Sex and Murder.com

by Zubro, Mark Richard

  “What pool?” Turner asked.

  “They tried to keep it a secret. Based on the detectives who work in this building, they’re taking odds on which of them is most likely to be murdered by this serial killer.”

  “Isn’t that a little premature?” Turner said. “If not downright macabre.”

  “Who’s the betting favorite?” Fenwick asked.

  “You,” Carruthers said.

  “I’m honored. This must mean they think I’m the best detective on the squad.”

  “Turner has much worse odds. Only a few guys are taking bets on him.”

  Turner said, “It could mean they don’t like you, Buck.”

  “Kindly, little old me?” Fenwick asked. “I’m sweet. I’m friendly. I bring them chocolate for Christmas. I’m the best at making cute-corpse comments. What’s not to like?”

  “It’s the jokes,” Turner said. “The serial killer is actually a saint who wants to eliminate hideous puns from the face of the earth. Can this be a completely bad thing?”

  “No one appreciates a true artiste of humor.”

  “Perhaps we haven’t met one,” Turner said.

  Fenwick pronounced his most recent, favorite, oftrepeated malediction. “May the next corpse we meet piss in your fur-lined jockstrap.”

  Carruthers said, “I don’t think it’s the humor. I think they don’t like you because you push too hard. You’re too mean to them. You ignore them. You make too many demands. You criticize them too much. You—”

  Fenwick interrupted. “Is this their opinion or yours?”

  Carruthers paused in his declamation. He licked his lips and glanced around the room. His insecurity in the face of Fenwick’s blatantly aggressive personality was palpable. Finally he said, “I’m just telling you what I’ve heard them say.”

  “You mean they confide in you?” Fenwick asked.

  “I’m the one who knew you were their odds-on favorite to be the one the killer picked as the next victim.”

  Fenwick looked at Turner. His partner shrugged.

  Carruthers said, “If you wanted, I think they’d let you guys get in on the pool.”

  Fenwick said, “I wonder if I dare bet against myself.”

  “Thanks for the news, Randy,” Turner said. “We’ll check it out when we get time.” The attempted dismissal didn’t work.

  Carruthers leaned closer to their desks. He whispered, “There’s real news.” His voice had lost its usual timbre, that of a nose whistle being abused. “Rumor is the police board is going to fire Devonshire and Smythe.”

  Ashley Devonshire and Dwayne Smythe were the newest detectives in Area Ten. They’d started as superior know-it-alls, moved on to spiteful envy as most of the others in the squad got more arrests and convictions, and finally graduated to murky scandal blending into abject horror. Late on a dank and foggy night, they had encountered what they had thought was an armed rapist. Both had fired their guns. It turned out they were confronting a twelve-year-old in a wheelchair. They claimed a gleam from the metal on the chair arm had looked like the barrel of a gun. As usual, an immediate investigation had taken place. Rumors of a cover-up persisted. Debate on cable television and talk-show radio continued as to responsibility and blame. Protests in the community, the newspapers, and on every newscast covering the Devonshire/Smythe shooting had been loud, insistent, and incessant.

  There is always an immediate investigation whenever a Chicago police officer discharges a firearm. Immediate, as in before the officer goes home. Representatives of the superintendent’s office, the District, and Area officials, all converge to make a report within hours. Turner had heard of some commanders who insisted that the police look good on any report but he’d never run into the problem.

  Devonshire and Smythe were disliked differently than Carruthers. The cops in Area Ten had worked with Carruthers for years. It was like the old Bob Hope line to Dorothy Lamour in one of the On the Road pictures, “I want you, I need you, I’m used to you.” Carruthers might be a fool, but he was a familiar fool.

  Turner didn’t believe that Devonshire and Smythe would deliberately kill or harm a kid. He did believe that their misplaced aggressiveness and overzealous ambition had led to a lapse in judgment. Turner knew police work involved a lot of quick thinking. Those who were best at juggling the needs of the community, the law, and their own conscience were generally the best cops. At some point, most cops pushed the limits of their job.

