Burners - A Jack Daniels/Alex Chapa Mystery

by Henry Perez

  “The Rueben is on the house.”

  “You really don’t have to…”

  “I don’t know what we would do in this town without the good work of the police. Please. It’s on me. I insist.”

  I thought about paying anyway, because I wasn’t the type to trade on my authority. But it really is rude to refuse a gift.

  “Thanks,” I said, taking the sandwich and the chips. He replied with a broad smile.

  I walked out of the deli, my free lunch tucked under my arm. Maybe I really should move to Birch Grove. The cops here seemed to have it a lot better than I did.

  The first day—first afternoon, really—consisted entirely of opening statements from the two sides. The whole thing took about an hour-and-a-half. All the while, Judge Malvo fluctuated between appearing to be in agony, listing to one side, and nearly nodding off. A couple of times he moaned quietly and the proceedings came to a temporary stop as the attorneys waited to see if His Honor had something to add. He didn’t.

  I was certain the judge was a goner at one point when he spent the better part of fifteen minutes resting his chin on his fist, his only movement an occasional twitch that snapped him back to life. The guy was either heavily medicated or completely disinterested. Or maybe it was the heat, since apparently the county had forgotten to pay its electric bill and air conditioning wasn’t an option. Or at least that’s what I assumed, as another bead of sweat rolled down the side of my face.

  Jack Daniels, on the other hand, looked far too icy to sweat as she passed the time fidgeting in a seat near the back of the courtroom. From time to time she would glare at the prosecutors, who never appeared to share as much as a glance with the Lieutenant.

  My gaze drifted back to Jack often. It was odd to see her in this sort of situation, glued to a chair, anxious to do something, but unable to move or take charge of her surroundings. Like a caged bird of prey.

  Several of my colleagues were seated in the gallery, there to cover the case for their papers. Right then I would’ve swapped places with any of them.

  The kid seated at the defense table could not have been more than twenty, if that. At times, for a moment here and there, I sensed that he grasped the severity of his circumstances. But that clarity would slip away an instant later, and he’d look like a boy who’d been summoned to the principal’s office on a charge of truancy.

  He sure as hell didn’t look capable of intentionally setting the fire that killed one Dennis Braun, who was trapped inside his print shop, Laserquick, when it went up. In my work I’d crossed paths with murderers, thieves, rapists, and blackmailers. Interviewed more than a few of each. But I’d never met a burner, and would not have imagined they looked anything like Tony Beniquez.

  The man I assumed to be his father sat directly behind Tony in the first row of the gallery, wearing his Sunday best. As though he, rather than his son, was the one heading for Judgment Day. He was a small man with a large mustache and neatly cropped dark hair streaked with silver along the sides. Studying his face, and the look of concern he was doing nothing to hide, I was sure the man would trade places with his son if he could.

  Sitting in the front row along the other side of the courtroom was what I assumed to be the family of the deceased, including a woman I pegged to be his mother, and next to her an elderly man who I guessed had suffered the horror of burying his son. There were no children that I could identify, young or grown, but the widow wasn’t hard to spot. She wore a navy blue business suit, a simple silver necklace, and a face as impenetrable as hardened plaster.

  When I wasn’t watching the accused, scanning the courtroom, or trying to get a fix on my fellow jurors from my seat in the front row at the far end, the furthest away from the witness stand, I listened to the attorneys present overviews of their cases.

  Five minutes into the prosecution’s opening statement I learned the wife’s name was Alice Braun. She and the deceased had been married for five years, no children yet, but they’d hope to change that as soon as the economy picked up.

  I stared at a diagram of the Laserquick floor plan while the prosecution laid out its scenario. The shop wasn’t very large. Just big enough to house a couples’ dreams of a future that was now lost, along with Dennis Braun’s life.

  Led by Lipscomb, the prosecution was going to rely on eyewitness accounts from a fellow business owner whose store was located across the street from the print shop, and from a second witness, referred to as “a well-respected police officer from Chicago.”

