Wilmer Pinsakowski, resident bum and would-be snitch, caught them just inside the door. In June, with the temperature hovering near ninety at noon, he had completely opened his overcoat. At his throat tufts of hair peeked over his three shirts. Every Friday Wilmer shaved and smelled as if he’d been doused with men’s cologne. This was his concession to cleanliness. Turner was sure he hadn’t bathed since the first Mayor Daley’s administration.
Fenwick growled at Wilmer and tried to brush past him. Wilmer clutched at their coats. “I know who killed that preacher’s daughter,” he said.
“Wilmer, it’s not good to lie about important things. What happened last time?” Fenwick asked.
Wilmer whimpered. For a couple of months, when Wilmer first showed up at the station six years ago, they had followed up all his tips. All of them had led to nothing, and they’d given up listening to him. Then, early this year, Wilmer’d insisted his tip in an important case was true. Turner and Fenwick decided to give it a try. They staked out an abandoned church on south State Street. It turned bitterly cold that day and before the night passed it began to snow. No crook appeared and Fenwick caught pneumonia. As revenge Fenwick had taken Wilmer to a detox clinic and it had almost killed the old guy.
“I just want to help,” Wilmer said.
“You need to get out of here, Wilmer, before the lieutenant sees you. You know what he said last time.”
Wilmer whimpered again and began to shuffle toward the door. Fenwick, now at the booking desk, asked loudly, “What the hell you letting in that fuckhead for? You new here?”
The young cop at the desk flushed red. “Sorry, but he said he knew something about the murder. I didn’t know.”
“Well, keep him the fuck out of here.” Fenwick took the stairs to the second floor two at a time.
Turner patted Wilmer on the shoulder and pointed to the lieutenant descending the stairs on the far side of the room. He said, “You better go. The lieutenant was awful mad last time he caught you in here.”
Wilmer nodded and staggered toward the door.
In the squad room a few minutes later, Turner observed Roosevelt and Wilson arguing about the merits of various bug sprays. Roosevelt and Wilson had been detectives since the year one. Joe Roosevelt, red-nosed, with short, brush-cut gray hair and bad teeth, and Judy Wilson, an African-American woman with a pleasant smile, had a well-deserved reputation as one of the most successful pairs of detectives on the force. Despite this, they averaged a major squabble about a senseless issue at least once a week. It usually started with something minor and stupid and ended with them in pouty silence. As soon as they started a new case, they shrugged off the problem. Anyone observing this stage of their relationship would have thought they were best friends, which in fact they were.
Paul Turner draped his coat over the chair behind his desk. Fenwick turned on the fan that sat on the filing cabinet behind his desk. The breeze barely made a dent in the sweat that began to form in his armpits. He wished they’d rehabbed the air conditioning first when they decided to redo the building.
They’d spent the bulk of the morning, after the interviews on the beach, knocking on doors in the high-rises along Lake Shore Drive. Out of twenty-three doors that had been answered, they’d learned nothing. They’d have to return to check the fourteen that didn’t answer. The other men from the squad, who’d been to the other buildings, reported similar findings.
They talked to Dean Fox, the cop who had helped the witness Alexander Polk look at mug shots and had drawn the composite sketch based on Polk’s memory. Fox said, “We spent an hour and a half on the mug shots. He didn’t recognize anybody. We might have somebody new here.”
He showed them the sketches he and Polk had worked on. “Not much,” Fox said.
Turner and Fenwick agreed: The drawings could have been of half a million different people.
Turner took out some of the paperwork forms from the bottom drawer of his desk.
He inserted the Daily Major Incident Log form into his typewriter. He typed in the time in military hours. In the crime/incident column he typed Homicide/Murder.
“I heard it’s a doozy,” bellowed a far-too-friendly voice.
Turner didn’t even look up from his typing.
