by Mark Zubro
The ME asked, “You fantasizing again?”
“His personal goddess calls him,” Turner said. “He claims she fills his every need.”
“Hate when that happens,” the ME said.
“Him and his personal goddess are having a thing,” Turner said.
The ME said, “Don’t tell Madge.”
Madge was Fenwick’s wife and one of Turner’s favorite people.
Fenwick asked, “Who would win in a wrestling match between my personal goddess and a psychic?”
The ME said, “You mean like between Batman and Spiderman.”
Turner said, “Which Batman? A wrestling match between Christian Bale and Toby McGuire? I’d pay to see that.”
“Well,” Fenwick said, “that’s not the same thing.”
“Depends on your perspective, doesn’t it?” the ME asked.
“We’re just encouraging him,” Turner said. “As for whips, plenty of them at the party upstairs.”
Fenwick said, “We going to have to interview everybody who owns a whip or who has scars on his back? I am not in the mood for that crap.”
The ME said, “Is there anybody ever really in the mood for the crap we do?”
Fenwick said, “Not many. This will take forever. I’m not in the mood for forever. Not tonight. Not with this heat.”
“What actually killed him?” Turner asked.
The ME said, “He wasn’t conscious when he was down here. Once the body got plunked here, it didn’t move of its own volition. Probably brought here wrapped in something that is not currently visible. You’ve noticed the lack of pools of blood?”
Fenwick growled. He hated when people stated the obvious.
The ME said, “The growl thing is getting a little old.”
Fenwick said, “Sometimes it works.”
“And sometimes not,” Turner said.
The ME said, “I’m not sure he was dead when he got here, but he might have been. I’m not sure when he died. Certainly, it was in the last twenty-four hours. Not longer. I’m actually not sure how he died. He’s got that huge dildo stuck up his butt, and it caused bleeding. He’s also got a large orgasm ball in his mouth.”
“Orgasm what?” Fenwick asked.
Turner said, “Weighted balls in the butt, or vagina for that matter. Often plastic, sometimes in graduated sizes linked together with heavy duty string or some such. Used to add sexual pleasure. Or so I’ve heard.”
“Oh,” Fenwick said. He asked, “How can you tell it’s an orgasm ball? With smaller ones below it?”
The ME said, “I looked.”
Fenwick said, “Cheater.”
Turner examined the closed mouth with smears of blood around the lips. With his pointer the ME lifted the upper lip slightly. Turner glimpsed a flash of pale blue.
“He has a graduated series of them down his throat. I don’t know if the loss of blood killed him, or he choked to death or he got stuck on the dildo of death. I’ll know more when I get him to the lab.”
The three of them squatted down. The ME lowered the black boxer briefs. Turner saw the bottom end of a dildo protruding from the corpse’s asshole. Belger’s ass was blood-smeared, the underwear blood-soaked.
Fenwick asked, “Was he having a good time or was he being fucked to death?”
“Or both,” the ME said. “I can at least let you know about one of those options.”
“Lot of bruises all over his ass,” Turner said.
Fenwick said, “Black and blue and pretty dead, too.”
The ME said, “Keep that up and you may be next.”
Fenwick said, “I was having a gritty and insightful moment.”
Turner said, “I never thought I’d say this, but maybe you should stick with ghastly puns. Gritty and insightful doesn’t look good on you.”
Fenwick said, “Everybody’s a critic.”
Wearing his plastic gloves, Fenwick began removing items from the victim’s pockets. He found change, car keys, wallet, and a pass to the leather party. In the wallet he found about fifty dollars in mixed bills. In a back pocket he found nine one hundred dollar bills. He showed them to his partner.
Fenwick said, “Wasn’t a robbery. Was he going to pay somebody for a good time, or did they pay him?”
Turner said, “If it was this much money, either way it was likely supposed to be a very good time.”
After examining each item, he bagged it carefully.
When they were finished, Fenwick nodded at the pass, “He was attending the party?”
Turner said, “We’ll see if we can find out if it was his or may have been planted on him. Although he could probably have gotten whipped at the party, which would be logical. Still we need to be sure it isn’t just proximity, but actual fact that it happened above. We’ll have to be very careful about cause and effect.”
The ME said, “Fenwick’s grammatical precision is rubbing off on you.”
Turner said, “Yeah, but I could never eat as much chocolate as him.”
Fenwick said, “No one can eat as much chocolate as I can.”
“Spare me,” the ME said.
Turner said, “Another possibility is Belger could have been killed by someone who set it up here at the party with all these accoutrements of sex and leather to make it look like a killing connected to the gay community or done by a gay person. Maybe trying to divert suspicion from the real killer. Someone who knew his kinks and his peccadilloes. Even a wife or girlfriend, although how they’d get in to the party above might be a little tough.”
Fenwick said, “Depends a little on how he got in and then down here.”
Turner said, “With luck, we’ll know more when we get the report from our people as they double-check all the corridors, ramps, hallways, whatever. With this blood, he’s got to have left smears somewhere.”
The ME said, “There’s no blood around except in the immediate vicinity of the body. Not enough to show he bled to death, but still.”
