I was on the steps again, holding my chest and feeling for a wound that was not there. My head was screaming. I couldn't formulate a thought. I dropped the bloody handkerchief there, rose unsteadily, turned back to the house and climbed. I reached the porch. The door that, a moment before stood gaping wide and puking blood in my vision, was now nearly closed. Probably always had been. (Ajar, that's the word my scrambled brain finally decided upon.) The door was ajar, just a crack. Cautiously, I pushed it open and, steadying myself, peered in. Silence. Darkness.
I entered the Riaz house. I turned on a light and was momentarily blinded. My head swam so badly that all the other aches, the road rash, the bruised hips, the wrenched back seemed almost painless in comparison. My vision began to clear. I moved slowly around an old couch to the far wall and to a door within. A closet door; the closet of my most recent nightmare vision. The hinges were broken, a panel busted in at its center as in that same vision, the door thrown open. A cord ran inside where a phone lay tossed on the floor beeping miserably for help. I heard the sharp gasp of a woman in pain and spun round.
The room on this side of the couch was splashed in blood. Rocio Riaz was on her belly at the bottom of the stairs. She grabbed her chest, struggled to lift herself, looked at me and, gurgling blood and air bubbles, said, “Upstairs. He's upstairs.” She struggled, fighting to climb the steps on her knees. I took two steps toward her – and she disappeared as if she'd never been. A trail of spattered blood covered the steps as evidence that she, or someone in that same condition, had been there recently and crawled the stairs to the second floor. I took a deep breath and headed unsteadily up trying not to step in the blood as I went.
I reached the second floor hallway and, dizzy again, had to collect myself. A lot of good it did me. Suddenly a new hallucination hit me and I was in another room altogether, a bedroom. I was suffering one thudding body blow after another as someone, a blur, was hitting me in the head, the chest, the stomach. Beyond the pain, I thought I'd puke. There was a rope or a chord or some such thing around my neck, biting into my throat. I couldn't catch a breath and I realized that I was being strangled. My eyes were bugging out and my vision was going again. Good God, I was literally being killed.
Then I was just as suddenly back in the hall at the head of the stairs. Christ, I was losing my marbles. But at least I could breathe again. I steadied myself, flicked on the light, and looked to the floor. The blood trail I'd followed upstairs was still there and continued on. I took one step…
…And was back in that bedroom again. No sooner did I see Reggie beside the bed, garroted, and in his death throes and recognize my surroundings for what they were – than somebody slit my throat. I felt it, sisters and brothers, as God is my witness, an icy sting of pain from my left ear to my right. Like a shot from a seltzer bottle, blood spurted in an arc in front of me, and again, and again, and it dawned with horror that it was my heart spitting my lifeblood onto the floor. I heard myself gurgle and splutter. I spit foaming blood trying to catch a breath that would not come.
I was in the hallway again, holding my throat and feeling for a gash that was not there. My head was screaming. When I could manage it, I concentrated on the blood trail on the floor, focused on it, and cautiously followed it down the hall. I opened each door along the way, terrified now but having to know, leaking gloom throughout the upstairs. The rooms were furnished but empty. The house was empty and the silence numbing. The buzzing in my head, meanwhile, went on, sawing into my nerves. I reached the end of the hall and opened the door to what once had been a bedroom, the bedroom in my vision, but now was a charnel house.
The night, which until that moment had been some sort of crazy action thriller, was now a horror show. Reggie Riaz lay beside the bed exactly as I had envisioned him, dead, his ashen face held up inches off the floor by a rope tightened about his throat and tied to the headboard post. He'd been left hanging and now I knew that I had just experienced his death. An arc of blood had spurted across the dresser, mirror and the wall. Rocio, the source of the blood, lay slashed and stabbed on the floor in a deep red pool. I stepped forward to feel her pulse. I lost my balance and dropped to a knee, staining my pants and mixing Rocio's blood with my own. Then I saw the items soaked in blood and clutched in Rocio's hand; a rosary and a Valentine's Day card. I stared, dumbfounded by the scene and shaken by my unholy experience there. Oddly, through the blurred vision and the screaming pain in my head, I caught a glimpse of a coin, a silver dollar, lying beside Rocio's head. I stood, looked the room over again, and spotted another one. Then another. There were silver dollars scattered across the floor – in and out of the pools of blood. And there was an open Bible on the bed.
