by Josh Cook
Trike whistled two lines from “En Cuba” softly as he strolled back to the punch bowl, ostensibly to meet Lola. The introduction went better than could have been hoped, but what Dave interpreted as an effort to make amends for earlier transgressions was just the result of Trike’s brain spending a good chunk of itself worrying about Lola.
Whenever he tried to divert the effort with a calculus problem or topical conundrum it returned to that crushing line from The Maltese Falcon: “If they hang you, I’ll always remember you.”
He poured himself a cup of that red excuse for a beverage. Looked over at the bathroom with two minds, one hoping to see Lola, the other hoping to not. He swept his attention across the rest of the Ball not looking for anything, just open and active. He observed the strangest phenomenon he’d observed in six years, ten months, one week, five days, and eighteen hours.
People were dancing.
The dance floor was full. While Trike half-suffered through an introduction only Dave wanted made, the Ball was infused with the reckless joy of a wedding reception. Trike’s attempt to smile was not successful, but he kept the resultant grimace on his mottled face for a moment before letting it fall back to standard. A primal being deep in the recesses of Trike’s brain mouthed the words “I’ll be gone in a day or two.” A vague emotion wafted out of the massive affront to human movement, some mixture of relief and release. It was like hearing that the brake job on your car would cost half as much as you feared.
Trike knew exactly when Spade knew who killed Archer. His life was defined by knowing those things. And knowing things only he could know. And then bringing those things out in a way that society found actionable. Sometimes he was thanked. Sometimes he wasn’t. Sometimes he knew more about Charles Pierce than he knew about anybody or anything.
Then the fire alarm went off.
Trike didn’t know a damn thing about the dancing.
Most of the dancers threw up their hands. A collective, “Wouldn’t you know it, just when we started having a good time.” But they’d all gone to school. They filed out in a reasonable approximation of the order that teachers and principals had instructed them to aspire to. Trike stood at the punch bowl while they flowed by, looking for distinctive faces. All faces are distinctive, but in this case, they didn’t distinguish themselves the way Trike had hoped. Even spotting Spoiled Pear didn’t tell him anything he didn’t already know.
Max appeared at Trike’s side. He put his hand on Trike’s shoulder. “Come on, boss,” he said, “time to go.”
Trike didn’t look at him. “Sure thing, Max. Let’s pick up some wings and soda on the way to the office. I’m starving.”
“You got it, boss.”
“Strange thing, Max.”
“Unassailable truth … any thoughts?”
“You could offer me three billion dollars for a purple elephant, but what in the hell would that mean?”
Max shook his head. “Ask myself that … all the time.”
They merged with the end of the crowd and rilled out of the Ball.
INTERLUDE THE MYSTERIOUS SPARK: A HORN-RIMS CASE
The Proces-Verbal was a hip nightclub on Woodstock between Nero and Fox with a narrow alley between it and an old apartment building that had a drinking hole called The Yard on the ground floor and nothing else.
Rain again. Washed away the DNA evidence. If there was any.
Horn-Rims sipped from a Styrofoam cup of cold convenience-store coffee. Sitting in his squad car. Staring into the alley.
The ambulance drove away over an hour ago. Could’ve been a mail truck for all it mattered. Renee Faralizq was dead hours before anybody showed up.
Beaten to death. Savagely beaten to death. Head trauma. Four broken ribs. Two broken arms. One leg broken in three places. Twenty-two broken bones in all. Horn-Rims wasn’t a coroner, but he’d seen enough internal bleeding and massive organ damage to know Renee had a dose of those too.
It was the kind of beating that required a tool. Two-by-four. Metal pipe. Baseball bat. Cricket bat, if the appropriate nationalities were around. Anything long and heavy. Any of a dozen or so objects in the surrounding Dumpsters. And evidence of sexual assault, if you trust the way dresses rip and wrists bruise.
