Sorry Now? Page 8

  Brian had permission to go out with his buddies after the game, but since he had school the next day, he had to be in by eight to study for his final exams next week. Turner called the station when he got in from the game to see if there had been any developments in the Mucklewrath case. Nothing. He asked about Wilmer, but Wilson and Roosevelt, who had the case, weren’t in.

  Paul spent the evening playing checkers with Jeff and reading with him. He even found some time to work on household tasks that got put off too often. He managed to rebolt the handholds in Jeff’s bathroom in less than an hour.

  The phone rang at nine. Paul found himself wishing it would be George Manfred. Instead a voice he didn’t recognize said, “We’re watching you, cop. You’d make a good target on the beach, and your kids an even better one.”

  FIVE

  Five minutes after roll call ended that morning Carruthers rushed into the squad room and ran over to Turner and Fenwick. “Lieutenant wants to see you,” he said. “Are you guys in trouble?”

  Turner said, “We’ll have to see.”

  Carruthers said, “I watched all the newscasts last night. They all had a story about the murder. Snotty reporters asking stupid questions. I heard there’s pressure from the Mayor’s office to get this solved quick. Do you think it’s part of a gay conspiracy, like the reverend said in his press conference?”

  Fenwick gave him a sour look and marched to the coffeepot. He growled, “You watch too much TV news, and since when did you and the mayor become good buddies?”

  In general Turner didn’t mind reporters. He suspected this was Ian’s influence. Carruthers tended to exaggerate most everything anyway.

  Minutes later the two men walked into the lieutenant’s office. They sat on two red vinyl-covered straightback chairs. From years of familiarity they ignored the stuffing protruding from the cracks in the seat covers. The lieutenant’s desk and two large folding tables against the side walls nearly filled the room. The table on the left side contained neat stacks of files and forms; the table on the right had a recent-hurricane look because of the papers heaped on it. The lieutenant’s desk had a phone, a picture of his family, several open folders, a pen set, and the lieutenant’s elbows. He cupped his hands around his chin.

  “Hell of a day,” was his first comment. Outside a placid blue sky hid the fact that the weatherman had issued severe storm warnings until six that evening, with tornado watches and warnings possible. The only evidence now was a rising wind gusting to forty miles an hour.

  The lieutenant picked a pen up and tapped it on the desk top. “What have you got on the Mucklewrath investigation?”

  “Nothing,” Fenwick said.

  Turner filled the lieutenant in on what they had done and found out.

  “Nothing,” Fenwick said at the end.

  The lieutenant scrunched his eyebrows together and pursed his lips. “What are you planning to do today?”

  “Check any other lab reports, try to get a lead on other preachers. And I want to talk to Wilson and Roosevelt about Wilmer’s death.”

  “The old guy died?” the lieutenant said.

  “Yes. They found him in the river on Saturday afternoon. He claimed he knew who killed the little girl,” Turner said.

  “Did he?” the lieutenant said.

  “Did he ever know anything?” said Fenwick. “I’m surprised he hadn’t gotten around to confessing to this one.”

  Wilmer did have a habit of confessing to some of their more difficult cases. How he learned about them no one was sure. He hung around the station so much, Turner thought maybe he found out by osmosis.

  “We haven’t got much else,” Turner said. “I think it’s worth checking.”

  The lieutenant nodded. “Do it, although I’m afraid it won’t lead to anything. Check the preachers. Go back over some of the same ground. The reverend has been making quite a stink in his speeches. The press hasn’t gone totally nuts with this thing because a lot of them don’t like these preachers. We’ve been lucky so far.”

  “Do we have a political or press pressure problem?” Fenwick asked.

  “I’ll bet you can’t say that again without screwing it up,” Turner said.

  The lieutenant said, “We’ll worry about the press and politicians if we have to. For now, no.”

  At the door Turner turned back and said, “I got a call last night. Somebody threatened my kids. They mentioned the murder.”

  “You got a tap on the phone set up?”

