Kill Them All (Drexel Pierce Book 2)

by Patrick Kanouse

  KILL THEM ALL

  For Gina, who is my hero and the center of my universe.

  To my brother, Doug. You’ll never know how much I needed those games of Battlefield and Ghost Recon. Thank you.

  Get a Free Book and Short Story

  See the details at the end of Kill Them All, after “Did You Like This?”

  Chapter 1

  April 20, 2016

  Detective Sergeant Drexel Pierce split the blinds with his fingers and looked down onto Congress Parkway. The late morning traffic was heavy with commuters pouring into the Loop, driving east into a blinding sun a quarter way up the sky. Behind him the handcuff chain rattled against the table. He turned to face Lester Hawkins, who crouched halfway between sitting and standing. Dark gray dominated Lester’s cumbrous hair and full beard. A long-ago broken nose curved left. He wore torn, oversized jeans and a Nike T-shirt with a University of Chicago sweatshirt over that. He smelled—if one were charitable—rank. A combination of body odor, onions, gasoline, and old, wet cardboard. Both men wanted out of the makeshift interview room in the Dearborn station, a putative temporary location while the Chicago PD renovated the Central Division’s Wentworth station. Drexel to escape the smell. Lester to avoid being questioned by the police and return to the streets that were his home.

  “Sit down.” Drexel twisted his lower lip, sighed, and walked back to the desk in the middle of the bland, off-white room.

  Lester looked at him and sat down, shaking his head the entire time.

  “Why are you here?” asked Drexel.

  Lester stopped shaking his head and stared at the desk.

  “Come on, man. I need to hear your story.” Drexel dropped his head and looked at Lester, but the man refused to return the look. Drexel opened the gray folder next to him, which contained a printed copy of Lester’s rap sheet and the arresting officer’s report. He skimmed the sheet, which was filled with minor arrests for suspended licenses, shoplifting, and vagrancy. Nothing violent, but no saint either. He could not blame the man for pilfering necessities here and there. Patrol officers Matt Bergenson and Ayeesha Jenkins had picked up Lester as part of Drexel’s investigation into the murder of James Praxton, street name Kid Dunkadelic, of the Vice Lords. The detective had sought patrol’s help in stopping and talking to any vagrants in the area of Eighteenth and Ridgeway because an anonymous tip had suggested a number of homeless may have been in the area at the time of the shooting. Bergenson and Jenkins had stopped by a shelter, and as they asked questions, Lester ran. They had caught him and brought him here.

  Drexel closed the folder and slid it to his right. “Look, can I get you a coffee, tea, or water? Pop?”

  Lester nodded.

  “Which?”

  “Coffee.” The word cracked as if it were the first word he had spoken all morning, which it may have been.

  Drexel stood up and started out the door.

  Lester raised his hand and showed two fingers with long, dirty fingernails. “With sugar and cream.”

  “Sure thing.”

  “Please.”

  Drexel nodded and closed the door behind him. The detectives of Central Division occupied half of the third floor. All but the captain had desks in the open, which they shared with opposite-shift detectives. Along the walls, stacks of poor boys—accordion file folders with lids and string tie-downs—rose to nearly the ceiling, a constant reminder of the active or soon to be cold cases the homicide division worked. Natalie Connor sat at her desk and looked up at him before returning to her computer screen, a miniature version of it reflected in her rectangular-framed glasses. He walked over to his desk and sat down and breathed in the—by comparison—fresh air of the station. He looked to his right and into the face of James Praxton staring out at him from a photo on the whiteboard. It was a photo his mother had given Drexel, asking him to find the killer of the twelve-year-old boy wearing a Superman shirt and not the seventeen-year-old gangster. The edge where the mother had gripped the photo as she handed it to Drexel was bent. So much had gone wrong in the past five years of her son’s life, not the least of which was the violent end.

