Public Murders

by Bill Granger

  The newspapers hounded them all about Bonni Brighton with a ferocity that exceeded that following the murders of Maj Kirsten and Christina Kalinski. Chicago Today, an afternoon paper, began to print a serialization of Bonni Brighton’s unfinished autobiography.

  Frank Bremenhoffer broke the camera of one photographer who came to interview him, and after that the reporters mostly left him alone. Besides, he was considered too dull to make good copy.

  The police superintendent and the state’s attorney questioned Donovan closely every time they held a session, but there was nothing to say and nothing left undone.

  The case was dragging and they all knew it. And each day that passed made it more difficult to solve. After a while even the newspapers seemed to grow tired of it. Which was fine with Jack Donovan and the rest of them.

  Karen Kovac resumed her decoy role but nothing came of it, and she was eventually transferred back to the patrol division. They gave her a party on her last night on homicide and Terry Flynn kissed her. He explained the next day that he had been drunk and hadn’t intended anything by the kiss, but Sid Margolies and Matt Schmidt razzed him about it all the same.

  Karen Kovac applied for duty on homicide.

  Leonard Ranallo was against the request and told the chief of detectives his opinion of women in homicide.

  Matt Schmidt quietly told the chief of detectives that Karen Kovac was a damned good investigator and that if they could get a woman in his squad, he’d be very happy. Besides murders, the homicide division handled rapes, and he thought Karen Kovac would be invaluable in this area.

  When Leonard Ranallo went on vacation in August, Karen Kovac was transferred back to homicide, to Matt Schmidt’s squad.

  19

  The summer dragged on into the dog days of August and there was no break in the case or in the oppressive heat or in the intolerable state of Jack Donovan’s personal life.

  They still had not heard from Rita.

  Kathleen had returned to the South Side after living two weeks with her father in his small North Side apartment. She said she did not want to leave him, but he pointed out that she never saw her friends and his neighborhood was not as family oriented as it had been. He worried about her.

  Even so, Donovan knew his daughter was not happy living back in her grandfather’s house.

  He would discuss it with Lily, but the discussions never went very far; Lily did not want to talk about Donovan’s family or families in general.

  “The kids are all right,” she’d soothe him. And he let himself be soothed.

  And every day passed without a word from Rita. When the telephone rang, he thought it might be her. But it never was. He dreamed about her one night. She had come back home and they were all living in the first apartment they had rented, a long time ago. It was a stupid dream and it didn’t go anywhere but when he awoke, he remembered the dream with regret that he was not still asleep. And that the dream could not be true.

  One afternoon he sat in his old office in the Criminal Courts building and talked to Mario DeVito about his situation.

  As usual he had taken a seat on the windowsill; Mario DeVito, who was using the office, sat on the couch with his feet up on a straight chair.

  Mario had taken over the day-to-day running of the criminal division while Donovan was attached to the special murder investigation.

  “I want to talk to you about Rita and the kids,” said Jack Donovan. “I can’t let the thing go on much longer.”

  Mario did not look sympathetic. “Why not? You’ve let it drag on for the last seven years.”

  “Rita hasn’t been gone for the last seven years. My father-in-law is eighty years old. He can’t take care of the kids.”

  “So?”

  “So I got to figure out what to do.”

  “What do you think you should do?”

  Donovan looked up. “Are you leading me?”

  “You brought it up, Jack.”

  “I know what to do but I’ve lived alone for seven years. I’m in no shape to take on two teenage kids. And the boy hates me.”

  “Who’s in shape to take on teenage kids? And boys always hate their fathers. Look at me. My Joey is fourteen. You know what he wants to be like when he grows up? You think he wants to be like his hardworking old man who goes out every day and catches the bad guys? No. He wants to be like his cousin, Sam Tosca. Tosca the hood. He wants to be a hood. Sam Tosca’s got money, Sam’s got good clothes, he drives an El Dorado. So I say, ‘You show Sam respect when we gotta go to a wedding or something, because he’s family. But you tell me you wanta be like Sam, I’ll break your back.’ ”

  “That’s one approach, Mario.”

