Three
Illinois Masonic is a complex of dark red buildings at 836 West Wellington. When Thinnes got there, the two patrol officers who’d escorted the ambulance were pacing the hall outside one of the treatment rooms. They spotted Thinnes as he came in and met him halfway.
“They find Banks yet?” the older one asked.
“No. How’s Nolan?”
“Still in surgery.” The copper hitched a thumb toward the treatment room he’d been guarding. “Witness is in there.”
Caleb sat on the examining table and shivered in spite of the blanket he was wrapped in. The excitement was wearing off and a poisonous cocktail of neurochemicals was replacing the adrenaline. He was beginning to experience depression. He’d suffered from it for so long it seemed comforting at times—the devil you know. He felt the onset of a self-loathing that was familiar, too, a habit he had thought he’d broken. It was partly self-disgust at having lost control, partly a profound feeling of loneliness. In times of distress, friends and family were a palliative or at least distracting. But he was estranged from his family. And he didn’t want to burden his best friend, Anita, with the story until he could relate it without emotion. It wouldn’t frighten her, but it might induce in her an anxiety he couldn’t assuage. And he had no significant other. The self-disgust was also due, in part, to this strange self-pity he was overcome by. Get a grip on yourself, he thought.
“How’re you doing?” Thinnes asked.
“I’ll live.”
“What happened?”
Caleb told him.
Thinnes asked, “What about Nolan’s partner?”
“Nolan is the officer I dragged out of the car?”
Thinnes nodded.
“He was the only one I saw. If I’d thought about it, I might have wondered why he was alone, but I didn’t have time to think.”
“Why’d you get involved? Why not just call for backup?”
Caleb gave him an I-don’t-believe-you’re-asking look before shrugging. “It would have been too late.”
Four
When Thinnes got back to the scene, the perimeter had been expanded. The yellow barrier tape stretched from North Pond, west of the smoke-blackened building, across Cannon Drive to North Lagoon east of the scene. Marked units cut off Cannon Drive at both ends of the block detouring traffic onto Clark Street. The crime-scene players were still crisscrossing the area, stopping occasionally to retrieve things they put in small plastic bags or manila envelopes.
Oster had arrived. He’d been Thinnes’s partner for over a year. As usual, lately, he looked worse after he’d had a few days off. Thinnes wasn’t sure whether it was because he was worse, or because he was just more likely to notice Oster when he hadn’t seen him for a while. This morning the older detective looked like shit—tired and rushed. He’d shaved, but he hadn’t tied his tie. And his shirt ballooned out from his pants, making him look fatter than usual. He always looked stressed; Thinnes was waiting for him to keel over from a heart attack.
He was talking to a medium-complexioned Hispanic, five-eight or -nine, maybe a 170 pounds—solid, no fat. Oster introduced him as “Art Fuego, Bomb and Arson.” Chicago was a little different than other towns in that arson—and the deaths resulting from it—were investigated by the cops, not the fire department. Arson dicks, and the explosives technicians who made up the bomb squad, were sent away for special training.
Thinnes pointed at the burned-out squad. “I thought the gas tanks on these things were designed to not blow up.”
“Well, sure,” Fuego said, “under normal circumstances. But opening the filler, punching a hole in the tank, and lighting a fire under it isn’t considered normal use.”
“So what do you think?”
“The white costumes are a new wrinkle.”
“And?”
Fuego shrugged and waved to indicate their surroundings. “They could hardly have picked a better spot to pull this. Except for the remains of the lighter and match book, there’s nothing here we can tie to them. I mean, we picked up a lot of stuff, but who knows how long any of it’s been here.”
“What about the gas can our witness mentioned?”
Fuego shook his head. “Must’ve taken it with ’em. What about our witness?”
“We’ve got him working on a composite.”
“We might as well go see how he’s doing, then. I don’t see anything more turning up here.”
