“You grew up in Spokane, Washington.”
Riley gazed at him without changing expression. “You must have looked very hard to find that.”
“Simple police work. We went back on everybody. You’re the only one with a dead teenager in a city you came from.”
“Oh.”
“I couldn’t find anybody else with a connection like that, only you.”
“And that means?”
Turner shut his eyes and listened to the silence of the building. He could barely hear Riley’s breathing as he sat there. No sounds penetrated to this room from outside. He wondered if back-up had arrived, if Fenwick would find anything across the street, and when he would knock on the door downstairs. Turner opened his eyes. He looked at the two metallic arms that stretched out from the machine at the height of his shoulders. “Killing in Millwood was one of the worst I’ve ever seen. Took this athlete and ripped him apart. Tore great strips of flesh and muscle off the frame.”
“Awful.”
“Where’d you live after Texas? We don’t have an address for you since 1985.”
“I inherited money from my uncle. I told you that the first time you talked to me. Mostly I bummed around. Lived here and there.”
“No need to pay taxes or Social Security if you’re living on an inheritance. Where’d you live?”
“You’ve looked up everything else. You can’t find that?”
“You can save me a bunch of time running it through our computer system.”
“I kind of lived everywhere.”
“Three suspicious deaths in Texas in the past nine years involving kids who had their names in the papers as sports heroes.”
“Sports heroes dying?”
“You play sports when you were a kid?”
“Didn’t get into working out until after college.”
“Why’d you take a job at the health club?”
“Why not? I enjoy it.”
“We’ve done a lot of computer checking,” Turner said. “Tomorrow we’re going to go through the credit-card files of everyone we’ve talked to. We want to see if they were in any of the cities or on the way to or from the cities where any of these athletes died.”
“You got lots of these cities?”
“Eighteen in the last nine years. We’ll have the movements of everybody we talked to outlined and listed before the week is out. We’ll track them on this huge chart on the wall. We’ve got floor-to-ceiling corkboard. We’ll be able to surround each murder with the movements of all the people we’ve talked to.”
“Hard to find out things after all this time.”
“We’ll talk to airlines and trains. Any credit-card transactions.”
“Person could use cash.”
“And bank withdrawals for days and weeks beforehand. We can get bank records that’ll give us dates. We’ll concentrate on sports kids who had articles written about them; the ones with testicles crushed, or with their underwear missing.”
“Missing underwear? Sick.”
“We’ll also be blowing up frames from the tapes of the funeral and the crowd at last night’s basketball game. The killer may have disguised himself, but we’ll find something in the blow-ups that gives him away.”
“You’ll never catch the killer.”
“I imagine we will. People can’t move totally undetected in a computer-driven society.”
“Take you a while to check all those computer records.”
“We’ve got a huge task force. Won’t take but a day or two.”
They gazed at each other.
“Why are you here?” Riley asked.
“Told you. The connection with Spokane.”
Riley nodded.
“And Texas. And no addresses.”
“None of which is illegal.” Riley smiled. “And now you come to my home to see if I hurry up and pack to get out of town.”
“Are you planning to leave town? I wouldn’t. We’re going to get the killer whether from credit-card records or pictures.”
“Yes.” Riley was silent for a long time. “It sounds like you will.” He ran his hand along the metal arm of the machine.
“Where were you this morning?” Turner asked.
Riley did not laugh maniacally or sneer or bluster or snarl or twist his face in rage. Nor did he stand up and scream, “You’ll never catch me, copper.” He did not make boasts about how clever he had been. Instead, he whipped the paintbrush he’d been fiddling with at Turner’s head, and then lunged at him.
Turner banged his head onto one of the arms of the machine as he ducked. He felt droplets of paint on the right side of his face. As Riley dove into him, the machine tilted wildly and crashed to the floor. Entangled in the machine, Turner couldn’t get his footing or balance, but it prevented Riley from getting a good grip on him.
Riley stepped back and aimed a kick at Turner’s nuts. He missed but caught enough of his midsection to cause Turner to double over.
Riley dashed to a pile of weights a few feet away. Turner tried to grab his gun, catch his breath, and get out from the machine.
Riley picked up the heavy metal pole that had no weights on the ends. He charged toward Turner holding the pole like a lance.
Turner thrust himself from the machine seconds before the blunt end of the weight would have crashed into his skull. Riley rushed after Turner using the weight as if it were a quarterstaff, shoving Turner backward and keeping him off balance.
Turner managed to get both hands on one end of the weight and push Riley back for a moment, but the health instructor was in excellent shape, and Turner found himself giving ground.
Turner suddenly let go, rolled under the iron staff, and kicked his legs toward Riley, catching him a solid blow on his left knee. Riley staggered, tipped over a bucket of orange paint, drove the left end of the weight bar into the floor to keep himself from falling.
Turner thought he heard pounding on the door downstairs. Riley abruptly lifted his head to listen and banged his right temple against an out-thrust hand grip. Turner leaped at him. The couple of seconds he was dazed gave Turner time to handcuff Riley to one of the machines.
Breathing heavily, Riley tried to break the hold the cuffs had on him. Turner moved slowly back, watching Riley drag the machine halfway across the room. Turner had his gun out and trained on his prisoner when Fenwick popped his head in the door.
When the back-up arrived downstairs, they assigned them to keep everybody out except the commander and the state’s attorney, both of whom showed up in less than half an hour. In that time Turner and Fenwick touched as little as possible and talked with Riley not at all except to read him his rights. The two detectives were determined not to taint any possible evidence or to screw up the paperwork process.