  “Hey, Jack. You don’t know when your wife’s gonna turn up again. You got those kids living out there with your father-in-law because you want them outta your sight. You just wanna send them money now and then and go out to visit once in a while, say, ‘Hiya kids. It’s Dad. Long time no see.’ Well, fuck it. You know you gotta do the right thing.”

  “But Mario, I’ve been living alone for nearly seven years.”

  “So? I lived alone six years before I got married. So what? People do tend to be single before they’re married.”

  Mario seemed impatient with the discussion. Or with Jack Donovan.

  “How’s the murder case? When you coming back? This job of yours is work, man. I don’t give a shit for it. I want to get back to trial.”

  “You wanna get some food? I haven’t been over to La Fontanella in weeks.”

  “No. I’ve got to go back downtown.” Donovan stared at Mario’s shoes on the chair. They were scuffed.

  “I can’t babysit every day,” he said at last. “I don’t think Kathleen would be the problem. She’s really terrific. She was cleaning up the house, shopping, got me supper. Very independent.” He said this somewhat proudly. “But it’s August. What do we do about school? Do I move back to the South Side?”

  “It ain’t so bad,” said Mario DeVito. He had known Donovan for a long time and, from time to time, they had depended on each other. He knew all about Rita and the kids and the problems. “Lotta people live on the South Side. Not everyone moved to the fuckin’ North Side.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Jack, this is bullshit and you know it. I’m gonna take the opportunity to tell you right now what the hell’s wrong, and wrong with you.”

  “I appreciate it,” said Donovan. “I ask for advice, I’m getting the whole Ann Landers treatment.”

  “Hey, get fucked, buddy,” said DeVito. He got up from the sofa, and went to the desk, and banged his fist on it. He stared at Donovan framed in the tall window. “Your fuckin’ trouble is you’re chicken. And you’re chickenshit, while I’m at it.”

  He paused for breath. His face was red. “You wanna be a burned-out case, that’s okay. You wanna just work and go home and get drunk or get laid with that bull-dyke friend of yours, okay.”

  “Nobody asked you to talk about—”

  “Shut your fuckin’ mouth. You asked me. I don’t say nothing to you and you came here and you asked me. So I’m tellin’ you. You wanna be a private asshole, that’s nobody’s business but your own. You wanna go down to the South Side now and then and see Kathleen and do her that big fucking favor of your company, okay. But who the suffering fuck do you really think you are, Jesus H. Christ? You’re just another bum like me and you got a crazy wife, which is nobody’s fault, and you got two kids and everything is fucked up. Look at me. What am I? Is this the Sermon on the fuckin’ Mount?”

  Mario decided to hit the desktop again and did.

  “You think life is neat? You think you’re a submarine with watertight compartments? You put Rita here and the kids here and O’Connor here and Mario here and Lily here and you move from one to another like a zombie.”

  Mario threw up his hands. “So Rita ran away. Again. So forget it. No, don’t forget it. Let it hurt you because it should. You loved Rita and you married her,
so it should hurt you that she ran away. But cut the phony guilt trip. You figure you drove her crazy in the first place when you were a cop and she was trying to bang out kids every year like they were cookies. You know something? Maybe you did drive her fuckin’ crazy. And maybe she just doesn’t get enough salt in her diet. Who the fuck knows about anything?”

  “You got to know,” said Donovan.

  “No. You got to keep trying to know. You didn’t wanna be a cop no more because you couldn’t get on top of it, because you couldn’t understand what the hell was really going on. So, you became a lawyer and you still don’t understand what’s going on. None of us do. Not a damned soul on the whole fuckin’ planet understands what the hell is going on, and those who do are like Frank Bremenhoffer. They got it figured and they’re crazy.”

  “Or like Rita.”

  “No. Rita doesn’t know either,” Mario said in a quieter voice.

