Dying Breath

by J. A. Konrath

  “So why the fibers?”

  “Maybe one of the perps works at a textile mill?” Herb suggested.

  “Something for the captain’s task force to check. Anything else?”

  “Both times, the perps paid in advance, using cash.”

  Impossible to trace cash. Damn near impossible to dust cash for prints, but we were trying, much to the chagrin of the motel manager who was more upset at his register drawer being taken as evidence than he was over the fact that a girl was tortured to death in one of his rooms.

  “How many days did they pay for?” I asked.

  Benedict checked his notes. “Last one was eleven days. Explicit instructions not to disturb.”

  I felt a little flutter in my stomach. “And how about the other one?”

  It took Herb a minute to find it. “Eleven days,” he said.

  I called the captain. Having the task force call textile mills was probably a pointless use of taxpayer dollars. But having the task force call motels, asking if any customer paid for eleven days advance in cash, might lead to something.

  With that underway, Benedict and I reviewed the videotapes from each of the crime scenes.

  The footage was extensive and professional. When video cameras were first introduced to the police department as a supplement to photos and sketches of crime scenes, they were frustrating. The cameraman had constantly been in the way, the footage was jumpy and out of focus, and it seemed more a hindrance than a help. Then we started a training program teaching the proper way to videotape a scene, and since then it’s been a blessing.

  The tape of the first scene brought it all back for me. Everything but the smell. As I watched I tried to place myself in the killer’s head, yet another thing that I’m lousy at. Seeing the small, brown, duct-taped girl with her dead grey eyes stretched open, all I could think of was shooting the bastard responsible. I could not imagine doing that to a human being, let alone getting pleasure from it. But I tried anyway.

  What do the killers want?

  Power.

  Control.

  Controlling this girl’s life and death.

  Because it’s fun.

  Why young girls?

  She’s shapely. Post-pubescent.

  This isn’t a pedophile thing.

  It isn’t about age.

  It’s about manipulation.

  Teenagers are naïve. Gullible. Easier to control.

  Why motel rooms? Why take that risk?

  Maybe taking the girls home isn’t possible.

  Homeless?

  Someone else who lives at home?

  A family?

  “Could they be kids?” I said aloud.

  Herb paused the recording. “You mean, like high school students?”

  “What do you do if you want to have a party, but don’t want to trash your parent’s house?”

  “You rent a room.”

  “And you don’t worry about cleaning up afterward. That’s why they leave them there.”

  “Rich kids. Entitled. Spoiled.”

  “Psychotic,” I said. “But they aren’t necessarily kids. They could be older. Just really immature.”

  “So how do we catch them?”

  How indeed?

  We both thought about it for a little while. I took another sip of my coffee, which got greasier the closer I got to the bottom. I think I preferred the regular station crap to the vending machine crap. At least you didn’t have to pay for the privilege of becoming nauseous.

  “You’ve got some sugar on your cheek,” Herb said.

  “You’ve got some jelly in your mustache.”

  We used napkins. On ourselves. Herb’s like a brother to me, but the line was firmly drawn at wiping food off his face.

  I put on the latest crime scene vid, thinking that maybe something would pop out at us having just watched the previous video. Contrary to popular TV shows, very little of police work was exciting. Mostly it was following leads that went nowhere, writing reports, thinking, and waiting around.

  “Would you ever move to the suburbs?” I asked Herb.

  “Hell, no. I love the city.” He raised an eyebrow. “Having regrets?”

  “Every second of every day.”

  “Can’t you talk to your mother about it?”

  “I don’t want to go home. She has a male friend over.”

  “You don’t like him?”

  “He’s nice enough. But the other day he was sitting at the breakfast table, and he fell out of his robe.”

  “He fell? Is he okay?”

  “No. I mean he was sitting there, and I noticed that all of the parts that should be inside his robe were not.”

  “The old guy flashed you?”

  “He didn’t flash me.” I quit beating around the bush. “His balls were hanging out.”

  Herb smirked. “Did you tell him?”

  “No. But, Herb… they were hanging over the edge of the chair. I mean, really hanging. They had to be seven or eight inches long.”

  “Gravity catches up with everyone, Jack.”

  “That happens? To all guys?”

  “Not just men. My wife certainly requires more support than when we were dating.”

  “Aren’t there… options?”

  “You mean plastic surgery? Like a ball tuck?”

  I nodded.

  “Is that what you’re going to push on Latham? Once he turns sixty-five, you’ll force him into a scrotum reduction?”

  I considered my fiancé, trying to imagine him hanging that low.

  “I might,” I said.

  “Jack… growing old with the one you love is about accepting them. As they age. As they change. You love him, right?”

  “Yeah, I love him. But I don’t want to have to worry about curling up next to him on the sofa and sitting on his balls.”

  Herb squinted at me. “This isn’t a male anatomy thing. It’s an intimacy thing.”

  “What? No, it’s not.”

  “You can’t stand change. That’s why you hate the suburbs. And you’re carrying that same bias into your upcoming marriage.”

  “I understand marriage, Herb. I was married before.”

  “And how did that work out?”

