Jack Daniels Six Pack

by J. A. Konrath

  “Lieutenant Daniels,” Agent Coursey said. Or maybe it was Dailey. “We’ve got good news.”

  I hoped it involved them being reassigned.

  “Vicky worked up a new profile of the suspect, and we’re 77.4 percent sure that he’s French Canadian, and most likely owns a horse.”

  “Our killer is a Mountie.” Herb said it deadpan.

  “A what? Hmm, that’s good. We hadn’t thought of that.”

  They looked at each other, and Benedict and I took the moment to do the same.

  “How about the candy,” I asked. “Did you get anything?”

  “There have been over six hundred recorded cases of food tampering in the last fifteen years. More than two hundred of those were with candy. By limiting the search to individuals who used razor blades, fishhooks, and needles, we narrowed it down to forty-three cases. In only two reported cases had a perp used all three. Both in Lansing, Michigan. On consecutive Halloweens, in 1994 and ’95.”

  I felt, for the first time in this case, the stirrings of excitement. This could be a solid lead.

  “Arrests? Suspects?”

  “None.”

  The hope leached away.

  “Both times, a bowl of candy had been left at an unoccupied house. No prints, no witnesses, no confessions, just several dozen kids taken to the emergency room, and one terminal occurrence.”

  “Have you gone through the Lansing files, found anyone arrested there in the past who might be our man?”

  “We’ve cross-referenced arrest records with anyone fitting our profile, but no one came up who was French Canadian. Several suspects owned horses, and we’re checking them out.”

  Patience, Jack.

  “How about apart from your profile? Anyone arrested in Lansing for kidnapping women? Raping stab wounds? Leaving notes for the police? Any unsolved murders that involved abduction, torture, and mutilation? This guy has killed before. You’ve pretty much confirmed he’s been in Michigan. Did you follow up on any of this?”

  “We’re checking,” the one on the right said, hooding his eyes in a manner that could only be described as sheepish. “However, if you could spare the manpower, we’d like to check out some local livery stables and investigate this horse angle.”

  I blinked. Twice. I was a deep breath away from spouting off, when a uniform knocked on my open office door. It was Barry Fuller, a large patrolman who used to be on the Chicago Bears. He was assigned to the Gingerbread Man task force, though in what capacity I’d have to admit ignorance.

  “Officer Fuller.” I bid him entrance, happy to be interrupted.

  Fuller came in, giving the FBI a sideways glance.

  “We . . . I took a call this morning.” I now remembered that Fuller had been assigned to work the phones, sorting out fake confessions and tips. “It was Fitzpatrick, the owner of the second 7-Eleven. He wanted to add to his statement.”

  “Add what?”

  “He remembers hearing an ice cream truck before he saw the body.”

  “Like one of those Good Humor trucks with the music?”

  “Yeah. It was playing one of those pipe organ songs, he thinks it was ‘The Candyman.’”

  I rolled this around in my head. We knew the perp drove a truck. An ice cream truck would be practically anonymous; there had to be hundreds in Chicago. I turned to Herb.

  “We need a list of all ice cream trucks registered in Illinois and Michigan. And we need to find out if any special kind of license or permit is needed, and check that list for priors; stick with assault, rape, burglary . . . don’t bother with traffic violations. Then we need the list cross-referenced with Dr. Booster’s patient list. And we need to talk with that kid Donovan, who found the first body.”

  “I did that,” Fuller said. “I called him. He remembers hearing an ice cream truck as well. I’ve also gotten started on the DMV reports. The problem is, they only register make, model, and year. An ice cream truck is a Jeep, and there are thousands of Jeeps in Illinois. More in Michigan, I can guess. We can’t break it down by drivers, because anyone with a standard class D can drive a Jeep. If the guy has a business license, it could be possible to find him through that, but that goes by village, not state. It could take weeks to check every suburb.”

  “What about companies that sell ice cream that have drivers?” Benedict was thinking out loud.

  “There are six in Illinois,” Fuller answered, surprising us. “I’m having them all fax employee lists as well as driver routes.”

