Condemned: A Thriller

by McBride, Michael

  There was one I’d always recall fondly, though. It was a day that in many ways both defined and altered the course of my life. Dray had been there with me, like just about every other day. We’d sneaked into the old United Artists Theatre downtown to explore what we’d thought of at the time as “the ruins.” We were maybe fourteen or fifteen; old enough to know that breaking everything in sight was wrong, but too young to understand or care why. Boys will be boys, or we heard.

  We’d worked our way up to the very top floor of the adjoining eighteen-story commercial building and into an office overlooking Grand Circus Park. I think Dray had been about to see if he could hurl one of the chairs hard enough to embed its legs in the drywall when he abruptly stopped and looked out the window. I remember standing beside him for what seemed like hours, staring out over the entire city.

  From that vantage point, we could see the neighborhoods that had already begun to rot, abandoned factories the color of rust, black houses victimized by arson, and vacant lots piled with trash. We could see the gangs gathered on the street corners and the homeless panhandling in the park. And in the far distance, we could see the suburbs, like some magical land at the end of the rainbow, a land that appeared to have stolen the sun and left the rest of the world in a gray haze of exhaust.

  “How’d this happen?” he’d said. I knew I’d always remember those words, because it was as though he’d pulled them out of my brain and spoken them for me.

  That was the last time we went on one of our little destruction sprees. We didn’t discuss it at the time, but we’d always thought of Detroit as our kingdom, and there we were tearing it down just like everyone else, while all of the money flowed uphill to the shiny suburbs and the men responsible for damning the city we loved to this fate.

  I’ll always see Dray as that awkward teenager, standing before that eighteenth-story window with the world spread out before him. As I looked at him now, I realized it had probably been six months since we last sat down together, even longer since we’d had a meaningful conversation. He wasn’t wearing his wedding ring. Either he took it off for the job or my oldest friend in the world, a man I thought of as my brother, had gone through a horrible time and not only had I not been there for him, I’d been too busy to notice or care.

  “Her parents are on their way now. I have to meet them at the morgue in an hour.”

  I nodded. I didn’t know what I was supposed to say any more than I wanted to trade places with him.

  The conference room was obviously in the process of being transformed for a task force. There were pictures tacked to a large piece of corkboard on wheels, some of which I recognized as my own work. The majority were provided by the crime scene photographer and the State’s CSRT. The pictures of Lindsay DeWitt were cold and clinical and left nothing to the imagination. Every bruise was isolated and photographed individually. There were pictures of her hands in detail through the plastic bags they placed over them to preserve whatever trace evidence might be under her fingernails. Her eyes were closed and her lips slightly parted, as though she’d died whispering to a lover.

  “It’s only a matter of time before this is all over the news.”

  “Where’s your partner?”

  “One of us has to get some sleep. Or at least try to.”

  “Meaning she’s sitting outside having a smoke.”

  He offered a tired smile.

  “Probably.”

  I didn’t mention I’d seen her doing just that on my way in. She’d been so preoccupied with her own thoughts she didn’t even see my walk right past her.

  “How’s Janae?”

  He looked at me for a long moment with an expression I couldn’t read and unconsciously touched the finger where the ring had once been.

  “Fine,” he said, but I knew him too well to believe him and now wasn’t the time to pursue it. He switched gears without segue. “Tell me again about the tip you got.”

  “It came from a Twitter account under the name @anachronist. I checked when I got home and both the tweet and the account had been deleted.”

  “You didn’t get a screenshot?”

  “Why would I?”

  “Seems like something I guy concerned with details would do.”

  “First of all, I hadn’t investigated to know if his claims were true. And secondly, I had no reason to believe it wouldn’t still be there when I got home.”

  “And you decided to investigate yourself rather than contact the police?”

  “Are you suggesting an officer would have rushed right down there?”

  “It’s their job to enforce the EWOP law—”

  “You know damn well the DA doesn’t prosecute entering without permission. And I’m sure there are guys who deliberately get caught on Sundays so they can eat a hot meal while watching Game of Thrones, knowing full well they’ll be kicked loose in the morning.”

  “That’s bullshit and you know it.”

  “Am I a suspect?”

  “You found the victim.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  He leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms above his head.

  “What kind of blood was it?” I asked.

  He looked at me curiously.

  “Fine.” I stood and paced behind the row of chairs. I wanted him to see my frustration, but I also wanted a closer look at the pictures of the wounds on Lindsay’s chest and neck. “You have my fingerprints and DNA. Do your job and rule me out as a suspect so we can figure this thing out.”

  “We?”

  “You know what I mean.” I turned on him abruptly. “We’ve been friends since we were kids. You know damn well I didn’t do this. You’re wasting time venting your frustrations at me while some sick bastard who trained his dog to attack little girls is out on the street thinking he’s getting away with it.”

  I shoved my chair back under the table and headed for the door.

  “The cause of death was asphyxiation,” he said to my back.