  Praxton as he exited an alley had been gunned down from a passing car. Four bullets to the chest and thigh. He died in the hospital two days later, never having recovered consciousness but with his mother and sister by his side. After looking at the photo of the younger Praxton beside the crime scene photos showing pools of blood on the street, evidence markers, and a close up of the lone shell casing, Drexel walked to the kitchenette, grabbed a Styrofoam cup and filled it with coffee. He added a packet of sugar and a packet of creamer. He then filled a mug with the Chicago PD logo on it and added three sugars to it.

  Drexel walked back to the interview room, uncuffed Lester, and sat across from him. He set the cup on the table in front of Lester, who grabbed it and held it in both hands. “You don’t understand.”

  “Try me.”

  “All I seen was the car. That’s it.”

  Drexel leaned over the desk. He lifted the mug and inhaled the smell. “And that could be crucial to finding the person who shot my victim. What make of car?”

  “Older model. I don’t know what kind.”

  “Older how? Nineties?”

  “Older.”

  “Eighties? Seventies?”

  “Seventies, I think.”

  And so the questioning continued with Lester offering brief, vague answers that forced Drexel to ask even more directed questions. He pulled out of Lester that the vehicle had been a four-door, American car from the seventies. Dark blue probably. The hubcaps were chrome spokes with a gold center. Lester said he heard a car pull up. He thought the victim was on the phone because he heard him talking to someone. This corresponded to Praxton’s call logs, which revealed Praxton was talking to his girlfriend, Angela Farner, at the time of the shooting. Lester heard a car roll by, several shots—he did not know if there were six or ten or more—and then the car pulling away, but not fast. The CSIs had estimated at least a dozen shots because they had recovered that many bullets from the victim’s body, sidewalk, building facade, and trees. The killer or killers had emptied a clip into the kid. He had really wanted him dead.

  Drexel gave Lester another coffee and a Snickers before escorting him out of the station, where he gave him ten dollars and told him to be safe. He watched Lester turn the corner at Congress and disappear out of sight.

  * * *

  Drexel sat at his desk and began typing out his report of the Lester interview. The details he had been able to provide did not assist the case. The vehicle description was too vague despite some minutiae. Another witness a block down from the crime scene had described a mid-eighties Lincoln Town Car driving by. Not a surprising contradiction given it was eyewitness testimony and the shooting took place at night. Drexel rubbed his two-day growth of beard and looked back at Praxton’s photo. He shook his head clear and looked back at the in-progress report. The Lincoln Town Car had already been submitted to the Gang Unit for evaluation. He submitted what he had for the car Lester described, as well. Perhaps he would get lucky and the Gang Unit would have some description of a car by a rival gang, which was Drexel’s leading theory at the moment: Praxton was the victim in a fight between the Vice Lords and any number of their rivals.

  Natalie interrupted the writing, recommending they grab lunch. His stomach growled at the thought, so they spent an hour at Fat Dave’s Tavern, a half-block from the station. A favorite of the Homicide Unit, Drexel did not often eat there, preferring the sushi at Osaka Express or Charlie’s, a sandwich shop that had
somehow evaded the knowledge of the unit. Not that Fat Dave’s food was not good, for it was. Instead of the normal Chicago dog, he went for the Italian beef. While they waited for their food, the waiter set their drinks—iced tea for Drexel and water with a lime for Natalie—on coasters.

  Natalie played with the edges of the coaster and fidgeted with her dark brown hair, shoving it behind her ear. Not too long after sitting down, Drexel realized that she wanted to talk about something, so he let her build up to whatever she wanted to discuss. She was the most junior homicide detective in Central Division, and he got along with her, unlike his more testy relationship with Martin Doggett, the unofficial hazer of the department, who had tormented Drexel years ago with pointless errands. Natalie had taken the hazing much more in stride. Doggett had walked over so often demanding a quarter, she had finally filled up an empty mug with them and kept it in her desk.

