Head Shot

by Dan Ames

  Joe knew once that bitch got away that she'd go right to the cops, and they'd find out he'd been a client of Harriet Bednarski's and that would be all she wrote.

  He cursed under his breath.

  He never should've gone after the hippie lawyer who had defended him when he got busted for peeping.

  He smiled in the darkness of the night, the flash of his teeth reflected back at him from the windshield. He'd always liked the young lawyer and her very luscious mouth.

  It had been so easy.

  The lawyer was so stupid, Joe thought to himself. And weak.

  The truck rolled on, pointed toward the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. He would pass Manitowoc, Green Bay, Marinette and Peshtigo, then turn onto Highway 141 toward Rodgers Bay.

  He would make a stop first, though, to see a friend who lived on the road north. He would get rid of the truck, and hopefully borrow a vehicle, then he planned to see his sister Mary. He checked his watch. Traveling at night was the only way to go. He would have to speed up a bit to make sure he could get everything done he needed to do by sunrise, when people would be looking for him.

  He rubbed his head. The headache was coming back.

  And it felt like it was getting worse.

  Chapter 19

  "Michael," Beta said over the phone.

  "How's my favorite peddler of flesh?" Mike Sharpe asked.

  "Peddlin' away, baby," she said.

  Mike was sitting at his little dining room table eating some leftover spinach pie Laurie had made. It was delicious. She had more ways to make shitty food taste good than anyone he had ever known. Her lentil soup was out of this world.

  He pushed the plate away and leaned back in his chair.

  "Have you seen the spot?" he asked, knowing what the answer would be before he even uttered the question.

  "I thought it was great, you looked good."

  He laughed inwardly, well aware of the fact that she probably hadn't seen the commercial and would make little effort to do so. Not because she was a bad person, but agents were busy. It was more time efficient to lie than to cater to every client’s needs.

  "Anyway," she said, "on to bigger and better things."

  Mike took a drink from his bottle of mineral water and listened.

  "I got a call from the producers of the Nation’s Most Wanted, have you seen the show?"

  "Sure." He and Laurie had watched the show from time to time, whenever they felt like they needed to be reminded of just how violent the world can be.

  Mike was of the impression that this was exactly what the programs called themselves: reality programming. What you saw on the screen had actually happened. This kind of stuff went on day and night in every city in America and if you weren't prepared to accept that, then you were in complete denial.

  "How'd you like to be on it?" Beta broke in, bringing Mike back to the topic at hand.

  "What makes you think I haven’t already?" he asked.

  His agent, always pressed for time, ignored the joke. “Apparently, there's a serial killer in Milwaukee who is on the loose, and the Milwaukee Police Department want the killer to be profiled on the show."

  "How did this all get around to me?"

  "Apparently, you look exactly like the serial killer. The show’s producers tracked me down and that's why I'm on the phone now," her voice took on a lightly sarcastic tone, "giving you the quality time you deserve."

  Mike was intrigued but tried not to show it.

  "So, Beta, is this a good thing?"

  He heard her hesitate just the slightest.

  "Of course it is,” she said. “You actually get to play a bad guy, unlike all of your spokesman commercials. Plus the show is broadcast across the country, and it's work."

  Mike thought for a minute.

  "I assume there's a quick turnaround on this?" he guessed.

  "The producers are waiting for you to do a quick read this afternoon, and then they'll call me before end of day to let me know if it's a go."

  "All right," he sighed, "what's the address?"

  She gave it to him, along with a condensed version of her usual pep talk.

  "So I guess crime really does pay,” he said.

  "Let’s hope so,” she responded and then disconnected.

  Mike set his cell phone on the table, changed clothes, hopped in the Camry and headed over to the address in Studio City.

  The receptionist showed Mike to the appropriate office and a man dressed in jeans, a blue jean shirt and a baseball cap rose from a deep, black leather chair as Mike entered. He was tall and lanky with tufts of gray hair sprouting out from underneath his baseball cap, and his gray beard was neatly trimmed.

