One Down..Nowhere To Go

A few days later I was at Philadelphia Homicide talking to my good friend Lt. Sissy Van Buren about Tanganika Jones...It seems like her death had taken on a life of it's own and had overshadowed my search for the still missing April "Tiny " Allen.Sissy and I stood on the rooftop of her building and caught the early morning breeze as we looked down at the teaming city..She had two tumblers of hot coffee and two doughnuts. I drank the coffee and bit into the delicious doughnut...

"No smokes today Sissy?" I laughed...

"I guess you didn't hear....I quit..went cold turkey a few months back...Been drinkin a lot of coffee and eating a lot more doughnuts lately...I guess my butt has been getting bigger too!" she lamented. I looked at her through the corner of my eye...Still one of the most round and shapely women I'd come across in a long time....If her butt was indeed getting bigger,I don't know too many males who'd complain.

"Your dead girl was quite active Kevin...we found used condoms just loaded with semen and we found semen in her mouth and in her anal area as well as her vaginal areas..." said Sissy Van Buren. "Yeah, well she occassionally made her living as somewhat of a prostitute." I said.

"Apparently...We found close to two thousand dollars scattered around her spot...but I'll tell you what the strange thing is...We found only twostrains of DNA in her....Even in the condoms...So for somebody like that..she was only sleeping with two men that day..That seemed odd.." she said.

"Well I know a guy who says he slept with her..I can tell you where to find him." I said.

"Way ahead of you....Anthony Young right? I know...My guys had him down here...His DNA matched and he admitted that he had sex with her that night and was in her apartment, but he left around four.. A neighbor verified his story...But there was another DNA sample that didn't match his... Another neighbor remembers seeing and hearing another man in her apartment around six or seven in the morning..but no one remembers seeing him leave." she said.

"Gee, these people keep funny hours." I said.

"In that neighborhood!! That's no strange thing, people are coming and going all the time... uh, no pun intended." she said ,laughing at the irony of what she had just said.

''And that's the man who came over after Tony left"I said."We found enough coke and heroin in her to say that this was an overdose, except that word on the street was..She didn't use heroin...not ever...plus her arms are clean...not the arms of a skin popper." she said.

"That's what I noticed.....I think somebody gave her a hot shot." I said.

"Can't prove it...and just because a guy came over and had sex with her doesn't mean he killed her." said Sissy...

"So we got nothin." I said.

"Nothin we can prove....I can't even say this is a homicide yet." she said.

"Ahhh Back to the damn drawing board..Well thanks anyway Sissy" I said.

I drove home...On the way home, I saw Haywood's car , a Black Ford Focus..parked in front of Patrice's house...It had several Parking Violation envelopes on it....I looked at them...They were all from the past Friday Night...No wonder this guy never had any money I thought. I started to knock on Patrice's door...I had more questions for her, but I heard the bed springs squeaking pretty loudly and more "lovers talk"

"OHHHHHHHH, OHHHHH lawddd, I can't get enough...OHHHHHHHHH...."

"Ouuuuuuuuuuuuu, haywood.....Hayyyyywoooooood....ouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu, oh baby, I lovvvvvvvveeee you....ouuuuuuuuu...."

"OHHHHHHHHHHHHPATRICE...I'll kill you if you give this good lovin to another man..ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh..."

I decided I'd try her again....some other time....I then decided another track...To go talk to Peeping Tom and look at his photos pulled from that Digital Camera.

He smiled as I walked through the door of his home.

"I was wondering when I'd hear from you Kevin...Check it out...Nothing Earth shattering here"

he said.

They were photos of Tanginika and Patrice in their underwear , in the bathroom, in tight jeans , in revealing dresses striking poses.....There was a photo of Manny Coles by himself, Manny holding a can of bear and Tanginika sitting on Manny's Lap...Another Photo of Tanginka and Tony tongue kissing...Photos of Patrice sitting on Brad's lap and Patrice and Brad tongue kissing,Patrice sitting on Manny and Tony's laps as if she were giving them lap dances and another photo of Haywood naked and fully erect! What was this doing in Tanginika's camera?? There were surprisingly no photos of "Tiny" in the bunch.

