Black Angel

by Thomas Laird

  “I came here from New York. He did two more in New York City, just like Kuwait, and from what the FBI shared, just like the triple homicides you two are doing now. The Milans. I was just talking to Captain Pearce about it. He wasn’t sure why you didn’t tell him about our boy when you saw the scene and the vics, and I explained we always waited for the ME’s verdict before we connected dots on multiple homicides.”

  “I still love you, Will,” the Captain grins. “Next time, inform me immediately, ME or no ME.”

  “Done,” I apologize.

  “So?” I ask Pete as we sit down around the Captain’s desk here in Homicide.

  “Same same. The eyes. The adolescent young teenaged females. The rapes minus the semen. The hangings. Everything is repetitive. Same caliber gunshot wounds. This guy is happy with his script. It’s working, so why should he change anything? He leaves next to nothing, as you know.”

  “The new scene here was immaculate,” Jack adds.

  “He’s what the book calls an organized killer,” Pete says.

  “You talk to the profilers at Quantico?” Captain Pearce asks.

  “Yessir,” Pete tells him and us. “Nothing we haven’t already heard.… White. Male. Twenty-five to forty years old. Solitary. Seems ordinary to those he comes in contact with. The rest you know by the numbers. Will and I were trained at Quantico by those same profilers.”

  “Why is he moving?” Pearce throws out. “Just to remain elusive?”

  “Why’d he move here? It’s a big enough country. But Kuwait is tiny, and we still couldn’t grab him,” I say.

  “He came for you,” Pete says. “He was one of us. I’m convinced he was a Marine. Probably an officer. I think you had him pegged, down the line. But there were lots of commissioned Marines in Desert Storm, in our area of operations.”

  “True enough,” I answer.

  “So now what?” Jack queries.

  “We keep after him until he lets us fuck him up. He does want to get caught if he’s trying to come here to get in my face.”

  “You have an idea who he might be?” Pearce asks.

  “I had several candidates. None of them came up as winners in the lottery,” I tell my boss.

  “Who were they?” Pearce again demands.

  “I’ll write up that list for you, Sir. Then I’ll see if I can begin to track them. But it’s been years since Desert…”

  “Get me that list ASAP. Captain Donato is here to assist the two of you.”

  *

  Pete and Jack and I go to Fatso’s on Fullerton on the North Side for a schooner of Old Style—but Pete opts for a Coors.

  “That Chicago beer has an aftertaste,” Pete explains.

  “LaCrosse, Wisconsin, bro,” I correct.

  “But everyone in this city thinks it’s the nectar of the gods,” my old partner smiles as he wades into his schooner of Coors. “We are off duty, are we not?” he asks with a grin.

  Pete has attracted the attention of the denizens of Fatso’s. It’s mostly a copper bar, but it has its female groupies too, like all police taverns. A blonde and a brunette have taken notice of my good-looking ex-partner. I know they’re impressed because I am too.

  “You’re a Captain, huh?” I ask.

  “Everybody fucks up. Even the hierarchy in the Crotch. Yeah, I’m a Captain. I deal with Violent Crimes only, these days, and apparently someone higher up has a hard-on over our killer, Laughing Boy.”

  “I have the same woody he does, for this guy.”

  “I think I suffer from the same affliction,” Jack Clemons joins in. “Who were these guys you suspected?”

  “A captain and two lieutenants,” I tell my current partner. “They all set off the bells and whistles from the profile. None of them has high grades in dealing with their own troops. Each is a solitary. And the only reason they’re ranked as high as they are is because they performed bravely in the field in Desert Storm. The Marines don’t hand out the awards freely, but these three have their share of the chest fruit salad.… Captain Benjamin Anderson. Lieutenant Carl Thomas. And Lieutenant Philip Brandon. Sociopaths in training all, but never a single disciplinary action was taken against this trio.

  “They were my three likely candidates for multiple murderer of these girls in Kuwait.… And now the twelve year old and family here on the north side.”

