Penance

by Dan O'Shea

  “So he sticks his gun out the window there?”

  “Rifle, Lynch. Guns are artillery. No, not out the window. Smart boy like this, he’s standing back a couple of steps. Shoots through the hole. Almost like a silencer – traps most of the sound in the room here.”

  “That’s why he’s in this back section, not up front by the houses? Quieter?”

  “Most likely. Brass balls, though, giving up another fifty meters just to cut down on noise nobody’s gonna be able to place anyway. Get crime scene to check the window here, probably get some residue.” Cunningham taking up a shooting position again, frowning a little.

  “What time she get hit? Around 3 o’clock, wasn’t it?”

  “Quarter after.”

  “So why this side of the room? OK, this whole face of the building is in shadow because of the step-back layout, but why not tuck back in against the west wall? Be even darker over there. Could even brace against the wall if he wanted to.”

  “Really matter?”

  “This kind of shooting, everything matters. It’s like a math problem. For each tactical situation, there is one best answer. So far, everything adds up. This wing to cut down on the noise. Also, it’s shaded that time of day. He’s two doors from the stairwell on the east end. Close enough to get out quick, far enough away that he’s got a little time if he hears anyone coming up. Also, look around in here. Less shit in here than in a lot of the rooms. Not a popular spot for some reason, and, trust me, our boy ain’t looking to win no popularity contests. So why does he get all that right and pick the wrong side of the room. Maybe that window was already busted, he didn’t want to risk the noise breaking another one.”

  Lynch walked over, looked at the window, shook his head. “He picked the pane, broke it himself. Most of the rooms we’ve been in, if there’s broken glass, it’s in here. Kids throwing rocks through the windows from the outside. This one was broken from the inside. Glass that’s left is flexed out. Fresh break, too. When he broke it, he knocked the dust off, hasn’t built back up yet.”

  Cunningham nodded, taking up his shooter’s stance again. “Gotta be a reason he picked this side of the room.” Cunningham walked along the wall of windows, looking at the floor.

  “He’s firing a semi-auto, not a bolt action. Worried about his brass. See over here, this gap between the wall and the floor? Brass could get down in there, maybe he can’t get it back. So he gets close to the east wall. Brass comes out, hits the wall, it’s right there. No gap. You’re looking for a right-handed guy shoots a semi-auto. He’s under six foot, probably military or ex-military, probably a white guy.”

  “How’d you know his height?”

  “Me? I’m six-four. I’d take out the bottom of the next pane up. He took out the top half of this pane – six inches down. Five-eight to five-ten, I figure. Ex-military because of the time and training it takes to shoot like this. I went into the Corps at eighteen, Lynch. Scout/sniper at twenty. Did that for twenty years. Been on the job here now another ten. Police don’t train much for shots at seven hundred meters. We can get closer than that. Now, you’re out crawling the brush in your ghillie suit worrying about a combat patrol stepping on your ass, seven hundred meters could be as close as you get.”

  “Seems like you’re channeling this guy, Cunningham.”

  “I understand what he’s thinking.”

  “Scaring me a little.”

  “Scaring me a little, too.”

  Back at their cars, they shook hands.

  “Interesting few hours, Cunningham, I gotta say. Thanks.”

  “No problem. You get the ballistics, give me a call. Number of grooves, left twist, right twist – might narrow the weapon down some.”

  “Will do.” Lynch walked toward his car, then turned.

  “Hey, Cunningham. You said a white guy. Why a white guy?”

  Cunningham smiled. “Lynch, I spent twenty years in the Corps hanging out with snipers. Lotta backwoods types, dirt farmers, hillbillies. I want to run for president of the Afro-American Snipers Association, only vote I know I got to get is my own.” Cunningham opened the door to the Jeep, then stopped, turned back one more time. “Besides, Lynch, you’ve seen the NBA. Always you white boys who want to shoot from the outside.”

  First time all day Lynch had seen Cunningham smile.

  CHAPTER 8 – CHICAGO

  Lynch drove back to the Marslovak house, wanting to give it a closer look. Typical Chicago bungalow, red brick, built in the Twenties or Thirties. Helen Marslovak had lived there the last fifty-two years of her life. In that time, Lynch thought, she should have accumulated more shit.

