Ring of Silence

by Mark Zubro

  Fenwick held out his wounded arm. “He didn’t miss by much. It was only luck that kept me alive.”

  Smeek leaned forward and rapped his knuckles on the table top. “You guys are lucky you have your jobs. Your boss Molton will be losing his soon.”

  “All for a Code of Silence to protect what?” Fenwick demanded. “What are you all gaining by this bullshit?”

  Smeek stood up. “Good to see you. Goodbye.”

  Saturday 5:17 P.M.

  In the car, Turner said, “I hate arrogance.”

  Fenwick gave him a long look. “I’m usually the one who bitches.”

  “Maybe it’s just the one who’s driving. This is the first time I’ve done it in a while.”

  “Vehicular slander? No, that’s not right. Vehicular defamation?”

  Turner said, “Vehicular pissed off.”

  “Then you may be right, it could be the driving part of this, if that is the correct medical term.”

  Since they were close by, they stopped at the new cardinal’s residence. They didn’t get past the secretary who told them he’d be glad to make them an appointment for when the cardinal was back from Rome. Not catching people at home was one of the banes of their existence. Sometimes, they were lucky. Sometimes, they weren’t.

  Back in the car, Turner asked, “Next?”

  “Ken Coscarelli, the guy in the department helping make Carruthers’s cases disappear.”

  Their call was sent to voice mail.

  “Now who?” Turner asked.

  “Griffin.”

  “As the assistant Chief of Detectives, he’ll know we’ve seen the Superintendent.”

  “How?”

  “Would we have the nerve to show up if we didn’t have high clearance?”

  Fenwick asked, “Has he met me?”

  “He’ll know,” Turner insisted. “And you have met him. Numerous times.”

  Fenwick grumbled, “Yeah, you’re right.”

  By now, it was nearly five, but the traffic wasn’t bad on a Saturday. The sky had completely clouded over. The wind still blew at gale force.

  Griffin lived on the far north side in a house just short of a mansion in the flight path from O’Hare. His wife answered the door and led them to the back garden where Griffin was on his knees pulling weeds.

  The assistant Chief of Detectives peered up at them and said, “This is the best time to do gardening, when the ground is damp. Weeds come right up by the roots.”

  He stuck a trowel into the ground, stood up, and brushed dirt off his knees. He wore a Chicago White Sox sleeveless t-shirt, a Chicago Bulls pair of long shorts, and flip flops. He took a long guzzle from a can of beer, put it down, wiped sweat from his forehead.

  He did not offer them a seat or a beverage. He said, “If you had the nerve to come here, it means you’ve got Molton’s support, and my guess is you’ve been off to tattle to the Superintendent as well.”

  Turner said, “He’s been to the station.”

  “Good for him, paying his respects to his newest heroes.”

  Fenwick asked, “How did all the complaints against Carruthers disappear?”

  Griffin said, “I’m not in charge of complaints.”

  “You’re in charge of all the detectives in the CPD. Every complaint against us crosses your desk.”

  “I don’t remember any against Carruthers.”

  Fenwick said, “We checked. He had more than any other detective who works under you.”

  “If they’ve all been erased, how could you check?” He gave a rollicking sneer.

  “You think Area Ten doesn’t keep records?”

  “Molton did that?”

  “We have duplicates of everything. In the station, 97 complaints. In his official file with the department, you’re right, none. How long did you think you’d get away with that?”

  “Someone obviously did. What’s the date for your first complaint?”

  Fenwick asked, “Why is that important? They’ve gotten away with this for years. You’re disputing the Area Ten records?”

  Griffin said, “I can just as easily dispute yours. You said somebody erased. I say somebody added.”

  “For years?” Turner asked. “Why bother making stuff up for that long a time?”

  Griffin sneered. “Don’t you think every one of your questions works both ways?”

  Fenwick said, “Not in a reality-based world.”

  But Griffin would give them nothing further. He drank more beer, knelt to his weeding, and waved them goodbye.

