by Rick Reed
Mayor Hensley informed his secretary that he would not be taking calls and had her usher his waiting visitor into the conference room via a private and seldom-used entrance.
Deputy Chief Richard Dick took a seat across from the mayor. Hensley forced a smile, and said, “What have you got for me, Richard?”
“I think we may have an opportunity here, Mayor.”
Dick outlined what he knew of the murders for the mayor, explaining how he felt the current chief had handled the investigations poorly. He omitted the fact that he, Richard Dick, was the commander of the investigations unit and had done nothing to solve the murders himself.
Hensley smiled. “Malfeasance,” he said, as if tasting the word. “That might work, Richard. But what if this detective…”
“Murphy. Jack Murphy,” Dick said.
“So what if this Detective…Murphy…catches the killers?”
Dick made a dismissive gesture with his hand. “Murphy’s not as good as he thinks he is.”
“But what if…?” the mayor persisted.
“Well,” Dick said, “if he does, then you and I take the credit. But if he doesn’t…” He paused deliberately. “And God forbid there is another murder…well…I am the commander of the detective unit, and Chief Pope is breaking policy by not allowing me to run the investigation. If it blows up in his face, we can point that fact out in his dismissal hearing when you appoint me as the new chief of police.”
“Has the chief ordered you not to work on these murders, Dick?” the Mayor questioned.
Instead of answering, Dick shrugged and gave Hensley a sardonic smile.
Hensley’s sources within the police department had told him that Dick wasn’t respected and that behind his back the men called him “Double Dick.” Obviously some play on his name, Richard Dick, but in any case it wasn’t good that he had no support within his own ranks. Dick was a bumbling, arrogant asshole, but he was a cunning asshole, too, and could be a useful ally. Hensley made a mental note to keep an eye on him and wondered if his choice of a new chief of police wasn’t made a little hastily.
“Keep me informed, Deputy Chief,” the mayor said.
“You know this child?” Carmodi asked.
Jack stared at the face of the little boy. He’d first seen the kid about a month ago. It was one of those early mornings. The sun was not quite up, and Susan had gone for her run. He’d taken advantage of the quiet to make coffee and go out to his back porch to watch the threads of brilliant red and crimson colors spread across the horizon to the east. That’s when he heard someone down near the riverbank, cursing a blue streak. The voice sounded young. He’d looked over the porch railing and seen a kid yanking the end of a long, thin stick for all he was worth.
He remembered how amused he was, watching as the kid wrestled a large catfish from the river and then had to chase its flopping body around the bank.
“Timmy,” Jack said. “His name was Timmy.”
“Last name?” Carmodi asked.
Jack thought about it, but didn’t think he had ever asked. “Just Timmy,” he said. “That’s all he told me.”
Then Jack told them everything he knew about Timmy. How he had found him fishing on the riverbank below his cabin, and how the kid never seemed to run out of questions once he found out Jack was a cop.
“He was always asking things like, ‘Have you got a gun?’ ‘Have you ever shot anyone?’ ‘Have you ever killed any bad guys?’ You know stuff like that,” Jack said. “I lied to him and told him it was mostly boring paperwork, but he saw my scar and started asking questions about that.”
While he spoke, Jack absent-mindedly began going through the pockets of the muddy jeans. In the right pocket he felt something mushy, but grittier than mud. He pulled out his gloved hand and saw something yellowish on the fingers.
“What’s that?” Liddell asked.
“Fish bait,” Jack said and looked at what was left of what had once been several cornmeal balls. He had taught the kid how to mix cornmeal with a little egg white and roll it into balls. Overnight it would harden and make bait that catfish couldn’t resist.
“Ah shit,” Jack said, and left the room.
Jack stood in the hallway near the coroner’s office. He pulled the latex gloves off and pitched them in a biohazard container. He had never walked out during an autopsy before, but this one was getting to him. There were other things he could do.
Jack almost laughed at that thought. “What to do next?” he said in the empty hallway. There was a long list of what needed to be done. None of it would bring back the curious little boy who would rather hang around a broken-down cop and ask questions, or fish in the river with a long stick and fishing line he’d found along the riverbank. Why couldn’t he just go to school like other kids his age?
He needed to make a bathroom stop. Then he would call the motor patrol lieutenant at the crime scene and juvenile detectives to tell them who he suspected the deceased child might be. They could get busy shaking the bushes again. He had only a first name for the kid, but he knew Timmy lived somewhere in the area of the museum. There were a lot of large, older homes that had been divided into apartments around there. Juvenile detectives would canvass the schools. Maybe they’d get lucky and find the kid’s folks.
I need a quiet place to make a call, he thought, and remembered that the closest phone was in the office of the chief deputy coroner—a diminutive woman named Lilly Caskins whom everyone called “Little Casket.” It was a nickname that suited her well, for she was evil looking, with large dark eyes staring out of extra thick lenses, and horn-rimmed frames that had gone out of style during the days of Al Capone. But the thing that bothered Jack was her bluntness at death scenes. For a woman, she had absolutely no compassion for the dead, or the living.
