by Thomas Laird
We rushed around him and saw that he had no pants or underwear on. He was quivering like a pooch that had been left out in a thunderstorm.
‘Jesus, don’t shoot me! I di’n’t mean nothin’!’
Then he vomited. Right over Edna’s expensive running shoes. I had this revulsion churning inside me. Edna was a pretty girl. Brunette. Well put together. And she’d left all those nice, sterile flights across North America to wind up in a pitch-dark park by Lake Michigan so that some cheesedick wienie-flasher could expose himself to her and then puke all over her toes. It didn’t seem dignified to me. It didn’t seem worth all that trouble for a woman to make it through the Police Academy.
‘I should shoot you for getting sick all over this nice young lady,’ Doc told the half-naked quiverer.
‘Please don’t shoot me!’
‘Shut the fuck up!’ Doc snapped.
Wendkos and Pierson had finally arrived.
‘We got lost in these weeds,’ Jack apologized.
‘You didn’t miss a thing,’ I told the two late arrivals.
Pierson started to snigger.
‘You aren’t really gonna shoot me, are you?’ the kneeling man whined.
‘Take off your shirt,’ Doc demanded.
There were three flashlights trained on this johnson-waggler.
‘Huh?’
‘Take off that shirt or I’ll shoot you right in your prized possession,’ Gibron told him.
The shaking man tore off his T-shirt.
‘Now wipe the lady’s shoes. And I mean clean.’
Three more uniformed patrolmen emerged from the surrounding trees and bushes. They watched as the flasher cleaned up Edna’s Adidas footwear. The flashlights were still aimed at her shoes as he finally finished the job.
‘Now put that T-shirt back on,’ Doc concluded.
‘You can’t be —’
‘Motherfucker, you get that thing on your back or I’ll kick your sorry ass all the way downtown. When we get there, then you can take it off,’ Doc Gibron explained.
I saw the perp wince as he put the shirt back on, just as Doc had ordered him. Wendkos cuffed him, and then Doc and I walked him back to our Taurus. Edna was riding back to the downtown headquarters with us.
The flasher got into the back seat with me. I didn’t want this reeking, butt-naked asshole sitting next to Edna on the long ride. I saw that she was grateful as I indicated that I’d be sitting in the back seat with her very first perpetrator.
This guy was a pee-pee-wiggler. Nothing more. We went back to the park and found his pants, but there was no sign of a knife. He didn’t appear to be a cutter. We charged him with assault and public indecency and with a couple other minor beefs, but he was not our guy.
He had no ether on him, either. He would have had no place to keep all the things our man had used in the killing of Genevieve Malone, the girl who went down in that same stretch of woods by the beach.
Randall Osborne had a sheet, though. He’d exposed himself twice before. Been nailed both times for short hitches in County. But no trace of violent behavior, so we had apparently come up empty.
The ether showed up on the corpse and in the blood work-ups Dr Gray had done at the morgue. So we knew our cutter put them to sleep and then did what he did to them. As I say, Doc was convinced that this wouldn’t be a one-time Charlie. The man did a very workmanlike job of removing Genevieve’s innards. That was all pro workmanship. The thing that disturbed me was the little rage number with the post-mortem mutilations. It was like this guy was of two minds. First he took care of business, and then he thought he owed himself a little something for all the effort and for all the potential danger. If he just wanted to kill and maim, why take all the trouble to be fastidious about the initial cutting? And then get sloppy and brutal with the remaining thrusts? I didn’t like mystery homicides. I enjoyed the no-brainers, just as my partner the good doctor did.
Randall went to jail and Edna was beginning to wonder if she could ever get the stink off her Adidas shoes.
‘Stick ‘em in the washing machine,’ Doc suggested. The three of us were in my office. It was very late. Way past the end of our regular shifts.
‘Are you kidding?’ she retorted. ‘These are three-hundred-dollar runners. I’ll do these by hand.’
