by Mark Zubro
“They’ve both been married,” Cheswick said.
Turner asked, “Did you know Belger appeared on a gay S+M web site?”
Cheswick said, “I don’t believe that.”
“Want us to wait while you check the Internet?” Turner asked.
Cheswick looked from one to the other. Turner said, “We downloaded one picture.” For once the color copier had been working. He pulled it from his folder and showed it to Cheswick who peered at it closely then looked up at the two detectives and said, “Did the killer whip him to death?”
Turner said, “He had fresh wounds. Belger was seen participating in S+M training sessions at this party.”
Cheswick again looked from the detectives to the picture and back again.
Turner said, “Either of those guys ever strike you as being into rough sex?”
“No. They were both regular guys.”
“Who fought a lot. Like lovers do.”
Cheswick said, “Come on, that’s not right. Sure I guess they could be rough around the edges. Who isn’t?”
“They ever hit each other?” Fenwick asked.
Cheswick said, “This is so fucked up.”
“How’s that?” Turner asked.
“Shit. Okay. Look. I saw them once. It was after our shift was over. I saw them outside the Raving Dragon. They got into a kind of shoving match. I’m sure it didn’t mean anything.”
“What was it about?” Turner asked.
“Damned if I know. Guys are rough with each other. They weren’t gay. Are you saying Callaghan is gay?”
Fenwick said, “We’re just trying to understand the two of them.”
But Cheswick didn’t really know anything helpful. He left. As the door slammed, Turner said, “So much for my brilliant interrogative trickery.”
“Or he really didn’t know anything,” Fenwick said.
“All too possible,” Turner said.
They finished two more interviews. That was all the personnel on duty inside the station at the moment. They’d have to come back to catch the ones on Belger and Callaghan’s shift. Turner sighed. More call-backs. More time. He yawned again. He was already tired. He wished he was home having breakfast with Ben and the kids. He’d be lucky to catch them at lunch.
Outside, even at this relatively early hour, sunlight had baked the car interior to nearly unbearable.
“I’m tired,” Turner said.
Fenwick added, “I’ve got to get some sleep.”
“Sleep would be good,” Turner said. “But for now it’s not that kind of tired. I’m sick of these people. We work with a few good people. We work with a lot more assholes. And for us it’s the same thing. Day after day, we basically lie, or put on a mini-play, which is the same as lying. We do just about anything to get to the truth.”
“We don’t hurt or torture people.”
“Except in cop bars.”
Fenwick said, “I’ll give you that, but we did what we had to do. Neither you nor I nor anybody on our squad hurts suspects or witnesses. Even Caruthers doesn’t have that kind of nerve.”
“That’s because his partner would beat the crap out of him, and Molton wouldn’t put up with it. Caruthers is easy compared to the assholes we just questioned. You listened to them. You heard Boyle earlier. Vague threats and bullshit. Except for a little cooperation from that Cheswick guy, and he was no saint. It’s just shit. I don’t know if rogue cops killed Belger. Or maybe everybody he worked with hated him. Nobody was raving about what a good guy he was. Nobody shed a tear. Nobody looked sad.”
Fenwick said, “He was the embodiment of an asshole, and he’s dead. What would you expect from them?”
Turner didn’t respond to the comment. He said, “And Callaghan is a double shit, to use your old classification system. Fighting the criminals of society is sort of a game. So many of them are so stupid, but even then we still have to get clear evidence. But fighting our own?” He shook his head. “And I believe in the system, the ultimate fairness of the law, but times like today are too much. The bullshit level is above flood stage.”
Fenwick pulled to the side of the road under the El tracks on Wells Street. The grid above provided a modicum of shade. He said, “I’ve never heard you be this down.”
“I’m not sure I’ve ever been this down. Not since my first week on the job when I was at my first homicide. A guy killed his wife and three kids. All the little ones were under the age of five. I know a cop isn’t supposed to cry. I went home and sobbed. Ian and I were lovers at the time. He helped. He was great.”
