Cruel Justice

by William Bernhardt

  Mike punched the LED button on his digital watch and checked the time. He’d been walking for over six hours. Add that to the seven hours he’d been clocking each night for the last three nights and … well, it was probably best not to dwell on it. He’d been at it for a while. And so far all he had was … sore feet and two major blisters on his toes.

  And a chance to get reacquainted with some of the worst parts of north Tulsa. What a panoramic display, Mike thought, scanning the streets surrounding him. Urban blight. Poverty. Crime. Human misery. All his favorite scenery. After all, why go to the beach when you can go to—oh, say, Dino’s Hubcap Emporium, or the Wizard’s Smoke Shop, or the crumbling remains of the ABC Taxicab Company, or—

  Wait a minute. Some half-remembered detail was nagging at him. What?

  The taxicab company. That was it.

  Without looking, Mike plunged off the sidewalk and crossed the street. The front of the stone building was crumbling; the faded paint lettering identifying it as the ABC Taxicab Company was barely visible. The door was bolted and the windows were blocked. It didn’t look as if ABC had been in business for years.

  Mike peered down an alley beside the building. It was dark, even though the sun was blazing overhead. The alley was littered with trash and debris. Mike found a huge pile of broken booze bottles stacked against one wall, along with spoiled food and human waste.

  He spotted a burlap bag that looked as if it were someone’s bedtime blanket. A homeless person must be using the alley for shelter.

  Holding his breath, Mike trudged onward. About halfway down the side of the building, he found the hole. A large hole, as big as a door, in the side wall.

  And then we walked through the wall.

  Mike looked inside.

  There was no movement, no sign of life. Of course there wasn’t, he told himself. What were you expecting? Shake out of it. He was not in danger here. He was just poking around.

  Mike stepped through the hole. There were no signs of life, true enough, but there were many taxicabs. Old yellow cabs, most on blocks, the tires having long since been lifted.

  Mike looked under one of the hoods. Nothing. Anything of value must’ve long since been removed. Still, there was something about this place. …

  Mike snapped his fingers. He was looking at this all wrong. He was thinking like an adult, viewing it as an adult would. Abie was only ten; he had an entirely different perspective on the world.

  Mike crouched down and surveyed the room from a height of, oh, say, four feet. The view was very different. You didn’t focus on the cars, because you weren’t looking down on them. All you saw were the doors.

  Yellow doors. With numbers.

  Mike raced through the building: 54-28X. 54-76X. 64-99C. The numbers flew past.

  Abie had been here.

  Mike checked the opposite wall. Sure enough, there was a hole in it, too, even larger than the other one. They must’ve passed through this building as a shortcut.

  Mike ran through the second hole. His excitement was mounting. If there had been any doubt before, it was gone now. He was close.

  The hole led to the back end of the block. On the opposite side, Mike spotted a row of low-income houses.

  Mike tried to concentrate. Why would it make sense to go through that building?

  He checked his map. The deserted building in Rockville where he found Abie was due north from his current position. Someone could stay away from the major streets and still get there from here in half an hour easily. But they wouldn’t cut through this building unless they were coming from …

  Directly south, Mike spotted the backyard of a white plasterboard home. The yard was barely big enough for the clothesline strung across it. Extending out from the house on the upper level, though, Mike saw some sort of … attic? No.

  Extra room. With a separate set of stairs.

  That was it. That’s why the police weren’t finding him. They were looking for apartments. There was probably no way to tell from the front of that house that it had an extra room. The police wouldn’t even stop.

  Mike jumped over the chain-link fence. He was happy to find there was no dog. The staircase allowed the tenant to come and go without communicating with the people who lived in the main house. Perfect for a kiddie pervert. He could go about his business … well, unmolested.

  Complications would arise only when he was bringing a boy home and thought there was a possibility of some … noise. That was undoubtedly when he used the abandoned building in Rockville. He would walk there to prevent anyone from spotting his car. And once inside, the boy could scream and cry as loud as he was able. …

  No one would hear him.

