Tin Men

by Mike Knowles

  The ride was fast. The elevator was an old model, and whoever designed it wasn’t worried about comfort. Os felt the machine’s acceleration in the pit of his stomach as it climbed the shaft, and the abrupt halt on the ninth floor buckled his knees a little bit. When the doors slid apart, Os saw the final link of the police food chain; an inspector, two superintendents, and the deputy chief were standing in the hall. All four men looked at Os, still standing in the small metal box that brought him up, and waited for him to justify being on a floor with men who were all above his pay grade.

  “Jerry MacLean told me to come up,” Os said as he stepped onto the ninth floor.

  The deputy chief, a pale man in his late fifties with buck teeth and ears that stuck out like satellite dishes nodded and said, “Jerry.” The deputy chief’s words were so quiet Os almost didn’t hear them. Usually a crime scene was alive with people moving around and investigating, but on the ninth floor of 110 Ferguson Avenue South, the deputy chief’s words were just loud enough to get Jerry to come out of an open door like a dog being called to heel.

  When Jerry saw Os, he jerked his head towards the open apartment door he had just left and walked back inside. Os walked forward and the four men stared at him as though they were conducting a silent evaluation of his every step. He barely noticed the looks; he was focused on the door.

  From the entryway, he could see the living room on the right and the kitchen straight ahead. Everything in the living room was as neat as Os had remembered. No flat surface was without some kind of decoration. Scented candles, vase arrangements, and picture frames all sat at perfect angles. The flowers in the vases were all fake, and the pictures all looked like they had been liberated from an ancient photo album. Os walked straight ahead and within two steps he was in the kitchen. The floor was clean and the sink was spotless. Julie still stuck to the habit of wiping down the stainless steel so it looked like new. Outside of the kitchen was the dining room. To call the space connecting the kitchen and living room a room was generous; it was wider than a hallway, but barely big enough for the table and chair that had been put there. Os edged past the table into the living room and saw Jerry, who had been waiting on the other side, turn to lead him down the short hall to the bedroom. Os hadn’t realized how slow Jerry had been moving; Os passed the bathroom and then almost walked into Jerry. The big detective sergeant took a deep breath and stepped into the final room. Os took a breath of his own and then followed. He saw the bed and then a second later he saw the hall again as he rushed for the bathroom.

  Three tours in Afghanistan, twelve years on the job—none of it made him ready for the bedroom. Os threw up at the sight of a body for the first time in almost thirteen years. He dry heaved into the toilet; his head deep in the bowl. The drink he never got a chance to have would have made things louder and messier. All that came up was a bit of bile that Os spat into the water. He slowly lifted his head out of the toilet and got to his feet. When he turned his back, he saw that the door was closed and Jerry was inside. The fat man took up a lot of space in the small bathroom. The vanity lights over the sink were powerful, and the high-watt light bulbs mercilessly showed the awful state of Jerry’s skin. His nose was a nest of broken purple veins, and his cheeks were pocked with the scars of childhood acne. Os could also see that Jerry had missed a spot on his neck when he was shaving. The fat man’s jowls probably made a spotty shave a regular occurrence. The lights also made it easy to see that Jerry was pissed.

  “Shit, Os,” Jerry whispered. “I put you on this because I told the white shirts you could handle it. I know she’s one of our own, but I thought . . . fuck, I don’t know what I thought.”

  Os knew what Jerry thought. Os had heard the jokes about him being the tin man—all shield, no heart. The jokes started soon after Os used some Pashto with a witness. It didn’t take long for someone to figure out that Os had spent some time in Afghanistan. The next day, his locker had sand inside it and someone sent a police dog with two takeout containers taped to its back that were supposed to look like camel humps over to his desk. That should have been the end of it, but cops are nosier than high-school girls. A couple of cops figured out exactly where Os had been and what had happened there. Afghanistan was officially adopted by the men in Central as the reason Os was such a mean bastard—that and a rumour around the station about how close he came to failing the police psych profile. Os didn’t fight any of it. After the tin man shit started, people made less small talk and everyone stopped telling him to calm down or to chill out when he got a little out of control. When he got physical during an interrogation or an arrest, everyone just backed away like Os had a doctor’s note that said he was allowed to do whatever he wanted. Truth was, his behaviour had always been anti-social. While other kids were playing high school football, Os’s parents put him in boxing. His father saw what Os was going to be early on, and he made sure that if Os was going to be hitting people, he would at least be wearing gloves. After high school, the army was the obvious choice—no gloves in the army.

