A Wake of Vultures

by Patrick Kansoer

  Nothing… silence... and the smell of death was now almost overwhelming. He could feel the contents of his gut churning and he really didn’t want to go any further. Tom, a well-trained experienced cop, mustered all of the resolve he could to take the next step.

  In one fluid motion he stepped over the dusty footprints going into the room and launched himself to the left of the door frame while sweeping his light to the right.

  The beam illuminated a sight that Tom had never experienced in all his years on the force. It was something out of a nightmare... something out of a grade B horror movie. It was a human body, or at least what used to be a human body.

  The flesh was in tatters on the upper skull and there were dark sunken holes where the eyes should have been. The visage of this specter looked almost like a melting wax candle. There could be no doubt that whoever this used to be was dead, long dead.

  Yet as Tom’s senses absorbed the scene he realized that the corpse was moving… almost as if it were breathing.

  Tom’s mind finally made the connection that the corpse was covered in maggots. A writhing, pulsating river of maggots cascading over the torso, down the legs and onto the thickly congealed stain of blood that had soaked into the threadbare carpet. That final realization finally overcame Tom’s years of police experience and training. His instincts took over and he retreated from the scene back through the dining room, through the kitchen, out the back door and off the porch.

  His feet never touched the rickety stairs and he plunged, headlong through the backyard and into the alley where he could no longer contain his rising gorge and his lunchtime doughnut and Boston coffee with two sugars painted the pavement between his navy last oxfords.

  Recovering after a few seconds, Tom reached for the microphone of the portable radio attached to his uniform shirt.

  Officer: 203 Skokie

  Dispatch: Skokie 203 go ahead

  Officer: 203 Skokie, I need a supervisor at this location

  Dispatch: Skokie 203, what is the nature of the problem

  Officer: 203 Skokie switch to tactical frequency two please

  Dispatch: Skokie 203 switching to TAC 2. Skokie 203 TAC 2

  Officer: 203 Skokie, I have a deceased subject at this location and need a supervisor before I can proceed.

  Supervising Officer: 200 Skokie, I have copied 203’s traffic and will roll to his location. What is the address?

  Dispatch: Skokie 200, 203 is at 8117 Bronx St., corner of Carroll.

  Supervising Officer:10-4. I’ll be there in about 5 minutes.

  Recovering from his initial shock, Tom retraced his steps back to the front of the house and Mr. Papoulonis.

  “Mr. Papolounis, we have a situation here and I need to ask you a few more questions before my supervisor arrives.”

  “Is the squirrel guy O.K. officer?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t give you any information on that sir. I do need to know if there is anything else you can remember about the guy who lives here, his name, his other friends, his family, anything at all.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t help you with that officer. Like I said, I didn’t know him well. I just spoke to him here while he was feeding the squirrels and a couple of times when he came into my place for a meal. I can tell you that I think his name is Sherman something.

  I think I have a copy of his credit card receipt from the last time he was in my place.”

  “I can check that when I go in this evening if you’d like.”

  “That would be very helpful if you could do that Mr. Papolounis. Let me get some contact information from you and we will be in touch later”.

  As Tom finished getting the spelling on the complainant’s name and his contact information, and sent him on his way, Sgt Novak pulled up.

  3 A MISCHIEF of RATS

  "The Police in Northern Cook County are not prejudiced and do not engage in random police brutality. They hate everyone equally and they treat everyone miserably."

  Sgt. Andy Novak had long ago become disillusioned with the idea of being a crime-busting cop. He found that his professional life consisted of periods of boredom.. interspersed with occasions of exposure to either irate citizens or absolute scumbags. There wasn’t too much “public service” left in his experience of police work.

  Pulling up to the address he saw that Tom had started stringing the crime scene tape. As he checked in with dispatch he saw Tom emerging from the side yard to the East of the property.

  “Tom, you look like shit. Whata we got here?”

