Killing Zone

by Rex Burns

  “Where’d you hear that, Mrs. Wells?”

  “We heard. We know.” She added, “We know what we gone to do about it, too.”

  In the car, Stubbs gave his short, timeless whistle. “We found him yesterday and the rumors are all over the street today. Even if they didn’t like him, they hate Whitey worse.”

  Wager could understand the feeling. It was one thing to fight among your own, but something else when an outsider came into the barrio to kill. And it wasn’t just hate; there was a lot of fear, and that was far more infectious than hate. It gave an easy excuse to those who sought revenge and could weld the non-committed to the bringers of violence. “We can’t prove it’s not a racist killing.”

  “Yeah, right. But we haven’t had that kind of trouble in so long, it’s hard to realize how close to the surface those feelings still are.”

  A bruise was always touchy, Wager knew, even when it wasn’t visible. Maybe you had to grow up in a barrio or ghetto to know that. But some, no matter where they grew up, were always seeking revenge. “She just hates, Stubbs—black, white, everybody.” It was the others: her sons, their friends, the kids who ached for a chance to play their role as rebellious victims, who would fill the streets. “Head back to the Admin Building—the lieutenant’s probably wetting his pants waiting for us.”

  He wasn’t; Wolfard had left shortly after five with the rest of the administrators. But a note in Wager’s box told them to telephone him at home. Wager did.

  “So far, nothing, Lieutenant. We talked to one of the White Brotherhood—an overgrown meatball named Sonny Pickett. He claims he didn’t even know who Green was.”

  “That’s not very damned surprising. Who else in the Brotherhood did you run down?”

  “Nobody. They’ll be hard to find on a weekend. They get on their bikes and go.”

  “So we have to wait until Monday to trace this out?”

  “I didn’t feel Pickett was lying. But I twisted his arm to come up with whatever he could. Maybe we’ll be lucky.”

  “Maybe doesn’t cut it, Wager. I heard from the chief this afternoon; he’s under a hell of a lot of pressure from the mayor’s office to clean this up ASAP. There’s rumors all over the place about Green being killed by a racist and what the blacks ought to do about it. I told the chief I assigned you and Stubbs to this full-time, and he wanted me to put even more people on. Hell, you two are one-fifth of the entire homicide section right now, so he went along with it. But he’s thinking of bringing in the CBI and maybe even the Feds if we don’t come up with something soon. People have been knocking on his door all day long, and if we don’t produce, he’s taking it away from us.”

  “We also talked to twelve of those sixteen families evicted from the apartments. Nothing there.”

  “Damn it all, Wager, I told you to stick to the racist angle! That’s what those rumors say and that’s what I want you to spend your time on. Not any goddamned long shots like that!”

  In a killing, any possible motive needed checking out. Wager shouldn’t have to tell Wolfard that. “Yessir.”

  “You and Stubbs are on duty tomorrow, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, keep after that White Brotherhood. I want to know who and what they are and if there’s any possible chance one of them might be involved. Any chance at all.”

  “Yessir.”

  “And keep me posted.”

  Wager leaned back and stretched against the back of his chair and gazed around the homicide offices without really seeing the pale walls and the clutter of gray metal desks. The television set mounted high in a corner flickered with a sitcom where a large black woman leaned threateningly toward a slender youth whose eyes widened with mock innocence as he held up his hands palms out. The sound was turned off but dialogue wasn’t really needed; the emphasized gestures carried the familiar story and defined the equally familiar characters, and you didn’t really need to suffer through whatever they were saying. In some ways, it was like this case—the kinds of actors were already known, and all the lieutenant wanted Wager to do was supply the names and faces to play those familiar roles. The trouble was, of course, life wasn’t a sitcom, and there might be a few players whose roles as well as names were neither predictable nor clear. Political players, maybe, such as the one who could have paid off Green for a favorable vote.