  Fatso comes with our second round. His real name is Billy True. He’s a Native American, an ex-Burglary dick and a vet of the Vietnam War with a Bronze and a Silver Star for Valor. He’s also missing his left arm, but he wears a prosthetic arm and hand, and you don’t notice the missing appendage until he displays it for you. Billy is a Lakota Sioux.

  He is also skinny as the proverbial rail, hence the name “Fatso.”

  “We ever going to make this prick?” Pete asks as he sips his second fishbowl of Coors.

  “Fuckin’ A,” I tell him.

  But there’s no grin on my lips when I say it.

  *

  We lie in bed staring at the cream-colored ceiling in her bedroom. We always make love in her apartment because I’m self-conscious about doing it at my dad’s house. I intend to get my own place soon, and there’s really no reason for me to stay with the old man any longer since he’s completely recovered. He takes care of himself, cooks for me and for Sammy whenever my kid brother’s home from school.

  “Mary.”

  “What?”

  “I just like saying your name.… Mary. Okay?”

  She smiles and rolls over to me.

  She has startlingly blue eyes. Natural red hair—auburn, in reality. Natural, because it’s the same hue all over her, I’m saying. She’s not very busty, but she’s well-shaped. I like her body because it’s comfortable. Not angular or hard where it shouldn’t be. We fit well when we have sex.

  I don’t think she loves me, but I love her and I always have. I think she’s very fond of me and I think she’d like to get serious. But right now her career comes first.

  She gets up, throws on her bra and panties, and then she puts on a severe black pantsuit.

  The last item of business is to strap her shoulder harness on and to attach her FBI ID to her belt.

  *

  “I can’t discuss an ongoing case with anyone. You know that.”

  We have drinks and dinner at The Marquee. It’s on the far northwest side, in a good neighborhood where we don’t receive many homicide calls.

  The lights are low. I want to tell her I love her again, but I don’t because I know she won’t reply with the correct response. I know she can’t because she can’t lie. It’s what I love about her, and I know it’s the reason she’ll never rise in the system of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. You have to have some bullshit to fertilize the pasture, as my old man says.

  “I’ve told you who I think might head the list of suspects. I already crossed the line for you, Mary.”

  She stares at me from behind her Tom Collins. It’s a hot day in late July, and I think I might order a Collins too.

  “Do you trust me?” I ask.

  “Don’t go there,” she warns.

  “My partner from Kuwait came back to help us. The NCIS is cooperating. Why can’t you?”

  “I don’t know any more than you do. All I know is that they’ve got the list you gave Captain Pearce.”

  “That’s all you know.”

  “Yes, Will, it’s all I know.”

  “But you wouldn’t tell me if you knew anything else.”

  She drinks another swallow of the Collins.

  “Don’t do this, Will. Don’t try to compromise me, because if you do…”

  “I know. I know what happens then.”

  I never see her again is what happens.

  *

  There’s a 10 x 12 manila envelope waiting on my desk the next morning.

  I open it up. There’s a photo of an alive Sandra Milan. She’s obviously terrified of the photographer. She seems to tremble even though she’s frozen in the m
oment in this picture.

  I turn the photo over. It has an inscription, but it’s done in cutouts from newspaper print.

  HELLO, WILL. ARE YOU HAPPY I’M BACK?

  SEMPER FIDELIS

  The envelope and its contents are delivered to the FBI. The package came via US Mail. Our mail boy put it on my desk, just as he puts all my mail there, daily. The postmark was from a northside station not far from our downtown headquarters here, near the Loop.

  The results come back very quickly. Two days. No prints, no leads. The envelope can be purchased at any place with a ‘mart’ on the end. The sender used gloves because the only prints belonged to postal employees, none of whom had ever been to Kuwait or the Middle East.

  We begin searching for the two lieutenants and the captain. The captain wound up dead in Iraq at the end of Desert Storm, but the two lieutenants left the Corps and wound up in parts unknown. We are tracing them via the perfunctory paper trail, but neither seems to have ever established a line of credit.