  Fenwick was an excellent example of the delicate balance policework often involved. He might be able to do a “bad cop” routine better than anyone else, but he never went over the line to abuse. His decisions were always considered. Devonshire and Smythe were foolishly ambitious and willing to push any situation for any advantage for themselves: either with coworkers, superiors, or their reputations on the streets. It had caught up with them in a dramatic, career threatening, and possibly criminal way. Turner thought maybe the two detectives should lose their jobs.

  If the boy died, Turner knew the situation could turn from a nightmare to a disaster. His sympathy lay with the parents. Turner’s son Jeff was confined to a wheelchair, so he knew the problems of a disabled child first hand.

  The newest rumor Turner and Fenwick had heard that morning, from a far more reliable source than Carruthers, had been that several of the arrests that Devonshire and Smythe had made in a high profile drug bust were under review. There was suspicion that they had doctored their paperwork on the case. Another rumor, from a less reliable source, claimed that all their arrest records were under review. Turner knew for sure that the lieutenant in charge of signing off on their cases was furious at them, and over the past few months had continuously sent back paperwork and even refused to approve several of the arrests. Devonshire and Smythe had made the monumentally stupid mistake of trying to bypass him in the chain of command. Besides the inherent impossibility of this leading to anything positive for them, it was an extremely poor choice of behavior in any bureaucracy, especially the Chicago Police Department.

  “You gossip central around here now?” Fenwick asked.

  “I know what I know,” Carruthers said.

  “You’ve spread plenty of rumors in the past that turned out to be bullshit,” Fenwick said. “Even more often you have what you claim to be facts that turn out to be crap later on.”

  “I do not.”

  “Yeah, you do. You’re stupid. What about the time you claimed for sure there was going to be a change in the pension law for cops? There was no change. There was never any plan for a change. Did you just make it up, or did you take a stupid pill that day?”

  Carruthers’ face screwed up as if he was being given a wedgie with a cast-iron pair of briefs that was already two sizes too small.

  Turner asked, “Who’s the source for the rumor?”

  “I got it from my clout down at City Hall. It’s all over my area of the city.”

  Generally, Turner felt at one with cops who were in trouble. Dealing with the public in mostly negative situations was not designed to be a warm and fuzzy experience. Nor was handling criminal perpetrators geared to make you a believer in the milk of human kindness, which, as Fenwick often put it, got curdled pretty quick in their line of work. Or as Turner remembered Fenwick’s comments—which included an image he wished was more forgettable—“Curdled more quickly than a carton of milk left between the thighs of a dead whore lying on an asphalt parking lot on a hot July afternoon.”

  Turner didn’t like incompetent fools screwing up police work. Cops had a tough enough image problem without the assholes on the force being showcased on the evening news. He doubted if Devonshire and Smythe would ever be back in Area Ten. The immediate impact on him was that the squad was shorthanded. This had meant more overtime recently. Supposedly two replacement detectives were showing up soon, which in police parlance could be in five minutes, five days, five weeks, five months, or five years.

  “We’re planning a defense fund benefit for the two of t
hem,” Carruthers said. “You guys going to come?” Turner thought it was more than typical for Carruthers to be the one rallying around those who were proving to be even more incompetent than he.

  “When is it?” Fenwick asked.

  “A week from tomorrow.”

  “We’re taking our kids to a Bulls game that day.” Turner and Fenwick had gotten tickets to a game for a family outing. Without a championship in sight, it had been easy to garner reasonably decent seats, but at a still-atrocious price.

  “You should try and stop by,” Carruthers said.

  “Won’t be able to,” Fenwick said. He picked up some paperwork and returned to pointedly ignoring Carruthers. Turner did the same. Their disinterest finally sank in. Carruthers then did what he did so well: he drifted away to find someone else to talk to.

  “You’re not going to the benefit?” Turner asked.

  Fenwick glanced around. As blusteringly assertive and self-confident as he was, he still didn’t want to risk the rumor getting around that he or Turner weren’t one hundred percent behind one of their own. He said, “Incompetent assholes of the universe unite. I won’t be party to bullshit.”

