Kill Them All (Drexel Pierce Book 2)

by Patrick Kanouse

  Drexel nodded and turned back to Brandon Marshall. He opened the file they had thus far been able to compile on the plumber. He found the license plate number—which Marshall’s boss had provided—for the assigned Plumber Savior van. Ton spotted it in the small parking lot to the east of the apartments. They needed the license plate for confirmation only, for it was the lone van with an image of a man in a navy boiler suit, a face reminiscent of Christ—beard and all—and a halo behind and above the head. The man gave a thumbs up and had a cheeky smile. Drexel closed the folder.

  After eating their dogs, Ton stepped out to grab coffee from the Starbucks a half-block down the road from where they were parked. Drexel reopened the thin case folder. Brandon Marshall was twenty-nine and had graduated from the University of Chicago in 2007 with a B.A. in religion and humanities. Too long ago to have encountered Brittany Day in the halls and lawns of the university, but maybe he had contact with Whitney Day. An intriguing possible connection.

  After graduating, he took a job with Plumber Savior. No speeding tickets. No minor arrests. Not even a parking ticket. Not married. Ton sat back down in the driver’s seat and handed Drexel his cup of coffee as he kept reading. The detective wondered why a University of Chicago graduate had taken a plumber’s job. Nothing wrong with the work—Zora had quipped several times that the only way Drexel knew the right end of a hammer was because it was a frequent murder weapon—but somehow it felt wrong. And he was a detective and prone to suspicion. He wrote down a series of unnamed people he wanted to interview about Marshall. Former professors. Neighbors. Co-workers. And then he crossed off neighbors. He crossed off co-workers but then wrote it again and put a question mark beside it.

  “What do you think of a guy graduating from the University of Chicago working as a plumber?” Drexel lifted the lid off his cup and blew on it.

  “Yeah, I put your gallons of cream and pounds of sugar in.” Ton shook his head and smiled. “What was his major?”

  “Religion and humanities.”

  Ton snorted. “Probably because he needed a job. If he didn’t go on to postgraduate work and he’s not a preacher, I’m not sure what his opportunities would have been. And plumbing’s not a bad gig all in all. Your brother does it.” He smiled the smile of the mischievous.

  Drexel ignored him. “Yeah, wasn’t saying it wasn’t. But Chicago is an elite university. I don’t think of many of those students using their hands to earn a living.”

  “You’ve got too high of an opinion of elite universities.” Ton reached over, popped open the glove box, and pulled out a silver flask monogrammed with “AN.” Drexel ignored the .38 Smith & Wesson revolver also in the glove box. He warned his friend that any stakeout was usually hours of boredom. Ton cracked open the flask and took a swig. He shook it in front of Drexel, who indulged as well. A scotch. Smoky, peaty. “Bored now?” Ton winked at him.

  Drexel looked at the flask. Some years old. Small dents along the bottom edge. A larger dent in the top of the screw-on cap. “What’s the ‘AN’ for?” He rolled down the window.

  Ton held the flask up. “Ah, that’s my dad.” He rarely talked about his family. Drexel did not know if he had any siblings, though if they existed they were never mentioned. “Andrew was his name. Carried this in Vietnam.”

  “I didn’t know your dad was over there.”

  “He was a mechanic. Worked mostly in safe areas, though he said he was in a few fights as they transferred vehicles here and there or he was sent to some remote location to fix Jeeps and trucks. Did his tour and got the hell out.”

  “Hmm.”

  “He gave this to me years ago. Well, I actually fished it out of the trash one night when I was in high school. Empty, but I kept it.”

  “Does he know you have it?”

  “Now he does.”

  “Where’s he at?”

  “Ah, he’s retired. Spends most of his time playing cards with friends in Sarasota.”

  Drexel nodded. He got the sense—perhaps a slight change in tone or the way Ton held his body—that the conversation was over. His friend had said all he wanted to say, so Drexel let it be.

  “So tell me what the deal is. Who is this guy we’re watching and why?”

