Public Murders

by Bill Granger

  “Can we have this one frame at a time?” asked Donovan.

  “This thing will do magic,” said the deputy. Click. Click. Click.

  “Hold it there,” said Schmidt.

  The second man had turned toward the camera and appeared startled by it. He had gray hair, cut in a shaggy crew cut; his eyebrows were thick and gray. His lips appeared to be pulled back over his even white teeth in a surprised snarl. He appeared to have a long symmetrical nose.

  “Wonderful,” said Terry Flynn. “He looks like the hood ornament on an old Pontiac I owned. Look at that schnozz.”

  “Listen to the film critic,” said Sid Margolies. “Talking to Robert Fredericks an hour and he’s ready for Cannes.”

  “What?”

  “Cannes.”

  “What the hell is that?”

  “The second man out,” said Schmidt, noting it and breaking up the conversation.

  The film rolled forward. The third man was short, and because the camera was fixed and unattended, it missed his face.

  The fourth man was black. He had large shoulders that could not be contained in the short focus of the camera. His eyes looked left and right, and then he blundered past the camera’s range.

  “Stop,” said Schmidt.

  “Big son of a bitch,” said Terry Flynn. “Do you think he hates the white race and takes out his revenge on poor li’l white women?” He was parodying the report of the University of Chicago psychologist.

  The fifth man had a beard and when he saw the camera, he grimaced.

  The sixth man was very pale and his eyes were watery and looked tired. He was wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase.

  “He looks like the police superintendent,” said Jack Donovan.

  “Maybe it is.”

  “No, I had a conference with him when the movie was shot.”

  The film ended. For a moment they sat in the darkness of the room.

  “You want me to run it through again?” asked the deputy.

  “Yes,” said Matt Schmidt.

  Karen Kovac was staring intently at the screen. She was afraid to speak, but something had nagged her, something about one of the men. She watched the film a second time, and she could not get it clear in her head.

  “Any ideas?” asked Matt Schmidt.

  No one spoke.

  “Okay.” He turned to Margolies. “Catch the lights, Sid.” The room was bathed in thin white light.

  Schmidt got up. “We got the tape recorder too. This is a sound and light show.”

  He picked up the Sony. “This belongs to Robert Fredericks but it’s in custody now, evidence. He had it turned on when Bonni Brighton was killed, and it picks up a lot of sounds. We’re taking it over to a private lab tomorrow to try and get some of the sounds separated, see if there’s anything there.”

  He turned it on.

  The first fifteen minutes consisted of an interview with Bonni Brighton held, apparently, in a restaurant. They could hear the sounds of dishes in the background, and at one point a male voice with a French accent said, “And dessert, sir?”

  “Now, this is the part.”

  There was a brief blank spot on the tape, and then it resumed: “Do you think that art in film is—”

  What followed seemed indistinguishable noise—from a hissing sound, a thump, and then a clatter—presumably as the tape recorder fell. After that came the sound of screams. Robert Fredericks’s.

  “He screams like a girl,” said Flynn. “God, you spend an hour with him, you think you’re interviewing a fruitcake.”

  “But he went to bed with Bonni Brighton the night before,” said Karen Kovac.

  They all seemed a little shocked at her remark, and they were silent.

  “Well,” said Matt Schmidt. “You can see. It doesn’t sound like anything.”

  “What was that hissing noise?” said Donovan.

  Schmidt played the tape again. Again they heard the ridiculous question begun and then the hiss and thump and the clatter.

  “That noise. Like a thump. That must have been the knife.”

  It was Karen Kovac again. They looked at her. “And the hissing noise. What would that be? It sounded like a voice.”

  They listened again. It might be a voice.

  “Maybe it’s from the movie sound track.”

  “No,” she said. “It’s too close. Too real, too much resonance. If you make a tape of what is essentially a recorded voice, then it loses resonance.”

  “It might be someone speaking,” said Flynn.