She was a pretty girl. Reminded me of another pretty police employee that I was two hours late meeting up with. Natalie Manion, our evidence expert. The redhead and love of my middle-aged life.
Edna left the office, but the cheesy odor of vomit lingered.
‘Open the fucking window,’ Doc groaned. ‘I couldn’t say it before because I thought I’d embarrass the kid.’
I went over to the window that overlooked the Lake and propped the window open with the crank that extended the glass outward.
A fresh breeze from Lake Michigan wafted into my cubicle.
‘The Captain pisses and moans when we open these. He says it upsets the fucking thermostats,’ I told my partner.
‘The Boss didn’t have two pukey shoes in his office,’ Doc countered. ‘You think I jumped the gun by putting together this little ambush at the Lake, Jimmy?’
‘I don’t think so. No. I trust your intuition.’
‘This guy might like to expand his horizons, his hunting grounds. I was hoping we’d get lucky.’
I nodded. Doc knew that I thought his call was a good one. If we had caught the prick tonight, we could’ve saved a life. Suddenly the scary thought was inside us both. I could see it on his face. There would be another cutting very soon. Maybe elsewhere, maybe right back where we just were, at the Lakeshore. But this time we wouldn’t be there because manpower cost big money. Everybody knew that dirge.
Doc got up wearily.
‘I thought we had a good shot ... I don’t like clever killers, Jimmy. They try too hard to be smart, evasive. I got the feeling we just dialed up one of that very kind. Get ready for the long haul, Jimmy P.’
He waved and left my cubicle. The odor of the retch-covered gym shoes had finally departed the premises, so I cranked my window shut. But the fragrance of the Lake and of the beach lingered.
My phone rang. I knew it was Natalie and I knew I was in a pile of something that made Edna’s shoes smell like a springtime garland.
Chapter Five
Fog occurs when two air masses overrun each other. I heard that somewhere. Perhaps it was the weather man on TV. But in the late fall you’d expect a lot of overrun since those two opposing forces — fall and summer — are having it out for the last time until the next go-round, a few months later.
It certainly is a convenient atmosphere for my line of work. It was almost as convenient as the thick environment of the woods where I last did business, down by the Lakeshore.
I spent an hour in advance of this detail, walking out along this so-called Gold Coast. It was one of the most affluent areas in the city. Downtowners and yuppies of all stripes inhabit these city blocks. If I were a thief — which, I suppose, is sort of what I am — I could make a very fine living in this neighborhood. If you pay attention to the kinds of security these people employ, you can devise ways of getting at these Gold Coasters. Usually it is a doorman or some security guard.
In this instance I’ve already eliminated the employee who oversaw the entrance of this multi-level dwelling. He was the fellow with the very sore throat who lies behind me at this very moment.
I’m waiting for the blonde, thirty-five-ish female who left to go out about three hours ago. I’ve been following her for about three days, and I’ve learned her habits by this time. She likes to go to a late dinner at one of the expensive Loop restaurants.
Usually it is a sports-theme bar-eatery. Then she returns home by no later than one since she is a lawyer in a firm, also in the downtown district. She does not allow herself to become attached to any of the several males who circle about her as she takes two or three cocktails at the bar before she is seated for an always-solo dinner. When she return
ed for two or three nightcaps at that same pre-meal bar, it was time for Delores Winston to hire a cab and go home to her Gold Coast apartment.
I couldn’t catch her on foot, alone, so the best plan seemed to be to take her here in the entry way to the building. It is a small cubicle. But it works well because it appears that most of the other residents of this complex are well into their senior years and none of them keeps late hours like our counselor, Delores Winston.
I knocked on the door and asked Jason, the fellow lying behind me on the floor, for directions. He was very helpful. He opened the door to answer me. Then I flattened him with a thrust from the base of my right palm, and while he was gurgling something or other at me on account of his badly broken nose, I bent down, took him by his long brown hair and slit his throat from ear to ear. He tried to stem the flow with both his hands, but the dam had broken and Jason expired in a few minutes. Most of the blood gushed down onto his scarlet sport jacket. It was a little difficult to spot the stain in this dim lighting.