  “So what do I do, Dago?”

  Mario, flushed, smiled. “You stop calling me names for one thing. And you gotta do the right thing. You know that.”

  “No.”

  “Yes, asshole. You know what the right thing is. You know you gotta get those kids and bring them up and make them eat their fuckin’ spinach and when Rita comes home, you gotta help her just like you did the last time.”

  Donovan smiled. “Fuckin’ spinach?”

  “Sure. It makes your dick hard.”

  Donovan got up from the sill. “I don’t remember you getting so mad before.”

  “I was waiting until you really needed it. I figured you needed it now.”

  “Dago bastard,” said Donovan.

  “Yeah.” Mario patted his stomach. “Let’s get the fuck outta this joint and get some lunch.”

  When Jack Donovan went home that night, he told Lily what he was going to do.

  She said it was his funeral.

  20

  Frank Bremenhoffer did not vary his routine until September 1, when Sid Margolies announced that the suspect was going on vacation.

  “Where?”

  “Northern Wisconsin. Two weeks in a cabin near a place called Minocqua is the way I got it,” said Margolies. He looked at his notebook and then closed it with a snap. None of them would think of asking Margolies how he got his information.

  It was their weekly meeting at Area One offices. Jack Donovan, who was seated on Terry Flynn’s desktop, scratched his nose.

  Enthusiasm for the murder investigation had waned among the politicians involved. The stories about the three murders had dropped from the newspapers and media notice. Halligan and the police superintendent were both on vacation, and the weekly report Donovan was required to make to them had quietly been dropped. Everyone was losing interest, and now Frank Bremenhoffer was going on vacation.

  A second psychological profile prepared by their man from the University of Chicago stated that it was quite possible that the killer would suddenly commit several murders and then return to a quiescent state and never kill again. On the other hand he might strike again very soon.

  “Sid. I want you to keep on him.”

  “I don’t like Wisconsin.”

  Everyone was startled by this, even Matt Schmidt. No one had ever heard Sid Margolies express resentment over an assignment.

  “Why?” asked Schmidt.

  “Flies. Big as horses. This guy is going up by Canada. That’s where all the flies come from.”

  “They come from the tropics,” said Flynn.

  “You don’t know a damned thing about flies,” said Sid Margolies. “They breed in those lakes up north, and they come down here. Only they’re much bigger up there.”

  “Not in August,” said Matt Schmidt.

  “It’s September,” said Sid. “I was there in June once. They ate me alive. Fifteen years ago and I never went back. I was a fly’s smorgasbord.”

  “There aren’t any flies now,” said Donovan. “You’re the best shadow we got. You’ll like it.”

  Margolies shrugged back into character. “Okay. I’ll tell my wife. She won’t like it. But it’ll be okay.”

  “You’ll get per diem,” said Schmidt.

  “Sure. It’ll be okay. I hope you’re right about the flies. They ate me alive last time.”

  Jack Donovan moved on September 2.

  The apartment was on the Northwest Side, not far from Irving Park Road and Pulaski.

  Donovan did not like the neighborhood, which was largely Polish and German and was strongly family centered. But the apartment, large and light, provided separate bedrooms for Kathleen and Brian.

  The boy seemed resentful. In the end Donovan had tried to have a long talk with him, but it did not work. He moved in with his father reluctantly.

  All the O’Connors were angry, and Arthur O’Connor said that now he would be all alone in the world.

  They still had no word from Rita. The first time she had run away, she had disappeared for a year. It was nearly two months now.

  There was a certain heaviness of spirit in all of them. Even Kathleen, who seemed best able to adapt, was subdued the first night in the new apartment.

  They sat around the new kitchen table and ate hamburgers that Jack purchased from the McDonald’s down the street.

  “This isn’t the easiest thing for any of us,” Donovan said that night. He had a can of beer. He had given Brian a can of beer as well. The little gesture toward comradeship with his son had been taken as a matter of course. Donovan looked at Brian. He was as tall as his father, but he looked like Rita. There was a darker cast to him, and his eyes were deep.