  “But what is he saying?”

  They listened to the hissing sound again. And a fourth time. And a fifth.

  “Sshhhh. Verrrrrr.” That was Flynn’s imitation.

  “Like that,” she agreed.

  “If we can get it to a private sound lab, we’ll be able to clean up the background noise a little and maybe we can get a better idea of what it is,” said Schmidt.

  They were silent again.

  “What about the black kid?” Donovan asked.

  “He ain’t around,” said Flynn. “We went out to his house on the South Side. He was staying with his aunt. But after the murder of Maj Kirsten they sent him down South again. To Mississippi. They said they didn’t want him raised in an environment like this.”

  “They were right,” Schmidt said. “Damnit. I really thought the kid could do some identification.”

  “Why don’t we get stills made from the film,” said Sid Margolies, “and send them down to the cops in Mississippi wherever the kid is?”

  “Sure,” said Schmidt. “Sid, you take charge of that, okay?”

  Sid wrote it down in his notebook.

  “Well I guess that’s it.” Schmidt stood up and stretched. “We got Angela Falicci coming down in the morning to look at the film. She was attacked in the park right after Maj Kirsten was murdered. I can’t figure out what else we can do. I’m disappointed in the film. I thought there would be more there.”

  “Maybe it is there,” said Karen Kovac.

  Schmidt glanced at her.

  “I mean—” she said. “I don’t know. I really think there must be something there. And on the tape.”

  Flynn said, “Let’s roll it again.”

  The deputy reversed the film to the beginning of the sequence.

  “I’m going home, Terry,” said Schmidt.

  “And me,” said Jack Donovan. “Only eight hours late.”

  Sid Margolies opened the door of the conference room. He turned back, “Then Terry will have the film.”

  “Yeah,” said Schmidt. “Bring it back to the area, and we’ll find a screening room tomorrow for Angela Falicci.”

  “All right,” said Terry. He realized he didn’t mind waiting for Karen Kovac to see the film again.

  They all left the room except for the deputy, Flynn, and Karen Kovac. The room seemed colder; as in most modern high-rises, the air conditioners took a long time to adjust at the end of the day to the presence of fewer people in the building giving off heat.

  The film began again with the ludicrous photograph of Bonni Brighton in the lobby of the theater.

  The film rolled slowly through the sequence of people fleeing the theater. Flynn glanced at Karen Kovac and saw she was biting her lower lip. Her teeth were very white and even and small: she had thin lips and angular features that were pleasantly combined.

  Terry Flynn lit a cigarette.

  “You want me to run it through again?”

  “Yes, please,” she said. The deputy complied.

  The film rolled backward. The sixth man suddenly appeared, walked backward comically, and the door slammed on him. The fifth man backed into camera range and disappeared into the theater. And so on to the beginning of the sequence.

  Again there was the photograph of Bonni Brighton in the lobby.

  “Stop,” she said.

  The frame was frozen. She examined the photograph from close to the wall it was projected on. Her shadow blotted out part of the
frame. She stared into the image of Bonni Brighton’s eyes.

  “What is it?” said Terry Flynn.

  “I don’t know.”

  She sat down again, and the deputy rolled the film forward. The first man came out of the theater. He had dark close-cropped hair. The second man appeared with his gray shaggy crew cut and dull gray Windbreaker and his teeth bared to the camera.

  Terry watched Karen Kovac chew at her lips.

  He waited until the end of the theater sequence.

  “You want me to run it through again?” asked the deputy. He seemed to be willing to stay all night and run the projector.

  “No,” she said. She sounded a little tired. “I’m sure there’s something there, in the film, and it won’t come loose.”

  “All right, Karen,” said Terry Flynn. “We got a day tomorrow. Only this time I’ve decided to disguise myself as a tourist when I trail you in the park.”

  “What will you look like?” she asked.

  “I’ll end up looking like a cop disguised as a tourist,” he said.

