by Thomas Laird
‘Had he been having problems with a neighbour?’ Jack asked her.
‘Everybody has problems with neighbours here, Detective Wendkos,’ Dilly smiled. I thought I detected a little sarcasm in her grin.
‘You mean gangbangers?’ I asked.
‘You need to talk to your tactical friends,’ she said.
‘You know tactical?’
‘Yes, Lieutenant. Everybody in this neighbourhood knows the tacticals. They’re out here often enough. There just aren’t enough of them to hang out twenty-four, three-sixty-five.’
Again she gave me the sly smile.
‘You think some of the locals might have done Arthur,’ I said.
‘Sure. Nothing new. That’s how they get blooded.’ She meant initiated.
‘You think Arthur’s death might have been part of a gang initiation,’ Jack said.
‘Nobody knows except Arthur and the bitch who did him,’ Dilly spat.
Her grin had turned to anger. I wondered how she had survived this environment for all these years.
‘Life is cheap on this street. Arthur should’ve had a dog like Rufus. Bangers don’t like dogs. They’d shoot my man if they ever had the chance. That’s why I keep him inside. Arthur is what those tacticals call a low profile killing, isn’t that right, Lieutenant?’
‘I’ve heard the term. But it doesn’t make any difference to me, Dilly. I’m not into profiles. I want whoever did Arthur. All murderers are equal to me. I’m real democrat that way.’
She smiled again, but there was no snideness in her gold streaked dental work, this time.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Count chose Jennifer Petersen. She wasn’t random. That was the way Jack and I were going to play it. He had to know she lived alone. He had to know he’d have her alone in that apartment and that he wouldn’t be interrupted doing what he was going to do to her.
The blood was the angle that we took in pursuit of this killer. All that blood, and he had to have some reason for draining her damn near dry. Sex wasn’t the issue according to Dr Gray. There were no signs of any recent intercourse. No semen, no bruising from rough entry. It had to be that red serum he was after. Why kill someone when you could knock off a Red Cross blood bank? It was a lot less risky than murdering a live victim.
Ritual. I had my son Michael on my mind. I had had nothing but Mike on my brain since he confessed the thing about the handy priest. The Roman Ritual. Body and the blood of our Lord. But there were other rituals.
‘What have we got in the files about these Goths that the women at the O’Hare restaurant were talking about?’ I asked Jack as we stood in the hallway outside my office.
I was referring to that one particular white-faced spook that both the manager and the cashier remembered seeing the day Jennifer Petersen was removed from the living.
‘I don’t know much about them, Jimmy. I’ve heard that they’re mostly harmless freaks who enjoy the shock effect of their appearance. I don’t know that I’ve ever come across them in one of our criminal jackets.’
I cracked the top of the Diet Coke. I’d been holding it so long it was warm.
‘Who’d know about these people, then?’ I asked my younger partner.
‘The shrinks in psycho might know something.’
*
Dr Nelson Creiger was one of our department psychiatrists. His office was much larger than mine. I almost felt slighted.
‘These kids — and they’re mostly kids — tend to grow out of it when they finally mature,’ Creiger smiled. ‘But not all of them fade away. Some of them get involved in more serious stuff.’
‘Like?’ I asked. Jack stood next to where I sat. Jack never seemed to sit when he could stand. I wondered what his blood pressure read.
‘Satanism, for one.’
‘Devil worship?’ I asked.
‘Black Sabbath. Ritual torture, sometimes ritual killing. Usually just animals. But not always.’
‘What kind of vic do they look for?’ I asked the shrink.
‘Children, sometimes. If they’re the worst kind of hard core, I mean. The real psychotics have been known to abduct and murder kids, but they’ll victimize women also, if that’s where all this is leading, Lieutenant,’ Creiger said.
‘That’s where all this is leading, Doctor.’
His jaw dropped just slightly, but then he clamped it shut. ‘We are talking about the Jennifer Petersen case, I take it.’
I nodded at the psychiatrist.
‘You think some Goth-looking perpetrator might have been involved?’