  Mike checked the garden by the staircase. Eureka!

  Statues of two dwarfs. Or trolls, if you prefer.

  Mike ran up the stairs to the private room. He pressed his ear against the door. At first, he didn’t hear anything. Then he did. Someone was talking in a low voice, barely audible.

  Mike reached inside his coat and withdrew his Bren Ten automatic. By all rights, he should get a search warrant, then come back and knock politely

  Aw, screw it. For all he knew, there was another exit. The pervert could get away, and he would never come back.

  Sorry, no warning today. Mike knew he was violating about thirteen different judicial decisions, but this time he just wasn’t taking any chances. What had the Supreme Court done for him lately, anyway?

  Mike took a running leap and threw himself against the door. It splintered like dried twigs. He crashed down inside the room, then rolled. He sprang to his feet, gun clutched in both hands.

  “Freeze!”

  He looked left, then right. He whirled around.

  Nothing.

  There was another room. A kitchenette. Slowly, gun still poised, Mike stepped through the passageway. …

  Still nothing. There was no one else here. There was no other way out, either. But he was sure he had heard voices. Was he totally hallucinating?

  When Mike returned to the front room, he saw it. The radio.

  The son of a bitch had left the radio on.

  Mike checked it out. It was an alarm radio. The alarm probably started while the boarder wasn’t here to turn it off.

  Where was he?

  Mike fumbled with the radio, trying to shut off the noise. He punched all the buttons. Nothing worked. Finally, in frustration, Mike picked it up and threw it across the room.

  That worked. And now, in addition to breaking and entering, he could add property damage to his list of crimes.

  Mike took a long slow breath. He really needed to get a grip. He was letting this search get to him, letting this case get to him. It was just so horrible. Little boys. Total innocents. They don’t know what’s going on. They can’t protect themselves. They’re helpless. And alone. How did that line by Olive Schreiner go? “The barb in the arrow of childhood suffering is this: its intense loneliness, its intense ignorance.”

  He searched the outer room and the bathroom, but found nothing of interest. Then he tried the bedroom.

  The room was dark. The curtains were drawn, and the overhead light didn’t work. Consequently, he almost missed it at first. Then, when his eyes made contact, he gasped.

  He had read about this, of course. He had read that pedophiles loved to look at pictures. That they kept souvenirs. Abie had even mentioned that the creep had pictures. But Mike had no idea.

  Wallpaper could not have covered the wall more efficiently. From floor to ceiling, the wall was layered with pictures of little boys.

  They didn’t vary much. All were in the eight-to-ten range. All were dark-haired, dark-eyed, pretty. Some of the pictures had obviously been torn out of catalogs—underwear ads and such.

  But most of them were photographs. Slick, professional work. Big smiles, cheesy grins. Bland backdrops.

  They were school photos, most of them, anyway. Did the creep know the photographer—or was he the photographer?

&
nbsp; Mike had to find out. He began jerking drawers out of the desk in the bedroom. When he drew open the fourth drawer, photos slid out from the back.

  Mike picked them up, then suddenly felt as if someone had squeezed his heart in their fist. It was not until some minutes later that he realized he was weeping.

  Mike recognized the boys at once. They were the victims. Andy Harden. Jimmy Whalen. The Connell boy.

  These were Polaroids, and they had been taken at that goddamned building in Rockville where the pervert kept his mattress. The boys were naked, or stripped down to their underwear. They had been arranged in a variety of sickeningly obscene poses. But that wasn’t the worst of it.

  All the photos except Mickey Connell’s were smeared with blood. Mike knew with instant certainty that the blood was the blood of each child. Smeared on by his killer.

  That was why the Connell boy’s didn’t have any. The car had gotten him before the killer could.

  Mike reached back into the drawer. Pieces of a photo were strewn about. Someone had ripped a picture into shreds.

