by Ed Gorman
It was usually empty in the early afternoon, three long if ragged rows of desks and telephones and typewriters resembling a stage set with nobody to man them. That had been one of his early discouragements about detective status. You spent a lot of time alone. When he'd worn a uniform, he spent most of his time with a partner. He'd had an especially good one, a woman named Sharon Rosenthal.
A lone bar of dusty, golden sunlight streamed through the window, illuminating the surface of Detective Cozzens' desk. The exact color and texture and quality of the sunlight made him recall, momentarily, his days back in Catholic school, sitting in the back of the classroom, chin cupped in his hand, daydreaming. He'd been a great daydreamer; hell, still was. He'd wanted to be, in those days, a pirate, an airplane pilot, a football hero and, most especially, a really neat guy like his hero, Roy Rogers.
But then he grew up and found that he wasn't any of these things. He was just this little, stubby bastard with a wife and two kids living in Chicago. Roy would never have settled for that; sometimes, Cozzens wondered why he had.
"'lo."
"Mitch?"
His wife. Or, to be exact, his soon-to-be-ex-wife.
"Hi."
"Did you see Dr. Sondegard this morning?" Karen asked.
"Yup."
"How did it go?"
He tried to keep from being bitter but it didn't work. "Well, as usual, we decided that I should take total responsibility for our marriage failing."
She sighed. "That hardly sounds like Dr. Sondegard."
"Well, maybe I over-interpreted his remarks, but after he managed to sneak in the fact that I'm not tender or sensitive, that I didn't spend enough time with our daughters when they were growing up, and that I've never really tried to satisfy your needs in bed—Well, hell, maybe he was trying to pay me a compliment and I just didn't know it."
A long silence on the other end. Then, "I have a date tonight, Mitch."
Now there was silence on his end.
"I don't want a repeat of last week. You had no right to—"
He managed to speak, finally, but when he did he sounded weak, almost sick. "I'm sorry I haven't been a better husband, Karen. And I—I'm sorry about last week."
Karen and his daughters had taken an apartment in Evanston. He was permitted to visit the girls twice a week. Edie, the youngest, had mentioned to him that her mother had a date last Thursday night. Cozzens managed to show up the same time as the guy, hating the fucker on sight, slick and polished, a total goddamn crowd-pleaser, making Cozzens feel like something that had just crawled out from under a maggot-encrusted rock
It had been a horrible scene, her date with his frozen-in-place smile, Karen with fury in her beautiful dark eyes, the girls—twelve and fourteen—trying to steer Dad into the living room, away from the intruder. He hadn't said anything, or hinted at any violence, but his mere presence there had been wrong, as the good, gray Dr. Sondegard the marriage counselor had told him this morning.
"I don't want a repeat of last week," she said again.
"You don't have to worry, Karen."
But she couldn't let it go. He heard years of her pent-up rage—and years of his own failures—in her voice. "I was so goddamn mad, Mitch—"
The rest of it, he tuned out.
He started thinking about the Swallows girl. Moved up here a year ago, right after graduating from the University of North Carolina, and had a future bright with promise and seemingly filled with fun, and then
"It's getting serious, Mitch, and I don't want anything to jeopardize it."
But he'd been tuned out. "Serious?"
"God, Mitch, you don't listen to me. You never did. I start talking and your mind wanders—which shows just how much respect for me you really have." She sighed. "I said that things are getting serious between Robert and me."
"I see."
"And that I don't want anything to spoil it."
"How do the girls like him?"
"That's not a fair question, Mitch, and you know it."
Now years of his own anger and frustration were back. "They told me that he's a real showboat and they don't like him at all."
"They feel guilty, Mitch. You know what Dr. Sondegard says. If they said anything nice about Robert, they'd feel disloyal to you."
He felt sick suddenly—raving, violently sick—of himself, of Karen. But mostly of himself.
