Jack Daniels Six Pack

by J. A. Konrath

  The window is open, the wind blowing in. That’s why the kitchen is cold. That’s how someone got into his house.

  Benedict’s gun is upstairs, next to the bed. He keeps it there on the off chance someone ever tried to break in. He’s aware of the irony. Who knew he should have armed himself to go eat leftovers?

  Another squeak. Closer. The person is right around the corner, less than ten feet away. Herb considers his options. Most burglars don’t want to be confronted. They run at the very thought of the house being occupied. A loud shout will scare this type of criminal away.

  But this might not be a burglar. It might be someone with a grudge. Someone Herb arrested in the past, looking to settle a score.

  Or someone else. Someone planning on making a new videotape to give to Jack.

  He chances a quick glance at the microwave. Thirty seconds left. Then there will be a loud beep to signal the food is ready. Herb had planned to open the microwave door a few seconds early, so the sound didn’t wake Bernice. Now he decides to use the beep to his advantage. When the microwave beeps, the light will go off. Maybe the combination will mask Herb’s movement, giving him a chance to strike first.

  Silently, Herb reaches back into the utensil drawer and finds a paring knife. Long-bladed weapons aren’t good in a fight. They get caught on clothing. The large blade makes penetration more difficult, and easier to defend against. A short blade is easier to control and wield, and can do more than enough damage.

  Herb takes one for each hand.

  The microwave reaches 15 seconds left . . . 14 . . . 13 . . .

  Benedict spreads his feet apart, widening his stance.

  12 . . . 11 . . . 10 . . .

  The kitchen is dark, but he knows every inch of it. He imagines the three steps he’ll have to take before the quick right turn into the living room.

  9. . . 8 . . . 7 . . .

  He bends his knees and crouches down. He’ll hit low, use his weight to knock the person over.

  6. . . 5 . . . 4 . . .

  Herb takes a deep breath, holds it, clenching the knives as hard as he can.

  3. . . 2 . . . 1 . . .

  BEEP-BEEP-BEEP!

  Benedict is already two steps into his run. Before he can make the turn into the living room he bumps straight into the man standing next to the refrigerator.

  Momentum takes Herb forward, but the shock of hitting someone sooner than expected, plus the slippery floor, makes him lose his balance. He falls face-first, trying to break his fall with his knuckles, realizing at the last possible moment that falling on two paring knives is a bad idea.

  Herb manages to stretch one knife in front of him.

  The other penetrates his chest and slips between two ribs, puncturing his right lung.

  The pain is instant and intense. A sharp, searing pain, accompanied by a sudden urge to cough.

  Ahead of Herb, the intruder also hits the floor. It’s followed by a clanging sound, something metal hitting the tile. A crowbar? A gun?

  “Herb?”

  Bernice. She heard the sound. Herb tries to warn her, but he can’t take a breath. Nothing comes out, only painful wheezing. He pulls at the knife in his chest, and it comes out with a wet sucking sound.

  A foot catches Herb in the face. Herb lashes out with the knife, finding a calf, digging the blade in.

  There’s a scream, low and loud, and the leg is pulled away. Herb hears limping footsteps heading into the living room. And then he hears something that almost stops his heart: the stairs creaking.

  Bernice is coming down.

  Herb tries to get up. He’s struggling to breathe, and there’s a wet hissing sound coming from the hole in his chest. He presses his palm to it, pain be damned, and manages to get to his knees.

  The light goes on in the hallway.

  “Herb!”

  Bernice’s voice, panicked. There’s a grunting sound. Something breaks, sounds like glass.

  Not Bernice please God please not my wife . . .

  Herb crawls across the tile, desperate. Another light goes on, in the living room. He sees what the intruder dropped. A hunting knife, the blade over ten inches long.

  Footsteps, getting closer. Herb raises the paring knife, ready to fight.

  Bernice walks into the kitchen. She’s holding Herb’s gun.

  “Oh my God, Herbert!”

  Herb tries to speak. Can’t. Bernice reads the question on his face.