He knew the voice belonged to the relentlessly cheerful newest member of the squad, Randy Carruthers, a fresh-faced young man whose tight clothes indicated recently gained weight. Frequently he carried at least one catalogue from a law school. He talked most often about taking law courses, so he could “get out of this hell hole and get a real job.” Turner wished him all the luck in the world. He occasionally thought of secretly writing to every law school in the state for catalogues and giving them to Carruthers. On the other hand, as of yet, Paul had seen no evidence of law or any other type of classes taken or passed. He ignored Carruthers and kept working.
Fenwick got busy putting the paperwork and other details of their current cases up to date and on hold. The sergeant had told them to drop everything else and work on this one. Turner finished the basics on the Major Crime Worksheet for the case and began making phone calls.
He called the Eighteenth District police station to check on the frequency and regularity of patrols on the beach. The desk sergeant told him they seldom bothered with the beach that early in the day.
Turner hung up and told Fenwick what he’d learned.
Fenwick said, “Mucklewrath doesn’t have a regularly scheduled morning walk. No regularly scheduled patrols by the cops. So the killers took a random chance. Saw an opportunity and took it.”
Turner said, “I like your idea of being suspicious of the Reverend. Only he could have timed it perfectly.”
Fenwick said, “Yeah, maybe. Let’s keep checking.” Each reached for a phone.
It was one o’clock Chicago time, only eleven in the morning in California. Since Mucklewrath lived and had his main office in Los Angeles, Turner called police headquarters there. He explained his purpose and was transferred fairly quickly to a Sergeant Dooley.
Turner said, “I’m working on a homicide. I don’t know the Reverend Mucklewrath or his people. Any help you can give me, I’d sure appreciate.”
The voice on the other end said, “The most frustrating people I’ve ever dealt with. Investigating the threats they claimed to get was the most god-awful case. I got absolutely nothing.” She gave an exasperated sigh.
“Nobody caught?”
“Nobody even suspected.”
“No leads?” he asked.
She snorted. “I’m saying not a nibble.”
“I don’t understand.”
Dooley said, “Nobody ever got suspected because we could never even prove they got the calls.”
“They didn’t order a tap?”
“Nope. I suspect they were more afraid of police finding out information about their group than they were about catching bad guys. This next is between you and me. If you repeat it, I’ll call you a liar.”
Turner grunted agreement.
Dooley said, “I have my doubts that they ever got such calls. I think it was a political ploy to get sympathy from the voters.”
“You investigated?”
“Sure. You ever try to get information from those guys?”
“Just this morning from a Dr. Johnson and the son.”
“Didn’t get much, did you?”
“Nope.”
Dooley snorted again. “And you won’t get much more. That whole crowd is very secretive.”
“Would any of them have a motive to kill the daughter?”
Dooley considered this, then said: “They are a tough group. Dedicated, committed. Their cause is all-important. You got kids?”
“Yeah.”
“Can you imagine sacrificing your kid at any age for a cause?” Dooley asked.
“No.”
“They could. They’re nuts. You talk to the current wife yet?”
Turner told her no.
“I doubt if you’ll ge
t anything out of her. We call her the ‘ice maiden’ out here. She’s tough as nails and is probably the real brains of the outfit. She’s certainly much smarter than the Reverend and his son put together. Behind the scenes she gives the orders. She’s got an MBA from Harvard Business School, and she’s a CPA.”
“What about the first wife?”
“Don’t have anything on her. I can check and get back to you.”
Turner asked her if she would and thanked her. He hung up and looked at Fenwick. The big man sat with his tie off and shirt unbuttoned. On one corner of his desk he kept a towel, which he periodically applied to his neck and forehead. Turner told him what he found out from California.
Fenwick said, “I knew I didn’t like them.” He heaved his bulk toward the coffee machine three feet behind his desk and poured a cupful into a mug with DAD in big red letters on the side. The cup had been a gift last Father’s Day from his nine-year-old twin daughters. He reseated himself and said, “I got this paperwork shit on the other cases caught up. Nothing that can’t wait a few days.”
