Night Terrors

by Dennis Palumbo

  Ignoring him, Zarnicki moved two stools over to make room for his boss. Alcott frowned, sniffed once, and sat.

  The bartender returned with a fresh drink. Parnelli gave me a bemused look, again indicating the stool to his right. I chose instead to lean with my back to the bar.

  “Suit yourself.” Parnelli loudly sipped his drink.

  “Feel better?” I asked. “Good enough to tell me how the hell you ended up defending John Jessup?”

  Alcott chimed in. “I’m curious myself, Parnelli. You’re with the DA’s office here in town, right?”

  “That’s right. Couple years now. But I started as a public defender in New York. I’m Brooklyn born and raised.”

  “Yeah, I noticed the accent.”

  “Hard to miss. Though every year in Pittsburgh grinds it down a bit.” He shook his head sadly. “Anyway, after I left New York, but before moving down here, I worked in the private sector. A huge corporate law firm called McCloskey, Singer, and Ganz. You guys remember them, don’tcha?”

  “Oh yeah,” I said flatly. Alcott nodded, too. The firm’s name and reputation had figured prominently in the bank robbery case during which he and I met last summer.

  “Then you might also remember how shitty I felt bein’ associated with that motley band of big shots. Besides, after a year of corporate work, I couldn’t wait to get back in a courtroom. So I started lookin’ around for another place to hang my hat. Right around then, a buddy of mine in Legal Aid in Cleveland—we went to law school together—tells me about John Jessup. How he’s accused of multiple rapes and murders, and the woman public defender who’s caught his case just went on maternity leave. So did I want to come to Cleveland and defend Jessup, pro bono? At least it would get me back in front of a judge and jury. Nobody else in Legal Aid wanted to defend the bastard, anyway. So I said yes.”

  Parnelli paused to knock back the rest of his drink. Tapped the glass on the counter. The bartender appeared.

  “Sure I can’t get you guys anything? I’m runnin’ a tab here and it’s gettin’ lonely.”

  Alcott and Zarnicki declined, but I ordered a draft Iron City. Somehow listening to Parnelli made me thirsty.

  After our drinks came, and the ADA took a healthy swallow of Mr. Daniels’ finest, he went on with his tale.

  “Now, believe it or not, I did my best for Jessup at the trial, but the evidence against him was overwhelming. Didn’t help that the prosecution had this female firecracker arguing their case.”

  “Claire Cobb,” I said. “She’s just upstairs.”

  “No shit? Ya shoulda brought her down to say hi. Ya wouldn’t know it to look at her, but she’s a cruise missile in the courtroom. By the time she finished her summation to the jury, I wanted to string Jessup up by his balls.”

  He paused then, a shadow passing over his eyes as he stared down at his drink.

  “Not that I needed much persuading. Jessup was a cold, unfeeling bastard. Every minute of pretrial prep with him was goddam awful. That flat, empty stare…”

  Parnelli finished his drink in one swallow.

  “Point is, it was pricks like Jessup that helped make up my mind to switch sides, go over to prosecution.” He gave me a collegial smile. “I think I told ya my sister lives here, right? I figured, why the fuck not? So I moved to town and went to work for the DA’s office.”

  Alcott stirred, which is when I realized he’d been silent during Parnelli’s entire story.

  “Doesn’t matter what you’re doing now, Parnelli. As far as our killer’s concerned, you failed to successfully defend Jessup at trial. We assume he blames you as much as anyone for what happened to him.”

  Parnelli shrugged. “Maybe you’re right. But there’s no way I’m gonna stay cooped-up in some FBI hotel room for the duration. Even if you gave me the key to the mini-bar. Hell, it could take weeks to catch this guy. Months…”

  “No it won’t.” Alcott’s voice grew hard as a blade’s edge. “But even if it did, cooped-up is better than dead.”

  I put my hand on Parnelli’s forearm.

  “C’mon, you gotta agree you’re a likely target for the killer.”

  “What if I am? Fuck him.” His words slurred now, laced with alcohol-fueled bravado. “Besides, did I ask for FBI protection? Nope, I was just sittin’ in my office, mindin’ my own business, when Junior here showed up…”

  Alcott looked past him at me. “Son-of-a-bitch is drunk.”