  CHAPTER 8

  FRIDAY, 13 JUNE, 1930 Hours

  Stubbs had gone for the night, the long tour pressing on his shoulders to make his walk heavy. The only other figure in the office was Golding, who shared the night shift with Max. As usual, he was on the telephone talking to someone about improving the spiritual side of life; this time it was by moon-phase dining. “Well, it sounds kind of weird, yeah, but she said to try it for a couple of months. And when you think about it, there’s some sense to it—you know, the moon regulates the tides and a full moon brings all sorts of weird calls. Even the birthrate goes up. So I thought I’d try it … No, what you do is pick foods that coincide with moon phases—receptors, she calls them.”

  Wager tried to ignore the list of full- and quarter-moon foods as he shuffled through the papers that had piled up in his mailbox during the tour, routine bulletins and notices that went to every detective in every section whether or not they were pertinent. He did not use the computing service, so it made no difference to him that new limits had been put on mainframe access, but the notice was there, anyway. What did make a difference was the memo stating that all computer terminals would shut down between 2 and 3 A.M. every morning, so Denver General, which shared the same equipment, could run their bills for the day. That meant the police had to stop chasing criminals while the city chased its dollars. A newsletter from the Police Brotherhood complained about long hours and understaffing, both of which had been around for as long as Wager could remember, and a hell of a lot longer than the PBA. But they were right: the numbers of crimes committed, especially burglary, had leaped, while the number of cops to investigate them stayed the same. The result was fewer minutes to spend on each crime, so you went after the ones you had a chance of clearing fast. What that meant was the professionals—the burglars who made their living with occasional big hits—were safer from arrest than the busy amateurs who tended to make small scores and big mistakes. But the brass went by stats and an arrest was an arrest. So you tried for the easiest bag.

  He found a reminder that he was due to pop a few caps this month, and he’d better make time to get out to the range for that—it was a silly way to lose pay. Finally, the forensics package on Green—an envelope wrapped with a short string and sealed with a CONFIDENTIAL label. He opened it and slid the pile of forms and pages onto his desk. As Wager began reading the insistent buzz of Golding’s voice faded from his consciousness.

  Much of what the pathology report told him, he already knew—the manner of death, approximate time, and so on. Nothing in the official document mentioned the possibility that the body had been moved—Doc Hefley was cautious about committing himself to that idea. But Wager forced his way through the familiar facts one more time, making occasional notes as stray ideas came up. Then he turned from the medical to the investigators’ reports. Walt Adamo’s survey of the crime scene turned up several patterns of footprints that had not been attributed to witnesses or investigators walking the scene. The prints were described in the appendix and Wager studied the paragraph that told him most of the unattributed prints seemed to be from either tennis shoes or street shoes. One set of tracks going to the murder scene and back out again looked promising: the deeper imprint of a narrow, tall heel, like the heel of a cowboy boot. The depth and distance between strides going in implied that the wearer carried a heavy weight; the few prints found exiting were shallower and the stride longer, and that could mean the burden had been dropped. The distance between exiting strides indicated a person approximately 5 feet 9 inches, medium build, and normal walk. Casts had been taken of all prints that had been found; however, the fr
iability of the dry earth made identifying characteristics difficult to determine. “See item #151.”

  Wager looked down to that entry: “Occasional scrapes ran parallel to the line of heel prints (Item #122) possibly caused by the victim’s shoes dragging toes-down through the dirt. Marks on the toes of the victim’s shoes were consistent with being dragged (Item #202).”

  He was dead before he was dumped. That’s what those marks told Wager: Green was hauled in by someone who draped the victim’s arm over his shoulder to carry the weight. Someone wearing heels like cowboy boots. That was hypothesis, of course, not fact—the only facts were the prints and the scrapes in the dirt. But now those facts were starting to speak.