  Drexel gave him many more details than he had the other night. A complete rundown on the case up to this point. “What we’re doing is a bit unorthodox. It’s not illegal, but we don’t have a warrant yet or anything. I think we could get one based on the fingerprint evidence, but I don’t think we’d find anything. And if we do it—”

  “You’ll warn him. Got it. So is the guy nuts or something?”

  Drexel shrugged and drank the last of the coffee. “Something’s not right, but whether he’s nuts or not, I can’t say.”

  “I haven’t found anything yet on that drawing. Not really sure what I’m looking for. It’s weird whatever it is.”

  “And it is, I’m guessing, what drives him. He’s put thought and preparation into it. It means something to him.” Drexel ripped out a piece of paper from the notebook and drew the image from the second body found. “Here’s what we found with the body yesterday.” He handed it to Ton, who studied it.

  A few people came in and out of the front entrance, but not Marshall. At 1:00 a.m., they called it a night. They agreed to meet the next evening at 5:30 p.m., at the same location. Ton would bring the food.

  Drexel closed the door of his apartment by holding onto the handle so it would not slam. As he let his eyes adjust, Hart walked between his legs, dragging his body along the calves, and disappeared back into wherever he had been. He gave up waiting on his eyes and used the light on his iPhone. On the kitchen counter, Ryan had left a message asking for a confirmation about the double date. He would presume a “Yes” if Drexel remained silent. Drexel crossed out the comment and wrote “No” below it before closing the door of his bedroom, stripping to his underwear, and falling asleep. Only to wake at 4:30 a.m. He showered, added water and food to Hart’s bowls, and made a breakfast of toasted strawberry Pop-Tarts and coffee. He popped four Advil in the hopes of fending off an allergy headache. Spring was glorious except for the pollen. He started reviewing the uni interviews, which were unsurprising.

  Everyone claimed Marshall was standoffish or remote or quiet or aloof. Hardly anyone knew him outside of work, though he would on a rare occasion have a beer with the guys at a bar down the street from the Lincoln Park office, but he would drink one and leave. He came in, did his work, and that was that. Most of his former professors could not remember him. Dr. James Dinkins, his advisor and professor in the Divinity School, did, though prompting was needed. Dinkins remembered a quiet though engaged student. His course work was very good. In fact, he presumed Marshall to have gone on to graduate work and being a professor. No mention of Whitney Day as one of his professors.

  By the time Drexel arrived at the station, he realized all he had learned about Marshall was that he was quiet or aloof and did not interact with anyone. Dead end.

  Daniela came in dressed in gray jeans and a light-blue blouse. She smiled at him as she set her phone on the table. “Get through the interviews?”

  “I did.”

  “Anything?”

  “Not that I read. Quiet. Distant. Hard to remember if you’re his professors.”

  She frowned and nodded. “No packages were delivered yesterday.” She walked to the kitchenette and came back a few minutes later with a Monster and grabbed the pile of interviews off Drexel’s desk and sat down with them at hers.

  He tapped his chin. They had been expecting a package. At least, the previous two days had led them to that expectation. The killer meant something with those packages. With his announcements. So did meaning exist in the absence of a package delivery? “What do you think of that?”

  “Of what?”

  “No package yesterday.”

  “I don’t kn
ow what to think. Two days in a row made a third seem inevitable.”

  Indeed. It did.

  While Daniela reviewed MPU reports searching for the second victim, Drexel reviewed footage of the station, hoping to spot how the two packages arrived at the station. Both were long shots.

  * * *

  After a lunch of take-out sushi, Daniela and Drexel listened to detectives Doggett and Gavin Jameson arguing about the case they were assigned to: a shooting in Cornell Square Park. Some gang members drove by firing their guns and hitting a number of bystanders, including a ten-year-old who died on the scene. Not surprisingly, the mayor and the superintendent were applying a lot of pressure to solve and quickly at that. The Cornell Square Park murders were, they all knew, just the start of murder season whose peak was July Fourth. The holiday all of Chicago PD dreaded. If, however, Drexel hoped that the attention focused on the Cornell Square Park case would divert Sobieski’s interest, he was wrong. Sobieski sat in Victor’s office. At their captain’s request, Daniela and Drexel stood along the wall. Sobieski sat in a chair by the window, looking at the two of them with anticipation.