The swirl of the next few hours’ activity was finally followed by a quiet moment in the interrogation room at the station. Riley and his attorney sat with Turner and Fenwick as the first hints of dawn rose over the lake. No one had spoken for a while after Turner had asked the simple question, Why?
Riley rubbed his hand slowly across the bruise on his forehead. He sighed. “Will you listen?”
Turner nodded.
Riley nodded as his lawyer repeated his warnings about incriminating himself. He told his story. “I grew up wild as a kid. Nobody could do anything with me. I kept an army of social workers busy. I sold more drugs in third grade than most dealers do in a lifetime. Twice, older kids almost killed me. I got beaten up by half the adults who tried to control me. I learned to fight. I was a small kid but I was so tough that nobody got into my butt in any of those homes. I learned about sex, but girls weren’t too interested in a shrimpy little hoodlum. I sat in some corner and beat off looking at Playboy magazines.
“So I was living with this out-of-it older couple for a few months. I was just sixteen, but still in ninth grade, when I screwed up a drug deal with a guy on the high school football team. He decided to get revenge. One of the high school cheerlead
ers asked me out. Most popular and beautiful girl at the high school. I was stupid. I never figured out why she asked me. I was in a haze for days before the big date. She picked me up in her car. I was so proud of myself. I never had many dates with girls. Hell, I had few friends male or female. Mostly I had fights. I was a secretive, nerdy criminal.
“The date was perfect. We went to dinner and a dance, and afterwards she drove us out to Lover’s Lane. I had an erection all the way out there. I couldn’t believe my luck. When she had the car parked, I sort of reached over. She laughed and the passenger side door opened. It was her boyfriend who I’d screwed over. His buddies from the team were there too. I think originally they were just going to scare me. But it got out of hand. They tickled me. They took my clothes. I started crying and they laughed harder. I started hitting the nearest one. He was a big star on the basketball team. He tried to hold my arms. But I kicked and screamed. Things got ugly.”
Riley shook his head. “They raped me. Over and over. I never reported it to anyone. Telling would have made it worse. I wasn’t sure who all of them were or who fucked me. I thought I was going to die because I shit blood for days. That night as I crawled home without my clothes, I vowed I’d get revenge. I couldn’t then; I was too screwed up. But I formed a plan to get even. I changed. I got off drugs. I studied in high school. I had to be smarter than them.
“It took me five years to get through college. I tried dating a few girls, but I found I couldn’t perform unless I got violent. All those years I worked out and planned. I thought about getting revenge on those who attacked me. I went back to Spokane and they were all fat and old. The guy who started it had been killed in a drug deal. None of them had an athletic career. Killing them would mean nothing. I figured I could even the score on high school stud athletes. First I tried robbing them, or wrecking their cars, even making obscene calls, minor stuff, then one time things got out of hand and I killed one. That night I went to a bar, got a girl, went home, and found I could perform with no problem. Two nights later I couldn’t get it up. Figured it out. I could have sex as long as I killed some stud motherfucker first. I decided to get revenge on everyone who hurt me in my life, maybe not the real people, but stud athletes were in large supply.”
Turner got done with the major parts of the paperwork just before the ten o’clock press conference. He and Fenwick glanced in mirrors in the john before they went out. Neither decided to clean up much. Let them see tired, hardworking cops.
They evaded the sillier questions, answered as much as they could of the more sensible, and let the commander handle most of the PR problems.
When Paul got home, the house was quiet. The boys were at school. He’d been up all night, but he was too keyed up to try and begin catching up on his sleep. He changed into jeans and a sweater and threw on a jacket. The wind was out of the north and howling. The first flurries of winter were predicted for that afternoon. He stopped at Rose’s. He found her on the phone complaining to the alderman about potholes on the street.
After Rose hung up, she patted his arm, insisted he eat a meal, and let him tell her as much as he wanted about the case. After half an hour she insisted he go see Ben. Paul had planned to do this anyway.
He walked down to Ben’s service station. As he passed Jennie’s flower shop, he stepped in for a minute and picked up a dozen daffodils and a dozen red roses.
Outside the shop, Myra was bent over a small car. He heard bangs from the engine. She looked up, saw him, smiled, and straightened up. “Heard you were on television. Congratulations. Boss is in the back, whistling. You must make him happy.” She noted the flowers. “Excellent touch. I like it when you follow my advice. He’s in his office.”
Paul made his way to the back. He found Ben peering at a computer screen. In one grease-covered hand he had a stack of bills, in the other a black felt-tip pen. Ben looked up from his work and smiled at Paul.
The flowers almost got crushed between them as they embraced. Paul felt one of Ben’s hands stray from his back to the door. It shut with a thump. They held each other tightly and kissed passionately.
By Mark Richard Zubro
The “Tom and Scott” Mysteries
A Simple Suburban Murder
Why Isn’t Becky Twitchell Dead?
The Only Good Priest
The Principal Cause of Death
An Echo of Death
Rust on the Razor
The “Paul Turner” Mysteries
Sorry Now?
Political Poison
Another Dead Teenager
Acknowledgments
For their kindness, patience, and assistance:
Rick Paul, Barb D’Amato,
Hugh Holton, Kathy Pakieser-Reed
ANOTHER DEAD TEENAGER. Copyright © 1995 by Mark Richard Zubro. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Zubro, Mark Richard.
Another dead teenager / Mark Richard Zubro.
p. cm.
“A Paul Turner mystery.”
ISBN: 978-1-4668-0429-6
I. Title
PS3576.U225A83 1996
813'.54—dc20
96-3498
CIP
Another Dead Teenager Page 20