by Thomas Laird
And it might not be Franklin. Who knows? Maybe this Hasidim has outstanding warrants on him. Maybe he’s not who I think he is, and then if I pop him, I’ll be in a world of dung.
I’m getting closer. He’s not doing very well in all his bulky clothing, but he doesn’t stop to throw off any of the dead weight he’s wearing. He knows he’s got to reach that lot.
I hear some noise behind us, and I know it must be Lila and her new friends. Some of them will be on foot, and the rest will be in their cars, racing to block off that distant lot.
It’s a quarter block from the parking area—he’s at that juncture, but I’m a football field away from him. It’s difficult getting traction in leather shoes out here on the half inch of newly fallen snow, but I’m managing to move closer.
My heart is thumping. I can feel the pounding of it on my temples, too. I’m breathing out of my nose so I don’t get winded. As I said before, I’m not a great sprinter, but I’m used to finishing the run regardless of how far it is I have to go.
Now I’m about a hundred feet behind him, but he’s approaching his ride, but he hasn’t bee-lined toward any particular car yet.
“Stop!” I yell out. He keeps in stride.
This is where I blow it out, all the stops. I’m in a dead sprint behind him. I’m begging God that I don’t fall. Not now, not after I’ve cut it to twenty feet.
He slips, goes down, and takes a header just five feet before the lot begins.
And then I’m on him. I’m over him. He’s trying to get up, but I shove the barrel in his back.
“Turn over slowly.”
I still have the snout in his back.
“Keep your arms at your sides and keep your hands wide open. Do it!”
He turns over the way I tell him to, and then he lies flat on his backside. It looks like he’s about to make an angel in the snow.
Lila and the troops are about one hundred yards away from us. I hear the shriek of sirens out in the street.
“Put your hands underneath you,” I tell him. He wedges both hands at the small of his back. I stand over him with the pistol pointed at his nose, and with my left hand I pat him down. No hard objects. No weapons.
I reach down and take hold of his beard, and I pull it off. I tear off his hat and throw his glasses on the snow.
“You shouldn’t have worn the Nikes, Franklin,” I tell him.
The CPD coppers make the official arrest, and they handcuff Franklin Toliver and haul him into a cruiser and take off for downtown. He points out his car for us before they drive away. It’s a non-descript Chevy Chevette. Green. One of his favorite colors.
The crime scene specialists arrive in fifteen minutes, and they pop Franklin’s trunk, and lo and behold, they find a hunting knife wrapped in a blanket. They find a sawed-off shotgun in the trunk, as well, and they find rolls of duct tape. The specialists seem optimistic that the knife and the tape were used in the six murders, but there’s no telling until they do a full evaluation.
He’s off the streets, finally, I’m thinking. Lila gives me a hug in spite of all the witnesses to her gesture of endearment.
But I don’t kiss her. That’d be begging for it, I figure. I’m not much for public displays of affection, anyway. I like loving when it is specifically one on one.
He’s cuffed to the ring on the table, and he’s wearing leg irons as well, when Lila and I interview him for the first time, two days later. He has not requested an attorney, but a judge will supply him with one anyway, eventually.
“Your mother hung herself,” I tell him.
He looks at me as if I’d uttered something in Pakistani.
“Did you read about it in the papers?”
He remains silent.
“Your father’s career is in the shit,” I tell him.
He looks at me with a passive stare.
He’s a handsome young man. He favors Raymond, his father.
“And the topper is that you slaughtered six women.”
Still no response.
“It won’t look good for you in court if you don’t show remorse, Franklin.”
“Really?”
He looks bemused.
“Yeah. They’ll oven roast you for sure if you give them this silent shit. Judges don’t like it when you do the psychotic act. Mostly they figure you’d be better off dead.”
“Is that right?”
He’s trying to get a rise out of me, but that’s not how this works. He’s the one facing the hangman, the executioner, not me.
Lila watches him intently, but Franklin won’t lift his gaze from me.