  So that’s why Jack Daniels was here. This was going to be good.

  I imagined the headline for the story I’d write once all of this was over, Chicago Police Lieutenant Daniels’ Testimony Convicts Killer.

  Judging from her body language, which involved a lot of fidgeting and smoothing out various parts of her designer wardrobe, Jack wasn’t planning to hang around for long. But any hope she had of making it to the stand on this day began to fade as what passed for a defense rambled through its opening statement.

  The older of the two court-appointed attorneys representing Beniquez, a man who introduced himself as Scott Milledge, shook the discomfort out of his undersized sport coat just before he began his remarks. He touted the young man’s good character, despite a few “youthful indiscretions,” and emphasized his strong ties to his family and the community. His father Carlos had worked as a carpenter and handyman for more than twenty years, during which he’d done work for the city, and also the county.

  “Much of the new woodwork in this courtroom was built by Carlos Beniquez,” Milledge said, pointing to the witness stand, jury box, and the railings that separated the business half of the courtroom from the gallery.

  Tony’s mother had passed away several years earlier, but a couple of aunts and older cousins had stepped in to try and fill that void as best they could. According to Milledge, the Beniquez family went to church every Sunday, belonged to charitable organizations, and had done their best to assimilate into the community—no easy task in a town as white, protestant, and conservative as Birch Grove. And now Carlos’ only son was on trial for murder.

  But Milledge did little to address the motive the prosecutor had pinned on Beniquez, that of a troubled juvenile whose shady past inevitably gravitated toward arson and murder. Instead, the defense attorney promised to prove that his client did not do what he was accused of, and suggested he would challenge the prosecution’s theory about the cause of death. That part I found interesting, but I didn’t have much faith in the defense at the moment.

  As soon as Milledge was finished, Judge Malvo, who had spent the past few minutes squirming like someone had slipped a randy weasel under his robe, summoned the attorneys to the bench. After a brief and mostly one-sided conversation, he adjourned until the following morning.

  When Malvo was done telling the jurors what we could and could not do, I turned my attention to where Jack had been sitting, but she was already gone. Twenty minutes later I was in my car, driving home to Oakton, and calling Zack, my assistant at the Chicago Record, on my cell.

  In his instructions to the jury, which the judge had delivered as though he was reading a script, he warned us against discussing the trial, told us to avoid any news coverage, and to resist doing any research on our own. I, of course, understood why this was part of the process, and that jurors were expected to render a verdict based solely on what was presented to them during the trial.

  Despite the judge’s orders, I had no desire to serve as little more than a referee in a contest between two teams of lawyers. Especially when one of those teams appeared to be so ill-equipped to meet the challenge.

  No, if I was going to be part of the jury judging Tony Beniquez I was going to get it right. Whichever decision I made regarding the young man’s guilt or innocence would be something I’d carry around with me long after the lawyers had moved on to other defendants.

  I wanted to learn all that I could about Tony Beniquez and the crime he was supposed to
have committed, and I needed to get started right away.

  When it became apparent they weren’t going to be calling me that day, I got out of there. I’d had my curiosity piqued and I wanted to see if I could find some answers.

  To be a good cop meant possessing various traits that were needed on the job. Being able to command authority was a necessity. I could do that, along with shoot a gun, hold my own in a scuffle, and read people well enough to separate truth from bullshit. But one of the most important characteristics a good cop possessed was a burning need to figure things out.

  I was a good cop. And even though this wasn’t my case, I wanted to know more about the string of fires. The prosecutor didn’t bring them up, perhaps in case the murder rap didn’t stick so he could later charge Beniquez with arson. The defense didn’t bring them up, which meant the attorney was either incompetent, or his client didn’t have solid alibis for the earlier fires. If Beniquez could prove that he didn’t commit any of the other arsons, that would introduce a big dose of reasonable doubt. So something was up.

