Another Dead Teenager

by Mark Richard Zubro

  Fenwick said, “I’ve got chairs as junky as that in my house.”

  “Yeah, but yours came from Kmart. I bet these cost a fortune.”

  They entered what Turner guessed was a living room. At the far end, before the gaping maw of an enormous, unlit fireplace, they met Mr. and Mrs. Goldstein, the Douglases, and the entire upper echelon of the Kenitkamette Police Department: three women and two men, the one of highest rank being Donna Robsart, chief of police.

  Coach Goldstein and Mr. Douglas looked pretty much like the pictures in the paper Turner remembered. Goldstein did have a lot less hair than in his photos and his paunch protruded less than on television. He stood next to his wife, who was seated on a low-arm sofa with a cream denim slipcover. She wore blue linen trousers and a white silk blouse. Facing the Goldsteins, Andy Douglas and his wife sat next to each other on an oversized sofa with a cotton slipcover and two needlepoint throw pillows. His hair was much whiter than Turner remembered seeing. She wore her hair pulled back severely to emphasize high cheekbones and violet eyes. The Douglases held hands.

  After introductions and being seated, Mr. Douglas said, “All these reporters. All this confusion.” He paused and sucked in a breath. “Is it really true?”

  “I’m sorry,” Turner said. “Yes, both boys are dead.”

  Mrs. Douglas buried her face on her husband’s shoulder. They wept together. Mr. Goldstein abruptly sat on the edge of the couch next to his wife and with one hand he patted her shoulder while with the other he brushed futilely at the tears pouring down his cheeks. Mrs. Goldstein pulled a tissue from a box next to her and held it to her face. This was the confirmation of their worst fears.

  When sufficient equilibrium returned and all of the local police except the chief had left, Turner said, “We need to ask you a few questions. Any details you can remember could be useful. It also might help if we could look at each boy’s room.”

  What the parents knew of the previous evening was simple enough. The boys had gone to the football game the night before. They had access to a sky box as well as sideline passes secured by Mr. Goldstein. Afterward they were to have been escorted to the locker room to talk to a few of the players. The parents expected the boys home around one in the morning.

  “It was late for a school night,” Mr. Goldstein said, “but it was a rare opportunity. I’d have gone with them, but I had a speaking engagement in Kenosha. My wife and I arrived home around eleven-thirty.”

  Mr. Douglas said, “We were at a fund-raising dinner and meeting for Special Needs kids. We got home a little after midnight.”

  “They were so eager to go,” Mrs. Goldstein said. “They’d been talking about it for weeks.”

  When their son Jake hadn’t called or gotten in by two, they called the Douglases. By three they’d phoned the police. Their status and wealth got them more than a let’s-wait-and-see from the local cops and a missing persons report was filed by seven in the morning.

  “What happened to them?” Mr. Goldstein asked.

  Turner gave them the bare facts of the case, leaving out the grimmer details both because he didn’t want to upset them further, but also because, grief-stricken as these people might be, they could be suspects, and he didn’t want to give the murderer any information he or she might find useful.

  When Turner finished, Mrs. Goldstein said, “We’ll do everything we can to help find the killer.” The other parents nodded agreement.

  “Any enemies, fights, break-up with girlfriends, new girlfriends with disgruntled old boyfriends?” Fenwick asked.

  None of the parents knew of any such problem.

  “Both of the boys were popular at school,” Mrs. Douglas said. “They had lots of friends. They’d known each other since eighth grade. Did lots of things together.”

  “Any family problems, drugs, drinking?” Fenwick asked.

  Turner watched the four parents carefully. When the personal questions started, emotional explosions could occur.

  “We talked about that a little bit before you came,” Mrs. Douglas said. “To see if something in either home could have been part of this. None of us could think of anything. I can’t imagine something at home causing this.” The other parents agreed with her.

  “None of you left after you came home?” Turner asked.

  Hints of anger and resentment flashed on their faces at the question, but the four of them muttered no or shook their heads.

