by Gregg Bell
“So.” Denny looked him in the eye. “It’s just by chance you came tonight? How come I’ve never seen you here before?”
“Hey, I’m here every Sunday morning—unless I’m covering for somebody’s vacation—for the ten a.m. open meeting.”
Sunday mornings Denny was either at the firehouse, hung over or sleeping. “So it’s just a coincidence you’re here tonight?”
“No,” Washington deadpanned. “Actually, it’s not.”
“So you followed me?”
“Yes, I did.”
Denny laughed and shook his head. “Oh, man.”
“Dennis.” Washington looked around to be sure he wasn’t overheard. “There’s a killer walking around out there this very moment. A killer that’s very likely going to kill again.” He nodded. “He murdered your wife. Don’t you want to stop him before he kills someone else?”
“Of course I do.”
“Well, that’s why I’m here.”
“But I invoked my right to have an attorney present during any questions you asked.”
“That’s right. You did. And I’m honoring it.”
“What?!”
“Have I asked you any questions?”
“Yeah, you just did. Don’t I want to stop the killer before he kills again?”
Washington exhaled deeply and looked off. “Yeah, okay.”
“Look, Detective, I want to get this guy as much as you do.”
Washington smirked. “Sure you do.”
“I do!”
Washington eyed him and spoke in a quavering voice. “Then... help... me... get... him.”
Denny thought about it. And thought about it. And thought about it.
“Dennis, every moment that goes by increases the chances this guy—and there’s evidence Rashida was tortured before she was suffocated—is going to kill again.”
What? Rashida was tortured? And suffocated, not strangled? He felt like throwing up. “I thought she was strangled.”
Washington shook his head. “Suffocated. We’ve seen it before. These sick psychos tie a clear plastic bag over the victim’s head and take them to the edge of suffocation over and over, each time gleefully watching the terror on the victim’s face before they finally kill them.”
Denny stood and walked off a few paces. He looked at Washington as if Washington had just hit him in the head with a baseball bat. Finally he went back and sat down.
“It rocked me too, Dennis. And whoever killed Rashida knew exactly what he was doing. The crime scene was wiped clean. We have no forensic evidence from it. Add to that a lot of your fellow firemen have clammed up because they don’t trust cops, and well, that has led to the sad shape the case is in now.”
“But people are afraid of you police for good reason. You trick people into giving conflicting statements, into making false confessions.”
Washington sighed and looked at the ceiling.
“They say you’re a climber. That you’ll do anything to get a conviction.”
“Dennis.” Washington seemed to gather himself. “They say that because I’m a black man that doesn’t play the ‘good old boy’ game the rest of them do. They say that because I don’t take bribes. Because I don’t plant evidence for my fellow officers when they break the law.”
“They call you the Prince of Darkness.”
Washington laughed. “All right now.”
“Some people even say you killed Rashida. And now you’re just looking for someone to frame.”
“Who said that?”
Denny shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. But you’ve got the handcuffs, you know how to cover evidence. So...” Denny thought, You’ve put me through hell by asking your questions. “...did you kill her?”
Washington leveled a look at him. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know. I think some people are exceptionally good liars.”
“Some people are also paranoid, Dennis.”
“Still, how do I know you’re not tricking me right now? How do I know that everything I tell you isn’t going to end up putting me in jail?”
“You know what?” Washington breathed in deep. “You don’t.”
Denny laughed. “So why should I trust you?”
Washington nodded. “Because you loved your wife.”
* * *
Because you loved your wife. That line from Washington broke Denny down and he opened up to the detective. Yeah, Denny had heard bad things about Washington, but now he was convinced Washington was a good guy, and that sometimes the good guys get ripped worse than the bad. Like they say, the tallest trees draw the lightning strikes. Denny was all-in now but even so, he had too much to think about, and driving home from the Serenity Club his brain was on dysfunctional overload. At his building, he dragged himself up the stairs but before he even got to his landing he smelled smoke.
