"Press... I give a shit about press."
"I'll see that you get citations of—"
"How about a word to my chief... I'm up for promo soon."
"I can't make any promises on that score... but IH make a call."
"Maybe you haven't heard, Donna, but a lot of people these days aren't taking your calls."
She stewed a moment over this. "I'm coming back, Brian, so don't put all your eggs into one basket."
Noone chewed on this thought before saying, "All right, you'll have Swisher on Stavros."
Thorpe knew that Stavros must be upsetting for Swisher; that it would be the impetus for driving "Swish" straight into her hands. Noone didn't know it, but Donna Thorpe knew more about motivating Joe Swisher than his captain ever dreamed of. She had had an FBI psychological workup done on Swisher be-fore using the files stolen from Swisher's shrink. She knew what made Joey tick, what made him run, what pissed him off, and what made him vomit.
In some ways, she knew, she was a lot like Swisher and getting closer by the day. Both of them skirted the letter of the law. Catching and punishing the guilty was uppermost in both their minds.
Her fingers sought the small, neatly wrapped box on her desk, and, using a pair of tweezers, she removed the portion of male genitals sent her by Dr. Ovierto only recently. Even Dr. O knew that she was now in Nebraska. He would continue sending his disgusting gifts not to the Bureau, but to her, to Donna Thorpe. She lifted the desiccated, bad-smelling penis mailed to her and postmarked Elmhurst, Illinois, a Chicago suburb. The note was as nasty as the contents: Fuck yourself, Donna, honey. Tommy boy would want it that way. It's his thing.
But she knew it wasn't part of Tom Sykes. She'd have the lab verify this fact, but somehow she knew it was not part of Tom.
She looked again at the signature. Ovierto had used his penname: Dr. O.
CHAPTER FOUR
Chicago, Illinois
Joe Swisher looked like a professional linebacker and he stood half a head taller than Captain Noone. Noone knew that he was also sharp-witted and streetwise. Joe smelled something wrong in Noone's suddenly reassigning a case —any case—to him.
He'd grown up on the North side of Chicago. He was thirty-seven years old. He detested being treated like a fool.
Why did Noone really want him to handle the one case Swisher had done his very best to avoid? Officially the case was known by the victim's name: Stavros. It was more than just the nightmarish, bizarre nature of the killing, which the newspapers had leapt on, that troubled Swisher. It was the resurgence of the old horrors that he'd fought back for so many years.
Mutilation killings disturbed him to his core. Having remained in vice for so long before taking over a homicide detail had shielded him somewhat from the ugliest of crimes. Big man on the force —afraid of nasty, splatter pictures and crime scenes that made him throw up, scenes that reminded him of Jerri's death.
Lieutenant First Class Joseph Swisher of the Chicago Police Force paced tiger fashion before simply saying, "I don't have the experience with mutilation cases to start now."
"Got to start somewhere."
"Besides, I've got enough headaches! I don't need or want Stavros. Currently my team of only three are juggling some twenty-seven investigations ranging from vice to murder and back again."
As he argued with Noone he saw Jerri's ghost over Noone's shoulder. She'd only been fifteen, his big sister. He had come home from school that day to find her dead in a grotesque pose at the end of the bannister where the killer had tied her distorted remains. Later, a neighbor's kid, aged nineteen, was arrested for Jerri's murder. It was a boy she'd known casually almost all her life.
Back at his desk, he now could barely bring himself to glance at the details of how a little old man's life had been disrupted. The cryptic report did not begin to describe the terrible way in which the sixty-year-old Stavros, owner of a pet shop and supply store, had succumbed. He'd bled to death on the removal of an organ not vital to life, his penis.
The object of the killer's apparent affection was not found at the scene of the man's death, but had been carried away by his attacker.
The newsmen were having a field day with it.
So were some rank cops in the locker room.
Swisher was no prude; he was a Vietnam vet and a former VA Hospital resident, but this Stavros business grossed him out.
