Head Shot

by Dan Ames

  Mike looked at the smooth carpet under his feet. Laying carpet was really an underrated skill, he thought to himself. Maybe he should go back to Milwaukee and enroll in one of those colleges that offer majors like gun repair and lawn mower maintenance. He could become a hell of a carpet guy, start a little business. But that was hard work. Long days on your knees. Sort of like trying to be a struggling actor in Hollywood. He looked up at Beta.

  "Fine," said Mike. "Let’s go for the toll booth attendant. Hell, I may end up being one if this actor thing doesn’t work out.”

  Chapter 4

  The jogger was having chest pains. His knees ached, his ankles hurt and his lower back throbbed. Almost a hundred pounds overweight, he had been forced to see his doctor by his wife who was getting more and more concerned with her husband's growing weight problem and family history of heart disease.

  For years, he had struggled with his weight problem. He'd done it all. Crash diets. Metabolic diets. Fruit diets. Exercising three or four times a day. None of it had worked. In fact, after every valiant effort at shedding the excess baggage he usually ended up about fifteen pounds heavier than when he started.

  And finally, he came to a decision. Screw the diets and the goddamn exercise. Who knew when they would die? He could get hit by an ice cream truck tomorrow. So he started eating what he wanted and exercise had come to a complete halt.

  But then his wife had really started to get on his case and he finally acquiesced, just to stop the constant nagging.

  The jogger cursed the day he gave in and went to the doctor's. The exam went well enough. The doctor was obviously concerned about his patient’s weight but the blood pressure wasn't too bad and the heartbeat was strong and solid.

  Then he'd been forced to give a blood sample and that's where it all went to hell.

  His blood work came back revealing his cholesterol was almost 320, which fell into the category of "lethal and malignant."

  Immediately, his doctor put him on some cholesterol-lowering medication, his wife started cooking some green shit called leeks, and his life had been a giant pain in the ass ever since.

  Decked out in a brand-new pair of cross trainers, a flashy black, red and white Nike jogging suit, the jogger was giving all appearances of turning over a new leaf, making a fresh start, and getting his priorities straight.

  But the two Snickers candy bars bouncing reassuringly against his thigh told the real story.

  At least, on the bright side, he had these morning runs. It was a time for him to reflect on the day ahead and spend some time overlooking the lovely Menomonee River.

  It was a gray morning with no hint of the sun and a very light mist was busily sleepwalking its way across the park.

  Even though his pace wasn't much faster than a quick walk, he was sweating profusely. Mercifully, he could now see his favorite park bench hidden behind a thick stand of elm trees along the banks of the river.

  The Menomonee River Parkway was a long, winding park that fringed the small suburb of Wauwatosa about ten minutes out of downtown Milwaukee. It was a friendly middle-class suburb where people still kept an eye on each other's houses and everyone knew everyone else on a first-name basis. The homes along the river were nicer than the majority of homes in town. There were lots of old bungalows and some grand Tudor Provincials built in the late twenties.

  The jogger waddled past the last of the homes before veering off into the woods of the park and seating himself on the painted bench just a few feet from the brown water of the Menomonee. His knees and ankles welcomed the relief.

  He unwrapped the first of his Snickers and ate it hungrily, not savoring the flavor, merely wolfing it down for sustenance and to ease the severe grumbling in his stomach. The second one he would savor.

  A flash of white caught his eye and he saw something he couldn't quite make out, hanging from the middle of a small walking bridge that spanned the narrow river. The river had been so swollen the last day or two, he realized that it had probably been high enough to reach the little bridge. Something must have gotten trapped in there when the river was high, he thought.

  He squinted his eyes but the mist was falling a bit harder now and he couldn't tell what it was. It looked vaguely familiar and was intriguing enough to make the tired jogger stand up and walk around the small clump of bushes immediately to his left down to the small bridge.

  As he came closer he could see that it was a big object, much larger than he could make out from the bench. When he rounded a thick tree it came fully into view.

  It looked like a woman. Her head was jammed between the wooden stiles of the bridge's safety railings and her body hung beneath it. Her legs and feet trailed in the water below.

  Pale, lifeless eyes stared up at him as the jogger looked at the first dead person he'd ever seen. He'd never even been to a funeral. He looked in disbelief at the woman whose eyes were bulging. Her face looked to be literally torn apart and her body was covered with bruises and scratches. Her arms stuck out at improbable angles like a mangled bird still struggling to fly.

  The failed dieter felt the candy bar rise in his stomach and he vomited milk chocolate, peanuts and nougat all over his one hundred and fifteen dollar running shoes.

  Chapter 5

  The phone rang and Ray Mitchell's eyes snapped open. The Milwaukee Police Department’s senior homicide detective threw the comforter off his body and reached for his cell phone. His body struggled to adjust to the sudden motion as his muscles were still sluggish with sleep.