“Would you like to confess? Or would you rather let the jury hear how there was a blood remnant that matches Khala Gibbons’? It’s so hard to tidy up after you cut someone all up, Franklin. And the fibers from the duct tape? It’s amazing what the FBI lab can do to match the tape to the stuff we found on all of the women.”
He smiles faintly, as if he’s bored.
“Doesn’t matter? Is that the way it is?”
The smile becomes broader, much more pleased with itself.
“I’ll be there. Right at the end, right at lights out, Franklin. I’ll be there when you head toward the underworld, my man. You ever read Homer?”
His face goes sober, but he doesn’t say anything.
“You’re one of those few people, Franklin, that when you die, everybody thinks the world is just slightly better, then. We’ll be talking again soon, partner. Have a sparkling afternoon, motherfucker.”
34
It takes a large sized U-Haul truck to get Lila moved in on the weekend after Franklin goes into the slammer. We get about six cops who are willing to help us move Lila in, and Kelly comes home from Northern to join forces with the rest of us. It takes about seven hours to get her stuff inside my house, and then another four, after our copper friends leave, for Lila and Kelly and I to get her stuff arranged as she likes it. What had been a rather Spartan dwelling for my daughter and me now appears a little over-choked. Some of this stuff will have to be discarded, and we’ll need to buy some new stuff to make the house ours instead of just mine and Kelly’s.
Lila is subletting her apartment to a pal of hers that she’s known for a long time. Her girlfriend—she says it was strictly platonic—has been after Lila to let her move in after the flight attendant left. Now her buddy wants the whole thing for herself.
It will be very different for me to cohabitate with someone other than my daughter. It used to be like living alone when Kelly was going through all her “issues.” Only recently has it felt like I was sharing the house with my kid, and now I’ve got something very different going.
I want to marry Lila. I know that her bi-sexuality makes that idea a bit chancey. It could be that she’ll find another woman that she finds desirable, but if she does consent to marriage, it’ll have to be strictly monogamous—just the two of us. That’s one line that stays in the sand. It’s not negotiable. I know it’s the Eighties and that I should be more open-minded, but I’ll never be adaptable to any threesome. It just isn’t in my repertoire.
The subject of marriage has never come up, but I get the idea that our relationship is definitely long term. She’s never given me cause to think this is all just temporary. Christ, the Saturday we moved her in was the second longest day next to D-Day, and I’m not fired up about moving her out, someday.
I’m remembering what my shrink keeps telling me about living in the present instead of dwelling on past rejections and betrayals I’ve experienced. Lila is not Mary, not even a little bit like my ex-wife. I cannot become paranoid about our life together. I have to give it a chance, learn to trust that she’ll be there every day and that I won’t find all her clothes and furniture gone, some night when I come home.
The cops who moved her in are all aware that this arrangement is strictly against Department policy. We’re not supposed to have a partnership in and out of the work place. We’ll be separated as work partners if they ever fi
nd out. The guys who helped us move are all reliable, so again I’ll have to put my trust in someone besides myself.
The first night we’re in bed at our house, we have to curb our enthusiasm because Kelly’s staying here until tomorrow, Sunday, afternoon. She doesn’t need to get an earful of any cooperate howling coming out of either of us. So we have to go slowly and calmly, and I rather like it. Starting on Sunday night, we can go back to our previous primate behavior, which I thoroughly enjoy, also. For the sake of the kid, we’ll keep it down to a low growl, tonight.
We interview Franklin again on Monday morning. He has not shaven, and his face is beginning to resemble that of the Hasidim he posed as, back in Marquette Park.
Lila is seated at the far left of the rectangular slab, and I’m directly opposite Toliver. They’re videotaping the proceedings. Franklin peers up at the camera lens in the corner off to my right.
“You still haven’t hired a lawyer?” I ask him.
He grins at me with his best nutsy grin.
