by Rick Reed
“Well, you looked like you was going to faint,” Brady said, still staring at him. “Old man, my ass,” he grumbled, then said, “I’ll fix you something up. What do you want?” He turned back to the huge stove and pulled a skillet down from overhead.
Jack’s hands started shaking, and he stuck them in his pockets.
“You’re creeping me out, Jack,” Brady said without turning around.
“Sorry. I guess I’m just not hungry.”
“Well, you gotta eat. So bacon and eggs then,” Brady said and began cracking eggs into a bowl. “How about the others?” He nodded in the direction of the war room.
Jack braced himself with the wall and opened the door. “I’ll go ask, but you can probably just make a heap of everything. Liddell will clean up any leftovers.”
Brady laughed. He was well aware of the big man’s appetite. He tossed two pounds of bacon on the griddle.
Garcia had two laptops set up in the war room and had “borrowed” a printer from somewhere. She was busy concentrating on the keyboard while Vinnie hovered around her like a gnat.
Vinnie was a small, wiry man, with a tan so deep his skin was leathery. His face was creased with lines that belied his true age, somewhere between twenty-five and sixty. Thick hair, the color of dirty dishwater, was pulled back in a short greasy-looking ponytail. His taste in clothes was tie-dyed T-shirts, faded denim cut-off shorts, and deck shoes, like the flower children of the sixties had worn. But, in his defense, Vinnie was a clean freak. Two-Jakes was spotless, and so was he.
Vinnie had fussed around Garcia since she had arrived early that morning—filling her coffee, bringing her napkins, and anything else that would allow him to be near her. According to Brady, Vinnie was in love. Garcia didn’t seem to notice.
Apparently Vinnie wasn’t the only one smitten with the petite Garcia. Mark Crowley was leaning over her shoulder when Jack came back in the meeting room, and Jack could tell from the look on Crowley’s face that he wasn’t admiring the computer screen. But, from Garcia’s smirking expression, he was sure she was aware of Crowley’s attention and was eating it up.
“What’s up?” Jack asked.
Crowley straightened up.
“I was just showing Chief Deputy Crowley what these babies can do,” Garcia said, and Crowley’s face turned beet red.
“She means the computers,” Crowley said, and backed away from the table.
Garcia looked up at Crowley and smiled. “I haven’t made a man’s face red in a long time.”
“That’s because most of us are going to hell,” Jack told her. “Now quit teasing the deputy and tell me what you’ve come up with.”
“First of all, Liddell had to go to headquarters,” Garcia said.
“Whoops. Hold that thought a minute,” Jack said and hurried to the kitchen door to tell Jake that he wouldn’t be feeding an army now.
“Okay,” he said, shutting the kitchen door.
Garcia handed him a printout. Jack looked at the list of forty or so names. “What am I looking at?” he asked.
Garcia turned in her chair and handed him another paper. “The first one is the list of people you’ve arrested for major felony crimes. Using the files from the parole office, I was able to slim the list by searching only for those with violent crimes or mental problems. The second list is a result of my running those names through BMV and the Indiana Department of Corrections to eliminate anyone who was no longer living in the state or in prison.”
Jack noticed the second list had only about thirty names on it. “And, yes, I ran them through the Department of Corrections, too, and all of those people are currently on parole or have been fully released to prey upon the innocent once more,” Garcia said.
“Any of them have ties with Dubois County?” Jack said.
Garcia looked slightly embarrassed. “I haven’t done that yet.”
“That’s my fault,” Mark said. “Our system hasn’t been computerized yet, and I’ll have to go through the records manually to check this list out.”
Jack sighed. He’d assumed that this was going to be quicker but had forgotten that small departments meant small budgets and significantly more paper to sift through. He had become spoiled by the technology that was available and wondered if it had helped all that much. The guys coming up through the ranks today didn’t have a clue about how to run snitches or build relationships with other departments. In Jack’s day, those two things were as important as carrying a badge or gun. He wondered if one day all detectives would only have to Google crimes to get their answers. He hoped not.
