Now he called it the Rush, and it was the physical manifestation of inspiration.
Years had passed before Czarcik understood this unique ability. He still wasn’t sure how it worked. All he knew was that certain images, certain words or phrases, plucked out of the ether by his subconscious, would sporadically cause an acute and powerful physical reaction.
The Rush was never arbitrary, never erroneous. It might take him a while—days, even weeks at the longest—but eventually Czarcik would find the connection between the trigger and his case.
There was nothing paranormal or supernatural about the Rush, although it could certainly seem that way to others. It was simply that he was wired differently from most people, and this difference was extremely fortuitous in his current line of work.
The DA said his hands were tied.
The phrase put his brain into overdrive. Czarcik didn’t know why this was so important, but he would chew on it as assiduously as he gnawed on that perfect cylinder of packed tobacco between his lips. Eventually, the answer would come.
Walsh studied the slack expression that had overtaken his colleague’s face.
“It’s too bad the kids didn’t do it,” Czarcik said sharply, just to get Walsh to stop staring at him like he was a specimen in a top secret laboratory.
“You think there’s any way they could have?” Walsh asked.
“Oldest is thirteen. The next one ten, and the youngest, the one with the chicken, is just seven. Damn near impossible.”
Walsh laughed condescendingly. “You’ve been off the beat awhile. You can’t imagine what thirteen-year-olds are capable of nowadays.” He shook his head and picked at a hangnail, letting Czarcik process his transparent attempt to bolster his street cred. “I was on a case last year in Englewood. You want me to tell you what a gang of twelve- and thirteen-year-olds can do to an eight-year-old girl?”
Czarcik didn’t. He could imagine. He had seen things in the city’s darkest corners that would have made Walsh’s blood run cold. He just had no desire to play a game of one-upmanship.
“We have to interview them, you know. The kids. Protocol.”
“Whatever you need to do,” Czarcik replied.
“You want to sit in?” Walsh asked. “Watch from behind the glass?”
Czarcik stood up without answering. He waved the file at Walsh. “This my copy?”
“It’s all yours.”
The detective, thinking about the DA whose hands were tied, walked away from his desk and headed to the exit.
FIVE
Daniel guided his beloved Lexus GS 350 down a country road, just teasing the speed limit. There were few things he enjoyed more than a long drive with the windows open, and even fewer things that a good warm breeze couldn’t fix. The wind carried the scent of fresh pine into the car. Even now, at the height of flowering season, the evergreen reigned supreme.
A black leather carrying case that held hundreds of CDs, all meticulously labeled, rode shotgun. Although the car had come with satellite radio, after the three-month trial period had expired, Daniel never bothered to subscribe to the service. At first, he loved the idea of an all-Springsteen station, until it became obvious that the playlist was mainly from Born in the U.S.A. as well as some singles from Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes. It hadn’t been easy for him to make the move to CDs from vinyl (he had chosen to ignore the cassette revolution altogether), and now there was hardly enough time left to migrate to digital. Because of his technical background, he was one of the few people who could actually understand why music in the form of zeros and ones was sonically superior to any other format, and yet he still preferred analog. But because he couldn’t cart his beloved Marantz turntable around with him in the car, compact discs were a poor but necessary alternative.
His tastes were eclectic, at least within the narrowly defined genre of rock. He had every studio release from Led Zeppelin, the Who, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, Simon & Garfunkel, Black Sabbath, the Doors, the Velvet Underground, Meat Loaf, and Billy Joel. And almost every release from the Beatles, the Stones, the Eagles, Supertramp, Dire Straits, Jimmy Buffett, and Crosby, Stills & Nash. There was also a smattering of albums from a hundred or so other bands, like Seatrain, Free, King Crimson, and Vanilla Fudge. The only classic-rock outfit not represented was the Steve Miller Band. For reasons not fully understood even by him, Daniel had always hated the group. There was a possible explanation from his childhood. Growing up, there was an older teenager on the block who, for the better part of a year, walked around going, “Some people call me Maurice,” and then making that grating wolf whistle. But this couldn’t be the sole reason. After all, he had an equally annoying connection to Paul Simon’s “You Can Call Me Al,” and he still loved Graceland.
