Mr. Shaw

Most city lots are 25’X125’. You’d be surprised how much can be built on such a small piece of land. The gang-ways separating the homes are usually three feet wide. It’s possible to touch your house and your neighbor’s house at the same time. Some are even closer. From the house to the unattached garage is usually twenty feet, not allowing for a very big backyard. The lot my suburban house was on was not that small but during the summer months when I would have my windows open, I could here any messages being left on my neighbors answering machine. That’s back when people used them. As a joke when I’d see my neighbor coming home, I’d yell out the window “Kate, your mother called, and she wants to stop by Saturday.” One-time Kate asked me what that strange noise was that was coming from my kitchen that she frequently hears. Again, I joked with her and said it was probably me after I’ve eaten a burrito. She laughed and said it sounded more like a motor. I didn’t know what she was talking about till one day after running the garbage disposal in my kitchen sink, I heard Kate tell her husband while they were watching tv that that was the sound she keeps hearing. Her husband laughed and told her what the sound was. My point in telling you all this is to emphasize the plight that Jose and Elsa had to endure with their nasty neighbor, Mr. Shaw.

Jose was busy setting up his backyard for his and Elsa’s annual summer family BBQ and birthday party. He set up the folding chairs and tables and was now filling the iced buckets with beer, wine and soft drinks. After their guests arrived, they proceeded to spend the afternoon laughing, talking and having fun. The smell of the BBQ was filling the air. As Jose, Elsa and their guests were about to eat, an unkempt Mr. Shaw exits his ramshackle house and heads for the garage. On his way to the garage Jose says hi to him. Mr. Shaw ignores him and proceeds to put his water sprinkler on in his mostly broken concrete backyard intentionally aiming the direction of the water over to Jose’s yard wetting Jose and his guests in the process. Everyone in Jose and Elsa’s yard had to scramble away to the other side to stay dry. 

“Hey, shut it off!” most people were shouting at Mr. Shaw as he hobbled back into his dilapidated house ignoring them. “Hey, what you doing old man! You need to turn that thing off!”  “He did that on purpose!” came another reaction.

“Forget about him!” s aid Jose as he hopped the chain-link fence and turned off the faucet attached to Mr. Shaw’s house. Before hopping back over the fence, he stops to notice the noxious fumes emitting from Mr. Shaw’s house. Most of the windows were broken or cracked with some haphazardly repaired with cardboard. The backdoor only hung on one hinge and barely closed. Jose shook his head in disgust before returning to his rattled guests.

Inside the house Mr. Shaw was staggering over all the deep debris covering his floors. He needed to support himself over one spot, so he grabbed ahold of an overloaded, top heavy shelving unit. In doing so, the shelving unit toppled over on top of Mr. Shaw killing him. Next door Jose cocks his head in his neighbor’s direction after he thought he heard a loud crash. Thinking it was nothing, he disregards it and resumes his conversation with family.

The next summer, Jose and Elsa again are setting up and getting things ready for their annual BBQ. After the guests arrived one asked if the neighbor was going to be turning on his sprinkler again? Jose responded “I hope not, guess we’ll have to see. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen him since that party last year. Hey Elsa, have you seen our neighbor Mr. Shaw lately?”

“No, I haven’t. You’re right. Pretty unusual. Maybe we should call the police and let them know.” Elsa says.

Awhile later a police officer appears. “Somebody here call for a well-being check on a neighbor?”

“Yes officer. There is an elderly man next door who we haven’t seen in about a year.”

“So, there’s been no activity that anyone has observed around here in all that time? Is that unusual for him?” the officer asks.

Jose answers “He’s always out in his yard trying to grow vegetables out of those buckets but nothing this summer. And his door has been open this whole time.”

The officer asks Jose if Mr. Shaw left on his own? Maybe to visit family or even be in a nursing home?

“I guess it’s possible, but we don’t feel comfortable living next to a house that is not secured. There are a lot of gangs that will start moving in if they knew the house is unoccupied.”

“OK” the officer responds, “We’ll go in and have a look.”

After several minutes of the police being inside Mr. Shaw’s house, they exit, awkwardly closing the door behind them.

“Didn’t see any indication of anyone living in there. The place is uninhabitable.”

Jose says “What can we do? We don’t want rats coming over by us! We can’t even have our windows on this side open because of the stink!”

The officer responds “Well like I said, maybe he is visiting family out of town. Nobody’s reported him missing.”

Some time after all this, Jose happened to look out his window and saw gang members exiting Mr. Shaw’s house carrying armfuls of stuff. He calls 911. After the police arrive Jose pleads with them to do something about the hazard next door.

The officer says “We may have to have the city board-up the house. My Sarge is on the way. … Here she is now.”

Once again, the police enter the premises. They carefully walk over the debris looking up and down and all around. “What do you think Sarge?”

She responds “At the very least it’s going to get boarded up. Maybe the health department should condemn it as well. Let’s go.”

