by Rick Reed
“Katie?” Spanner said, and a lecherous smile lit his face. “I wasn’t aware of that,” he added, and the nervous tic was back. “Charlie came here—actually was sent here—by his last school because of problems with other students.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice, “He has a real problem socializing with anyone, and I mean anyone.”
“What kind of trouble are we talking about here?” Liddell asked.
Spanner looked pensive. He obviously was uncomfortable talking about his students in general and maybe about Charlie Toon in particular. He seemed to come to a decision, and continued. “Well, you are the police, so I guess it’s all right to speak to you of this.”
Liddell assured him that he was doing the right thing.
“Charlie likes to fight. He has a hair-trigger temper. All someone has to do is look at him and he’s on the attack. It doesn’t matter if it’s another student or a teacher.
“He was at Howard Roosa before he came here, and his social studies teacher asked him what was bothering him.” Liddell’s eyebrows raised in question. Spanner hurried on, “I’ve spoken to the teacher, and he swears that all he asked was ‘What’s wrong?’ The teacher, Mr. Griffith, had noticed that Charlie was very withdrawn, stayed to himself a lot, and that the other children seemed to be afraid of him. That’s usually an indication that something is wrong at home, and Mr. Griffith was trying to help Charlie.”
Spanner smiled broadly, and said, “Mr. Griffith is an excellent teacher, I can tell you. He’s very interested in his kids, his students, and takes a personal interest in each of them.”
Jack was getting tired of waiting for Spanner to say what was on his mind. “So, tell us what happened.”
“Well. Mr. Griffith asked Charlie what was wrong, and Charlie jumped on Mr. Griffith and began beating and kicking him.” He looked horrified. Mr. Spanner was a small man, and probably had a lot of fear that what happened to Griffith could happen to him. From what he had seen of school incidents in this day and age, and what he’d been told by Katie, Jack didn’t blame Spanner for being concerned.
“It took several male teachers to pull Charlie off.”
“Was Mr. Griffith hurt?” Jack asked. He didn’t recall seeing anything in any of the newspapers about an incident like that.
“Not any permanent injuries, thank goodness,” Spanner answered. “But he was pretty shaken by it and took a leave of absence.” Spanner shook his head in dismay. “He didn’t return this semester. Mr. Griffith, that is. And Charlie was sent here. Well, it was either here, or the psychiatric institution, and if I may speak frankly, I think they made a mistake sending him here. I think Boys School or the Children’s Psychiatric Center might be better for him.”
Mr. Spanner looked at the men with concern. “What has Charlie done now?” he asked.
Liddell and Jack exchanged glances. Apparently Officer Townsend hadn’t informed Mr. Spanner that Charlie Toon had been found dead an hour earlier. Jack ignored the question for the moment and asked one of his own.
“Who are the two students in the hallway?”
Spanner looked surprised that the men didn’t know. “Alex Templeton and Ellen Sanders, of course. They came to the office and said they saw Charlie run off from school yesterday. He didn’t show up for class this morning, and Alex was bragging that he’d run Charlie away for good.”
Spanner tented his eyebrows again and said, “Alex Templeton is somewhat of a bully.”
“I guess Townsend was too busy chatting to tell us,” Liddell said.
After they informed Principal Spanner that Charlie Toon would no longer be a problem to his school, or any other, because he was dead, they could not get enough cooperation from the man. Jack wasn’t sure, but he thought he’d seen a glow of relief in the principal’s eyes.
Principal Spanner looked up the next-of-kin information the school had on file, and told them Charlie Toon lived with an uncle in the Howell Park area. The Howell area of Evansville is the white ghetto. Jack and Liddell passed this information on to Captain Franklin, who sent a team of detectives to find the next of kin. When Franklin called back a few minutes later he told them the “uncle” would have to be sobered up a bit before he could talk to anyone.
Meanwhile, Liddell and Jack had the task of interviewing Alex Templeton and Ellen Sanders. After a few minutes with each they realized they needed more help at the school. It seemed that numerous students may have seen Charlie leave the playground. Jack had the pleasure of speaking briefly with the red-haired smirking boy from the hallway, and came to the conclusion that Alex Templeton might possibly graduate from school, but would definitely become a prison bitch someday, or maybe a serial killer.
Spanner came up with a list of almost thirty students that would have been on the playground at the time Charlie Toon was last seen. Jack decided to stay and interview as many students as they could until help arrived.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
“My name is Jonathan Hewett Grant,” the man told the uniformed officer sitting with him in one of the police department interview rooms. “Am I under arrest?” he demanded to know. He was dressed in khaki pants and shirt, and had finally been located by juvenile detectives at his newest girlfriend’s apartment. He worked at a car dealership as a grease monkey, and the girlfriend as a waitress at one of the county taverns. When he had been told about the death of his charge, Charlie Toon, he had promptly begun to swear that he hadn’t done anything wrong and then demanded an attorney.
The remark had bothered Jack and Liddell. Most people didn’t swear innocence when they had not been accused of any wrongdoing. So Jack had decided to let him stew while Jack and Liddell watched on a four-way monitor in the detectives’ squad room that was hooked into each of the four interview rooms.
