Divine (A Benny Steel Novel)

by Steven Grosso

  Steel reclined in his computer chair and whirled around a few times, chewing a blue pen cap until it cracked, tasting sour ink residue, the plastic scratching the surface of his tongue and cutting the roof of his mouth. He tasted blood, and it was symbolic of his anxiousness to catch Kevin Johnson before he’d strike again. He glanced at the clock and it read 6 A.M. He’d left Marisa sleeping at home about an hour prior without waking her. On nights he couldn’t sleep, he often went into work early, to get a jump on his day, especially during a case like the one lain out in front of him on his desktop.

  The office was quiet and all the other detectives in his unit were out working or home preparing to come into work. He slid in his chair away from his cubicle and stared through the glass cutout next to Lieutenant Detective Williams’ door and out through the window on the back wall that led to the city. The atmosphere outside the office was pitch-black and lonely, the lighting inside low, the quietness as if Steel was all by himself and had God’s ear. And he noticed powdery flakes glowing and streaming by a street lamp directly outside the window. More snow, he thought, the last storm just melted. He was about to pray but the precipitation distracted him.

  He spun in his seat, glided back toward his desk, and sipped his coffee. The cool liquid was in the process of turning cold and tasted acidic and oily and greasy milk formed a layer over the light brown coffee. He frowned and tossed back one big gulp. His Apple’s apple bobbed and the cold, stale bean residue left a bitter aftertaste. He stuck out his tongue and mouthed the words “Ahhhh,” and shook his head hard and squeezed his eyes shut.

  He yawned and rubbed his chapped hands together. “All right…let’s get to work here,” he mumbled to himself, smelling his coffee-breath as he said it.

  After snatching a yellow legal pad off a shelf above the desktop, he gripped a BIC pen between his thumb and first two fingers and pulled it from the plastic silver cup holder to his right. The side of his hand and pen tip hit the paper and he wrote SUSPECTS in large letters across the top. Next he wrote:

  1) Kevin Johnson

  2) Jonathan Herns

  3) John Fratt (because I don’t like or trust him/something fishy about him)

  Afterwards, he circled Kevin Johnson twice, one bubble overlapping the other. He would like to bring them all in for DNA samples but knew he needed some type of evidence. He couldn’t go solely on guesswork. Police work didn’t go like that. He needed something concrete. He glared at his mouse pad and chewed the pen again, thinking that the murders were related. They had to be. Who’d kill a mother and daughter for no apparent reason? Had to be someone they knew. Had to be someone close. Had to be Kevin Johnson. He clenched his jaw and its sharp bone tightened against his skin. He pounded the desktop with a fist. “Fucking prick. Punk. Kill women. How could you…”

  He stopped himself. He thought how he was mostly angry at himself for not being able to track down Kevin. He wanted something to give on this case—and wanted it now—didn’t want to wait. And when he couldn’t get what he wanted right then and there, his first instinct was anger, had a tough time deciding whether to punch a wall, throw a stack of papers, or kick something.

  He tossed the legal pad to his left, nearly knocking over his coffee mug, and watched the glass base shake and jiggle. He snatched a handful of papers from under the mug and wiped off a wet ring that the cup had left. The top page was Jeanette Jones’s police report. He scanned the cause of death: manual strangulation. He rubbed his own neck as if imagining dying that way. Forensics had stated that the sheer force and grip to the victim’s neck had caused her to suffocate, had cause her eyeballs to pop from the socket. Hatred and anger had to play a role, he knew. He flipped over that file, opened another manila folder and scanned the ballistics tests that indicated a 9mm, which he had known already, but he read it anyway. He thought and tried to notice any similarities between the murders, but couldn’t, other than the fact that they were mother and daughter and that each had been snuck up on outside of, and in, the same apartment.