  She gave him a rare smile.

  “Come on, kiddo,” he said. “Let’s have a drink.”

  “I don’t think I can. There’s a woman watching my boy.”

  “Pay her overtime,” said Terry. “Come on. We’ll go over to Mayor’s Row across the street.”

  They found seats at the end of the bar.

  She ordered a Scotch and soda, and Terry Flynn ordered a beer. His latest diet was in shambles and he was in no mood to put it together again. He drank the beer like a man who really liked beer.

  She sipped her Scotch. He lit a cigarette and offered her one, which she declined.

  “I quit when I joined the department,” she said. “For training.”

  “I started when I joined,” said Terry Flynn. “It made me look older.”

  “Where do you live, Terry?” she asked.

  “South Side,” he said. “Around Ninety-fifth and Lonwood Drive. In Beverly. You know Beverly?”

  “No. I mean, I know where it is, but I don’t know it.”

  “Yeah. You talk like someone from the North Side.”

  “Northwest,” she said. “Six Corners.”

  “Yeah.” Terry Flynn didn’t need an explanation. He knew every street in the city and every neighborhood by name; he knew all the parishes on the South Side, for most South Siders identified themselves as belonging to a parish, “Visitation” parish or “John of God” parish. He knew the districts of the West Side as well, and he was an encyclopedia of racial and ethnic change in the city. He knew when St. Ambrose had “gone black” and when the Jews fled the West Side and when the hillbillies started moving in on Wilson Avenue in Uptown. He didn’t take pride in his knowledge; it was just part of his education.

  “You’re married then?”

  “No,” he said. “I was married and then I wasn’t. My ex-wife didn’t like cops, it turned out.”

  “Why not?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. How can anybody not like cops?”

  She took another sip of her drink and smiled again.

  “Why’d you go on the department?” He was asking her.

  “It was a job. And it paid good money. And I had a kid to raise.”

  “What’d your old man do?”

  “He’s in advertising. An account executive.”

  “Yeah?”

  She didn’t say anything. She was surprised she had said as much as she had. She felt she must like Terry Flynn. She put down her drink.

  He watched her, but she made no move to leave.

  “I’m seeing them now,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “In the film. It’s almost there, I can almost touch it.”

  He nodded.

  “But what is it?”

  “It’ll come,” he said gently. “You see, it almost came that time. You weren’t thinking about it and it almost came. I get it that way sometimes. I realize the answer before I know that anyone asked the question.”

  “That’s a clever way of saying it,” she said. “Why did you go on the department?”

  “What is this? More women’s lib?” he asked. “Men aren’t supposed to have reasons. We just do things.”

  “Okay.”

  “No, I want to tell you,” he said. “I think it’s really important. Shows what a clear thinker I was when I was a kid. My father was a cop and my uncle was a cop and my grandfather was a cop. So I wanted to be a fireman.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Heights,” he said. “So the world lost a great fireman and gained a great dick.”

  “Heights?”

  “I got in training academy and the first time I climbed the hook-and-ladder—that’s what we had then—I almost passed out. As it was, I puked on the instructor who was down below. So I washed out.”

  “So you went on the cops.”

  “It wasn’t that easy. But my old man still had his clout and so I got on. I was on the South Side for the first eight years. Christ. Nothing but war. That was when the black gangs were really being cute. And we had shit. Well, I don’t want to bore you.”

  “Did you ever kill anyone?”

  “Not in this country. I killed some people in Nam for a while, but I haven’t killed anyone here but a few German shepherds.”

  “Kill dogs?” She leaned forward in her chair and he leaned back in his. He was smiling.

  “Sure. The brothers keep shepherds in their flats. All the time. So you go up someplace and you say, ‘Is Willie there?’ and the next thing you know some goddamn dumb dog is jumping out at you. I ain’t gonna be bit by no dog.”

  “So you kill them?”

  “Sure,” he said.