His door knob was warm to the touch and he jerked the door open. In the living room sooty black smoke smoldered and a shoot of orange flame and a crackling sound came from behind the stereo. He ran to the bathroom, grabbed a towel, ran back and smothered the fire. A smoke detector in the hallway blasted obnoxious beeping. Denny grabbed a chair and hurried to remove its battery. God, he was so tired and didn’t want to deal with any of this, but he went around the apartment and opened all the windows and turned on the ceiling fans to clear the smoke as best he could. Finally, the ceiling fan blowing cold on his shoulder, he bent over the stereo to see what caused the fire.
The stereo was only a year old—there was no way in the world it should’ve caught fire and it was plugged into a surge protector. No, there was no way this was a defective wiring situation. Coughing, he fanned his hand across the traces of putrid smoke still rising, wiped his eyes and looked closer.
“Oh my God,” he said softly. A toy remote-controlled car with its hood off was wired to the stereo. Whoever did this knew exactly what they were doing and triggered it precisely when they wanted to. In fact, Denny looked out the open windows, whoever did it was probably watching him right now.
Fine, Denny thought. He gave the finger to the darkness. And yeah, whoever did this knew exactly what they were doing, and when it came to remote-ignition devices, like this was, firemen knew exactly what they were doing. Denny sighed and lifted the toy car from behind the stereo. Whoever did this not only got into his apartment—they must’ve been watching him—but they triggered the device just before he got there. Which meant they didn’t want to burn the entire building down, for certainly someone who did would’ve used more combustible material, say a trash container, more accelerant and a less detectable method of ignition. No, whoever did this meant it as a warning.
But a warning from who? A freezing draft emerged from the windows being open and Denny shuddered. Brig? Denny couldn’t see it. Powell? Powell made no sense. No, like everything else lately, the needle pointed straight at Orson. You’re on your own now, Denny. Orson’s warning seemed more dire with each passing moment.
Chapter Twenty-one
In the morning, looking back on the night, Denny could hardly call what he’d experienced sleep. Nightmares, getting up when he heard noises, walking around his apartment with a flashlight and his father’s revolver, itching for a drink, itching for a thousand drinks. Denny dragged himself to the kitchen, lit a cigarette and took a soda from the fridge. He needed to be awake. His mind needed to be sharp. He could sense things were about to tumble either into or out of place. Yes, he was all-in but he was also in over his head. And now not only was a killer out there, the killer was likely wanting to kill him.
The smart thing would be, like Aunt Elizabeth suggested, to lie low but forget that. At this stage Denny was flat-out going for it. He stubbed out the cigarette, took his soda to the bedroom, dressed and stuck his father’s revolver in the back of his jeans.
A knock on the door.
Denny thought of the fire. Of Orson’s You’re on your own now, Denny. He rehearsed grabbing the pistol like a quick-draw artist.
Okay. One last deep breath. Whoever it was, he was ready. He opened the door.
Two uniformed Chicago cops stood there, edgy, nervous. “Dennis O’Callaghan?” the taller one with a twitchy right eye said.
Denny could feel they were there to take him down. “He’s not here.”
The cops looked at each other and when they did, Denny slammed the door and bolted through the living room, pulling a chair behind him to block the cops’ path. He burst out his back door and onto the porch. He looked over the railing. A squad car sat at the foot of the stairs. He bolted down the stairs anyway. On the second floor he knocked on his neighbor’s, Mrs. May’s, back door. He’d helped her move in and they’d been friendly ever since. But no answer. Mrs. May was hard of hearing but he couldn’t shout with the cops on the ground floor, so he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, wrapped it around his right hand, punched through the window, twisted the deadbolt and entered.
Mrs. May was standing in her living room in a pink housecoat, hands in her pockets, a terrified look on her face that turned to a smile when she recognized Denny. “Dennis, what in the world are you doing here? How did you get in?”