‘We’re entertaining that notion,’ I told him. ‘You have a sighting, so to speak?’
‘There was someone in Petersen’s vicinity on the day she was murdered. We have a couple of eyeballers,’ Jack told him.
‘As I said, these so-called Goths tend to be harmless teenagers and some college kids. I might look into something a bit more sinister, if you’re playing the ritual angle, as you said.’
‘What’s more sinister?’ I queried.
‘There are known cases that involve vampire cults,’ the Doctor said.
‘Vampires? As in Dracula?’
‘No. Psychotics who imagine they are vampires, naturally. There’s nothing supernatural about them. They’re very real nutcases. Sorry I didn’t use something more technical, but that’s what they are. They use blood in their rituals. They’ve even killed to gain their supplies. They’re rare, but they’re out there.’
‘They bite people?’ Jack smiled.
‘Yes,’ Creiger stated.
Jack’s smile went limp.
‘No shit,’ he told the shrink.
‘No shit,’ Creiger responded. ‘They even have fangs implanted by dentists who apparently are as strange as they are.’
Jack went pale.
‘Of course the fangs don’t work the way Bela Lugosi’s did in the movie.’
‘We had a case of these self-proclaimed vampires in 1997. I can loan you the jacket,’ Creiger told me.
‘Please,’ I replied.
He went over to his file cabinet and retrieved the jacket.
‘These people are very shy, Lieutenant. They’re going to be very difficult to locate. They don’t exactly advertise. They’re a very small clique.’
I nodded, rose, and walked out of his office with Jack just a step behind me.
*
‘They have these exotic clubs. They cater to people with very special tastes.’
The speaker was Sergeant Don Mahoney. He was the Homicide who worked the Mary Handley murder in 1997. She had died as Jennifer Petersen had. Drained of most of her blood. Strapped to her own bed. Mary Handley was a single bank teller with no family. There was no one to check up on her, just as Jennifer Petersen had no one to interrupt what had happened to her. Two women who were alone and disconnected.
The exotic club which was involved in the 1997 case was a spook bar on the periphery of New Town. They catered to Goths and Satan Cults and weird groups and clubs and cults on that order.
So when we left Don Mahoney downtown, Merlin’s was where we were headed.
*
Merlin’s was never open during daylight hours, Mahoney warned us with a smile before we’d left him. They opened after dusk, after the last rays were gone. That was sort of a trademark of theirs, Mahoney supposed.
Jack and I got there about 10:00 p.m. long after the sun had gone down.
The bartender looked more like a standard biker. I showed him the artist’s rendition of the Goth who’d been close to Jennifer Petersen at the O’Hare Chili’s.
‘Looks like most of the males who come in this place,’ the long-haired barman smiled. I didn’t see any fangs, but he was missing his left front tooth. He had tattoos on both his forearms. He was massive. He wasn’t cowed by cops, apparently.
‘You on probation?’ I asked him.
‘Is there some beef, here, Lieutenant?’ the bartender pleaded.
‘Take a better look at the drawin
g,’ I told him.
Merlin’s was dim inside, as you would expect. There were a few for-real Goths lurking at the tables away from the bar. They all wore their uniform black clothing and they all looked like they had slathered white pancake on their faces. It was tough to tell the males from the females.
‘I’m telling you, Lieutenant, this guy has a lot of identical twins in here.’
‘You sure?’ Jack asked.
‘Look. If I recognised him, I’d tell you. Thing is, I am on pro. Can’t afford to lose this part-time job. My PO doesn’t know I work here nights. Can you cut me a huss? I mean, I’ll give you a call if anybody like this shows up here. I mean, really ...’
The biker bar guy looked sincere. He was doing a good job of making us believe he didn’t know the face on our rendering sheet.
‘You got any hard cores in this place?’ I asked.
‘How do you mean?’
‘I don’t mean these assholes with the chalky faces and the hands up their girlfriends’ thongs. I mean hard core.’
‘You mean like black Sabbath dudes?’ the barkeeper answered.
‘Yeah. That’s what he means,’ Jack said. ‘Devil worshippers. Blood ritual types.’
