“How about friends? Neighbors? A church group?”
Bald Guy shook his head.
Harry said, “Try taking off your shoe and sticking your foot under his nose.”
“I just need a little tenderness,” Bald Guy said. “Will you do it?”
He looked so devastated, so desperate. Plus his vehicle was air-conditioned and smelled nice. What more prompting did I need? I walked around the front of his car/truck and climbed into the passenger seat.
“Dammit, Jackie! Find another john!” Harry, screaming in my ear. “There aren’t any laws against cuddling! Don’t waste our time!”
The earpiece really needed an off switch. In fact, so did Harry. The sad thing was, Harry wasn’t as bad as some of the other jerks I had to work with. What did a female cop have to do to earn the respect of her peers in this city?
I guessed it wasn’t dressing up as a hooker, hawking BJs.
“Okay,” I said. “One quick hug. On the house.”
I opened up my arms, ready to embrace this poor clod, and he handed me a latex glove. I backed off a notch.
“Are you sick?” I asked. “Contagious?”
“No, no, nothing like that. While you’re hugging me, I’d like you to stick your fingers up my bottom.”
No wonder he was divorced.
“And wiggle them,” he added.
“Mirandize that pervert,” McGlade said. “I’ll call the wagon and be right there.”
I opened my silver-sequined purse, reaching for my badge and handcuffs.
“I’m a police officer,” I said, making my voice hard, “and you’re under arrest for soliciting a sexual act. Put your hands on the steering wheel.”
Bald Guy turned bright red, then burst into tears. “I only wanted a little tenderness!”
“Place your hands on the steering wheel, sir. And for future reference, fingers up the wazoo really don’t qualify as tenderness.”
“I’m so lonely!” he sobbed.
“Buy a dog.” An unwelcome image popped into my head, of this pervert with some poor schnauzer. “On second thought, that’s a bad idea.”
Bald Guy moaned, wiped his nose with his wrist, and then flung open his door and ran like hell. Which didn’t make much sense, considering that in jail he could probably find someone to fulfill his request for free.
“He bolted!” I yelled to Harry. “Coming your way!”
I pushed open my door and scrambled after him. Three steps into my pursuit I broke a heel and almost fell onto my face. I recovered in time, but my speed was drastically reduced. A penguin on stilts would have been faster and looked less clumsy. I wasn’t about to kick my broken pump off—this wasn’t the nicest part of town, and I didn’t want to step on a dirty needle.
“He ducked down the alley, Jackie!” Harry said. “It lets out on Halsted. Run around and block his exit!”
Easy for him to say. He was wearing gym shoes.
I rounded the corner, hobbling as fast as I could, my spandex skirt riding up and encircling my waist like a neon pink belt. My purse orbited my neck on its spaghetti strap, and each time it passed in front of my face I reached for it and missed. Inside was my Beretta 86, and I didn’t want to be charging into any alleys without it firmly in hand.
Honking, from the street. I wondered if it was the squadrol—a police wagon that picked up and booked the suspects we caught on this sting. No such luck. It was a carload of cute preppy guys. They hooted at me, pumping their fists in the air.
“What’s that sound?” Harry said. “You watching Arsenio?”
I skidded to a halt at the mouth of the alley, tugged down my skirt, and pulled out my Beretta.
The hooting stopped. I heard one of the preppies yell, “The whore is packing heat!” and their tires squealed, their car rocketing away.
“Where is he?” I said into the mic.
“If he didn’t come out on your side, he’s hiding in the alley somewhere.”
“I’ll meet you in the middle.”
“It’s dark. Don’t shoot me by mistake.”
Harry didn’t mean it to be condescending, but he wouldn’t have said it if I were a man. I set my jaw, gripped my weapon in both hands with my elbows bent and the barrel pointing skyward, and crept into the alley.
The decaying garbage odor got worse with every step, so bad I could taste it in the back of my throat. I moved slowly, letting my eyes sweep left and right, looking for any place Bald Guy could hide. I came up to a parked car, checked under it, behind it.