  Normally, the way I did research was on the Internet, but I hadn’t brought my laptop with me. So I decided to go old school and visit the local library, which I located, ironically, using the Internet on my cell phone.

  True to the original intent of having a Main Street, the library was situated on the east end of it, bookending the half mile stretch like the courthouse did on the west. My Nova was parked in the lot, and I opted to leave it there and make the journey on foot. I passed all the usual small town businesses: three antique shops, an ice cream parlor, a bookstore, three bars, two cafes, various restaurants, a music store, a shoe store, a locksmith, several clothing stores, a five and dime, a newsstand. Of those, one of the cafes, and the music store, had the same plywood windows and scorch marks as the print shop. That got me thinking, and I retraced my steps a block back and popped into Jay’s Locksmithe Shoppe.

  Jay’s had seen better days. The tile floor was in bad need of a wax, the front counter had an ugly, dirty split in the Formica, and the glass showcase had a crack in it and only showcased a few dusty boxes of burglar alarm systems. There were three key trees boasting hundreds of metal blanks, and stacked along the wall were half a dozen large pieces of plywood.

  There was a grinding sound coming from the rear of the shop, and I stood near the register and waited until the guy cutting keys noticed me. He was Caucasian, bearded, and even from the distance of five meters I could see the ink on his arms, dark blue against a deep tan.

  When he noticed me, he put on a friendly smile and strolled over, letting his safety goggles fall across his chest on their elastic band.

  “Can I help you, ma’am?”

  I’d been meaning to get an extra front door key made, so I fished it out and pried it off the key ring as I spoke.

  “I need two more copies of this. Can you do it while I wait?”

  “There’s an extra charge for rush service. Twenty-five percent.”

  “No problem.”

  He smiled again, then took my key and walked over to the racks of blanks. It took a few seconds of searching and jingling before he found the appropriate match. When he passed me up I pointed and said, “Those boards. Are they used to board up broken windows?”

  “Yup. I’m the guy in town to call if a window gets broke. Come out anytime, even the middle of the night, but there’s an extra charge for that.”

  “You the one who boarded up all the shops that were set on fire?”

  The smile left his face and I got the look. The thousand-yard-stare, perfected by anyone who did time.

  “What about those fires?” he asked.

  “How many have there been?”

  “You’re not from around here. Haven’t seen you before. You a cop?”

  “Maybe I’m just curious. Or maybe I’m a reporter,” I said, thinking of Chapa.

  “I ain’t done nothing wrong, and I don’t got to talk to you.”

  “Are you Jay?”

  “Ain’t no Jay. Got the sign cheap from some store went out of business in Wisconsin.”

  “So who are you?”

  “Who’s asking?”

  I thought about pulling out my badge, but I had no jurisdiction here. Besides, this man wouldn’t talk to cops, just based on principal. The designs on his arms were obvious jailhouse tattoos, and we were the enemy. On one hand, it seemed odd that an ex-con got work in this quaint little town as a locksmith. But on the other hand, who is better suited to working with locks than someone who knows how to pick them?

  ”What are you being paranoid about?” I asked, trying to make my tone non-confrontational. “They caught the guy. There won’t be any more fires.”

  “I do what I’m supposed to, and don’t bother nobody. I ain’t doin’ nothing wrong.”

  “Nobody said you were.”

  “I’m just trying to make a living, Officer. Nothing more to say. Now please excuse me while I cut your keys.”

  He didn’t wait for my reply, and returned to the grinder and went at it like he was punishing the metal for its many sins.

  While he did that, I went over to the plywood, which still had an order receipt stapled to it. I checked the date. He’d bought the boards a month ago, a full two months after Beniquez’s arrest.

  That didn’t jibe with someone who thought the fires were going to stop.