Short black dress, matching high heels, and an array of bracelets, necklaces, and rings. Renee was done up for the evening, and why not, she was a pretty girl at a nightclub on a Saturday night.
They found the purse next to the body. A ticket stub told them she’d been to Proces-Verbal. Eighty-seven dollars in cash told them it wasn’t a robbery. The stats, the cash, and the hickey told Horn-Rims she most likely knew her attacker. Probably even liked him.
But something had gone wrong. You wouldn’t think something could go wrong in a sexual assault/murder, but something went wrong here. Horribly, horribly wrong.
The Man with the Facts sat in the passenger seat, also looking straight ahead into the alley. He had an earpiece plugged into the radio. He was transcribing the statements from Renee’s friends without looking down at his notebook. There was a break in the relay.
The Man with the Facts took out his earpiece and, without turning, said, “All testimony from friends congeals into this single narrative: Renee was with her cadre of female friends for the entire evening, enjoying what three of her friends identified as ‘girls’ night out,’ until she went to the bathroom alone and then was not seen again until her body was recovered. After a span of time, delineated by her friends in the range of thirty to forty-five minutes, they went looking for her. When she was not found in the bathroom or anywhere else in the club, they concluded that Renee had gone home. None of her companions was worried, as Renee had a strict curfew and was, as one of them explained, ‘weird about getting in trouble with her parents.’ No further insight was provided, although, through their testimony, a list of male classmates known or suspected to be attracted to and have some kind of relationship with Renee has been generated. Pictures of said male classmates are being acquired and will be shown to employees at the club as soon as possible.”
A long pause.
A cleaning crew of Hispanic workers filed into the front door of the nightclub. Time to undo what the white people did all night so they can do it again tonight.
The Man with the Facts said, “There is nothing to do here.”
A long pause.
Street debris collected over a storm drain creating a small, swirling, filthy pond.
The Man with the Facts said, “There was no reason for us to come back after talking to her parents.”
Streetlight at the corner flickered and went out. Then came back on.
“There’s something dark here,” Horn-Rims said, bringing the coffee up to his mouth but setting it down without taking a sip. “Something strange. It takes more than strength and anger to beat someone to death like that. It takes dedication. It takes commitment. A pro beating somebody to death looks one way. If a pro has to do it and a two-by-four is the only tool around, then a pro is going to use a two-by-four and stick with it until the job is done. But this wasn’t done by a pro. The blows are too haphazard, too ineffective. It takes work, it’s ugly, but a pro would’ve killed her in half the strikes.
“But this isn’t how an amateur does it either. Most of the time, if someone gets beaten to death by an amateur it’s a couple of lucky blows. No one is supposed to get killed, but then the bat or the two-by-four or whatever it is catches the skull just right. Even when someone loses their shit it doesn’t look like this. They focus all their blows on the face and head because they’re not attacking a body, they’re attacking an emotional trigger, an idea, a memory, an insult. It can’t be a pro and it don’t look like an amateur.”
“Soundly reasoned, HR, but why does it lead us back to the scene?”
“We’re missing something.”
Horn-Rims started the car. Pulled into the street. The city still unaware it had a body to mourn. If this were a mourning city.
As the
y drove away, Horn-Rims repeated, “We’re missing something.” Horn-Rims sat at his desk. A half cup of lukewarm coffee precariously close to a precarious pile of paperwork. He was trying to figure out what the fuck was up with this Joyce case, why The Chief called that rabid jackoff Augustine in on the first day, and why they were keeping the city’s top homicide detective on a kidnapping case. And the fucking FBI.
He was trying to find what they missed in the alley.
You could say all of it was giving him a headache, but everything always made his head pound. He saw Renee’s mangled body every other time he blinked his eyes.
One of the detectives investigating Renee’s murder rushed up to Horn-Rims’s desk.
“We’ve got a lead,” he said.
“What?”
“Frank Geyer.”
“One of the guys the girls mentioned?” Horn-Rims pursued.
