THE BUTLER

by Bill WENHAM

  Wayne nodded as I told them about the bank robbery, my shot at the fleeing car and the horrendous results of it. I also told them about the groom’s identification of his intended bride’s body and of his apparent lack of reaction or emotion. Wayne sat there nodding his agreement. Now that it had surfaced again, we both remembered it all very clearly.

  “Do you remember his name, Lieutenant?” Jan asked, in control of herself now, after wiping her eyes.

  I paused for a moment, realizing I’d known all along whom our killer was. I’d just been too dumb to pick up on his hints and to put all his little clues together. It had all been a game, with him as the hunter and with me as his prey.

  “I do,” I said slowly. “His name is Cervantes. Emilio Cervantes.”

  “Cervantes!” Jan cried. “Wasn’t that the name of the guy who wrote ‘The Man from La Mancha’?”

  “Yeah, Jan. At least, he wrote the book the show was based on. He wrote ‘Don Quixote’, and dammit, guys, our guy even told us that, didn’t he? Telling me I was just tilting at windmills.”

  “And ‘The Butler’? Ellie said. “It’s really not too much of a stretch to get butler or manservant out of Cervantes, is it?”

  “Christ!” I said in frustration. “It makes me sick to think we’ve lost three good cops, three good friends, apart from all his other victims, just to get us to the point where we are right now. When we did the identification of the girl’s body, he was even dressed in a black tux for his wedding. Just like a goddamned butler!”

  My mouth had gone dry and I got up to pour myself a coffee from the trolley Wayne had pulled into my office with him. I was about to ask if anyone else wanted one, but they beat me to it, helping themselves.

  “So,” I said, as we settled ourselves back down. “We now know who he is, agreed?” All three of them nodded. “We also have a full face photo of him, so we also know what he looks like as well, but as of now we don’t have a clue where he is, do we?”

  “Maybe he’ll give us one, Boss,” Wayne said.

  “Yeah, Wayne, maybe he will at that,” I said. “But right now, Ellie and I have a little private business to attend to, if you’ll both excuse us.”

  Ellie just nodded as Wayne and Jan left my office, grinning at each other with much of Jan’s fear now evaporated. They were both well aware of the situation that had developed between Ellie and me.

  When they were gone, I said, “Moving day, Ellie, is that it?”

  “Oh, God, yes, Sandy, let’s do it today, please.”

  We left the Precinct together to get her stuff moved into my apartment. It was mainly her clothes since this was intended only as a temporary measure until the Butler was apprehended. Personally, I hoped it would become permanent but only time would tell. Right now, her safety was my main concern.

  I wasn’t in the least bit surprised that, under the circumstances and although they weren’t romantically involved with each other, Wayne and Jan had made a similar arrangement. You never know, romance could still blossom and like Ellie and me, hopefully they’d be able to keep each other safe.

  Things were quite obviously now down to the crunch and we needed to have our backs covered. I suppose I could’ve asked for more people but I am sure Ellie’s right. I don’t want to put anyone else at risk in the Butler’s murderous elimination process. We still don’t know how he’d managed to take guys like Newt and Petrocelli out either and perhaps we never will.

  Emilio Cervantes listened to the conversation that had taken place in Spicer’s office with a smile on his face. So they think they know my name now, do they, he thought? Wrong again, Detective Spicer. He hadn’t used the name Emilio Cervantes for years. Not since he’d first gone on the stage. It had amused him enormously to have seen Spicer and the Todd woman in the audience at one of his own performances.

  When the cast had taken their final bow, he’d smiled directly at the wildly applauding pair. Of course, in character and stage makeup, he looked nothing at all like the photo that silly old woman had taken anyway. And it wasn’t of him anyway.

  Spicer would be astounded if he knew the old woman had photographed the wrong man! Winders had been shocked to have been stabbed by a man, when he had obviously been sure he’d been spoken to by a woman.