“Your father is hiring one, I’ve heard, however. We could postpone this talk until he’s available, Franklin.”
“I don’t mind talking to you. I mean, I don’t mind talking to her.”
“You remember me from the time you had the two girls in the trunk, don’t you, Franklin,” Lila tells him.
He smiles widely at her.
“That was the time you Molotov-ed the car and fried those last two women. I’m sure you recall, don’t you?”
“I’m sorry. You have me confused with someone else.”
“Come on, Franklin. They already have you, with the knife and the duct tape. Why don’t you just confess and save the State of Illinois a few million bucks? That way you can go make new friends in the joint. You know, those guys you like so well with the teardrop tattoos?”
“They’re not my friends. I don’t have any friends.”
“That’s a shame,” I tell him.
I watch him closely, but he won’t make eye contact with me.
“Were there others, Franklin? It doesn’t matter now if you tell me. They can only execute you once. You might as well tell me who else you did. Maybe they have families who’d like to be put at peace. I don’t figure we’ve got you down for everything you’ve done. You want to tell us how many others there were?”
He looks at me with an entirely blank expression. His eyes are dead, lifeless. The pupils are large and black, like those belonging to a shark. The famous dolls’ eyes. He’s a predator. He has the look of a hunter. It takes you in and sizes you up. He’s calculating what it takes to drain the sap and substance out of you. He’s like a butcher eyeing a steer before he cuts its throat.
He’s figuring what he’d do to the body once the killing’s accomplished.
His hands are shackled to the ring on the table, and his ankle chains are hooked to a ring on the floor. He still seems dangerous, lethal.
“There were no others. You’ve got the wrong man. I’ve never hurt anyone.”
I smile at him, and it begins to agitate him.
“Franklin. Franklin. What interests me is why you have this thing for black women. I know you were interested in some white meat after you did the six black hookers, but that was probably just because the black meat was getting a little too difficult to get close to. You knew we’d see a pattern, and you’re not dumb enough to overplay your hand, right?”
He watches me with his still, dark eyes.
“But if you’d had a choice, you’d still be killing nigger whores, right?”
The word “nigger” makes his face tighten. His eyes narrow upon mine.
“That’s what you call them, isn’t it, Franklin? Niggers?”
He shrugs and sneers.
“What’d they do to piss you off like this? Some black kid steal your fucking lunch money? They have any black kids in those DesPlaines schools?”
“I grew up in the city.”
“You have African Americans in your grade schools? High school?”
He looks down at Lila and grins. Then he turns back to me.
“I don’t remember. It was so long ago.”
“What, they kicked your ass out on the playground? Is that it? Some little pickaninny popped you upside the head and you took it out on those poor, lame women?”
“I didn’t kill anyone. You’ve got the wrong man.”
“We’ll do the research. We’ll find out eventually why you did what you did. But it doesn’t really matter. You killed them, and that’s that. Why you did it is what they call academic. See, it’s for my own edification and education, Franklin. Usually we look for motive before we catch them. Sometimes it helps apprehending asswipes like you. Not always, but sometimes. I just like to understand what went into your skull and made you snuff all those girls.
“Was it because they were prostitutes?”
He shrugs again and sends his eyes against a spot on the wall behind me. I know this interview will be pointless. I know he’ll never admit what he did. He won’t confess. He’ll take it to court with the finest defense attorney his father can afford, and then he’ll hope that twelve honest peers will find him innocent of all the charges. And he might get himself acquitted. It happens, despite all the evidence the prosecution can muster, it happens. It’s true that you never know what a jury’s going to do.
That’s why we go after a confession, even knowing that Franklin hasn’t got it in him to admit what he did.
The new term is “sociopath.” But it’s just an academic term for “asshole.” Because sociopaths, like assholes, are what they are because they’re unaware of what they are, and they do what they do just because they do it.
No, Franklin will never confess. He’ll stonewall us, and he’ll remain mute in the courtroom. He’ll let his lawyer do the pleading, and he believes he’s too clever to meet the executioner, the hangman.
