The Murder Channel

by John Philpin

  “Wait.”

  “Holy shit. He talks.”

  “Who is paying you?”

  “I got paid. What do you care?”

  I watched his face as he mouthed his sandwich and sweat beaded on his forehead.

  “I got a cashier’s check, okay? I don’t know who paid me. All I know is I’m on the fuckin’ record and I can’t get off till after tomorrow. This is a formality, okay? Jesus. I pity the fuckhead who gets this case. He says not guilty, and the D.A. shows an instant replay. If we had the chair, you’d be a crispy critter.”

  I turned from the bars and stepped to the back of my cell, where I examined the texture of the concrete blocks.

  Carroll’s footsteps faded in the hall. The lawyer bantered with the guard about the Boston Celtics. Both men swore and laughed, and the steel door slammed.

  The silence was a delight.

  OUR TABLE WAS AT THE REAR OF JACOB Wirth’s. Bolton was on his second dark beer before dinner, and in storytelling mode.

  “We’d just gotten the DNA lab up and running,” he said. “A couple of department clowns were fussing about whether Albert DeSalvo was the ‘Boston Strangler.’ They wanted to run tests, make a definitive announcement, but they didn’t have anything to test. Jimmy Wheaton, BTT’s guy who does ‘Talk about Boston,’ called. I figured he wanted to discuss the new lab, but the last time I was on that show, Wheaton threw me more than a few curveballs. I made these cards, about the size of business cards, and I printed ‘Fuck You’ on each one.”

  “Not very nice, Raymond,” I said. “Sounds like something I’d do.”

  “Listen,” he continued. “Jimmy’s first question was about the bad blood between some of the cops and the highway department. There was stuff in the Boston Record, but that was all I knew about it. Instead of answering the question, I handed him a card. We were on live. He handled the first one, skirted the issue, asked me about the lab, then he landed on the BPD’s image. I gave him another one.”

  I laughed.

  “At the commercial break he said, ‘Ray, you’re killing me. What are you doing?’ I told him to stop using me as a straight man, and we were fine for the last twenty minutes. I got the idea from you.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “The hell,” Bolton said with a laugh. “You were my inspiration. Where was it?”

  “D.C.,” I said.

  “That’s right. It was back when they had the seven-second tape delay. You told the guy that every time he asked a hinky question you were going to say one of those words you aren’t supposed to say on the air. The guy was cocky. He told you about the tape delay. You said that was fine, you’d just repeat each word for eight seconds.”

  “A knowledge of syphilis is not an instruction to get it,” I said, paraphrasing my favorite philosopher of culture, Lenny Bruce.

  Our waiter delivered dinner and removed our empty mugs for refills. Bolton had the German mixed grill—bratwurst and weisswurst, sauerkraut, potato salad, and pickled red cabbage. I had ordered Jake’s special, knockwurst and bratwurst in red beer sauce, and the requisite sauerkraut and potato salad. I stabbed at Bolton’s cabbage.

  “Waycross should be here,” I said.

  “He’s not a nice drunk,” Bolton said. “He was drinking before Shannon died. He didn’t drink every day, but when he did, it was uncontrolled. The only department Christmas party he attended, he never left the bar. Shannon was with Louise and me most of the night. When we went home, I guess she danced with a couple of the guys. Neville went after one of them. Remember Steve Winslow?”

  I nodded.

  “He set Neville down on his butt without too much damage done.”

  “Except to Neville’s ego,” I said.

  “He took it out on Shannon. Neville can’t drink. It’s that simple. He was a good cop. When he’s sober, he’s a likable guy.”

  “What did he do to Shannon?”

  “That night, he slapped her. Couple of months later, he hit her hard enough to knock her down. They ended up in the E.R. He quit drinking. The two of them went to counseling. He slipped a couple of times, but no rough stuff that I know about.”

  Bolton shrugged. “Then Zrbny.”

  “When he heard about Zrbny’s release petition, he hit the bottle,” I said.

  “Solace in an old friend,” he muttered.

  “The Brothers warned him, then tossed him,” I mused. “He lied about it.”

  “Maybe he was embarrassed,” Bolton said.

