City Problems

by Steve Goble

My bottle of bourbon had vanished from the table.

  Damn it, Linda. Always trying to fix me.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Wednesday, 8 a.m.

  “DUDE, WE GOTTA talk.”

  “Do. Not. Keep. Calling. Me. About. This. Shit.”

  “Fuck you, dude. It was you got us into this mess. I don’t need fucking cops asking me shit, OK?”

  “Lady cop is one hot piece.”

  “Jesus, yeah, she is hot. She is also a fucking cop! Got it? What the fuck we gonna do?”

  “We are gonna calm the fuck down, quit making a bunch of phone calls because goddamn it they might be checking that shit, OK? And we are gonna calm the fuck down and realize they ain’t got shit, and they ain’t gonna get shit. OK?”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You fucking sure?”

  “Yeah. They got nothing.”

  “OK. You sure?”

  “Jesus.”

  “OK.”

  “Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Wednesday, 8:05 a.m.

  “HEY, ED! YOU doing alright?”

  Even through the shitty phone speaker, I could hear the concern in Detective Tom Atkinson’s voice. One of these days, I was going to have to call my old colleague when things were going good, just to convince both of us that things sometimes were good.

  “Yeah, doing OK, I guess. Just wanted to check something.”

  “Sure, man. What?”

  “Professor Donald Graser.”

  “Oh, fuck, Ed.”

  “Professor Donald Graser. Is he still in prison, or did some fucking parole board or psychiatrist let him out?” Graser was not really a professor. He was a self-taught philosopher, able to quote pretty much any religious text you had ever heard of. He liked to parse words, flay ideas, skin concepts and peer into what he called ultimate truth. He was nuttier than a PayDay bar.

  He was the son of a bitch who had nailed Briana Marston to his fucking wall, and then later tried to convince us it didn’t matter because what the hell did morality even mean, really? We were all just fucking descendants of goddamned bacteria.

  “Ed, the professor ain’t ever getting out. Trust me.”

  “You know that for sure?”

  “Absolutely. And so do you, damn it. He hasn’t been in long enough to even have a parole hearing yet, and the judge denied three attempts to move him to a psychiatric facility. He is in the general population, where I hope he is forced to bend over daily.”

  “OK.”

  “Why are you worried about him, Ed?”

  I turned onto the highway. “I got a case here. Missing girl. Reminded me of Bree, I guess.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Yeah, it is tough, I bet. I think about that case, too, though I try not to. Very ugly, sticks with you. But believe me, the professor ain’t your perp on this new thing of yours, whatever it is. Seriously.”

  “Yeah, I know. I just … You know?”

  “I know. Listen, I gotta run. We are hitting a gang today, grabbing a guy who killed a nun. Wish you were here to have my back, Ed. I always liked working with you.”

  “Glad I’m not there, Tom. Good talking to you. Be careful, man.”

  “You know it.”

  “Bye.”

  After the call, my head was boiling with memories.

  Briana Marston had been very much like Megan Beemer. Young, smart, pretty, blonde. All the school clubs, dated the jocks, starred in the school musical.

  Her case, we all thought, involved just another teen who had skipped away with a boyfriend because her parents thought her too young to be so serious about a guy. We had her poster on the dingy bulletin board in the squad room, along with a couple dozen others. We all looked at those, tried to memorize names and faces, carried info with us. Uniforms asked around, kept eyes open, and compared every young girl they ran into hooking or running drugs or getting locked out of a car to the faces on the wall and in their computers.

  But most of us figured this girl had just run off with a guy, even though she had recently broken up with her beau. The boyfriend was not a suspect. He was still hanging out at home every night, with his nose glued to an iPad. We all figured maybe the girl had a new boyfriend, one she hadn’t talked about. Friends said there had been a college boy who showed interest, but they had not met him and could not remember his name and weren’t sure Bree was into him anyway.

  She didn’t seem the type to go all drama queen and run out, to end up selling herself just to get by, or to get high. And there had been no sign of her being taken by force. She had so many clothes in her closet, her parents could not honestly say whether she had packed and left or not. No favorites were missing, though.