Curiously, there were no jazz CDs in the case. Curious because when people met Daniel, especially in social situations where it was customary to discuss politics, sports, and the arts, they always assumed he was a jazz connoisseur. Daniel took it as a compliment, since everybody knew that jazz was the domain of the sophisticate. The freethinker. The life lover. All interesting people loved jazz. But Daniel hated it as much as he did the Steve Miller Band.
Right now, however, he cherished the silence. The sound of the breeze, amplified by the car’s aerodynamics, was all the road music he needed.
Right off Route 12, at a tobacco outlet that straddled the Illinois-Wisconsin border, Daniel tossed a McDonald’s bag into the plastic garbage receptacle out front.
Inside were the three pieces of Luis Fernandez’s broken mandible.
He continued on Route 12 into Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Like most resort towns, Lake Geneva was a hive of activity from early June to mid-August. During the summer months, its streets overflowed with a mixture of shoppers, young families pushing strollers, and lovestruck teenagers sharing ice cream. The downtown was charming, and the picturesque lake, which was its namesake, was ringed by stately mansions built by Chicago’s and Milwaukee’s old-money families.
One of the town’s claims to fame was Big Foot Beach, advertised as the “World’s Narrowest Public Beach,” a ribbon of sand—less than a foot in some places—that separated the highway from the water. Black lakeweed hitched a ride on the inland tide and tickled the shoreline as a lone gull searched in vain for a stray mussel before retreating to the safety of the sky with a futile wail. Soon the beach would be overrun with families looking to escape the summer heat, but now, just like the rest of the town, it was practically deserted.
Daniel parked in front of one of the many antique stores right off the main drag. He walked down to the waterfront and continued onto the pier, past the handful of docked tour boats that would soon be circling the lake hourly. He sat down on a bench overlooking the water and watched as the gulls identified a particularly generous family who, despite posted signs against it, were treating the birds to a meal of Wonder Bread.
The setting sun painted the lake a deep purple. From behind, he could hear the sounds of children, which always made him smile. Two particularly aggressive moppets begged their parents for a slice of fudge from one of the small snack bars along the pier. Just let them have it, Daniel thought. He understood that sometimes a parent had to be firm. You didn’t want your kids to grow up to be entitled little brats. But this was the kind of place where spoiling them seemed appropriate. Their childhood memories of sleepy early-summer days would last a lifetime.
As the wine-dark lake settled into dusk, Daniel had a sudden urge for a cigar. He wasn’t a big smoker but used to enjoy the occasional stogie. How relaxing it would be to puff away as the horizon swallowed the sun. But now smoking only exacerbated his headaches. Plus, there was a woman holding her newborn in a BabyBjörn who was close enough to smell it if the wind was right. So instead, he closed his eyes and let the sun’s ambient warmth wash over him.
As he went about disposing of the remaining pieces of Luis Fernandez’s head, he realized he still had plenty of time to choose his next victim.
He had a list in the car. The folders (dossiers as he liked to call them) that had created the list remained back in Chicago. He had no need for the folders themselves; he had memorized their contents. Each was filled with documents pertaining to worthy candidates. It was really a question of geography. Where did he want to go next?
Minnesota was a possibility. Although he had lived in the Midwest for most of his life, he hadn’t spent much time in the Land of 10,000 Lakes. However, Minnesota was home to the Devil’s Kettle, with which he had been fascinated since reading about it in a National Geographic supplement years ago. The infernally named geographic feature was a waterfall near the mouth of the Brule River that split into two distinct flows. The eastern arm cascaded down a two-step fifty-foot drop and continued downstream. But the western branch spilled ten feet into a pothole hollowed into the rhyolite cliffs and then . . . disappeared forever. Despite countless attempts, nobody had ever located the outflow point. Researchers had dyed the river, dropped hundreds of ping pong balls, and utilized the best aquatic tracking techniques—all to no avail.