  Zack wasn’t technically my assistant. He was an intern and a gopher for the news department, a stand-up guy, and one of the people I trusted most at the Record. But none of that mattered now, since Zack had gone home for the day. I was due back at the courthouse by eight the next morning, so waiting until then was not an option.

  I needed to get some background on this case. What I’d seen on this first day had not inspired confidence in the defense team. Sure, I knew I was supposed to go on the testimony and evidence alone. But if I was going to send a young man to jail for the rest of his life, I sure as hell was going to make sure he had it coming.

  Though I could very easily go into the office myself and get on my computer, but that seemed a bit too brazen, even for me. I didn’t know to what extent the court might go to find out whether a juror had violated the judge’s orders, but I wasn’t going to take any more chances than I had to.

  The rotating construction—now in its third year—tied up traffic on Randall Road. Exhaust from idling cars and the occasional pointless honking of a horn invaded my thoughts and I responded in the only way that made sense at the moment. I cranked the Bob Seger CD that I’d had in my player for the better part of a week.

  Michigan’s native son was roaring through You’ll Accomp’ny Me when I struck on another plan. I dialed up the paper’s main number, and waited to hear Helen’s voice.

  “Chicago Record.”

  “Helen?”

  “Chicago Record.”

  I turned the volume down on Bob, having long ago concluded that the couple in that song didn’t make it in the end, anyhow.

  “Helen, this is Alex Chapa.”

  “Okay.”

  The theory around the office was that Helen had been around since before the building got built, which was sometime during the Coolidge administration.

  “I need you to tell me who might still be in the office right now.”

  “Okay, here you go.”

  Before I could stop her, Helen transferred my call. I was about to hang up and try calling back when someone picked up.

  “Sports, this is Jerry.”

  “Rossiter?”

  “That’s right, can I help you?”

  Jerry Rossiter was the senior sports reporter at the Record, a terrific writer, and an all-around decent guy who kept to himself more than most. But he didn’t figure to be someone who could help me right then. Though, in his capacity as a high school sports reporter, Jerry had an encyclopedic knowledge of the Fox Valley area.

  “Hey, Jerry, this is Alex Chapa.”

  “Alex, what’s up?”

  “
I was actually trying to reach someone in news. I’m looking for info on an arson investigation in Birch Grove.”

  “Which one?”

  Which one? There was more than one Birch Grove? As far as I was concerned one was plenty.

  “What do you mean which one?”

  “I mean that by my count there have been four unusual and suspicious fires in that town over the past two years.”

  Now I vaguely recalled one of the other fires, but Rossiter had the lowdown on all of them.

  He explained that three other shops had been burned, and how the police had come up empty until they caught Beniquez while he was watching the Laserquick fire.

  “How do you know all this, Jerry?”

  “I spend my nights sitting in bleachers, and people talk about all sorts of things like I’m not even there. Why don’t you remember these? You work in news, after all.”

  I didn’t have a regular beat like most other reporters. At least not since I’d been given my own regular space in the paper several years ago. These days, any story I tagged typically involved a dead body, a crooked politician, or a dead crooked politician.

  “You know how it is, Jerry, some stories just slip by. What have you got on the Laserquick fire, the one that killed—”

  “Dennis Braun, the owner. His wife was a cheerleader at the high school way back when. Popular girl, if you know what I mean.”

  I thought I did.

  “Yeah, I know Tony Beniquez is on trial for that, Alex, but I’m not buying it.”

  I nearly rear-ended a Mustang, a mistake that would’ve likely totaled my well-past-its-prime Toyota Celica, but Rossiter’s words were reverberating in my head.

  “You still there, Alex?”

  “Why aren’t you buying it?”

  “Because I know the kid, interviewed him a few times when he was playing for the high school baseball team. A good player, too, third baseman, probably could’ve gone on to play Division III, but instead he went to work with his old man to help pay the bills.”

  That came a lot closer to matching the impression that had been forming in my mind than anything the prosecution had asserted during its opening statement.