“I’ll get on this right now,” Crowley said.
“I could come and help you,” Garcia offered.
Just then Jake Brady came out of the kitchen carrying a large tray laden with platters of toast, bacon, omelets, and fried eggs. The aroma was overpowering.
“Sorry,” Jack said. “It looks like it’s going to be you and me, old man.”
Jake looked at the tray of food and at the others. “You can’t leave without a good breakfast,” he protested.
Mark Crowley was drooling. “Well. Since you went to all the trouble, it would be rude of me to leave.”
“Me, too,” Garcia chimed in as they helped set the platters of food out on the table.
The restaurant phone rang, and Brady went to answer. When he returned he had a serious look on his face.
“Jack. That was Franklin. He said the state police ran the DNA, and it doesn’t match anyone in the database.”
They all traded looks before Crowley said, “Well, shit!”
“Angelina,” Jack said, “run your list by Walker to see if any of them are on the list of names from IAFIS.” He was referring to the partial fingerprint that was found on the Black Jack chewing gum wrapper.
“I forgot to tell you. I already did that. No match to anyone on that list either,” Garcia said.
This time, Jack said, “Well, shit!”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Katie looked out from her classroom window, across the empty playground, and felt a little irritation. She wasn’t married to Jack anymore and didn’t have an enemy in the world. Why would anyone want to harm her? It angered her a little that Jack had insisted on having policemen watch her house. She felt that, if anything, it would draw attention to her, and she was right. Just that morning, as she walked to her car she had spotted the creepy old van setting at the corner. She immediately made it as the type the police would use for surveillance. Believing it was one of Jack’s buddies, she had even given a half nod to the driver. Just to let him know that she had seen him. Jack wasn’t the only one that was observant. But the van was so obvious that before she got into her car, her neighbor, Mrs. Rosenbaum, had called out to her.
Mrs. Rosenbaum was a widow in her eighties. She had seen everything, and loved to tell anyone she could corner just how much she knew. This morning she said, “It’s that ex-husband of yours, isn’t it?” When Katie had asked her what she meant, Mrs. Rosenbaum said, matter-of-factly, “Stalking is against the law, dear.”
Katie had tried to explain that Jack wasn’t having her followed, but Mrs. Rosenbaum had never liked Jack and had more than once referred to him as a thug. Before Katie could extricate herself from the one-sided conversation, Mrs. Rosenbaum said something funny that Katie wanted to remember to tell Jack.
She smiled now, thinking about how Mrs. Rosenbaum had said in a conspiratorial tone, “I’m afraid to even go to the store alone. You never know when one of them little punks is going to ‘cap you with his nine.’”
Katie had laughed at the old woman’s remark, but could see that Mrs. Rosenbaum was completely serious.
I really have to tell Jack about that, she thought, as she surveyed the playground for truant children. The little old woman had actually said, “cap you with his nine,” and had held her hand out like she was holding a pistol sideways.
“Mrs. Murphy,” a little voice said, snapping her out of her thoughts.
> Katie looked down to see one of her students dancing from foot to foot and looking anxious. “You may go to the bathroom, Danny. But come right back,” Katie said. The boy rushed out of the room.
Two blocks down the street, Eddie sat with binoculars, watching Katie. He was eager to finish this, but Bobby wouldn’t have it. Eddie wasn’t sure how much longer he could wait. He could just walk right into that classroom and cut her head off with the corn knife. It would only take one swing. But he knew what Bobby would say.
Jack drove down Martin Luther King Junior Boulevard, each bump in the road causing short starbursts behind his eyes. The doctor had assured him that this particular symptom would soon go away, but the headaches were another matter. He felt like he had ridden a rodeo bull.
But there were worse things than headaches. The boredom of sitting around the restaurant, just waiting for something to happen, was unbearable. It was like the killer had vanished. He knew he should be glad there were no new victims, but with the recent bad news, that the DNA didn’t match any known criminal, he was starting to feel the cases growing stale.