“Mrs. May.” He took her gently by the elbows and spoke loudly. “I need to leave through your front door. Mrs. May...” He had her eye. “...the police are going to be coming through.”
“The police?!”
“Yes, Mrs. May. Please just tell them you saw me run through your apartment and that was all. And don’t worry.”
“Okay, Dennis.” She nodded. “All right if you say so.”
Denny kissed her on the cheek and hustled out her front door. In the hall he ran to the garbage chute and yanked it open. “Oh.” It stunk and a cockroach was crawling on the cover toward his hand. He sighed and sandwiched his body into the claustrophobic little opening. He tried to keep himself from falling by plying his hands and legs to the sides of the chute, but his body weight was too heavy, gravity took over and he plummeted into the dumpster, using his hands and arms to try to break his fall, his neck twinging hard.
He lay there in the dumpster, shaking his head. But he had to move. He cleared the garbage off his face and pushed himself up by his hands but oh! the pain! It felt like his left wrist was broken. He got to his knees and looked at the wrist—dangling limp and useless—in the dim light. Somehow he managed to climb out of the dumpster, his wrist screaming, his neck aching. He brushed cockroaches from his clothes and hair as best he could. The chute was on the opposite side of the building from where the squad car was and he ran to his Camaro.
* * *
Washington, Denny thought as he floored the Camaro away from his apartment building. Detective Washington, the Prince of Darkness, his program ‘bro’ had betrayed him. Denny held the steering wheel gingerly with his left hand and checked for the pistol in the back of his jeans with his right. Damn it! The gun must’ve come out when he crashed into the dumpster. There was no way he could go back for it now. He drove to a store, ran in and bought a coat and some gloves. He didn’t care if he used his credit card or not. He knew the cops were going to get him soon. But before they did, there were a few things he had to do.
On the way to Brig’s apartment, Denny’s mind raced faster than the Camaro. Just how did Brig seem to know more than anybody? All the inside information: no DNA under the fingernails, the handcuffs, the date rape drug but no semen in Rashida’s body. Yes, Brig had said his insider cop friend told him but still it was strange. What cop released sealed forensic evidence? And what about Brig quoting from the Bible? Something about devils being angels of light. Brig had probably never cracked open a Bible in his life. Yeah, it was all just too strange. And here he’d been thinking Brig was the one person in the whole wide world who had his back, the one person who was a real friend, the one person who never would’ve killed Rashida.
Denny ran up the stairs to Brig’s apartment. He banged on the door with his right hand. When no one answered he banged on the windows. He kept banging. He knew Brig had a gun in there. He might get shot but he didn’t care. He kept banging.
Finally, Brig opened the door. He stood there in his underwear. “You crazy, O’Callaghan?”
“I gotta talk to you.” Denny wasn’t telling him about the cops coming to arrest him. He didn’t want to implicate anybody in anything. He pushed past him into the apartment.
Brig squared his shoulders. “This had better be soooooooo good.” His eyes were hangover-tinged-red, his face utterly drained of color.
“Close the door.”
“Whatever.” Brig flung the door shut.
The apartment was its usual mess, plates and glasses, looking like they’d been there for weeks, all over the cocktail table. And the same pistol Denny’d seen, the big silver one that looked like an automatic, sat on the far arm of the sofa. “I need to ask you some questions.”
“And it couldn’t wait a few hours?”
“No.”
Brig sighed. “All right. Whatever.” He collapsed onto the sofa and grabbed the pistol. “Ask away and then when you’re done...I’m going to kill you.”
Denny knew he was kidding. Brig was his one true friend. Being in his presence Denny could feel it. But Denny couldn’t help himself—he had to ask. “How come you know all the stuff you do? How come you’ve got all this inside information about Rashida’s murder?”
“Uh.” Brig shook his head and stared at the gun. “I thought I told you my contact is an evidence technician on the police department.”