  “No, it isn’t,” said Brian Donovan.

  “It’ll be all right,” said Kathleen.

  “Brian, this has to be done,” Donovan said.

  “No, it doesn’t. I could have stayed with my grandfather. That’s where my pals are.”

  “Well, sometimes you got to make new pals.”

  “Because you want to live on the North Side, and you don’t want us to stay where we lived.”

  “Yes,” said Jack Donovan.

  Kathleen didn’t say anything. She bit into her Big Mac.

  “I just think it stinks.”

  “So you’ve said,” said Jack.

  It went on like that for the first few weeks. He hired a housekeeper recommended by Karen Kovac’s housekeeper. Her name was Mrs. Woljczek. One day Brian said something unkind to her. She smacked him in the face.

  Mrs. Woljczek prepared dinner; for the first two weeks Jack Donovan made it a point to go home to dinner every night. Brian was usually late. Once, on a Saturday, he went back down to the South Side on the bus and didn’t come home until four in the morning. He was high and smelled of beer.

  After two weeks in Wisconsin, Frank Bremenhoffer and his wife, Ulla, came back to the city.

  Sid Margolies filed a long report. There had not been any flies.

  Frank Bremenhoffer ran two miles every morning and swam vigorously in the small cold lake near the cottage. He rarely spoke to his wife. The temperature of the lake was forty-nine degrees.

  “How do you know?” Terry Flynn had to ask.

  “It was so cold when I went in that I was curious, so I bought a thermometer from the hardware store. I took sample readings in shore, out two hundred yards, and in the middle of the lake. That’s the average. I have it broken down if you want.”

  They declined.

  Margolies reported that Bremenhoffer went fishing in the late mornings and did not have much luck. He played cards in the afternoon with the man who owned the resort or read books. He drank beer in the Bowery, a bar on Highway 51 in Woodruff, or at the cabin. They had rented a new Ford for the two-week vacation trip. It was blue in color and had 4,218 miles on the odometer at the end of the trip.

  “Are you interested in buying it?” asked Flynn sarcastically.

  “No,” said Sid Margolies.

  Margolies filed for his expenses later in the week and because he was very meticulous and carried a rece
ipt for every expense—including the thermometer—he did not have any trouble with the accounting section. Which amazed everyone else.

  The case had taken on a kind of torpor, and while the special investigation existed in theory and on paper, it was beginning to disintegrate. Karen Kovac started classes in police school to fill her in on the areas of evidence and investigation where she was lacking; she was considered a curiosity at the police school because it quickly became known that she had transferred to homicide.

  Kathleen Donovan started classes as a freshman at Maria High School, a Catholic girl’s school on the Northwest Side. Suddenly she began to look very grown-up, and the sudden change in her makeup and demeanor startled and annoyed Jack Donovan. Until Karen Kovac told him it was very normal.

  Kathleen said she liked school.

  Brian did not. He went to the public school nearby after St. Ignatius High School refused to accept him as a transfer student. His grades were too low.

  Donovan, after a flurry of activity in his private life, resumed his old depression. The case depressed him and so did his son. He did not know what to do with the investigation and he did not know what to do about Brian. He tried threatening him one night when the boy came home from a party, obviously drunk. The threats only drove Brian further into his shell.

  Because of these things, Donovan almost accepted the offer when Lee Horowitz said he could drop the murder investigation and go back to his old duties at the Criminal Courts.

  Instead he was amazed to find himself lying to Horowitz.

  “I think we’re getting onto something,” he said. “We need a little more time.” They sat in Lee Horowitz’s large office on the fifth floor of the Civic Center. Lee sat behind his large oiled-walnut desk. It was September 21, the first cold day. The back of the breathless summer had been broken.

  “Getting, scmetting,” said Horowitz. “You know as well as I do that anything this old gets moldy. It’s been three months… no, four months… since What’s-her-name was killed. The first one.”