  Mike didn’t have to reassemble the pieces to identify the subject. It was Abie.

  Mike slammed the drawer shut and began tearing the room apart. He had to find something. Something, anything, damn it! There was no way in hell that Chris Bentley lived in this dive. It was someone else. Someone else!

  He wiped his eyes and tried to think clearly. He had to focus. This man was out there, damn it! And his plan of action was clear; the torn photo left no doubt about that. Mike had to figure out who this sick bastard was before he got to Abie.

  Like he had the others. The little boys in the Polaroid parade.

  Smeared with blood.

  Mike spent the next half hour searching every nook and cranny. While groping about in the bedroom closet, he accidentally dislodged a shoe box. When it tumbled to the floor, the lid fell off and out spilled two pairs of socks, two rolls of pennies, and two keys on a chain.

  Mike clutched the keys in his hands. A piece of tape on one key read: C-D-Y-S-K.

  The key chain bore a regal lion pennant. And the lettering read: UTICA GREENS COUNTRY CLUB.

  There was a connection.

  Mike shoved the keys into his pocket and raced out the door. Even if his big toes protested, he would run all the way back to his car. From there, he could call Tomlinson and tell him to get a warrant. With a warrant, Tomlinson could cover up Mike’s illegal search and bring in a proper crime-scene team. Surely they could find more identifying clues.

  If not, they could just wait till the chickenhawk came home. But it was always possible he wouldn’t. It was possible he would realize his lair had been discovered.

  It was possible he already had.

  In the meantime Mike was heading to the county courthouse. He remembered Ben saying something about the importance of the caddyshack keys, but he couldn’t recall the details. Ben would know what it meant. Who it was.

  That was what Mike wanted to know, what he had to know.

  Who it was they were looking for. He had to know that, before it was too late.

  Before Abie became just another bloody photograph.

  68

  CAPTAIN PEARSON LOOKED AS if he had been knocked in the face. Ben’s announcement of his next witness seemed to come as a surprise to everyone, including, to be truthful, Ben. He wasn’t entirely sure why he had decided on Pearson. The deed was done now, though. He would have to make the best of it.

  Pearson was on his feet in the gallery, but he wasn’t moving. “Do I have to do this?” he asked the judge.

  Judge Hawkins appeared confused. “Didn’t counsel discuss your testimony with you in advance?”

  “Hell, no.”

  Hawkins gave Ben a long look. “Is this true?”

  “Yes, your honor.”

  “You gave him no advance warning?”

  “He isn’t a friendly witness.” Ben glanced at the jury, making sure they got that. “But he possesses critical information.”

  “Very well,” the judge said, scowling. “But I’ll be watching you carefully. Behave yourself. I won’t have you harassing someone who didn’t even know he was going to testify.”

  “No, your honor. Of course not.” Like hell!

  Judge Hawkins motioned, and Pearson strode unhappily to the witness stand.

  “Good afternoon,” Ben said.

  Pearson grunted in reply.

  “Shall I call you Mr. Pearson or Captain Pearson?”

  “Mr. Pearson will be fine.”

  Ben established the essential background details: that Pearson was the self-styled captain of the country-club board of directors, that he had been for years, and that he had general supervisory authority over the country club’s affairs.

  “Mr. Pearson, you held the same position ten years ago, when Maria Alvarez was killed, right?”

  “What are you implying? That I killed that woman? This is outrageous!”

  “Please answer the question,” Judge Hawkins said firmly.

  “Yes,” Pearson spat out. “I was in charge ten years ago. But I had nothing to do with this mess.”

  “Were you at the club the night the murder occurred?”

  “I most certainly was not!”

  “What were you doing?”

  “I was at home, sound asleep, with my wife.”

  “Your honor, I object,” Bullock said. “This isn’t going anywhere. This is a pure and unadulterated fishing expedition.”

  Ben racked his brain for a response. It was hard to come up with a good one when Bullock was basically right.