“Jesus, the stink is making my eyes water,” Harry said. “It smells like some fat guys with BO ate bad cheese and took a group shit on a rotting corpse.”
Harry wore so much Brut aftershave I was surprised he could smell anything.
“You’re a poet, McGlade.”
“Why? Did I rhyme something?”
I stuck my head into a shadowy doorway, didn’t find Bald Guy, and went deeper into the alley.
Then I heard the scream.
It came from ahead of me. A man’s voice, with a hollow quality to it.
Something horrible was happening to Bald Guy.
My whole body became gooseflesh. I just joined Vice two weeks ago. Even though I was still a patrol officer and made the same pay, I jumped at the chance to wear plainclothes and ditch the standard uniform. But plainclothes turned out to be hooker-wear, and I felt especially vulnerable without my dress blues on. It wasn’t easy being tough when you were wearing a micro-mini.
Another scream ripped through the alley. The little girl in me, the one who still woke up scared during thunderstorms, wanted to turn around and run.
But if I gave in to my fear, Harry would mention it in the arrest report. Then it would be back to riding patrol and answering radio calls, where I got even less respect.
I forced myself to move forward. Now my gun was pointing in front of me, toward the direction of the sound. The Beretta was double action, and protocol dictated it stayed uncocked. The harder pull meant fewer accidental shootings. Theoretically, at least. My finger was so tight on the trigger that a strong breeze would have caused me to fire.
“You see him?” Harry asked. I heard him in my earpiece, but I also heard him in the alley, somewhere ahead.
“Not yet.”
“Maybe he’s screaming because he can’t stand the smell.”
I didn’t think that was the case. I’d heard my share of screams on the Job. Screams of joy. Screams of sorrow. Screams of pain.
This was a scream of terror.
A clanging sound, only a few yards away from me. A Dumpster. I held my breath, heard whimpering coming from inside.
“He’s in a Dumpster,” I told Harry.
“Probably sitting in a big pile of rats.”
I approached quickly. It was dark, but I could see the Dumpster lid was open.
“This is the police!” I shouted, hoping my voice didn’t quaver. “Raise your hands up where I can see them!”
Bald Guy complied. But there was something wrong. Rather than two hands, I counted three.
I moved closer and realized the third hand wasn’t his. It belonged to a woman.
And it wasn’t attached to the rest of her. Bald Guy was holding it, the look on his face pure horror.
I felt someone touch my shoulder and jumped back. It was Harry.
“Looks like he got you a birthday present, Jackie. Quite a handy guy.”
My stomach seized up, and then I bent over and vomited, soaking my broken shoes and getting it caught in the fake curls hanging in front of my face. When I heaved for the final time, the transmitter popped free of my bustier and plonked into the puddle of puke.
“Happy twenty-ninth,” Harry said.
Present day
2010, August 10
I flipped over onto my left side, my shoulders burning, my fingers beginning to go numb from the restricted blood flow. I closed my eyes and tried to relax my muscles. A cramp right now would be torture.
This
new view didn’t offer any revelations. I still couldn’t see anything, still couldn’t hear anything other than the hum of some machine. I stretched out my bound legs, seeking anything other than empty space, and my bare toes touched something.
Something flat, and metal. Cool, smooth, it made an empty sound, like tapping on a Dumpster. I kicked harder, feeling it vibrate, realizing it was a wall.
This wasn’t a garage. It was a storage locker. Probably one of those self-storage spaces that people rented out.
And all at once I knew who had me. And I knew what he wanted to do with me.
My death wasn’t going to be the worst of it. Death, when it came, would be a mercy.
I flexed my knees and kicked them against the corrugated aluminum wall as hard as I could, hoping someone would hear me.
Knowing no one would. Knowing what would come next.