“Yep. A waitress at the club said she saw him talking to Renee by the bathrooms.”
“Match with the timeline?”
“As much as it could.”
“Where’d they go after that?”
“Waitress didn’t see. She just happened to notice them, because she thought they looked cute together. It was a busy night. She said she was practically on roller skates.”
“Were they affectionate?”
“Not that she saw.”
“Anybody else see the kid?”
“No one would say for sure they didn’t see him.”
“Right.”
“I guess the underage kids pretty much just go dancing at this place. Once they get past the bouncers, they go right to the dance floor, never interact with the staff, and the dance floor is just a bunch of kids all dressed the same, dancing the same.”
“Any other leads?” Horn-Rims asked.
“He’s the only one anybody’s even suspected of being there.”
“Nothing on the other pictures?”
The detective shrugged. “More of the same. All of them could’ve been there or none of them could’ve been there.”
“Right. All right. Well, I’ll pay a visit. See if you can track down some of this kid’s friends and see if they’ll place him there. Might as well talk to the other guys on the list anyway. Kid got a record?”
“Not even a parking ticket.”
“Well, maybe he can at least tell us where she went after he saw her.”
“And he didn’t come forward with the info already?” the detective asked.
“Don’t you remember when you were a teenager? You thought hanging out with your friends was the most important thing God gave humans to do, and that’s when you can get your hormone-fucked-up brain to do any thinking at all. If he saw her with a buddy of his, there’s no way he’d come forward on his own. He’d keep it to himself and hope the shit just worked out. Then some guy with a badge shows up, his parents give him the ‘What did you do?’ look, and he spills about the buddy and the one time he cheated on a math quiz. There’s no point in taking a tone with a fucking kid, you got that? You feed some obstructing justice line at the kid and his mom, mom is around, right?”
“Yeah. Both parents.”
“His mom will eat your lower colon while dad punches your face through the floor if you make their kid feel like a criminal. You got that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Got your coat handy?”
“At my desk.”
“Grab it, get the other guys on this kid’s friends and come with me to see him. Consider it training.”
“There’s one more thing you should know.”
“Yeah.”
“Both his parents are lawyers.”
Horn-Rims’s shoulders collapsed. His lips twisted around hundreds of contained curses.
“Civil or criminal?” he asked.
“One of each.”
Horn-Rims leaned back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling. Nope. Still nothing useful up there. He took a deep breath.
“Ever had a prostate exam, detective?”
“Can’t say I’ve had the pleasure.”
“Well, you’ll be ready when the time comes. Get your coat and meet me back here.”
“Yes, sir.”
Frank Geyer’s house was a nice two-story number at 191 Benwell Ave, on the border between the suburbs and the city, painted an inoffensive but not entirely characterless blue. Nice lawn. Two-car garage. Winding walkway. What you’d expect from a couple of lawyers in this town. Probably had a summer house somewhere.
Horn-Rims knocked on the door. A middle-aged man, slightly above average height, with narrow shoulders, a fit physique, and a long nose, still in his tie, with most of his brown hair, answered. Horn-Rims didn’t recognize him. That meant Mom was the criminal lawyer, confirmed when she met them at the door. Horn-Rims knew her, but he couldn’t pull the first name out of his brain. She was the same height as her husband with a stockier build but long delicate-looking fingers, lush auburn-colored hair, and chocolate-brown eyes.
After the formal introductions, Horn-Rims and the detective were shown into the living room and gestured into matching plush chairs. Mr. and Mrs. Geyer sat down on the sofa.
When everyone was settled, Horn-Rims said, “We’d like to speak with your son Frank, if he’s around.”
“Frank? Why?” Mrs. Geyer asked.
“We hope he might have some information for us.”
“Information about what, detective?” she asked.
“The murder of Renee Faralizq—”
“I can’t imagine he’d know anything about that,” Mr. Geyer offered.