  Steel picked up the entire stack of papers and banged them against the desk before tossing them aside. Being a detective was something he couldn’t explain to people when they’d ask him about his job. There was both a helpful and helpless quality to it. When there wasn’t anything he could do with a case, when it went completely cold, he felt like the biggest piece of shit on the planet, as if his stomach was constantly nauseated and nervous, a tense, cold sensation deep in his abdomen, knowing he had failed and that many people would suffer because of his shortcomings. Cold cases weighed his mind down more than the worst migraine, the worst depression. But when he solved a case he felt as though he could wrestle a tiger with his bare hands and win, pin that fucker down and hold it in place, all six hundred pounds of it. He couldn’t articulate that feeling or the high it gave him, only that he understood the true meaning of the word “power” in moments like that, moments where he knew he’d stopped evil from spreading, where he knew he’d done his job. He felt like the greatest man on the planet, something 9 to 5ers couldn’t understand when he’d tell them.

  By the time he finally turned on his computer and watched the monitor blink twice before asking for his log-in information, it was just past 7:30 A.M. He figured Marisa would be in soon and was already preparing apologetic words in his head for why he hadn’t woken her when he left that morning. He knew that exchange would be more grueling than the entire investigation. I better go get another cup of coffee, he thought. It could be a long morning.

  26

  W

  hen he reached his desk, coming from the kitchen for a caffeine jolt, the phone rang and buzzed in the quiet office. He flinched and nearly spilled some of the steamy brown liquid over the sides and down his Philadelphia Phillies coffee mug. He bent his forearm at the elbow and eased the cup onto the desktop with a shaky hand, and plopped down. The seat shook from his weight. He glanced at the lit-up green box displaying a number he didn’t recognize.

  “Detective Steel,” he said and looked at the freshly-poured coffee swirling in the cup, saw steam rising from the edges until the vapor blended into the air.

  “Why, why…Detective Steel…it’s been a while,” a woman said.

  “Amy…Miller,” Steel said.

  “Benjamin Steel.” She giggled.

  Steel reminisced for a few seconds about that giggle and thought about the Amy Miller he knew for roughly five years now. She was the lead investigative reporter for the Daily News. Steel knew what this call was about. At least he hoped it was about the case and not her trying to find closure on their dating history. He had ducked her many times since their break-up to avoid that conversation. They’d dated a few years ago but Steel had stopped calling her after the second month, just stopped without an explanation, disappeared. She had left him several messages but he never responded. After that, they’d see each other from time to time in passing but always acted as if they never even had a relationship. Amy was weird, a bit of an idealist, and independent, much like him. She had a sense of humor, was witty, and had a sharp mind. She was thirty-two, blonde hair and light blue eyes, and her smile always lit up her face, could electrify an entire room. She was semi-attractive, not the best looking woman, average at best, but there was something about her, a unique and likeable quality, maybe her ambition and the way she would devour every opportunity that came her way in life. She was always on the move, never sat back and waited. And Steel had overlooked her appearance for her personality, for her outgoing, go-getter attitude. She had lured him in at the time. But she had her demons, her flaws, sank into deeper depressions than Steel because she never felt relevant, as if her career as a reporter in a city instead of working for a national news network was never good enough, or that she hadn’t reached her potential or goals for her age. But Steel had a tendency to favor those who had flaws. People who tried too hard to appear perfect, who never shared their inner pains, weren’t interesting or real to him. He found beauty in people with im
perfections. He always liked the way she talked with confidence in her voice, not overconfidence, but fully knowing that you couldn’t compete with her intellectually, that she’d slaughter you with her words. She’d beaten Steel in many intellectual jousts over the years, but he never revealed his defeat, too much pride of his own. He’d just play it off like silence was golden and held all the answers in lieu of explaining it to people who didn’t understand. But that wasn’t the case. She always stumped him. It bothered him. And her calling him now, at this moment, he knew it was about the case. He’d better get his chess-mind ready because she’d have hers, for sure, thinking at least three moves ahead, ready to checkmate his king, and early.

  “A bit early to hear from you, Amy.”

  “I could say the same. I was planning on leaving you a message. What’re you working on, Ben?”

  He chuckled. “My hair. I can’t seem to get it to stay back anymore…it’s thinning out a little.”

  She laughed into the receiver and the vibrations buzzed his eardrum. His face reddened and he smiled.

  “Riiiight, right, your hair,” she said, “you know why I’m calling you?”

  “Refresh me.”

  “Starts with a D. Ends with a J.”

  “Look, it’s too early in the investigation. I can’t give you anything.”