He pulled his Jeep into the back parking lot of the parole office and wondered what Susan had found. She’d been cryptic on the phone. As he stepped from the Jeep he saw Susan at the back door, motioning him to come inside.
“You’re sneaking me in the back door?” Jack said, half jokingly.
“I just didn’t want to waste time. Hurry up and come to my office.” She headed down the hallway, not waiting for him.
Jack entered Susan’s office and looked around. Stacks of files and/or books were everywhere and anywhere there was a flat surface to hold them. The top of her desk was completely immersed in piles of paper. The seats of the two chairs across from her desk were used like bookcases. She ignored the mess and grabbed a couple of folders. “Let’s go to the break room,” she said, and brushed past him into the hallway.
In the break room Susan grabbed a couple of Styrofoam cups and handed Jack one. When they had hot coffee and sat at a table by the window, she laid the files on the table top.
“First, let me tell you the background so you don’t think I’m crazy when I tell you what I suspect,” she said.
“It’s your story,” Jack said.
She took a breath and began. “When you first mentioned the Mother Goose rhymes something bothered me, but I couldn’t think of what it was.”
Jack nodded, but didn’t interrupt.
“It kept bugging me, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I knew something important.” She took a sip of the coffee and made a face, got up, and poured her coffee down the drain. “Anyway, this morning it came to me.” She looked at Jack, obviously pleased with herself. “One of my parolees used to quote pieces of Mother Goose rhymes when he would show up for our meetings.”
Jack waited. He didn’t want to say, “So what?” but the fact that one of her nut-job parolees was spouting nursery rhymes didn’t strike him as very unusual. They were all a bunch of smart-asses as far as he could tell.
“Aren’t you going to ask me who it was?” she said.
“Who was it?” Jack asked, obediently.
Susan waited a heartbeat before answering. “Bobby Solazzo.”
“That’s impossible,” Jack said, his fingers going to the scar on his face. “Bobby’s dead. I killed him, remember?”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Eddie parked the van on the side street. Just a short walk from here, he thought. No one will notice the van parked in this neighborhood.
He looked over at Bobby, who was leaned back, eyes closed, in the passenger seat. Always in control. Unstoppable.
He watched Bobby for another minute before disturbing him. “Wakey, wakey, motherfucker,” Eddie said.
Bobby didn’t open his eyes. “I got your ‘motherfucker’ right here,” he said, and put a hand over his crotch.
They both laughed. It was good to be working together on this. Good to be brothers. And Eddie felt brotherly pride swell within. He had to admit, Bobby’s plan was sharp. Bobby had his shit together, and it was a good thing, because Eddie wasn’t feeling too cohesive.
“Bobby Solazzo’s dead,” Jack reminded Susan. He thought about the last encounter he’d had with Bobby Solazzo. The chase through the alleys behind Turley’s Jewelers. Finding the expended shotgun thrown aside by Solazzo. His mistaken belief that Solazzo was unarmed. The surprise of coming up against Solazzo in the rain, the huge blade slicing down toward him.
Pain began to creep up the back of his neck, and he could feel an electric buzz growing inside his skull. “Solazzo’s dead,” he said flatly. “I put three bullets in him.”
“I know. That’s why I didn’t call you earlier,” said Susan.
Jack closed his eyes and rubbed at the base of his skull.
“You should be in bed,” Susan said.
Without thinking, he said, “That’s all you ever think about, isn’t it?”
Susan laughed and said, “Well at least you still have your sense of humor. Or whatever you call that.” She got up from the table. “I’ve got some aspirin in my office. I’ll be right back,” she said, and started to leave, but Jack called her back.
“No, I’m okay,” he said, and he could feel the buzzing diminish from a chain saw down to an electric hum.
“You didn’t call me here to tell me a dead man is behind all this.”
“Let me finish—then see what you think,” Susan said, and Jack nodded.