Just as she turns to exit, her flashlight illuminates a foot sticking up from under a capsized shelving unit. “Hold on. I think we might have something here.”

Back in the office several days later I was planning to stop at the Medical Examiner’s Office to pick up the case reports since it was my turn. Vic, Ben and I rotate doing this. Before I left the office, I asked everyone if they needed me to get anything for them while I was there. Ben said he wants me to give a kiss to Rose for him. Vic says “Yes, will you pick up a room release for me please?” as he hands me a piece of paper with all the information. He continues “apparently another house of squalor. The guy was crushed to death by a shelving unit and he wasn’t discovered for over a year.”

“Lucky you.” I respond.

A “room release” is what the Medical Examiner’s Office gives to someone allowing them to enter a deceased person’s sealed premises. We like having these before entering a house because sometimes the neighbors call the police if they see us, or anyone, entering the home. A lot of times when there are no keys, I’ve crawled in an unlocked window to gain access. That looks even more suspicious so calling the police first is the best solution. This practice I started after police entered a house I was in one time with their weapons drawn demanding to know who I was.  Not the best position to be in.

Vic says, “I want to call the police when I get there and have them remove the coroner’s seal because the neighbor was telling me that in spite of the building being boarded up, she still has seen people coming and going from there.”

“Good idea Vic. Bring strong flashlights too in case the power is turned off.” I say.

Ben asks Vic when his appointment is and if he needs me or himself to go with him.

Vic answers “I’m meeting the neighbors tomorrow. I should be alright on my own but thanks.”

“When you get there and if you think you’ll need help, give Phil or me a call.” Says Ben.

As I’m getting ready to leave for the morgue Malika says, “So Phil, I heard on the news earlier that in New York, the first known suicide by decapitation with a chainsaw was reported happening there recently.”

“Hey, what about our guy Don Ho? He got cheated out of his piece of infamy. That’s not fair!” I say

“Leave it to New York to claim all the glory” someone else says. We all laugh.

Later as I’m approaching the parking lot outside of the Medical Examiner’s Office, I notice crowds of people standing around crying, holding hands and praying. Others are being consoled by their Reverend. Some appeared to have fainted and were being fanned by others. I walk past all of this and enter the lobby where there is more of the same going on. I walk up to the receptionist sitting behind a bullet-proof glass partition “Hi Pam. Is Rose in?” Pam nods her head and buzzes me in.

Rose’s job at the morgue besides giving out room releases was to receipt any inventory that came along with a corpse. These items usually are keys, wallet, cash, jewelry removed during autopsy, glasses and so forth. I would regularly check with her to see if any of the cases I was working on had an inventory there, especially keys. Anyhow, Rose was an older woman who wore an ill-fitting jet-black wig that sat lopsided on the top of her head with her natural white hair hanging out of the sides. The wig appeared more like a hat than anything else. She was very short and very round. She wore stretch pants that hung halfway down and polyester shirts that pulled halfway up. Her reading glasses seemed permanently grafted to the end of her nose and she always wore rubber gloves even when eating her sandwiches. I liked her because of her uniqueness and always stopped to talk with her whenever I went to the morgue. She always had some bit of gossip to tell or someone to complain about. Rose also had an assistant named Charmaine or Char for short. She was identical to Rose in every way except she is black, and Rose is white. She wore a bad fitting wig too and constantly had on those rubber gloves. Char was very quiet and never had much to say.

When I first met Rose years earlier, she was excited about relocating to the newly opened and renovated Medical Examiner’s Office located on the near West side. She asked if I wanted a tour and I said yes. When she took me into one of the huge walk-in storage coolers where bodies are stacked on stainless steel trays, I notice a row of small brown paper bags lined up against the cooler wall with names on them. I asked Rose what they were. S he said they were the employee’s lunch bags, naturally. She then went over to one of the trays with a covered corpse on it and casually mentioned that he was a recent victim of a serial killer and asked if I wanted to see. When I said no thank you, she said in a surprised voice “Why not? They pieced him back together pretty good!”” She then went on about the killer whose sex toy was found in a victim during an autopsy. She said one of the more prominent medical examiners was walking around the room with the “toy” hanging from between his legs telling the ladies present to “come get some.” She said how appalling it was that a man with such a position should carry on in such a way. I know I was appalled just listening to her. She also mentioned another, more infamous serial killer whose painting was hanging in the Medical Examiner’s office. When word of it got back to the County President, he demanded the clown painting to be removed and replaced with a picture of The Last Supper. 

Back to the story.

As I’m approaching Rose’s office, I notice she’s arguing with someone on the other side of her bullet-proof glass partition and Charmaine is sitting at a desk going through some envelopes. Rose sees me approaching and opens the door. I wait till the person she’s arguing with leaves. She turns to me and says, “You came at a bad time. It’s chaos here!”

“Sorry. Want me to come back later?”