  “Ya think?” I kept my grip on Parnelli’s arm. “So what’s your plan, Dave? Figure you’ll just stroll around town, waiting to get shot in the head?”

  “Not a bad plan, Danny boy, but I see some flaws in it. How ‘bout this? J. Edgar here assigns an eager G-man or plainclothes cop to be my bodyguard. Some Clint Eastwood wannabe who’ll shoot first and ask questions later. Now that’s a plan. Ain’t it?”

  I took a pull of my beer and tried again.

  “What about Sinclair? What did he say?”

  Leland Sinclair, Pittsburgh’s ambitious district attorney, was Parnelli’s boss. And not a man who suffered fools lightly.

  “Haven’t asked him.” Eyes blinking as he struggled to maintain focus. “Thing is, Lee’s up in Boston for some political fundraiser. Brown-nosing the party bigwigs.” He leaned in, conspiratorial. “Ya know what I think? I think Lee’s gonna run for governor again.”

  Parnelli was probably right, but it was hardly the point at the moment. With a grunt, I helped him sit upright again. It was like hefting a big, shifting bag of sand.

  Meanwhile, Alcott had had enough.

  “Zarnicki, take Mr. Parnelli upstairs to the suite till he sobers up. Maybe get some hot coffee into him. Then I’ll have another talk with him.”

  As the young agent took hold of Parnelli’s other arm, the ADA glared hotly at him.

  “Where are we going? Are we done here?”

  I leaned in close. Buddies. Paisans. “Go with Agent Zarnicki, will ya, Dave? The Feds need your input on this case. You spent time with Jessup. You might even have some idea who’d been sending him fan letters in prison.”

  He nodded importantly. “Ya know, I might at that…”

  I smiled encouragingly. “So go on upstairs and give it some thought, okay?”

  Without waiting for his reply, Zarnicki pulled roughly on the older man’s elbow and yanked him off the stool.

  “Hey!” Parnelli yelped. “Watch it, Junior!”

  Alcott growled. “Now, Agent Zarnicki.”

  Parnelli wobbled a bit, but Zarnicki steadied him and began leading him out of the bar. Once they’d cleared the door, Alcott turned back to me. Made a point of showing how beleaguered he was.

  “Figures he’d be a friend of yours, Rinaldi. Another pain in the ass.”

  “Maybe. But Parnelli has a point. I mean, how long can you keep these people under wraps? They have work, lives. And the Bureau’s resources aren’t unlimited.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Besides, now that the story’s leaked, the killer might go underground. Or at least slow his pace. He might wait months to go after the next victim on his list.”

  “That thought had occurred to me.”

  But his words had no bite. Alcott leaned back on his stool, hands on the bar, head sinking down between those linebacker shoulders. The fatigue he’d fought for so long finally asserting itself.

  “Time’s on his side, Rinaldi,” he said at last. “And the killer knows it.”

  Before I could respond, a heavy tread on the bar’s hardwood floor behind me drew my gaze. It was Harry Polk, buttoned up tight in his Army surplus coat. As he neared, I noticed he was also carrying another winter coat.

  Mine. The one I’d left up in the hotel suite.

  He and Alcott exchanged perfunctory nods, then Harry turned to me. Held out my coat, bunched in his hands.
r />   “Here, Doc, you’re gonna need this.”

  “Where am I going?”

  “On a little road trip. To Steubenville, Ohio. Ain’t that exciting?”

  “Why?”

  “I gotta go talk to our eyewitness to the Cranshaw shooting, and you’re comin’ with.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Ash-gray snow was piled high and wide on either side of US-22 West, the waning sun offering just enough light to make the frost on the hood of Polk’s unmarked sedan glisten. Beyond and behind us, the empty fields shone like white satin sheets.

  “Looks like a Christmas card, don’t it?” Harry drove with one hand, the other holding the dash lighter to the end of a Camel unfiltered. With the windows shut tight and the heater on high, after two puffs from his cigarette you could’ve smoked a ham in the car’s interior.