  Saturday 5:51 P.M.

  They’d been rushing about the city all afternoon in a car that felt more like it was trying to move the humidity out of their way, like a snowplow in winter trying to plow through a drift. Even in the air-conditioned car, Fenwick sweated. The clouds in the west were continuing to darken. Weather radar showed a continuous line of storms forming along the Mississippi River and moving slowly east.

  Fenwick banged his hand on the door handle. “Who did call about getting us assigned to the case?”

  Turner pulled onto Lakeshore Drive. He glanced at his partner then back to the road. He said, “There was no such call.”

  Fenwick said, “Double fuck.”

  They each mused in silence for a moment. Fenwick thumped his door handle again. “You gotta be right.”

  “Simplest thing in the world. Why would Molton question the assistant Chief of Detectives? He’d just assign us like the good employee he is.” Turner pulled around a van swaying because of the wind. “And if it is one vast conspiracy, why not then assume, when Carruthers misses us on the street, and they move onto another crazed notion.”

  Turner’s phone binged with a text. He handed it to Fenwick who read it. “Fong says he’s got one more thing. No details. Asks us to meet him,” he paused and looked, “not in the station. Says there’s a coffee shop at Harrison and Devon.”

  Turner nodded. “Yeah, Harriet’s.”

  Sometimes, if Fong was in a secretive mood, or the thought he had something really incriminating or just a major oddity, he asked to meet off site. It was a quirk they mostly endured with equanimity. And he’d been a big help in this case and many others. They were quite willing to be as indulgent as they needed to be.

  Turner headed over.

  Wind buffeted the car. Turner wished the storm would get it over with.

  Harriet’s had a low ceiling and a long row of booths along one wall that stretched nearly half a block. Fong was in the last one, far back. Each booth had a sconce, some of which had light bulbs and a few of which were working. The one at Fong’s booth was not.

  His lap top was open and plugged into the wall. In the light from his monitor, he looked like the just beginning stage of a horror movie transformation from human to not-human. He shoulders were slumped. He seemed to sag in his seat.

  “What’s wrong?” Turner asked.

  For an answer, Fong pressed a key on the computer and turned the monitor to them. A Chicago street scene in daylight began to unfold.

  Turner and Fenwick watched. First, it showed DeShawn Jackson running by. Then it showed Carruthers shouting. Fong had the sound turned low so they had to lean close to hear. Carruthers wasn’t waving his gun. He was alternately listening to his phone and then screaming. The rest of the video showed Carruthers moving a few feet away from his car. He bellowed at the kid. Then he brought up his gun.

  Fenwick said, “So what? We know what he did.”

  Fong said, “This is the video from the missing dash cams. I’ve synced it with all the other dash cams and videos. Now watch.” He pressed a few keys. Three images appeared on his monitor.

  The same scene unrolled but now from several points of view. Fong put it on half speed. Again, it was a record from the moment DeShawn first ran past, to Carruthers beginning to fire. The last frame showed Carruthers taking his first shot. Fong froze it at that point and said, “You see it? He waited for you guys. He didn’t raise his gun until you guys turned that corn
er. He wasn’t going to shoot until you got there.”

  Turner said, “It couldn’t be bad timing? Odd timing? Coincidence?” He shook his head. “None of us believes in coincidences.”

  Fenwick said, “The whole DeShawn thing was set up to kill us?”

  They both sat back.

  “Want to see it again?” Fong asked.

  Fenwick said, “I want to learn about the slowest way to kill a person, and then I want to find a way to prolong that.”

  Fong said, “Torture doesn’t work.”

  Fenwick said, “You misunderstand. I don’t want to torture Carruthers for information. I want to torture him to inflict pain. Pain up to the point to just before he’d be dead. Then I want to leave him like that in some dark basement until he is starving and dying of thirst. Then I want to torture him again, and then send a million jolts of electricity through his body until it is fried into an unrecognizable pile of ashes.”