  “Did they have access to guns?” Fenwick asked.

  As far as either set of parents knew, neither boy had ever fired a gun or even touched one.

  The chief of police said, “We know who the troublemakers are in this town. Believe me, it was not these two boys. They were great. Lots of good press in the papers. Did lots of work in the community. Helped deaf kids every Saturday morning at the Methodist church. Nice kids. Wouldn’t hurt anybody.”

  They were told that Jake Goldstein had an older brother who was a Rhodes Scholar in England. Frank Douglas had an older married sister living in Australia.

  Turner and Fenwick gave them assurances that all would be done to find the killer or killers.

  They examined the Goldstein boy’s room before they left. Ken Goldstein accompanied them to the door.

  “Mr. Goldstein,” Turner said, “I need to ask. Did your son wear underwear all the time?”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “When we found him, we found a set of clothes with everything except shorts.”

  “I can’t believe he was naked. He’d fight. He’d never take his clothes off for some pervert.”

  “He might not have had a choice, Mr. Goldstein. It would help if you knew if he wore underwear all the time.”

  “I presume he did. Doesn’t everyone? He’s bought his own clothes for quite some time. I honestly don’t know for sure, but he must have.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Mr. Goldstein watched them enter his son’s room. “I don’t need to stay, do I? I’d rather be with my wife.”

  “No problem, sir.”

  “You’ll be careful?” He looked over the room and tears started flowing.

  “We’ll be very gentle, Mr. Goldstein.”

  After Mr. Goldstein left and they stepped onto the plush gold floor covering, Fenwick said, “Nice carpet. Got his own john too.” They peered into the medicine cabinet. “Somehow I knew we wouldn’t find illegal drugs,” Fenwick said. “I hate it when murder victims are saints.”

  There was toothpaste, aspirin, muscle-relaxing cream, deodorant, hair spray, zit cream, nail clippers, and a brush and comb set. Turner pointed at the pimple medicine. “At least he got zits.”

  “Do saints get zits?” Fenwick asked.

  The faucets were gold-plated, the tile expensive, the porcelain gleamed. No hints of cause for murder.

  The bedroom itself had a dresser, chest of drawers, and a king-size bed. A bookcase along one wall had textbooks neatly lined up on the top shelf with a variety of trophies and photos of teams resting on the other shelves. Turner glanced at these. It looked like the pictures Turner had of his older son. Goldstein’s started from when the boy must have been nine or ten. The wall over the bed had a life-sized poster of Michael Jordan. On the opposite wall was an eight-foot picture of a Porsche.

  Turner and Fenwick stood at the desk next to the bookcase. Fenwick glanced around the room. “This place is too neat. Who ever heard of a kid not leaving underwear around and crap all over?”

  “The maid probably cleans it,” Turner said.

  “Maids clean underwear?”

  In the dresser they found a drawer with rows of briefs and T-shirts neatly lined up.

  “Had underwear,” Fenwick said.

  They looked in the closet. Clothes hung neatly, shoes arranged carefully, athletic equipment stored in individual open shelving.

  They opened each container. In a black Chicago White Sox gym bag on the bottom shelf Fenwick found three neatly folded jockstraps, two Kenitkamette High School je
rseys that had been ironed, a leather jockstrap, metal-studded belt and armband, plus one black and one pink dildo.

  Fenwick gathered up the last five items in his arms. “These are a little different for a high school kid.”

  “I hope so,” Turner said. Turner found a similar gym bag tucked further into the corner from which they’d grabbed the other. He opened it. “Fascinating. We’ve got a whip, chains, tit clamps, an electric butt plug, and several smaller dildos.”

  “This is really an electric butt plug?” Fenwick asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Doesn’t every well-equipped S and M dungeon have several?”

  “I guess. Wonder if Mom and Dad know about all this?”

  “Bet not. I know Brian buys his own clothes and stuff, but I can’t imagine him even knowing where to get this kind of material.”

