Dying Breath

by J. A. Konrath

  “Morning, Herb. Thanks.”

  I took the coffee. It was bitter and salty. For the millionth time I wondered why I didn’t buy a machine myself and keep it in my office.

  Probably because someone would swipe it. Cops are people, too.

  “Morning, Jack.” He was wearing a fat orange and green tie. It reminded me vaguely of a dead Muppet hanging from his neck.

  “What happened to that tie I gave you?” I asked. “For your birthday?”

  My phone rang, and I slapped it to my cheek.

  “Daniels.”

  “You and Benedict. My office.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  I hung up the phone.

  “We’re on,” I told Herb. I took another swig of brewed sewage and we were out the door, heading for the office of Captain Steven Bains.

  Bains was a good guy and a good captain, but he was also a bureaucrat. That meant he adhered to a strict policy of covering his own ass. If he was getting pressure from above, he’d pass it on down the chain.

  Because he had an early warning system for cases that would prove politically harmful, Bains expected to be briefed on every important case. Also because of his political ambitions, he had a hair weave. It would have looked realistic if it had some grey in it, like his mustache did. Instead, it was a shade of brown only found in a can.

  Benedict and I entered his office without knocking, as per usual when we were called in to visit. He removed the reading glasses from his fiftyish face and considered us. Benedict closed the door behind him.

  The captain was short and going to flab, and his squarish face wasn’t built for laughing. The grey mustache lit up his lip like a beacon in contrast to his hair.

  “This one is going to be bad,” he said.

  Thus setting the tone for the rest of the meeting.

  “We rushed the autopsy, and somehow the report leaked. I’m tracking down who did it, and I’m going to crucify that person on barbed wire.”

  “We haven’t seen the report yet,” I said.

  “I know. I’ve held back copies.”

  He indicated his desk and Benedict and I each took one. Usually coroner’s inquests took several days, due to the backlog of bodies. But on special cases; important murders, serial murders, the like, a man named Phil Blasky was brought in to do the honors immediately. Blasky taught at UIC, but was on a retainer by the city of Chicago to help out when things got bad. A dozen times or so a year we called him. This was one of those times.

  “The press played this to the hilt,” Bains continued.

  “It’s as bad as the Kork case.”

  Charles Kork was an individual who was dropping mutilated bodies in dumpsters around the Chicagoland area. He was headlines every day until he was caught.

  “This girl was mutilated like the other one, no teeth, raped, etc. Her body had been washed in Drano, probably to remove any DNA. Like the first one, she died of dehydration. Which means she was bound and suffering for days. But it gets worse. We got wrist X-rays. The bones weren’t fused yet.”

  Herb and I knew what that meant. When people are born, their wrist bones are separated by cartilage. In the late teens, the bones finally come together. If they hadn’t fused yet…

  “How old was she?” I asked.

  “The estimate is under seventeen.”

  Ugh. Murder was bad. Murdering children was worse.

  “I just got off the phone with the mayor and he’s demanding we set up a task force.”

  That could get ugly. I kept my face neutral. “We don’t have any hard leads to follow yet. All a task force will do is get in its own way.”

  “I realize that. The task force will handle the phone confessions. So far we haven’t gotten that many. Even the sickos out there don’t want to take credit for this one. But once you get even the tiniest lead, get it to me so the task force can start narrowing it down.”

  “There’s more,” I said, reading his face.

  “The FBI has also expressed an interest in getting involved.”

  “Ah… hell.”

  The FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Team sent two agents to cling to me like ticks during the Kork investigation. One of their gimmicks was profiling. Profiling meant taking evidence from crime scenes and feeding it into a computer to create a history and modus operandi on repeat killers. For Kork’s case, they were convinced he frequented country and western bars and had a fetish for horses.

  “Last time they staked out a horse,” Herb said.

  “The pics were in the paper,” I added.

  “That’s their PR problem, not ours. If they can prove jurisdiction, we’re letting them have it.”

  I searched for some fair words, and decided on, “They suck.”

  “What’s your job?” Bains asked us.

  The correct answer was to serve and protect. My personal coda was to make the world a better place on the off chance that someday I’ll have children. But Herb and I knew what the captain was asking.

  “To make you happy,” we said in monotone unison.

  “Catching this assbag would make me happy. Handing this off to the Feebies would make me almost as happy. Dismissed.”

  We left, Benedict closing the door behind us.

  “Eat breakfast?” I asked him.

  He nodded.

  “It would have been my treat,” I joked.

  “If you feel bad, you can give me the cash.”

  We stopped at a carousel vending machine. The type with the revolving little compartments that held fruit and sandwiches and juices. I fed four bucks into the machine and got an egg sandwich. The picture on the wrapper was so appetizing it made a home-cooked breakfast look messy and freakish.

  I took off the paper, and stared at an English muffin that was completely devoid of color. I lifted up an end. The eggs were also virtually colorless, and the pad of meat on top was the size of a half dollar and the same muddy brown as our coffee.

  So much for truth in advertising.