  I stopped and turned to look at him. He rested his forehead in his palm and closed his eyes for a long moment before opening them again and studying me from the corner of his eye.

  “He fed her to his dog after she was already dead?”

  “You catch on quick.”

  “What kind of dog?”

  “That’s your follow-up question?”

  “Seriously, Dray. What kind of dog?”

  “We’re still waiting on a match for the bite marks. Believe it or not, a canine forensic odontologist is a little hard to come by, especially in the middle of the night.”

  He leaned back and chuckled, but there was no humor in his voice.

  “Swing by after you talk to the parents. We can grab some breakfast—”

  “Next time.”

  I nodded and turned away. I had the doorknob in my hand when he sighed.

  “The blood,” he said. “It contains more than twenty discrete human samples.”

  I released the knob and furrowed my brow. When I looked back at him I found him studying my expression as carefully as I was scrutinizing his.

  “Why did you specify they were ‘human’ samples?”

  “Because the majority of the blood came from an animal.”

  “The dog?”

  “No.” His eyes locked onto mine. “A bat.”

  SIX

  I didn’t know if he was telling the truth or messing with me. I couldn’t read him like I once could. What I did know was that he’d never been one to joke about anything when it came to matters of significance, which is why I firmly believed he’d follow through with his threat to reach down my throat and pull my sphincter out through my mouth if I said a word about any of this to anyone. Not that anyone would have believed me anyway. On the positive side, that meant he still trusted me—at least to some degree. On the negative side, the post-mortem exsanguination, mastication, and application of nonnative, mixed-species blood was a carefully constructed signature, one into which
someone had invested considerable time and thought, and one I had no doubt the killer would use again.

  It was the kind of signature designed to grab headlines and bring notoriety, the calling card of a serial killer who wanted the entire news community to descend upon his story and take it global. It was so sensational that it would blow up the moment word leaked. Detroit had itself a murderer who wanted people to think he savaged the necks of his victims, drained them of their blood, and left a little of his own in the wound, blood that contained the DNA of myriad other victims and that of a bat. Either the murderer wanted the world to think a vampire had laid claim to the ruins of the Motor City, or he genuinely believed himself to be one.

  Yesterday I would have found the whole thing laughable. I mean, really, like anyone would buy that a bloodsucking creature of the night stalked the streets of Detroit. It was the kind of thing you’d read about in Star Magazine or The National Enquirer. I’d seen what this monster did to Lindsay DeWitt, though, and there was nothing remotely amusing about it.

  The thought that he’d chosen me to discover his victim made me more than a little uncomfortable. Here was a guy who was either familiar with my work or had found me while plotting his crime. He’d undoubtedly researched me and knew enough about me to understand how I worked and why, on a personal level, I did what I did. His choice of screen names had been so perfect it passed my inner BS detector and his tip had guaranteed I’d rush right out to the Eastown.

  I felt violated, like something dark and ugly had crawled inside my computer and invaded my life. Worse, I knew it was still in there, or at least its digital presence was.

  I turned on my system and was relieved to find my email inbox clogged with innocuous spam and my Facebook and Twitter accounts mercifully bereft of any more tips. All I wanted right now was to curl up in my bed and sleep. Maybe when I woke I’d find this guy was already in custody or, failing at that, my mind would at least be fresh enough to make some sense of everything going on around me.

  First, though, I intended to take the longest, hottest shower in the history of mankind so I could scrub the taint of the Eastown from my skin. The thought of the blood of twenty different people constricting on my skin made me want to crawl right out of it. Were they all his victims or did he simply have ready access to samples of blood? Either way, surely at least one of them could be identified, which would provide a lead for Dray, who appeared worn down to such an extent that I barely recognized him as the adult version of the kid who never stopped smiling.

  Water has been revered by every society since the dawn of time for its cleansing and rejuvenative powers. I felt immediately better beneath the weak stream my shower provided, and even after I’d scrubbed every inch of my body, I stood in the spray until I was as pink as a sunburn. I let my head hang and watched the water drain from my bangs and patter between my feet. It reminded me of the blood dripping from the fingertips of the dead girl, of how I’d stared at the puddle forming on the stage as several more drops struck it. I remembered how the edges were darker where the fluid clotted with the dust and plaster and how the only footprints were my own. Now that I really thought about it, the only way the killer could have hung the body where he did without crossing the stage was by entering through the roof.

  I killed the stream and stood naked until my body stopped steaming and I felt the bite of the cool air from across the room. In my mind, I walked around the outside of the Eastown, evaluating it from every conceivable angle, but, for the life of me, I couldn’t remember seeing a ladder or a fire escape. The siding was either brick or smooth concrete where the bricks had fallen off. The western and southern elevations didn’t have a single window or ledge of any kind. Someone might have been able to use the window sills on the front to climb up there, but not without being clearly visualized on the security camera of the gas station across the street, and definitely not while carrying a woman’s body. The east side had burned to a pile of charcoaled rubble, which left only the back side of the apartment complex, and the inside of the building itself.