“No, things are winding down here now but you should have seen it earlier!”

“What’s going on?” I ask her.

“Didn’t you hear in the news about that burned out car the police found?” she asked. Apparently, there was a body on the front seat and two bodies in the trunk. It was a suspected drug deal gone terribly wrong.

She continued, “We only allow six people in the viewing room at a time, but they had at least 20 in there! They’re not supposed to! All these people are the friends and family coming in to ID the bodies. Some brought their Reverends and I think some even brought their mailman! I’ve never seen such a mess! And in addition to that, we also have the family in here on that domestic hostage case!”

“What domestic hostage case?” I ask.

“Phil! The other story on the news! What, you don’t follow the news?” Ruth went on “The man shot himself after killing his pregnant ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend and the creep did it all in the presence of their young daughter.”

“Whose daughter?” I ask.

“The killers and the woman’s! He barged into her apartment and shot the new boyfriend dead then held her hostage for awhile before he finished her off then himself.”

“No, I can’t believe I didn’t hear anything about it.” I say.

“Well if you followed the news like most people you’d know and wouldn’t need me to be telling you, right Char?’

Without looking up, Char grunts “Uh huh.”

“So, what brings you in today of all days?” Rose asks.

“Vic needs a room release for this decedent.” I say as I turn over a paper with the information she needs. “He said the guy was dead for a year in his house before he was discovered.”

She said “Which one is that? I didn’t know anything about it. Did you hear that Char?”

“Uh huh” was Char’s automatic response to anything Rose asks her.

“So, Rose, I guess there’s something I know that you didn’t?” I say with a smile on my face. I look at Char and wink.

“Smart ass!” Rose says.

After she gives me the room release, I thank them and wish them a good day.

“Alright already, get out of here and don’t come back! You didn’t bring me anything!” as she slams the door behind me. I turn to her through the glass partition and blow her a kiss.

My next stop at the morgue is in the receiving area where bodies are brought in and tagged. I see Isiah sitting at his desk with his head down napping.

“Hey Isiah.” I say

Isiah looks up, sees me, groans then puts his head back down on the deck.

“Good to see you too. Everyone on lunch?” I ask.

“How am I supposed to know? What you want?” he asks.

“Never mind, I’ll get them myself.” I say as I grab the case reports set aside for us. “Got them, thanks Isiah.”

Isiah groans again without lifting his head off the desk.

As I’m leaving the building through the lobby, I stop to talk to Pam, the receptionist. While we’re talking, two middle aged white men approach Pam’s window and tell her they have an appointment. When Pam picks up the phone to make the call, the two men look at me and say “We’re from Ohio. Is it always like this here?” they ask as they look around at all the people there. “We just came here to make arrangements for our mother’s body to be shipped back with us. We didn’t expect to see all this going on. This is better than watching TV.”

I explained it just so happens a lot of homicide victims are being ID at the same time today.

“What a shame.” they say. “This is Chicago after all.”

At the end of the work day I pull into my driveway and notice my best friend Danny sitting in my yard as he frequently does whether I’m home or not.

“Hi Phooda. I got done with work early so I thought I’d get out and enjoy this beautiful day. I just love sitting in your yard.”

“You’re right. It is a beautiful day. Want some wine?” I ask as I head towards the back door.

We sit at the table in my yard talking and drinking.

“A new guy started at the hair salon today.” Danny said.

“Oh yeah? A member of the club?” I ask.

“No, supposedly he’s straight.”

“Yeah right. A straight hairdresser.”

“There are some out there I guess. By-the-way, are we still on for our afternoon out next week? I’m so looking forward to cocktailing downtown.” He asked.

“Me too” I respond. “I already signed myself out for that day. It’s been too long since we hit the afternoon bars in Boys Town.”

“It will seem like we were on vacation again sitting pool-side in Key West or South Beach with a cocktail in our hand.”

“Those were some fun trips, weren’t they? Those places aren’t as fun as they used to be however.”

“Nothing is forever, I guess. How are things in the office with the new boss? Any changes happen yet?” he asks.

“No changes yet in my department although a new investigator was hired and starts next week.” I don’t mention to Danny that I asked for and eventually got passed over for the position.

Danny smiles “It’ll be nice if he wound up being some hunk that would be interested in you. We need to find you a man!”

“I know. My problem is I’m too picky when I have no right to be. I mean, look at me. I’m too quick to find fault.  I’m such a bitch.”

“One day you’ll meet someone and when you do, you’ll be together forever. I don’t want to lose you though.”

“Thanks Danny, how sweet. You wouldn’t be losing me. You’d have to put up with two of us that’s all. Let me get us some more wine.”

“Great. Want to go to that Bohemian restaurant later for dinner? I’ve got nothing at home to eat.”

“Sounds good to me. We can come back here and watch a DVD afterwards if you want.”

Danny and I continue sitting in the yard talking and sipping our wine.