Try as they might, the detectives on the case, Paul Doley and Frank Lefever, could not long contain the awful story. The cause of death was listed by the coroner as loss of blood. Stavros, relieved of his genitals like a Texas steer, had been held in place by the killer, who remained to watch as he bled and bled until he was too weak to help himself.
The Stavros "thing" —as it was being called by the working stiffs in the department—had effectively opened old wounds in Swisher, wounds no shrink could heal. The hideous case sent him back along a timeline that placed him in that fiery hot foyer where he'd gaped at Jerri's disgorged remains, some of which lay on the floor, some of which ran along the railing, some of which had been slung about, staining the walls and carpeting. Jerri's carcass looked as though it had come out of the discard basket beside the butcher's block. Only her eyes, wide and staring back at him, had been left intact.
Stavros... Jerri... the helpless, cornered victim.
And him nowhere in sight; no way to help, to draw off the pain.
Shattered nights, days, months, years.
The killer had been caught burying his bloody clothing in a wooded area back of the houses. Young Joe Swisher found himself trembling but concentrating on what the policemen were doing, the methodical, plodding steps they took to uncover the killer in a matter of hours. He was fascinated, and in that fascination he kept his mind intact.
It took almost two years to convict the killer. Joe, at fifteen, testified to what he knew of his sister's killer, how his sister had fended off his lewd advances more than once. He'd put it behind him; had gone into the service and had wandered aimlessly for a time before becoming a cop. He never examined why he became a cop, except that he felt lost after returning from the war; something solid, something smacking of the military life, was attractive at the time. He'd never married, but he enjoyed a tumultuous, romantic relationship with his female partner, Robyn Muro. As for Jerri's killer, he was up for parole at the end of the month.
Robyn had, for some time now, become a sweet distraction from his sister's ghost. Jerri haunted him, hounding him to avenge her.
He tried recalling how he'd met Robyn. They didn't at first like one another. They'd been assigned as a team in an undercover sting operation in Burnham Park. K & J's Laundromat was a natural front for the operation that had burned a consortium of gangs in the Burnham Park District. The thugs had begun to convince small businessmen in the area that they needed "insurance" against bad people. People were being bullied and pressured into taking out a "policy" with the gang to protect them from other gangs. Gangs on both sides of the street were cleaning up and sharing the profits—a fine example of "gang co-oping" which the police department had been pushing on the punks for a year now, except the police were talking about legitimate ventures such as staging a block party.
Early on police were called in, but there was no evidence, and the handful of people willing to testify had soon changed their minds. To gather the evidence, Joe and Robyn had volunteered to open up shop in the aged neighborhood. Working as operators of the poorly lit, poorly equipped laundromat had only one up side, so far as Joe Swisher was concerned that first night: he got his laundry done for free. They had sat up with the churning machines for four weeks now, photographing each night. They got some pretty weird people in off the street, but no sign of the Bone Breaker's Insurance salesmen. Until the night, all hell broke loose, and Robyn earned Joe's undying respect. The place was littered with the street scum before the two of them were through —some twelve collars, several wounded.
He and Robyn had come out unscratched. Unfortun
ately, the washers and dryers hadn't a chance.
Even so, like a married couple, they had their differences, as in the child abuse Hampton case, on which she had once again wanted him to slow down.
Noone handed him a file. "You're on the case, Joe. Give it your best."
In the squad room, he ran into Robyn Muro, who pushed coffee his way. Their two desks faced one another. "Face it, Joe, you're working for the Feds again."
"So I noticed. Damn that Thorpe."
"Swartze— guy you shot this morning?"
"What about the little weasel?"
"Already made bail."
"What!"
"Easy, Lieutenant, remember your image."
"Already made bail! Christ, guy's a known offender, his third robbery, and he walks?"
"Well, no... he's not walking. That slug you put in him left him paralyzed, Joe. He won't be robbing any more liquor stores, but he's suing you, and the department, Joe."
"Best news I've heard all day."