  “Nice job, Officer,” I told him. “We’ll put someone else on phones, and you’re in charge of gathering all of this information. I want a progress report every morning, and I’ll need Donovan’s and Fitzpatrick’s depositions ASAP.”

  Since I liked initiative in my men, I also threw him a bone.

  “There’s an extra case file on my desk, go through it, see if anything shakes loose.”

  He grinned, I suppose from the opportunity presented to him, and then left. In two minutes’ time, an ex-football player who walked a beat proved to be of more help than two federal agents with years of experience. It didn’t surprise me.

  “Maybe he’s selling ice cream on horseback,” Benedict offered to the Feebies.

  “Parlez-vous Fudgsicle?” I added.

  “His driving an ice cream truck does not preclude ownership of a horse,” the one on the left said, “but we’ll need time to assimilate this new data and consult with Vicky.”

  “Maybe you should do that.”

  “We are well aware of the fact that you don’t like us, Lieutenant. But we’re all trying to do the same thing here. We’re trying to catch a killer. We do it by analyzing data and comparing it to thousands of other documented cases, in order to get a picture of the unsub. You go on the news and talk about bed-wetting and cowardice. To each his method.”

  Then they turned as one and left.

  “Ouch,” Herb said, “that was awful close to an actual insult.”

  “I may need a hug, Herb.”

  “I’m here for you. At least until Lunch Mates sets you up with someone. Did I mention how darling you looked in that sweater?”

  “Aren’t there any doughnuts left you should be attending to?”

  Benedict’s eyes lit up and he attacked the box. I washed down two aspirin with the last of my coffee, and then was forced to refill it with the sludge from the hallway vending machine. When I returned, Herb had valiantly triumphed over an éclair and had begun poring over the letters we’d taken from Theresa Metcalf’s room. I sat down, stretched my leg, and attacked the appointment book.

  It was a typical Day-Timer, every date in the month with a page of its own. There was an address book at the beginning, which was mostly blank except for a few unlabeled phone numbers that would have to be checked out.

  Going page by page, I came across many notes and appointments involving her canceled wedding. She’d met with several caterers, bakeries, florists, photographers, etc. Again, all would need to be interviewed.

  Every seven days she wrote down her work schedule, which hardly varied one week to the next. Birthdays for both Elisa and Johnny Tashing, her ex, were labeled in advance. There had been two dentist appointments and a doctor’s visit, but it hadn’t been to the late Dr. Booster’s office. She’d also written in her dates with Johnny, which ended abruptly on April 29, when she wrote PIG! next to his name and underlined it.

  Also in April were two meetings with someone named Harry. Just that name and a time—six o’clock in both cases. Once was on the twentieth, and once on the twenty-eighth. Nothing else about Harry, or Johnny, from then until present.

  I called up Elisa and asked if she knew anyone named Harry, from back in April. She said she didn’t.

  “Any mention of anyone named Harry in the letters?” I asked Benedict.

  “Nope. But her ex-boyfriend had a real flair for the romantic. ‘Your breasts are like two ice cream scoops, and I want to lick them up.’”

  “Isn’t that
Shakespeare?”

  “Yeah. King Lear.”

  “Does he seem like a wacko?”

  “No more so than any other hormone-crazed guy who wants to get laid. He says ‘I love you’ a lot, and it seems sincere. Most of these letters are from when they just started dating. They’d been going out for a few years.”

  I set the appointment book aside and dove into the canceled checks. There was a big stack of them, dating back to 1994. Luckily they were in chronological order.

  There was nothing unusual for the last few months. Rent, gas, phone, electric, groceries, clothes, all the normal things people pay for. Then, when I got to April, something abnormal.

  She’d written two checks for two hundred dollars each to a man named Harry McGlade.

  I frowned and showed them to Benedict.

  “Sounds familiar. Cop?”

  I nodded. “Used to be. Private now.”

  “You know him?”

  I nodded again and extended my frown. I hadn’t seen McGlade in fifteen years.