  Place smelled of soap. Murphy’s Oil Soap. Just like his mom’s house. Living room across the front – parlor she’d called it. White sofa along one wall, one big chair. Sofa and chair looked pretty old. Coffee table, end table – those were newer. Big Zenith console set. That was ancient. Lynch hit the on button, saw the white dot in the center of the screen start to grow, listened to the hum, saw the orange glow of the vacuum tubes through the vented cover in the rear. Took him back. Jesus, where’d she still get tubes for it? Flicked it off just as the picture filled in and the sound started. Big Bible on the coffee table, the leather-bound kind with the family tree page in the front where you could fill in all the communions and weddings and such.

  Dining room – table, six chairs, sideboard, built-in corner hutch, some dishes there. White cabinets in the kitchen. Not much food. Not much anything. Floors clean enough to do surgery on.

  Just the bed and the dresser in the master bedroom, bed perfectly made. Wedding photo on the dresser. Helen had been a looker back in the day, a little Hedy Lamarr vibe going. Another Bible, smaller one, pages and cover pretty worn. Crucifix over the bed.

  A number of old pictures lined the hall outside the bedroom. The husband, mostly. Even one of him with Hurley the First, the mayor’s grandfather, the first Hurley to stake out the fifth floor at City Hall. He’d ridden his Southside Irish Bridgeport connections to the top prize back in 1952. Hurley the Third had the fifth floor now. Better than fifty years in the Hurley line and no end in sight.

  Couple of pictures of Eddie Sr in his hard hat. Blue, with the city seal on it. Streets and Sanitation guy. Picture of Eddie Sr in his Knights of Columbus getup, with the cape and the Three Musketeers hat. Picture of Eddie Sr with the Cardinal. Eddie looking older in the last two, Lynch betting the ALS had already kicked in before the last one was taken.

  Bedroom in the back must have been Eddie Jr’s. Old Cubs pennant on the wall, picture of Ernie Banks. Bears’ spread on the bed. Picture on the dresser, Eddie maybe thirty years and ninety pounds ago, standing in a football uniform. Scrapbook. Lynch picked it up. Eddie as a baby. Eddie holding up a fish on a pier somewhere. First Communion picture, Eddie and the parents standing on the steps where Lynch had seen the body. Graduation shots, high school and college. Wedding shots – all three wives. First one with the tux, the next two just suit and tie. Newspaper clippings. Eddie making partner at Morgan Stanley twenty years ago. Eddie setting up his own shop. Eddie yukking it up with the current Hurley at some ribbon cutting. Eddie throwing out a first pitch at Comiskey – the old one. Mom was prouder than she let on, prouder than Eddie knew.

  An old desk was tucked into a corner in the hallway. Lynch went through it. Checking papers – bank statements, insurance policies, satisfaction of mortgage on the house. All of it pretty vanilla, nothing there. Lynch found a three-hundred-sheet spiral notebook in the center drawer, black cover. A sort of journal, Helen Marslovak’s account of her illness. The diagnosis back in October. Metastasized colon cancer. Deciding pretty much right off not to fight it – no chemo, no surgery – docs having told her there wasn’t much point. Writing about the pain with a kind of gratitude, thankful to know it was coming, to have a chance to put her soul in order. No self-pity that Lynch could sense.

  Lynch went to put the notebook back, saw a piece of cardboard in the bottom of the drawer. He pulled
it up. On the other side was an eight by ten photo, black and white, Eddie Sr and Hurley the First in the Hurley box at Wrigley, right behind the Cubs on deck circle. Eddie Sr and Hurley were up against the brick wall, leaning on it with their elbows. Ron Santo was standing on the field to the left of the mayor, Don Kessinger over to the right. Son of a bitch, Lynch thought, one of Hurley’s favor shots. Walk into any alderman’s office where the guy’d been around during the first Hurley reign, any mover and shaker in the city, you were gonna see his Wrigley shot. And the ballplayers in the shot, they told it all, in a kind of social ranking system as esoteric as any court ritual at Versailles but one that every politico in Chicago understood. Santo, he was Hurley’s favorite, even more so than Ernie Banks, because Santo was a white guy, and Hurley the First, he didn’t have much use for Schwartzers. Not racism of the white-supremacist type. Just he liked the balance of power the way it was, and the way it was when he took over left the blacks pretty much out of it. You’d see Ernie in a lot of the shots. Ernie had just enough step’n’fetchit in his act to keep Hurley happy. He was the only black guy you’d see, though. Never saw Billy Williams, never saw Fergie Jenkins. If you had Ernie and Santo, that was top drawer. Lynch’s old man had a Wrigley shot, Santo and Huntley, which was hot shit, too. But Lynch’s old man had hauled a lot of water for the Hurley family in his day. Now here’s Marslovak, Streets and San line grunt as far as Lynch could tell, and he’s got Santo and Kessinger? Lynch peeled the photo off the cardboard backing. Date from the developer on the back. July 1971. All these other shots out on the walls, what was this doing face down in the bottom of a desk drawer?