Fenwick said, “We all get down. It’s part of the job.”
“I need sleep. And this side of death, I’m not sure there is enough sleep to cure what ails society. And I’m not sure I care that much about the dead guy, but it’s the seedy shit that’s depressing me.”
“You mean like the party?”
“No, that’s kind of amusing and a little fun. I might even get a few tips for late night with Ben. And don’t ask.” He was silent several moments then he rapped his knuckles on the torn door vinyl as he stared out the window. As he spoke, each distinct syllable got its own thump. “This is sordid. Squalid. Sleazy. Ugly in ways that make no sense.” He looked over at Fenwick. “That asshole Callaghan beat the hell out of the bartender, and now it’s so important for him to get away with it that people are willing to kill?”
“If the bar incident is connected with the killing.”
“Neither of us believes in coincidences. Certainly people are willing to lie. Why? What the hell makes Callaghan’s life that important?”
“You saying you think Callaghan did it?”
“A cop or cops.”
“It could have something to do with the people at the party.”
An El rumbled by on the tracks overhead. Turner felt a slight breeze. When the noise abated and the wind died, he resumed, “I know there’s no solution to any of it. Crooked cops. The depression of violent death. I guess I’m just tired and hot and miserable.”
Fenwick said, “You’re right. There are no easy solutions. I don’t have any. I could make a joke about chocolate always making things better. I don’t know what does. I’m not sure what to say.”
Turner said, “Maybe there isn’t anything to say. Maybe it’s like everything else in this world. You learn to endure. And mostly I do. I’ve been at this for years. This time it’s getting to me. Either I endure it or I don’t.”
Fenwick said, “I suspect you will.”
Turner said, “I suspect you’re right. You heard Molton. We’ve got to get this finished. We’ve got to try and get more of these interviews done.”
Fenwick said, “People will tend to be home, this hour on a Saturday morning. Let’s find the complainer that was listed in the files. The one who hired a lawyer and followed up.”
Turner said, “We get enough overtime on this, I can buy you donuts for a week.”
“Not enough money to do that on our salaries for a month.”
TWENTY-TWO
The complainant, Delmar Cotton, lived on LaSalle Street just south of North Avenue. Saturday morning just before 7:30 A.M., he answered the door in black silk boxers and a gray T-shirt.
Cotton said, “I was expecting a delivery from the bakery down the street.”
Turner and Fenwick showed ID and introduced themselves.
Cotton didn’t rush to change. He had extremely wide shoulders, very narrow hips, and muscular legs. “What’s this about?”
“Trent Belger and Barry Callaghan.”
Any nervousness Cotton might have felt with having two cops at his front door disappeared. He said, “Bullshit. It was bullshit. Those two are assholes.” He led them into the apartment. His Bowflex machine sat in front of a flat screen television. Cotton’s body looked like he and the Bowflex machine had a seven-day-a-week relationship. Besides the TV and exercise machine, two black easy chairs decorated the living room. They could see a large kitchen and a door which must lead deep
er into the apartment.
They sat at a glass topped table in a breakfast nook. Cotton spread his legs wide and didn’t seemed concerned if anyone was trying to look up the gaps in his shorts. Turner resisted the urge. He asked, “What was bullshit?”
“Are you guys finally going to do something about those two? Each one was worse than the other.”
“Did you file a complaint about both of them?” Turner asked. They’d only found complaints about Belger. This would be proof that someone had doctored the files.
“I sure did. Both. I got a lawyer and everything. I didn’t care how much it cost. But nothing ever happened to those two. Nothing.” He shook his head. “Everybody knows the statistics now about the internal workings of the Chicago police complaint department. Everybody! Two complaints out of a thousand were upheld. Two! What bullshit. And Belger and Callaghan were the biggest assholes.”
Turner said, “Trent Belger is dead.”