  “It’s the first thing I’m going to do,” Turner said. “The voice wasn’t familiar. It might be nothing, but it’s too suspicious and coincidental. I also called the Twelfth District. They’ll put a special watch on, but they can’t spare a twenty-four-hour guard. I warned the boys. Jeff gets help from my front door to school, and Brian promised to be extra careful. I told Mrs. Talucci this morning. She watches the kids after school. The whole neighborhood will be alerted before noon today. That’ll help.”

  Fenwick asked him about the call as they sat down at their desks. He’d been to Turner’s home numerous times and the families got together at least twice a year, at Christmas and for a summer picnic every July. “These people have to be fucking nuts,” Fenwick concluded.

  After a brief discussion Turner made the calls to set up the phone tap.

  They decided to phone the police departments on the basis of Dooley’s information from the day before. She had given them basic data on prominent televangelists not only in California but around the country as well. During the calls they got some sympathy because people recognized desperation tactics when they saw them. Many of them had been in the same position. Sympathy but little help. No one knew of any feuds of major proportions. One cop in Atlanta told Turner, “These guys are always squabbling about one thing or another. No one notices anymore.”

  After an hour and a half of futility they reached the end of their list.

  “I’m open to any suggestions you’ve got before we try Wilmer,” Turner said to Fenwick.

  Buck got himself another cup of coffee and grumbled an okay. They walked over to Roosevelt and Wilson.

  Turner explained to the two detectives what they wanted and why. Roosevelt and Wilson were happy to oblige. “A passerby saw something in the water and called the police. We got the call at”—Wilson checked some papers—“at four sixteen yesterday afternoon. They fished the body out from under the Halsted Street bridge. We assumed he got drunk and fell in.”

  “I wonder,” Turner said. “I never knew Wilmer to be falling down drunk at that time of the day. That doesn’t seem right.”

  “Could be any number of reasons,” Wilson said. “Maybe he got in a fight with a buddy over a bottle, or he took a wrong step and that was it.”

  “Maybe he was pushed,” Turner said.

  “We’ll get the autopsy report later today,” Wilson said.

  “The area canvassed yet?” Turner asked.

  “Everybody who was around on Saturday was talked to. No one saw anything. We weren’t planning to go back today. We didn’t think it was important,” Roosevelt said.

  “It probably isn’t,” Turner said. “You don’t mind if we go ask around?”

  They didn’t. They had plenty of other cases to work on.

  On the Halsted Street bridge Turner glanced at the green Chicago River below. From here, it stretched a couple of hundred yards east, then curved north. Turner said to Fenwick, “Maybe he didn’t fall off this bridge. Maybe he floated downstream. If we each took a side of the river and walked toward the Loop, we could talk to people and see if anybody knew anything.”

  Fenwick said, “Might as well give it a shot.”

  On his way to a rundown three-story fake tile-brick building, Turner walked under the shadow of the Dan Ryan Expressway. He glanced up at the concrete, saw the massive traffic tie-up typical for Chicago expressways during summer patching and reconstruction.

  He talked to mechanics at marinas, and security guards at nearly abandone
d warehouses, got snapped at by mean-looking German shepherds behind chain-link fences, and discovered nothing. He built up an itchy sweat in the close quarters of the old buildings, most of them un-air-conditioned and steaming.

  After over an hour of plodding, and even getting lost once under the girders of the Dan Ryan Expressway, he came up with nothing. Wearily he trudged back to where they had left the car on Halsted Street. Fenwick wasn’t in sight. Turner leaned on the railing, staring down at the water.

  The flashing lights of an emergency tow truck caught his eye from the expressway he’d passed under several times. He watched the truck as it weaved through the snarled traffic. The waving yellow lights halted for a few minutes, then he saw the front half of a car begin to rise. Moments later they left. Turner kept his gaze fixed on the workers. They repaired expressways in Chicago all summer long, it seemed. To avoid tying up rush-hour traffic they especially concentrated on doing the work during midday, late in the evening, mornings, or on the weekends. They might have seen something if they were there last Saturday.