  “Well?” he asked. “Any progress?”

  Drexel sighed. “We’ve got a lot of interviews done about our person of interest, but nothing actionable yet. He’s still a bit of a mystery. And we haven’t been able to identify the other victim yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “We’re scouring the MPU records, but we don’t know when she was kidnapped. It could have been days ago. Months ago. So we haven’t been able to narrow the time frame down. We need to keep looking.”

  “Well ain’t that fucking great?” Sobieski stood up and swept his hand through his hair. “We’re not getting anywhere with that ten-year-old,” he gestured weakly toward Doggett and Jameson, “and we’re getting nowhere here. And the Tribune is sniffing this one out.”

  Victor said, “We’re making progress. In both cases, but—”

  “No one gives a rat’s ass about your ‘buts,’ Victor. All they care about is getting the criminals in cuffs.”

  Victor raised his hands in a shrug. “Then why the hell are you yelling at us instead of letting us do the work?”

  Sobieski’s face turned crimson. He stuttered in an attempt to respond. Failing what he thought was an acerbic enough response, he said, “Make fucking progress and do it soon.” As he walked to the stairwell, he let out a curse.

  Victor stared out the window. “Keep working it. When you’re ready to talk to your person of interest, do it.”

  “The Tribune?” asked Daniela.

  “We can’t do anything about that. You two officially have no comment if asked. Right?”

  They nodded and then left Victor. Drexel wrote up the daily report. Daniela countersigned the reports and filed them. The daily was sent via email.

  Daniela shut the lights out and locked the door of the conference room. “See you tomorrow. I’m going to read these at the coffee shop.” She walked out with an armful of MPU reports.

  “Yeah. Another day.” He tapped the play button on his computer to continue scanning the hours of video from the lobby of the station. As 5:00 p.m. approached, he powered off his computer, depressed by the lack of progress.

  Chapter 12

  Ton parked the Mustang two spots farther back than the previous night. When Drexel rapped his knuckles on the window, Ton leaned over and lifted the lock. Drexel slid in and closed the door.

  “Anything?” asked Ton.

  “I didn’t see the van, no. Walked around the block.”

  “Hmm. We beat him back. Good.” Ton sighed. “See the latest article?” He reached behind the passenger seat and pulled out a bag from Five Guys. “Don’t spill shit on my seat. Got it?” He handed a brown paper bag to Drexel and then pulled out a second one and then a pile of napkins, which he split between them.

  “What did it say?” Drexel unfolded the top of the bag. Grease spots from the fries had leaked through. He pulled out a handful of them and started eating.

  “You haven’t read it yet?”

  “Nah. Didn’t know there was one.” Drexel smiled. “Plus, you’re the only source of news I need.”

  Ton stared out the window toward the front entrance. “Somebody’s got the scent. They supplemented the story from yesterday. Added in details about it being a grisly murder scene. Identified Brittany Day as one of the victims. Went into her disappearance and all. But they found out about the letters and the way the bodies were laid out.

  “So someone leaked that info.” Drexel clenched his fists. Working with the press by giving them some information had many legitimate purposes, including identifying victims and potential suspects to crafting a story a specific way to provoke a killer. He had been contemplating if Vivaldi would recommend such an approach in her profile. However, he had suspected for a year that someone in Homicide or the crime scene unit sold information to the media. Victor had spent the better part of a year trying to determine who it was without success. “Damnit. Any details about the—the—ah tokens?”

  “Nope. But they gave him a name.”

  “Already? Jesus.”

  “Simon the Butcher they’re calling him.”

  They sat for a few minutes. Cars passing on the street and people passing on the sidewalk. Ton drummed the wheel with his thumbs. “So any thoughts on why this guy sent in the photos?”