There was photos of Brad Rathers, completely naked and fully erect being serviced orally by Patrice.....What was this? Did Haywood know? Still another photo of Haywood and Tanginika dressed up and at Mulberry Street for a concert! Huh? What was this? I never knew Patrice was this close with her sister, Tiny's best friend. What was Tanginika doing in a photo with Haywood?

And what was she doing with a naked photo of him??

I think I knew the answer to part of this mystery....I took the photos and drove back to Patrice's house....It had been two hours...perhaps they were out of the bed by now. Patrice was home, but her boyfriend, Haywood was not..His car was gone too. I sat in the living room with her...

"Patrice, you know a guy named Brad Rathers?" I asked. She was kind of startled at first.....

"Yeah, I used to mess with him before Haywood." she said. I didn't believe her...Something about the way she answered the question...I didn't think that these two were ever serious. He wasn't her type of guy.

"How about his friend, Manny?" I asked.

"Yeah...I uh er know him...What's this about...? " she asked.

"I found some photos in Tangy's apartment...Photos you probably wouldn't want Haywood to see." I said.

She looked frightened....Her eyes got as big and round as saucers!

"It's okay...He won't see em.....Say, Where was he Friday night?" I asked.

"He said he was watching the Phillies game with his boys." she said.

"They didn't play Friday night." I said.

"Well,I guess he was at some bar, The Mermaid Club, Ciros, Josies...I didn't see him until late Saturday morning" she said.

"Was this normal?" I asked.

"Well. we aint married.....an he grown...I can't really tell him what not to do.." she said.

"Give me one of his used condoms out of your trash?" I said.

"What? What the hell you want with that?" she asked.

"Just get it, put it in a plastic zip lock bag and give it to me..."I asked.

''What's this gotta do with Tiny?"she asked.

"Nothing...but maybe if I can solve one thing, it'll lead me to another...You have to trust me Patrice." I said.

"Oh okay." she wimpered....

"Don't say anything to him, you hear me?" I said.

"I won't...and Kevin look....One night ,I got high with Tangy...She wild and we uh did some crazy stuff....I didn't know Tangy was taken photos.....I swear,I only did somethin with those guys just once....I swear...It was a little lightweight orgy." she said.

"So you really weren't in a relationship with any of them?" I asked.

"No, hell no....Just one night I was was over Tangy's spot...My sister wasn't even there..and they came over..we got to drinkin..did some snortin and the next thing you know...we was all , well,you know..gettin freaky." she said with her head held down in shame.

"I don't care about that Patrice..I'm trying to find your sister and find out who killed Tangy."I said.

I took the condom to Police Headquarters and they did a DNA work up.....Within a week they had a match...Haywood was the other person's semen found in Tanganika and in some of the condoms found in her house.. The parking tickets found on his car , were tickets from the no-parking zone near Tangy's apartment....Proof that he had been there in the wee hours of the

morning...and probably longer than that!

Haywood was brought to police headquarters....The DNA evidence, the parking tickets and a latent fingerprint found on the needle was enough evidence to make him confess....He had indeed

been to Tanginikas apartment and he had killed her with a lethal hotshot....The reason...She was blackmailing him...He had been stepping out on Patrice with her and she had discovered that he had been stepping out on her with Tiny...She was threatening to expose him...Which meant..he wouldn't have a place to live and Patrice would have stopped making payments on his car...He killed her to shut her up and then hurried out of the house..

I asked him -

"Haywood, what about Tiny? Where is she?"

"Huh, what? I don't know....I haven't seen her since Thursday afternoon...I swear....I never seen

her." he said. I couldn't know if he was telling the truth or not...I thought he might be responsible for Tangy's murder and Tiny's disapearence...but now it looked as if I was right back where I started as far as finding Tiny...and that was ...absolutely nowhere!

(To Be Continued...)