  We study their military jackets. They are not related. Apparently had never met in Desert Storm or anywhere else.

  But it’s the no line of credit that disturbs me. For an American in the Nineties to have no credit cards.… Something is out of joint. Jack Clemons and Pete Donato agree with me. Something is wrong with this picture. We cannot find either of these elusive Waldos. No paper trail usually displays a taste for solitude. They don’t want to be found, and I’m wondering if maybe I selected a winner in the Kuwait Killer lotto. We’ve got two possibilities that we like now, at least. The dead captain cut down the field.

  But the fact that my list might not include the real killer sinks my stomach. There is nothing to do, though, but persist. Pursue these two names on a list. Names written in red, just like the unsolved murders on our white board in the Homicide headquarters. Names in red. Suspects to be located and interviewed.

  I’m hoping to locate both of them before we find another dead female child and her equally dead family.

  3

  We spend hours searching the paper vapor of Carl Thomas and Philip Brandon, late of the US Marine Corps. Both lieutenants, both highly decorated, both loners with borderline sociopathic traits that flew underneath the radar of the Marine guidelines for the term ‘lunatic.’ Neither ever got caught doing anything that would achieve them the Army’s status of Section Eight—nuts. They were careful boys. They always behaved in front of the brass, obviously, and each of them distinguished himself in the short-lived combat that was Desert Storm. So the Corps had no cause to send them to the loony farm or to bust them and send them back to the States to push pencils in Quantico. They were sent to the fray and made leaders of men, and it wouldn’t have been the first time for psychos to be leading the troops.

  Carl Thomas came home to Davenport, Iowa, and then promptly disappeared. We call the cops, state, county and city, in his hometown, but they have no idea of his location. Lt. Carl Thomas is a white male, 26 years old, five feet ten inches, 172 pounds of trained lean mean killing machine. I’m still wondering if his kills were relegated only to the enemy in our War. I’m wondering if he’s a murderous pedophile who decimated whole families, entire clans, here and in Kuwait.

  We find out he has a sister in Peoria, Illinois. It’s a drive of three hours from Chicago, but Pete and Jack and I feel useless hanging here at headquarters.

  *

  We take the Stevenson, I-55, all the way down to 116 and head west and south, meandering through some podunk Midwestern small towns en route. We stop at a McDonald’s for lunch, and I buy two cheeseburgers and a Coke. Jack opts for the chicken sandwich and fries, but Pete indulges in coffee only. We squeak a leak, and we make Peoria in less than three hours.

  Doris Calvin (her married name) is divorced with two grown children. When she opens her north Peoria door—it’s an upscale bi-level brick and wooden siding mix—we see she’s got a headache or an attitude. She’s mid-forties, slim with a decent rack, and her face has a peeved look to it. It’d be a pretty face if she weren’t pissed off or hung over.

  She checks our IDs before she allows us in.

  Her ex-husband, she tells us immediately, is having the house watched for “boyfriends” because he’s trying to nail her for adultery.

  “The cheap prick.”

  She has photos of two athletic-looking teenaged males above her fireplace on the mantel. The house is tastefully decorated, with expensive furniture cluttering her living room.

  “I’m not a cheater,” she explains. “You’re here about Carl.… Is that right?”

  We prepped her over the phone. If we’d come unannounced, she likely wouldn’t have answered the door. We go in and sit down.

  “Yes,” I answer. “We’re here about your brother.”

  “He was a war hero. What’s the problem?”

  She has her chin thrust out at me, telling me to take a pop.

  I’d really like to slap her, but I’m not the type.

  “We’re here investigating a case.” Pete tells her. He’s dressed in civvies, as he has been except for the first time I saw him back in Chicago.

  “And the case regards what?” she demands.

  If she ever relaxed and got rid of her sour face, she might be very attractive, even though she’s a bit old for us.

  “Homicide,” Jack informs her.

  “Do I… I need a lawyer?”