Susan opened the file she had brought into the break room.
“I thought about Bobby because he was always quoting parts of nursery rhymes to me when I had him under the hammer for some type of parole violation. At the time I thought it was just a defense mechanism. You know. Like trying to distract me, or himself, from the point of our conversation.”
Jack nodded understanding, and Susan opened the file to the back page.
“Because Bobby’s crimes were so violent he had undergone extensive psychiatric examinations. The court had ordered the first round of examinations to see if he was fit to stand trial, and he was examined again by the Department of Corrections after his conviction to determine where to house such a violent inmate.”
Susan got up and poured another cup of coffee, and began pacing. Jack had noticed that when she was thinking something through she tended to walk the floor.
“Guess who his court-ordered psychiatrist was?” Susan said.
Jack raised his eyebrows, seeing where her train of thoughts was leading. “Anne Lewis?” he said.
“Yep,” Susan answered, then continued to pace. “But Bobby’s dead. So that was a dead end,” she said, then looked at Jack and said, “And don’t say it. Let me finish.”
He nodded for her to go on.
“I was curious,” she said, “So I looked up Eddie’s file. Bobby’s psychiatric report hinted at his being an abused child. So I wondered if Eddie was abused as well. Like I said, I checked Eddie’s records and my hunch was right.”
“Eddie was examined by Anne Lewis, too,” Jack finished her thought.
“Yes,” Susan said, “and Eddie hasn’t reported to me for a few months now.”
Jack hadn’t considered Eddie a suspect in these current murders, but now it was all starting to make sense.
“Eddie Solazzo?” Jack said.
“Yep,” Susan agreed.
Charlie Toon had been on the playground for only a few minutes when he first noticed the man outside the fence. He was tall, with long dark hair, and dressed like a biker, with one heavy-soled boot stubbed against the front wheel as he leaned against the side of an old panel van. The other kids were huddled in their small groups, talking, laughing, telling stories, and making plans for the coming weekend, oblivious of everything else around them, and impervious to Charlie, but he didn’t care if they liked him, or talked to him.
Harwood Middle School was a school where kids were sent when no other school would take them, and, even at Harwood, Charlie was an ou
tsider. He had worn out his welcome at no less than six other schools before landing here. And from “here” there was only one other place to go: the Evansville Children’s Psychiatric Center. He’d heard bad stories about that place and was behaving himself. But right now he was watching the man, and the man was watching him.
Charlie’s mother was an exotic dancer, and she was real pretty. But “I’m not getting any younger,” she’d told Charlie last winter, and when she’d gotten a job offer in a Las Vegas club she had jumped at the chance. She’d told Charlie that he would have to stay behind with Uncle Jon, but it would just be for a while. Just until she got settled.
For nine months now Charlie had lived with his Uncle Jon, who wasn’t really his uncle, but that’s what his mother had made him call the man who had shared her bed. He knew his mother wasn’t coming back.
As he watched the man across the street, he was reminded of the way his Uncle Jon looked at him sometimes, and he’d learned the hard way that it was much tougher on you if you resisted.
When he was nice to Uncle Jon, then Jon was nice to him, and gave him money or took him to a show, but at first he’d resisted Jon’s crude, fumbling advances. The very first time he’d screamed until Uncle Jon had choked him unconscious.
“Hi, Charlie.”
Charlie was startled at hearing his name. He looked up to see Ellen Sanders. Ellen was the most popular girl at Harwood, and no wonder. She had blond hair and sparkly green eyes, and her smile could melt you down into your socks. He smiled back, but it quickly faded. He knew he could never be friends with a girl like this.
“What do you want?” he said. His tone sounded angrier than he realized, and he regretted it. But like everything else in his life, it just kind of happened. The thought of apologizing never crossed his mind, because apologizing was an action that implied hope—a chance of correcting some wrong. In his short life he had never had much use for that feeling. Life wasn’t something to be celebrated; it was something to be endured.