Fenwick said, “Logic would dictate the killer is an angry cop who didn’t like him ratting on a friend. That’s the place to look for suspects. He could have been whipped off-site and dragged here.”
Turner said, “Off-site or on-site, he wound up here. We didn’t find any signs of a body being dragged on our way in. With all this debris and even this small amount of blood, you’d think we’d find something. He must have been wrapped in something and carried here.”
At that moment Deveneaux and Sanchez returned to report. Sanchez handed Turner an envelope. Turner glanced inside. He found pictures, background sheets for Belger and Callaghan, and other bits of data Molton had promised.
Deveneaux glanced at his notes as he said, “There are only a few ways down here to where the body is, but there are a lot of ways to get to those few ways down here. From this spot you can cross these tracks and climb the cement barriers on either side to the next sets of tracks.”
They all looked. Pillars marched in both directions into the gloom on both sides of the tracks. The rows of pillars continued in each direction. Three-foot-high concrete barriers extended between the pillars.
Turner said, “Dragging him over those barriers and over these tracks and carrying a dead body? Looks tough.”
Deveneaux said, “Several guys checked for bloodstains in each direction. Toward the north, the pillars end in about a hundred feet. It’s the old wall of the station where a waiting room used to be. It’s boarded up and looks like it has been for years. The other way goes on for half a mile. It eventually narrows, the tracks merge and dwindle down and become four elevated tracks but those peter out in empty fields south of here. No blood anyone could see. It’s dark. We used flashlights, but it was tough. I’m not sure there’d be much more to see in daylight. There’s very little lighting down here. The guys with luminol can spray for hours down here.”
Turner said, “Doesn’t rule out that direction. Or he was brought down from above?”
Sanchez said, “We found all kinds of e
ntrances and exits above that lead to the ramps that eventually get to this platform. The guys are still checking them. We did the ones closest to here first. No traces of blood anyone can see.”
Turner said, “Let me get this straight. Someone could start from far away, from outdoors, along those deserted train yards just south of the Loop and drag or carry the body here?”
“Right.”
“And is there an entrance from above in that direction as well?”
“Sure, you could go down steps from overpasses.”
Fenwick said, “Either way, it is still a long way to tote a body.”
Turner said, “Might have been in something, a wheelbarrow, a two-wheel cart.”
The ME said, “Or the killer was very strong.”
Sanchez said, “We talked to all the guys who worked the door and all the registration people. Commander Molton sent over extra pictures of Belger and Callaghan. Nobody recognized either of them, but we’re not sure we got all of the employees and volunteers. Slade said some might have gone home.”
People who just happened not to be around; a typical loose end of police work that ate up more of their time than they liked to contemplate.
“Did the door guards or bouncers or whatever the hell they are, notice anything unusual?” Fenwick asked.
“Unusual? Here?” Sanchez asked.
Fenwick said, “I do the cryptic semi-humor in this relationship.”
“Could have fooled me,” Sanchez said.
Fenwick grumbled but said nothing. He liked Sanchez.
Sanchez said, “They claimed no one got in without proper ID.”
Fenwick said, “Let’s put a little pressure on Slade.”
SIX
They found Slade fussing at a couple of beat cops, his hands in almost continuous motion. He was saying, “I’ve got to be able to get around. I’ve got to manage things. I’ve got to be sure everything is perfect.”
Fenwick nodded to the beat cops. They left. Before Slade could resume, Fenwick asked, “Could anybody get in here who didn’t belong?”
“No way. Everyone was checked for ID and registration badge. Who was he? Who died? I only took a brief look...before.”
“You checked all the registrants yourself?” Turner asked.
“I trained all the people who worked the door and the registration booths myself. They knew better than to let anyone in without properly checking them. And we patrolled down here. Maybe whoever I saw was legitimately down here. I don’t know why he ran. That’s what was suspicious.”
Fenwick asked, “You know anything about people being whipped?”
“Sure,” Slade said. “For the larger demonstration rooms, we used all the old storefronts from when this was a mall. Plus, we converted a bunch of the old baggage storage areas down below for people into particular scenes. You saw some of those as we walked down here. For whipping we had separate rooms for beginners, intermediate, and advanced.”
“Oh,” Fenwick said.
Turner said, “We’ll need to interview the people involved with the whipping booths.”
“Right now? It’s just after eleven. The festivities are at their height.”
Turner said, “We’ll start with the owners or people who are in charge of the whipping. We’ll need to see if this guy was at their booth.”
“Why do you think he was with them?”
Turner said, “He has whip marks on his back.”
“But who was he?”
Turner said, “He was wearing leather pants. He had a pass for the party in his wallet.” He wasn’t about to give him all the details. If Slade were the killer, most likely he would know them. If he weren’t, the police didn’t want him spreading them around. The more details the cops told the public, the more difficult it would be to weed out the loons who came out of the woodwork. People confessing were often a problem in a high-profile case. It did no good to provide the resident loonies with ammunition. With luck, the case would be solved before too many of these emerged.
Slade said, “I can check to make sure whether or not he was here officially. I can’t imagine someone who was supposed to be here being killed.”