  When I got sick of looking at it, I placed it in the microwave next to the vending machine. It had to be one of the first microwaves ever made, and probably ran on diesel. It belonged in a museum, not a precinct house. But our budget mostly went toward office supplies. The rest was reluctantly doled out for more Kevlar, since our bullet proof vests had a habit of walking out on us. We were missing almost twenty in the past year, and hadn’t found the thief yet. I guess someone was getting a good price for them on the street. Either that, or they were paranoid as hell about getting shot.

  The microwave pinged, and I took out the tray. Modern technology was wonderful. It could take a cold blob of yuck and in under a minute turn it into a hot blob of yuck, while also removing every smidgeon of flavor.

  “What did you have?” I asked Herb, eyeing what I was about to upset my stomach with.

  “Homemade muffins. Perkin’s wife brought a whole bunch in. They were amazing.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I said, dropping the sandwich into the trash.

  “Because I ate the last four,” said Herb. “I wasn’t even hungry after the second one, but I forced them down anyway because they were so good.”

  I glanced at the garbage. My ugly egg sandwich was sitting on a mound of ugly coffee grounds.

  “Shit,” I said, for lack of a better thing to say.

  I walked back to my office and Benedict went to his cubicle, giving each of us time to go over the autopsy report.

  The duct tape was grey, and two inches wide. The first piece was thirty-five inches long, and wrapped around her ankles.

  The second piece was eighty-three inches long, starting at the stomach and taping her arms to her sides, going all the way up to her elbows.

  The last piece was seven inches long, taping her mouth shut. All the ends were cut with scissors.

  No fingerprints, indicating that someone probably used gloves. It was very easy to get a print on the sticky side of duct tape. The outside was also receptive, because it
was smooth. But not even a partial was found.

  In her mouth, behind the duct tape, was a wad of toilet paper. Matched the paper in the bathroom.

  Traces of Drano and subsequent burns found all over her body. It also dissolved several patches of her blond hair.

  Strands of burlap fiber found stuck to the edges of the duct tape.

  Fecal matter found under and around victim was tested to have come from her.

  No clothing on the body. No personal items found in the room.

  I looked at the autopsy and scanned the atrocities.

  Several dozen bruises.

  Thirty-six cigarette burns, most concentrated around her breasts.

  Broken collarbone.

  Broken arm.

  Chiseled-out teeth, with trauma to lips and tongue.

  Severe vaginal and anal trauma.

  Chemical burns covering ninety percent of body, from the Drano.

  Two black eyes.

  A broken nose.

  Internal hemorrhaging.

  Death by kidney failure, caused by dehydration. Blasky theorized she probably hadn’t been conscious during the last twenty-hour hours of her life.

  One could only hope.

  No fibers found on body, save a few that matched the burlap stuck to the duct tape.

  No skin under her fingernails.

  I logged onto my desktop computer and sipped the cold, salty remnants of coffee as it booted. When it did, I logged into the CPD network server just as the phone rang. I stopped the phone from ringing by picking it up. It’s a trick I do.

  “Daniels.”

  “This is Tate at the front desk. Got a bald guy named Troutt here to see you.”

  “Send him up.”

  Phin came in a few minutes later, wearing a flannel shirt and faded jeans with a rip in the left knee. With my shades open behind me he had a full raster of sunlight hitting him in the face.

  He looked like a corpse. Thin and ragged and sunken.

  I hoped my shock didn’t show.

  “I hope the rumors are true,” he said.

  “About my unparalleled fashion sense?”

  “About cops liking donuts. I brought you some.”

  He held out a white bakery bag and set it on my desk.

  The scent of cinnamon invaded my nostrils and told my salivary glands to kick in.

  “Thanks,” I exercised superheroic self-control and didn’t reach for the bag immediately.

  Phin wasn’t here to break bread. He wanted the file on Amy Scadder.

  “You can read it here,” I told him. It took a few keystrokes to bring it up on my computer, and I gave him my seat, located the previous Jane Doe’s autopsy report on one of the many piles threatening to topple off my desk, and then nonchalantly opened the donut bag, selecting a cinnamon bun almost the size of my head. My personal beliefs on the existence of an afterlife were skeptical, but if there was a heaven, it smelled like this donut.

  I took a bite. Soft as butter.

  Maybe there was a god after all.

  “Where did you get these?” I had to ask.

  Phin looked up from the notes he’d been taking.

  “Good?” he asked.

  “Great,” I said.

  “I found them in the dumpster outside, under a diaper.”

  “I’m serious. I want to patronize this place, and possibly leave them something in my will.”

  “I thought you were a good cop,” said Phin. He turned the bag around and let me see the name printed on it.

  Duh.

  I finished inhaling the cinnamon bun and wrestled a bear claw out of the bag, then sat in the visitor’s chair as I cracked the Jane Doe #1 report.

  Lots of similarities. The duct tape. The Drano. The burlap. The bruises and burns. The chipped teeth. The death by dehydration. But the first murder had one thing different about it.

  “Do you have anything on her father?” Phin asked.

  “Hmm?” I said, mouth full of bear claw.

  “Vincent Scadder. Does he have a sheet?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Can you check?”