Although it flew in the face of common sense, Daniel imagined the Devil’s Kettle was a portal to the center of the earth. Or somewhere even farther. A secret river to the land of the dead. He could be a modern-day Charon, sacrificing himself in the name of science. Unfortunately, there was no way to prevent himself from slamming into the jagged rocks that lined the hole. No way to guess how far down those stone teeth descended into the great maw. Even if he managed to survive the initial plunge, and the falls quickly met up with an underground river, he would most likely drown before reaching the surface.
Of course, he could also throw someone else into the void. Then listen to how long the screams echoed.
Detective Czarcik returned home after a long workout. Aside from the obvious physiological benefits, heavy lifting cleared his head. When he first read about antioxidants, how they purged free radicals from the body, he found the perfect analogy in weightlifting. The intense physical exertion forced all the nonsense from his mind, leaving him in a state of almost euphoric clarity.
Today’s workout wasn’t great. He had focused on his chest, shoulders, and triceps, a typical routine designed to maximize complementary muscle groups. During a set of military presses, he felt a tweak in his rotator cuff. But he persevered and subconsciously put too much stress on the surrounding tendons, resulting in a dull ache that remained long after he left the gym.
Czarcik never worked out with a trainer. Not only was it completely unnecessary, but he had no interest in the casual companionship one provided. Although he would never admit it, even to himself, he was also secretly terrified that someone would tell him that a man his age shouldn’t be lifting such an obscene amount of weight. But in his mind, this was the price he paid to maintain his physique, considering his lifestyle and bad habits.
His alarm wailed for nearly half a minute before Czarcik punched in the code. He dropped his gym bag on the floor by the front door and headed to the bathroom to take a shower. He rarely showered at the gym; the combination of rampant fungus and uncircumcised Russian men was simply too much to bear.
Czarcik’s West Loop condo overlooked the Kennedy Expressway. A strange place to live, especially for a cop. Most of the units were owned by either young professionals who wanted to ride the real estate boom as the area developed or empty nesters looking for a cost-effective way back into the city now that their suburban homes, absent of children, felt like mausoleums.
Neighbors were irrelevant to Czarcik since he rarely spoke to them. He simply enjoyed watching the traffic from his bedroom window, captivated as the arteries of the city swelled and contracted at regular interludes.
After drying off and throwing on a clean white T-shirt, Czarcik headed into his office. Most people would have used it for the master bedroom, as it was the larger of the condo’s two bedrooms. But Czarcik only needed a bed and a nightstand for sleep, so there was no reason to squander space that could be put to better use.
While his space at the station was stark and minimal, his home office looked as if it could have been built by an ambitious set designer making a movie about a rogue detective.
Crime scene photos, ranging from the unassuming (forest clearings and coastlines) to the ultragraphic (on a rusty stove, a pot of boiling water held a woman’s breast), covered almost every inch of wall space. Occasionally these were interrupted by maps dotted with push pins connected by strings.
Case files were strewn not just across the heavy wooden L-shaped desk but all over the floor. Some of the scattered papers were decorated in yellow highlighter, others sported random words and circles in permanent marker. Most had illegible notes in the margins.
There were all the accoutrements of any modern office (a color printer, scanner, cable modem) and one anachronistic touch: a huge brass ashtray, its bottom permanently scarred and stained a sickly gray from decades of use. Perched on the rim was a bald eagle. Regal. Poised to kill or defend.
One item that seemed completely out of place was a small fishbowl that sat at the far end of the desk’s L, as if Czarcik had purposely placed it as far away from himself as possible. The glass was filthy and the bowl filled halfway up with a thick, black sludge.