  Eventually, she spoke, and it turned out she wanted his advice on transferring out of homicide. She and her husband were divorcing, and the hours of being a homicide detective in Chicago did not conform well to the needs of her eight-year-old son. Drexel did not have much to say to her other than that Captain Victor Macleod, Natalie’s and Drexel’s boss, would be supportive and assist her. But he cautioned her that getting back into the unit may not be so easy. She frowned and nodded.

  Back at the station, he sat down at his desk and looked at the digital frame, which he stored overnight in the bottom right drawer. Photos of his wife, Zora—murdered now two and a half years ago—flicked by, changing every minute. He knew these photos well. Both of them at Grant Park. A selfie on the Navy Pier Ferris wheel, nighttime Lake Michigan dotted with lighted boats behind them. At a Cubs game wearing her white ball cap. He looked at the Sammy Sosa-autographed baseball in its plastic cube and hoped to get to Wrigley for a game soon. A new manager and some trades in the off season gave him—and others—hope for this season, which the Cubs would assuredly dash in typical fashion.

  Over lunch, mail had been dropped off at his desk, which contained several department memos, including an invitation to try out for the police department’s baseball club. A large manila envelope, ten by thirteen, addressed just to homicide, but with no return address, sat under the memos. Packing tape secured the seal along with the double-prong metal clasp.

  Doggett slapped him on the back as he walked toward the elevators. “Have at it, my boy. I told them to drop that on your desk, sucker.” Despite his large frame, the lieutenant walked fast, often sending loose paper fluttering off desks in his wake, and he was around the corner jabbing the elevator down button before Drexel could respond.

  He held the envelope. Light and pristine. “Do Not Bend” was stamped in red letters three times each on the front and back. Several Forever stamps—part of the Statue of Liberty’s head with wording along her left edge and the date 2011—but no postmark. As the elevator dinged its arrival, Drexel pulled on the packing tape, ripping the envelope. The glue seal had not been used. He slid out the contents.

  The first eight-by-ten photo was peculiar, and Drexel did not understand what he was looking at until he got to the second. In the first, a young woman—dark hair cut chin-length and straight, wearing a bright blue sweater over a T-shirt and dark blue jeans—stood before a nondescript background. A wall painted an eggshell white with no decoration. The woman was captured from head to toe. The look in her eyes, however, is what caught his attention and why his initial reaction was unable to conform the rest of the image. The look in her eyes was terror. He looked more closely. She was crying. Her right foot was supporting her weight as she retreated while her left arm was thrust out in a pleading gesture.

  When he slid the first photo away and saw the second, he called the CSIs.

  Chapter 2

  The second photograph looked down on a mutilated version of the woman. The killer had dismembered her body at the major joints and then rearranged them on the floor as if whole, or nearly so. A gap the width of a couple of fingers was left between the ankles and lower legs, the lower legs and the knees, which were still attached to the thighs, between the thighs and torso, and so on. No blood was visible on the floor between the gaps. Her body was laid out in a representation of the Vitruvian Man, the arms held out to the sides and the feet close together. The woman faced the camera, with two gold-colored coins over her eyes. Around the woman, someone had drawn a large circle, and inside that circle, but still fully surrounding her, was a Star of David. A jar of some sort sat near her head.

  In all, a note and seven photographs were inside the envelope. Two photos of the woman squatting on the floor, her arms wrapped around her legs, head between her knees. The same woman in the same clothes with the same background. Three shots of her mutilated body, including a close-up of the jar. It was a small Ball jar, the kind Drexel’s mother used years ago for homemade jam she made after a visit to a strawberry patch outside the city and then gave to friends as a small gift during the holiday season. One CSI offhandedly said, “That looks like brain matter,” and all looking at the photo were convinced of the accuracy of her statement. Another photo closed in on the face, revealing the coins that depicted snakes eating their tails.

  The photos of the mutilated corpse were hard to make out in their full horror, which Drexel never determined was good or bad. Looking at them through the protective plastic the CSIs had placed each photo in, made the process surreal. The CSIs, Drexel, and Natalie could not determine definitively if the mutilated body was real or was, on the other hand, an elaborate and sophisticated reproduction. After all, movies could be startlingly realistic with high-quality special effects if they wanted. Drexel concluded the images were real, particularly when using the two photos of the woman alive, whose looks of terror could not be faked.