  Fenwick trudged up a few minutes later. In the car Turner explained his idea.

  They entered the expressway at Roosevelt Road and immediately found themselves in the traffic jam caused by the construction. It took twenty minutes to traverse the half mile to the workers. They pulled onto the far side of the barricades and got out of the car. First Turner took a long look around. He’d never walked on an expressway before and this portion of the Dan Ryan was elevated, so nothing blocked his view to the northeast, of the buildings of the Loop. Due east he saw railroad yards; to the west he could see the houses of the Pilsen neighborhood just south of his own. Directly north and south, snarled traffic fought its way through the midday construction.

  They talked to the manager of the work crew. The same guys who had worked Saturday afternoon making overtime were at work now. The manager took them to each man in turn. Most, like the manager, wore heavy work boots with thick socks, jeans, T-shirts, and hard hats. A few of the younger men wore cutoffs and no top. Deeply bronzed parts of exposed flesh glinted in the sunlight.

  They strolled around freshly poured squares of cement and mounds of jagged pieces of rock. Past one spot where the concrete had yet to be poured, Turner could see the exposed cables and girders. Once he thought he caught a glimpse of street far below.

  They talked to clumps of men. No one had heard or seen a thing. The manager felt it necessary to apologize after they talked to the last group.

  “Is that everybody who was here?” Fenwick asked the manager in front of the last group.

  “I think so,” the manager said. His name was Arnold Fleckstein. Muscles like cannonballs bulged along his arms and shoulders.

  A gray-haired man in his sixties said, “Billy’s in the john. He was here.”

  The tiny group looked toward the portable john. The door opened and a slender, broad-shouldered, blond man in his late teens or early twenties stepped out. He noted the gaze of the crowd and strode over. Portions of his white jockey shorts peeked out at the belt and crotch of skimpy cutoffs. Without a shirt, he presented a well-tanned hairless chest for admiration. He smiled easily at the cops and spoke in a soft voice when he said hello.

  Fenwick asked him if he’d seen anything on Saturday.

  “I think maybe I did. I drink so much water that I can’t sweat it all away. I’m always going to the john to piss.” He scratched his left ear, then said, “I don’t know though.”

  Turner and Fenwick took the man aside. He told them his name was Spike Bergenson. On Saturday he’d gone to the John as he said. He’d had to wait a minute for somebody already inside.

  Bergenson said, “I looked over on the south bank there and saw three guys. I guess I wouldn’t have noticed them except they wore kind of dark, heavy clothes, didn’t fit the weather. They looked out of place, you know, suspicious.”

  “What did they do?” Turner asked.

  “Nothing much. They kind of watched the water for a while then drifted offpast the boats. I couldn’t have seen them for sure more than half a minute.”

  “Did they look in a hurry or scared? Did they stare around them?” Turner asked.

  “Not really. They just looked like guys hanging around.”

  “You didn’t see where they went?” Fenwick asked.

  “Nah. The guy came out of the john so I went in. It pays to hurry around here. Old Arnold don’t like it when he thinks you’re loafing.”

  “Did you see anything in the water?” Turner asked.

  “Like what?”

  “Anything.”

  “A couple little boats. Nothing unusual. What should I have seen?”

  “Maybe a dead body,” Fenwick said.

  The kid gulped and said, “Oh.”

  Turner and Fenwick walked to the portable john and peered over the edge where the kid must have looked on Saturday. He wouldn’t necessarily have seen anything in the water from this height. It was a little surprising he’d even noted the men.

  “It was the same guys,” Fenwick said.

  Turner agreed then added, “And they’ve got to be amateurs. I want to check out Gangs and Narcotics when we get back just in case. I’d bet these three are acting on their own. Nobody who’s a pro threatens a cop or his family. Too much unnecessary heat.”

  “Unless you busted somebody recently who’s big in the gangs,” Fenwick said.