  “Out there, yeah,” I said, waving away smoke. “Just like Christmas. In here, not so much…”

  Polk gave a grunt, his version of a disinterested rebuke. I turned my attention back to the view.

  We’d crossed the state line into Ohio ten minutes before, though the scenery wasn’t dissimilar. The highway passed towns of various sizes and levels of prosperity, and more than a few well-tended farms, but most of the region’s industrial vigor had fled. Like many other parts of the country, the tri-state area’s manufacturing base had been transplanted overseas, and its agricultural bounty had been co-opted by conglomerates. Between outsourcing and the rise of agribusiness, the economic landscape of states like Ohio and Pennsylvania had changed radically, even while the actual landscape had not.

  Which was what made the view so mournfully evocative. It looked exactly as it had when I was kid, when my dad had driven the two of us—lonely father and motherless son—to visit family in Cincinnati for the holidays. The weather reliably cold and snowing, the roads thrillingly icy, the cloudless night sky as blank as a blackboard. A blankness waiting, in that same child’s imaginings, for the words of a hopefully-exciting story—the narrative of his future—to be written on it.

  “You with me here, Doc?”

  Polk’s sharp voice shredded the skein of my memories.

  I turned my head away from the gathering dusk.

  “Just thinking, Harry. You ought to try it sometime.”

  “Uh-huh. Speakin’ o’ which, you give any thought to why I might’ve asked you along? It sure as hell ain’t for your delightful company.”

  “I figured that. So why am I riding shotgun? You need back-up in case Vincent Beck gets violent?”

  Another noisy smoker’s laugh, somewhere between a gasp and a hack.

  “If I needed backup, I’d get me a couple actual cops. Not some shrink with a hero complex.”

  “I’m a psychologist, not a shrink. Jeez, Harry, we’ve been over this.”

  “Like I give a fuck.”

  “And I’m nobody’s idea of a hero, believe me.”

  “You get no argument from me, Rinaldi. I’m just makin’ a point here.”

  “Wish I knew what the hell it was.”

  He took another drag on his cigarette, burning it half-way down. When he exhaled, the dash heater swirled the smoke in eddies before our eyes.

  “I just wanted to get you alone,” Harry said at last. “So we could talk.”

  “You wanna talk? Since when?”

  “Since I noticed how you and Detective Lowrey been actin’ around each other.”

  “Eleanor and me?”

  “Gimme a break, will ya, Doc? You’ve been checking out her inventory, on and off, since last summer. Which makes sense, since she’s a great-lookin’ woman, even if she is my partner. My problem is, I think she kinda likes you, too.”

  “Look, even granting that it might be a problem, how is it your problem?”

  “It’s my problem ’cause I don’t need the aggravation. You go breakin’ her heart or some shit, and it’ll be my job to pick up the pieces.”

  I considered this.

  “Harry, are you asking me what my intentions are regarding Detective Lowrey?”

  “Christ, you make it sound like we’re on Masterpiece Theater…but, yeah. I guess I am.”

  “Okay. Then let me ask you a question: Does the phrase ‘It’s none of your business’ mean anything to you?”

  “Don’t mean shit. Lowrey and me are partners. Which means we watch each other’s backs.”

  “I appreciate that, Harry, but—”

  “There’s somethin’ else.” Polk gave me a sidelong look. “I don’t wanna tell tales outta school here, but Lowrey…I mean, it ain’t exactly a secret that she swings both ways.”

  Actually, I’d thought it was. Given how zealously Eleanor guarded her private life, I was surprised Harry knew. Though Eleanor once told me that some of her fellow cops suspected. Maybe Harry had just picked up on the rumors. Or maybe she’d told him herself. As Harry’d said, they were partners. And had been for a long time.

  Regardless, I wanted to see where Polk was going with this. “What are you talking about, Harry?”

  “You know damn well what I’m talkin’ about. Sometimes she drives stick, sometimes she don’t. I’m just sayin’… Hell, no need to get your heart broken, either.”

  “Why, Sergeant, I’m touched.”

  “You’re touched, all right. In the head. But this thing between you and Lowrey…I just want you love-birds to know what the hell you’re gettin’ into. Far as I’m concerned, everybody would be a lot happier if you two just gave it a pass.”