  Fifteen very pleasant years.

  “So Theresa must have hired him for something. I wonder what for.”

  “The mind boggles. I can’t see anyone hiring Harry for anything.”

  “Something to do with the boyfriend?”

  I shrugged. Only one way to find out, unfortunately.

  “I’ll go pay him a visit,” I conceded. “You want to tackle the boyfriend?”

  “I may do just that. You sure you don’t want to tag-team them?”

  “I’d rather meet with McGlade one on one.”

  “I sense some history here, Jack, that you aren’t telling me about.”

  “Let’s just say he’s not my favorite person.”

  Which may have been the understatement of my life.

  Chapter 25

  THE ASPIRIN WASN’T HELPING MY LEG much and I felt every bump and crack in the road during the ride to McGlade’s. A call to the phone company had confirmed his address to be the same as it was fifteen years back, when I’d last busted him.

  He lived in Hyde Park, near the Museum of Science and Industry and the University of Chicago. Hyde Park wasn’t really a park at all, but a multitude of apartment buildings sectioned off from shops and stores, sort of like a housing development.

  I parked in front of a hydrant next to his building. A group of teenagers hanging out on the corner made me as a cop and walked off as I struggled to get out of my car. I suppose I was just cursed to look like an authority figure.

  After finding the appropriate buzzer, I pressed once and waited, half-hoping he wasn’t home.

  “Harry’s House of Love. You buying or selling?”

  “I’m gagging. Lieutenant Jack Daniels, Violent Crimes. Buzz me in, McGlade.”

  “What’s the magic word?”

  “Now.”

  “Nope. Try again.”

  “Open the door, McGlade.”

  The door buzzed, but only for a second. By the time my hand reached the knob, it had stopped.

  “McGlade . . .”

  “When did you become a lieutenant, Jackie?”

  Harry was the only person who called me Jackie.

  “The nineties. Now you can either buzz me in or I can shoot the lock off and then arrest you for destruction of property.”

  He buzzed, but only for a millisecond like before. I was ready for it this time, and pulled the door open.

  The lobby was dim, the carpet worn, the heat barely on. I saw a roach scurry along the wall and blend into the peeling paint.

  Harry was on the fifth floor, and since I hadn’t brought my cane, I took the elevator. When I located his apartment, the door was already open. He was standing in the middle of his den, pulling on a pair of pink paisley boxer shorts.

  “Normally I don’t dress until later in the day, but I don’t want you getting any ideas.”

  He was as I’d remembered. A little older. A little chubbier. But he still had the same three-day beard, the same unkempt shock of brown hair, the same twinkling brown eyes that always seemed to be laughing at you.

  “Christ, Jackie, you look old. Aren’t they paying you enough to afford Botox?”

  Exactly as I remembered.

  I took a step inside and looked around. It was a pigsty. Laundry and garbage and junk covered every inch of the floor. Empty cans and wrappers and moldy socks and sour food were strewn around in such abandon that it seemed like someone had blown up a landfill.

  “Jesus, McGlade. Do you ever clean up?”

  “Nah. I pay a girl to come in once a week. But every time she comes over we just hump the whole time and she never has a chance to clean anything. Want to go into the kitchen, have a seat?”

  “I’m afraid I’d stick to something and never be able to leave.”

  “No need to be rude,” Harry said. Then he belched. I closed the door behind me and noticed the aquarium against the wall. That must have been where the smell was coming from. Moldering fish corpses and chunks of multicolored rotting things bubbled around in the brown water, buoyed by the tank aerator. I watched a corn dog float by.

  “Some kind of fish disease wiped out my whole gang within twenty-four hours,” McGlade explained.

  “There’s a shocker.”

  “I like it more now. There’s always something new growing, and I save a bundle on fish food.”

  I pulled my eyes away.

  “I’m here to talk about Theresa Metcalf. She was a client of yours. Back in April.”

  “Got a picture? I can’t place the name.”