  “I mean, you’ve seen worse, right?” Jerry said. “You can handle this. The brass in the hall are seriously up my ass. We can’t fuck this up.”

  Os shouldered Jerry out of the way and ran the tap. It was clear Jerry had more to say, but Os ignored him and angled his mouth under the faucet so he could gulp from the weak stream of water. The fucking guy was worried about how he looked to the four in the hall, when one of their own was lying just a few feet away. If they had been off duty, Jerry would have been picking up his teeth.

  “I’m fine, Jerry. Let’s go.”

  Os walked out of the bathroom and went back into the bedroom. He was hoping the scene would be less shocking the second time around, but it wasn’t. The second time, knowing what was waiting for him, was worse. He brought his eyes up from the floor and slowly looked from the parquet flooring to the bed.

  Os could see only a patch of white comforter through the strands of brown hair fanned above Julie’s face. The rest of the bed was the deep kind of red that could only be blood. It was almost impossible to believe the human body had enough blood to stain a bed like that, but Os had also never seen a body killed the way Julie had been. She was naked, with each limb tied to one of the bedposts. Her arms and legs were stretched tight. Her hands and feet were secured by what looked to be torn sheets. The left side of Julie’s face was caved in at the jaw line. Whatever had hit her had shattered the bones in her face. Os wanted to keep looking at Julie’s face; he didn’t want to look any lower, but it had to happen. He lowered his eyes and took a sharp breath in through his nose; it was the kind of breath he usually took when he had cut himself badly and was waiting to see the blood to prove it. Julie’s abdomen had been cut open with three long incisions and her flesh had been folded back, as though it was two window shutters. The blood that spilled out onto the bed came from Julie’s pregnant belly. Only, she wasn’t pregnant anymore. Her umbilical cord lay on top of her naked thigh like a blood-stained blue snake. The cord had been cut cleanly—just like her belly. Julie looked like a lab dissection—some experiment done on a pillow-top mattress. Tears streamed down Os’s cheeks, but only Julie could see them. Os didn’t run this time; he was frozen in place—almost as still as the body in front of him.

  Jerry was right. Os had seen worse, but it was different overseas. Anonymous faces on dead bodies, limbless unknown victims, mutilated strangers; this was different. The blood, the humiliation, the total disregard for another person was the same, but none of the bodies on the other continent had been carrying Os’s baby.

  Os ran his sleeve across his face and erased the tears. He took a deep breath in through his nose and let it out slow. Then, he turned to Jerry and said, “I got this, Jerry.”

  “I want this solved, Os. I want the son of a bitch who did this caught, and I don’t care how it gets done.”

  There it was again. Os was being given permission to get his hands d
irty. It was destined to happen, but it was nice to know there wouldn’t be anyone looking to complain about it. Os was already thinking about what he was going to do to the fucker when he realized Jerry hadn’t stopped talking.

  “You, Woody, and Dennis will report to me every three hours, and I’ll pass everything along to the deputy chief.”

  “Wait, wait, wait,” Os said. “Wood’s my partner. We don’t need Dennis for shit. This look like an open-and-shut case to you? ’Cause that’s all he’s good at.”

  “Not your call, Os. Now do me a favour and take a step back.”

  Os had pushed Jerry against the door. He wasn’t thinking straight; his mind was on the baby. Could anyone have lived through that? There was so much blood, so much brutality. Did the baby have a chance?