  “Do you?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “If adults can find it, kids can too.”

  “These don’t mean much by themselves,” Turner said.

  Fenwick examined under the bed and between the mattress and box spring. “No dirty books hidden away.”

  “You won’t be able to add to your collection.”

  “He’s got to whack off to something.”

  “Saints beat off?”

  “Probably not athlete saints,” Fenwick said.

  They examined each drawer of the desk as they had the other pieces of furniture. Nothing indicated anything out of the ordinary. The simplicity and neatness made it easy for them to finish in less than half an hour.

  Before leaving the house, they got a list of friends and teachers from the parents. From Donna Robsart they got a promise of cooperation and a commitment of personnel for the next morning for interviews at the high school. Turner and Fenwick told her they didn’t want to wait until Monday to question people. Robsart promised to have available as many of the friends, teachers, coaches, and administrators as possible for a Saturday. Turner and Fenwick asked them to include acquaintances and those who knew the boys only slightly.

  When conducting interviews of people who knew the deceased in a murder case, the police liked to start with those who knew the victims least. People on the periphery of the victims’ lives were the ones most likely to know the negative rumor, harbor ill will, know the tawdry gossip that might lead to a clue, a break in the case, or a conviction. They rarely started with those who knew the dead person best. Those are mostly people who liked the dead person, and only have good things to say. The Kenitkamette police would try to do this screening before the Chicago cops returned in the morning.

  They followed the Douglases’ car to their home to inspect Frank’s room. All Turner could see as the gleam of the headlights raced across the front of the house was that it had a heavily beamed Tudor exterior. Mrs. Douglas led them up beige-carpeted stairs to her son’s room. She opened the door and brought them in.

  “I’m sorry it’s such a mess.” She stooped to begin picking up clothes from the floor.

  “Please, stop, Mrs. Douglas,” Turner said gently. “We’d rather just look at it as is.”

  She halted and then said, “You won’t hurt anything?”

  “We’re just trying to get hints about him that could help us solve the murder.”

  “I can’t imagine what you’d find here that could lead to the killer. He was such a good boy. Surely you won’t find anything….” Her voice trailed off. She nodded uncertainly and stood in the doorway observing their work.

  Her presence limited the commentary between the two detectives.

  The room had sports posters of tennis and track players on three walls. A king-size bed, a chest of drawers, a dresser, and a desk. This room had mounds of dirty clothes on the floor with whiffs of rotting jockstrap emanating from several of them. Five or six pairs of shoes were piled in one corner. The desk chair was hung with jumbled dress pants and shirts. The closet was a mass of athletic equipment draped over, under, and around a myriad of shirts, pants, and jackets, some on hangers, some thrown carelessly about.

  Turner checked the scattering of school books on top of the desk, in the center of which was a pad of paper with an opening paragraph of an essay about the castles of Europe. It would never be finished. The center drawer, positioned over the space where one could sit, was filled with more paper, pens, pencils, stamps, and envelopes. The first drawer on the right had old gym locks, assorted keys, a condom, a harmonica, a police whistle on a string, and heaps of similar paraphernalia, but no clues to murder. The second drawer had papers from past school years. The bottom drawer had more paper on top but near the bottom was a magazine with pictures of naked women. Under that was a notebook.

  Turner opened it and then beckoned Fenwick over. The two detectives paged slowly through the three-ring notebook.

  “What is it?” Mrs. Douglas asked. She moved across the room toward them.

  Turner showed her the first several pages.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “This is the Satanic alphabet. Someone was practicing the letters.”

  “My son wouldn’t be involved in any of that nonsense.”

  “He wasn’t?”

  “Most definitely not.”

  She could add herself to the long list of parents who weren’t aware of what their kids were doing.

  “We’d like to take this with us,” Turner said.

  “Certainly. I wouldn’t want it in the house.”

  They left. Fenwick took the same route back to the city. As they drove through the Kennedy/Edens junction, he said, “Parents claim their kids were saints. Sex toys and Satanism don’t seem to mix with the image of a saintly teenager.”