  “Got that right,” Turner said.

  Commander Drew Molton strode into the room. Arriving at their workstation, he perched his butt on the corner of Fenwick’s desk. No one else in the entire squad dared be so forward. Fenwick might squirm each second his commander took the liberty, but even Fenwick didn’t have the nerve to tell his boss to get his butt off his desk.

  Fenwick said, “We’ve got a hot rumor from a source I would never reveal—Carruthers—to the effect that Devonshire and Smythe are going to be fired. You know anything about it?”

  “I know the investigation is on-going. I heard the board isn’t scheduled to release their decision for weeks yet. The kid they shot has recovered almost as much mobility as he had before the shooting. Whether or not he fully recovers, they’re in huge trouble. I think their case has nothing to do with the rest of us, except as an object lesson to people like Carruthers who wouldn’t catch on if great flaming dragons came down from heaven and told him how to do his job better.”

  “The great flaming dragons thing is way overrated,” Turner said. “Just last week they were wrong about several things.”

  Fenwick said, “They never told me they visited you. You never told me they visited you.”

  Turner said, “Maybe you’re losing your touch.”

  Molton said, “I hate to interrupt great flaming fantasies and delicious rumors of impending doom for cops in this city, but we’ve actually got real work to do. The killers in the city have not paused to appreciate the humor, the dragons, or the intricacies of police bureaucracy.”

  “Good for them,” Fenwick said.

  Turner mentioned the chocolate and the message on his computer screen.

  “Get them checked out,” Molton said. “How’s the Lenzati case going?” he asked.

  “A few computer leads,” Turner said. He filled the commander in.

  “Not much,” Molton said when Turner finished.

  Turner handed him the coded gibberish.

  “What’s this?” Molton asked.

  Fenwick said, “Secret plans to conquer the world? A long hidden map showing the way to the lost treasure of the Incas?”

  Turner said, “It’s a little late for feeble attempts at humor.”

  “Feeble!?” Fenwick exclaimed.

  “Feeble,” Molton declared. “Get on with it,” he said, and walked away.

  In the middle of their paperwork, Micetic showed up.

  “Did you find out anything yet on Lenzati’s computer?”

  “No. I was taking a break and decided to stop over to check on your computer message problem.”

  Micetic sat at Turner’s desk for several minutes and typed at the keys. “You leave this thing logged on?” Micetic asked.

  “Usually.”

  “Don’t from now on. Somebody got into your machine. I think I got rid of all the bugs. You need to turn the machine off when you aren’t using it.” He left.

  On their way out Fenwick marched up to the front desk. Turner followed. Dan Leary, the cop on duty, gave them a wary look. Leary had been a cop for thirty-five years, and had a gut that bespoke of more donuts than you could shake a cliché at.

  Fenwick said, “I’d like to get in on the pool.”

  “What pool?” Leary asked.

  “The one about which of the detectives is going to be the next target of the serial killer.”

  Leary looked confused. “I haven’t heard about any pool. Don’t you do all of them?”

  “You can tell me,” Fenwick said. “I’m not offended.”

  A couple of the other beat cops on duty joined the discussion. One said, “Nobody would organize that kind of pool. It’s sick.”

  Turner said, “Carruthers told us there was one.”

  “Maybe he made it up,” Leary said.

  “Why?” Turner asked.

  Leary said, “I don’t want to intrude on detective business, but maybe he thought it was funny, or maybe he was trying to get back at you. There is no pool.”

  “Oh,” Fenwick said.

  Once out the door Fenwick asked, “You really think there isn’t a pool?”

  “Would they lie to the two most perceptive and well-loved detectives on the force?” Turner asked.

  Fenwick said, “We could find out whoever that is and ask them to come over and talk to the desk detail.”

  Turner responded, “I think the idea that Carruthers pulled the wool over your eyes would bother you more than if they really did have a pool on which of us might die.”

  “I’ll have to find a corpse and have it piss in Carruthers’ underwear.”

  “The guy’s working up some nerve, which isn’t necessarily all bad.”

  “I don’t want him working up nerve near me,” Fenwick said.

