Ring of Silence

by Mark Zubro

  “I’m representing the mayor.”

  “Has he committed a crime?” Fenwick asked.

  Edberg looked confused.

  “Is the mayor here to calm things?”

  “Uh, no.”

  “Are you?”

  “Uh, no. Uh, yes.”

  “You have no place here. Get your ass out from behind the police lines.”

  “You can’t talk to me that way.”

  Fenwick faced the man, spread his legs, and said, “Yet I just did.”

  A florid faced man dressed in full command uniform rushed toward them. Turner recognized him as the local District Commander, Gerald Palakowski. The man paused to listen to several of the beat cops then hurried forward.

  “What’s going on?” Palakowski demanded.

  Edberg began to explain. Palakowski brushed him aside with an abrupt wave of his hand. “I want to hear from the detectives.”

  Turner and Fenwick summarized what little they knew about the situation on the bridge from the short time they’d been here.

  Palakowski rubbed his hands together. “What the hell am I supposed to do?”

  Turner was pissed. They must train them for moments like this. The entire force had had seminars in recent years that included refreshers, reminders, and information about new tactics for defusing situations, helping the community, and causing just such moments to de-escalate from violence. What was wrong with this idiot? Maybe he was afraid that if he screwed up, he’d be blamed for violence and death.

  Edberg butted in, “Get every cop you can and get them here. Move these people!”

  Fenwick inserted his bulk between Palakowski and Edberg. Fenwick said, “Simplicity itself. The woman in the clerical collar talking to the beat cops seems to be the leader, or one of the leaders. Try her. Send them on a march to someplace that’s significant but a long way away. Make sure they’re protected, find their leaders. At their destination, someone can make a statement. They’ll be exhausted. With luck it will pour rain.”

  A few moments later the Commander along with several members of the group, including Zelvin, huddled together with several other beat cops and Edberg, whose presence Turner thought was useless.

  Turner and Fenwick stood to the side. After five minutes, Turner could feel Fenwick’s impatience nearing the boiling point. They had a crime scene to get to.

  Edberg, Zelvin, and Palakowski began walking away from the others. All three were talking at a great rate of speed. Then they began shouting at each other.

  The protesters looked confused and began to shuffle and mill toward the arguers.

  Fenwick marched to the three of them. Turner followed.

  Palakowski began waving his arms. “We can’t just let you march anywhere. You’ve got to be controlled and follow the rules.”

  Edberg said, “You’ve got to control your people.”

  Zelvin’s voice was shrill. She pointed to Edberg, “Are you saying he should control his people, or I should control mine? Who has more dead people in their history, my peaceful protesters or your violent officers?”

  Fenwick stepped between them. They glared at him. Fenwick said, “The next one who says a word, I will sit on and crush.” He held up one hand and with the other pointed at Zelvin, “Why don’t you get ready to march to the local alderman’s office and to Daley Plaza?” He pointed to the police contingent. “And you get ready to provide logistics and support.” He turned to Edberg. “And you get on the phone to the local alderman and make sure he’s there to greet them with a smile and a neutral statement.”

  Growling, stammering, and shrugging broke out among the small aggregation.

  Fenwick looked over to where the crowd on the bridge had grown to several hundred. He moved to Palakowski and pulled him away from the group. Turner joined them.

  Fenwick said, “We’ve got a crime scene to get to. Why not let them march to somewhere?”

  “What if your plan doesn’t work?”

  “If it doesn’t, then do your damn job, think of something.”

  Fenwick marched away. Turner followed. They trundled south down Racine Street and came to the intersection with Harrison. They turned west and began walking to the building with the bodies on the roof. A few minutes later, still several feet from their destination, they looked back. Zelvin was explaining to demonstrators, Palakowski to his officers, and Edberg was on his phone.

  Turner and Fenwick moved to get to work.

  Fenwick muttered, “Numbnuts assholes.”

  “Which one?” Turner asked.

  “All of them.”