“Okay,” Thinnes said, “but have someone check all the trash baskets in the park and the dumpsters and garbage cans in the area—case any of ’em decided to ditch their costumes. And have patrol put it out that anybody making a stop should keep an eye out for white robes.” He looked at Oster; the older man was standing with his hands in his suit-jacket pockets staring across Cannon Drive and over the lagoon, at the lake beyond it. “Carl, d’you bring us a car?” Oster didn’t seem to have heard. “Carl!”
Oster started. “Yeah, what?”
“We got a car?”
“Tac guy—Azul—said we should keep the one he brought you. He’ll bum a ride back when they’re done with the canvass.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I just need some coffee.”
Thinnes thought he heard him add, “Irish coffee,” under his breath.
Five
The police officers who’d driven Caleb to the hospital were pressed into service chauffeuring him to Area Three Detective Headquarters. They’d taken his statement earlier and, beyond asking if he was okay, didn’t speak to him. When they got to 2452 West Belmont—Belmont and Western, the site formerly occupied by the Riverview amusement park—they turned him over to Detective Swann, a middle-aged black man with a mild disposition and a strong resemblance to the late Mayor Washington.
Caleb had been to the Area many times since his first visit in 1993. The squad room seemed brighter; it had recently been painted a paler shade of yellow. The red tile floor was unchanged. The open space had been partitioned by dividers between the tables, and computers replaced the typewriters that had been used for filling out reports.
Swann skirted the desks and headed, first, for the table where two large coffeemakers stood. Someone had posted a sign that said: ALL DRINKS INCLUDE SALES TAX.
They looked at mug shots first, computer-generated images that came on the screen like wanted posters from some electronic post office. Swann showed him a series of pictures of men in the age category Caleb had estimated for the fire-setter. There were an amazing number. None of the pictures looked familiar, though; after the first few dozen, the men all began to look related. And they all seemed to have the same vacant expression.
When he and Swann had exhausted the usual suspects, Swann took him to the room off the case management office, where the Identisketch computer was kept. It was a painted concrete-block cubbyhole, ten-by-twelve, with a blind-shaded wall of windows overlooking a parking lot, and two chairs and two desks, one occupied by the computer Swann called the Etch-a-Sketch. There were no bulletin boards with Polaroids or photocopied pictures to mislead witnesses.
Caleb had thought, in the surrealistic moments of the incident, that the fire-setter’s image would be burned into his memory. Now he found it wasn’t so. The face merged with the faces of other madmen—Rasputin, Charles Manson, Adolf Hitler.
Having studied memory, he understood that the brain didn’t function like a biological VCR. Memories weren’t stored like movie film that could be played back on command. They were more like coded files stored in various places in the mind, and reconstructed when retrieved, sometimes fabricated from inference and hearsay and bits of other memories (or others’ memories) like a puzzle put together from pieces of like shape and color that happened to be near. To really remember something, you had to take careful note of it, study how its parts fit together and how it fit as a figure in its ground, how it differed from similar members of its class. Caleb had not had time to notice much more than man, white, not young, not old, eccentric, dangero
us before the immediacy of the situation forced him to react.
He could remember individual features—the cursing mouth, the bulbous, broken nose—and how the man had avoided eye contact. It had not been the sad, practiced avoidance of a schizophrenic, or the shy avoidance of an autistic person, or even the guilty avoidance of one who knows what is right or at least what is acceptable yet does the opposite. There was an ecstatic element to the fire-setter’s oblivion, as if he were high on chemicals or on the opiate of the people. Caleb and the officer had not been so much invisible to the fire-setter as inhuman, irrelevant, inconsequential. Whatever had caused his high, it had become a self-sustaining reaction.
Caleb was at a loss as to how to combine the disparate parts into a coherent picture. Perhaps it was the stasis of the fixed image that made the sum of the parts so much less recognizable than the whole. Why was it so easy to say what it was not?
Detective Swann was very patient, very good at his job. He didn’t push, didn’t lead. He let Caleb study the relation of each new feature to all the others and decide if it fit. Caleb was grateful and took his time. Better to get it right.