  Ray's urgency to get to the phone did not represent any kind of enthusiasm for who the caller might be. The reason for his fatigue was simply that Ray's nine-month-old daughter had awakened twice during the night and his wife got the worst shift, which lasted close to two hours before the child finally fell back asleep. Ray wanted both his wife and his daughter to get some sleep and if the phone woke them up, there would be hell to pay. In the nine months since their daughter had been born, Ray and Michelle had made a simple observation: If marital difficulty were a fire, then exhaustion was like gasoline thrown directly into the flames.

  Still struggling to clear his head and rubbing his dry, bloodshot eyes, Ray listened to the duty officer who got right down to business.

  Ray listened closely, mumbled something in the affirmative, then thumbed the disconnect button on the phone. He walked back into the kitchen and turned on the coffee machine.

  He’d just closed a case involving a pimp who’d beaten one of his prostitutes to death. Ray had felt particularly satisfied as it had been a nightmare to get anyone to testify against the scumbag. Eventually, Ray had earned the trust of the pimp’s business partner and flipped him.

  The case had required patience and the dogged pursuit had left Ray fatigued. Now, he went to the bathroom, looked at himself in the mirror, and wasn't entirely displeased with what he saw. A strong jaw and high cheekbones, dark eyes with not-too-noticeable circles under them peered back at him, his thick, jet-black hair looked neat and presentable even if he just ran his fingers through it.

  The coffee pot was full now and Ray heard the telltale percolating come to an end and he felt disappointed with himself. He filled up his travel mug even though he would have preferred to sit down at the kitchen table and savor his first cup but there just wasn’t time.

  The body of a young woman had been found early this morning by a jogger.

  Ray gulped as much of the coffee as he could, went into the bathroom, started the shower and turned the fan on to try to soften the noise. There was a good chance the sound of the water running through the pipes would wake up his daughter but he had no choice.

  Duty called.

  Chapter 6

  Flat on her back in the bathtub with her legs raised and feet planted firmly on the wall above the fixtures, Nancy Bishop felt the surge of warm water from the tub's faucet pulsate against her when suddenly her cell phone rang.

  She turned off the water, got out of the tub and wrapped a towel
around herself before reaching for the phone.

  Nancy Bishop had gotten to be the top investigative reporter in Milwaukee by always putting her job ahead of everything else. It was a career choice that had her out working the mean streets at ungodly hours and when she finally did make it home, it was almost always alone and there was never anyone there waiting for her. Of course, the fact that she had taken a married man as her lover didn’t help matters that much. Unless he divorced his wife, which was something they had talked about, Nancy would be looking at a lot of lonely nights.

  Since her day started early and ended late there was usually just enough time to take a shower before hitting the sack for three or four hours. It was a schedule to which her mind and body had eventually become accustomed.

  She pressed the connect button on her phone, listened to the voice on the other end of the line while simultaneously toweling her short brown hair, and walked through the narrow hallway into the dining room.

  She paused while listening and caught her reflection in the glass picture frame above the small dining room table.

  In her younger years she had worked to be pretty spending countless hours on makeup, lipstick, and clothing. And for a brief time, she had attracted her fair share of men. But the woman looking back at her looked haggard, even unpleasant; a woman who had no time to be concerned with appearances.

  Although her colleagues saw a tough, no-nonsense reporter who could belt down booze and curse like a sailor, Nancy Bishop had once been a romantic. As her career took off, though, that part of her was sublimated. Now she wore professional but nondescript clothing. Her piercing gray eyes never saw eyeliner and although her smile rarely saw the light of day, when it did, it couldn't quite shake the spirit of its tired, somewhat hostile owner.

  Nancy wrapped a towel around her long, lean body. At least that hadn't gone to hell, she thought. She listened intently to one of the many sources she had spent years cultivating and who now had access to information no one else could get.

  While other reporters were home with their families or snuggled up in bed getting their solid eight hours, she was out drinking with cops, giving money to snitches, whatever she had to do.

  It had been fun at first, she'd even gone to bed with several of the cops, but the thrill had quickly worn off. Playing nursemaid to men who were either in the midst of divorce, depression or both wasn't exactly a barrel of fun. Now it had become an elaborate act, nothing more than showing important clients a good time.

  It was this practice that also put her at odds with the station's management.

  When word got back that she had been drinking and carousing with cops, the old men in the corner offices had called her in and chastised her for being unprofessional. They had argued it wasn't right for a female reporter to take cops, most of them men, out on the town and buy them drinks.

  But Nancy Bishop didn't back down for one reason; she didn't know how. It seemed to her that when male reporters worked the cop bars they were seen as industrious, but when a woman tried the same thing, it was deemed "inappropriate behavior." And that's exactly what she told management.

  It was a stalemate.

  The old men disapproved of her methods, but she continued to wine and dine her sources and her stories were the most widely followed reports in the city.

  When a scandal involving the mayor erupted shortly after his election Nancy scooped everyone, including her colleagues, and it was a resounding victory for Channel 6. Suddenly, the same stuffy bureaucrats who had chastised her before now began literally throwing expense checks and petty cash at her. They encouraged her to do whatever she had to do to cover the angles of the story that were rapidly radiating like the arms of an octopus.

  That scandal and Nancy Bishop's reporting boosted the station's image dramatically and made her the hottest reporter in town. Soon the sentiment was that if you really wanted to know what was going on in the city, you looked for Nancy Bishop's stories.