  “Babysitting Dennis is just going to eat up time, which is something we don’t have.”

  “Dennis is a lot of things, Os. But on paper, he’s a fucking case clearer. He clears almost as many murders as you and Woody. He’s in. The brass wanted my best and they got it. End of story.”

  Os could feel his fingernails biting into his palms.

  “Fine. Fucking fine. Get everyone out of here. Everyone. From the brass to the rubbernecking unis, all of them need to be gone. Then get forensics up here.”

  Jerry didn’t say anything; he rubbed his chin and nodded. Os could tell he was trying to figure out the politically correct way to tell his four superiors in the hallway that they had to leave.

  “Paramedics were already here?”

  “Yeah, Os, they came in right after the first two constables got here.”

  “What did they say about the baby?”

  “It ain’t here, Os.”

  “They know whether or not it was alive after it was cut out?” Saying the words out loud made Os want to put his fist through the wall.

  “Far as I know, they showed up and saw Julie was already dead. They didn’t touch the body. There was nothing they could have done for her. I called the coroner after I got here.”

  “I need you to get downstairs to organize the unis. Get a few up here to work a canvass. We need to know who saw what.”

  Jerry looked at the door, but his feet stayed put.

  “Jerry, I said I got this. Get everyone moving.”

  “Right, right. I want an update in three hours.”

  Os followed Jerry to the propped-open front door and closed it behind him. Os put his back against the door and slid to the floor. He sat and cried for the first time in a long time. He bit into his fist, stifling the sound. No one could know about Os and Julie, or the baby. He knew cops; if they found out he was the father of the baby ripped out of the dead cop on the bed, they would look hard at him. Julie had never said anything about him to anybody, he knew that for a fact, but if he volunteered the information that he was the father of her child, it wouldn’t take long for everyone to link the bruises on Julie’s face eight months ago to Os. The baby was like a time stamp on an email that connected Os to the time he lost his temper with Julie. He knew how it would look. He had no alibi—it wasn’t like the meth-heads could vouch for him. It was better to shut his mouth. If he talked, he would be a suspect, and suspects aren’t allowed to stay on the case they’re suspected of committing. Os needed to stay on it. He was going to find whoever murdered Julie and the baby, and he was going to kill them.

  5

  Woody pulled up in front of 110 Ferguson and took a spot from a cruiser pulling out. The street was full of uniformed officers walking away from the building. The shit was bad then. Woody felt inside his suit jacket for his eye drops and craned his neck back on a practised angle that missed the headrest. He blinked to make the drops work faster while he went for the mouthwash in the glove box. The bottle said it killed 99.9 percent of germs. Woody didn’t care about germs, he knew the mouthwash was 100 percent effective in killing the smell of heroin on his breath.

  Woody swished the awful fluid around until his cheeks burned. He swallowed, and the mouthwash burned the whole way down, but Woody figured there would be no risk of beer-smelling burps in the near future. He got out of the car and walked towards the entrance. The late-night air was cold—probably ten below. Woody dug his hand into his jacket pockets and buried his chin in his scarf.

  Jerry was out front giving orders to a bunch of constables. Woody took a spot at the back of the pack and listened to the detective sergeant dictate orders about crowd control and how to speak to the “nosey fucking press.” Every young cop had a stern look on their face. They were taking the death of another officer seriously. Up until now, the unis probably thought they had the best job in the world. Driving fast, carrying a gun, taking no shit from anybody. The fact that the job could kill you was just something somebody said. No one thought it would happen to them. So when it did, it was a hell of a shock.

  Woody found it hard to concentrate on what Jerry was saying. His words sounded like they were coming from a man talking underwater. Woody forced himself to focus hard on the detective sergeant’s lips, but his mind betrayed him. It was like having a toddler in his brain constantly reaching out for the next thing to grab on to. At home, Woody would have still been sitting in his chair, listening to the Stones and letting his mind wander wherever it wanted while his ass stayed firmly planted in his chair. Instead, he was on the sidewalk, trying to fight the effects of lack of sleep, too much beer, and maybe a bit too much heroin.