  “Are we going to sit here while Mr. Kincaid calls every member of the club to the stand and tries to get them to confess?”

  Hawkins leaned over the bench. “It would help if you got to the point, Mr. Kincaid. If you have one.”

  Ben nodded. Time for a bold initiative. “Mr. Pearson, isn’t it true that you’ve been supplying illegal narcotics to country-club patrons for years?”

  The uproar in the courtroom astounded even Ben. People rose to their feet; reporters sent messengers running toward the back door. Judge Hawkins pounded his gavel, trying to quiet everyone. ,

  “That’s a serious accusation, your honor,” Bullock shouted over the hubbub. “Mr. Kincaid better have some proof.”

  “I’m inclined to agree,” Hawkins said. He was mad now, no doubt about it. “Mr. Kincaid?”

  “I’m waiting for the witness to answer my question.”

  “No!” Pearson shouted. “It’s a lie!”

  “Permission to treat the witness as hostile,” Ben said.

  “Under the circumstances,” Hawkins said, “we can hardly claim that he’s your bosom buddy, can we? Granted.”

  “Captain Pearson, isn’t it true that your fellow board member Dick Crenshaw has a major cocaine problem?”

  Pearson’s eyes darted toward the gallery. Crenshaw was there, watching him very closely. “I don’t pry into other people’s problems. …”

  “The day we all played golf together, he was on a coke high. Till it ran dry. Then he was on a coke low. Right? You were there.”

  “That doesn’t mean he got the stuff at the country club!”

  Ben saw heads nod in the jury box. They had picked up on the implied admission. “Where else would he get it?”

  “How would I know? Look, if you have questions about Crenshaw, ask Crenshaw. I don’t know where he gets it.”

  “I think you do. I think you’ve been supplying it to him for years. You put that monkey on his back.” Ben paused. “I wonder if he won’t admit it when I call him to the stand, since you’ve all but admitted he’s an addict.”

  Pearson hovered over the edge of the witness box. “I will not sit here and let you call me a … a drug pusher!”

  Again, Ben checked the faces in the jury box. On this issue, they appeared undecided. But they were definitely interested.

  “And what you can’t distribute at the club,” Ben continued, “you distr
ibute throughout Tulsa via paid accomplices. The same people you use to collect the junk from Peruvian smugglers and run all the other risks. The Demons.”

  “The what?”

  “Don’t bother acting like you don’t know who they are. I saw them in your office.”

  “You’re lying!”

  “No, I’m not. Captain Pearson, isn’t it true that after we finished playing golf last week, we walked back to your office?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “In your office I saw four black teenagers wearing jackets bearing the emblem of the largest North Side youth gang, the Demons.”

  “That’s not—”

  “I wasn’t the only person there that day. Should I call some of your employees to the stand?”

  Pearson folded his arms across his chest. “I was interviewing those young men for jobs in the dining room. I believe I mentioned to you that I was hiring. You came in one day while I was talking to an employment agency.” He smiled thinly. ‘Those young gentlemen were part of my new affirmative-action program.”

  “I don’t think so.” Ben hated this. It was more like being in the boxing ring than putting on a defense. But he had to keep it up until he got what he needed. “You would never allow those boys to work in your dining room. You’re a deeply prejudiced person.”

  “Another lie!”

  “You have no minority employees working in the main club building, right?”

  “We had some black caddies.”

  “And that was darned big of you, but I’m asking about the real employees. The full-timers. No minorities, right?”

  He sank back in his chair. “Well, that’s why I started my affirmative-action program.”

  “Wrong. I heard your phone conversation when you were talking to the employment agency. You told them you weren’t interested in any non-Caucasians.”

  “I said no such thing.”

  “Not in so many words, maybe, but you communicated the message, just the same. I was suspicious at the time, so I made notes and later consulted a friend of mine at the EEOC. Turns out code phrases like yours are commonly used to communicate illegal hiring preferences.”

  Pearson’s eyes broke contact. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”