  Thursday 7:58 P.M.

  A few steps outside the entrance to the building where the bodies were, a man, who looked like he was still in high school, met them at the front bumper of the Crime Scene van. He asked, “You guys okay?”

  “Who are you?” Fenwick demanded.

  “I’m Kent Duffy. The Chief Medical Examiner assigned me to this case.”

  “Where’s Bernie?” Fenwick asked. “He’s been around forever.”

  “He retired.”

  Fenwick asked, “You graduated high school?”

  Duffy gave him an extended look then said, “I heard you’re some kind of an asshole.”

  Fenwick snorted. “I’m not ‘some kind’ of asshole. I am the asshole. And I tell the jokes. Get over it now.”

  “All of them?”

  “All.”

  Duffy said, “Yeah, rumor is you have a funnier-than-thou attitude.”

  “Bullshit,” Fenwick said. “It’s not a rumor. It’s true.”

  Duffy raised an eyebrow, but then he grinned. “Is it important that I laugh at all your jokes?” His eyes met Turner’s. “Or maybe you’ll let me know when to laugh?”

  “You’re on your own,” Turner said, “but I can safely ignore them. I suggest you do the same.”

  Fenwick glared at Turner. “Fine. Be unappreciative. You’re teaching these new kids bad habits.”

  Turner said, “Nothing you’re not used to.”

  Silence for a few moments, then Duffy said, “Let me try this again. You guys okay?”

  Grunted yeahs from the detectives.

  Duffy asked, “Is Carruthers really going to be gone?”

  Fenwick said, “We can hope.”

  Duffy said, “Party at my place.”

  “You know about Carruthers?”

  “This isn’t my first case. It’s the first time I’m connected to you guys. Everybody knows Carruthers.”

  “Pity,” Fenwick said.

  “What do we have?” Turner asked.

  “We’ve got a lot done already but with more hours to go. What took you guys so long?”

  Fenwick said, “Bullshit.”

  They walked into the building.

  The bodies were on the roof of a mixed use classrooms and conference center at Little Village Community College. Turner judged the building to have been built in the forties. Lots of faded red brick, pollution begrimed from over half a century in the city. Windows that might let in gray light, that probably used to open, but now most had air-conditioners crammed in their lower half.

  They took the elevator up the four flights.

  Fenwick said, “We gotta have somebody check all the stairways.”

  Turner nodded.

  The ME said, “We already processed the elevator.”

  The door opened on the fourth floor. A uniformed cop led them to a doorway. He banged the door-opening-bar.

  “No emergency alarm,” Turner said.

  Fenwick’s turn to nod.

  As he walked onto the roof, as any good cop would, Turner made a careful examination of his surroundings. He saw skinny chimneys, a few more modern heating and air-conditioning units still in their wrappings, a brick balustrade on all the edges of the roof. In the center, he saw a few pockets with patio furniture around rusted tables. Their tattered umbrellas flapped in the wind. Turner figured this wasn’t so much an emergency exit, although it could be such, but a place
for people to relax on a summer evening.

  A few streaks of lighter blue shone in the west between billowing clouds. To the east, he could see the lights of the Loop buildings.

  Across the street to the south was a block-long building several stories higher than this. He saw bright lights on its roof. He walked to the balustrade and looked over the edge to the street below. The tops of trees swayed in the stiffening wind. He heard traffic, a distant siren, the usual from a big city. Two-and three-story houses filled the neighborhood in the other three directions.

  Duffy pointed to the center of an area well-lit by crime scene arc lights, which were anchored with heavy weights to keep them from flying off in the rising gale. Duffy said, “Two dead bodies. Both shot twice, once in the head, once in the torso. The blood spatter tells me the head shots came first. The two torso shots came when they were on the ground. Victims probably never knew what hit them. Or if they did, there wasn’t time to react. They were facing each other when the shots started, a few feet apart. The shots came in rapid succession, from a distance.” He pointed to the lights on the roof to the south. “I’ve got people up there already.”