  But that’s why we’re actors, isn’t it, Detective. Remember Dustin Hoffman’s ‘Tootsie’ or Robin Williams’ ‘Mrs. Doubtfire’? A really good actor or actress can handle age, race or gender with comparative ease, and I, Detective Spicer, am a very good actor!

  He was also pleased the penny had now finally dropped and his long awaited payback time for Spicer was fast approaching.

  He was pleased Spicer and the Todd woman had a thing going between them too. It would make for a much more interesting finale when the curtain was rung down on the last act of his Big City crime drama.

  They were confident they knew who he was now but he would lead the remaining four of them on a very merry chase before he let them know where he actually was.

  He would also lull them completely into a false sense of security, letting them believe their little love nests were safe havens. How terribly naïve of you, Spicer, to think you, of all people, could think for a moment you could ever be safe!

  Before we meet face to face however, be assured at least two more of your team will have dropped by the wayside by then.

  The Butler chuckled to himself. A most interesting and appropriate choice of words, he thought. What a very good idea!

  He also took a moment to think back to the day when he’d started to plan his murderous vendetta against the police, and Detective Spicer in particular, another moment for a solemn vow to renew his resolve for revenge.

  It had all started on his wedding day.

  “So how do I look?” he’d asked his best man, his younger brother Raphael.

  “You look like a bloody penguin in that getup,” his brother had teased him. “Or one of those stuffy, snooty English guys, you know, the valet or the butler, the kind of role Arthur Treacher used to play in those old black and white movies, and we both look just as bloody ridiculous, Bro.”

  “Very appropriate dress then, don’t you think, given a family name such as ours?”

  “What’s our family name got to do with it?” his brother asked.

  “Well, like you said, my little brother, valet, butler, manservant, and with our name being Cervantes. Quite close enough, don’t you think?”

  Emilio Cervantes and his brother were already standing at the altar, making small talk to hide their nervousness, as they waited for Emilio’s beautiful bride to make her dramatic appearance. The bride and groom had agreed, as was tradition, not to see each other on the morning before the wedding. They didn’t want to start their marriage with any bad luck.

  Emilio was already starting to get the premarital jitters as the church pews behind them began to fill with the wedding guests.

  There was a sudden commotion at the church entrance. They turned to see his bride’s younger brother, Juan, stumbling down the aisle towards them. Tears were streaming down his face as he struggled to find the right words to tell them the awful news.

  He finally managed to tell Emilio that his sister, Rosetta, Emilio’s beautiful and beloved bride to be, was dead. She’d been killed as the direct result of a police shootout that morning.

  Raphael glanced over at his brother about to try to comfort him and was shocked. He’d expected to see dazed grief but the look of blazing fury and hatred on his brother’s face was terrible to see. Raphael knew immediately that someone, somewhere, would pay very dearly for the events of this day.

  This had made a mockery of the police credo, “To protect the public”. Rosetta hadn’t been protected by them; she’d been killed by them!

  The police were there to serve the public, and as public servants, to maintain law and order, not to create chaos themselves! And just what was the dictionary definition of ‘servant’? A person dedicated to a cause!

  Emilio
had a very good cause of his own to devote his life to now. His dedicated cause would be to avenge his beautiful Rosetta. God, but he would make the policemen responsible for this pay, and they would continue to pay until he finally confronted the man who’d actually pulled the trigger!

  Today was to have been his wedding day, the happiest day of his life but it was not. His life had been completely destroyed for him today. So he would now start a new one. He vowed, right there in the church that he would keep on destroying policemen or their loved ones, until he was finally face to face with Rosetta’s killer. Today would be a day to be remembered forever. Others, policemen and their kinfolk would have very good reason to remember it also, because it was on this same day Emilio Cervantes created the murderous and avenging ‘Butler’!

  Chapter Ten

  It was now almost two years to the day since the four of us had attended Petrocelli’s funeral and the week before we’d all attended Newt Winder’s funeral as well.