  They sat in silence for several moments.

  Fenwick said, “Or a bus.”

  Turner sighed. He knew the reference. Fenwick loved stupid comedy movies. One of the scenes his partner loved most was when they included an illogical and gratuitous appearance of a bus running over a character. Fenwick thought the ‘bus’ bits in the movie “The Comebacks” were among the best humor moments in cinematic history. Turner could never figure out how much competition there really was for buses gratuitously running over characters. He didn’t ask Fenwick. He feared his partner might know the answer. Sort of like Groucho Marx telling a character to, “Walk this way,” in so many movies.

  Instead of responding to the irrelevancy, Turner asked Fong, “How’d you put this together?”

  “Barb Dams and I have been working the secretaries and techno people networks. I have friends. She has friends. Somebody was trying to suppress some of these.”

  “Who?” Fenwick asked. “They’re next on my list after I’m done with Carruthers.”

  “Don’t know that yet. I’m working on it.”

  Turner said, “He had no idea he was being filmed?”

  Fong said, “He was crazy or desperate enough to take the risk. Or thought his clout was powerful enough to protect him from a murder charge.”

  Both detectives sat silent, their eyes going from the screen, frozen on Carruthers’s first shot, to each other, to Fong, to the middle distance.

  Fong said, “I’ve made copies. I’ve sent them to you, Dams, and Molton. I have people on the Net waiting for word from me or you guys to have them go viral.”

  Turner said, “We gotta think.”

  Fong yawned and shook his head.

  Turner asked, “Have you slept?”

  “I know I did once.”

  “You should head home.”

  “Yeah.”

  After another round of profuse thanks, they left.

  They drove to the station.

  Turner said, “Somebody knew these existed, had access to them, tried to hide them, didn’t have enough savvy to keep them hidden.”

  “Any number of possibilities.”

  “We never talked to DeGroot today. Anybody else we missed?”

  “The entire level of brass downtown?”

  Turner nodded glumly. Raindrops splattered the windshield for a minute then stopped.

  At the station, they trudged in silence up the stairs to their desks. To Turner, Fenwick looked like a bulldozer snarling at a starting line, waiting to be released upon the unsuspecting world. He felt the weight of the afternoon they’d spent listening to lies, evasions, half truths. Frustration and anger ate at his soul.

  On the way to their desks, Turner stopped in the washroom as Fenwick continued on.

  Turner heard the door open. He concentrated on his business at the urinal. Someone shoved him hard into the wall. Between getting himself put together, zipping up, and trying to keep his balance, he tipped and began to fall.

  He heard a clink and was shoved around with a handcuff on one wrist and the other end attached to a silent and clammy pipe.

  He got a look at his attacker.

  Carruthers.

  Saturday 6:30 P.M.

  “Go ahead,” Carruthers shrieked. “Call for help. I can kill you now or get a few things off my chest and kill you then. Your goddamn perfect kids and your goddamn shove-it-up-your-ass husband will all be sobbing because you’re gone. They’ll all be sobbing by morning.”

  Turner shook his head. “Why is making my kids and my husband miserable so important to you?”

  “You’ve made me miserable.”

  “So why punish them?”

  “I want to punish you and anything you’ve ever touched.”

  “But I’ll be dead. How would I be punished?”

  “Just content yourself with being dead.”

  Turner didn’t bother to debate this bit of illogic. He said, “I’ll do my best.”

  Carruthers said, “And your goddamn obese pig partner. I may kill him, too.”

  “You do know there is no possible way for you to get away with this?”

  Carruthers chuckled then said, “I came to finish the job.”

  “What job?”

  “We’ve wanted you dead for a very long time.”

  “Who is we?”

  Turner edged his butt so his body was in a more comfortable sitting position.

  Carruthers gave him a smile that revealed yellow teeth. Turner had never noticed them before. Had he ever seen Carruthers smile? At the moment, he wasn’t sure, and he knew that he didn’t care.