  Theresa’s roommate had given us some snapshots, but I’d forgotten them back at the station. Instead, I handed McGlade one of Theresa done up by the makeup artist, with the digitally added eyes. It was as close to lifelike as we could get it.

  “Yuck. Ugly.”

  “She’s dead.”

  “Then she’d smell bad too.”

  “Do you remember her?”

  “Not offhand. No. But then I have a hard time remembering last week. How long has it been, Jackie?”

  “Not long enough.”

  McGlade raised an eyebrow.

  “You’re not still mad at me, are you?”

  I took the picture back, careful not to touch his hand.

  “If you don’t feel like cooperating . . . ” I began.

  “You’ll drag me in. Can’t it wait? I was watching the new Snow White DVD, the director’s cut with the extra footage. The gang-bang scene is next.”

  I frowned, wondering how to play it. I needed the information, but taking McGlade in would mean having to drive with him.

  “Do you keep files?” I asked.

  “Sure. At the office.”

  I let out a breath. My head was beginning to hurt, probably because I’d inhaled something toxic, and I was quickly losing the little patience I’d brought along. I took another cautious step forward, and something crunched underfoot.

  “Hey, watch out for the pizza, Jack. I’m not done with it.”

  “Get dressed,” I ordered. “We’re going to your office.”

  “Kiss my piles. It’s my day off. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Then you’re under arrest.”

  “For what?”

  “For being an asshole.”

  “You can’t do that. I’ve got an Asshole License.”

  “Okay. How about for assaulting an officer?”

  “I haven’t laid a hand on you.”

  “Seeing you in your underwear qualifies as assault.”

  McGlade shook his head.

  “When are you going to get over it, Jackie? It was a long time ago. I paid for it, didn’t I?”

  “You have the right to remain silent, and I sincerely hope you do.”

  “This is ridiculous.”

  “Good. Resist arrest. Maybe you’ll find someone down at County General that likes your boxer shorts more than I do.”

  Harry sighed. “Fine. You win, O Mighty Lieutenant. We’ll go. Just help me find some s
ocks.”

  “Find them yourself.”

  He bent over and picked some pants up off the floor. After sniffing the crotch, he deemed them okay and put them on. Years ago, I learned that the best way to deal with Harry was excruciating patience, punctuated by occasional outbursts of hostility. It still held true.

  “What’s the big deal anyway?” he asked, smelling a sock.

  “She was murdered.”

  Harry gagged and dropped the sock back on the floor.

  “I didn’t do it.”

  “I’m sure you didn’t. It was the Gingerbread Man.”

  “No shit? No wonder you’ve got your undies in a knot. If you told me that earlier, I would have been much more helpful.”

  “I bet.”

  Harry picked the sock back up and put it on.

  “Can we stop for coffee on the way?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe a bagel too.”

  “No.”

  “I know a great place nearby. If you don’t like it, I’ll pick up the tab.”

  “I hate it already,” I said.

  McGlade found a stained shirt and a suit jacket that didn’t match his pants. He buttoned up the shirt incorrectly and had to redo it. I needed more aspirin.

  “So what’s with the limp?” Harry asked as we walked to my car. “Boyfriend wearing you out?”

  “I got shot.”

  “Who would shoot a sweetheart like you? You sure you can drive okay? We could take my car. It’s a lot nicer than yours.”

  “Shut up and get in. The more you talk, the more I feel like arresting you again.”

  “So nasty, Jackie. When was the last time you got laid? Pretty thing like you should be able to find a guy.”

  Following Harry’s lousy directions, our meandering took us to a corner bakery, where I got coffee and McGlade got a large orange pop and blueberry bagel.

  “Hell, where did I leave my wallet?”

  I paid. From there, it was to his office, a merciful five blocks away.

  “I’m on the sixth floor. Sorry, Jackie—no elevator. Want a piggyback ride?”

  I ignored him, tackling the stairs with as much dignity as I could. It wasn’t much. By the third flight I was a sweating, shaking mess.

  “You don’t mind if I go on ahead, do you, Jackie? No offense, but I don’t like watching the Special Olympics either.”