The apartment building was a post world war two brick building with four floors of walk up apartments on a block of identical rectangular brick buildings in the Southeast corner of Washington D.C. Half of the units were vacant with a corresponding number of broken front windows. Some of the broken windows were covered in plywood, but most left the empty units to the open air and an occasional junkie. It was a bad neighborhood where residents hid behind their curtains and prayed for the day that their luck would change so they could move to better quarters.
Most people would have locked their doors, but this was Oxenstein's domain and there was little that the locals feared more than the wrath of The Ox Man. Everybody in the neighborhood knew who he was, and nobody would have dared to enter his apartment. No mater how strong the draw of the treasures anyone believed might be in there, the threat of the tortures that lie in the domain of this self admitted sadist was enough to scare off even the bravest of treasure seekers. There were rumors that he kept body parts in formaldehyde jars in his den. Some said that he kept victims alive for weeks in his spare bedroom by drugging them and then torturing them a little each day in between doses of the drugs. Nobody had ever substantiated any of these claims, but nobody really wanted to, either.
In a world of organized crime and drug syndicates, Gershom Oxenstein was one of the last independents. He had connections at all levels of society through blackmail, bribery, and extortion. He was, without question one of the most feared men in the dark subculture of the city, but you would never know it to look at him. Gershom Oxenstein stood about five feet six inches tall and weighed about two hundred and fifty pounds. His hair was long, unwashed and hung in greasy corkscrews around his face and neck. His skin was pasty white and doughy with sparse black body hairs sprinkled abundantly throughout. He wore bifocal glasses that were black plastic across the top with a chrome wire underneath and a trademark gray cashmere safari hat. His standard dress consisted of a loud Hawaiian shirt with cargo shorts and sandals in the summer or sweat pants with jogging shoes in the winter.
He was a marker of a kind for people whose troubles had caused them to sink to new depths in their social interactions. When you reached The Ox Man's level you had reached the slimy bottom in the fishbowl of humanity. And when you had to deal with him all the showers in the world couldn't wash away the memory.
In short, nobody wanted to have any more to do with him than they had to. To some extent that explains why nobody called the police. A more benign explanation might be that in this neighborhood, nobody calls the police unless multiple shots are heard. A single shot just wasn't enough to get their attention. But it is likely that everyone who heard the shot knew it was from The Ox Man's apartment and decided to just leave well enough alone. In fact, well enough was left alone for nearly a week, when the smell from the apartment got so bad that the neighbors couldn't take it any more and reported the incident anonymously.
When the detectives arrived on the scene they knocked a few times and then kicked in the door. They could have gone around to the patio door and let themselves in but they did know about that yet. Even if they had known about it, they might have kicked in the door anyway. Everyone knew this was the Ox Man's apartment and every indignity they could visit on it would be savored.
As the door flew open the detectives were greeted by the overpowering stench of rotting flesh. A few put handkerchiefs over their mouths and went in, but the younger ones stood in the hall like they were facing the gates of hell. A week ago, the weather was cool. Oxenstein had turned off the air conditioner and opened the door to the porch. Now it was well over ninety degrees outside and well over one hundred inside. The combination of the heat and the smell bypassed your conscious thinking and went straight to your animal instincts. It was all the younger detectives could do to keep from running as far way as they could.
Inside, the sink was overfilled with dirty dishes. Across the kitchen table and on to the floor was a montage shrine to fast food carry out. There were half empty containers of no longer recognizable Chinese food, a pizza box, some multi-part Styrofoam containers, and an assortment of sub wrappers. On the wall over the table was a black velvet painting of an exotic dancer who couldn't possibly stood up straight without a back support. The furniture was a mismatched collection of plaid burlap weaves with so much grime worked into the fabric that it was smooth and shiny in places. Across the wall leading into the living room was a bookcase. The shelves were unfinished pine one by six's separated by stacks of old magazines that were probably not past issues of Architectural Digest.
The living room was demarcated by a large piece of carpet that looked like an unfinished remnant. On the carpet sat an overstuffed top-of-the line easy boy recliner and in the recliner sat the cold stiff faceless body of Gershom Oxenstein. No body parts or torture victims were found in the apartment. In fact, other than the one video in the DVD player, there was no evidence to support any of the rumors. There was, however, an interesting discovery in the spare bedroom. In the large walk-in closet, the detectives found several mail bags filled with small denomination currency. Apparently The Ox Man didn't believe in banks because the mailbags contained nearly three and a half million dollars, all in bills less than a twenty. Whoever killed Oxenstein must have had a motive other than robbery. There were a thousand motives and reasons that were too obvious to be seriously considered, leaving only the two most puzzling questions - Who and Why?