Twenty-five years ago
1985, October 15
Sergeant Rostenkowski walked into the classroom and cleared his throat, getting everyone’s attention. He was old—probably close to fifty—thick, with hands like two-by-fours, the knuckles covered with curly, gray hair. When he spoke, it was with utmost authority, and all of us took notes. Standing next to him was a short man in an ill-fitting suit whom we’d never seen before.
“Our guest speaker today is Dr. Malcolm Horner,” the sergeant boomed, “a clinical psychiatrist from the University of Chicago.”
Harry McGlade raised his hand and began talking without being called on. “Doc, I’ve been having these dreams where I’m trying to throw a spear at a giant pink pretzel, but every time I throw it my spear bends in half.”
Everyone in class laughed, except for me. I nudged my one-piece chair and desk away from Harry and silently pitied the poor sap who got stuck being his partner after graduating from the police academy.
Dr. Horner smiled politely. “Your problem, Cadet, is firmly rooted in the fact that you have to be the center of attention, probably because your parents didn’t love you enough.”
Harry’s grin fell away, but mine blossomed.
“My mom may not have loved me,” Harry said, “but the last time I saw your mom, which was yesterday—”
“Can it, McGlade.” Rostenkowski shot out one of his cut the bullshit looks, and Harry clammed up. “Now, please welcome Dr. Horner to our class.”
The fifty or so cadets offered the psychiatrist a weak round of applause. It was close to dinner time, we’d been running drills all day, and I figured everyone was as hungry, exhausted, and brain dead as I was. While I was sure Dr. Horner would be tremendously enlightening (baloney, because during four weeks at the police academy the speakers had ranged from bland to downright awful), now wasn’t a good time to absorb a lecture. But like any good student, I dutifully opened my notebook to a blank page and jammed a pen between my fingers.
“Gentlemen…and ladies,” Dr. Horner acknowledged me, the only woman in the room. “Today I’m going to talk about evil.”
My interest was piqued. In the nonstop lectures I’d been forced to endure about the criminal mind, the word evil hadn’t been used before. We’d had terms like socioeconomic factors and biological positivism and differential association hammered into our heads, but nothing on evil.
This prompted a predictable outburst from Harry. “I just joined so I could catch bad guys.”
While being a law enforcement officer had as much to do with how and why criminals became criminals as it did with how to catch them, part of me was with Harry on this issue. While poverty, upbringing, and genetics all contributed to illegal behavior, I was more interested in stopping it than understanding it.
But evil? That was for philosophy class, not psychology. I thought about mentioning that, but someone in the front row beat me to the punch.
“We’ve been told evil doesn’t exist. Last week, your colleague, Dr. Habersham, lectured that morality had no place in law enforcement. We’re supposed to enforce the law, not judge right and wrong.”
“I’m surprised you stayed awake long enough during Dr. Habersham’s lecture to absorb that tidbit.”
Laughter broke out. I was starting to like this guy.
“Indeed,” he continued, “some schools of philosophy dictate that morality changes according to society. For example, in ancient Rome it was considered acceptable to throw people to the lions. A little over a hundred years ago, our country bought and sold human beings. Forty years ago, Germany endorsed genocide, something still common in modern times. For a recent example look at Cambodia and the killing fields, where more than two hundred thousand people were forced to dig their own graves before being beaten to death with ax handles because their executioners wanted to save on ammunition.”
I looked around. No one was fidgeting or sleeping. Even Harry seemed to be paying attention.
“If we’re going to discuss evil,” Dr. Horner went on, “first we must decide whether evil is defined as an act, or as a trait. Let’s do a thought experiment. An innocent, let’s say a child, is murdered. By a show of hands, is this an evil act?”
Almost every hand went up. I kept mine on my desk. Dr. Horner met my eyes, pointed at me.
“Your hand didn’t go up. Can you tell us why, Miss…?”
“Streng,” I said. “Jacqueline Streng. There might be altruistic intentions for the malice aforethought and…” my mind groped for the Latin term we recently learned, “mens rea.”