  I shrugged. “Divorce. But that had nothing to do with how long his testicles were.”

  “What if you have kids?” Herb asked.

  I snorted. “I’m too old for kids.”

  “There are women close to fifty who are having kids.”

  “That won’t be me.”

  “Do me a favor. Close your eyes and picture you and Latham, in the suburbs, with a kid.”

  “Is his sack swinging between his knees?”

  “Don’t worry about his sack for the moment. Just close your eyes and do it.”

  I closed my eyes.

  I couldn’t do it.

  “I can’t picture anything.”

  “If you don’t see that as a problem,” Herb said, “then you’re never going to be happy.”

  I opened my eyes. “Happiness is bullshit, Herb. If we were happy all the time, we’d never get anything done.”

  Herb stared at me like I’d said the stupidest thing ever uttered by a human being.

  “Do you like the Job?” I asked.

  The Job, of course, referred to being a cop.

  “Which part, seeing the bodies of dead little girls, or dealing with criminals that represent the very worst aspects of humanity?”

  “The part where we catch bad guys and help society.”

  “Last I checked, society was still a mess.”

  “But we’re making a difference,” I said. “If we weren’t, we’d just give up. Right?”

  “So you want to save the world at the cost of your own happiness?”

  “You’re twisting my words.”

  “I’ll rephrase. You want to change the world, and at the same time don’t want any change in your life, like moving to the burbs, or getting married.”

  “You don’t wan
t to move to the suburbs, either. And there’s a difference between not wanting to get married and not having a husband who can trip over his own nuts.”

  “Happiness isn’t about what you do, Jack. It’s about how you feel about what you do.”

  I had no idea how I was losing this argument, but that seemed to be what was happening.

  “What about your weight?” I said, going for the straw man.

  “What about it?”

  “How do you feel about being overweight? Happy?”

  “I’ll show you how I feel.” Herb reached for the last donut, took a big bite, and smiled with custard running down his chin.

  Apparently, happiness is a state of mind. Or else it’s carbohydrates.

  The phone rang.

  “Daniels.”

  “Lieutenant Daniels? You’re in charge of the Motel Mauler case?”

  As far as I knew, the task force was fielding the media and the fake confessions, so this guy got past the filters.

  “Who is this?”

  “Captain Francis T. Butchman, Mount Cisco PD.”

  Mount Cisco was one of Chicago’s endless, spreading suburbs; forty thousand people, mostly white upper middle class.

  “How can I help you, Captain?”

  “Well, we have here what could be a related case. A body of a young girl, wrapped in duct tape.”

  I sat up, hit the speaker phone button. “You’re also talking to my partner, Detective First Class Herb Benedict. Which motel was the body discovered?”

  “That’s the thing. She wasn’t found in a motel. She was found in a parking lot in the back of a rental truck.”

  “Is she still there?”

  “Yep. Scene is sealed off. I figured if it’s related, you’d want to send your lab guys down here.”

  “Good thinking, Sheriff. We’ll do just that. Where’s the scene?”

  He gave me directions on how to get there from Interstate, and I hung up and called the captain and the M.E. and we all got our asses into high gear.

  Mount Cisco wasn’t too far from Bensenville, where I had a house. We took my car, and hopped on I-209 heading west, then north. It had gotten cool enough for me to put on the heat in the Nova, which smelled faintly like hot dogs because Herb had dropped a chilidog on my dashboard last year, and a piece had fallen into one of the registers.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked. “I’m hungry.”

  “You still have donut on your chin. Eat that.”

  He did.

  After exiting on a cloverleaf near a forest preserve, we passed some strip malls and gas stations and drug stores and more strip malls and wound up in an industrial part of town, a collection of small, ugly factory-type buildings that manufactured everything from semi-conductors to rubber components to polymer resin to metal strapping. While it didn’t look derelict or run down, the complex had a poverty/desperation vibe to it, making it stick out in the otherwise lush and colorful suburb. Like you wouldn’t want to be walking around here at 2am.

  We found the address easily, because the entire Mount Cisco police force, eleven cars, was parked in front. They were joined by seven State Troopers, and six CPD cars that beat us there.

  The last time I saw so many cops in one place was when Dunkin’ Donuts was giving away freebies.

  Media had also arrived, but there was a tape line that kept them off the immediate grounds. Herb and I parked near the media vans, hung our badges around our necks using the cords in the badge cases, and walked into the fray.

  The address was for an injection molding facility, which had a side parking lot that wrapped around to the back of the building. There, next to several Dumpsters, was a nondescript, medium-sized box truck. White sides, no markings.

  I remember five or six years ago four kids were found frozen to death in the back of a rental truck. They were college students and had driven up from Kentucky to see a football game, their logic being they had a party room on wheels, complete with a sofa and a keg of beer. Unfortunately, they chose to visit during the coldest winter on record in Chicago, and their party room became a huge ice tray. They got drunk, passed out, and died with a blood icicle level of thirty-two point O.

  “Fits the M.O.,” Herb said. “Same as a motel, except now the play room is portable. Remember those kids a few years back that froze?”

  “I was thinking the same thing.”