It had been fifteen minutes since Jonathan Hewitt Grant had been brought to police headquarters, and he still refused to give them any information about Charlie Toon or tell them why he was being so defensive. Jack was running out of patience.
“Let’s try him,” Jack said, picked up his coffee, and headed for the interview room.
“There’s only one way to do it quick,” Liddell said.
“I know,” Jack responded, and the two men entered the interview room where Charlie Toon’s pro-tem uncle was just finishing another crying spell.
“You can leave him with us,” Liddell told the uniformed officer.
“He’s all yours,” the officer said.
Jack sat in front of Grant, and Liddell scraped a chair across the concrete floor until it was directly behind the man’s left shoulder. As Liddell sat down, he slapped a meaty hand on Grant’s shoulder and let Grant feel his weight.
Grant’s jaws worked, but the mouth was clamped shut. He tried to look around at Liddell, but Jack said, “Hey! Look at me, Mr. Grant.”
Grant’s attention focused on Jack, but his expression was unchanging.
“You need to talk to us about Charlie,” Jack said.
“You got no right doing this,” Grant said. “I got rights, you know.”
“We don’t care about your rights, Grant,” Jack said. “We care about Charlie.”
Liddell leaned in close to Grant’s ear. “Maybe we should look at you for these murders.”
Grant’s demeanor slipped. “You won’t do that, will you, fellas?”
Jack felt bad taking advantage of the man. He knew Grant had nothing to do with the killings, knew it was Eddie Solazzo. But they needed information, and the clock was ticking. Eddie was out there somewhere. Waiting to take another victim.
“You bet we will,” Jack said. “If you don’t start answering questions, we’re going to put you away.”
“Well, I’m not even his real uncle, am I? His whore of a mom just dumped him on me.” Grant’s jaw was still clamped, but his shoulders sagged. He couldn’t fight these men.
“Talk to me about Charlie,” Jack said.
And he did. Jonathan Hewitt Grant talked for the next fifteen minutes. When
he was through they were no closer to having any useful information about Charlie Toon. The last thing they would have to do was take Grant to the morgue to identify the body.
Liddell drove, and Jack and Jonathan Grant sat in the back of the Crown Vic. At the coroner’s office, Grant was taken to the small room just adjacent to the autopsy room where bodies could be viewed with more dignity. Little Casket had accompanied him, and now stood beside the shroud-covered remains of Charlie Toon. She folded the cover back to expose only enough of the face for Grant to identify the battered and paint-spattered face of the boy that he had failed to protect.
Grant’s tough exterior shattered.
Jack and Liddell dropped Jonathan Grant off at The Lucky Lady strip bar near his girlfriend’s apartment, and watched as the man walked inside. He seemed to have made a full recovery from his show of emotion.
“I’m having trouble with the way Double Dick gave in so easy today,” Liddell said.
Jack had been thinking the same thing. It wasn’t like the pompous ass to miss a chance at punishing Jack. There was something else going on. He was sure of it. But for now he couldn’t let himself worry about things that were out of his control.
“Never look a gift horse in the mouth,” Jack said.
“What exactly does that mean, pod’na?” Liddell said.
“Hell if I know. I’ll call Garcia and let her know what’s up. Then we should go back to the morgue. Carmodi should be just about ready to do the autopsy on Charlie Toon.”
CHAPTER FIFTY
Lilly Caskins prided herself on a well-run office. In fact, she couldn’t imagine doing any other type of work. She had been the chief deputy coroner for almost thirty years, which was no small feat considering that the chief deputy position was determined by the sitting coroner. She had worked for no less than four coroners, both Republican and Democrat. But as she looked at the small body of Charlie Toon on the metal autopsy table, she wondered why she had ever chosen this career.
She thought she had seen everything. Dismemberments, children scalded to death in tubs filled with hot water, infants whose brains had been turned to oatmeal from being shaken by an angry adult, gunshots, knife wounds, fatality accidents, hangings, and worse. But never anything like what had been done to this child.
She looked up as the forensic pathologist, Dr. Carmodi, came in to the autopsy room, wearing a hooded Tyvek suit complete with mask. She had always thought that gearing up like that was a bit of overkill, but she knew it was to avoid cross-contamination with any evidence on the body. Courts today were less forgiving of mistakes made during an autopsy, and were quite a bit more knowledgeable about evidence and procedures for its collection.
Normally she would tease him about suiting up for a space mission. But she couldn’t find the humor to speak the words today.
“Hello, John,” Lilly said.
“What have we got?” Carmodi asked.
“Maybe another victim of Mother Goose,” she answered. They had seen quite a lot of this psycho’s work recently, but it wasn’t like her to give an opinion prior to the autopsy. For the first time in her career she felt that she needed a change. But what would she do? she wondered.
“Well,” Carmodi said, “let’s see what we have.” And with that, he opened the big catalog case that he carried everywhere with him. As a forensic pathologist, he consulted for no less than seven surrounding counties, and therefore, needed equipment he could count on. Some of the counties were so poor they had virtually no medical equipment. In some cases he had the body transported to the Vanderburgh County coroner’s office, where he had X-ray equipment, and all the necessities for examining a body and recording his findings.