Six
The car Thinnes had commandeered had flashers on the headlights but no Mars light. He wasn’t in the mood for a leisurely drive back to headquarters, though. He put the flashers on and floored it, slowing only enough at intersections to avoid killing anyone. Oster didn’t comment. At Western and Belmont, Thinnes slewed the car around a WLS minicam van and cut into the drive ahead of it. He left the car in the fire lane of the dark brick building, facing the wrong way and, with Oster following, pushed through the glass doors into the District Nineteen lobby. He tossed the keys to the uniformed sergeant in the square brick enclosure that served as the district’s front desk.
He was halfway to the stairs when the sergeant said, “Hey Thinnes, they want you.” He leaned over the polished granite countertop and hooked his thumb in the direction of the district commander’s office. Oster kept going toward the stairs. Thinnes nodded and changed direction. The sergeant hadn’t specified who “they” were but, given the missing cop, it could be anyone up to a deputy superintendent. Hell, if Banks were “connected” it could be the superintendent himself.
Thinnes went down the hall and knocked on the commander’s door. He heard, “Come,” and went in, then relaxed. The district commander was a dark-eyed black Irishman who looked Italian; he was forty-eight, five-eleven, 190 pounds. He was sitting at his desk across from Evanger, Thinnes’s boss, who was acting head of Detective Area Three while its commander was on vacation. Evanger was a light-skinned black, midfifties, six-one, two hundred pounds. He had receding, close-cropped hair, a narrow, prominent nose, and a wide, stern mouth. He’d shaved his mustache since Thinnes saw him last. Both men had Starbucks coffee cups in front of them and looked as happy to be rousted on a Sunday morning as Thinnes felt.
The DC pointed to an empty chair and stifled a yawn. Thinnes had to fake a cough to hide his own answering yawn as he sat down.
“What’re the damages?” Evanger asked.
“One officer missing, one hospitalized—they’re working on him. We’ve got every car in town looking for Banks.”
“What’s the story?”
Thinnes was sure he’d heard it, but he repeated the highlights, anyway.
“What’s with the witness?” the DC asked.
“A solid citizen,” Thinnes told him. “A well-to-do shrink. In fact, a department consultant. He was out jogging and literally ran into it.”
“If he’s not goofy, why’d he get involved?”
“Reflex probably. He was a medic in Nam.”
The DC nodded.
“How’re we gonna handle this?” Evanger asked.
Thinnes saw that he was being given the reins. If he succeeded, all to the good. If not, he’d be the fall guy. He said, “Patrol is looking for Banks. Our witness is upstairs looking at pictures. If he comes up empty, we’ll have him build a composite on the Etch-a-Sketch. And I sent everyone I had out to canvass the buildings overlooking the scene on the off chance some peeper with a telescope saw something. But it’s gonna take a while. There’s a lot of buildings, with a lot of windows.”
“You have anybody at the hospital?” Evanger asked.
“Not yet.”
“Ferris is here.”
Thinnes shook his head and tried to keep his disgust from showing. “I’d rather send him out to interview peepers.”
“You’re calling the shots. Where’s Oster?”
“Upstairs trying to find out if any cop-hating torches have been released recently. We’ve gotta look on the bright side.”
“There’s a bright side?” the DC said.
“Yeah,” Thinnes said. “It’s Sunday. If it was Monday, we’d be up to our assholes in reporters.” He stood up and looked at Evanger, “Channel 7’s setting up as we speak. Can you run interference?”
Evanger nodded. “I’ll try to stall them.”
Thinnes went upstairs. Unlike TV squad rooms, there were no desks or chalkboards, no partitions to separate the violent crimes dicks from their property-crimes counterparts. Everyone worked at tables that were separated by partitions you could look over.