  Lynch found an empty manila envelope in the center drawer and tucked the photo inside. Time to drive out to River Forest, to see Uncle Rusty.

  CHAPTER 9 – CHICAGO

  March, 1971

  Detective Declan Lynch couldn’t decide. The watch commander told him Riley wanted him on the case, which meant the mayor wanted him on the case, and that was good. But the stiffs were the mayor’s kid and one of the mayor’s go-to guys, which, if Lynch didn’t solve this quick, would be bad.

  Wasn’t hard to decide about the crime scene, though. The crime scene was a mess.

  There was a lot of blood, and not much of it left in the bodies. Stefanski was spread-eagle on the floor, naked except for what was left of a Dago T. There was a shirt on the floor by his head, a pair of pants in the pool of blood next to him, more clothes strewn all over. The fire ax someone had used on him was still buried in his chest – looked like it was buried all the way into the floor. Stefanski’s chest was completely open, chunks of meat and rib sticking out. Lynch could even see his spine in a spot. He’d taken a good whack or two to the head as well. Just enough face left to know it was him. Must have thrashed around quite a bit – blood was smeared all around his body, smeared on his arms and legs, like he rolled over a time or two. Guess you would, Lynch thought, guy’s chopping you up with an ax. Lynch could see several spots where the ax had bit into the floor.

  Junior Hurley was in his shorts, sprawled on the floor at the base of a big wing chair across the room. The top of his head was gone, a bloody wad of skull, hair, and brain lying between the rest of the body and the wall. Some blood on the chair, lots of blood on the floor, Hurley’s blood flowing over to mix with the smeared mess around Stefanski. Blood on the walls, too, where somebody’d used it to write BUTCHER THE PIGS. On the other wall, near Stefanski, RAPES THE PEOPLE. A bloody tie was wadded up on the floor near the graffiti. Must have been what was used for a paintbrush.

  Footprints in the blood, too. At least three different shoes that Lynch could see. That diamond pattern on those Converse shoes a lot of kids were wearing. A bigger set, looked like boots of some kind. Something smooth-soled that was smeared around pretty good. Converse guy got around. Lynch could see his prints fading out toward the dining room. Looked like boot guy was the poet – good clear set of his prints by the wall next to Junior where the writing was.

  A lot of shit smashed on the floor – a lamp in a mess of pieces, books thrown around, Hurley’s briefcase dumped out, the papers everywhere.

  Lynch turned to the uniform watching the door. “Whole place trashed like this?”

  “Yeah. We swept the joint when we got here, just making sure it was empty. Not much blood once you get by here, couple footprints in the dining room, but they ripped everything up pretty good.”

  “Like they were looking for something?”

  “Could be,” said the uniform. “More like they just wanted to. You get to the john, you’ll see somebody ripped off the toilet seat and hung it over the light fixture. What’s the point in that?”

  “Anything else?”

  “Smelled dope when we got here.”

  Lynch took a sniff. “Yeah, a little. OK. ME guys are here, so you and your partner get on the canvas, see if the neighbors got anything.”

  First thing the next morning, Lynch met with Dr Thomas Anthony, the ME. Sitting in the glassed-in office Anthony had off the autopsy room, metal furniture, chemical smell. Anthony was a big guy, bald, huge head, which, Lynch knew, was pretty much full of brains.

  “Thanks for turning things around so quick. Long night for you guys, I know,” said Lynch.