  I filched more of Bolton’s cabbage.

  “The Brothers were willing to support him through treatment,” he said. “He didn’t want that. They didn’t want an aggressive drunk in the monastery.”

  “Maybe he’ll show for the arraignment,” I said.

  “We can try to talk to him,” Bolton said. “Doesn’t usually do any good.”

  “Anything on Braverman?”

  “They’ve got a make and model on the gun that killed him. I’m waiting to hear. We’ll test it against Zrbny’s.”

  “Expect it to be the same one that killed Danny Kirkland,” I said, “but don’t expect it to be Zrbny’s.”

  “You think what’s left of Vigil quit BTT and went solo?”

  “Whoever dismantled those two offices didn’t know where to look for what he was after. I suppose it’s possible.”

  TWO HOURS LATER, I STOOD IN THE HALL outside my hotel room. I studied the carpet, the baseboards, the walls. There was not a speck of evidence that a severed head had been there. I got down on my hands and knees and searched for a stain or a single strand of hair.

  “It’s like this never happened,” I said.

  The cleaners had done a thorough job. They had eradicated the entire event. I wondered if any hotel employees would tell stories about the head in the hall. Doubtful. Everyone is in the business of rewriting the past.

  I stood and opened my door. “Guess there wasn’t any head there,” I said.

  I sat on the edge of the bed and wondered if others were as concerned with shaping events to fit their images of themselves.

  “We revised the sixties right out of existence,” I muttered, clicking the TV remote control to find out what BTT was doing.

  They had caught up with the Braverman story. An intruder believed to be Felix Zrbny had shot and killed Wendy Pouldice’s personal assistant. Pouldice had narrowly escaped with her life. Police, who concentrated their search for Zrbny in the Boston area, were trying to determine how the mass murderer had eluded the largest dragnet in the city’s history since Albert DeSalvo’s escape from Bridgewater State Hospital, the reporter said.

  “Enough,” I said, banging the remote.

  I was restless, not ready to sleep. I thumbed through case files, paced the room, and smoked. I grabbed the file that had shaken Neville Waycross. It was a particularly dense set of reports analyzing blood mixtures on Zrbny’s knife and at the three scenes.

  At two A.M. I fell into bed.

  Good morning. I’m Lily Nelson, and this is Boston Trial Television Headline News. Same case, different courthouse. Felix Zrbny will be arraigned this morning in the shooting death of Sheriff’s Deputy Michael Finneran. We will be going inside the courtroom in about ten minutes. Right now, let’s go to the courthouse steps, where …

  THREE DEPUTIES STOOD BEHIND ME; TWO deputies led the way into the courtroom. All were armed with stun guns and Mace.

  Hensley Carroll sat at the defense table. He had not removed his rubber boots.

  “Sit,” Carroll said. “Remember what I told you. We do this clean and quick, then we’re outta here.”

  The three deputies took their positions across the front of the court. Two remained directly behind me.

  As I expected, a TV camera at the rear observed and recorded everything. Most of the studio audience had taken their seats.

  Insects buzzed on a summer day long ago. Water cascaded down the side of the vegetable crisper. I touched my fingers to the liquid and rubbed it on the back of my n
eck. I had waited fifteen years from that moment when I heard my sister’s voice, to this moment, when she spoke to me again.

  “Today,” my lady of sorrow said, and her soft voice echoed inside, “Today.”

  I waited patiently for my final scene.

  WENDY POULDICE WORE HER GAME FACE TO court. She sported two new bodyguards—African-Americans wearing black suits, dark glasses, and bald pates.

  “Your friend Bolton has been making a nuisance of himself,” she said.

  I waited. I was in no mood for sparring with her.

  She surveyed the courtroom, then lowered her voice. “You two are ancients and you don’t fucking know it.”

  I thought of numerous ways to return the jab, but refrained.

  “Look at that camera,” she continued, pointing at a single TV camera at the courtroom’s rear. “That’s what the public wants. They don’t want summaries. They don’t want to hear from Bolton or Captain Newhall. They want to be in the middle of the action as it happens. Disasters are great, but they have a short shelf life. Continuing dramas like Simpson, the JonBenet Ramsay murder, Cary Stayner in Yosemite, Timothy McVeigh, Theodore Kaczynski …”

  “That’s where the money is,” I said.