She lifted the Stavros file from where he'd tossed it and began to sift through it. "Dick-gusting," she said.
He frowned, and replied, "Goddamnit, Robyn, just because the Times and the Tribune and the nightly news are all making sick jokes over this, doesn't mean we have to follow suit. Got that?"
"Sure, sure boss."
"Jesus, I'd expected better from you."
"Why, because I'm a woman?" She raised her shoulders, bouncing her blonde hair, a look of surprise coming over her. "Hey, who's made more damned 'penal 'jokes over this case than you? Were you so bashed last night that you forgot?"
He squinted at her. "Hey, what goes on at the bar, off the job, that's one thing."
"Hell, you were on the bar, reciting this long diatribe about pricks. You even had a name for it: prickology; remember?"
He did half-remember, and now it bothered him. He had had quite a few drinks, but he had also seen Stavros's body at his shop; he'd been in the vicinity when the call came over. Later, he'd seen some vivid Kodacolors that Lefever had pushed under his nose when the other man thought Swisher would be interested. At the time, in front of Frank and Paul, he'd pretended the shots had no effect on him. They had talked around him about the scene at the city morgue. It was enough to drive anyone to drink, cop or no.
He'd gone from Lefever's pictures to the bar. He'd had the good sense to at least steer clear of the morgue on this one.
When he'd gotten to the bar, Robyn was waiting for him, along with some other friends, also cops. Other cops were the only people foolish enough to hang out with cops.
As the night wore on, Swisher got drunk. Robyn tried to steer the conversation off work, especially away from the Stavros case. She tried desperately to match him drink for drink, but she soon gave that up. Remarking on the awful scene at the pet shop, he'd confided that the incident had deeply disturbed him, but he wouldn't say anything else about it after that. He just kept belting down drinks.
About then Robyn had had enough. She coaxed him, in the expectation they were leaving.
All the night long he'd heard little snickers and jokes and off-color stories from cops at the watering hole, where they let off steam in an atmosphere where others understood the need. He climbed up on the bar and called for everyone's "goddamned" attention. He then told them that he had done extensive research in the field of Prickology. That brought a round of laughs. He then told them all that he knew about the penis, aka the "thing."
He next shouted, "The given names for the virile manly member are, and I quote: bone, cock, cod, dick, ding, horn, knob, prick, prong, prod, rod, root, wick-"
Robyn was tugging at him and shouting, "Get down, Joe! Come down from there, Joe! Joe!"
But he was on a roll, "—privates, genitals, one- eyed, short arm, middle leg, snake, yo-yo, junior, silent flute —my personal favorite—night stick, joy stick, lady's lollipop, Old Slimy, Cupid's torch, root of evil! Hammer, pole, hose, handle, and let us not forget tree of life *
He had run out of names and energy, and so had then allowed himself to be talked down amid the laughter, tears and applause.
"Tell you another thing," he shouted to the assembled men and women in the bar. "Compared to a horse, or even a boar, men have proportionately very small ones. Two and a half feet for a stallion! One and a half for a boar!"
"Stop it, now! Joe! Damn you!"
"And another thing," he continued. "I have it on good authority—the cadaver man himself—that when you die, they're all the same size; nobody wins any prize."
Now, in the squad room, the day nearing an end, Swisher half-blushed at the memory of his drunken antics, but he would not admit as much.
"It was kinda funny," she said.
Don Mallory shouted across at them. "Kinda funny? I was in tears! Swish, you're one of a kind, man!"
"Yeah, right... I really had the audience in the palm of my hand... get it?"
"Playing to the lowest common denominator," she said.
"Touche."
"So, you going to be okay with Stavros?"
"It's mine now."
"I don't get Thorpe's involvement."
"She'll let me know when she's moved to do so. Bitch..."
'You really hate her, don't you?"
"Does a snake have fangs?"
"How's Frank and Paul going to take this?" She shook her head. "It was their case. Kinda looks bad. Kinda unusual, isn't it?"