The aquarium had been a gift, given to Czarcik during one of the last cases to which he was officially assigned. It was bequeathed to him by ten-year-old Hailey McDonald, whose sister Vanessa had been the final victim of a serial killer colloquially known as Bad Ronald for his still-not-understood penchant for targeting unrelated victims with the surname McDonald.
Czarcik had uncovered the evidence that eventually led to Bad Ronald’s capture. Unfortunately, the killer wasn’t found until after he’d had plenty of time alone with Vanessa and a straight razor.
Knowledge of her death, however gruesome, gave the family some much-needed closure five months after her disappearance. To thank Czarcik for his help, Hailey had given him Vanessa’s goldfish, which she had kept alive and assiduously fed every day with the hope that her sister would eventually be found safe. At first, Czarcik refused. What the fuck did he want with a fish? But when he saw the faces of his colleagues, aghast at his callous refusal of a young girl’s symbolic gift, he acquiesced.
He had planned to flush the thing right down the toilet the second he got home. But distracted, he instead left the tank on the corner of his desk and forgot about it. By the third day or so, the fish was dead. After a few weeks, most of the water had evaporated, leaving the tank in its current state. At this point, Czarcik was simply too lazy to care. He had figured that eventually the putrefying mass would harden, and he could just toss it into the alley behind his building. He never did that either. So now the tank just sat there—the world’s nastiest paperweight.
Czarcik put his feet up on the desk and began to flip through the Fernandez file. Even after his workout, he found it hard to concentrate. He knew what he needed. In less than ten minutes, he had picked a petite girl with a black bob from the Ecstasy Escorts website and requested that she meet him at the Lonely Hearts Motel on Archer Avenue.
Czarcik refused to bring a professional girl back to his condominium. As reckless as he was, this one rule was sacred. This was his home sanctuary; it couldn’t be compromised.
The Lonely Hearts Motel was the perfect solution. The secrets it held were legion, equal only to the misery it perpetuated.
SIX
The girl with the bob, who introduced herself as Nikki, arrived exactly at the scheduled time. Czarcik said his name was Joe and ushered her into the motel room. He used the same pseudonym all the time, and although it was his father’s name, he attached no significance to this. Joe was just easy to remember.
Because Nikki was technically an escort, not a prostitute, and Ecstasy Escorts was technically an escort service, not a high-tech pimp, Czarcik was technically paying only for her company. The irony, of course, was that this really was exactly what he was paying for. But whatever else went on be
hind closed doors, between consenting adults, well, that was outside the purview of the original transaction.
Czarcik left an unsealed plain white envelope containing five crisp hundred-dollar bills on the table near the door as Nikki went into the bathroom to prepare.
She returned to the room wearing a black leather miniskirt and black lace bra. She gave a cursory glance at the envelope, just to make sure the corners of the C-notes were visible, as was customary. Czarcik was already sitting on the bed, smoking a cigarette.
“I hope this isn’t awkward for you,” she began, “but usually we’re told ahead of time what the client likes. What he expects. But for some reason, the agency didn’t tell me.”
“I guess that’s because they didn’t know how to explain it.”
Her eyes widened at the thought of a previously unimagined degree of perversity.
“Don’t look so worried,” he assured her. “I’m sure you’ll be OK with it. If a little bored.” He patted the bed’s infrequently changed sheets. “Come sit down.” Still hesitant, she nevertheless obliged. “I would really just like to talk with you.”
“Dirty talk?”
“Not the kind you mean.”
“OK . . .” She still looked unnerved. “Then what?”
“Just about you. Your background. Your aspirations—”
“My what?”
“Your goals. Things you like, things you don’t like . . .” Czarcik remembered Candy, the last escort he had hired. She had had a conniption when he got too personal. “Unless you’re not comfortable with that,” he added. “Because then we can just talk about whatever.”
Czarcik needn’t have worried. Nikki burst out laughing. He watched her, amused.
Rain Will Come Page 4