‘We get them from time to time. But they’re not much for sharing the wealth. They keep very quiet. Even in here. It’s dangerous to talk, more dangerous to be overheard.’
‘You’re on Don Mahoney’s pad, no?’ I asked.
‘How’d you —’
‘I’m not here to hassle you ... what’s your name?’
‘Leonard. Leonard Bliss.’
Jack almost let out a guffaw. I saw him cover his mouth.
‘Listen. Leonard. You can make some fazools if you contact me or my partner if you do hear anything about the murder of that flight attendant that I told you about before. You reading me, Leonard?’
‘Sure. Sure, Lieutenant. I’m glad to be of help.’
‘I don’t have to tell you that I’m happy to keep your moonlighting job a secret from your PO.’
Leonard frowned when I squeezed his nuts, just then.
‘Leonard. We’re buddies, no? Keep your eyes open. Listen around. We’ll scratch your back, yeah?’
Jack and I went over to a table and sat down with the Diet Sprites we’d ordered when we first encountered Leonard Bliss.
‘Do we have to stay, Jimmy?’ Jack grinned nervously.
‘Just long enough to make our presence known. Maybe we can stir somebody up enough to have them be overheard by Leonard when we leave. Who knows what fucking evil lurks, Jack.’
There were paintings on the wall which neither of us could recognise. They weren’t prints, certainly. Looked like crude originals. Cheerful stuff. Like nude females being crushed by pythons. Nude males and females being tortured by the demons I read about in Dante. That kind of thing. We didn’t see any pastoral scenes on Merlin’s walls.
One female Goth was dancing in front of the table where her male partner sat. He wasn’t watching her. She danced in a lazy sort of swirl — it was hard to make out very much in this dim lighting. But we saw her crawl under the table and disappear beneath the blood-red tablecloth. The male Goth’s head jerked up as if he’d been electrically shocked.
‘That’s a relief,’ Jack declared. ‘At least they’re into blow jobs.’
‘Either that or she’s changing his oil via his dick.’
Jack frowned.
‘Can we go home now, Dad?’ he asked.
We got up and managed to find our way out to the street and the navy blue Taurus which was our unmarked vehicle.
*
There were a few other bars that these Goths frequented. We made a stop at the joint called Dire, and later we checked out The Ninth Concentric Ring. Both of which were a load of genuine grins. Anyone inhabiting those two saloons had to be on the lower pole of bipolar. Dark, gloomy, morose. Morose would be putting a happy face on them. No one in either establishment had ever sighted our boy.
After the third stop at The Ninth Concentric Ring, our shift was over. Another murder on our plates would probably seem light-hearted compared to our tour of hell in Chicago on a Wednesday night. I was sure we’d both be happy when the sun rose. And rise it did just when Jack and I pulled out of the downtown lot, headed, both of us, for home.
*
Some killers like to use familiar hunting grounds. Jack and I gave the O’Hare concourse a shot on the next night, Thursday. It wasn’t likely that our pale-faced Goth would try to hit on another flight attendant. How he chose Jennifer troubled me more and more. How did he know that she lived alone, that she had no one to check up on her from time to time? No current boyfriends. No family. Both of Ms Petersen’s parents were deceased.
He must have had access to personnel files. He must have researched her. Did he work for International?
We walked O’Hare for three hours and came up as empty as I knew we would.
*
Jack and I went into the corporate office of International Air on Friday. We went to personnel and checked out the employees. No one remotely fit the description of the white-faced Goth who’d been spotted at the restaurant.
‘Maybe he was just a credit-card thief,’ I admitted to Jack as we walked out of the International office.
‘You don’t really think so,’ Jack told me.
‘He felt right.’
You couldn’t prosecute on feelings, gut instincts. Evidence was what our prosecutors demanded, of course.
But the blood ritual angle and the weirdness of the Goths or the vampire cults or at least some variety of spook seemed righteous to me. It resonated inside, as the poets claimed.