  “He’s gone. He saw the gun and broke through the living room window.”

  Herb coughs, blood bubbling from his lips. He collapses onto the floor and is conscious long enough to notice the note on the floor, next to the hunting knife.

  Chapter 29

  FOR THE SECOND time in twelve hours, the phone woke me up. I squinted at the clock in the darkness. One a.m. I’d been asleep for almost an hour.

  The phone rang again. I slapped it to my cheek.

  “Daniels.”

  “Jack? It’s Bernice Benedict. Someone just broke into our house.”

  I went from groggy to alert in record time.

  “Are you okay? Where’s Herb?”

  “He’s been stabbed in the chest.”

  She sounded scared, but in control. Cops’ wives were tough.

  “Have you called 911?”

  “An ambulance is on the way. The man who broke in, he left a handwritten note. It says ‘All shall be punished.’ ”

  “I’ll be there in ten minutes. If you’re already on your way to the hospital, leave the back door open.”

  I threw on some jeans and a sweatshirt and made it to Herb’s place in nine minutes. Scores of squad cars jammed the side streets; cops took care of their own.

  I parked on his lawn and caught Benedict being shoved into the rear of an ambulance. His pajama top was open, and an EMT pressed a large piece of gauze to his bloody chest. Herb’s face was literally gray, but he was awake.

  “How you doing, partner?”

  He rolled his eyes, which buoyed me with relief. The dying don’t bother with sarcasm. He whispered something, more a gargle than a whisper. I leaned over, my ear to his lips.

  “. . . stabbed the guy . . . leg . . .”

  “Description?”

  “. . . dark . . . Bernice . . .”

  “She saw him?

  His eyes said yes.

  “I’m going to check out the scene. I’ll visit you later.”

  I patted his cheek, and he whispered something again.

  “. . . crow wave.”

  “What?”

  “. . . microwave . . . don’t touch my rib roast.”

  Bernice stood in the doorway, talking to three cops. She was in her midfifties, short and a shade too plump for this era. Her gray hair was in a bun, and she hugged her robe around her, cold or scared or both. I approached, and when Bernice noticed me she grasped my hands.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.” Though I didn’t see how she could be.

  “Did you see his face?”

  “Yes. Short red hair. Acne scars. Chubby. I don’t know about height—he was limping and hunched over. In his late twenties or early thirties.”

  “What was he wearing?”

  “A black sweatshirt, black jeans, gloves.”

  “Black leather?”

  “White rubber. Like a doctor wears.”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  Bernice laid it out for me: waking up when she heard a noise, calling for her husband, hearing a man scream, grabbing the gun and coming downstairs, finding the suspect in the living room. When he saw the gun, he busted out through the window.

  “Did you see which way he went?”

  “No. I was in a hurry to find Herb.”

  Something in her tone made me wonder if there was more. “Anything else, Bernice?”

  “Yes. He spoke to me, before he ran off.”

  “What did he say?”

  Bernice didn’t flinch. “He said, I’ll be back, bitch.”

/>   I left Bernice in the capable hands of Chicago’s finest and entered her house. The Crime Scene Unit hadn’t arrived yet, and the first-on-the-scene officer was reluctant to let me in, even though I pulled rank. He was worried about contaminating evidence, which wasn’t an unfounded concern. A few recent high-profile court losses due to compromised scenes had made many of the higher-ups unhappy.

  I assured him I’d be careful, and wandered through the living room, mindful where I stepped, taking everything in.

  The entry point was through a living room window. A hole had been cut in the glass, wide enough to accommodate an arm. Then the latch had been turned and the window raised. Silent and effective. It was an MO I’d seen before—the Gingerbread Man had used it.

  The perp had exited through another window, smashing the glass. There was blood on the window frame, on the wood floor trailing up to it. I followed the blood into the kitchen, found the note and the hunting knife. The note seemed to match the first note left for us, and the hunting knife appeared to be the same one used in the Diane Kork video.