A thunderous crash sounded below. “Police!” someone shouted. Soon after followed a thudding of boots on the stairs.
Grand. It was the cops; as usual, late and short. If I was going to do anything or look at anything at all, I'd have to do it fast. I spotted one of the coins not covered in blood, carefully picked it up by its edges, and slid it behind my heel and into my shoe. Then, skirting the blood on the floor, I quickly stole a look at the Bible. It was opened to the 12th chapter of the book of Romans.
Two police officers stormed the hall and, immediately thereafter, filled the bedroom doorway with their guns drawn. “Hold it,” one of them (that I didn't know) shouted. He eye-balled the room and whistled. “All right, Bela Lugosi. Don't move.”
Over his shoulder, the second cop, who obviously recognized me, stammered, “Blake, what the… That's Blake. He's a private dick.”
“What the hell is going on here?” the first one asked.
“She called me,” I said, pointing to Rocio's body. “Said there was trouble.”
“She wasn't wrong,” the cop said. “I'd say you got trouble, buddy.”
On the surface, I couldn't disagree with him. I'd been hit by a car and felt every bit like it. My mind was a well-folded fruit salad. The images being delivered to that brain looked to be coming through lenses filled with effervesced Alka-Seltzer. I was standing in a bedroom with two still-warm bodies, whose deaths I had just experienced myself, with their blood on my hands and clothes. To a couple of dull and unimaginative cops the situation must have looked pretty rotten for me.
The first officer gawped at Rocio's body then turned to me. “You always cut their throats before you put 'em to bed?” I had no answer. Why try?
The wiseguy's notes would state that at 4:30 that morning (the start of my sixth day hunting Katherine Delp's killer) I was taken into custody on suspicion of murder. Despite his partner's assurance I was an all right guy, and because I am apparently the gods own chew toy, the same hard cop insisted on patting me down. What he found in the right pocket of my suit coat, believe it or not, made everything much worse.
Chapter Eighteen
When I carried a badge, I'd spent a lot of time on the interrogators side of the small table in police Interview Room #1 on the second floor of the 16th Precinct building. But that was a lifetime ago; so jump ahead to a miserable morning in 1979. From my arrival early on, until well-after the a.m. rush hour had done its worst to the city, I sat, my bruised and battered carcass in a slump, my throbbing head – a blood-stained patch of gauze taped to my scalp and hair – laying on the other side of that same table with one cop following another hurling questions at my face and flanks. First the patrol boys, like gnats to be shooed away, then the detectives, by which I mean, of course, Wenders in waves. He'd gone out again and I was alone, dying by inches, and not at all sure that wasn't the way it was supposed to be. I have no idea how much time passed but, too soon, the door came open again and Wenders lumbered back in like a cow into a milking parlor. His reappearance meant the break was over and round four had begun. And, yeah, if you're keeping score, little Davey Mason was there, in the hallway behind him. This time that's where he stayed. Taking a new approach, the lieutenant shut the door in Mason's face making it just the two of us. Normally I'd have given him
grief, thunder to hold up my end of the storm, but not that morning (or was it already afternoon?). I felt like a log after the chipper shredder and it was all I could do to remain upright. Wenders did not let that stop him.
“Let's start again, Blake,” he said, booming. “Keep in mind, I'm running out of patience.”
“Would it be too much to ask that you not shout?”
“Well, I'm very sorry. Where are my manners? Am I hurting your ears?”
I silently mouthed, My head. I would have given it a shake but that would have made a mess.
“Delp's secretary sent us to the scene.” He was still booming. “If everything happened the way you say it did, how come she called us and not you?”
“How come? Don't you mean why?”