He thought of her the autumn day he'd met her at the University of Illinois—so fucking gorgeous. She never should have let him even get close to her she was so fucking gorgeous. He thought of her that autumn day, so shiny and fine and new, radiating not only great beauty but also great hope and great promise. How had all those wonderful early years led to this inching, hesitant, painful conversation today? Maybe the pods had taken them over, as in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and they weren't really the Karen and Mitch who'd met that day by the victory bell.
Then he started crying. No big, dramatic sobs, just sad, angry, quiet, male tears, and he didn't want her to know it and so he said, "Give my love to the girls," before she could say anything.
And then he hung up.
And he got the hell out of the squad room.
Dealing with a maybe-dead girl suddenly seemed a lot easier than dealing with a living soon-to-be-ex-wife...
3
The Swallows girl lived in a two-story apartment house in the Lincoln Park area, one of the many old greystones that had had a facelift in the past ten years, in this case a cedar shake façade. Given the number of Volvos parked along the curb, and the number of mothers with strollers moving along the sidewalks, it was easy for Detective Cozzens to surmise that this was a neighborhood for young and very successful professionals and their families.
He got out of the car and stood for a moment touching the small of his back. It hurt. Ten years ago he'd suffered a problem with a disc and his back hadn't been right since. Sitting for any long period of time gave him special trouble. And cops frequently sat for long periods of time. He went up to the apartment house.
He was used to vestibules that smelled. In some neighborhoods, they frequently reeked of food. In others, they reeked of drugs and the feces the junkies had left behind while squatting in the vestibule shadows. But this place, wide and sunny and bright, had no odor at all. There was a long row of mailboxes on the left wall, two or three silver boxes for the milkman on the right wall, and a steep staircase covered with a spotless rubber runner.
He walked past the staircase, to the rear of the first floor. The last apartment on the left bore a discreet sign, MANAGER.
He knocked once and waited.
On the other side of the door, he could hear an announcer identify the radio station now playing as WFMT. He spoke with great care and dignity. He then announced that listeners would now be treated to Vivaldi. Detective Cozzens felt ashamed of himself. To him, Vivaldi sounded like a shortstop the Cubs had deep-sixed a few years back.
The door opened. A small man in a tan cardigan sweater, a white shirt, a red bow tie, dark trousers and a fussy little pair of rimless glasses stood looking up at Cozzens. With his white hair and prim mouth, he looked like Cozzens" old Latin teacher back in Catholic school.
"Afternoon," the man said. The Vivaldi was loud behind him so he had to shout a bit.
"Afternoon." Cozzens showed him all the ID he was supposed to.
"I thought that had been taken care of."
"What had been taken care of?"
"You know. Jenny's boyfriend."
"Jenny's boyfriend?" Cozzens was bewildered.
The man leaned forward, looked around the hall a moment as if somebody might be listening, and then said, "I still think it was him who smashed my kitchen window. You know, because I called you fellows when he parked in that spot again."
"What spot?"
"You know. In the back. Right in front of the fire exit. If somebody had to get out of there—" For the first time, the man seemed to take real stock of Cozzens. "You're not the fellow
, are you?"
"I guess not."
"Officer was out here the other day. Trying to help me with a tenant whose boyfriend got mad because I called the police on him. Next morning, I found my kitchen window smashed in. I think it was him, her boyfriend."
"Well, I hope you get it all straightened out, Mr.—?"
"Mr. Kemper. Albert Kemper. I'm the super. I used to teach English, but after my wife died—" He shrugged. "Well, I don't have to tell you how the Chicago school system is these days. I got scared to go to school, if you can imagine that. A teacher scared to go to school."
"Yessir," Cozzens said, "I can imagine that."
Kemper shrugged again. "So I quit. Just went in one day—this was right after one of my students pulled a knife, and it was one hell of a knife, let me tell you, pulled a knife on another boy right in my classroom and—"
"And you quit."
"Absolutely right. I quit."