  “Eerie. What am I thinking about right now?”

  “Cheeseburgers.”

  “You should write horoscopes.”

  I asked one of the Mount Cisco uniforms to point out Sheriff Butchman to me. He shot an index finger at a short lean man with the biggest nose I’ve ever seen. It was so large you could fit Jimmy Durante’s nose in one of his nostrils, and still have room for Jamie Farr’s, Barbara Streisand’s, and a turkey leg. I’m not one to dwell on personal appearances or shortcomings, and I prided myself in not judging people based on looks, but I couldn’t help but wonder if the Guinness World Record people had been called.

  “My God,” said Benedict, upon seeing the Sheriff and his nose. “That is one helluva honker.”

  “If he starts to sneeze, run for cover,” I said.

  “I’m surprised his brain doesn’t just fall out,” Herb said.

  “His nose is so big, I bet he can smell the future,” I said.

  “We should quit talking before he hears us,” Herb said.

  “Why?” I asked. “He’s probably already smelled us coming.”

  But we did shut the hell up before getting within earshot. After all, we were professionals, and no doubt the man had suffered a lifetime of insults. Not to mention hay fever.

  “Captain Butchman,” I said, clasping the man’s hand. “I’m Lieutenant Jack Daniels and this is my partner, Detective Herb Benedict.”

  He smirked.

  “Pretty funny name, Jack Daniels.” His voice was nasally. Go figure. “Your parents like the sauce?”

  “Marriage. Sexist tradition and patriarchy conspired against me.”

  He nodded. “So… when you interrogate someone, do they plead the fifth?”

  I smiled politely, and resisted asking him if his feet got wet when it rained. I resisted, but made a mental note to tell that one to Herb in private.

  “Some of your lab guys beat you here,” continued Butchman. He bid us closer to the rear of the truck.

  I waved away some flies. That’s when the smell hit.

  My stomach tried to twist its way out of my body.

  I peeked in and winced.

  The victim was the smallest so far. Duct-taped, spread-eagled to the bed of the truck, a naked and rotting mess. Hordes of angry flies buzzed around like a flying blanket, making the air in the truck thick and dark.

  It was the same perps. The signature was identical.

  “Don’t know how to get rid of the flies,” said the Sheriff. He was purposely looking away from the truck. “I got a closer look before. She must have been in there for a while. Weeks. Maybe months. Back before the Spring thaw.”

  “The truck has been here for that long?”

  “We think so. Injection molding plant shut down last year. Place has been empty since Christmas.”

  “You don’t patrol the area?”

  “‘Course we do. But a parked truck in this part of town is as common as a cow on a ranch. The machining factory next door called us, because of the smell and the flies. Foreman who called us is a Veteran. Knew something was dead.”

  I got the foreman’s name and number.

  “Did you trace the plates?” Herb asked.

  “To Gomar Rentals, out of Chicago. Rented to a Chuck Gardiner last month. Reported missing back in February.”

  A different name than the two Dougs who rented motel rooms.

  “Was it locked?” Herb asked.

  “No padlock on the cargo door.”

  “How about the cab?”

  “Haven’t checked.”

  I squinted back into the truck bed. The blood had dried,
leaving black stains. Much of it had pooled in the rear of the cargo space, and some had even leaked out, over the rear mud flaps.

  “This your guy?” Butchman asked.

  My standard answer should have been, “Too early to tell,” because we weren’t certain yet. Speculation lead to rumors, and rumors tended to get leaked to the media. But my gut told me it was the Motel Mauler. Sharing that with Butchman would let him off the hook. Right now, he felt he’d failed his small town. But if this was a big city criminal, he couldn’t blame himself.

  “Looks like our guy,” I said.

  “I suppose you’ll search the whole area.” Butchman was still staring off into the distance.

  “Every inch of it,” I told him. “Was there any contamination to the scene?”

  “My people have steered clear. Me, I wasn’t so professional.”

  “How so?”

  “On the left side of the truck you’ll find a big puddle of puke that’s all mine.”

  “If I had a nickel for every time I threw up at a crime scene I’d be retired now, Captain.”

  He looked at me, down the length of his big nose, and nodded. Then he walked off.

  I hoped I’d given him a little of his pride back.

  Benedict and I stayed through all the tech work, and the eventual removal of the body by Phil Blasky and two other men, all dressed in what looked like radiation suits, complete with breathing apparatus. During all of this I poked around and found a few things for my trouble.

  First of all, embedded in all four tires, were dozens of thin metal shavings, all very short and curly.

  Second, there were no keys in the truck.

  Third, even though it had an automatic transmission, it was parked in neutral. Which was odd. When you park, you put the vehicle in park so it doesn’t roll. I checked the parking brake. Not engaged.

  “You notice the blood pooling?” I asked Herb.

  He nodded. “Ground here is flat. Could have happened while the truck was in motion. Newton’s first law.”

  “It’s pooled at the rear. Nothing at the front.”

  “So?”

  “So objects in motion want to stay in motion. If the truck accelerated, the blood would pool up in back.”

  “But when the driver stopped,” Herb caught on, “the blood would have flowed to the front.”