  “No one’s accusing you or your brother of anything,” I say. “We just need to ask him some questions regarding his tour in Kuwait.”

  “Were you there?” she asks me.

  “He and I both served there in Desert Storm,” I point to Pete.

  “So you know about what Carl went through.”

  “We were policemen there.”

  “Okay. Then you know how some of these guys come back and then they want to take off on their own to get themselves back into one piece, then,” she says.

  Her eyes are welling up.

  “We need to talk to him right away,” I say.

  She studies me again.

  “Is there someone I can call to verify your IDs?”

  I hand her my card.

  “Call Captain Pearce at that number.”

  She goes immediately to the phone. It takes under three minutes. I look at my wristwatch to time her.

  “You seem for real.… He took off for our grandfather’s cabin in Wisconsin. It’s not far from LaCrosse.”

  *

  She gives us the directions, and I write everything down. Then we drive back to the city to ask the Captain if he wants us to do a road trip. He nods and tells us to get our shit together.

  *

  The trip from the city takes five hours. The cabin is in a micro-town twelve miles from LaCrosse. We have Jack’s Explorer. We figured the roads might get rough. They are, indeed.

  None of us figured he’d still be there. There was no phone to call. The sister said he didn’t have a telephone. There’s no number registered to his mailing address, here in Wisconsin, and so he has truly isolated himself from the world, and I’m beginning to wonder if the hangover sister isn’t telling the truth after all.

  The Yamaha bike is parked outside the door. If he’s running, he’s looking for a showdown right now, I’m figuring. So I unstrap my Nine. I have it so it’s ready to pull.

  Carl Thomas comes out onto the porch of the sturdy-looking log cabin. It appears to be well-maintained. Someone’s done work to keep it up.

  He’s a strong-looking young man, a determined set to his jaw.

  “My sister said you were on the way.”

  “I thought there was no phone here,” I say.

  “I have a radio. Short wave, for emergencies,” he smiles.

  The smile is crafty, intelligent. I don’t like the son of a bitch now.

  “Come on in,” he tells the three of us.

  I look at Pete and Jack, but their faces are blank. I can’t read what’s going on inside them.

  The interior i
s spartan, unlike the cluster of furniture at the sister’s house.

  He sits us on a spacious leather couch, a three-seater.

  “You’ve come here why?” he asks. The same leering grin is on his mouth.

  “We’re investigating the deaths of some Kuwait nationals. And an American family, as well,” Pete declares.

  “Why are you talking to me?” he wants to know.

  “We’re investigating Marine officers who were in the vicinity of the Kuwait nationals,” Pete says.

  “You think I killed some of the indigenous personnel.”

  He grins again, and I want to severely bitch-slap him. I know now why his men despised him and why the company shrinks were a little dubious about his stability.

  I checked him out with the military, and he’s clean. Things might have been a little less confusing for me if he were a registered offender, but then he certainly wouldn’t have made it into the Crotch, let alone achieved the rank of lieutenant. He’s sly enough to have avoided having any paperwork done on him. He passed the psych evaluation too, obviously. I’m thinking he always knows the right answers.

  I tell him that his area of operations in Kuwait would have placed him near enough to the two female vics and their families in order for us to be interested in him, then and now.

  “I looked you up, overseas, but I had no evidence to interrogate you,” I tell Thomas.

  “Then why am I talking to you now?”

  He’s sneering again.

  Pete lays his arm across me.

  “Because you want to cooperate. You want to do the right thing,” Pete says to him.

  “Of course I do,” he smiles again. But this time it’s his affable smile. He has perfect, straight, white teeth.

  “Can you account for the following days and hours?”

  I read him the dates and the times.

  “I have no idea. It was long, long ago.”

  No smile, this time.

  “Maybe you ought to try and remember,” Clemons chimes in.

  “You already know where I was. It was logged in, back then.”

  “But you had time on your own. You could’ve gone off on your own.”

  He eyes me. Still no smile.

  “That’d be hard to do without a vehicle. And there’s always paperwork with vehicles,” he says to us.