Cozzens prided himself on his patience. At least he had until he'd met Albert here. The way the guy jabbered on... But then Cozzens thought of what Albert Kemper had just said. Wife died. Meaning terminal loneliness. No wonder the old guy talked so much.
"I'm looking for a young woman named Swallows."
"You mean the girl in 18-C?"
Cozzens nodded.
"Very nice girl," Kemper said. "Very nice."
"Have you seen her in the past three or four days?" Kemper raised watery blue eyes and looked at a point on the ceiling above Cozzens' head.
"Guess I haven't," Kemper said.
"Her mother is getting worried."
"Well, between us, her mother is the type."
"The type?"
"Worrier. The girl met a nice boy last year and went off on a long skiing weekend with him to Wisconsin, way the hell up in the hills. Perfectly fine as far as I'm concerned—I mean, I'd just as soon that all these kids would get married, but I don't want to be some disapproving old fart who begrudges the young having a good time—anyway, that mother of hers called me every single day the girl was gone. I knew where she was, of course, but I wasn't going to tell her mother. She doesn't seem very up-to-date, if you know what I mean."
Cozzens would sure hate to get stuck in an elevator with this old coot. The guy would talk him to death. Cozzens could imagine himself on his knees, pleading for mercy as Albert here kept yammering.
"Mr. Kemper?"
"Huh?"
Albert Kemper had been in the middle of starting up with a new topic but Cozzens interrupted him.
"I don't have a search warrant."
"You don't?"
"No. So legally I can't go up to her apartment and look around."
"You think something's wrong?"
"Getting a search warrant would be a lot of hassle—and even then I'm not sure I could get one. But you could help me."
"I could?"
"As the super, you could take the responsibility for letting me into her apartment."
"I could?"
"And then you could stand there and watch me look around the place."
"And I wouldn't get in trouble?"
"Not as long as you're the super."
"You think something's wrong, don't you?"
"That isn't the point, Mr. Kemper. Her mother thinks something's wrong and—"
"—but like I told you, her mother's a—"
"—worrier. Yes, Mr. Kemper, I remember you telling me that, but why don't we go up and have a look? If you'd like to, I mean."
Kemper straightened his bow tie and said, "I'll bet that woman's been pestering the hell out of you, hasn't she?"
Cozzens let Kemper precede him up the stairs. Kemper left his apartment door open so everybody could share in the wonders of Vivaldi.
4
Somebody had been killed in here, and recently.
The odor told Cozzens that, as did the faint discoloration at several points on the hardwood floor.
The sunlight tried to brighten things up. So did the bird song through one of the partially raised windows. The neat, trim furnishings—tasteful in a trendy off-white way—lent the living room a brisk sense of life, and it was easy enough to imagine a nice young woman moving through these sunny rooms, whistling as she dusted or munching on a bright red apple as she snuggled up on the divan and read a novel.
"You want me to go along with you?" Kemper said.
"If you wouldn't mind."
"Something's wrong here, isn't it?"
"What makes you say that, Mr. Kemper?"
"I guess I believe in what my students call 'vibes.' You know, when you instinctively sense something."
"And you instinctively sense something?"
"Yes. Yes, unfortunately, I do."
"So do I," Cozzens said, and moved from the doorway into the apartment proper.
There were two closets in the living room. Cozzens checked them both. They were full but orderly, one smelling of moth balls, the other of dust. In the latter closet, he found examples of things that said the Swallows girl probably got a great deal of exercise. There was a tennis racquet, a softball bat, a pair of white ice skates and a grass-stained volleyball.
While Cozzens did this, Kemper, ever the English prof, checked out her bookcases. "She's even brighter than I thought."
"How's that?"
"Henry James."
"Oh, yes, Henry James," Cozzens said, remembering a literature course at the University of Illinois in which he'd had to slog through a novel by Henry James. He'd liked Jack London, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Willa Cather, but he'd never developed a taste for Henry James. He'd always supposed this marked him as a peasant for sure.