  "Hi Mike, Dean Harwell, nice to meet you," he said, offering his hand.

  Mike shook it.

  Dean Harwell was a well-traveled director whose claim to fame had been a popular television show in the seventies called, Chicken Feed, a sitcom based around the antics of employees at a fried chicken restaurant.

  "Hey Mike. Curtis Bentley, good to see you," said a short, balding man in an Armani suit with suspenders and a bright red tie.

  "Thanks Curtis, for giving me the chance to read for you."

  Bentley gave a wave of his hand as if to say, "ah, forget about it," and gestured Mike to a chair next to Harwell, across from his glass desk.

  The office was filled with Hollywood memorabilia, as well as pictures of young children who Mike assumed the show had helped ‘discover.’ Bentley was a well-known producer in town who often ventured back and forth between television projects and feature films, not a feat every producer in Hollywood could pull off.

  "There you are, Cynthia," said Bentley as a tall, casually dressed woman entered the office. She had red hair piled high on her head and was carrying a large bottled water.

  "Mike, Cynthia Broggins, our casting director."

  Mike shook hands with the woman then they got down to business.

  "Did Beta tell you what we had in mind?" asked Harwell.

  Mike nodded. "She said you were considering me for the part of a serial killer in one of the re-enactments?"

  Bentley answered.

  "Yeah, there's an amazing likeness," he said, nodding toward Cynthia, who then handed Mike a mug shot photo.

  The attached form gave the name of Joseph P. Ferkovich.

  Mike looked at the photo.

  "I guess I look a little bit like him," he said. "His nose is thicker and I think my face is wider, but yeah, I can see the resemblance. Except for that messed up eye."

  "We'll take care of that with a contact lens, no problem," said Cynthia.

  Mike looked again at the picture of the killer.

  "You're both from Wisconsin," said Harwell, a small smile on his face.

  "Small world," Mike said.

  "Let's go over the script, guys," Bentley interrupted, adopting a let's-get-down-to-business tone.

  For the next ten minutes they had Mike act out the action of the scene in which Joe Ferkovich breaks into Harriet Bednarski's apartment and kills her.

  When they were done the men thanked Mike, and Cynthia turned him over to a production assistant who took him to a small studio where she snapped pictures of him.

  Mike made the drive back to his apartment, stopping briefly to pick up some beer and a pizza for dinner with Laurie. When he got home, the red light was blinking on his answering machine and it was Beta's voice, telling him he got the part and that he should be back at the studio the following afternoon.

  Mike crossed the kitchen and turned the oven to four hundred degrees, pulled the pizza out of its box, and popped it in.

  He set the table, lit a candle and placed it in the center of the table, then grabbed a bottle of beer and sat on the couch.

  Well, he thought, it couldn't be any worse than playing a toll booth attendant. Mike wasn't nuts about contributing to society's paranoia, but it would be a good paycheck, good exposure, and give he and Laurie some spending money when t
hey went on vacation next week.

  He heard Laurie pull her car into the driveway and he met her at the door.

  Before she could say anything, he adopted a menacing stare.

  "Stop me before I kill again," he said, and she came into his arms, both of them laughing as they stumbled toward the bedroom.

  Chapter 20

  "What have you got for me?" Ray asked.

  "Nothing you weren't expecting,” Kellen said. “Same cause of death, asphyxiation, and similar evidence of assault as the previous victim."

  Ray scribbled on his notepad, thanked Kellen, and disconnected.

  Patrick Krahn stopped by Ray’s desk. “Hey Ray, you might be interested in this."

  Ray had asked his team for details of any similar murders that could be found in the national violent offenders database.

  “I think I've got two matches,” Krahn said. “Two years ago, a woman was found in Detroit, Michigan. She'd been strangled to death, and all her teeth were pulled and her body was dumped in the Detroit River."

  "You said two matches."

  "A year later, the body of an 8-year-old girl was found in Huntington Woods, a suburb of Detroit. Same thing. Teeth knocked out, asphyxiated."

