corpse. Bass could barely make out her face from that angle. From what he did see, he could tell she had been a beautiful young woman.

He let the lid fall back in place. He examined the outer sides of the cart, the gouges and scuff marks, the hard-plastic wheels, the broken bits of asphalt where the cart stood. Across from the bin was a garage with its wooden doors down tight to the concrete, and next to it was four feet of chain-link fence that sealed off the backyard from intruders. Bass went over to the door and tried to raise it up, being careful of any forensic evidence. The door didn’t budge; it was locked. It also needed a coat of paint. Bass noticed that too. Much of the raw, gray wood showed where the white paint had blistered and peeled off.

He turned around and looked up at the brightening morning sky, shading his eyes to see. He turned back to the door and noticed how the morning sun had beaten heavily against it for years. He could feel that same sun beating down on his back, being absorbed into the brown fabric of his suit. He stepped away from the door and looked up at the garage. Above the door, below the peak of the roof, was a basketball hoop. The orange rim had weathered into rust. A hornets’ nest was near the peak of the roof’s eve.

Bass’s attention turned downward to the broken asphalt under his shoes, then his eyes followed the pavement past the row of similar garages, most of which were painted white and separated by similar sections of linked fencing. Stretching above his head were phone wires, electrical wires, cable wires. They went from post to post and extended to the end of the alley. The next street over had a portion of a vacant lot as well; it was vacant except for weeds and a few scrubby trees in the center.

I suppose we wait now? Bass said, thinking out loud. He rubbed his chin with thumb and forefinger, feeling his poorly shaved face again, wondering if he could have made better use of his time. Anybody have anything? he asked.

The officers responded with blank stares.

Bass turned to view the vacant lot opposite the alley. He was looking for distortions and fresh trails cut through the grass, but what he saw were matted weeds next to the crumbling asphalt edge, discarded chunks of concrete exposing tangled rebar, rusted and bent. Several uniformed officers stood in the weeds. They were sweeping their feet back and forth, inspecting the ground for anything unusual. Bass scanned past the officers and past a clump of thistles in purple bloom that were near the center of the lot, and looked at the distant street and the vehicles passing at a rate of two or three cars every two or three minutes. Busy for that time of morning? he wondered.

It was a desolate area, and there was nothing more he could do but wait for the forensics team and listen to the passing cars.

Soon, forensics’ black and white van arrived and parked next to Bass’s old Crown Victoria. The team hauled their gear out from the back, looped their camera straps around their necks, and walked the half block to the nearest uniformed officer. The garbage truck had already left, having to back out of the alley in the opposite direction. All that remained were yards of yellow police tape crisscrossing the alley and the blue cart containing the woman’s body.

Bass stood to the side and let the team do their work. His partner, Chet MacIntyre, arrived then, and so did two M.E. assistants. When forensics had the necessary photos, the M.E.’s assistants snapped on their gloves and examine the body as it lay in the cart.

Bass returned to the area to watch. Macky stood to his right.

Traffic? Bass asked.

That’s as good of an excuse as any, Macky replied.

The victim was indeed an attractive woman. Young, early twenties, light complexion, long, brown hair—although the correct word, the word that came to Bass’s mind, was auburn. Auburn would go on his form, the M.E.’s form, and all the other forms the bureaucracy required.

After the M.E.’s assistants slid the body out from the tipped cart, they removed a small beige purse that had been lying at the bottom next to the beer cans and plastic soda bottles.

Bass let forensics open up the purse and examine the contents, but he stood close and watched as every item was removed and set aside: lipstick, tissue, coins, paper bills (the amount would be totaled up later), and then the wallet. That was what Bass was waiting for. Unlike a man’s wallet, the victim’s wallet was thin and neat.

She had no credit cards, but there was a driver’s license, and a local address. Bass jotted the information down immediately. Macky continued to watch forensics as Bass stepped aside and phoned in the information he had copied from the license. Edie Love was the victim’s name.

When the call was complete, Bass returned. The body had been bagged and put on a gurney, which the M.E.’s assistant was rolling down the alley toward the van. Bass could hear the metal sides scrape and clank as it hit the cracks in the asphalt.

Bass watched a group of uniformed officers fill in Macky on the particulars of the neighborhood as he made notes. Behind them, forensics continued to process the scene. One member of the team picked through the recyclables in the cart. As each aluminum can came out, the sunlight glinted off the curved side, forcing Bass to turn away from the sharp reflections. He wondered if the team was going to take fingerprints off every bottle and can in the cart?

When Macky was through talking with the officers, Bass walked with him back to their cars. Their discussion was brief.

Not much, Bass said.

No, not much, his partner replied.

Knife wound?

Macky nodded. Stabbed. That’s what they say.

It wasn’t quite nine o’clock. Bass wanted to sit down. He noticed that some aluminum powder used in fingerprinting had gotten onto the edge of his suit jacket. He brushed it off with several quick strokes of his hand. As he did this, he recalled passing a restaurant in the area.

Nothing more to do here, he said.

Macky agreed.

They took separate cars. Bass drove his Crown Vic and Macky followed in his Buick.

The