  I suppressed a smile. “I’ll take it under advisement.”

  “See that you do.”

  With that, he opened his window to toss out the spent cigarette. Exposing us to a blast of bone-chilling cold.

  “Now, about this Vincent Beck mook.” Polk quickly rolled up the window. “He’s the only eyewitness we got, so I don’t wanna spook him. This interview calls for a kid-gloves approach. A little finesse.”

  “Probably why they sent you.”

  He wisely ignored me.

  “Anyway, my gut says Beck didn’t cough up everything he knows. That’s why we got Alcott to pull rank on the Steubenville PD and let me re-interview him.”

  “I’m guessing they’re not too happy about some Pittsburgh cop playing in their jurisdictional sandbox.”

  “Good guess. Which is why we gotta make a pitstop first at their house, so I can kiss the captain’s ring.”

  ***

  Initially, it was hard to pick out Vincent Beck from the dozen or so other delivery drivers at the warehouse.

  They were all on the young side, bundled into thick coats and scarves against the numbing cold. Some even wore ski masks under their assorted caps and hoods, wind-dried eyes peering out in the gathering dark, making them look like a team of cat burglars.

  After Polk’s obligatory call at Steubenville PD’s downtown precinct, we’d driven to an industrial area just outside the city. Rows of warehouses and factory outlets, lights blazing, stood against the winter’s night sky.

  The warehouse where Beck worked belonged to a well-known grocery chain, whose business had apparently transitioned over the years into primarily a delivery service. The long, low-slung building huddled at the far end of a broad graveled lot, which was dotted with steepled, melting islands of snow. A huge semi, wheels pock-marked with icy sludge, was parked with its rear doors opened to the warehouse’s cavernous mouth.

  Polk shut off the engine and pointed to a tall, gangly guy engulfed by a heavy coat and muffler, and wearing a Bengals cap. He was loading boxes from a handcart into the back of the truck.

  “That’s Beck,” Polk said. “Big Bengals fan. Local PD said he even kept the cap on in the interview room.”

  His hand on the driver’s side door, Polk turned to me. “I guess there ain’t no chance you’d stay in the car?” />
  “None whatsoever.”

  “Lucky for you, I’m too fuckin’ tired to argue about it. But keep your mouth shut, okay?”

  “Don’t I always?”

  Harry growled something unintelligable and wrestled himself out of the car. I got out on my side and joined him, quickly buttoning my coat against the frigid air. Since the sun had gone down, the temperature must’ve dropped fifteen degrees.

  With Polk in the lead, we crossed the ice-glazed gravel, stepping over heavily-indented tire tracks, until we reached the lip of the loading area. Vincent Beck was bent over the handcart, lifting the last of the boxes.

  Glancing past him, into the shadowed maw of the great building, I saw towering rows of shelves, holding hundreds of brand-name products. The other delivery men—they were all male, I noticed, and all similarly bundled against the cold—hurried along the various stacks. Putting items into boxes emblazoned with the store’s logo, climbing ladders for the upper shelves. Long, buzzing fluorescents hanging from the ceiling creating as much dense shadow as pools of unnatural light.

  For some reason, Polk waited until Beck had secured the final box into the belly of the truck. Then Harry called him by name and flashed his badge.

  It wasn’t until Beck had jumped down from the loading dock and unspooled his muffler that I got a good look at him. He was as young as I’d first thought, barely twenty, with cheeks burned by the cold. Deep-set, troubled eyes. A thatch of unruly hair shoved down by the Bengals cap.

  He was instantly on his guard, nervously shifting his weight from one foot to the other. Gloved hands patting before him, the muffled applause of anxiety.

  “I told everything to the other cops already.” His voice thin, a bit nasal.

  “I know, but now you gotta tell me.” Polk glanced around, taking in the other workers on the dock. A second truck now slowly backing up against a warehouse further down the line. “Is there somewhere we can talk, Vince?”

  “Vincent.” The younger man corrected him, rubbing his red nose. “And here’s fine. Nobody pays no attention. We all got enough to worry about, gettin’ the delivery right. Ya don’t know what these customers are like. If anything’s missin’ from the order…Like I said, ya don’t wanna know.”