  I bundled myself in a towel and started to call Dray, but thought better of it. The crime scene techs had surely gone through the same logical progression I had, only last night and in a matter of minutes. They didn’t need me stepping on their toes and telling them how to do their jobs, yet there was something about the way the killer must have entered the building that didn’t sit right with me, and I wasn’t about to consider the notion that he’d flown up to the roof, regardless of what he wanted us to believe.

  I laughed out loud at the mental image. The sound was strange and foreign to my own ears.

  By the time I realized what I was doing, I was speeding northeast on Gratiot with a greasy paper sack of breakfast sandwiches and hash browns in my lap and a half-formed plan coming together in my brain. Unconsciously, I’d recognized something my conscious mind needed hours to rationalize. The victim’s body had still been swaying when I arrived and for even a negligible amount of a finite supply of blood to have been leaking from a wound that he’d attempted to refill like a soft drink, it could mean only one thing.

  The killer had still been there when I arrived.

  SEVEN

  The CSRT was long gone by the time I got there. The Eastown was decorated with police tape and guarded by a pair of DPD officers, who sat in the cruiser parked against the curb in front of the building. Their presence was meant to dissuade the curious from getting too close or staring too long, but word had surely traveled through the grapevine by now and everyone in the neighborhood already knew what had happened. Most of those out on the streets took either a casual or what I suspected to be a financial interest; the police weren’t good for business on this side of town.

  I drove a circuit around the theater before parking behind the New Life Church, two blocks north on Van Dyke. Mine was the only car in the lot and completely invisible from the back of the Eastown. Sneaking into the crime scene was about the stupidest idea I’d ever had, and yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something of consequence I’d missed inside, something the CSRT must have missed too for them not to have shown up at my door. The killer had engaged me for some unknown purpose, and one that would likely only reveal itself to me. I watched the street people while I catalogued the hundreds of reasons not to get out of my car.

  A homeless man cursed violently at no one in particular as he walked past the lost. A woman with a disproportionately large butt and thighs like sacks full of walnuts pushed a stroller along the opposite side of the street, dragging a toddler wearing only a diaper behind her. They were like the Eastown itself, casualties of an unforgiving economy and an unsympathetic government that bailed out the automakers with billions in taxpayer funds, while simultaneously turning a blind eye to the suffering of those whose jobs could have been preserved had that money not been rerouted into executive bonuses. I hated what this country had become and wanted nothing more than to hold up a mirror so its citizens could see it for what it truly was, not the Land of Opportunity for which our forefathers fought and died, but as the fascist regime that served to funnel the money upward from those most in need into the pockets of those who would see them all starve in the streets, the same men who took away their livelihoods and stranded them in a city rotting beneath their very feet.

  I locked my steering wheel with my Club and the doors by remote and walked around the back side of the church, which had formerly been an auto parts store and now held the distinction of being the only building within sight not covered with graffiti.

  From behind, the Eastown looked like any other industrial structure. For whatever reason, it reminded me of a granary, although I can’t recall ever having seen one. I watched long enough to make sure no one was surveilling the rear approach and walked as casually as I could across Malvern and the overgrown field of weeds. The long grasses were still matted where they’d been trampled by the evidence teams and the tracks of the ME’s van were clearly evident. It was stagge
ring how quickly and precisely they performed their jobs, like well-oiled gears in some intricate machine. I was used to dealing with distracted officers who chomped on gum while only half-listening to my statement, the kind who didn’t take any notes because they knew in the grand scheme of things no one cared who spray-painted the façade of an abandoned building or broke all of the windows of a factory that hadn’t produced anything in decades. They were crimes that would never be solved, let alone prosecuted, justifying the progressive feeling of apathy pervading both law enforcement and the community they were sworn to protect and serve.

  Apparently murder was a different beast, and one that needed to be hunted and slain in the most expeditious manner possible. It was hard to believe that mere hours ago this had been a hotbed of activity and now it was once again consigned to the rodents and the elements.

  With the exception of the police tape and the new cigarette butts and crumpled coffee cups discarded on the broken asphalt, everything looked pretty much as it did when I first arrived last night. The rear entryway was once again boarded over and an EWOP warning had been tacked to it, but that was of no consequence to me. I intended to take an entirely different route this time.

  I followed the stale scents of smoke and urine through the back door of the adjacent apartment building and stood in the hallway while I gathered my bearings. The eastern half of the four-story Eastown complex had once featured street-level storefronts, office space, and thirty-five residential units. The devastation of the fire was near complete. Were it not for the meticulous attention to detail invested by the original builders, the entire block would have gone up in flames. As it was, what little remained hardly qualified as an actual structure. The front elevation, formerly brick and adorned with ornate reliefs, was now a fifteen-foot mountain of rubble from which the scorched framework of a stairwell ascended to even more blackened debris clinging to what little remained of the upper levels. The half-dozen or so surviving rooms were accessible only from the rear and after deliberately ignoring the demolition order nailed to the knob-less door.