Dr. Horner smiled. “I see you’ve been studying hard, Miss Streng, but please cut the jargon and give me an example when murdering a child isn’t evil.”
“What if it’s a child dying of cancer, and in terrible pain? A parent, or someone else who loves the child, might attempt murder to end the suffering.”
“Excellent, Miss Streng. Mercy killing, by law, meets the requirements for murder. The act of committing the crime, actus reus, and the willful intent to commit the crime, mens rea, is indeed malice aforethought, and according to the present law, that parent is a murderer. In this scenario, how many of you think the act is evil?”
No one raised their hand.
“But earlier, almost every hand was up. If the act itself isn’t evil, what is?”
Someone said, “Motive.”
“Ah.” Dr. Horner nodded. “Now we’re getting somewhere. A parent’s decision to murder is based on ending a child’s agony. A noble, unselfish motive. Now let me show you a motive that’s a bit more selfish. Lights, please.”
Rostenkowski killed the lights, and Dr. Horner positioned himself behind a slide projector. He switched it on, and an image threw itself up on the movie screen on the far wall.
Someone coughed—an attempt to cover up a gag. I forced myself to look even though I had to hold my breath to do so. The temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees.
“This victim has never been identified. The missing fingers and missing teeth have made it impossible to trace who she is. They were removed while she was still alive. The mutilation here—”
Dr. Horner used a pointer and tapped the screen, touching the victim’s pelvis.
“—was caused by a sharp instrument, a filet knife, or perhaps a scalpel. The victim was forced to eat these parts of herself. This white powder is salt, rubbed into the wounds. The burns here, here, here, and here were the result of a super-heated flame. Possibly a blowtorch.”
Dr. Horner turned away from the slide and stood in front of the screen, the ghastly image projected on his face and body.
“The autopsy determined, based on how some of the wounds had had time to heal, that she’d been tortured for at least twenty-four hours. We have no suspects, but some of the atrocities committed upon her have been seen in other, similar murders. The perpetrator has been dubbed Unknown Subject K by the FBI. We’ve taken to calling him Mr. K for short. Lights please, Sergeant.”
The overhead fluorescent light flickered on. It reduced the brightness of the slide, but not enough. Details could still be seen.
“Now I
present to you my earlier question. By a show of hands, who believes Mr. K is evil?”
Every hand went up but mine. Dr. Horner focused on me.
“Surely you don’t believe this is a mercy killing, Miss Streng.”
Titters from the peanut gallery.
“No. Of course not.”
“So why didn’t you raise your hand?”
“I don’t know enough about the case.”
Dr. Horner folded his arms across his chest. “What more do you need to know?”
“Was she raped?”
“Aw, come on!” Harry, naturally. “She was tortured for an entire day! What does it matter if she was raped, too?”
“Rape is a crime of violence,” I stated, “but rapists tend to enjoy the act.”
Dr. Horner tilted his head. “Sexual assault is unverified. Those parts of her were cut away. No semen was found.”
“Was this the crime scene?” I asked. “Or was she dumped there?”
“We believe the apartment where she was discovered was where the crime was committed.”
“Were there condoms found in the apartment? Condom wrappers?”
“No.”
“Was it her apartment?”
“No. The room was supposed to be unoccupied.”
“Were there neighbors?”
Dr. Horner offered a small smile. “Yes, on either side.”
“No one heard her screams?”
“No. The same thing that allowed Mr. K to pry out her teeth also kept her from making any sound. A ball gag, holding her mouth open. Sold in sex shops across town and in the backs of pornographic magazines worldwide.”
“Did he use ball gags on his other alleged victims?”
“Let’s stick with this one. What is your reasoning that Mr. K might not be evil? His objective was obviously to cause pain and death.”
I tapped my eraser against my desk. “But what was his motive? Did he do this because he knew the victim and hated her? Is he a sexual predator, a lust killer, who derived pleasure from his acts? Or was this murder dispassionate? Maybe someone paid him to commit these acts, but he had no feelings about it one way or the other.”
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