  “You can’t expect much different from parents at a time like this,” Turner said, “and parents don’t know a lot of things about their kids. There’s stuff about Brian I’m sure I’d rather not know. I did stuff as a kid I hope my parents never find out about.”

  “Like what?”

  “Same stuff you did, probably. Want to tell me about it?”

  Fenwick thought a minute. “You’re right,” he said.

  Turner said, “I just hope tomorrow when we talk to the friends and teachers, we’ll get some lead. Somebody must know something about sex toys and Satanism.”

  “And if it’s got anything to do with the murders.”

  It was just after midnight when they got back to Area Ten headquarters. Even at this late hour three reporters from radio stations and two from newspapers along with a television crew were waiting for them outside. They ran this gauntlet and then had to answer to the commander, the case sergeant, and the chief of detectives for over an hour. No one had any ideas for actions they should take beyond what had been examined and who had been questioned so far. They discussed the probability of pressure from press, public, and parents and how to deal with it. They outlined strategies for the morning.

  On the way to their desks they passed Joe Roosevelt and Judy Wilson, two detectives from the squad. Joe was red-nosed and short, with brush-cut gray hair and bad teeth. Judy was a fiercely competitive African-American woman. They had a well-deserved reputation as one of the most successful pairs of detectives on the force. They were arguing with the watch commander outside an interrogation room. Their heated debate was about the necessity or lack thereof for giving a suspect they’d been questioning for three hours his Miranda warning. The difference between a probable suspect and an actual suspect can be subtle. Roosevelt said, “He was a witness until he started talking about the gun.”

  “But did he say it was his gun?” Wilson asked.

  “I thought he said….”

  Turner and Fenwick left them to it. They sat at their desks for almost two hours to begin the detailed paperwork that a police bureaucracy requires.

  They knew they would have to be extra careful to cover themselves. Every reporter in the city would be after them for details, but more important, everyone in the brass would b
e looking over their shoulders to make sure they’d pursued every lead as far as it would go and that every case file was completed absolutely correctly. Too much of what they wrote on many cases was simply to cover their asses. Turner and Fenwick had been detectives long enough that doing everything correctly was almost intuitive. They’d have to go by instinct and then double-and triple-check everything. Careers could be lost with a screw-up on a case like this. The pressure would be intense to solve it quickly and be right.

  Turner left for home just before three. More nights than he cared to remember they’d been required to stay all night to work on a case. In this instance there were no leads to follow, suspects to question, witnesses on hand to interrogate, or vital information to be hunted for. They’d only gotten the essentials of the paperwork done before calling it a night. They’d have to start early in the morning on more interviews and examination of possible evidence, all of which would add to the mounds of forms to be completed.

  Three

  Through his front window Paul Turner could see Ian Hume’s six-foot six-inch frame sprawled in the golden brown easy chair. One leg swung over an arm of the chair and another stretched out onto a red, velvet-covered ottoman. Ian’s slouch fedora was low over his eyes. Turner saw him reach a hand up and scratch the front of his beard-bedecked chin, a sure sign that Ian was immersed in the book he was reading. Turner saw that it was a hardcover edition of Conduct Unbecoming by Randy Shilts.

  Ian was the star reporter for the city’s major gay newspaper, the Gay Tribune. Several years before, he’d won the Pulitzer Prize for investigative journalism for his exposé of the medical establishment’s price-fixing of AIDS drugs.

  Paul and Ian had gone through the police academy together and after graduation had been assigned to the same district as beat cops. They’d come to respect and like each other, but Ian had gotten fed up with the system, and in addition made the decision to come out. He’d gone back for his journalism degree and begun writing newspaper articles; then he’d quit the department to work full time as a reporter for the local gay newspaper. Ian had been a great help to Paul in the emotionally difficult time after his wife’s death, when Jeff was born. They had been lovers for three years and close friends since. Occasionally they had been of some help to each other on cases.