“I don't need a grammar lesson. And stop talking in italics! Answer the question, Blake. It was your civic duty to call the police.”
“I didn't have time to call you.”
“What were you doing on the phone with Gina Bridges at three in the morning? Is she in this with you? Are you boffing her? Is that it? Some jealous little ménage ja four between you two and the Riaz couple?”
“She works for Chicago's most famous evangelist. I don't think she boffs… alone or in tag teams.”
“What's going on, Blake?”
“Isn't it obvious? The animals are starting to eat their own.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
I closed my eyes, not only because Wenders was ugly, but because my head was threatening to explode. “I swear,” I managed to get out, “it would really be better if you didn't shout.”
“You said this was all tied up with the Delp murder? And the Nikitin murders? How? What do two more killings got to do with the first three? What's it got to do with that church?”
“I don't know.”
“Or you? How come every time you show your face, somebody dies?”
“I guess it's like yours, Wenders, just not much of a face.”
“Laugh, bright boy. Laugh till they push the plunger.”
Mason entered with something in his hands. It looked to be an evidence bag but, as I lowered my aching head to the table again, taking what respite was available, I couldn't be sure. Wenders met his junior at the door and listened to Mason's whispers.
The lieutenant returned to the table and slid the plastic bag under my nose. “You can't have that back yet. We'll need it to convict you. But you can look at it again.” There seemed no way around it. I lifted my head with a grunt to see that, beneath the scribbled evidence label, the bag contained an old-fashioned straight razor. “I'm not telling you anything you don't know already,” Wenders said, “but that's the razor was used to cut Rocio Riaz's throat. The same razor Officer Friendly found in your coat pocket when you were searched at the scene of your crimes.” Safely folded up, newly cleaned after its priority visit to the lab, tucked neatly in its bag, the razor looked innocuous, incapable of the bloody murder of which it – read that I – was being accused. And it had been found in my pocket. I stared, still unable to believe it and unable to remember ever having seen the like. It was a moon rock, an extraterrestrial butt probe, a bill a Senator read before a vote. There was no damned way, my splitting head assured me, I had ever seen that blade before. Failing at his attempts to listen in on my thinking, Wenders demanded, “You want to fill me in?”
I turned my head, too quickly, from the shaving instrument to the cop. Then, while I reminded myself to exercise better judgment next time, I took a deep breath to keep from throwing up. When this (most recent) wave of nausea passed, I opened my hands in weak surrender.
“Shall we continue the verbal sparring,” Wenders asked, “with all the witty banter and bullshit you're so fond of? Or should we save time and you just tell me why you had the murder weapon in your pocket?”
Wenders was as far from King Henry V as an overweight Chicago cop could get, yet once more unto the breach, dear friends, he seemed determined to go. Who was I to argue? I just hoped, in the meantime, that I wasn't bleeding to death internally. But I digress. “I was hit by a car,” I told him (for at least the fourth time that interview). “On purpose. I was unconscious; only Christ knows how long. I told you. Obviously the killer hit me. Obviously the same person would have had no trouble putting the razor in my pocket while I was out. It doesn't take a rocket scientist, Wenders. It's as plain as the snout on your face.”
“I'm not buying it.”
“I'm not starting a religion. I don't need to sell you anything.”
“Your mother wouldn't buy that story.”
“No. My mother would no doubt be on your side. What of it?”
“Start over, killer. You ain't no Jimmy Cagney. Just say it and unburden your soul. I stuck the Riaz woman like a pig. I put the blade in my pocket. I got a rope… Tell me how you spent your morning.”
I had half a mind to tell him. To just shout it out. I spent my morning hallucinating, bouncing from one murder to another – as the victim. It was a blast, being smacked by a car, getting my throat slashed, being punched and strangled, then getting arrested as the perp. That was my morning; a regular goddamn circus! But Wenders would have loved that. He would have insisted on sticking his knee in my back for leverage while he cinched up the straight jacket himself. Luckily, the sane part of my mind made the decision. “Not another word until I talk to my attorney.”