Turner didn’t have time to disabuse him of any notions about who might or might not be motivated to commit murder.
Fenwick said, “We’ll have some officers go over the registration lists with you.”
“But they’re private.”
Turner was reasonably sympathetic on the privacy issue. For more years than anyone cared to count being gay in public had been the cause for police harassment. The Stonewall riots had been the beginning of the end of that, but to this day there were problems between the police and the gay community. Turner had heard of a recent case in Atlanta where a gay bar had been raided. So far all the court cases in that incident were going in favor of the gay community. In Chicago, especially with the gay friendly mayor and gay aldermen, things had gotten better. Still, Turner understood. He knew no one outside the investigation would get any names from him or Fenwick. He and Fenwick were exceptionally good at keeping their mouths shut.
“It’s a murder investigation,” Fenwick said. And they didn’t want him pulling Belger’s registration to try to hide his official presence at the party.
Loud voices from beyond the last turn they’d come down drew their attention. Moments later Sanchez appeared. He and Deveneaux each had a hand clamped onto a willowy-thin young man who didn’t look old enough to be shaving. His tight, black-leather shorts clung to very narrow hips. Turner thought if the kid had an erection while wearing them, he might injure himself. He had a badge for the convention clipped to the side of his pants. The only other things he wore were a stainless steel, metal-link choker chain around his neck and motorcycle boots, with chains attached to them that matched the one around his neck. Delicate blond hair feathered gently around his head.
The kid stopped struggling and snarling and cursing only when Sanchez and Deveneaux stopped in front of the detectives.
Sanchez pointed at the young guy. “Beat cops found him lurking around in the lower depths way the hell around the other side from here. When they told him to stop, he ran. They chased him down. Found him trying to get out where there wasn’t an official exit. And the beat cops thought he looked too young to be admitted to the thing going on up above.”
Fenwick said, “What’s your name, kid?”
“Fuck you.” He yanked himself out of the uniformed cops’ grip, and took two steps of an attempted sprint.
Fenwick reached out a paw and grabbed the kid by the elbow. The kid came to an abrupt halt. Fenwick flipped the name tag over. He laughed. The kid turned red. “His name is Peter Hardon.”
Sanchez and Deveneaux smirked.
Turner said, “We need to see some kind of identification.”
With a flick, Fenwick pulled the ID from the kid’s shorts. From a side pocket of the plastic packet he pulled a Grover Cleveland High School ID that said the kid’s name was Peter Scanlan. There was also a small brass key with a number on it.
Turner showed the ID to Slade, “How did he get in?”
Slade looked discomfited. “He must be of age.”
Scanlan said, “I’m of age.”
“And pigs fly,” Turner said.
Fenwick asked, “What’s this key to?”
From Scanlan, “Screw you.”
From Slade, “We have lockers where people who want to change can leave their things.”
Fenwick said to Slade, “Your security is not as perfect as you claim it to be.”
“I trained them myself.”
Fenwick said, “We’ll have someone talk to the registration people and the door guards.” They gave Sanchez instructions on what to ask the guards and registration people. He left.
Turner said, “Kid, you’re not under arrest. We don’t want to get you for being out after curfew or for being here. We just need to know what you saw.”
Scanlan rolled his eyes, rocked on his heels, flitted
his eyes from adult to adult. He gave a final gulp, then said, “I met a guy upstairs. We got about halfway down here together then he said he had to pick up a few toys, and I was to go where he said and wait. He gave me directions, but I kind of got lost. I got down to this level, and it’s pretty dark. So I was kind of groping around. And the guy didn’t come.”
“What time was this?” Fenwick asked.
“I don’t have a watch.”
“About what time?”
“I don’t know. I got here about five. I guess I was at the party for a few hours. There was lots to do and see. It was cool. So I waited and kind of wandered around. Then I heard someone shouting at me about being security, and I didn’t know who he was, and I didn’t want to get caught so I ran. And I tripped over…” He looked around. “Hey, are we back near, where…? Hey. I don’t want to be here. What happened to the guy I tripped over? I didn’t do anything wrong.”
Fenwick said, “He’s dead.”
The kid said, “Bullshit.”
Fenwick said, “Have I ever lied to you before?”
The kid said, “Bullshit.”
Fenwick said, “Repetitious and unimaginative.”
“I didn’t kill him.”
“Neither did I,” Fenwick said. “But you could be next.”
“You can’t threaten me.”
“I did and I may again.”
The kid tried to yank away.
Turner pointed toward Belger.”Is that the same guy you were supposed to meet?”
The kid slid-hopped as Fenwick dragged him near the corpse. For several moments the kid’s eyes stayed riveted on the body. He turned very pale. “I don’t know who the fuck he is.” Not fear, maybe annoyance. More as if adults were disturbing him and they’d better back off. Fenwick gave the kid a gentle shake.
“He’s dead?” the kid asked.
Fenwick said, “He’s really, really, really dead. And you’re our number one suspect.”
“I didn’t kill anybody. This is bullshit. I didn’t do nothing.”
“So why’d you run?” Turner asked. Something in Scanlan’s reaction wasn’t right. He might be attempting bravado, but there was something beneath the surface.