  “We’ve busted the same guys for the past two months, and we’ve worked on the other cases together, even if we arrested them on our own. Nobody anywhere mentioned connections. We usually get a call from somebody at either Gangs or Narcotics if we have something more than we know.”

  “Okay, we’re clean the last few months,” Fenwick said. “It doesn’t mean it couldn’t be somebody from the past. Remember that woman who said she’d get you for arresting her for beating her husband.”

  “Tell me you really believe she’s behind all this,” Turner said.

  “I’m just suggesting, is all,” Fenwick said.

  “Let’s get back so we can do some checking.”

  Back at the station he had a message from Ian to call. He tried the Gay Tribune office, but Ian was out. While Fenwick called a friend who worked with Gangs. Turner called Organized Crime. They had no hints for him about anybody angry enough to threaten cops.

  Fenwick reported on the talk he had with the Gang Crime Unit. “Nothing. Nobody’s noticed any unusual activity of any kind. The guy I talked to said he’d put out a couple of feelers, and he’d do some checking with our guys who have mob connections.”

  Turner called Narcotics. After he hung up from them, he told Fenwick, “Same thing. No unusual activity, and he’d put out the word, same as Organized Crime.”

  Charlie Grimwald, the old officer on the desk downstairs who occasionally drove a squadrol on busy nights, came upstairs with their lunches. He’d caught them on their way in to ask if they wanted anything. Turner had ordered Italian beef with hot peppers from Angel’s Coffee Wagon.

  Charlie Grimwald delivered Turner’s sandwich, collected his money, and then leaned down close. Turner got an up-front view of the white hairs sprouting from the old man’s nostrils. Charlie put his hand on Turner’s shoulder and whispered. “If anything happens to your kids, that guy is dead meat. You know we’ll be watching in case somebody tries, but people are crazy.” He squeezed Turner’s shoulder tightly and repeated, “If anything happens, the killer dies. It may only be vengeance, but it will be something.”

  Turner watched the old man’s eyes. He saw drops near the corners. Charlie suddenly straightened up, snuffled loudly, rubbed his hand vigorously over his nose, and shuffled away. Turner knew word of the threat had spread among his colleagues. He knew the sincerity of promises made by men like Charlie Grimwald. At the annual station picnic every summer in Lincoln Park he’d seen Charlie push Jeff’s wheelchair to various zoo exhibits, and pick him up to bring him closer to the animals. Jeff didn’t trust a lot of people t
o carry him, but the beefy old cop was one of his favorites. For the moment, though, Turner wanted to concentrate on preventing an attack on his kids.

  Turner started his lunch. Halfway through his sandwich Ian called.

  “Did you call the good doctor?” was Ian’s first question.

  “I’ve been a little busy,” Turner told him.

  “Get a break in the Mucklewrath case?” Ian asked quickly.

  “Nope. What’d you call about?”

  Ian ignored his question and said, “I hear the good doctor is going to be at a party tonight. You should go. You should call him. Don’t wait for him to call you.”

  Turner sighed, then said, “Ian, we’re busy. Do you have something for me besides gossip?”

  “Promise you’ll go to the party tonight and I’ll tell.”

  “I’ll try to make it. Now what?”

  “I assume that’s the best promise I’ll get out of you, and what I’ve got is another homophobic bastard getting it.”

  Turner said, “I’ve tracked down the other two incidents you’ve given me. There is absolutely no connection I can find between the them. I can’t find a glimmer of a hint that either of those is connected to the murder. Start with major problem one. There is no way the killers could have known that Mucklewrath and his daughter would be on that beach at that time.”

  Ian started to speak.

  Turner interrupted. “Think about it. They couldn’t have. They had to be waiting for the opportunity. They needed him there with his daughter. Arson and mass diarrhea are well planned and well thought out, but they are not the usual crimes we connect with someone who goes on to be a killer. It just doesn’t work.”

  “Do you want to listen or not?” Ian asked.