  Woody looked up at the building and started to count the floors; he had got to five when he remembered Jerry. When he looked back at the detective sergeant, he was still droning on, but he had put his hands behind his back. He looked like a chubby George S. Patton. Woody started to chuckle and then he remembered where he was and why he was there. Like a goddamn toddler in the brain. A female at the back of the group of uniforms turned to look at Woody. Her disapproving look disappeared when she saw it wasn’t another uni who had laughed. She made eye contact with Woody and then pretended she was looking around him for someone or something else. Her attempt to pretend didn’t fool Woody. He looked right back at her. She was about five-foot-five with blond hair just long enough to fit into a ponytail under a winter uniform hat. She was cute in a bitchy sort of way. The woman turned back to Jerry, and Woody noticed that the detective sergeant was staring at the two of them. Woody walked back to his car when Jerry started to assign jobs.

  “Need a little pick me up,” he said to himself.

  In the back seat, Woody found two cans of Red Bull and took both with him. He closed the door and leaned against the car. The first can spilled over a bit when he opened it, but Woody quickly slurped it off. He downed the can in two gulps and then started on the second. The beer and heroin had him too mellow; he needed something to bring him up. The Red Bulls wouldn’t make much of a dent in the smack, but it would be a start.

  On his way back to the entrance, Woody had to pass by the little blonde. She gave Woody an icy look and then turned her head in the other direction. Woody breezed past the uni and found Jerry inside by the elevators.

  “Jerry.”

  Jerry turned around and held out a fat palm signalling Woody to wait while he finished his phone call. There were a lot of yes, sirs and I understands coming out of Jerry’s mouth.

  Woody looked around the lobby. The carpet was worn—looked to be at least ten years old. The glass doors leading to the street were streaked with greasy handprints and one pane on the lower part of the left door had a long crack. The buzzer panel was old, and each plastic rectangular button had a name above it generated by a standard low-quality label maker. Woody concentrated hard, trying to drag Julie’s last name out of his mind. Woody cursed under his breath; he should have waited longer to get high, but he couldn’t help himself. He had been so tired lately and he wasn’t sleeping; the weekend was still a few days away, but he could make it. Then he’d be able to recharge his battery and get his head righ
t.

  “Woody, what took you so long? Os is already up there.” Jerry was off the phone and close enough to whisper. “It’s bad up there, Woody. Bad as I’ve ever seen. To make it worse, I got the white shirts breathing down my neck to get it solved. Julie ain’t even cold and they’re on me. Can you believe that? The deputy chief was already here for Christ’s sake.”

  “They just want her killer found. We gotta look after our own, Jerry.”

  The fat detective sergeant looked ashamed. “I know that. I know that we do.”

  He knew it, but he was more concerned about every asshole with more stripes than him thinking he botched the murder case of a fellow cop for the rest of his career.

  “I got you and Os on this. Dennis too.”

  “Dennis?”

  “Fuck, not you too. Listen, like I already told Os, Dennis fuckin’ clears cases. I know he’s kind of a fucktard, but he’s another pair of eyes with almost twenty on the job. Put him to work. He’ll help you catch this bastard.”

  Woody nodded and went for the elevator. Arguing was pointless. Jerry was so spooked by the higher-ups that he’d never change his mind.

  “Woody.”

  Woody turned. “Yeah, Jerry.”

  “When you catch this guy . . . let Os at him.”

  Woody searched Jerry’s face. It didn’t take much looking to see that he was serious. Woody couldn’t tell if he was just saying it to make it seem like he gave a shit, or if he really did care. Woody just nodded and got on the elevator.

  “Ninth floor,” Jerry said.

  “I know.” Woody had seen the number on the buzzer. The caffeine combined with the night air and walking around was starting to kill his buzz. The toddler was starting to fall asleep and Woody was finding himself more on the ball.