Another Dead Teenager

by Mark Richard Zubro

Three of the kids wore baseball caps turned backwards on their heads. They had on baggy pants over which they wore loose shirts that hung outside multicolored T-shirts draped to their knees. The smallest one of the group, Enrico, didn’t wear a hat. He had his hair cut nearly bald on the sides but left an inch long and flat on top. He looked to be only twelve. He wore a junior wrestling champ T-shirt tucked into tight jeans. The other without a hat, Alfredo, snarled, grinned, or popped his gum while poking and punching his buddies. He reached for one guy’s cap, but his hand got a lazy swat before it reached its destination. He was a trifle taller than the others and more heavyset. His T-shirt was taut over an ample belly, and the sleeves were too short for his arms. The cuffs of his ill-fitting jeans were frayed, the legs bunched against his sneakers, and his belly sagged over the waist. The back pocket flapped half off. His clothes seemed more hand-me-down and mismatched than trendy-grunge.

  They took the kids one by one into the conference room. It differed from the all-gray interrogation room by having dull brown folding chairs, a larger dull brown table, and walls painted dull brown.

  Turner explained to each one, “We need background information from you guys. We need your help to catch a killer.”

  The three with the caps weren’t much help.

  Enrico, the smallest one, immediately said, “He wasn’t from around here.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Everybody would talk about it. Everyone talks. We know everything that goes on.” He puffed out his chest in bold assertion.

  “That so?” Fenwick asked.

  “Yeah. And none of us is in a gang. But we hear. We know.”

  “How long have you guys been playing there?”

  “We don’t play, man, we hang out.”

  Turner found himself only half listening. His fatigue was catching up to him. He sat up straighter in his chair and concentrated.

  “Some of us been hanging out there for five years,” Enrico said. “I’ve been the longest. I’m fifteen now.” Small for his age.

  “What does hanging out mean?” Turner asked.

  “We go there when our parents hassle us. Or just to be with our friends. Sometimes we get fries and soda pop if anybody’s got any money. We don’t do drugs or drink. We talk about our girlfriends. You know, hang out. We always use the back room you found. When we were little, we used to scare each other about getting up to our meeting room in the dark without a flashlight. Alfredo was the last one to finally do it. When the gangs were around a year ago, we had to be careful for a while.”

  “Why’d they leave?”

  “It got too wrecked up even for them. We don’t mind.”

  “Tell me about recently,” Turner said. “Think of even the slightest thing unusual or out of the way at that place. Anything you saw, heard, or even thought you saw or heard.”

  Enrico frowned thoughtfully for several minutes.

  “Anything?” Turner prompted.

  Enrico said, “The street outside there is so quiet. The new guy fixing his place up says hello, but he works every night and doesn’t hassle us. We get homeless in the winter sometimes, but it’s too far from their territory. Too far to walk to where they get handouts or ask people for money, or from any of the missions.”

  After an hour of talking to the teenagers, the sum of the cops’ increased knowledge added up to zero. Turner and Fenwick watched the group troop out.

  Fenwick leaned back in his chair. “Is this day ever going to end?” he asked.

  “Killer took a hell of a lot of chances,” Turner said. “How did he know there weren’t gang members, neighborhood kids, or a stray homeless derelict to accidentally interrupt him?”

  “Maybe he wants to be caught, or is that just serial killers?”

  “Or maybe he’s been around for a long time and knows the area.”

  “Did we get that serial killer profile crap?”

  Turner hunted on his desk. “I thought it was here.”

  “They all set fires and hurt furry little animals as kids. Don’t look for it. Blessing’ll have the details upstairs somewhere. I suppose we’ll have to refresh our memories on that shit. Is this a serial killer?”

  “I don’t think two equals a serial killer.”

  “Thought I was going to fall asleep there for a few minutes,” Fenwick said.

  “I started wondering who was asking all those boring questions,” Turner said. “Then I realized it was me.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t suppose we could just leave all this and run off to Canada for some fishing?”