I too am wearing a scarlet sport jacket in advance of the return of Delores the attorney. And if anyone should defy an observance of habit and come home late, I suppose I’ll have to kill them as well. There could be quite a pile of bodies in this entry way by dawn if Delores doesn’t move it along.
Ah, but her cab finally arrives. I can only barely make her out through the fog that is wafting in off Lake Michigan. The driver hustles around to the door to let her out. Apparently he had an eye for a large gratuity. Then she is floating toward me. I keep my head down as she puts her gloved left hand on the door handle. I help her open the glass entry, and before she can cry out, I have the wad of ether clamped over her pretty mouth. Her eyes widen as she tries to struggle, but I have one hand over her mouth and the other squeezing her throat. The fumes do their thing and Delores is slumping to the floor next to Jason the doorman. Just as she goes out, she notices the body next to her own. I can see the recognition crossing her dimming eyes.
It is about 1.15,I see, as I look at my watch. Time to get to work.
Then it occurs to me that I’ve been all business and no pleasure. I think I owe it to myself to reap the rewards of my work. Certainly once I finish with this flat-on-her-ass lawyer I will not be able to enjoy her. I hadn’t seen the need for romantic contact with my previous client, but it seems as if this one is special. She is about my age, whereas the other girl was too young. I have no inclination toward females in their twenties and younger. They are far too immature, too inclined to chew gum and smoke cigarettes. At the same time. They are too inclined to look at sex as some kind of physical release. Women in their thirties and older, however, seem to understand the spiritual side of human sexuality. They have reached their sexual peaks and so they experience much more fully what this carnal contact is supposed to entail. It is not just a fuck to them, I’m saying.
It is too bad that Delores won’t be around for this brief encounter. I’m willing to take a chance, here, by delaying my work, but I’m not foolhardy enough to stick around for an entire symphony.
I tear her dress from the neck to the crotch with my nine-inch blade. Then I rip away her bra and panties as well. Delores is very well maintained. She is in full blossom.
I pull her over to Jason, and I position her rear on top of Jason’s midsection. Angle of entry. If she were awake she’d realize my little enhancement of pleasure. Just looking at her prepares me. She is a beautiful, ripe woman.
I pull down my zipper, I elevate her legs, I kneel down close to her, and I begin.
Her mouth is wide open, but she does not snore amid her slumbers. I tell myself that I can’t take the time I would enjoy taking, that I must end this before someone stumbles upon us, the three of us. And I wonder if Jason is sensing the urgency I now have at finishing. He is our still-warm cushion. He pads us from the cold concrete floor beneath the three of us.
Then I am coming in Delores. A sweet throb. But not nearly as sweet or as prolonged as I had imagined. It is because I am rushed, I’m certain.
I stand and pull up my fly. There is a salty, sea-water odor in the close air of this entryway.
I pick up my knife and look down at the stretched-out body of Delores Winston, prominent Loop lawyer. I aim my thin-nosed blade at the point beneath her breastbone and I make my first incision. It is a red line that extends, now, to her pubic patch. I am almost reluctant to cut her any deeper than this delineating line that stretches from breasts to puff of pubic hair, but time grows very short. There is no more of it to waste, standing here desiring this blonde woman again.
I place the tip of my ultra-sharp knife at my starting point, but this time the knife goes in. Goes in deeply.
I can hear the very soft giving-up of Delores Winston’s flesh as my tool embeds itself in her chest cavity.
Chapter Six
Natalie Manion was the woman who came into my life just as I thought my life was ending. I lost my wife, Erin, to breast cancer, and then I fell in love with a woman named Celia Dacy. Celia’d had her son murdered at a housing project called Cabrini Green and I was the lead investigator, along with Doc Gibron. We got involved in spite of my knowing that getting entangled with a person involved in a case is strictly out of bounds. But I fell in love with her only to find out later that Celia had capped three of the primary suspects in her son Andres’s murder investigation. So I lost my wife and I fell in love with the most beautiful killer I had ever encountered. Then Celia got herself topped by going after the nastiest gang-banger in the Cabrini district, and I was there on scene holding her as the life evaporated out of her.