  Turner asked, “They were talking, fighting, embracing?”

  “I’ve got no evidence of offensive or defensive wounds from a fight they might have been having with each other. I got no indication of what they were doing. They could have been two random guys who happened to be walking on the roof in the same direction at the same time and got murdered.”

  All three raised an eyebrow. None of them believed in anywhere near that level of coincidence.

  Fenwick said, “Had to be an expert shot.”

  Turner nodded. “Nobody is that lucky.”

  The ME said, “Or one murder could have been deliberate and the other random chance or collateral damage or blind luck. For both or either of them.”

  Fenwick raised an eyebrow. “They must be teaching you guys good stuff these days.”

  “Maybe I can be the smart one in the bunch.”

  Turner said, “As long as you don’t start telling jokes.” The ME had voiced possibilities that a good cop would be aware of. He liked that.

  People from the Crime Scene unit had blocked off the roof into squares. They used bright lights on their cameras to film each square. When they finished, each square had been dusted and any debris picked up, no matter how obscure a connection it might have to the murder.

  Turner and Fenwick donned their blue booties and gloves then approached the corpses.

  The detectives stood at the edge of bright light and scanned the area. Even though the scene was being videotaped, they still took out their notebooks and made sketches and anecdotal notes. Both detectives preferred to have hand-written reminders. Moving forward, they walked in their delicate ballet between bits of pulverized brain and gore, the remnants of life. At the moment, it wasn’t hard to forget almost being shot. Human bone, blood, and gristle could certainly focus the mind.

  Turner wondered when all cops had body cams, if people would want to see such details. More real than Hollywood could make it, but he didn’t doubt that there would be some reveling in the remnants of life and once-living flesh.

  Duffy pointed. “The one closest to the west is Preston Shaitan. The one a few feet to the east of him is Henry Bettencourt. Half of Shaitan’s brain wound up over there. Basically, his head exploded.” He turned slightly. “We got most of Bettencourt’s brain over here.”

  Shaitan wore a black and white floral shirt with a cutaway collar, tight fitting retro shorts in camo, and black sandals. His toenails needed cutting. Bettencourt wore a gray polo shirt, white slim Chinos, and black deck shoes. They both looked to be in their late thirties or early forties.

  Fenwick said, “We’ve got a sniper with a high-powered rifle. Four shots. First two fatal. Second two just for meanness or maybe to be certain. Does anyone think this was random chance?”

  Head shakes.

  “Why here?” Fenwick asked.

  “What were they doing up here?” Turner asked.

  They were used to mulling out loud in rhetorical excess. Helped them think as they investigated.

  The ME said they could examine the bodies. They approached closer. With a Crime Scene person, they took each item from the pockets, catalogued them, preserved them. Nothing leaped out at them as clues.

  Turner took out his cell phone and called Barb Dams at Area Ten headquarters. Pleasantries exchanged, Turner asked, “Is Fong in?” Fong was Area Ten’s tech guy. No one’s expertise on the CPD, as far as Turner and Fenwick knew, matched his abilities.

  Dams said, “The Commander called in everybody. They’ve been afraid of violence since this started, so it’s been all hands on deck for two days. You know Fong. He practically lives down there anyway.”

  “Could you have him do credit card checks on the two victims? That will give us some sense of their movements and, with luck, where they were staying.”

  She already had the names from earlier. He gave her the numbers they’d found on credit cards in the wallets. She promised to get on to Fong immediately. The detectives said they’d deliver the cell phones of the deceased when they returned to headquarters.

  Thursday 8:28 P.M.

  They’d learned all they could from the scene and the body. Finished with their examination, they approached a uniformed cop near the door that led back downstairs.

  “Anybody report hearing gunshots?” Fenwick asked.

  He was an older man whose gut hung out over his belt. He said, “You expecting someone on the roof of a building to jump in front of the bullets?”

  Turner always figured it was the sneer in the beat cop’s voice that caused what happened next.