  Wager turned to the itemized survey of the victim’s clothing and personal effects that had been tested in the forensics lab. Green’s pockets contained a wallet, handkerchief, comb, a dollar and seventy-three cents in loose change, a small pen knife, and nothing else. Wager thought about the things in his own pockets and the everyday things that should or should not be in Green’s. Keys. No keys. Everybody had keys: car, home, office. But no keys on Green. That reminded him to call MVD again about the missing car, because the keys would have been used to drive away in that car. The wallet had been gone over for forensic evidence, too. Nothing unusual there: only Green’s prints on the various cards and photographs in the plastic windows. Wager scanned the list of contents for other pockets and found nothing notable. A glasses case and a pair of sunglasses found in the jacket’s inside pocket, a matching gold pen-and-pencil set also found in the vest pocket. That was it, and Wager leaned back to gaze at the ceiling and turn over those items in his mind.

  Nothing that shouldn’t be there … Only one thing that should be … Somewhere at the edge of his concentration, Golding hung up the telephone, shrugged into his coat, and said something to Wager as he left the office. Wager’s mouth said something back, but his mind didn’t register what, because it was again counting off those footprints and scrapes, those things found on the victim. He jotted another note and then turned to the lab analysis of Green’s clothing. According to visual inspection, the suit was recently pressed; recovery of trace materials from the pockets, pleats, and seams was hampered because of removal of the victim’s clothing at the morgue. However, a lab analysis of the underwear revealed traces of semen and vaginal fluids, indicating that the victim had sex and apparently dressed rapidly after the act so that the fluids on his flesh were still damp enough to smear.

  He found corroboration further down in forensic’s detailed study of the corpse. Skin swabs of the crotch and penis indicated heterosexual activity, and combing of the pubic area resulted in hair samples different from the victim. Wager read that entry and then ground the heels of his hands into his tired eyes and read it again. The samples were from a blond Caucasian woman.

  A wife who wasn’t too surprised when her husband was gone all night.

  Two periods of missing time.

  And Sonja Andersen had not called her condolences because she was unsure whether or not Mrs. Green would want to hear from her.

  Making a longer entry in his notebook, Wager finished reading Adamo’s survey of the forensic findings: The site offered little conclusive evidence of the perpetrator’s identity, but enough soil and vegetation samples had been collected to provide links to the clothing of any future suspect. The pathological analysis of the victim’s clothes revealed sexual activity probably on the same day he died.

  Replacing the sheets in their envelope, Wager leaned back and thought for a while. Then he jotted a few more lines in his notebook and began finishing up the rest of the notes and notices in his mail. Near the bottom of the pile, he found a telephone slip with a familiar number and a request checked: “Call as soon as possible.”

  He dialed and listened to the tone rattle twice before a man answered with the bar’s name. “Is Fat Willy there?”

  “Who wants him?”

  He was sure the bartender knew his voice by now, but the ceremony never changed. “Gabe.”

  “I’ll see.”

  A few seconds later the wheezing voice came over the wire. “Thought you forgot all about your friends, Wager.”

  “I’ve been busy.”

  “You been busy, shit. You been running around in circles, you mean.”

  “All right—I’ve been busy running around in circles.”

  “Uh huh. What’s the word, my man?”

  “Nothing doing. They’re up for two felonies and Papadopoulos wants to put them away as habituals.”

  “Shit, Wager—you owe me! Goddamn it, you owe!”

  “I owe what I can pay, Willy. Not what I can’t. McKeever complains they threatened to set his store on fire, and then the damn fools did it. Then they beat him up because he fingered them. Nobody can help a couple of turdheads like that.”

  “That ain’t the way it was! That McKeever—you know him? You know what kind of scumbag he is?”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “You about the only one. He set fire to his own store, man. Insurance scam. He set fire to it and then laid it on Franklin and Roberts. They went over there to make him stop that crap and he come after them with a forty-five—wasn’t a damn thing they could do but take it away from him. Assault? Shit!”

  “He must have had some reason to blame your two choirboys, Willy. Or did he just pick the names from the telephone book?”