  There was more blood here, Herb’s and the intruder’s, smeared around in a pattern that suggested a struggle. Two paring knives were slathered with the stuff.

  I looked in the microwave, found the Tupperware bowl full of rib roast. I didn’t see how touching it would in any way, shape, or form hurt a conviction, so I put it in the refrigerator.

  Careful to avoid the blood, I left the kitchen and followed the blood spatters, through the living room, up to the window. Hanging on a jagged shard of glass were three red hairs.

  Caleb Ellison, who lived with Charles Kork for ten years, had red hair.

  The CSU arrived. Pictures were taken. Video was shot. Samples were acquired. I left after an hour, heading to St. Vernon to check on Herb. He hadn’t come out of surgery yet. I sat with Bernice, holding her hand, trying to get my mind around everything.

  It didn’t make sense.

  The note and the hunting knife looked to be matches, but other than that, this crime didn’t seem at all related to the deaths of Diane Kork and Francis Mulrooney. There were too many discrepancies. The MO was all wrong.

  Diane and Francis were abductions. No evidence had been left. Their deaths had been videotaped. Their killer wore black leather gloves. Everything pointed to him having a blond beard.

  But in this case, the killer was a redhead who wore latex gloves, tried to kill his victims in their homes without recording it on tape, and left a truckload of physical evidence.

  Why so many differences? Was the killer escalating? Or getting sloppy? Or was this a hasty attempt, thrown together at the last minute?

  By four a.m., Herb was out of surgery, and his doctor came to see us. I didn’t like the fact that he appeared grim.

  “We repaired the damage to his lung and inserted a tube to reverse the pneumothorax—the collapsed lung—but while on the table your husband suffered a myocardial infarction.”

  Bernice’s only reaction was to blink.

  “He had a heart attack?” I asked.

  “We were able to resuscitate, and he’s in Recovery now. We anticipated this might happen. A chest CT before surgery revealed large amounts of calcium deposits on his arterial walls. So after closing him up I ordered an MRA and found evidence of coronary artery disease. He’s going to need angioplasty at the least—I need to run some more tests. There’s enough plaque to qualify for bypass surgery.”

  Bernice began to cry, and I didn’t feel so hot myself.

  “I want to see my husband.”

  The doctor nodded. “One visitor only. He’s still in critical condition.”

  Bernice hugged me, and the doctor escorted her out of the waiting room. I sat for another hour, pestered the nurse to visit Herb, got turned down, and went home, worried sick.

  Chapter 30

  SLEEPING WASN’T AN option, so I left for Indianapolis early, the rising sun in my face as I headed southeast. There was a little bite of winter lingering in the air, a frigid breeze that made a jacket necessary. I wore my three-quarter-length London Fog trenchcoat, black Levi’s, and a black and red blouse by Kathleen B that I picked up in a small boutique in Aurora. The blouse was made of material called poodle fabric, and had the thickness of a sweater without the bulk. For shoes, I went with Nikes—no woman likes to drive long distances in heels.

  I did a lot of thinking during the trip. If I truly was happy being miserable, as I suspected, then I’d just attained a state of euphoria.

  My father died when I was young. My mom raised me, but she’d worked full-time as a police officer, and from eleven years old on I spent a lot of time alone, locked in our little apartment. I loved Mom, and appreciated all she’d done for me, but I didn’t need a therapist to know I had abandonment issues. Control issues too. Chasing bad guys helped keep the issues at bay. It was easier than dragging them out into the sunlight and dealing with them.

  But at times like these, when the world felt like it was falling apart around me, when it didn’t look like the bad guys would ever get caught, when I needed more than ever to be strong—I always seemed to come up short.

  When I joined the police force out of college, Mom hugged me and told me how proud she was, and then begged me to quit. She was my role model. I wanted to be like her, and didn’t understand why she regretted me following in her footsteps.

  Now I understood. It took twenty years, but I understood. I did a lot of good things, helped a lot of people. Saved lives. Caught criminals. Made the world a better place.

  A better place for everyone but me.