Carruthers sauntered over to the coffeepot, crossed the few feet to Turner, and planted a major portion of his rapidly expanding ass on the corner of Turner’s desk. “How’s the case going?”
Fenwick said, “Listen you double-fuck numbnuts, don’t you have work to do? Where’s Rodriguez?”
Harold Rodriguez was Carruthers’ long-suffering partner. He’d made no secret of the fact that he’d be happy to take the next rookie who showed up in the squad room as a new partner. This didn’t seem to bother Carruthers. Turner liked Rodriguez, a generally silent man who worked methodically and with precision. If he arrested you, you were likely to spend time in jail. He seldom made a mistake.
“He’s doing research at Eleventh and State. Something on one of our cases.”
Area Ten encompassed the Chicago’s First, Eighteenth, Twelfth, and Twenty-first police districts as well as including Chicago police headquarters at Eleventh and State. The districts handled minor crime, crowd control, parking tickets. Chicago hadn’t had police precincts since O. W. Wilson came in during the early sixties and began cleaning up the department. The Areas handled major crimes. Eleventh and State handled the bureaucracy. Area Ten’s boundaries included the Loop, north Michigan Avenue, the yuppie North Side, the resurgent near South and West sides, and the slums farther south, ending with the university community in Hyde Park.
Turner liked the diversity, liked being in a world-class city amid the tremor and clamor of millions of people.
“We’ve got to get to the hotel to talk to Mrs. Mucklewrath,” Fenwick said. “She’s got to be in by now and if we get time, we can make our callbacks.”
Outside, Fenwick growled, “Carruthers is the biggest double fuck in the city.—Correct that.” He pointed to their car.
Wilmer Pinsakowski leaned against the passenger side of their much-dented official car. “That shit is a triple fuck.”
Paul knew that the highest rating anyone could get in Fenwick’s system was “triple fuck.” Usually he reserved this sacred category for inept Bears quarterbacks when they threw game-losing interceptions, or Cubs pitchers who walked in winning runs. The system proceeded through three levels of “shit” to the highest “fuck” category.
“He probably secretly owns half the Loop,” Turner said.
“Yeah, and Miss America wants to date me,” Fenwick said. “I wish the stupid fuck would stay away.”
Paul said, “He’s harmless.”
Wilmer smiled at them as the two approached him. Paul wished he wouldn’t do that. The man’s ragged and blackened teeth tempted him to switch to Fenwick’s opinion.
Wilmer held out something in his hand. “This is for your boy,” he said to Paul. Turner saw a mass of metal that might have once been a toy car. Bent, rusted, and missing three wheels, it had to be a pathetic relic of Wilmer’s forays into various neighborhood trash cans.
Turner looked into Wilmer’s gray-irised, yellow-rimmed eyes and said, “Thank you, I’m sure he’ll enjoy it.”
Wilmer smiled. “I got more. I’ll bring them all. He’ll like them.”
Turner occasionally got gifts for Jeff from other members of the squad. They’d cared and been concerned from the first. Many, even Carruthers, had been by the house to visit or bring a gift.
“You do that,” Paul said and smiled back.
“I know who killed that preacher’s daughter,” Wilmer said.
“Who?” Paul asked.
“Let’s go!” Fenwick called from inside the car.
“Who?” Paul asked again.
“Forget him.” Fenwick tooted the horn in exasperation. Wilmer could bring out the worst in Fenwick very quickly. “The stupid double fuck couldn’t even find the lake if he walked due east from here. Let’s go.”
“Tell me,” Paul said.
But Wilmer was mad now. He pointed his bony new-shaven chin in the general direction of Fenwick. “I ain’t gonna tell until he apologizes.”
“Good, then we won’t have to hear it,” Fenwick said from the interior. “Get in the car, Paul.”
Near the old drunk, Paul smelled the Friday perfume job. “You see me later,” Paul told him.
But the old guy had already begun his obdurate shuffle away from them, and Paul wasn’t sure he’d heard.
In the car Fenwick said, “You just encourage him.”