  “At least I’m done for now, detective. I don’t suspect you’ll be sleeping until you have an arrest.”

  “I’m hoping you have something to help me out there, doc.”

  “To start, you’ve got multiple assailants. Three sets of footprints, definitely contemporaneous because they walked on one another’s tracks a couple of times. At least one of your assailants is likely colored, because we’ve got a couple of Negroid hairs stuck to the ax handle. They were in Stefanski’s blood, so they were deposited while the ax was being used. One set of tracks is from a pair of Converse All-Stars, size twelve. One is from a pair of Red Wing work boots, ten and a half. I’m working on the other one. Smooth soles, heel, more like a dress shoe. Smaller, maybe a nine. We found the butts from two marijuana cigarettes in the room.”

  “Wonderful,” said Lynch. “Coloreds and drugs – old man Hurley’s head is gonna explode. Cause of death looks pretty straightforward. Standard ax murder. Not that I ever had an ax murder before.”

  “Almost impossible to tell, actually,” said Anthony. “Especially with Stefanski. The damage done with the ax is so severe that if there was any preexisting cause, it was obliterated. There was a mark on one rib, or should I say rib fragment, that didn’t seem to correspond with an ax. But the rib cage and surrounding anatomical context were so disassociated that any findings other than death due to trauma from the ax simply can’t be supported.”

  “What are you telling me with this marks-on-the-ribs shit?”

  “You saw Stefanski. I don’t have a piece of Stefanski’s ribs or sternum bigger than four inches, and the pieces I have are badly damaged. However, I have one piece of rib, still connected to the sternum, that has a fresh groove in it that doesn’t look like the ax wounds. Again, though, with so much trauma, I can’t do anything but report it as an anomaly.”

  “Groove like what?”

  “Like a gunshot, actually, if I had to guess.”

  “This groove, where was it located?”

  “Not on the rib itself, but along the top of the costal cartilage where it connects the third rib to the sternum.”

  “And a bullet goes through there, it hits what?”

  “The heart.”

  Lynch looked at Anthony for a moment, waiting for a sign.

  “You telling me Stefanski got shot?”

  “No. I’m telling you that a single anomaly in the evidence could support that conclusion. Arguing against it, I have no soft tissue damage consistent with a bullet wound. Although, if Stefanski were shot prior to the ax wounds, such evidence would have been obliterated. And we recovered no slugs – not from the body, not from the scene.”

  “Anything else?”

  “We’re missing a piece of Hur
ley’s skull and scalp from the right temple. It could have stuck to one of the assailants. It could have been tracked out. It could have been taken as a souvenir.”

  “That a big deal?”

  “It happens. I won’t say it’s common.”

  “Sounds like there’s something else you won’t say.”

  Anthony nodded. “There’s this. Most of Hurley’s clothing, and Stefanski’s for that matter, is soaked with blood. The clothing is lying in the blood, got walked on – it’s just a mess. Except Hurley’s shorts, which aren’t much of a mess because he was wearing them. Which is why I noted a small amount of blood and other fluids in his underwear. Semen. Further examination revealed additional blood and semen in his rectum. I have no way of telling whose, but based on the serology, it could be Stefanski's.”

  Lynch’s turn to be quiet. Anthony just sat, looking at him, waiting.

  “You telling me Hurley’s kid was queer?”

  “I’m telling you he had anal intercourse shortly before his death, possibly with Stefanski.”

  “Willingly?”

  Anthony shrugged. “No bruising not associated with the head wound, no defensive marks. No significant tearing in the anus. Anuses are not designed for sex, so in cases of anal rape, tearing is usually evident.”

  “So you got a few things making you think,” said Lynch.

  “It’s the combination of them. By itself, the missing piece of Hurley’s head? Like I said, it happens. But I’ve got this weird groove on Stefanski. So, suppose somebody shot him but didn’t want it to look like they shot him. So they take the ax, chop him up, dig the slug out of him or maybe out of the floor. Now, you have this transverse ax wound on Hurley. That’s a little strange. Usually when bodies come in with head trauma, the blow is descending or at a bit of an angle. That’s the natural swing at somebody’s head. This is pretty much straight across. Makes sense if you were a baseball. Might even make sense if the wound were to the thorax.”