  The door to the conference room clicked open. Alfredo, the more heavyset teen, stuck his head in. He glanced over his shoulder and then around the room. He slipped inside, hunching himself near the doorway.

  “What’s happening, Alfredo?” Fenwick asked.

  “Something strange.”

  The cops waited patiently.

  “Last week Tuesday, early in the morning, I was there by myself. I slept overnight. Don’t tell my parents, please?”

  “If you help us, Alfredo, we’ll help you,” Fenwick promised.

  “I was leaving early. Just before dawn. I saw this guy drive up. He got out of his car and began creeping around the back of the building. He came inside. He didn’t see me. There’s a million places to hide around there. He had a flashlight. He explored all over.”

  Alfredo stopped talking and stared at the top of his running shoes.

  “Why didn’t you tell us this the first time we talked to you?”

  “The guys might have heard, or maybe they thought I’d be talking to you too much, but I want to catch the guy. If I help, will I be on television?”

  “Tell me about the car,” Turner said.

  “Red, I think. It was dark.”

  “Dark red or too dark to tell what color it was?”

  “Dark red.”

  “How about the man driving?”

  “Bald on top. I could see the hole when he leaned over to get in the building. This big.” Alfredo made a hole the size of a baseball with his fingers.

  Turner watched Fenwick unconsciously finger the patch that had begun on the crown of his head six months ago.

  Alfredo continued, “He didn’t look real old. Maybe like you guys.”

  “Tall, short?” Fenwick asked.

  “Maybe medium.”

  “What did you do?”

  “As soon as I didn’t hear his footsteps, I ran.”

  The detectives tried to jog his memory for another half hour, but got nowhere. Alfredo left.

  Fenwick sighed. “Add one bald guy in a red car to the list. Only a few zillion of those on the planet.”

  The door opened. The sergeant from the desk downstairs said, “The guy from the sky box is here.”

  Turner and Fenwick shuffled down to the third-floor interrogation room.

  Outside the door, Fenwick said, “He’s the last one besides the players to see them alive. Maybe he’ll remember something they said that could be important.”

  “I’m past tired on this.”

  “If he confesses, I’ll kiss him.”

  “Hell, I’ll marry him.”

  They were introduced to Daryl Logan. He wore a gray herringbone sport jacket with patches at the elbow. His shirt was light green and adorned by a white and gray paisley tie. He wore gray slacks and Gucci loafers. He had the slender frame of a runner who occasionally worked out as well. His brown hair was clipped short.

  They sat in the room of gray walls, gray chairs, and gray table. Logan matched the decor perfectly.

  “I’m a part-time professor and part-time administrator at St. Basil’s University,” he explained. “They divide up the use of the sky box among administrators, select faculty, and visiting dignitaries. It’s used quite often to impress people in a position to donate to the school’s endowment. College is big business these days.”

  “We understand you were in charge of the group that night,” Turner said.

  “I acted
as more of a liaison. I arranged for the tickets before the game. In the sky box I was supposed to meet the needs, do the bidding of, keep happy, obey any commands. I want to move up the academic and administrative ladder. You need to know whose butt to kiss and when.” He smiled. “I’m a realist.”

  “How did Jake Goldstein and Frank Douglas behave that night?”

  “Polite, cheerful, unobtrusive. Didn’t give me any trouble.”

  If he said they were saints, Turner thought he might throttle Daryl Logan on the spot. Turner found himself repeating by rote, “Did you notice anything at all odd or unusual?”

  Daryl frowned as thoughtfully as anyone else they’d questioned in the last three days.

  “They might have squabbled briefly about where to go after the game.”

  The detectives waited. Turner saw Fenwick’s eyelids begin to droop.

  “What’d you hear?” Turner asked.

  “Not much. I think one wanted to go straight home after talking with the players. The other wanted to go somewhere. They saw I could hear and stopped talking. They weren’t angry at each other, really. The Goldstein boy did say he needed to get home. This was at halftime. They seemed to laugh and cheer as much after as before their words. Didn’t seem like much, but you asked for anything.”