  "And I'm guessing the cases remain unsolved," said Ray.

  "Yes.”

  "All right."

  Krahn left and Ray’s cell phone began to vibrate.

  "Mitchell."

  "Ray, how ya doin'?" It was Paul Casey.

  "I'd be doing a lot better if I had some matches, my friend."

  "You got 'em."

  "Both scenes?" asked Ray.

  "We got a latent off the girl's face, and quite a few from the lawyer's house, all matches with Ferkovich's prints."

  "Thanks, Paul."

  "How's it going?"

  "Making some progress. If I can find him, he'll be going away for a long time."

  "Let me know if there's anything else I can do."

  "Thanks, I will."

  Ray hung up the phone, picked up his notebook, and headed to the conference room down the hall. He had set up a war room specifically to track down Joseph P. Ferkovich. Several computers had been brought in, as well as a printer, fax, and the chalkboard at the head of the room featured some of Ray's chicken scratchings.

  He’d even been able to get additional detectives pulled from vice to do some of the legwork.

  More people began filing into the small room and Ray got everyone's attention.

  "All right, Tony, what'd you find out?"

  Tony Halaska had been working vice for the last two years. He was a small, unkempt man with slate gray eyes.

  "I talked to Ferkovich’s boss at the Capitol Cookie Company. He didn't like Ferkovich, said he was competent at best, but that lately he'd been coming to work late, sluffing off, said he would've fired him but he was so hard up for workers he couldn't afford to."

  The detective closed his notebook.

  "I talked to a couple other people who worked with him and they said pretty much the same thing. One guy, who said he was probably the closest thing to a friend Ferkovich had, said he had a crude sense of humor and that the only thing they had in common was fishing. Apparently, this guy had a cabin up north and he used to talk to Ferkovich about fishing. That's all I got."

  Ray nodded toward a detective seated at the far end of the table.

  "Adams."

  The detective spoke with a baritone voice, sounding like his vocal cords had seen too much whiskey and cigarettes.

  "All of the names were cleared but one," he said. "A James Tomczak, of Iron Mountain, Michigan, which is right across from Wisconsin in the U.P."

  The detective looked up from his notes.

  "I talked to him and he said he knew Ferkovich when they were kids, and they used to fish together off and on but that he hadn't seen him in years."

  "Do you believe him?" Ray asked.

  "That's hard to tell over the phone, but yeah, he seemed like a straight shooter, no hesitation in his answers."

  Mitchell nodded, picking up his own notebook.

  "OK, here's what I found out. Joseph Paul Ferkovich was born November 20, 1967, in Florence, Wisconsin, to Oneida and Ed Ferkovich. He has an older sister named Mary. Oneida worked as a waitress and Ed was mostly unemployed. He worked hard at drinking and not much else. In 1971, when Joe was four, Ed stabbed Oneida, non-fatally, took the kids to an abandoned mine, beat them and raped them, then fled. He was caught and sentenced to thirty years in prison, but before he could finish doing his time, he was murdered by another inmate."

  Ray paused and took a long drink of lukewarm coffee.

  "Mary had internal bleeding and Joe was diagnosed with severe head trauma and severe damage to his left eye. They both survived, and what was left of the family moved to Detroit, Michigan, where the kids lived with their mother until her death ten years later. She died of heart failure and complications brought on by prolonged alcohol abuse."

  He set down his notepad and picked up a computer printout. “It appears that Joe was on his own from then on out and, not coincidentally, that's when his rap sheet starts."

  Ray took a pencil and went down the list.

  "Breaking and entering, criminal trespassing, assault, disorderly conduct."

  Mitchell put down the rap sheet and went back to his notes.

  "He then spent time in Michigan's juvenile detention facilities for the next few years, then wound up back in minimum security prison. He got out and came to Wisconsin where it looks like he kept his nose clean for a long time, but he may have just been a bit smarter at this point. According to the prison psychologist he has a fairly high I.Q."