“Screw it, Blake, and screw you too. Go ahead, lawyer up, see if I give a damn. I got your prints and the pictures you took at the first murder scene. I got your license plate, your prints again, and a bunch of permanently scarred Russians watched you take a mud bath at the second scene; a double murder. I got your bloody handkerchief, the victim's blood all over you, and the murder weapon in your pocket at the scene of murders four and five. And, if anything you've said even accidentally ends up being true, I'll have phone calls from the Riaz house to you on their luds. Hell, even a piss-poor ADA could get a capital conviction.”
“You know I didn't kill anybody, Frank.”
He laughed. “What? I care?” Just like that, the laughter disappeared and he bore down on me with gritted teeth. “And don't `Frank' me, you fucker. We've never been friends, remember? This case is making me look like a putz and somebody's going to death row for it. Or to a maximum security jail cell for the rest of their whole born natural. You apparently thought I was kidding, Nod.”
Geez, I didn't think I could hate that name more. The fat slob was using it just like my mother used to do. Next thing I knew he'd break a hair brush over my shoulder and promise to knock me into the middle of next week or remind me that he had brought me into the world and he could take me out. I really was in trouble.
Wenders was still yelling. “I'm telling you for true, Blake, give me what you got on these killings or, I swear to God, I'll pin this whole shittin' mess on you.”
I opened my mouth.
“I'm not done,” he screamed, cutting me off and leaving me looking like a landed carp. “Yeah, you'll probably beat the murder charges, but you'll burn through every nickel you ever squirreled away doin' it. And I guarantee you'll lose your detective's license. What'll you have then? Your reputation? Tell me another fuckin' joke.” He fell into the chair opposite as if his skeleton had collapsed under the strain. “Go ahead,” he said, “smart off now.”
I met his black expressionless eyes; a koala waiting for me to throw him a eucalyptus leaf so he could wrap up this case and get back to his twenty-hour nap. Like the marsupial, Wenders had proved he'd just as soon attack one of his own as look for a real enemy. He didn't care what I gave him as long as I gave him something that led to an end.
“There's something going on in the Delp Ministries,” I told him, exhausted. “I don't know what. Reggie Riaz was involved in the Delp murder; I don't know how. Someone else was involved as well; I don't know who. I've got a lot of questions. And I've got a bad headache.”
Wenders groaned, filling the room with bad air, l
eft me, and stepped into the hallway. Through the open door I heard him tell Mason, “His headache is catching. Now I'm gettin' it. Get me something for it, will ya?” The young suck-ass vanished. A moment later, the shift commander, Alexandra Cozzi, appeared out of nowhere and took Mason's place. I knew Captain Cozzi when she was just good ol' Alex; a decent cop and a hard worker in the old days. (If you're wondering, No, there was no love lost between Cozzi and me either.) Wenders saw me peeking and yanked the door shut. Prick.
I laid my head back down on the table knowing full-well how the conversation in the hall was going. Cozzi was asking the fat slob's opinion. Did I do it? He would answer in the negative because he knew damned well I didn't. But then he'd insist I knew a lot more than I was willing to tell. Though he'd never let on to me, he'd admit to her that he was just squeezing me. Alex would then frostily remind the big ape that squeezing me was pointless and order him to cut me loose. Not because she felt sorry for me, just to make sure I didn't die on them there.
Not long after, I guessed, a frustrated Wenders shook me awake. I was still in the interview room and struggled to a sitting position, leaning heavily on the table, in time to hear him bark, “You can go, Blake, for now.”
I started to stir then stopped myself. Through the headache and the blur, I stared at the detective lieutenant. “Wait a minute,” I said. “There's something you're not telling me. You know I didn't do this. But it's more than that. You have proof I didn't do this or you'd already have me locked away. And you sure as hell wouldn't be letting me go.”
He scowled. “Are you too stupid to know when you're bein' handed a gift?”
“Thanks, but let's stay with this. You've got a witness, somebody who saw what happened outside Reggie's place.”
Corpses Say the Darndest Things: A Nod Blake Mystery Page 13