  She smiled. “Get used to it, Lucas. The hero runs for a night. The killer is worth months of prime time.”

  She turned, and her muscle turned with her. They claimed their second-row, reserved seats.

  She’s as dangerous as any killer, I thought. Perhaps more dangerous.

  Bolton slipped into a seat beside me.

  “Warrant’s on its way,” he said.

  I nodded. “Our media queen’s arrest? Which of her many crimes are you going to nail her with?”

  “We’ll start with obstruction and go from there. Anything that originates with Zrbny is worthless. We’ll need corroboration.”

  “It’s a start,” I said, returning my attention to the front. “Boston is in for a treat. Pouldice will play the martyred journalist with aplomb.”

  “All rise,” the bailiff intoned.

  “Great theater,” I muttered.

  Bolton elbowed me.

  “In and for the County of Suffolk in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,” the bailiff continued. “The Honorable Nancy Kahn presiding.”

  As the judge and prosecutor attended to housekeeping matters, I surveyed the packed court. Reporters scribbled, artists sketched, and the single camera eye recorded the show.

  Blood.

  Strange how a single word can pop into your head and commandeer your consciousness.

  “Something is wrong,” I told Bolton.

  He waved at me to be quiet.

  People want a simple picture of the killer—a hulking, drooling, slobbering, primitive who is totally insane, incapable of reasoning, and who goes slashing through the city at night leaving a sea of blood.

  “Ray, Waycross interrupted him,” I whispered.

  Bolton ignored me.

  “Neville Waycross interrupted you,” I’d said to Zrbny.

  “Does it matter now?”

  “I’m curious, only because there are three ladies of sorrow. You killed three times.”

  A slight smile creased Zrbny’s lips. “You’re very good,” he said.

  “Not good enough,” I muttered.

  “Judge Kahn will boot you out of here,” Bolton whispered.

  I asked Zrbny if he remembered what he had said to Pouldice on that summer day fifteen years earlier.

  “Of course. I said that Levana had spoken to me, that today was the day. Right here. Right now.”

  I had watched him pull what was left of his sister onto his lap.

  “I still haven’t heard Levana’s voice,” he said. “I thought I would.”

  At his trial in 1970, Charles Manson propelled himself over the defense table, landing a few feet in front of Judge Older’s bench and falling to one knee. He was quickly subdued.

  When Felix Zrbny rose from his seat, his movements were fluid and fast. He turned away from the bench; his target was not the judge. He shoved two deputies aside, planted his foot on the railing, and launched himself into the air. He landed hard on Wendy Pouldice.

  Bolton flew from his seat. Four deputies converged on the melee. Pouldice’s bodyguards yanked at Zrbny, trying to pull him away. Reporters in adjacent seats moved aside and continued to scribble.

  From beneath the human pile, I heard a loud crack and knew immediately that Wendy Pouldice was dead, her neck broken.

  Deputies restrained and shackled Zrbny. Judge Kahn ordered the courtroom cleared. Bolton’s people secured the area around Pouldice’s limp corpse. I stared dumbly as the officers lifted Zrbny to a standing position.

  He gazed at me, smiling, and said, “My lady of darkness.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  A HALF HOUR LATER, BOLTON AND I STOOD on the sidewalk and watched a county van back into position to collect Felix Zrbny. The crowd, quiet now, moved slowly from the courthouse steps and followed the media army into the alley.

  “I don’t understand this,” a small black man said. “He shoveled for me, cleared the steps, and he wouldn’t take a dollar. He shook my hand.”

  “Eddie,” a Hispanic man said, “those flowers in the snow, Felix carried them to Sable.”

  “He said his name was Felix, but I don’t believe he’s Felix Zrbny,” Eddie concluded.

  I turned to Bolton. “If Wendy Pouldice was Zrbny’s lady of darkness, what the hell was Shannon Waycross?”

  “It doesn’t make any sense,” Bolton said. “He’s crazy.”