  “Just give me your suspects. Is it a serial, vendetta, drug-related? Give me something.”

  “Can’t do it. Can’t jeopardize the investigation. You know that—”

  “Ben,” she said, cutting him off, “I need a story here. We’ve got bloggers kicking our asses on this thing. We have nothing for the people. Murder of a mother and daughter and our police can’t give the public anything.”

  He cleared his throat, twirled the cord between his fingers.

  She mimicked him by clearing her own throat.

  He ran a hand across his forehead and cradled the phone between his ear and shoulder, took a sip of coffee, wiped his mouth with a finger. “I give you something, and it’s twisted and sensationalized by this afternoon. Then we’ll have a bigger problem,” he said and chuckled sharply, hard.

  He instantly regretted the tone of his words, sounded more critical than he’d intended.

  Amy spoke firmly, loudly, “Don’t you dare try to impugn the integrity of my work. Like you’re so high and mighty. Give me a break, Ben.”

  “Not questioning your integr—”

  She interrupted, “You and your ‘brotherhood’ of police officers…like you’re so perfect. Like the police reports you file are always accurate and exactly how things happened. Like you power-hungry officers of the law…” She sighed hard into the receiver. “…or whatever you want to call yourselves, always follow procedure when arresting a suspect, always play by the rules. I saw those YouTube videos last year of those cops punching teenagers in the mouth for being out past curfew. Like your brothers and sisters of law enforcement don’t shut their mouths for a kickback, or feed false information to reporters to protect their own asses. You know the old saying, ‘Only difference between a cop and a criminal is the badge.’ So don’t you dare give me that crap about dishonesty.”

  Steel whistled for a second. “You finished?”

  “Yeah.” She inhaled for about thirty seconds before exhaling. “Sorry, but you pissed me off.”

  “No worries,” Steel said, shaking his head, smirking, but the smirk more from resentment than pleasure. He knew she was upset, probably stressed out with work. He’d seen her stress-free, and it was a one-eighty. She’d laugh and joke around. He knew people were at their best when totally relaxed, unstressed. That’s how you find the true person under their hardened exterior—their true self is revealed—the kid inside comes out to play.

  There was a moment of silence.

  During that time, Steel thought of her assessment of the police department and felt some of it was accurate, although it was grossly exaggerated and cliché. Truth was, no agency or organization was perfect. Everything had flaws. Life itself was flawed. But he knew without the police the city would be chaos. Steel understood that citizens knew they needed police. They knew the city would be ruthless and crazy without them, but for some reason, still held disdain for the department, acted as if they were the enemy. Probably was that people don’t like authority, don’t like to be told what they can and can’t do. But he couldn’t overlook the fact that sometimes it seemed as though the police department couldn’t care less about him. At times, when he had worked patrol, he just wanted to answer his radio and not do extra work, fuck getting the medals. If he was shot and killed, they’d give him a ceremony and say how nice he was and that he was a great officer. But every once and a while he felt as though they didn’t give a shit about him. He’d get called into Internal Affairs for petty things, for doing his job the right way. He tried his best to be a good cop, to be one of the good guys, but it was a struggle. If you didn’t work for the right unit, or were under the lead of an officer who only took the job to carry a gun and have power over people and not to enforce the law, or worked under a dirty officer and attempted to do the right thing, you were fucked. They’d work like hell to ruin your career, to stop you from threatening their power. Steel was always glad he worked under an honest guy, Lieutenant Williams. But even he had to put up with the nonsense at times. Most of it was political bullshit and power-struggles within the department for ego.

  “Ben,” she said.

  “Yeah?”

  “I wouldn’t fully go the boyfriend route.”

  Steel snorted a short laugh. “You know about the boyfriend?”

  “Hey, I’m an investigative journalist, and I have reported on too many murders to know that it’s not always the most obvious.”

  “Well, I’m a detective and have worked too many cases that turned out to be the most obvious suspect, and that’s where I’m at in this investigation, he’s my guy now.” Steel scrunched his face and shook his head, laughed for a second. “Set me up, didn’t ya? If you use it in the paper, just say we’re looking in to him, but mention that he’s not a top suspect. We can’t find him. Maybe that’ll make him make contact, if he thinks he’s in the clear.”