  Drexel rubbed his chin. “Gave it thought but got no answers. Why’d the Zodiac killer start writing letters? Or Dennis Rader? He’s probably doing it because he wants to call attention to his work. Tell the world he’s smarter than the police.”

  Ton shrugged and then chuckled. “Truth be told—with an exception sitting beside me—most cops aren’t that smart.”

  “Most of the time the bad guys are dumber, which is why we catch them. It’s relative, right? Right now, I just want to catch this asshole before he kills again. But he’s probably already done that if he froze two bodies.”

  “Maybe he’s only killed two and that’s why no package yesterday.”

  “I hope so.” Drexel rubbed his left thumb into the palm of his right hand. “I don’t think these packages are the normal taunts. There’s more of a purpose behind them. It’s a necessary part or path for his message.” He rolled his tongue around in his mouth. “Shit, I don’t know.”

  They lapsed into silence for a few minutes.

  Ton broke it. “What are you hoping to get out of this stakeout?”

  “I want to see what he does. See if he drives anywhere or goes someplace that might be suspicious.”

  “When do you think this will become official?”

  “I’m guessing days or weeks. We’ll pull his cell logs over the past few days and during the time Brittany went missing to see if there’re any clues in there. We can do that without tipping him off that he’s under investigation.”

  Ton nodded.

  “I just don’t think he killed anyone or kept them chained up in his apartment. If this is the guy, he’s got a place he’s doing that at.”

  A Plumber Savior van, a stepladder strapped to a rack on top, pulled into the apartment building’s parking lot. Dirt decorated the outer edges of the wheel well. The windshield was covered in thick dirt as well except for where the wipers cleared it away. The van pulled into an empty space, and a few seconds later, Brandon Marshall—dressed in the dark gray pants and light gray Oxford shirt with the Plumber Savior logo on the left breast that Ryan wore daily—walked to the apartment entrance, disappearing behind the glass doors as they swung closed.

  “Wait here.” Drexel opened the door and jogged across the street, glancing back at the apartment entrance. He walked up to the van. The dirt covered the back windows, as well. He looked in the passenger window. The dash had a large police-style clipboard on it, with several business cards under the clip. Two partial bott
les of Pepsi sat in console cupholders. A pile of papers filled the passenger seat, stacked haphazardly. A King James Bible—it’s maroon, faux-leather cover with gold lettering—with several bookmarks poking from the bottom of the pages was visible from a slot on the console. Drexel could not see the back of the van because of a solid partition behind the driver’s seat. Taped to the partition on the passenger side were a set of guidelines for Plumber Savior employees:

  1.Say “Hello” with a smile and shake the customer’s hand.

  2.Always ask permission to enter the home.

  3.Wear protective foot covers inside.

  4.Explain what you will be doing and how much it will cost before doing the work.

  5.Clean up after yourself.

  6.Say “Goodbye” with a smile and shake the customer’s hand.

  Someone had underlined with a red marker number three.

  Drexel stepped away from the van and returned to the Mustang. “Nothing interesting.”

  And they sat for two hours. They talked, though Drexel and Ton would have been hard pressed to recall the specifics of the conversation. Just two friends chatting, watching the main entrance to an apartment complex. At 7:23 p.m., Marshall walked out of the entrance and to his van, disappearing behind a Honda CR-V. He reappeared seconds later, carrying what looked to be the Bible Drexel had seen. He wore light-brown khakis and a red-and-brown striped polo shirt. His hair was dark blond, but he had lost the goatee of his DMV photo. Marshall walked by the apartment entrance on the sidewalk.

  “Shit. He’s on foot. Stay on the street opposite from him and don’t pass me. I’ll be on the other side.” Drexel got out of the car and jogged across the street, pausing midway to let a car lumber by. Once he hit the sidewalk, he jogged a half-block until Marshall was in sight but a bit ahead. He then glanced back to see Ton across the street and still a bit farther behind. He called Ton on his cell. “Keep him in sight. You’re my backup eyes.”