  There were three ladies of sorrow, and Zrbny had killed three times.

  Why would Neville Waycross believe that he had interrupted the killer?

  “Lucas?”

  “Zrbny planned to kill Wendy Pouldice fifteen years ago,” I said.

  “It’s over.”

  “He always intended to kill her on camera. That was his final scene.”

  The side door opened. Deputies escorted a shackled Zrbny down a short flight of iron stairs to the waiting van. His face expressionless, his long hair blowing in his face, he gazed into the eerily silent gathering until a man shouted, “She’s got a gun.”

  The crowd retreated as a woman stepped forward and pumped five shots into Felix Zrbny.

  He folded and collapsed on the pavement, and cameras caught the action for the evening news.

  I saw the woman’s profile as deputies restrained and disarmed her. On my first day back in Boston, she had thrown a snowball at me, narrowly missing my head. “You fucking bastard,” she had screamed, not knowing her target.

  This time she knew who she wanted to take down.

  … gunshot death of mass murderer Felix Zrbny brings to an end the bloodbath in Boston. Many will argue that it is a fitting end for the man who left an unprecedented trail of carnage in his wake. A concerned citizens’ group has already formed a legal defense fund for the woman who emerged from the crowd in the courthouse alley and fired five …

  MY FLIGHT WAS DELAYED.

  I grumbled about it, then found a quiet corner away from the gate area and dipped into my duffel bag in search of George V. Higgins’s Outlaws. Instead, I dragged out the lab and autopsy files on Shannon Waycross, Gina Radshaw, and Florence Dayle.

  I returned to the analysis of blood types and blood mixes, the file that had so distressed Neville Waycross that he vanished, probably wandering the city on one hell of a bender. As I worked backward from the last victim, I found what I expected. Technicians identified two blood types at the Dayle residence, hers and Gina Radshaw’s. Transfer, I thought. When Waycross saw Zrbny emerge from the woods, the teenager was blood-soaked and carried a bloodstained knife.

  There was no blood mix noted in the Radshaw report, and none in the Waycross report. Zrbny’s knife held stains from Dayle and Radshaw, none from Waycross. His clothing—Dayle and Radshaw, no Shannon Waycross.

  Zrbny had killed Waycross first, then Rad
shaw, then Dayle.

  “No,” I muttered, flipping through the autopsy reports.

  I skimmed the external examinations. Radshaw and Dayle were similar: numerous stab wounds, no defensive wounds, no evidence of restraint. Dayle had an appendectomy scar, Radshaw a mole on her stomach.

  Shannon Waycross’s throat was cut. Traces of an adhesive were found on her ankles, wrists, and near her mouth. On her right hand, two fingernails were broken. Her right cheek and the back of her head bore evidence of blunt-force injury.

  No solved homicide ever accounts for all the bits and pieces of evidence and information, but this was glaring. “Someone fucked up,” I muttered.

  I glanced around for a phone, and that was when I saw Neville Waycross standing in the departure area, surveying the crowd. His hands were stuck deep in his pockets, and he was unsteady on his feet. He was not here to wish me a safe trip, nor would he be inclined to discuss the nuances of evidence. I figured he had primed himself with whiskey and convinced himself that I had to be eliminated. He expected me to discover the inconsistencies in the reports dealing with his wife’s death, to realize that he had killed Shannon.

  I walked quickly to the opposite wall, where Waycross could not see me. The phones were in the corridor that led to the main terminal. That was out because Waycross had a clear view of the corridor.

  I flattened myself against the wall, wondering if Waycross had a gun. He had to pass through metal detectors to get this far. Waycross was an ex-cop. A quick flash of his old ID might get him through.

  When I looked out again, Waycross was gone.

  There was a bar fifty yards down the corridor where he could grab a bracer and have a place to wait. I walked slowly toward the Budweiser sign, scanning the waiting areas and searching for airport cops.

  Waycross stood at the end of the bar, watching pedestrian traffic enter from the main terminal. Ray Bolton was part of that traffic. I did not have to wonder what he was doing here. He had been waiting for a report on the gun that killed Donald Braverman and Danny Kirkland.