“35A, I copied. I’m en route,” Sergeant John J. Haley responded. He was three blocks away from Cheryl Williamson’s apartment. This meant Haley had heard the initial call to 3514, and there was no need for the Police Radio operator to repeat the information.
Without really thinking about it, Sergeant Haley oriented himself with regard to where he was-at Franklin Street and Sixty-fifth Avenue North-and where he was going, took a quick look, made a U-turn, and stepped hard on the accelerator. He used neither the light bar nor the siren. They wouldn’t be necessary.
When he got out of his car at the curb in front of 600 Independence and started inside, a white, middle-aged woman was standing on the walkway just off the porch.
“Up there,” she said, gesturing inside. “Second floor, on the right.”
Haley took the porch stairs, and then the interior stairs, two at a time.
The door to Cheryl Williamson’s apartment was ajar.
There was a white, late twenties male sitting on a couch, his head bent.
“Police,” Sergeant Haley said.
“In there,” the man on the couch said, gesturing toward an interior door.
“What’s happened here?”
“Some fucking perverted cocksucker killed my sister, that’s what happened here.”
Sergeant Haley went into Cheryl’s bedroom, stayed only long enough to determine that the naked female in the bed was dead-he had seen enough bodies to make that determination with certainty; he didn’t feel for a pulse-and then stepped backward into the corridor and then went into the living room.
Looking at the guy who said he was the brother, Sergeant Haley squeezed the transmit switch on his lapel microphone.
“35A.”
“35A,” Police Radio responded.
“35A, notify Northwest Detectives, and Homicide. We have an apparent homicide. White female, no obvious cause of death, but there are signs of a possible rape. Hold myself and 14 car out at the scene.”
Jack Williamson looked up at Sergeant Haley.
“She is dead, right?”
“I’m afraid so.”
They both could hear the growing scream of Officer Stone’s patrol car approaching.
EIGHT
In the radio room-"room” doesn’t do justice to the large area in which Police Radio is housed-in the Roundhouse, the radio operator who had taken Sergeant Haley’s call then pressed a button on his console that automatically dialed the number of the desk man at the Northwest Detectives Division.
Detective units operate on what is known as “The Wheel.” It’s actually a roster of the names of the detectives on duty at the moment, and it’s designed to equitably distribute the workload. In most detective divisions, there is a detective assigned to “man the desk.” The “desk man” answers the telephone. When a job comes in, the desk man assigns it to the detective “next up” on the wheel.
When the phone rang in the Northwest Detectives Division, it was answered by Detective O. A. Lassiter, who was not the desk man but was filling in for Detective Len Ford, who was in the men’s room “taking a personal,” as a bathroom break is referred to on Police Radio. It also happened that Detective Lassiter was next up on the wheel.
Detective Lassiter was twenty-five years old, with 115 pounds distributed attractively around her five-foot-seven-inch frame. She had dark black hair, green eyes, long attractive legs, and had what her fellow detectives agreed- privately, very privately-were a magnificent ass and bosom.
“This is Police Radio, operator number 178,” the Police Radio operator began, then went into the details of the call he’d received from Sergeant Haley.
> Detective Lassiter wrote them down on a lined tablet and finally said, “Okay, we got it,” then raised her voice to call out to Lieutenant Fred C. Vincent, “Hey, Lieutenant, we got one.”
“What kind of job is it, Lassiter?” Vincent asked.
“Homicide, possible rape, white female, twenty-three years old. Her brother found her inside her apartment, tied to the bed. He’s still at the scene.”
“You better take somebody with you,” Vincent said. “I’ll get over there as soon as I can.”