To say that it put me out of commission was to understate the experience.
I met Natalie Manion while I was working the Dacy homicides. Natalie was working in the lab tech department. But now she was about to graduate from the Academy so she could become a street policewoman. She said she wanted to work Homicide with me.
I told her that she should plan on a different section in the Department because Chicago PD frowned on fraternization between co-workers. She said she didn’t care. We would fool them by appearing aloof. But it was all bullshit because everybody on my floor knew I was in love with Natalie Manion. They accused me of robbing the cradle with the redhead because she was twenty years younger than I was. None of which phased this lovely, auburn-haired woman. She had been in the Air Force for four years, and she also had a master’s in Criminology from her alma mater, Northwestern. She was just a little bit extraordinary, as I said.
I was at her apartment at 7.00 a.m. She went on shift — her first practice tour — at 3.00 p.m. We ate breakfast together and then we made love and then I had to get home to help take care of my teenaged daughter and my almost-teenaged son. My mother lived with us in our North Side bungalow. We were a couple of miles northwest of Wrigley Field, even though I had been a White Sox fan since 1957.
‘You tired, Jimmy?’
I smiled at her. ‘We’re always tired.’
‘Screwy shifts. But I’ll be out on the street in another two months, come graduation.’
‘That’s what I’m afraid of, Natalie. Little red-headed you, out on these lovely streets. With all those very bad hombres. You’re going to give me high blood pressure.’
‘You’ve already got hypertension, Jimmy P.’
Leave it to her to know the medical term.
‘I forgot,’ I apologized.
‘I thought I was good for you, Jimmy.’
‘You are.’
I took her up out of her seat. We were sitting next to each other at what she called her breakfast ‘nook’. I never sat across from Natalie. It was too goddamned far away from her.
I pulled her up to me and kissed her until she insisted she couldn’t breathe.
‘Go back into evidence or you’ll scare me to death,’ I told her.
‘We’ve been down this road before, guinea. That’s a negative, Lieutenant.’
There was no use. It was just as she said. I lost the argu
ment in a humiliating fashion. She creamed me. She was better educated and smarter than I was. She would likely make a better investigator than I was. Natalie would succeed at anything she wanted to succeed at.
‘So come on. Tell me about it. I haven’t got a weak stomach.’
I looked at her carefully as we got back to our chairs. She refused to make love in her breakfast goddamned nook. Said savages mate where they eat.
‘We find two bodies. The woman on top of a male. She was naked, eviscerated, just like the first. The guy beneath her was the doorman. His throat was cut, ear to ear. He probably died in a hurry. She was dosed with ether, but this time he did her sexually. No semen. But the cute son of a bitch left us a Trojan wrapper inside the woman’s split-open torso. He took the liver, a lung, and the big pump. Same stuff, except that he didn’t mutilate this one. Other than the "surgery" he did on her.’
‘Why do you think he didn’t cut her up more?’
‘He had sex with this one, or so we’re led to believe. At least it was the message he left behind.’
‘So what’re you and Mr Gibron looking at?’
‘Known sex offenders. Rapists. Assault guys. The usual starting point. And then there’s this parts-removal business.’
‘Is he taking organs and selling them?’
‘Could be. Unless he’s got another use for them. Maybe it was just psychosexual. We’re not getting much help from the shrinks at work. They’re not sure what this guy’s really after.’
‘What if it was a woman, Jimmy P? A woman who wants you to think it was a man.’
‘The attack on the door guy. He was popped with enough force that we thought it was a male. And the first girl, Genevieve Malone. She was struck in the face and leveled. We don’t think a female could knock down someone as athletic as Malone was with one punch. Someone strong had to stifle both victims with that ether. It told me it was a male. By the sheer weight and bulk and muscle. But I could be wrong,’