  Willy’s lurching breath measured a second or two. “All right, here it is—straight. That McKeever, he runs a numbers game out of that two-bit candy store. Numbers, a little cards, and craps on the weekend, you know. He likes to lay off a few bets with me now and then.” He paused. “Personal wagering—friendly bets—all legal, you understand.”

  “I understand real well, Willy.”

  “Yeah. Anyway, McKeever, he got no luck. He’s one of them people got no luck at all. He always loses and he loses big. He owes me, you know?” He waited for Wager to say he knew, but there was only silence. “Well, he owes me. So I send Franklin and Roberts over to talk to him—see what they can find out about when he’s going to pay up.”

  “And if he doesn’t pay, they burn him out?”

  “No, shit, man—they don’t say nothing about that! That’s what I’m telling you—they burn down his store, how’s he going to make money to pay me? They go over and look mean and that’s all. God damn, Wager, I know what their records is. I use muscle, it ain’t going to be somebody got three falls against them.”

  “So you’re telling me McKeever burned his own place for the insurance and blamed them.”

  “Yeah—turns out I wasn’t the only one he owed. That eedjit got into his own crap game and lost. His own game! I told you he was unlucky. Except he lost to a crazy man—Wall-Eye Oates, the one spent too much time down in Canyon City. Wall-Eye, he say he going to pocketknife McKeever if he don’t pay up and pay up now. McKeever believes him. Hell, I believe him. So McKeever burns down his own store, and he knows damn well he can’t make it look like nothing but arson, so he blames Franklin and Roberts.”

  Wager knew of Wall-Eye; he’d interviewed him once in the emergency ward of Denver General when what was left of the man had been hauled in after a knife fight. He was crazy—that much of Willy’s story was true. “All this can come out in court, Willy. That’s grounds for a not-guilty plea.”

  “I don’t want it to get that far. Them two, they got long records and it’s only their word against McKeever. You think a jury or judge going to listen to what they say? McKeever knows that. He ain’t had a charge against him in twenty years. My men don’t want to take a chance in court and I don’t blame them. You heard what Nick-the-Greek said he do.”

  There was a lot more that Willy wasn’t telling him, additional reasons why the fat man was so worried about Franklin and Roberts. “Those two’ve worked for you a long time, right, Willy?”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “They know about your busine
ss. They said if you don’t get them off, they’ll trade what they know for a lighter sentence, right?”

  Another heavy breath, something like a sigh. “Maybe.”

  Wager, too, gave something like a sigh. “I’ll tell Papadopoulos what you told me about McKeever. But I don’t think it’ll do any good. He likes the simple truth of Franklin and Roberts shaking down McKeever.” And so would a jury.

  “Well, damn it, do some good! What the hell we paying our taxes for?”

  “You don’t pay taxes Willy. You know that.”

  “Maybe I don’t, Wager. But I pay in other ways. I paid for this in advance—I saved your pimply white ass that time, and you goddamn owe me for it.”

  “I’m also goddamn working on a homicide right now.”

  “Don’t hand me that shit, Wager. You know who killed Green; it’s all over the street.”

  “Who?”

  “Who! Who! You know who: that White Brotherhood shit, that’s who.”

  “I don’t know that, Willy. I don’t know that at all.”

  “You the only one! That’s the word that’s out, Wager. Everywhere.”

  He gave it a try. “What can you find out for me about Green?”

  “Say, what?”

  “Green. Find out everything you can about him.”

  “You asking for another fucking favor? You tell me to kiss my own ass about Franklin and Roberts and then you turn around and ask for another fucking favor? Man, you got the most … You are the biggest …”

  He groped to think for a word that fit, and in the pause Wager said, “If you come up with something worthwhile, it’s leverage. The chief might be willing to shrug off Franklin and Roberts if it means getting Green’s killer.”

  “… Oh, yeah?”

  “It’s a chance. But it has to be soon. They go up for charges on Monday. After that, it’s in the court’s hands.”

  Willy muttered something under his breath. “What I hear, Wager, is Green was straight. Somebody the people are proud of. That’s why they so pissed.”