"Of course, she's got a lot of trash here, too, a lot of self-esteem books and things like that. Tell Them The Lord Says To Shove It. My God."
Cozzens said, "Why don't we try the bedroom?"
"Detective Cozzens?" Kemper said.
"Yes?"
"I don't know how I'll handle it if we find— Well, if something happened here. I mean, you're used to it, I suppose, but—"
"That's a myth, Mr. Kemper."
"A myth?"
"About cops being used to it."
"Really?"
"Nobody ever gets used to it, Mr. Kemper." Cozzens offered a sad smile. "Being good professionals, we just have to pretend we do."
Cozzens went into the bedroom.
Kemper stood in the doorway, watching him.
The room was small and sun-splashed. A very sweet scent of sachet lay agreeably on the air. The motif was pink and almost aggressively girlish, as if the Swallows woman were trying to recapture her lost teen years. On the neatly made bed, three plump teddy bears sat watching Cozzens with bright button eyes. Between a wicker chaise lounge and a rocking chair sat a huge teddy bear, one as big as most four-year-olds. He had a jolly smile but curiously melancholy eyes.
"My stomach is in knots," Kemper said from the doorway. "I'm afraid..." He was much less talkative up here than he'd been downstairs.
He let his voice trail off.
There were also two closets in this room, one containing good but not expensive clothes, the other holding skiing gear on which she'd obviously spent a good deal of money.
Cozzens closed the door.
"I guess that leaves the bathroom and the kitchen," Kemper said. His voice was shaking. He obviously sensed they were getting closer to finding something he dreaded.
Cozzens led the way into the bathroom.
He took one look at it and saw that it had been cleaned recently. There was a residue of scrubbing compound on the curving white bowl of the sink. In the sprightly yellow waste can next to it, he found an empty container of Windex and Lysol liquid disinfectant. There was also a rolled lump of dirty rags. The discoloration on them looked all too familiar to Cozzens.
He was careful not to touch anything.
The bathroom was small, tiled in mint green, with opaque sliding shower doors on the tub and two different cabinets on the wall.
He took a pencil and used it to slide back one of the doors on the tub.
A gray bath mat lay on the ribbed floor of the tub. A brown container of Vidal Sassoon shampoo stood in one corner. A festive yellow bottle of discount conditioner stood in the other.
The tub had been thoroughly cleaned. Suspiciously so.
Not even when Cozzens got down on a knee and looked carefully at the floor of the tub did he see so much as a single hair.
Cozzens stood up.
"I guess that leaves the kitchen," Kemper said, still clinging to his familiar position in the doorway of the bathroom.
When Cozzens turned to look at him, he saw that fear had given the aging Kemper the look of a frightened little boy.
"You don't have to go with me to the kitchen, Mr. Kemper."
"I've gone everyplace else. I may as well."
Cozzens studied him a moment.
To judge Kemper by the book, he was behaving suspiciously. By rights, he should even be a suspect in case something had happened to the Swallows woman.
But somehow Cozzens didn't think so. Here was a gentle, civilized little man for whom violence was an abstraction, something he mostly read about and heard about. Now, he was confronting it in his own life, and it was terrifying him.
They went into the kitchen, Cozzens leading the way as usual.
The scent of blood was overwhelming here, even though none could be seen, even though somebody had scrubbed the hell out of this room.
The kitchen was done in black and white tiles with two small aluminum sinks side-by-side. Continuing around the corner of the L-shaped kitchen, he saw a nice, big, imposing refrigerator with a juice dispenser built into the door. There were also two closets, one on either side of the refrigerator.
Cozzens opened the door of the closet on the right.
Propped up against the back of the closet was the naked body of a young white female.
Her head had been chopped off, leaving only a raw, scabbed, bloody hole in the center of her shoulders.
"You found something, didn't you, Detective Cozzens?" Kemper said from behind him.