“I feel sorry for him,” Paul said. “I’m always grateful that I wasn’t born a triple fuck like that poor old guy.”
“Ah, bullshit.”
They drove to the Oak Street Arms and double-parked on the street. Fenwick never had trouble finding a parking place in the city.
A functionary they hadn’t met before let them in and directed them through a series of connected suites on the sixth floor to a group of members of the reverend’s church clustered around a cluttered dining-room table.
A woman dressed in ice blue with a strand of pearls around her neck glared at them. She sat to the right of the Reverend Mucklewrath, holding a yellow legal-size pad. Turner pegged her as in her mid-thirties, about half her husband’s age.
“Who are you and what do you want?” she said before the functionary or Turner or Fenwick could speak.
Donald Mucklewrath whispered in the woman’s ear. After a moment she brushed him aside. She nodded a cool greeting and said, “If both of you gentlemen can wait just a minute, I’ll be happy to meet you in the living room of the suite just behind you.”
Turner and Fenwick waited in a room designed to entertain royalty in the 1890s in India. A Persian rug covered nine tenths of the polished wood surface. Antique chairs and tables formed prim groupings near windows and around fireplaces. Paintings of bucolic landscapes covered three of the walls. On the fourth hung a portrait of some anonymous matron dressed for an evening at the opera.
Mrs. Mucklewrath glided in, yellow legal pad still in hand. The officers greeted her. She sat at the grouping of furniture that overlooked Oak Street Beach. She did not invite them to sit.
She spoke coldly and precisely. “The reverend deeply regrets his decision to take that walk with his daughter. He should have stayed here preparing for meetings. He had numerous fund-raisers to meet and a huge campaign debt to pay back. The members of the Children of God movement have bankrolled him this far. Find those who hated my husband and you’ll find the killer.
“Who hated him the most?” Turner asked.
“Read any newspaper. Unbelievers. The shiftless and lazy. Those who wanted a free ride. Everything he fought against.”
“I meant any specific individuals,” Turner said.
Mrs. Mucklewrath launched into an angry denunciation of those not of their faith, at the end of which they’d learned nothing.
Fenwick tried a different tack. “Could you tell us about you and your husband?”
“We have been married seven years. We are very happy.”
Turner tried to picture being married to an iceberg. He s
aid, “What’s your relationship with the rest of the members of the organization?”
“I’m in charge. My husband is totally wrapped up in his preaching. He will reach many millions on his mission. I run his business affairs, the university, his election campaign.”
“What was your relation with your stepdaughter?” Fenwick asked,.
“I barely saw her. The few times I did, she seemed to be a sweet thing. Her presence gave my husband spiritual comfort. I approved.”
Turner did not want to think of what would have happened to the daughter if she didn’t approve. Or could she have ordered the murder, because for some obscure reason she didn’t approve?
Mrs. Mucklewrath continued, “She was an intelligent woman. We planned a large role for her in the coming campaign. If she did well with that, she could move into the organization soon after she finished college.”
“You don’t seem upset about Christina’s death.”
“Someone has to hold this organization together. The men indulge in sniveling excess.”
The cops stared at her.
“I will grieve in private, although I will tell you what no one outside the organization knows. For a number of years Christina and I did not get along. Only in the past years has there been some reconcilation. For five years before that I rarely saw her.”
“What was the problem between you?” Turner asked.
“She was jealous of my relationship with her father. Very Freudian. She grew up and began to get over it.”
“How do you get along with your stepson?”
“He does a competent job. At least he did until today.”
“He came from the reverend’s first marriage?”
“Right.”
“Christina came from his second marriage.”
“Yes.”
Fenwick asked, “Do you know where the first wife is?”
“I have no idea. She hasn’t been in contact with the Reverend Mucklewrath since I’ve known him.”
“Do you know of anyone who would have reason to murder Christina?”
“Our statement should be ready by the time you leave.”
“How was the reverend’s relationship with his daughter?” Turner asked.
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