  She bent her head, listening carefully and scribbling notes on the yellow legal pad that always sat on her kitchen table. Her handwriting was a nasty scrawl, like graffiti no one but the author could understand. She asked several short, pointed questions, hurriedly wrote down some notes and promised the caller a night on Milwaukee's skin tour, cop slang for making the rounds of the city's strip clubs, then hung up the phone.

  She quickly dressed by throwing on jeans and an old sweatshirt.

  She turned off the lights to the apartment and locked the door behind her. It was still very early in the morning and it would be chilly down by the Menomonee River Parkway where the body had been discovered. She had jogged there before and knew it would be cold this time of day.

  On her way out she had grabbed her cell phone, micro recorder, notebook and paper, as well as a small camera. She checked her watch. It had been less than seven minutes since she'd gotten the call from her source. That wasn't bad, but just a year or two ago it would've taken her five minutes or less.

  Nancy told herself she needed to start working out more often and to eat better, more balanced meals. At the age of thirty-eight she felt her greatest fear may be coming true.

  She was slowing down.

  Chapter 7

  He had no problem with Monday mornings like this. He felt well-rested and calm. The tickle at the base of his brain, the one that would graduate in coming days and weeks into a full-blown raging obsession, was barely noticeable.

  The need had been thoroughly satiated.

  And then some.

  He permitted himself a small smile which he noticed in the rearview mirror.

  The company parking lot was half-full when he pulled in, stuck his hands in his pockets and strolled into work.

  As usual no one paid much attention to him, as he was one of the drones. Faceless workers who simply did their jobs, didn’t talk much, and left as soon as they could.

  If anyone had noticed him, they would have seen him frequently with his right hand in his pocket, as if he was rolling change around between his fingers.

  He spent the day performing his mindless activities. Just another nobody stuck in the gears of corporate America.

  Toward the end of the day, the tickle that had been nudging at the center of his fantasies was now throbbing with the beginning of what could be considered urgency.

  It was the end of the day that he usually went to the bathroom before he left his place of work.

  Today was no exception.

  He went into the men’s room, went directly to a stall and reached into his pocket. From it, he withdrew the items he had been playing with all day.

  Lisa Young’s teeth.

  Chapter 8

  Ray Mitchell drove through the quiet, tree-lined neighborhood and saw the effects of the recent devastating rains were painfully obvious. Along many curbs were telltale piles of boxes, mattresses, and old furniture. Obvious signs of flooded basements and backed-up sewer mains.

  The scavengers, people ranging from antique hunters to trash pickers, had cruised through all the surrounding neighborhoods hoping to find a treasure buried beneath the piles of water-damaged garbage.

  He passed a home where an old man stood with his garage door open. Several card tables had been set up and they were covered with photographs that were warped and curled. Ray idly wondered how many memories would be lost forever, swallowed up by heavy rains and overflowing sewer water.

  He turned onto the Menomonee River Parkway and noted the river's usual quiet gurgle now had a faint roar. He raised up in his seat to look down the sloping bank of the quiet park and was surprised to see the normally tranquil stream transformed into a raging river. Instead of its usual dark green, the winding column of water had now taken on the color of chocolate milk stirred to a frenzy. The transformative powers of Mother Nature never ceased to amaze Ray.

  Ray saw the two Milwaukee squad cars parked ahead, their lights flashing, and pulled his sedan in behind them. He locked the doors, then walked down to the sma
ll clearing where a small group of people stood.

  Flashing his badge, he addressed the nearest officer.

  "Mitchell, homicide. What do you have?"

  The officer Ray addressed was a tall, stocky man with a short crewcut. He looked more like a Marine than a cop.

  "Deceased female," the cop answered. "Jogger found the body," he nodded his head toward an overweight man in a sweat suit being asked questions by another cop with a notepad. “My partner's taking his statement."

  "Casey on his way?" Ray asked. Casey was Paul Casey, the crime scene analyst for the Milwaukee County coroner's office.

  "Should be here any minute."

  Mitchell began walking toward the body and the cop followed.

  "Anything else?" Ray asked. The sound of the rushing water forced him to raise his voice.

  "Watch where you step, the track star over there puked," the cop said.

  Ray approached the walking bridge and saw the body. He instinctively scanned the surrounding park for anything that looked out of place. He checked for signs of disturbance along the bank but everything looked normal. The body probably wasn't dumped here. Considering how high the river was it could have been disposed of miles back and been carried here by the strong current. In fact, if it hadn't been for the bridge, the body might have made it all the way out to Lake Michigan.

  Images in conflict with the scene in front of him flashed through Ray's mind. He had been to this very park several times before with his family. He and Michelle had put Jennifer in the stroller and walked along the winding river with the lush green foliage surrounding it, enjoying the peace and tranquility which seemed oddly out of place just ten minutes from downtown.

  Jennifer, always fascinated by birds, had spent the afternoon pointing at any bird that took to the sky, and Michelle and Ray would tell her whether it was a cardinal, a crow, or in most cases, a sparrow.