  So we figured she would call home, or turn up on the beat somewhere, and in the meantime we detectives went on investigating our confirmed homicides and drug rings. “We’re doing all we can,” we assured Bree’s parents, and we thought we were.

  We should have known better.

  When we found Briana Marston, she was nailed to a wall. Crucified. Spikes through her palms, through her ankles, blood running down to the squeaky floor and flies flitting across her frozen face. Cabalistic bullshit scrawled all over the walls, in her blood. Patrolmen had gone there to investigate a report of screaming, then called us when they found her.

  I left New York that night, wondering if any of the other faces on the dingy bulletin board would be found hanging on a goddamned wall somewhere. Wondering if I could have done more. Wondering if I had put some real time into that case if Bree would still be alive.

  And knowing that I never wanted to see anything like that again.

  My boss had tried to talk me out of quitting, but I was already kind of drunk when I called him from somewhere on the road back to Ohio where I had never seen any nightmarish shit like that. I remember him asking me, “How we gonna save any of them, Ed, if the good guys get sick to their stomachs and run away?” I felt shame, because what he said made sense, but not as much sense as never seeing that again.

  That’s how I ended up in Ohio and in therapy. I was angry at the world because parts of it were horrible and I couldn’t fix it all, the counselor said. I was blaming myself for things that were not my fault. I needed to forgive myself for not having time and ability to investigate every case with my full time and devotion, for trying to decide which cases to pursue diligently and which to put on the back burner. And I needed to forgive myself for sometimes being wrong.

  It took a lot to bring me around. It took Linda. It took therapy. It took pills. It took meditation. It took time. But I got a job, a place to live, and, eventually, my old guitar from my dad’s place. I had passed through. I even made it through the professor’s trial and my own testimony. That surprised me, but I did it.

  It had not been easy, either. I was well aware of the stares from the guys who had tracked the bastard down and brought him in while I was off somewhere in farm country. But I endured that, and made it through.

  And now there was another pretty missing girl, and all that anger was boiling inside me again. Fears were creeping out of the shadowy closets where I’d carefully hidden them.

  My call to Tom had been a ridiculous move, of course. I knew the bastard professor was in prison. I knew he was not connected to this Beemer case. I knew it, intellectually. But I had called Tom anyway. Why?

  Fuck if I know.

  Maybe it was the nightmares. I had woken up hearing the son of a bitch professor laughing while us big-time NYPD detectives prioritized cases, finding reason after reason after reason to chase this homicide or that narcotics ring, all the while pushing Bree Marston’s case into the background. That’s what I heard in my dreams, anyway. I won’t tell you what I saw.

  I had taken my time working up a brave face before climbing out of bed and hugging Linda. I don’t know why I bother hiding my worries from her, because she always unearths them anyway, but I do.

  And the
n I had bucked myself up, gotten dressed, and headed to work. Yay me.

  Next, of course, I had called an old friend about a case that was closed, and had nothing to do with anything I was working on, just because I needed to confirm what I already knew in order to shut down a fear I knew was not real.

  I grabbed a disc at random and shoved it into the player.

  Willie Nelson started singing “Crazy.”

  I shut it off, and laughed and cried all the way to work.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Wednesday, 8:17 a.m.

  AFTER A LONG restroom stop that involved much splashing of cold water onto my cold face, I headed toward the squad room. Sheriff Daltry waved me into his office. His stony glare said I wasn’t going to like this.

  Inside the spartan room, where the only personal touch was a painting of a very white Jesus next to a portrait of Ronald Reagan on the wall behind a desk uncluttered by paperwork, the sheriff sat. He indicated I should sit, too. I did.

  “You feeling OK, Ed?”

  “A might sick, honestly, but I will get through the day.”

  He stared at me a while, as if he was pondering a mediocre diner dish and trying to decide whether to send it back or just go ahead and eat it. Eventually, he scratched his head.