“Well, Mr. Geyer, in these investigations we need to pursue all possible avenues—”
“And the lead detective would examine all avenues? I’m assuming you are the lead detective on this case,” Mrs. Geyer said in a tone Horn-Rims was prepared for.
“I am the lead detective in the case, ma’am, but I want to be very clear. We are here because there is a chance your son has information about the night in question. There are about ten other detectives, sitting in ten other living rooms asking parents and kids these questions as well,” Horn-Rims explained.
“As his parents, I think we have a right to know what led you to believe Frank has any information at all,” Mr. Geyer said.
“Of course, of course. We were given a list of Renee’s other acquaintances by her friends, people she might have seen on the night in question. Your son’s name was on that list. We showed pictures of the kids on the list to the staff at the nightclub and one waitress said she saw Frank talking to Renee.”
“There must be some mistake,” Mrs. Geyer said. “Frank wasn’t at the club that night.”
“Well, ma’am, in a murder investigation we must pursue every avenue, and there is a chance that even if he wasn’t there, he might still have something useful, so I would like to speak with Frank myself, if you don’t mind.”
“His mother just told you he was not at the club that night. I’m not sure why you still need to talk to him.”
Horn-Rims noticed that Mr. Geyer had willfully ignored the already offered explanation. Nothing that happened on the inside of Horn-Rims in reaction to the statement made it to the outside. Sometimes, cops can’t let others notice what they notice.
“Was he here that night?” Horn-Rims asked.
“He was at a friend’s house,” Mrs. Geyer answered.
Horn-Rims leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees. “Here’s what I expect Frank to tell me. I’m going to ask him about Renee, he’s going to say he chatted with her at the club, sorry Mom and Dad but it’s all-ages Friday and all the cool kids go, and then she went to the bathroom and I went somewhere else. But if there is anything he could add to that, anything at all, it would be extremely valuable. What time he saw her, how long they talked, if he saw her talk to anybody else or with anybody else. And if the waitress made a mistake, I just want Frank to tell me where he was—”
“So you can verify his alibi,” Mrs. Geyer i
nterjected.
Horn-Rims leaned back off his knees and raised his hands. “You both know we have to be thorough. A girl was brutally murdered. I’ll ask Frank what he saw. If he says he wasn’t there, I’ll ask him where he was. And if he doesn’t want to say where he was in front of you, I’ll let him tell me in another room, or outside or something, and then we’ll be on our way.”
“I still don’t see why the lead detective on a homicide case would come here,” Mrs. Geyer looked derisively at the other detective, “with an assistant, for such a slim lead.”
Horn-Rims made himself look abashed. “To be honest, we don’t have much else. We are grasping at straws.”
“And Frank is one of those straws,” Mr. Geyer said.
“Frank is one of those straws,” Horn-Rims confirmed.
Mr. and Mrs. Geyer looked at each other for a moment. Communicated with expressions. Made a decision.
Mrs. Geyer stood up. “He’s upstairs. I’ll call him down.”
She left the room. Horn-Rims heard her walk to the stairs and gently call to “Frankie.” There was an exchange that Horn-Rims couldn’t hear. The exchange was followed by the unmistakable tromping of an exasperated teenager abandoning a video game. Horn-Rims and the other detective stood up for semiformal introductions. Frank looked just like his dad, but an inch taller and with the musculature of an athletic teenager.
Frank’s parents sat him down on the couch between them. He didn’t look happy about that either. Horn-Rims and the other detective returned to their chairs.
Horn-Rims said, “How are you doin’, Frank? Were you close to Renee?”
Frank shrugged. Didn’t make eye contact. “Not really. I mean, I knew her, and all, but we weren’t, like, friends or anything.”
“It’s still hard though,” Horn-Rims said.
Frank shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.”
There were a lot of different ways to ask questions, but not many of them produced answers. Even fewer if you were a middle-aged white man with a badge and a gun. No matter what needed answering, people got defensive when a cop was asking.