He had brought the catalog case in more from habit than from need. All that he required from it was the Pentax DS200 digital camera that he had grown fond of. He turned the camera on, selected the features he required, and began snapping digital photos of the body. He knew that when the EPD Forensic team arrived they would photograph everything in more detail, but he liked to have his own set of pictures to look at while he dictated his findings of the cause of death.
While he was snapping away, a technician from the police forensic team came in to the room and started photographing the body from all angles, beginning with a distance shot and then moving in for close-ups.
When they were finished they all stepped back and waited for police detectives.
When the mayor removed Marlin Pope from his position and appointed Double Dick as the new chief of police, Dick had decided not to raise anyone to his previous rank, that of deputy chief. This left the deputy chief’s office vacant, and that office space had been assigned to the murder investigation team. It was probably the only smart thing Richard Dick had done in his life, even if his intentions were not to assist the investigators. By moving Jack and his team out of the noisy and chaotic detective squad room, he had cut off the source of information leaks to the press. Or at least, the leaks that he himself didn’t approve.
The little office was cramped and totally inadequate for the number of investigators involved in this serial investigation, but there was no way “Chief” Dick was giving up the chief’s offices and conference room as his predecessor had done. Dick was a king, and a king deserved the most spacious and plush surroundings. The worst part, as Jack discovered upon entering the office, was that it still smelled like the strong cologne that Double Dick seemed to bathe in.
When Jack and Liddell walked in, they found Garcia hard at work and Mark Crowley standing behind her, his hands resting on her shoulders as he peered over at her monitor.
“Get a room, you two,” Liddell said with a grin.
Crowley asked, “Did you get anything from the autopsy?”
“Not much,” Liddell said.
Jack turned on the television. “Maddy Brooks is supposed to make an announcement. The mayor is hoping that if the killer hears that I’m back on the job, he won’t make good on his threat to kill more kids.”
“You think that will stop the killer?” Garcia asked.
Jack gave a noncommittal shrug and said, “I don’t know anymore. I think Eddie is unbalanced and won’t quit for long.” He looked at the clock. It was almost time for the news.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Maddy Brooks stormed out of the newsroom in a rage. She knew that Murphy was holding back. He knew something important. And what was worse, that old fuddy-duddy boss of hers, Bill Goldberg, was telling her what to report now. She had been “ordered” to give a breaking news story that wasn’t worthy of the title. Just because Murphy had been reinstated, she didn’t see why that was news.
She had argued with Bill that the real story was the note—the threat to kill more children, and the subsequent murder of Charlie Toon—and not whether Jack Murphy was employed. But Bill Goldberg was the news director, and he had agreed with the mayor that releasing the note would just panic people, and it was not “responsible journalism.” He even threatened to take her off the story altogether if she said anything more about the notes until he gave her the okay.
She was furious. She wanted to blast the mayor for buckling to the demands of the killer. She wanted to put the note itself in her story, along with photos of the crime scene tent at the riverfront. This was a sensational story. Her story! The killer was sending the notes to her! The killer was contacting her!
But, in the end, she had relented and did as she was told for the sake of staying on the story. But why was Goldberg so afraid of the mayor? Hell, Goldberg had even kept Lois Hensley, that impossible old biddy, working well after she should have retired. Was it just to keep in the mayor’s good graces?
Maddy promised herself that when this story was through she would use her skills as an investigative reporter to look thoroughly into the news director’s relationship with Mayor Thatcher Hensley. Who knew, maybe there was something juicy there. Maybe Goldberg was the mayor’s real father, and Lois Hensley had been Goldberg’s mistress. But, the thought o
f Lois having sex—with anyone—made Maddy shudder.
Well, she had done her two-minute spot as ordered, and announced that Detective Jack Murphy was back on the trail of the killer and that his suspension had been a mere misunderstanding.
She slammed the door to her office behind her and picked up the phone. Murphy knew something, and she wanted to know what it was. She dialed a number she had used infrequently, and waited while the phone rang twice and then hung up. She repeated this process and then waited for her informant to return the call. She hoped he would get the information she wanted. The thought of what she might have to do for repayment of the information made her nauseous—hence the reluctance to call in the first place—but if the information was what she thought it was, she would have a story that she could sell to the national news. It could be her ticket out of Evansville.
The thought of anchoring for one of the major national news shows made her smile, but then the phone rang and her smile faded.
Jack turned off the television in the new war room and looked around the table. The atmosphere was still tense, and no one spoke. True to his word, Captain Franklin had been able to get Channel Six’s Maddy Brooks to announce what the killer wanted to hear. Jack felt no pleasure at hearing his name on the news. Instead he felt guilt. All these people had died because Eddie was trying to punish Jack Murphy, because Eddie wanted to kill him. But Eddie’d had the chance and had only knocked him unconscious instead. Jack looked at the maps on the whiteboards and the pinned-up photos of the victims.
Why don’t you just get it over with? If you want me, come and get me.
But he knew that Eddie wasn’t through with him yet. The pentagram wasn’t complete. There was at least one more murder before Eddie would come for him.