  “Well Sarge, what we have is a stiff in the house. He looks like he had a close encounter with a herd of stampeding elephants. Then a full body massage by every maggot in the north suburbs. It was bad enough that I tossed my cookies in the alley behind the house. I haven’t done much... a cursory premise check. Once I found the body I tried not to contaminate the scene any further.”

  “Anything on who our deceased might be or why he partied with the grim reaper here in this house?”

  “Nothing much Sarge. Called in by the Greek guy that owns the Little Inn on Golf rd. He was out for his constitutional and smelled something walking past here. I guess he knew the guy that lived here in a casual way.

  The guy that he knew was kinda weird; tamed wild squirrels; petted ‘em; even put hats on ‘em.

  But I’m not even sure that the stiff inside is the same guy. Anyways, the Greek guy said that the guy he knew had been in his restaurant about 3 weeks ago ... with a female; quite the looker according to the complainant. Looked like one of those plastic real estate broads according to him.”

  "O.K. Tom. Not too much more we can do here between us. Let's make sure the place is cordoned off. I'll take a quick trip inside the house to get a quick photograph of the scene before I call out the lieutenant. I'm happy to dump this in his lap. It will be a nightmare for the NORTAF crew with our lieutenant bloodhound in charge. You make sure the tape is up and start on your incident report. I'll call in to get Litkowiak out here along with the NORTAF crew and someone from the ME's office."

  Lieutenant Kevin Litkowiak looked how a detective in a movie looks. And he played the part well. Tailored suits, always chomping his trademark cigar. He had a booming voice thick with a Chicago accent. He had a hearty laugh and a respectable handshake. He loved to buy others drinks and trade stories.

  He was the friendliest and warmest man many of his peers had ever met. And he was quick to cut himself down with abundant doses of self-deprecation. It was hard not to love Detective Lieutenant Kevin A. Litkowiak. He was a Skokie cop but attached to the North Regional Major Crimes Task Force – NORTAF.

  NORTAF was a crime investigation cooperative between the Northern Chicago suburban police departments... Lincolnwood, Skokie, Morton Grove, Niles, Glenview and a few others. They pooled their resources. It brought major crime investigation resources to the smaller towns.

  At NORTAF homicide investigations you would find Litkowiak's partner, Detective Sergeant Wayne Boerema. A stout man with a handle-bar mustache, a brown comb-over, and skeptical, probing eyes. Where Litkowiak seemed to seek the spotlight, Boerema was fine working in the shadows. The Robin to Litkowiak’s Batman, cops around the suburbs joked.

  Litkowiak was the star of the NORTAF Homicide Squad. He solved some of the suburbs’ most notorious homicides, plus scores more that got only a blurb in the papers. He was tenacious and crafty. He developed close contacts on the streets. He had a knack for tracking down eyewitnesses. And he was a master at getting suspects to talk. “That crystal ball” in his stomach, he called it.

  Great detectives, he once said, had “the ability to get inside that person’s soul whatever way you can. You get the person to say what you need to hear.” What set Kevin Litkowiak apart were his people skills.

  “He understood human nature,” said Michael Cunningham, a state's attorney. “He could read people. He knew how to talk to people. He was empathetic. He didn’t talk down to them. He was not judgmental. He had a way
with people.”

  Instead of putting the call out over the air, alerting every busybody with a police scanner, Andy calls on his cell phone.

  "Hey lieutenant, I got a real stinker for you at 8117 Bronx. The deceased looks like he's was worked over by a platoon of MMA fighters. Tom Skrzyniarz caught the original call and he's busy taping off the scene. You're gonna need to call in the NORTAF crew, an ASA for a search warrant and somebody from the ME's office."

  "Andy, is there anything out of the ordinary, aside from a dead guy that's beaten to a pulp, that I should know about?”