  Carruthers reached over and turned the lock at the top of the restroom’s aged door.

  Someone would notice it was locked and get a janitor to open it. He hoped. Or Barb Dams had a key.

  Carruthers said, “I know you don’t think I have friends.”

  “Why does what I think matter?”

  Carruthers snorted. “Fuck you.”

  “You couldn’t have planned all this yourself.”

  “I’m too stupid, as you all have pointed out for years.” He let go a grimace that showed just a small line of his yellow teeth. “You guys have been right about that, I suppose. No one would believe I’d planned all this. No, people far above me, who you will never be able to touch, took care of all this. They let me help.” He shook his head. “I wasn’t even very good at that. Once I failed that first time, I know they abandoned me.”

  “That first one wasn’t well thought out.”

  “Sure, protestors around, a frightened kid running around, and you accidentally caught in the crossfire. It was perfect. I knew your every move. We knew your every move. It isn’t only Fong that can do electronic shit. I got excited. I missed.” He sighed. “They’ve abandoned me since then. All of them. It’s hopeless.”

  Carruthers paced and waved his gun around then aimed it at Turner. Whether pacing or in the rare moments of stillness, the gun and the hand he held it with wobbled, trembled, and shook.

  “If they break the door in, I’ll shoot.”

  “I’m not sure anybody knows I’m missing yet.”

  “They’ll figure it out.”

  “I thought you came to shoot me. If that’s true, what difference does it make to you if the door is broken in. You didn’t think you were going to be able to get away with murder inside a police station?”

  Carruthers actually stopped pacing.

  Turner said, “You’ve gotten away with everything else, so you thought you could get away with this?”

  “Does getting away with anything matter anymore?”

  Turner asked, “Why did you want to talk to me in the station after the shooting in the street?”

  “I wanted to see how lost you were to the Code of Silence. How lost you were to doing right by your fellow cops.” He gave his grating laugh. “I wanted to fuck with your mind.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “Because I may be stupid and inept, but maybe I could do that.”

  Turner’s hands gripped the pipe he was
attached to. His eyes stayed on Carruthers’s gun hand, but his mind whirled. Thoughts of his husband and his sons raced through his mind. Is this what people thought of as their lives flashing before them? He thought of the first time he’d held each of his sons after they were born. He shook his head to bring himself back to the present.

  Carruthers leaned his body against the opposite wall and let himself slide to the floor.

  Turner watched the slow motion plop.

  Carruthers’s hand with the gun landed on the floor with a slight click. For the first time, gun and hand didn’t wobble. Carruthers looked down at it for a second.

  Turner bunched his muscles for a lunge.

  Carruthers raised the gun. His hand no longer trembled. He said, “My guess is if you tried lunging at me, you’d wind up about six inches short. And anyway, I can maneuver and you can’t.”

  Turner leaned his back against the wall. It dripped from humidity. Water soaked into the back of his shirt.

  Turner mused idly that he’d never seen the old dump from this angle. And despite Molton’s strict orders on cleanliness, he could see bits of dirt in the grout that separated the yellowing tiles.

  Carruthers said, “You know that kid you saved has a juvenile record.”

  Turner thought for a moment, “You couldn’t have known that at the time of the shooting. How do you know it now?”

  “They all do.”

  Turner didn’t bother to ask, they who? Didn’t matter. Just as long as you were a member of any group that Carruthers was prejudiced against, you were a ‘they’.

  Turner asked, “Why would it make a difference?”

  “It makes me look like a good guy, trying to rid the city of one more piece of vermin.”

  “We’ve seen video of you not raising your gun until we came around that corner. You were waiting for us. You were planning murder.”

  “There is no such video.”

  Turner said, “Reality was never your strong suit.”

  “We’ve been planning to get you for a long time. Once you had that video showing I’d given solid information to the Catholic Church, we knew you had to go.”

  “But I only showed you after you shot Fenwick.”