  “I don’t want him working near me, period,” Turner answered.

  8

  Cop hangouts are the best. It’s easy to find them if you’re methodical. Just be around when the last shift of an evening goes off duty. You might follow a few home to their faithful spouses, but eventually you’ll follow one to a cop hangout. You’ve got to be careful about going into them. There’s nothing like cops for being suspicious. You pick times when you know the hangout will be crowded. You sit near a group, but not too close. You never, ever look at any of the potential victims directly. There’s a lot of rough camaraderie. I love listening to them, knowing one of them is going to die.

  Paul Turner opened his front door a little after eight-thirty. On the couch in the living room sat a scrawny teenager dressed in baggy black pants, a baggy gray sweatshirt, and torn black sneakers. His gelled-back hair was dyed maroon on top and cut razor-short on the sides. His beard stubble was almost longer than the hair between his ears and the mass on the top. He was watching a college basketball game on ESPN, and barely glanced up as Paul nodded in his direction.

  His youngest son, Jeff, called a brief hello. He was curled in his wheelchair next to the front window. He was rereading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone for the third time. Like hordes of other kids, Jeff had abandoned his computer for the Potter books. Paul was glad the boy now spent fewer hours immersed in playing games in which the goal was to defeat vast hordes of evildoers as quickly as possible. Paul had picked up the first book in the series one night when he was sitting up with Jeff when the boy was sick. He’d become as enthralled as his son. It wasn’t something he was about to tell Fenwick, but he was eager to get the time to read the next book in the series.

  Paul found Ben at the kitchen table reading a new issue of Bludgeoning Computers. It was an underground satire magazine designed for those frustrated from failed attempts to use their computers—the fastest-growing segment of the population.

  They kissed and hugged hello. Paul enjoyed his lover’s aftershave and thought of how good it would be to go immediately
to bed next to that warmth and good feeling. He was tired and wanted nothing more than to be entangled in those masculine arms.

  “I called earlier,” Paul said.

  “We went out for steak. Brian is now on a high protein diet.”

  “Which sports star claimed that was the be-all and end-all?”

  “Does it make a difference?”

  “I suppose not.” Paul said, “Thanks for the chocolate.”

  “What chocolate?”

  “I found a package addressed to me on my desk. It didn’t have a return address on it. I assumed it was from you, or at least I had hoped it was.”

  “You opened a package without a return address or name on it?”

  “It was a tiny thing, barely big enough for a small piece of buttercream chocolate. I didn’t open it. I sent it to the lab for analysis.”

  “Be careful.”

  “I’m always careful. It wasn’t from you?”

  “If I wanted to give you chocolate as a surprise, I wouldn’t be shy about admitting it afterwards.”

  Paul shrugged then asked, “Why is there a surly, uncommunicative teenager, not my own, sitting on my living room couch?”

  “Kid’s name is Andy Wycliff. He’s got a heavier beard than half the daddies in a leather bar. He’s another one of Brian’s school projects.”

  “The kid is a ‘project’? Would that be science, social studies, literature, calculus, or what?”

  “Or what. Brian’s in that peer helper group. You know, they help out kids in crisis or who transfer to the high school after the beginning of the year. Brian says this kid has all kinds of problems adjusting, so he came to their group for help. Brian offered to take him to the poetry reading tonight. He has that literary assignment.”

  “Nuts,” Turner said. “I thought about the reading earlier today, but then I forgot all about it, and I promised I’d go.”

  Brian’s assignment was not the reason Paul felt compelled to attend the poetry reading. Several weeks ago Paul had run into an old friend, Trevor Endamire, from his police academy days, who had tried to convince him to come to the gay police officers’ meetings. Trevor and Paul had grown up in the same neighborhood. Paul had begged off because he wasn’t much of a joiner. The guy had then explained about the poetry reading. It was not a gay group, but a bunch of cops who met once a month in the basement of a shop which sold a mixture of new age, cabalistic, and holistic health food items. The meeting place was half a block from the Eighteenth District police station on Chicago Avenue on the near north side.