  The CSIs photographed all the photos, the envelope, and the letter, then left them with Drexel in a conference room. They took the originals with them to begin conducting innumerable tests and hoping to find fingerprints or skin cells for DNA. Daniela Longfurd, a young jack-of-all-trades field tech, handed Drexel the photograph of the letter. On her right wrist, the edge of a red and green tattoo peeked from beneath the cuff of her crimson long-sleeved button-up blouse. A gold necklace with emeralds draped her neck. Light blue jeans and sensible, dark-colored gym shoes. She had recently cut her hair short.

  Drexel took the letter and read it.

  In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

  I, Simon, said to the Lord, “Lord, before Satan fell, in what glory abode he with thy Father?”

  Enclosed find my message to the world.

  Simon

  After the signature, an address in Chicago. The letter was typed with a Gothic font. Drexel slumped in the chair. “Jesus.” He handed it back to Daniela. “What’ve we got?”

  The conference-room door opened and Victor walked in. His close-cut hair was long for the ex-Marine, allowing the sweeps of gray to become visible along the temples and on the top. He wore a dark gray suit, with a dark blue shirt and solid red tie, knotted in a small four-in-hand. He glanced at the photographs on the table and shook his head. “What have we got?”

  Drexel smiled. “I just asked Daniela the same thing.”

  Victor looked at her. “Well?”

  “Not much as of yet. The envelope is a standard manila envelope. The perp didn’t use the glue seal, just a clasp and packing tape. We’ve got dust and dirt on the tape, but no prints that we could see. Two first-class Forever stamps, but no postmark. Inside we have the seven photographs. All printed on HP Advanced photo paper. Three eight-by-tens and four five-by-sevens. Standard sizes. An inkjet printer by the looks of it. Looks like the printer heads need cleaning.” She looked up and saw the questioning look in their eyes. “The printing isn’t even. There are lines running across the image that are printer artifacts. Usually—but not exclusively—because the inkjet printer heads need
cleaning. In other news, no fingerprints at all on the photos except for the detective’s thumbprint here on the first two and his first three fingers the back of the last one. What we think to be a single eyelash was found in the envelope itself, but it doesn’t have a root, so we won’t be able to get DNA. We’ll test it, of course, and confirm. Take all of this as preliminary. Finally, the quotation itself—I did a quick Google search—is from some Cathar text in medieval France. Gnostics or something. Long gone.”

  “What can you tell us about where the photos were taken?” Victor rubbed the top of his head.

  “Nothing. The photos with the victim alive look to be inside, but the blank walls and common color offer no distinguishing characteristics. We think both were taken in the same place. But that’s conjecture.”

  “And the—the others?”

  “These seem to be at a different location from the,” she shrugged, “alive photos. But that could be a different room in the same building. We don’t know. The shots are taken from above. Best guess is a person stood on a stepladder. If that’s the case, the ladder is down by the victim’s feet. On the back of the first photo showing the body, a small address is typed—computer typed—along the top edge that matches the address in the letter.”

  Victor picked up the photos, looked at them, and shook his head. “Let’s get a team to that address.”

  Drexel stood up and looked at the photo over his boss’s shoulder. “That’s what I was thinking.” The woman with the haunted, horrified look. The eyes staring into her Grim Reaper. The face Drexel would never forget.

  * * *

  Drexel stood outside in the tiny backyard of the house on Montana Street north of DePaul University. The late April afternoon sun was brilliant. With Memorial Day a few weeks away, everyone he knew seemed restless for the official start of summer. April was the speed bump between winter and summer. He bummed a smoke from one of the patrol officers, lit it, and inhaled deep. He looked at the cigarette, a vice he indulged in only at crime scenes, and rubbed the filter with his thumb.