“No, you just told me about a friend in CPD.”
“Okay, so now I told you. Why? What’s the big deal?”
“Fine, but even so, why would an evidence technician release evidence?”
“Wow, great question, Denny.” Brig rolled his eyes.
“Well?”
“Okay, how about because I’ve been sleeping with her and I asked her to.”
“Oh, so she just spilled all this classified information?”
“No, she spilled it because I schmoozed it out of her.”
“And why would you do that?”
Brig held the pistol up before his face, as if admiring it. “How about because I was trying to help out a friend.”
“Yeah right.”
“What, Denny?” Brig sat up on the sofa. “Are you trying to say I killed Rashida, that I know all this information because I killed her? Is that where you’re going with this?”
Denny looked at his friend and shook his head. “No.” He sighed and his chin slumped to his chest. “To be honest, Brig, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing anymore. It just was weirding me out you knew all this stuff no one else did. You’ve no love lost for Muslims. And Orson accused you of killing her.”
“Orson.” Brig snorted out a laugh.
“He’s not who we thought he was.”
Brig sighted the pistol on something across the room and mock-pulled the trigger, making the sound of a shot. “He’s not who you thought he was. I always knew.”
Denny thought of all the lies Orson had been caught out in, of his interest in kinky sex, the threat he’d made, the fire he’d probably set. “What do you know about him I don’t?”
“Ah, forget it.” Brig set the pistol back on the arm of the sofa.
“No, tell me. Why would you want to protect a guy who obviously has it out for you?”
Brig nodded. “Whatever.”
“Brig, he does.”
“I know he does.”
“No, you don’t. He was talking about killing you!”
Brig laughed.
“Why are you laughing?”
“Because I know why he would want to.”
“Well, for God’s sake, tell me why already!”
Brig leaned forward, resting his forearms on his thighs and looked Denny in the eye. “You know how Orson is always trying to fit in with the rest of us? And not just fit in. How he’s always trying to show everybody he’s the best at everything, has the most guts, is the most macho?”<
br />
“Yeah.”
“Over the summer, I was down on Rush street partying with some Marine buddies in on leave. Well, we were pretty lit and so we decided to walk down to the lake to get some air. On the way we passed a couple of gay bars, and in this alley some guy with his pants and boxer shorts down around his ankles is standing there looking at us as another guy is on his knees in front of the guy his head bobbing up and down. Then the guy on his knees must’ve sensed somebody looking at him and he turned.” Brig smirked. “Guess who?”
“Orson.”
“You got it.”
“And he recognized you?”
“Oh yeah.”
Denny nodded and walked up to Brig. “Let me borrow your pistol.”
“What for?” Brig grabbed the gun and held it away from him.
“Just let me have it. Come on, Brig. I don’t have much time.”
“No.” Brig stuck the pistol in a drawer in the cocktail table and clamped the drawer shut with his foot.
“Fine.” Denny ran out of the apartment, slamming the door behind him.
Chapter Twenty-two
Denny headed to Aunt Elizabeth’s office. Gabriela told him she wouldn’t be able to see him, but he walked right past her. Aunt Elizabeth was on the phone and covered the mouthpiece with her hand. “I can’t talk now.”
“They came to arrest me.”
Her face froze. She took her hand off the phone. “I’ll call you back.” She hung up. “What do you mean, they came to arrest you?”
“I mean the police came to arrest me.”
“Dennis, sit down.”
“No.” He heard something behind him and turned. Gabriela was filing a folder in a gray cabinet just outside the office. “I’ve no time.”
“Well, tell me what you mean by they came to arrest you—how did they not?”
“I got away before they could.”
“Oh my God.”
“I had to, Aunt Elizabeth. I know who murdered Rashida now. If I’d let them take me, I’d’ve had no way of proving who the real killer was.”
“Dennis, proving who killed Rashida is not your responsibility.”