  “Well, you look like shit. You are a good detective, Ed. You are. But I gotta tell you, showing up for work with beer on your breath ain’t good for anything.”

  “I was off duty, John, you know that. I got called in, remember?”

  “Yeah, I remember.” He leaned forward, locking his fingers together and laying them on the desk in a manner of grave concern. “We call detectives in on their days off a lot. Comes with the job. I hear you were at Tuck’s last night, drinking again.”

  “Jesus, Sheriff. It’s my time, right?”

  “Yeah, but it’s my headache,” he said, sharply. “And you look like hell today. I gotta run for reelection, Ed. That won’t be easy if some damn reporter or some damn liberal Democrat smells beer on your breath at a crime scene. What if fucking Farkas walked in here and smelled a brewery on your breath? That shit would be on the front page.”

  “I get it. You’re a man of the people.”

  “Damnit, Ed, just slow down, OK? And buy some goddamn breath mints.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  Daltry stared at the ceiling for a second, an indicator that he was switching topics. “Anything on that missing girl from Columbus?”

  “Not really. Some kids from here were at the party where she was seen last, but that’s about as thick a thread as we’ve got. Shelly is back in Columbus, and I’m going to poke around more here, but all we really have so far is a bunch of kids who don’t much like talking to cops.”

  “I hope she turns up safe and sound after a few days of cuddling up with a handsome boy somewhere,” he said.

  “Me, too.” I stepped out and headed to the detectives’ office.

  I fired up my computer, and the email told me Daltry had signed off on my report concerning the gay-bashing skinny guy at Tuck’s. Bob Van Heusen. Guitar picker out of Columbus. The same Columbus where Megan Beemer was last seen at a warehouse, listening to a rock band. I suddenly found myself wondering why a guy like Bob Van Heusen was drinking beer in a Jodyville bar on a weekday afternoon, and decided my trip to Chalmers High School would have to wait.

  I dialed the jail. Oscar answered. Oscar smells bad, usually, but you can’t tell over the phone, so what the hell.

  “Hey, Oscar. This is Runyon. We booked a guy named Van Heusen yesterday, after a fracas in Jodyville. He still in the pokey, or did he make bail?”

  “We still got him.”

  “Good. If a lawyer comes to spring him, stall. If another jurisdiction wants to extradite him, stall. I want him in the interrogation room in an hour, OK?”

  “Yes, sir, we’ll get him there. And his lawyer ought to be here before long. She called yesterday.”

  “Thanks, Oscar.”

  Next, I called Trumpower. “That skinny guitar picker had a motorcycle, right?”

  “Did you read my report?”

  “Not yet.”

  Trumpower sighed, loudly and dramatically. “Detectives. Too busy spending their big paychecks to read my hard work and sterling prose. Yes, he had a motorcycle. We impounded it, pending his release on bail by some goddamned do-gooder judge.”

  “Great. Case number is in your report?”

  “Of course it is, overpaid detective-type person.”

  “Thanks, Trump.”

  “Don’t call me Trump.”

  “Sorry. Habit.”

  “Fuck that guy.”

  “Amen. Irwin, then. Anybody comes after that vehicle, it’s evidence.”

  “Understood.”

  I looked up Trumpower’s report, got the case number, and called the impound lot to make sure that cycle went nowhere without my say-so. Then I called the lab at Ambletown PD, and told them to go over Van Heusen’s bike with every goddamn bit of science they could muster. They asked if I had a search warrant to do that, and I told them I would have one within minutes. I called Judge Brennan, who does not fuck around, and he said the warrant would be on my desk before I could take a dump.

  It was delivered within ten minutes. I actually did take a dump in the meantime.

  My phone rang before I got away. “Detective Runyon,” I said.

  “You were at my home yesterday, talking to my boy?”

  “Can you tell me who you are, ma’am? I interviewed a lot of people yesterday.”

  She sighed. “I am Kim Norris, and you talked to my son at my home yesterday, him and his friends.”