  Once again, our Chief had done them both proud, with glowing eulogies, telling the assembled mourners what wonderful cops they’d both been.

  And once again the Mayor and the Police Commissioner had made token appearances. But this time they were really token appearances since both of them, surrounded by their entourages for safety, scurried off as soon as it was decently possible to do so. No standing around shaking the bereaved relative’s hands this time for the benefit of the media.

  We, what was left of our team, now took each day as it came, constantly looking over our shoulders, jumping at shadows and trying to protect ourselves and each other from our vicious but unseen enemy.

  Day after day went by, then week after week, with no word or further activity from the Butler. Nothing at all, no taunting messages, no fancy clues as to his whereabouts, no threats. Nothing, absolutely nothing.

  It was as though the Butler and his insane game of eliminating police officers was over and gone forever. We didn’t know how or why either. Perhaps he’d accidentally been killed somehow and hadn’t been identified. We all fervently hoped so. Maybe it’s wrong to wish death on someone but surely there must be some acceptable exceptions, aren’t there?

  As the weeks slowly turned into months without hearing anything more from the Butler, our lives and the pace of the City began to return to normal. Or as normal as a big city can get. Normality is relative. The bigger the city is the more abnormal ‘normal’ becomes.

  We still had our fair share of muggings, rapes, robberies, gang and drug dealer fights and naturally, a few deliberately planned murders and manslaughters just thrown in there for good measure. Just normal City life, or death, as the case may be.

  But unless he’d changed his M.O. totally, none of those deaths could be or would be attributed to the Butler. He appeared to be gone from our City and our lives for good now.

  We, particularly Jan and Ellie, started to relax a little after a while. And with the fear of death now gone from their hearts, minds and faces, they both returned to being the beautiful, happy women they both should be. No more red rimmed eyes around the duty room.

  I’d been completely wrong about Wayne and Jan not being romantically inclined towards each other though. I guess the close proximity of a small apartment and Jan’s desperate need to be protected had changed things a lot for them.

  Nowadays, when she was with Wayne, she just positively glowed.

  It was no surprise to Ellie or me when they stood in my office one morning, both grinning sheepishly like a couple of naughty school kids. They really didn’t have to announce their engagement to us at all. It was written all over their faces. If they’d put their news on a billboard or had taken a commercial spot on T.V., what they were about to tell us couldn’t have been any more obvious. They’d wanted to tell us first, they said, and they did. We congratulated them both, with the appropriate hugs and kisses all round, and then we all trooped out to the duty room where they made their announcement again to the rest of the Precinct.

  That had been almost eight months ago now. Jan said she wanted a June wedding with all the trimmings, including good weather, and they’d set a date for it, a Saturday.

  The wedding was to be held in the beautiful old St. Mark’s church, overlooking the square. It was one of the few public buildings left with some pretty parkland surrounding it on three of its sides.

  On the day of the wedding Jan looked absolutely stunning, dressed in a gorgeous white satin and lace gown. It had been lovingly stitched for her by her mother and her grandmother, with an intricate design of seed pearls in the bodice and headdress.

  Jan and Wayne were the opposites of Ellie and me, with Jan being ash blonde and Wayne dark haired. In his black tuxedo, black bow tie and white wing collared dress shirt he made a fitting partner to his beautiful bride. Even I had to admit they made a perfect couple.

  Wayne had asked me to be his best man and Jan asked Ellie to be her chief bridesmaid. Over the last year or so the two girls had become very firm friends, which had made it easy for us all to go out as a foursome.

  As Jan hoped, her wedding day was as beautiful as she was, bright, warm and sunny.

  Inside the church, as the ceremony began, she handed her wedding bouquet to Ellie. It was a beautifully arranged selection of double white carnations, deep red roses, ferns and baby’s breath gypsophila. Ellie handed it on to Wayne’s sister, Julie, another one of the bridesmaids. She would return it to Jan after the ceremony. Jan would then hold it again at the church steps for the wedding photos. Later, she would toss it over her shoulder for the traditional catching of the bride’s bouquet, with all of the unmarried girls scrambling to catch it.