  She laughed but lowly. “Works every time. Men, go after their egos and intelligence, and they’ll show their cards.”

  He laughed again, but a long silence occurred.

  Then she spoke softly. Steel could barely hear her. “Let me ask you something, Ben.”

  “Yeah.”

  “How come it never worked out between us, between you and me?”

  He glanced away if she were in front of him and could see his face reddening, embarrassed that he’d never given her closure before this question. The heat under his skin reminded him of his shame.

  “I guess it was that we’re both contentious people at times. We both get depressed. Wouldn’t have worked. And it was more me not being able to commit myself to someone back then and less about you.”

  “I see,” she said. “So it wasn’t the sex?”

  He laughed and held a smirk after the laughter had no sound. “The sex? Why would it have been the sex?”

  “Just messing with you, the sex was goooood,” she said, her voice low and slow, like a woman talking to a lonely guy on a hotline.

  Steel’s crotch heated a bit and his stomach flipped. He got a little turned-on before he remembered he was engaged.

  “Hey, Ben.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Give it another shot? You and me?”

  “I’m actually engaged now, Amy.”

  “That’s a shame because I would have rocked your world.”

  Every muscle in his body tensed, had that wrestling-a-tiger-feeling, but he didn’t answer.

  She giggled and hung up, and he wanted to hear her high-pitched giggle just a few more seconds, but the phone cut off.

  He pondered if the married life was for him and what he was giving up for it, pictured Amy’s naked body on top of his own, her small breasts b
ouncing in front of his face, his hands wrapped around her waist and gliding over her skin, her rocking his world, but glanced down at a picture of him and Marisa on his desk—his world right there in a 6x9 picture frame. Life and its choice were hard. And the woman with the water balloons and Amy weren’t making it any easier. He guessed he was finally, after thirty-three years, becoming an adult. He shook his head and got back to work, hoped Amy would write a fair story in the paper.

  27

  “I

  appreciate you comin’da meet me here under the circumstances,” Kevin Johnson said.

  The man walking beside him said nothing.

  Kevin turned his head right, left, his eyes large and darting and frightened. His fingers trembled and his footsteps were jumpy like a pack of kids stepping into a graveyard with rumors of ghosts who come alive. “I don’t know where to go anymore,” he said, “I got the cops lookin’ for me. I don’t feel like dealin’ with all that.”

  The man locked eyes with Kevin. “Understood.”

  The two men ducked into the back of a random run-down bar in the Northeast Philadelphia neighborhood they had decided to meet in. The slow lyrical yearnings and whines of R&B music played in the background, but quietly, deep pitches of voices crying out for love over light strumming of guitars, but one only heard the tunes if they stopped talking and focused on the muffled speakers. A few men in their forties sat at the end of the bar. The rough, tough-looking guys all had receding hairlines, old, worn, hairy, tattooed forearms, crow’s feet aside their droopy, depressed eyes, and hard, leathery faces that were worn and wary but one could tell had been young and handsome and cool years ago. And all drank in silence, their heads tilted upward at the small flat-screen television on the wall, hoping the liquor would recreate a youthful buzz when life was good or erase the reality of present despair through an alcoholic fog. The TV was set on ESPN and was the nicest item in the dimly light bar that seven or eight dinged-up wooden stools sat, each of which a foot apart and in front of a chipped mahogany countertop. Stale beer stained the top of the wood, next to a silver handle for the tap. The dried circles of sticky golden liquid on the counter meshed with deep-fryer grease from a small Styrofoam container of French Fries behind the bar and the scent swarmed the air. More food containers were just in front of rows of clear, green and brown bottles of liquor stacked against a mirror, a crack webbed in the lower right corner of the glass. An old pool table stretched across the back of the room. Red, blue and yellow cue balls rolled across the green cloth top, along with the black eight ball, as two fat, bald men chalked their pool stick tops and finished up a game. The air suddenly reeked of cigarette smoke as one of the guys in a black Jeff Cap at the end of the bar lit a Marlboro and puffed gray clouds into the air. The rough stench of burning tobacco broke from the clouds and spread throughout like fog.