He decided he didn’t want to run into Lilly. At the other end of the building there was a bathroom, and after going there, he could take his cell phone out into the garage.
He headed in that direction, and as he passed the conference room he spotted the pale face of the rookie cop that had thrown up at the crime scene. He was little more than a kid, and Jack guessed his age at barely twenty-one, just old enough to be hired by the police department. He was shirtless and sipping ginger ale from a can. His uniform shirt lay stretched across a couple of chairs, drying.
Scratch the bathroom stop, Jack thought, not wanting to smell vomit on top of everything else today.
“You feeling better, Officer, uh…?” Jack asked. He’d forgotten the rookie’s name.
The young man looked up with red-rimmed eyes and said, “Kuhlenschmidt,” then returned to staring at the floor.
Kuhlenschmidt was a wreck. He had just seen his first murder victim, his first mutilated body, and had the bad luck of humiliating himself in front of the news media and his peers by soiling himself and screaming and crying hysterically. Eventually he would have to be interviewed and file a complete report as he was the one that had found the actual scene of the murder. But Jack could see that questioning him right this minute would be fruitless.
Not everyone is cut out to be a cop. He wanted to tell Kuhlenschmidt he should look at other career options, but instead he said, “Look, Officer Kuhlenschmidt, don’t be so hard on yourself.”
The young cop looked up hopefully. “This ever happen to you, Detective?”
“No,” Jack said, and watched as the darkness crept back into that face. “But I can tell you some whopper stories on your training officer when you get off probation.”
Kooky looked up and said, “I’m sorry I screwed up out there, Detective Murphy.”
Jack had to turn away from the tears welling up in the young man’s eyes. It had been a long time since Jack had seen his first ugly murder, and had become the hardened bastard he was today. It was a cop’s lot in life to lose faith in humanity to the reality of evil.
“You married?” Jack asked, changing the subject.
“No. Got a girlfriend though.”
> “Go home,” Jack said. “Take a shower. Have sex. Drink a beer or two. Have some more sex.”
Kuhlenschmidt looked up and grinned.
“Did I mention that you should have sex?” Jack said in a very serious tone, and Kuhlenschmidt chuckled.
“Yeah, I get it, Detective Murphy. Thanks.”
“Do not get drunk,” Jack said sternly. “That’s not the way to deal with this.”
“I understand,” he said, “but what about Corporal Timmons? I’m on shift until three.”
“I’ve already taken care of it,” Jack lied.
Kuhlenschmidt picked up his shirt and started to get up.
“Wait here,” Jack said. “I’ll have someone take you home. You can come back to get your personal car later.”
Jack was about to leave when Kuhlenschmidt said, “The deputy chief will never let me be a detective because of this, will he?”
Jack pulled out a chair and sat down beside the man. “Let me tell you a story about Double Dick.”
Kooky glanced up, and a grin spread across his face. “Double Dick? Are you talking about the deputy chief, sir?”
“Yeah,” Jack said, and told the young officer how Deputy Chief of Police Richard Dick had earned the nickname Double Dick. It wasn’t because Dick was short for Richard, which would make his name Dick Dick. The name had come about because Dick had a reputation for screwing everyone over and fouling up every case he was involved with. He also briefly told the story of how Dick had screwed up the last robbery stakeout that Jack was on and the lawsuits that were still being settled because of it.
“So you’re saying that when he shows up at a scene, everyone gets Dick’d, sir?” Kuhlenschmidt said with a crooked smile.
“You got it, partner.”
Kuhlenschmidt smiled brighter at the word partner. Maybe Kooky isn’t such a bad nickname, after all, he thought.
“Gotta go pee, Kooky.”
Jack left the rookie in the conference room. He hoped the poor guy was in better shape, mentally at least, than he looked.
Jack walked into the garage and punched the numbers for the motor patrol shift lieutenant into his cell phone. He passed on the first name and information they now had for the victim, and the lieutenant promised to get some guys out re-canvassing the area around the museum. Before he hung up, Jack told the lieutenant that Officer Kuhlenschmidt would need the rest of the day off and a ride home. Probably needed some time with the department shrink, too.
Having done his good deed for the year, he called the Juvenile Division and got some good news. And a lot of bad news. The good news was that juvenile detectives already knew the kid’s last name and where he lived. The bad news was there was no missing persons report on Timothy Ryan, and the kid’s mother had taken off years ago and left him with one of her boyfriends. There was no mention of a father. The juvenile detective working this was trying to find the boyfriend to come and identify the body, but so far had been unable to locate him.
Jack hung up thinking that couples should have to apply for permits and prove they have a collective IQ over twenty to have children. Unfortunately, they don’t even have to have a full set of teeth between them to breed.
His cell phone rang. “Murphy,” he said. It was Liddell.
CHAPTER NINE
Jack entered the autopsy room again to find Carmodi, Liddell, and two crime scene techs leaning over the table near Timmy Ryan’s head.
“Check this out,” Liddell said and moved aside.
At the bottom of the table, one of the crime scene techs was unfolding a wadded-up piece of paper.