  I had a husband. I could have had a family, and pursued some other career that didn’t involve death.

  Funny thing about regrets. I don’t lament what I’ve done, but rather, what I didn’t do.

  And now, with my partner hurt, my job in trouble, my love life nonexistent, and my mother in a coma, I couldn’t help but wonder if I should have listened to Mom and not have become a cop.

  Would I be happy?

  I considered the melancholy I felt when I thought I was going to die in the fire. I’d faced death, and met it with apathy.

  That spoke volumes.

  I arrived at the Indiana Women’s Prison a few minutes before nine. From the outside it looked like an old schoolhouse, a two-story building made of reddish brown brick, with a circular driveway and well-tended green landscaping. The assistant superintendent met me inside, a thin reed of a woman named Patricia Pedersen. She had severe black eyebrows that looked like caterpillars and the barest hint of a mustache above thin lips. Her pantsuit matched the mustache.

  “Lieutenant Daniels, welcome to our facility. We’ll need to check your weapon, of course.”

  My .38 was locked away, and Ms. Pedersen had me sign in before leading me inside. I knew a little something about the prison. It was the first all-female penal institution in America, having opened in the 1870s. High-medium security, dorm living rather than individual cells.

  “We’re currently over capacity, with 388 inmates. Most of the latest are juvenile offenders. We just received an eighth grader who beat her mother to death with a baseball bat. Tried as an adult and sent here. Thirteen years old.”

  The hall we walked down didn’t have any doors—just concrete blocks painted gray and a white tile floor that met Ms. Pedersen’s square-heeled shoes with a horselike clip-clop.

  “Tell me about Lorna.”

  “Admitted twelve years ago. She cut off another woman’s breasts. Lots of trouble, for the first few years. Fighting. Attacking guards. Starting fires. She’s settled down some recently, since turning sixty. Still a strong woman, though. Don’t underestimate her.”

  “Any visitors lately?”

  “I don’t think so. I can check the records.”

  “If you could.”

  She led me through some heavy steel doors and into the first dormitory. It resembled a military barracks, beds alternating with metal lockers. All were empty.

  “Brea
kfast just began in the mess hall. We’ll catch her as she’s coming out. Need a private room, or can you talk in the yard?”

  “A room.”

  “I can move some chairs into isolation, post a guard on the door for you.”

  “If you could take her there first.”

  “Of course. You can wait in my office.”

  “Can I read her file?”

  “I’ve already pulled it for you.”

  Ms. Pedersen took me through more locked doors, another lonely hall, and into a small room with a cluttered desk. An American flag hung limply on a pole in the corner, and a signed picture of a former president adorned the wall. I sat in a wooden chair, the red vinyl cushion cracked and hard.

  She brought me the Lorna Hunt Ellison file, and I gave it a quick gothrough. Lorna had been born in Indiana, sixty-two years prior. She’d been arrested over a dozen times, mostly violent offenses, and previously served a two-year stint in Rockville Correctional Facility for setting fire to a liquor store.

  That was the litmus test for blue-collar crime: liquor store burning.

  A psych eval spun a story of antisocial personality disorder, passive-aggressive disorder, impulse disorder, and sadistic tendencies. A recent update added bipolar to the diagnosis. Lorna took a daily cocktail of antipsychotic medication, the dosage high enough to cause stupor in a gorilla. Her IQ was in no danger of reaching the triple digits.

  Hardly any mention of her son, Caleb, and no mention at all of Bud Kork.

  I wondered if the Feebies were wrong, and Lorna had nothing to do with Kork. Wouldn’t be the first time.

  Ms. Pedersen came back and told me Lorna was ready. “She’s not in a pleasant mood this morning. Just warning you.”

  “Did you check her visitor list?”

  “Yes. Not a single visitor since her incarceration.”

  “Popular lady. Do you think I might grab a bagel or something? I left early and missed breakfast.”

  “Sure. Let’s swing by the mess.”

  I wasn’t really hungry. I wanted Lorna to stew for a while.