  She nodded then, silently, as if in a sort of private reverie. He waited. Her eyes were staring at some place other than the room.

  “Her teeth. They were remarkable,” she said. “And her face. So symmetrical.”

  “Yes,” he said. He wasn’t sure what she was driving at, but he was sure she was talking about Bonni Brighton.

  “One of the men,” she said. “Oh, I wish we could see the film.”

  “You’ve got it now,” he said gently.

  “Yes.”

  “Come on. We’ll go back.”

  “You don’t have to. It’s late. Maybe I’m wrong.”

  “Hell, Karen. This is homicide. There’s no late in it. We just do it as long as we can.

  “Esprit de corps,” she said.

  “No. Cop macho.”

  The deputy was gone and Flynn threaded the projector himself. He explained he had seen it done once and that he was very mechanically minded.

  Surprisingly the film was affixed properly. He turned on the projector lights and the film began.

  Again the bathing beauties on Oak Street Beach.

  And then the lobby. And the photograph.

  The first man came out of the door.

  The second man.

  “Stop,” she said.

  But he fumbled with the switch and the film proceeded to the third man. He stopped the film and the picture froze. Slowly he reversed it and then stopped.

  On the wall was projected the image of the gray-haired man in the crew cut.

  “Yes,” she said softly. “I knew it.”

  “What?”

  “Do you see?”

  “No.”

  He stared at the gray man who seemed to snarl at the camera.

  “Look at this,” she said. She went to the wall and pointed. She appeared to be pointing to his mouth.

  “What?”

  “The teeth. They are the same as Bonni Brighton’s teeth.”

  He was disappointed. Maybe she was a dud after all.

  “You don’t see, Terry,” she said. She sounded excited. “Look at the eyes. Look at the mouth. Look at the long nose, look how symmetrical it is. Do you have a picture of Bonni Brighton from the morgue?”

  No, he did not.

  She went to the door
and opened it and went out. She returned in five minutes.

  “I went down to the newsstand by the bus station,” she said. “Here’s the Daily News.”

  It was the final edition. On the front page was the banner story of the murder of the porn star. Below was another Watergate headline. And just above the fold was a large picture of Bonni Brighton that resembled the poster in the lobby of the theater.

  Flynn stared at it.

  She took the newspaper to the wall and held it up next to the freeze-frame of the second man.

  Then he saw it. “Mother of Christ,” he said. “That’s really—that’s—”

  She looked back at him and didn’t speak.

  “Karen,” he said. “I think you’ve got him.”

  The two of them stared for a moment in the darkness at the face of the gray-haired man with piercing eyes and a snarl on his lips.

  It was so simple.

  “He looks like her,” she said. But it wasn’t necessary to speak.

  “He killed her,” said Flynn. “Whoever he is, he looks like her and he killed her.”

  “Look at the shoulders,” she said.

  “Strong man,” said Terry Flynn softly. “When Maj Kirsten was killed, the knife came down from the heart across her body. Three ribs were broken. He cut her like a piece of meat.”

  “Look at the shirt,” she said.

  Yes, he understood everything. “A factory worker. He looks like a factory worker.”

  She let the newspaper fall onto a table and stood back from the wall, still gazing at the freeze-frame image.

  “Which is why he killed in the mornings,” she said. “Because he worked at night. Somewhere downtown. He killed them after work.”

  “Her brother or uncle or father or something. The dead women all looked like her. She was the last killing.”

  “For now,” said Karen Kovac. “Until next time.”

  “Look at him,” said Terry Flynn. “He looks like every bohunk factory worker in the city. He’s gotta live in the city. Put out his face in the papers and we’ll have him in twenty-four hours.”

  “It isn’t real, is it?” she said. She hugged her arms around herself both because the building was very cold now and because she felt the excitement rising within her.

  “Sure it is,” said Terry Flynn. “It happens just like this. You’re chasing a shadow and then there he is. Real as hell, just standing there, waiting for you.”