  “Yes, I did. I talked to Buzz and his friends about a party they were at, where a girl disappeared. Did he mention anything to you about a girl from Columbus?”

  “Is he in trouble?”

  “We’re just trying to find a missing girl,” I said. “We hoped the boys would remember seeing or hearing something that would help us do that.”

  “He’s not in trouble? Doing pot or … or … heroin, my God, he’s not doing heroin?”

  “We have no reason to suspect anything like that.”

  “Oh, God, thank God.” I could almost hear her shaking through the phone line.

  “He’s not—”

  “I work two jobs, waitressing,” she said.

  “I know, Ms. Norris. It happens a lot, but—”

  “I’m never around,” she said, sobbing. “And cops come out there, and it’s just telling them to quiet the music down, but you are a detective and that’s never happened before.”

  “Right, but we were not there because of any—”

  “Really? No drugs? Nothing like that?”

  I sighed. “You should know the boys drink beer when they practice.”

  “But no drugs?”

  “No. No drugs.”

  “Thank God.”

  “Ms. Norris, did Buzz or his buddies say—”

  She hung up on me.

  I grabbed a file folder and headed to the jail. It was connected to the sheriff’s office by a narrow, sterile corridor. The jail guys had my man in the interrogation room waiting for me.

  I had to wait twenty minutes because Van Heusen had invoked his right to have an attorney present. I scanned the guy’s priors. Lots of fights, a few pot busts, a DUI. Nothing worse.

  Trumpower and Daltry were in the viewing room, watching Van Heusen through the one-way. I joined them and we made small talk while awaiting the attorney.

  “Skinny, ain’t he?” Trumpower shook his head. “Needs a fucking hamburger.”

  “Ugly, too,” Daltry added.

  A phone buzzed, and I stepped out into the corridor to meet the lawyer. The woman who showed up to represent Van Heusen was familiar to me, a tall and bespectacled black brunette named Gretchen Pearson who did a lot of public defender work. I filled her in on why I wanted to talk to the client she had not met yet, she asked me a few questions about why we arrested him in the fi
rst place, and then she went in to consult with him.

  “Tell your buddies in the viewing room to turn off the fucking speakers and don’t watch us,” she said.

  “Of course,” I said, and then I did that. Trump, I mean Irwin, and the sheriff complied.

  A few moments later, Pearson opened the door and I walked in.

  Van Heusen sat at the coffee-stained table and glared at me as if to say he wished he’d stuck his damn knife in my neck and twisted it. I gave him a smile that said if he’d tried that, I’d have shot him in the head. I think we understood each other.

  The lawyer sat next to Van Heusen, ready to take notes and prepared to intervene if I asked this guy anything she did not like.

  I dropped the photo of Megan Beemer on the table without saying a word. I wanted to gauge his reaction. He responded to it the way I respond to TV commercials. He just sort of blanked it out.

  “Do you recognize her?”

  He glanced down at the picture. “No. Why?”

  He was no amateur at interrogation. I leaned forward. “She vanished at a party in Columbus. We have reason to believe she came up to Mifflin County. You’re from Columbus. You came here to Mifflin County.”

  “I didn’t bring no teenybopper with me.”

  I stared at him.

  “I mean it. I came here alone.” He scratched his left arm. A rat was tattooed there. It was jerking off. I don’t know why.

  “Why did you come here?”

  He glanced at Gretchen Pearson. She nodded at him.

  “Indian summer and I had a Harley and a day off,” he said. “It’s pretty around here. All pasteurized.”

  “All what?”

  “Pasteurized. Lots of trees and nature and that kind of shit.”

  “You mean pastoral.”

  “That sounds like church, but whatever.” He scratched his nose. A scab fell off.

  “So you were just out joyriding? Soaking up the countryside?”

  He ran a finger across his mustache. The cologne smell had washed off. Now he smelled like sweat and urine. I wasn’t sure that was actually worse than the cologne. “Yeah. I work weekends, mostly, and I have my fun through the weekdays.”

  “What do you do?”