*
We stood over her. She was strapped to the bed just as Jennifer Petersen had been — with grey, all-purpose duct tape. And Dr Gray had uttered the same lamentation over this female corpse. Her name was Madelyn Meaney. She wasn’t a flight attendant. She was an insurance adjustor for Holiday Insurance, a downtown outfit. Lived alone, no family to check on her. Almost the same profile as Petersen’s.
At least we wouldn’t have to zero in on O’Hare Airport any longer. He wasn’t stuck on stewardesses. His choice would be random if it weren’t again for his vic’s disconnected life.
How did he know? How did he find them?
‘Where can you research people, find out about their lives?’ I asked Jack in the Taurus as we drove once more to the West Side to interview the homies about Arthur Ransom.
‘The library?’ Jack smiled.
I didn’t look his way as we drove on.
‘Social security? The Feds? Credit people?’
Then I turned and looked right at my partner as we plodded our way through midday cross-town traffic.
CHAPTER FIVE
My daughter Kelly is a replica of my first wife Erin. She is the same height and approximate weight. She has the same green eyes. And she has a slightly twisted grin that emerged on Erin’s face whenever something struck her as ludicrous or damned fool silly.
It almost shocks me how much she’s like her mother, but it’s a gift to have all that remembrance in her daughter’s carriage and general behaviour. What they call one of life’s ‘tender mercies’.
I don’t talk to Kelly nearly often enough. Especially now when she’s a woman on her own at the university. But I felt like I neglected her too when she was little, since I worked all those different shifts. Getting to her activities was difficult. Erin was the present parent at too many of her things. I was busy cuffing assholes who did murder while my girl was becoming the young woman she is today.
But I don’t think she held it against me. Her mom was my apologist. She made it clear that it was the nature of Daddy’s work, not that Daddy didn’t want to be there at her various performances, athletic and dramatic.
Kelly Parisi is a natural actress and an equally gifted singer. She sings mezzo-soprano and actually made the Archbishop of Chicago weep with her rendition of ‘Ave Maria’. It was at her high sch
ool’s Christmas mass a few years ago. She’s majoring in theatre and voice at the U, currently.
So I made it a point that we would go out, just the two of us. It was in the middle of all this trauma about Mike and the priest, and again, I felt I was ignoring my eldest.
I took her to lunch at one of those soup and sandwich specialties. But all she went for was the soup. Onion with mozzarella cheese on the surface.
‘I’ve been lonely for your company, Big Girl,’ I told her as I perused my soup and ham sandwich combo.
She shot me her mother’s scraggily grin. Her green eyes were always intense when they watched you. I had to believe she was a terror to most of her would-be boyfriends, with those piercing eyes.
‘You feeling guilty about Michael, Daddy?’
There was very little pretence about her. That was a given.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because you’ve been spending a lot of time with him now, and maybe you think it was your fault you weren’t around to protect him.’
She’d make a great interrogator. But then she’d never make anybody cry with the ‘Ave Maria’ again.
‘You’re right. I do feel guilty. About Mike, and about slighting you, all these years. Because of my job.’
‘I never felt angry about it, Daddy. You were there every chance you got.’
I tasted the chicken noodle. It was a bit salty.
‘How much of both of your lives did I miss, Big Girl?’
‘You’re feeling sorry for yourself. You’re terrible at self-pity, Daddy.’
‘Oh. I flunked my screen test — or my audition,’ I smiled.
‘You couldn’t have protected him — or me — any better than you did. You can’t be with your children every time they go out of the house.’
‘I used to watch witnesses on shift. No one ever got shot. Not on my watch.’
‘Were you supposed to follow Michael into the sacristy? Were you supposed to catch Father Mark in the act?’
I smiled again and put my spoon down.
‘I get no huss from you, darlin’. You’re just like your Momma that way. She would not tolerate whining. From her students in that classroom she loved so much to her own family. I never saw her exhausted with life. Not even when she was in chemo or radiation. She lost her hair, but it didn’t seem to make much of a dent. I was sure she was going to beat it. There was no doubt she was going to go into remission ... and then it took one month to kill her. She went into the hospital and never came out.’