  I appraised Phin. He was not a man who liked asking for favors. I don’t think I’d ever met a tougher man, except for a guy named Tequila that I’d run into some years ago.

  “Sure,” I told him. I leaned over him and accessed a different database. Then it was just a question of key strokes before Vincent Scadder’s record appeared on the screen.

  Scadder looked irritated in his mugshot, like being arrested was an inconvenience. His crime was state tax evasion.

  “Was he convicted?” Phin asked.

  “Different database. Gimme a sec.” I punched some keys and clicked the appropriate spots.

  “Probation. Got a hefty fine.”

  “Can I get a copy?”

  He was pushing the limits of friendly favors, but I printed the file for him. Phin took it, and continued to stare at me, as if expecting more.

  Right, he’d asked me about something else. The partial. I did my computer-fu, and punched the digits into the proper text box.

  “Seventy-four potentials,” I said.

  He frowned. “Those are all from white Land Rovers?”

  “That’s the correct order, but you didn’t tell me the position.”

  He reached into his pocket, forked out a photo between his fingers. It was of two people in front of a Land Rover, a man and a girl, and their legs were blocking the plate. Illinois cars had up to seven digits, and the two that were visible were somewhere in the middle.

  “You sure that’s a B?” I asked. “Looks like an R to me.”

  Phin’s frown became a slight wince. I reran the search. “One hundred and eight potentials,” I told him.

  “I liked it better as a B.”

  That must have served as a thank you, because he nodded and left without saying anything else. I was considering another donut when Benedict walked in, with two cups of coffee. Apparently, he was trying to kill me.

  “You trying to kill me?” I asked.

  “This is from the vending machine. The coffee maker finally died.”

  “How?”

  “Someone threw it on the floor and stomped on it.”

  “Homicide,” I said.

  “Justifiable,” Herb said. “A good attorney would push for exculpation.”

  “And everyone in the building had a motive. You got an alibi for the time of death?”

  “I won’t answer any questions without a lawyer present. How about you?”

  “I plead the fifth. How’s the vending brew?”

  “I don’t want to cloud your opinion.”

  I took a slug and found it wasn’t that much of an improvement. We’d traded salty for greasy.

  “Aren’t there like seven hundred Starbucks within walking distance?” I asked.

  “If you go, get me one.” He dug into my donut bag without asking for permission, selected a jelly, and scarfed it down while making greedy, satisfied noises.

  I found some napkins in my desk and passed Herb a few. Then we began the time honored tradition of brainstorming, bouncing facts and ideas off of one another.

  It rarely led to a revelation, but did help us both become more familiar with the facts surrounding the case.

  “So… theories, observations, helpful crime-solving hints?” asked I.

  “The perps paid in advance both times in cash. Once under the name Doug Jackson, once under the name Doug Stevenson.”

  “Both common names. Impossible to trace. But they used the same first name twice.”

  “So maybe one of the perps is named Doug?”

  “We keep saying perps. Could be just one guy, smoking two brands of cigarettes to throw us off.”

  “Does it feel like one guy?” Herb asked.

  I frowned. “Feels like two. Maybe more.”

  “Why? Other than the obvious?”

  The obvious Herb was referring to was the descriptions given by the hotel clerks. Othe
r than both being white, the men who checked into the hotels were different heights, had different hair and eye colors, and one was about fifty pounds heavier. Could have been a disguise, but I had a feeling it was multiple perps.

  I tried to wrap my head around the feeling. “We’ve been to crime scenes that felt… private. As perverted as the act was, it was carried out in an intimate way. These two motel murders… they felt more like two boys reveling in how bad they’re being. Feeding off each other.”

  Herb nodded. “Like a frat party. Encouraging one another’s debauchery.”

  People that kill together wasn’t as rare as it might seem. Herb and I had tackled a degenerate family before, the Korks. They seemed to have it in their blood, and their particularly unhappy brand of nature and nurture had caused a lot of suffering and death.

  We’d also had some gang experience. Years ago, I’d gone undercover to arrest a psychopath known as T-Nail, who headed a gang called the Eternal Black C-Notes. They functioned almost like an insect hive, following his orders, each willing to die for the others. It was all about loyalty and respect and pecking order, and they would often kill together. The C-Notes once tortured a snitch, in front of his family, for three days before the man finally died.

  But the Korks had been genetically insane, and for the C-Notes, it had been about business and a perverted sort of honor. The Motel Murders were different. A group of friends, who killed together for fun, was something we hadn’t seen before. Who were these guys? How did they meet? What started them down this path? Where was the weak link? How long has this been going on?

  “Clues?” I asked.

  “Used the same type of duct tape. Possibly the same roll. If we find the tape, it’s good enough for an arrest warrant.”

  “Keep going.”

  Herb flipped through his notes.

  “Burlap fibers found on both bodies. But no bag found at either scene.”

  “You think they carried her into the room in a burlap bag?”

  “Could be. But they’d risk being seen, so that would be stupid.”

  I agreed. The human body has an instantly identifiable shape, even if wrapped in burlap. Anyone who saw that would have called the cops.