  "Well, lieutenant, that type of judgement is a bit over my pay grade. I've been on the force a long time. The only time I've seen a body this mangled was some idiot who walked in front of a locomotive. I can tell you this much, you're gonna have to work in full hazmat suits, hoods... booties, double gloves, the whole nine yards."

  "O.K. Andy, I'll roust Wayne Boerema and have Yerkes from the States Attorney round up a judge to sign a search warrant. I have to call Hensen from the ME's office to meet us there with his crew. What is the neighborhood like? I seem to remember that most of the houses in that block are gone"

  "That's right Lieutenant., the house would have been third from the corner. Everything on the block is, leveled except for the murder scene. Across the alley is that municipal parking lot, but it's pretty overgrown with weeds."

  "From the sound of it, I'm gonna want the location around the house roped off as a primary scene. Then an outer perimeter along the parkway in front and half-way through the parking lot in back as the secondary buffer zone to keep the brass, the press and the gawkers out. I'll have dispatch roll another unit to your location to help with securing the area. My crew should be there in 30 minutes or so."

  Litkowiak broke the connection. Novak headed back toward the yard looking for officer Skrzyniarz to fill him in on the plan.

  4 A Parcel of Pigs

  “Squirrels are just rats with good publicity

  --- Garrison Wynn

  Jacob liked looking into the secret lives of celebrities and the “movers and shakers”. He would dig through publications, internet postings, junk mail and personal trash of the elite to uncover the “dirt” he found so titillating. Then he would post it on his internet blog, www.snoopwiki.com. He considered himself a citizen journalist, but Jacob was just a digital peeping Tom, and a rather unpleasant one at that.

  His life would have probably continued to lurch from petty scandal to petty scandal satisfying the prurient voyeurism of himself and his blog readers if it had not been for the express envelope dropped by mistake in his Skokie, Illinois post office box by a clerk in a hurry to go to lunch.

  Jacob got lots of leads from fellow snoops. His post office box was often filled to overflowing with letters, news clippings and other ephemera as well as the usual ads and junk mail, so he seldom went through the stuff immediately.

  This was the case now. He gathered it up, stuffed it into a tattered Walmart bag that he kept for just that purpose and drove home where he unceremoniously dumped the bag on the seat of the chair next to is cluttered desk.

  It resided there for the next few days, in the company of the detritus decorating Jacob’s office.

  Finally, after the better part of a week, he remembered the plastic bag of correspondence.

  Rifling through the pile with fingers still greasy from the chicken he had for lunch, he discovered the express envelope was not addressed to him but to someone named Maurice Bernard Laughton with a post office box number that was one row above his.

  “Son of a bitch!” he swore, “The stupid bastard at the post office screwed up.” He figured that he would just throw the envelope away. “I don’t owe nothing to this Laughton guy… screw him and his envelope.”

  It was then that he noticed the crossed swords and palm tree crest next to the Riyadh address on the label. Jacob recognized that crest as the logo of the Abdulazizi. royal family. Controlled by the shadowy princes Abdulaziz., they were involved in questionable financial dealings worldwide, including, it some said, overseeing the considerable wealth of the Vatican.

  A cross between a smirk and a smile spread over Sherman Jacob’s face. He realized that the envelope in his hands could be the key to an elephantine payday, either from Maurice Bernard Laughton, whoever the hell he was, or, if not from him, from the reclusive and mysterious House of Abdulaziz. Thanks to the stupid mistake of a slipshod postal clerk.”, he chortled to himself.

  “The first order of business is to find this Maurice Bernard Laughton."

  Sherman thought to himself. "That shouldn’t be too difficult, he probably lives somewhere in the area since he keeps a P.O. Box in Skokie. Next thing I need to do is open this express envelope and find out just what the Saudi royals have for Mr. Laughton and decide how I can make some dough from it.”

  Following the principle of “Keep It Simple Stupid”. Jacob fired up his tired old computer and opened his browser to www.anywho.com and typed in the name “Maurice Bernard Laughton” and “Skokie, Illinois” in the appropriate fields. In less than a second, the database returned the result. There were three Maurice Bernard Laughton’s in Illinois, but only one was in the immediate area.