  Turner probed some more, but when Daryl left fifteen minutes later the cops had nothing new.

  Fenwick said, “I’m awake but not by much.”

  The watch commander came in and told them the owner of a small business across the street and down the block from the murder scene was at his place of business, if Turner and Fenwick wanted to talk to him.

  Outside, the cool night air refreshed them a little. They traveled the few blocks to the neighborhood where the crime was committed. They cruised the front and side of the building they’d found the body in.

  “Not a lot of street lights,” Fenwick said.

  “Back was actually better lit, but fortunately for our jobs plenty of shadows all around to park a car so that it wouldn’t be noticed.” They drove to the corner.

  “This the only business operating around here?” Fenwick asked.

  Turner flipped through a stack of papers. “Uniforms only listed this one.”

  They parked half a block down from the factory and banged on the door of a building on the opposite side of the street. Through pebbled-glass windows they could make out vague movements. Moments later the door was yanked open by a man in his early thirties.

  After the cops introduced themselves, he invited them in. He was about five feet eight, but Turner thought he must eat steroids for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. He wasn’t fat, but he was the most muscle-bound person Turner had ever seen. A paint-spattered T-shirt concealed muscles that strained the material all around his torso. The part of his upper arms Turner could see had veins easily observable crawling just underneath the rippling flesh. The guy’s wheat-colored jeans clung to every inch of his lower body, revealing that he must either stuff his crotch with baseballs and socks or he was the most well-endowed man in history. His name was Drew Riley.

  The room they were in had bare walls, a cement floor, a stack of paint cans on the left, and boards and bricks on the right.

  “I’m fixing the place up,” Riley said. He led them through a passage to a room with recently painted walls, bright orange carpeting, but no furniture. The entire place smelled of paint, new-sawn wood, and urban rot. “It’s gonna take me a while. There’s no place to sit really, but this room is the cleanest. Gonna be the hottest fitness center. All the yuppies are moving this way. I’m gonna cash in big time.”

  “You here a lot?”

  “Yeah. That’s what I told the uniformed cops who came to talk to me. I work at a health club on the north side and then I come here for eight to ten hours a day to work. I’m doing it all myself. Got the money for the down payment from an uncle who died. It’s gonna be perfect. I can’t put the pool in myself, but after I’m open a year, with all the new memberships, I’ll be able to afford that.”

  “What happened Thursday night?”

  “Oh, yeah. I had the game on a portable television upstairs. I was painting some rooms on the north side of the building. The side away from the street. I had an hour’s worth of work left after the game got over, so I thought I’d stick it out. I put on the radio. The painting took longer than I thought. I came down here to use the john when I saw lights go by on the street. It’s kind of rare when anybody comes down here at night. I thought it was a little odd. When I got back upstairs, I looked out the front window up there, since you can’t see out these. I saw one of those little foreign cars with its brake lights on and the headlights off. He was just sitting there.”

  “You sure it was a he?”

  Drew thought a minute. “I didn’t see real clearly, but I thought it must have been a guy. Maybe I just assumed it was. I don’t remember any longer hair that a woman might have.”

  “Was he alone?”

  “It was one of those foreign jobbies. Only two seats in the front. I only saw one head.”

  “What’d he do?”

  “Sat there. He didn’t do anything, and there’s not much worth breaking into around here. I’ve got a gun I keep in my toolbox. I’ve got a permit for it—the other cops already asked.” He showed them a .22 target revolver and the permit. Riley resumed, “The guy in the car didn’t do anything threatening, and I can take care of myself. I wasn’t worried, so I went back to work. When I left, he was gone.”

  “What color was the car?”

  “Yellow, I think, maybe tan. The light was dim. It looked sort of old.”

  “Could whoever it was have seen your car?”