I have to go after him, though. I can’t just let it be up to the judicial branch. If I can get him to confess, then he’ll die in prison or rot there until he does die. If I leave it up to blind justice… As I said, you never know what a jury’ll do.
I look at him, suddenly, and I know what he’s up to. He’ll go for an insanity plea. He’s been to Elgin, and perhaps he rather enjoyed it, telling Dr. Talbot all about his mommy and how he hated her and how she hated him right back. And now he can tell Talbot about all his guilt now that he’s provoked mommy to string herself up in the closet. He can affect a pose about how sad all this makes him, how he’s getting a raw deal because no one has ever taken the time to understand him—except for Jennifer O’Brien, who also betrayed him eventually by getting married to some other man. I’m sure he’ll parade out his pathology, and he’ll let them dope him up with anti-depressants and other wonder drugs. They’ll find the cause of his psychoses, and some fine day—
He’ll get sprung from the mental hospital, and then he can go right back and do his thing, but this time he’ll make no mistakes like the Aryan Nation parade and the black gym shoes, because Franklin Toliver is too clever not to learn from his mistakes.
“No, Franklin. I don’t think you’re crazy. I think you’re evil.”
Lila looks over at me. I can see her concerned look out of the corner of my eye.
“If you had anything of value inside you, you’d tell me what you did, but since you don’t, you won’t. Good luck at the trial, nickeldick.”
“What was that all about?” she asks me as we work the vending machines in the hall outside our offices.
“He’s going to cop insanity. That’s what I’d do if I was his high-priced mouthpiece.”
“But he won’t get it, will he?”
“Did you like his crazy show? The stares and the glares? Maybe he’ll eat his fucking sport coat for the judge and the jury, or maybe he’ll eat one of the jury people.”
“They couldn’t be that lame. Everything he did was premeditated, and premeditation is—“
“The mark of a functioning mind. Crazy dud
es don’t pre-think. They act on impulse, right? We should talk to Fernandez and ask her what chance she thinks he has.”
“What good would that do, Danny?”
“None, I suppose. It’ll be up to those twelve fine citizens. We have blood, we have a knife and we have duct tape. You think that’ll be enough? We’ll never get a confession. I should’ve shot him when he ran.”
“You couldn’t be sure it was him, Danny. Cut it out.”
“Details, details. The devil’s always in the details.”
“He’s not going to get away with it. Our prosecutor is really good. He’s the first string. The newspapers made sure we wouldn’t be throwing any bench-rider at Franklin.”
“His father is the Lieutenant Governor of our fair state. You think he might know a really good criminal lawyer?”
She frowns instead of answering me.
The attorney’s name is Mick Kelly. He’s the second coming of Clarence Darrow, according to the Sun-Times. The Tribune calls him a “great white shark.” I’ve seen Kelly in court, and he is very good. He doesn’t always win, but I’d want him defending me if I whacked six women, or just one. He’s very passionate with his defense. I’ve literally seen him cause male jurors to weep. Kelly does win lots more than he loses.
I thought about going at Toliver one more time, but now that he’s got a lawyer, he’ll be clammed up until the trial begins. Kelly will do all the talking from here on out.
Kirk Radley will not benefit from such an illustrious attorney as Franklin Toliver has hired. Radley has got himself a second tier ambulance chaser. It appears that Kirk has squandered most of his profit on very slow racehorses and on a real lack of talent at high stakes poker.
But his attorney, Kell Skarsland, has convinced him to confess to killing Sharon, and their angle will be irresistible compulsion. In other words, Kirk was temporarily insane when he gutted and hung Mrs. O’Connor from her chandelier. I don’t like Radley’s chances, but those dozen jurors are an unpredictable lot. They are what the scientists call “variables.” You never know what they’ll do or what they’ll believe. That’s why ambulance chasers make the big bucks, if they’re exceptional litigators.