The door to the rest of the condo opened. A well-muscled man bare-chested and wearing navy blue pajama bottoms walked into the room. He yawned and said, “I thought I heard somebody. What’s going on?”
Cotton said, “This is my partner, Bill Grant.” The detectives introduced themselves. Grant was taller and leaner than his partner.
Cotton said, “These detectives are here about Belger and Callaghan. Belger is dead.”
“Good,” Grant said. He pulled some juice from the refrigerator, offered some to the others, poured himself a glass, and joined them. “I hope he suffered.”
Turner asked, “What did those two do to you?”
“We were attacked right on Belmont Avenue. This gang of homophobic teenagers got out of their cars with baseball bats. But we’re in good shape and people nearby rushed to help us. It was wonderful. We got the baseball bats away from those kids. We got the keys to their car. We held them on the ground until the cops showed up. Belger and Callaghan.”
The doorbell rang. Grant returned with a box of pastry. He offered them some. Turner glanced inside. Grant said, “These are whole grain, no-fat muffins.” Turner declined. He watched Fenwick manage to mask his sneer. As far as Fenwick was concerned if chocolate wasn’t involved in the pastry, it wasn’t worth eating. And if the pastry was trying to disguise itself as something healthful, it should be sent immediately to the great garbage disposal in the sky.
Cotton offered coffee and produced four heavy beige mugs which he filled.
Fenwick asked, “Did the kids get hurt?”
Grant said, “From the way they screamed, you’d have thought we were torturing them. We got the bats away from them. That was all. They had no bruises. There was no blood. But those fuckers Belger and Callaghan.” He banged his fist on the table. The box of pastries jumped. “They let the kids go.” He wiped at his face.
Cotton picked up the story. “They let those snotty little, homophobic creeps go. We said we’d testify. We had witnesses. We had everything. They listened to us. Then they took the kids about twenty feet away. A few minutes later, I saw a couple of the kids giggle. I knew something was wrong.”
“You were right,” Grant said.
“The kids got in their car and took off. The cops came back to us. I was so furious. If Grant hadn’t been there, I think I would have been arrested. Those two were as bad as the kids.”
Turner said, “That was wrong.”
Cotton said, “It was criminal. But there was nothing we could do. Not right then. But the next day we called an attorney. He told us how much it would cost, and what we would need to do, and how useless it probably would be. He was right about all of it, but I didn’t care.”
Grant said, “Nothing happened.”
Turner said, “It should have.” He didn’t add that only one of the cops involved had gotten a mention in his file.
Cotton said, “There’s worse.”
“What?” Turner asked.
Grant said, “We heard rumors about them tasering gay people.”
There had been absolutely nothing about this in either cops’ file. Turner knew that if anything had been made of such a complaint, they would have heard about it through the department grapevine.
Cotton said, “Yep. It was after a Pride Parade a few years back. They went after a couple guys who were holding hands.”
“Nobody complained?” Turner asked.
“The guys were closeted, but thought they’d be safe at the Pride Parade. They were afraid because Belger and Callaghan were cops.”
“When was this?”
“Two, maybe three years ago.”
“Do you have any names of the people involved?”
“No,” Grant said. The answer came very quickly. Turner wasn’t sure if he was lying or not. “Some friends told us about it.”
An urban legend or strict fact?
“They were in uniform when they did this?” Turner asked.
“Yep,” Grant said.
“It wasn’t the first time,” Cotton said.
Again, they didn’t have names, dates or facts.
Turner said, “With officer Belger dead, any investigation into that kind of incident would stop.”
“What about Callaghan?” Cotton asked.
Turner said, “We’re trying to find out anything we can about both of them.”
Cotton said, “I know what happened to us. I believe they did that other stuff.”
“Did you call the gay papers?” Turner asked.
“We did about the tasering,” Grant said. “The reporter we talked to said we’d have to have the victims come forward. We knew that wouldn’t happen.”