Liddell said, “Carmodi found it stuffed in the kid’s throat.”
The tech finished unfolding the paper, and they could see there was something written on it.
“Shit!” Carmodi exclaimed softly. The crime scene techs began snapping digital photos excitedly.
“What is it, Doc?” Jack asked. It seemed everyone in the room knew something that he didn’t.
Liddell leaned toward Jack and said in a whisper, “We found one of these notes last week, Jack.”
Liddell had been back to work for several weeks, and had kept Jack up to date on some of what was happening, but he didn’t remember being told anything about a murder where a note was left at the scene. He hadn’t been much interested in what was going on while he was recuperating at home, but now he wished he’d kept up.
“Crayon,” one of the crime scene techs said. “Just like the last one.”
The note was scrawled in red crayon in what looked like a child’s handwriting. Jack read the note:
he caught fishes
in other mens ditches
they pay for your sins
“What the hell does that mean?” Jack asked. No one seemed to have a clue.
Maddy Brooks threw her ruined shoes at the trash can in her office. She was furious. Not only did she ruin a pair of expensive shoes, but that incompetent, damned detective had shut her out of the story.
Who the hell does Murphy think he is?
She was imagining ways to make his life miserable when she noticed the two envelopes that still lay on her desk. In her haste to get to the murder scene at the river, she had not thought them important. She tore open the newest one and pulled out the note inside.
Once again, in a childlike scrawl, in red crayon, was written:
he caught fishes
in other mens ditches
they pay for your sins
Really! she thought angrily. Enough is enough. If these yokels think they can scare me into quitting, they don’t know who they’re messing with.
She debated the merit of going to the station manager, but realized that she didn’t have any evidence as to who was leaving the notes. And if she started asking who had left them on her desk, it would just make her look panicky, and that would never do.
She decided to wait and watch. But right now she needed a smoke.
Eddie awakened with a start. His pillow was damp, and his long hair clung to his face. His eyes hurt, and his throat felt strained, like he’d been screaming. He sat up on the edge of the couch where he had fallen asleep and shielded his eyes from the sunlight that bled through the mostly missing window blinds of his motel room.
From the room next to his someone was banging loudly on the wall. A raspy voice accompanied the banging. “Shut the fuck up over there! I’m trying to sleep!”
“I oughta kill that bastard,” Eddie said through clenched teeth, then yelled at the wall, “Shut up, ya rat fuck!” He slammed his hand against the wall hard enough to rattle the windows.
Sitting across from him, his brother shook his head sadly. “How many times I gotta tell you, bro? Complaining don’t get the job done.”
Eddie jumped up from the couch and grabbing the huge corn knife, headed for the door.
“I’ll get the fuckin’ job done, all right,” he said as he swung the thirty-inch blade of the corn knife around in the air. “I’ll cut him a new asshole.”
Bobby didn’t move from the bed where he was reclined, head cradled in his hands, with a huge smile playing across his face.
“What?” Eddie asked. Then he looked in the cracked mirror behind the couch, and saw what Bobby was grinning about. Eddie’s damp hair stood out in all directions, he was naked, and in his hand was the antique harvesting knife he’d stolen from behind a junk store.
Bobby started to chuckle, and Eddie had to admit he was quite a sight.
“Guess I’ll just cut the shit heel’s tires later,” Eddie said and sat back down on the couch. He held the knife at arm’s length, checking it out. He’d always liked knives, maybe not as much as Bobby, but even Bobby would have to admit this was the “mother of all knives.”
The thirty-inch hammered-iron blade was a quarter of an inch thick at the back and razor sharp along the wickedly curved blade. The long wood handle was at a forty-five-degree angle to the blade and, like a scythe, was designed to swing with one or both hands to harvest
corn.
“Save it for Murphy,” Bobby said.
Eddie put the knife down and slumped back on the couch. He was tired. The one thing he’d never had trouble with in his life was sleeping, at least until now. Booze, even drugs, didn’t help anymore. He pulled his knees up under his chin, wrapped his arms around his legs, and began rocking. Pieces of memories flashed in his mind, sparking raw emotions. The waking nightmares were all too familiar now. An old church building, stairs, a locked door, a boy shoved over an altar, a splash of blood dripping onto a wooden floor, screaming, screaming, screaming…
“Hey, snap out of it, bro.” Bobby’s voice brought Eddie back. Bobby was sitting at the foot of the bed, a sad look on his face. “You were thinking about the preacher, weren’t you?” Bobby was referring to their deceased father. He had been a self-professed preacher of sorts.
Eddie nodded, not trusting his voice. He was too big to cry, and too proud to let his brother see how close he was to doing just that.
“I told you how to make the dreams go away, Eddie,” Bobby said. “Complaining don’t get the job done.”
Eddie hated it when his brother said that. “Complaining don’t get the job done, Eddie. Sorry don’t get the job done, Eddie.” Those were the preacher’s words. Nothing ever seemed to get the job done where his father was concerned.
“What do you want me to do?” Eddie asked.
Bobby looked at the corn knife, and Eddie felt a shiver of excitement.
“Who?”