  He set down his notes and placed his hands on the back of the chair in front of him.

  "From there, he was relatively quiet until the indecent exposure charge, for which Harriet Bednarski defended him. However, he may be responsible for two other unsolved murders in Michigan, but that's all confidential until we know more."

  Ray looked around the room.

  "His sister Mary is an elementary school teacher in Rodgers Bay, Michigan. She said she hadn't heard from Joe in almost five years and seemed totally oblivious to what was going on. However, I checked with the minimum security prison Ferkovich was sent to and according to their records, he did receive some letters from her over the course of the three years he was there."

  Everyone in the room seemed to step up their focus.

  "We checked his phone records for the last year and he didn't make any calls that we know of to her."

  Ray straightened up.

  "Comments?" he asked.

  A patrol cop in street clothes spoke up.

  "We've sent Ferkovich's picture to just about every police station in the state, but we've heard nothing so far."

  "Unless he's got a place to hole up here," Ray said, "and it doesn't sound like that's the case, he's got to get the hell out of Dodge. His picture is in all the papers and on the news, and unless he wears sunglasses constantly, that lazy eye of his sticks out like a sore thumb, not to mix metaphors or body parts."

  The ad hoc committee let out a collective chuckle, but one that failed to mask the tension everyone was feeling.

  "He's got to ditch that cookie truck, it's a dead giveaway," said the cop in street clothes, referencing the tip they’d gotten from Ferkovich’s employer.

  "Do you think he'll run to Chicago?" someone asked.

  "He should," said Ray, "but he won't. He knows northern Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan a whole lot better than Chicago, and it will be a helluva lot easier for him to hide up there than down in the big city."

  Ray paced at the front of the room.

  "Besides, some parts of the U.P. are so remote it'd take the National Guard to find him, especially if he knows his way around the woods. And there are a few in the U.P. who hate anything to do with the cops and the government."

  Ray checked his watch.

  "Well, we know this, he'
ll kill again, and the time between his killings is getting shorter. We've got to get him, and get him soon.”

  “He’ll be featured on Nation’s Most Wanted?” someone asked.

  "This week's episode," answered Ray. "Hopefully, we'll have caught him by then but if not, it will certainly put the pressure on him. I’ve reached out to the cops up near his sister’s place and his old stomping grounds. Asked them to keep their eyes and ears open."

  He scooped up his papers and started for the door.

  "All right, I'm going to talk to the chief.”

  Chapter 21

  Joe Ferkovich stood on the small dirt mound next to the dried-out ravine in which the stolen truck now sat.

  He dragged the last scrap of the tin siding material over the top of the truck, which was now completely covered from above, and would look like nothing more than a low-roofed metal storage shed to a helicopter flying overhead.

  Joe had driven from Milwaukee to the U.P. in less than three hours, thanks in no small part to the truck's dual fuel tanks and the fact that Joe hadn't stopped once, opting to piss on the truck's floor rather than risking a stop.

  Under the cover of night, he knew there'd be little chance anyone would spot him, but he knew that come daylight driving around in the cookie truck would be a dead giveaway.

  He'd remembered the way to Jimmy Tomczak's with remarkable clarity considering that it had been years since his last visit.

  Joe stepped off the mound and walked partially up the ravine's bank, taking one last look at the truck.

  If someone actually walked into the ravine, they would be able to see the truck, but the two men were confident no one would be coming here anytime soon.

  "It's Miller Time, baby," said Tomczak, standing at the top of the ravine's bank and wiping the sweat from his forehead with his shirt sleeve.

  The two friends trudged back up the hill, then down the narrow dirt road that ran between an abandoned tractor and a tiller before it swung by the back of the one-story house marked by peeling paint and overgrown weeds.

  Tomczak had purchased the house some fifteen years earlier for a song, even though it came with fifteen acres and was located at the foot of the Porcupine Mountains, about a half hour from Rodgers Bay and the shores of Lake Superior.