  For a moment, a light shone on the guy’s name tag: Blawn. Turner didn’t remember working with him before.

  The area around the door was in shadow. Fenwick made no threat. In one swift move he had his good arm pressed against the guy’s throat and was using his own bulk to move the guy deeper into shadow.

  Turner eased after them.

  The beat cop flailed against the pressure of Fenwick’s arm. Seconds later, the cop halted as his head thudded against the wall. Fenwick pulled him forward an inch or so then rammed him back against the bricks. Fenwick’s growl was at its deepest and most menacing. “You got a problem, motherfucker?”

  The beat cop attempted to swat at his captor.

  Fenwick snarled, “Go ahead, mother fucker hit me. I’ve got one wounded arm, and I’ll still beat the shit out of you.””

  The man struggled for breath. Between gurgles, he gasped out, “You made shit choices.”

  Fenwick asked, “What did you want us to do? Make decisions based on what the situation calls for? Or pick and choose our behavior based on the ethnic identity, social connections, or job qualifications of the people the situation contains?”

  Turner knew when pissed, Fenwick could talk very fast and very loud with no trace of his own Chicago origins. Once Turner had asked Fenwick about the penchant for the professorial when he was pissed. Fenwick had said, “It’s a gift.”

  Right now, Blawn, the beat cop, managed to gasp out, “Huh?”

  “We faced death, you shit. We made instantaneous decisions that might have cost us our lives, others their lives. You want to second guess that?”

  The guy managed to shake his head and then gasped, “I give. I give.”

  Fenwick kept his arm on the man’s throat, but eased back a fraction of an inch.

  Turner asked, “You know Carruthers?”

  The guy nodded.

  “He a friend?”

  The guy shook his head.

  “Are we your friends?”

  More head shaking.

  Fenwick snarled. “You and any of your buddies try to fuck up our investigation, I will personally cut off your balls and feed them to you. Do you understand?”

  The guy nodded.

  “If you try to fuck with us, I will find out where you liv
e and I will come over with a baseball bat in one hand and a machine gun in the other. Do you understand?”

  Between gurgles, the guy nodded.

  Fenwick eased up on Blawn’s throat. The guy bent over, retched for a moment, then pulled in great gulps of air.

  “Let’s try it again. Anyone report hearing gunshots?”

  The answer came between heavy pants. “No one has come forward.”

  Fenwick ordered the guy to organize and begin the canvass of the building.

  Blawn tottered away.

  Fenwick gasped for a few moments and rubbed his wounded shoulder.

  Turner asked, “You feel better?” He knew behind his often snarly exterior, his partner was a gentle soul, but it did not do to piss him off.

  “Not as much as I’d like.” Fenwick shook his head. “We’re going to have to put up with far too much of that.”

  “Maybe this guy will relay the message. Or report you.”

  Fenwick glanced around. “No witnesses.” He peered at the eaves and corners nearby. “Even if there are cameras, they can’t see anything in the dark back here.” He drew another deep breath. “Almost getting killed and then harassed by an idiot who is one of our own takes it out of me.”

  “Pisses me off, too. Remember Rodriguez’s car already got keyed. All kinds of shit could happen.”

  Fenwick nodded.

  Turner said, “We can’t count on Blawn to do his job.”

  They hunted for Sanchez. The beat cop appeared at the top of the stairs. “You heard any rumbles about us?” Fenwick asked.

  Sanchez said, “That an idiot detective might be fired and you guys saved an innocent kid? Other than that, not much. Feelings aren’t running strong because Carruthers was so hated. Although there are a few morons around. They aren’t likely to talk to me or Deveneaux. They know we’ve worked together a long time. If we hear anything, we’ll tell you.”

  They asked him to follow up on the canvass. Sanchez nodded.

  Turner asked him, “Who found the body?”

  “Guy named Ian Hume. One of the old guys says he used to be one of us. I never heard of him.”

  Turner said, “What the hell?”

  Fenwick raised an eyebrow.