  It showed an address of 10 Sheridan Rd. Suite 15P, Wilmette, IL 60091 and an (847) area code phone number.

  “Well,” Sherman Jacob thought; “That was easy. Now to open this envelope and see what goodies are inside that will lead to my big payday.”

  Jacob eagerly ripped open the envelope that was addressed to Maurice Bernard Laughton without giving a second thought about violating postal laws. Strangely, the only thing apparent inside was what appeared to be two sheets torn from an old 9 pin dot matrix printout. Opening the first sheet, he read:

  "This was forwarded to us for your action. Reply by the usual method." PBUH

  The second sheet was a bit more detailed:

  "To arm a small paramilitary group? Say, 20 people?”

  “Absolutely, we can accommodate your request, but we need more parameters such as your exact arms needs and destination country.”

  “I can provide: tec9's, scorpion's, ak47's and one single Vietnam war "thumper", but its ammo costs. SMGs are much less expensive, and satisfy your self-protection or combat needs very well: the sound of an easy-to-conceal Soviet Skorpion with backpack feeding system can scare the most badass mother...”

  “We only deal with small arms and equipment, but if you need artillery, MANPADS [Man-portable air-defense systems], ordinance, APCs, Helos we do have resources and can make certain introductions for a fee.”

  “I'm telling this for you: one single grenade of a thumper costs 50 bitcoins to me: the GL itself will be around 100, to me. My sources aren't object of discussion, sorry.”

  “Take your time to choose, there's no rush: but be sure your purchase is what you really want since there are no refunds. You buy it, you own it. “

  “Please send your next message on line through PGP encryption, our public key is on our profile page.”

  “Regards,

  BOHICA"

  "Holy shit", Jacob said out loud to the empty house; “HOLY SHIT!"

  Jacob realized that he really needed to think his next move through carefully. He had obviously found himself in possession of something that could either make him a very wealthy man or, if he didn't handle it properly, a very dead one.

  One thing was for sure, he just couldn't dial Laughlin's number and say; "Hi Morrie, my name's Sherman and I have the note from your Saudi buddies about the arms sale. What say we get together for a beer and talk it over?"

  Sherman knew instinctively that he needed advice but he also knew that he would need to be very careful about who he shared any of this with. After chewing on the problem overnight, Sherman decided that his best bet was an attorney that he had met about a year ago, one Douglas R. Gunn, Esq.

  Douglas Rochford Gunn, if born in 1850, would have been the prototype Southern gentleman. He seemed much talle
r than his 5-foot seven-inches. His ramrod stiff bearing, a holdover from his education at The Citadel, made him look more imposing. His manner made him irresistible to the many vulnerable females who crossed his path.

  Gunn joined the Air force after graduation as an attorney from the Citadel in 1967.

  He was assigned to the Judge Advocate General's office. By 1968 he had shipped out to Viet Nam and got involved in the prosecution of defendants in the Mi Lai incident.

  He was lazy and depended on support staff for background and legal research. He found that both boring and beneath his image of himself. His courtroom presence, however, earned him high praise from his superiors.

  Once out of the Air Force he wangled recommendations to some of Chicago's premier law firms. He accepted a position at Jenner and Block, but only lasted two years. His lack of discipline prompted a senior partner to suggest other employment. At that point he opened his own practice.

  Realizing that he needed to have an office he decided to approach an attorney he was acquainted with, an Assistant Public Defender in the Homicide Task Force of the Law Office of the Cook County Public Defender. He knew, through the grapevine that Keren Odensdotter had just rented office space in an historical building at Two-O-Five West Randolph street in the loop that had once been occupied by Ernest Hemingway.

  Keren Odinsdotter was an Assistant Public Defender in the Homicide Task Force of the Law Office of the Cook County Public Defender.