  As we came back outside, I squinted in the bright sunlight, after the darker interior of the church. Something across the park caught the sun and the reflection of it flashed across my eyes, making seeing even more difficult for a moment.

  The wedding photographer’s assistant fussed around arranging the ladies’ dresses. We mere males, apart from Wayne of course, were jockeyed around according to size and placed in position.

  Finally the assistant was satisfied and the photographer was ready. Just as everyone said ‘cheese’, I got another flash in my eyes from across the park.

  Jan was smiling and holding her bouquet just above her waist. She sagged as another bright red flower burst into bloom on the bodice of her dress, as though another rose had just been added.

  She was already falling by the time the sound of the single rifle shot reached our ears. Although it didn’t occur to me at the time, the flash I’d seen twice was the sun reflecting off the lens of a telescopic rifle sight.

  I know I should have reacted differently, but we were all momentarily stunned by what had happened.

  Jan’s Uncle Joshua, a wedding guest and a medical doctor, hurried forward to attend to his niece. He knelt beside her on the steps, checked for a pulse in her neck, looked sadly up at Wayne and shook his head.

  Wayne just stood there for a moment looking as though all the life had been drained out of him. Slowly he sagged to his knees beside his dead bride in the gathering pool of blood beginning to run down the church steps. Ellie knelt beside him with her arm around his shoulders.

  I realized I should have gone racing off across the park after the mystery gunman except I was unarmed. Even cops don’t take service revolvers to weddings. In any case, he or she would have been long gone by the time I got there.

  What the hell am I talking about, I thought. He or she! There was no he or she about it. I knew damned well who it was.

  The Butler was back!

  And the lousy bastard had waited all this time, two years, for one or the other of us to get married, so he could kill our brides off.

  There are now only three of us left and once again, none of us is safe. As soon as I can, I’ll ask Wayne to move in with us. There’s plenty of room in the apartment and remembering Petrocelli, none of us should be left on our own now.

  The poor guy is a basket cas
e and I doubt if he will be operating sensibly for some time yet anyway. All the more reason for Ellie and me to look after him.

  She seems to be handling Jan’s death remarkably well but I’m pretty sure it’s all an act, a very difficult façade she’s trying hard to maintain. I’m determined not to damage it for her if I can possibly help it.

  Jan was killed yesterday, Saturday, and on Monday we’ll be back in my office trying to figure out what to do next. I can almost guarantee there’ll be a message of some kind from the Butler.

  There are only three of us left now but the hunt is on again.

  The Butler looked once more through the rifle’s telescopic sight to verify the results of his shot. He was reasonably satisfied, but he would have much preferred if it had been Spicer’s bride lying there in a pool of blood on the church steps. But that too would come eventually and he would wait. Not patiently but he’d wait. Every good performance deserves a good encore, he thought, even with a change of cast members. It would be worth waiting for.

  Originally he’d planned to finish this whole thing months ago, but when he’d heard about Crawford’s and the blonde girl’s engagement, he’d devised this plan instead.

  Since the wedding was planned for well into the next summer, he was able to join the cast of his show’s road tour. It had been planned as a six city program. This would give him ample opportunities to find other locations in which to taunt and trap Spicer. After all, he’d promised himself he’d lead Spicer a merry chase. A chase it would be indeed, but he doubted if Spicer would find it very merry. He certainly didn’t look too happy today.

  The Butler slid the rifle back inside the golf bag on the two wheeled cart beside him. Then he casually strolled away towards his car, pulling the cart along behind him.

  He didn’t play golf. He thought it was a most ridiculous and totally illogical game. Once again though, his actions had all been about deceit and diversion. If he’d carried a rifle or a rifle case into the park he would have been immediately spotted by somebody. A golfer, however, even though he isn’t on a golf course, can stand there all day swatting at the grass with practice swings and no one would take a scrap of notice of him.