"Hey, it's not like it's gone sour. Hell, the coroner's report isn't even in, yet."
"Joe, I know you; I also know that this case isn't... right for you."
He had told her once about his sister's death. He met her stare, but said firmly, "If we nail the bastard, the case'll be right for me."
"And if we don't?"
"Negativism."
"Your sister Jerrie."
He flinched, his big form contracting at the sound of Jerrie's name.
She said, "You didn't tell me all of it, did you?"
"She —she was cut everywhere." He inhaled so deeply it made a scuba diver's noise. He then rushed out to the men's room.
CHAPTER FIVE
Sergeant Robyn Muro felt that she was as close to Joe Swisher as the man would allow anyone. He'd close down faster and tighter than a bear trap if he felt threatened on an emotional level, and yet he was dangerously fearless of any mortal wound. She began to worry about Joe when she got a second call from Inspector Donna Thorpe, the FBI vamp who'd used and hurt Joe before. The woman simply would not take no for an answer, it appeared. First she had arranged for Stavros to be dumped on Joe, and now she was hounding him for a meeting tonight.
She chose not to tell Joe when he returned. She leaned back in the cushion of her chair and watched him as he went about the business of checking his calendar and rummaging through a desk drawer. He acted as if everything was normal, and as if their earlier conversation had not taken place.
"Look, I'm sorry if I spoke out of turn, partner."
"Don't mention it." She took the double entendre as it was meant.
"Quittin' time."
"My feelings exactly."
"Well, then... you want to have dinner with me tonight?"
"Sure, if you're up to it."
"We can then take in the Black Hawk's game, whata-ya' say?"
"Sounds great."
"This twenty-four hours a policeman crap is getting too much for me."
"Nice to hear you admit it. Yeah, the Hawks... sounds great."
She went back to the report she'd been writing.
"Robyn, thanks."
"For what?"
"For being here... and on my side."
"Joe, you have more friends and more admirers 'round here than you know."
"Is that right?"
"Wouldn't be surprised if Thorpe didn't kinda' like you."
"Rather bet on the Black Hawks! It's a safer bet."
"Don't sell yourself short, handsome. IH just tidy up a few loose ends and meet you later."
He watched her go, thinking how much help she'd been in both his personal and professional life, and how little he'd given her in return. He wondered why she stayed with him.
Robyn Muro often worried about the man she loved. Swisher was both enigmatic and disturbing, as well as quite easily the kindest "tough guy" she knew. He might be a "blue knight" in many respects, but he was also a black knight, doling out death to those he felt deserved death. An inner turmoil of grief, guilt, and anger had eaten away at his humanity for years now. What such emotions did to the psyche no one knew. Had such an experiment in terror and loss, depression and a life of seeking revenge ever been conducted at a university or in a laboratory? Joe
Swisher's life on the edge had taken its toll.
Joe's insomnia had led to more drink, and his drink had led to more confusion and internal struggle. He had turned away from her for support from Hiram's Old World Whiskey. And she didn't like the storm signs.
They'd talked about it, and he had made promises. But she didn't know if they were promises he could keep.
Joe was not easily understood. Yet he had no secrets from her anymore, and his motivations were straightforward enough that she should be able to help him. She saw his life as an interrupted journey. He might've done anything in life with his Michael Douglas smile, full baritone voice, and rugged good looks. But all that went by the wayside when Jerrie was so brutally killed. It made for a twisted ending to his life as a boy, and a corrupt beginning to his life as a young man. Now his every action was predicated upon that horrifying event, a multilation killing. And now Thorpe was knowingly rubbing his face in it, not allowing him to flee, forcing him to obsess on it and confront the ugliness. What would that do to Joe? Robyn feared it might become a sickness, become like carrion to feed upon continuously for the rest of his life....
Maybe... just maybe she could help him, and maybe not.
The warm shower water soothed her nerves. She al-ways washed the cop off her before leaving the precinct each evening.
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