Oster was at one near the operations desk, which was behind a counter along one wall. He looked marginally better. His tie was tied if not snugged, his shirt tucked in. His color was better, too—not as gray. He looked up when Thinnes entered, and he nodded but kept listening to the phone wedged between his ear and his shoulder. The polystyrene cup in front of him was empty. Thinnes picked it up and filled it at the coffeemaker, along with one for himself. While he was standing there, trying to remember what he’d been going to do next, Kate Ryan came by with a coffee mug that said, ONLY ROBINSON CRUSOE HAD EVERYTHING DONE BY FRIDAY. Ryan was a natural redhead with green eyes, and eyebrows and lashes so pale they were almost invisible. She said, “Damn,” softly when she tried to fill the mug and got just a few muddy drops. She put it down and told Thinnes, “Move it or lose it.”
He took his two cups and went back to the table where Oster was making rapid notes on the margins of a rap sheet. Putting the cups down, Thinnes watched Ryan stalk out of the room with the coffeemaker. It wasn’t her turn to make coffee, and under normal circumstances, she’d have driven to McDonald’s to get herself a cup before making it out of turn. But circumstances weren’t normal. The pressure they were all feeling had caused most of them to revert to their older, pre-politically correct selves.
Thinnes turned to Oster. “What’ve we got?”
“Shit. We got shit.” Oster shoved a hefty stack of computer printouts and faxes toward Thinnes. “This is all the cop-hating torches we came up with.” He tapped the pages with the middle fingers of his right hand. “I crossed out all the ones I know are dead. An’ I put C by the ones that’re in County, S by the ones in Joliet, M for Menard, P for Pontiac—you get the idea.”
“Yeah. How up-to-date are they?”
Oster shrugged.
“You want to go over and sit with Nolan, get his statement when he comes to?”
Oster looked around. “Why me?”
“It’s you or Ferris. And when Nolan comes out of it, I don’t want any fuckups.”
The phone rang and Thinnes let Oster answer. His expression soured as he listened to the caller. When he put down the phone, he said, “They just found Banks—what’s left of her.”
Thinnes waited for the punch line; it came like a kick in the gut. “She was beaten to death.”
Seven
Arlette Banks turned up in a vacant lot in an industrial area. A half-dozen marked squads and a fire department ladder truck—but no engine or ambulance—were parked along the near-side curb. Yellow police-line tape had been stretched across the open sides of the lot, and grim-faced coppers crowded against it.
Thinnes parked near the squad cars and got out. The small discrepancy of the odd fire truck irritated him enough to make him ask about it. “Fla
t tire,” he was told. “Rest of ’em took off on another call when they couldn’t help Banks.”
He’d arrived ahead of the ME; the crime-scene guys were still taking pictures. He walked over and ducked under the tape, and a patrol sergeant hurried over to fill him in.
The factories on either side were surrounded by high fences topped with coiled razor wire. The building that had originally stood on the lot had been dismantled, its intact bricks and blocks salvaged. The broken pieces that were left had been put to use. On Banks.
The first officers on the scene, a salt-and-pepper team, were the ones who’d found her. The sergeant pointed them out to Thinnes. “They only found the body because we’ve been monitoring the lot for illegal dumping.”
The white officer was a rookie, probably under twenty-five. He looked ready to puke. His partner, a woman in her thirties, and big, seemed ready to do murder. Thinnes walked over to them and introduced himself.
“Tell me about it,” he said.
“We been watching this lot,” the woman said. “An’ when we went by earlier, it was empty. This time we come by, there’s been a dump. So I get out to see if he’s—maybe—screwed up an’ left something’ we can use to nail him. An’ I find Banks. We never expected—”
“God!” his partner said, “the flash they put out was real vague—missing—so, you know, it was a shock. But this place is perfect…” He waved his arms at the closed and abandoned buildings across the two streets that the lot fronted on, “…for something like this.”
Thinnes nodded. “Anything here—besides Banks—that wasn’t here the last time you were by?”
Both coppers looked.
“Just…” The rookie nodded at the remains.
His partner took longer, then pointed to a hubcap against the curb nearest the body. “Don’t recall seein’ that, but I could be wrong. It wasn’t there yesterday for sure. Somebody would’a salvaged it by now.”
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