  “There’s a side entrance I pull into. It’s like a sort of garage. I’ve got the security cameras and everything working already. It’s the first thing that I put in after I bought this place. I know the neighborhood is going to be perfect in a few years, but for now it’s better to be safe.”

  “Could the person have seen your lights?”

  “I was working in the back most of the night, so maybe not. This place is pretty big.”

  “Must get a little spooky.”

  “Nah. I got the security, I got the gun, I got no imagination.” He shrugged.

  “Must take a lot of money to get this kind of place moving.”

  “Mostly hard work. I started small. Buy only what I can afford. Do it a little bit at a time.”

  “You from the area?”

  “Moved here a couple years ago. Saved my money for years. That plus what my uncle left me let me get started on this. When I’m finished, I’m going to make big bucks with this place.”

  “Have you seen a beat-up pickup truck around the neighborhood any time lately, or a dark red car?” Turner asked.

  Riley thought for a few seconds. “Can’t say I have. One of those the kind of car the killer had?”

  “We don’t know. We’ve only had descriptions of two vehicles so far. Yours is the third.” Turner didn’t add that none of them remotely matched.

  “Just wanted to help as much as I could. Shame about those two kids. I hear they were saints.”

  Turner and Fenwick left. Fenwick said, “He gets run through the computer check just for that last remark if nothing else.”

  “Must have taken him years to bulk up like that.”

  “And half the steroids in the city. We got any more trips before we get back to the station?”

  Turner riffled through his papers. “Nothing.” He rubbed the back of his neck and then massaged his temples. “I don’t want to think about how much sleep I haven’t had.”

  “We’re going to be getting even less if we don’t get a break on this,” Fenwick said. They returned to Area Ten headquarters to check the latest leads, fill out paperwork, and get depressed.

  Around seven, Blessing called down on the interoffice line. “Why don’t you guys stroll up here?”

  They found Blessing with his hands rapidly tapping o
n computer keys. “I think we’ve got a lead on a possible witness.” He motioned over a uniformed cop Turner and Fenwick didn’t recognize. Blessing introduced her as Alice Drindle. “She’s been handling the calls from people who used the parking garage. Tell them, Alice.”

  “I got a call about half an hour ago. This guy claims he saw something suspicious on Thursday night. I’ve had about a dozen people say that, but this guy was different. He seemed to know what he was talking about. He described the kids’ van exactly.”

  “Where is he?” Fenwick demanded.

  “Blessing said I should have him come in. He’s on his way. I think he wants to be on television.”

  The detectives sighed.

  “Everybody wants their fifteen minutes,” Blessing said.

  “Guy’s name is Charles Edward Stuart.”

  At eight a dapper man in a navy blue business suit was escorted into the third-floor detective room. He had hair combed straight back off his forehead. He was barely over five feet five and didn’t look to have an extra ounce of weight on his slender frame. Turner estimated the guy was somewhere between thirty-five and forty.

  Charles Edward Stuart said, “I’m a musician with the symphony. I play cello. We had practice late Thursday night.”

  Turner and Fenwick had given him coffee and all the deference a possible break in the case merited. If he really had something, they might erect a statue to him.

  “You parked on the fourth level of the parking garage?”

  “Yes, I always do. It’s usually much less crowded, but if I hadn’t gotten there early Thursday, I might not have gotten a space. I deliberately stayed late practicing with some friends so I’d miss all the traffic from the sports events. I heard the call for help on the radio today.”

  “What did you see when you went to your car?” Fenwick asked.

  Stuart described the boys’ vehicle and then said, “I only saw their van, but no teenagers. As I drove out, I saw a man lurking in the shadows. Mine was the only car on that level besides theirs. I thought the van must be this man’s, but he wasn’t walking purposefully toward it. More looking around as if he were lost.”

  “What did he do?” Fenwick asked.

  “When he saw me, I thought he ducked into the shadows. Of course, he could have been walking toward an exit in that direction, but would he be leaving his vehicle at that hour of the night? There were lots of parking spaces on the upper level by that time and I think the garage closes, doesn’t it?”