“What happened to Belger?” Cotton asked.
“Where were you last night?” Fenwick asked.
Cotton said, “A private party.”
“You have witnesses?” Fenwick asked.
Grant said, “Several thousand. We were at the Black and Blue party. I’m sure you don’t know what that is.”
Turner said, “That’s where they found the body.”
Silence reigned for several moments as Cotton and Grant looked at each other.
“I didn’t see him last night,” Grant said.
Cotton nodded. “Same here.”
“Did you know Belger appeared on a porn web site dedicated to S+M?” Turner asked.
Grant said, “We don’t need to look at porn to be turned on.” More nods from Cotton.
Turner asked, “What did you do at the party?”
“We looked at the display rooms and looked in on the seminars. We were signed up for some of the bondage seminars. They were pretty interesting. Do you know what a bondage seminar is?”
Turner said, “About what time did you leave?”
“We got home about two. We were going to go back tonight for more extensive stuff. Are they going to close down the party?”
“Not that I know of,” Turner said. They left the two lovers to their pastry.
In the car Fenwick said, “They never look at porn on the Internet?”
“You don’t. Now there are three of you.”
“You don’t?”
“I don’t ask. I don’t tell.”
Fenwick said, “Those two would be plenty strong enough to drag a body around.”
“And they were pissed off enough to be willing to give revenge a try.”
Fenwick said, “If an angry gay person killed Belger, wouldn’t that same person be out to get Callaghan? Wouldn’t he be in danger?”
“Only if we’re lucky,” Turner said.
Turner’s cell phone rang. He looked at the caller ID. It was Ian. Turner pressed the answer key. The reporter said, “I know you’re going to interview the guy who had the cell phone that night and the reporter.”
“Yeah.”
“I have paved the way. All will be well. I have the proverbial gold mine.”
“What?” Turner asked.
“The fella who did the recording is gay, and he’s angry, and he’s scared, and he’s ready to talk. He doesn’t k
now what the hell is going on. I think he’s been threatened. I’ve convinced him that you and your portly buddy are the answer to his dreams.”
Turner glanced at Fenwick’s bulk and tried to imagine him as the answer to anyone’s dreams. He knew for sure that Fenwick’s wife Madge loved the man, bulk and all. After that he wasn’t too sure.
Turner asked, “You got a lead on the reporter who broke the story.”
“I, your sainted friend, have more than a lead.”
“Saint Ian?”
“I may get my own goddess to match Fenwick’s for this. I have the reporter set to come to lunch after we’re done with the guy with the video.”
“How do you manage all these things?” Turner asked.
“I’m a saint.”
“Depends on your point of view,” Turner said. “We’ve got a couple interviews yet this morning.” They agreed to meet for lunch when Ian could fill them in on the details he found out.
“Any progress?” Ian asked.
“Yes, Belger and Callaghan were assholes.”
Ian said, “I’ll alert the media.”
TWENTY-THREE
Turner organized their next interviews so that they’d be least geographically challenged. He also called Judy Wilson, who had said she knew the bar owner. She had set up a meeting for later that morning at the bar. She said she would call when she had the exact time.
They walked up to Callaghan’s ex-wife Stacey’s porch. As Turner raised his hand to knock, a teenager wearing all black rushed out the door. He ignored the cops but took the time to slam the screen door. He hopped on a bike that had lain on the front lawn and pedaled off down the street.
“Everett, come back here,” came the shout through the door.
“Domestic bliss,” Fenwick said. “My favorite.”
Turner knocked.
A harried woman in her mid-thirties hurried around a corner and rushed down a short hallway. “You need to close this door to keep the heat out.” She pushed open the screen door and tried to see around the detectives.
“Where did he go?”
“Took off on his bike,” Turner said.
“Who are you guys?” She peered at each of them. “Cops? I know cops. What? Barry get killed, too? I can’t be that lucky.”