by Jordan Dane
Start without me
I’m working up the courage to come to you
I won’t let you down this time
Ethan
Tim smiled as he read the note again. This time the boy had used his name. He found the musician’s shyness very charming and wondered if he would be Ethan’s first male lover. He poured a glass of the Merlot and downed the wine far too quickly to savor it as he gazed across the roof deck and imagined what he would do to Ethan to make their first time unforgettable. He tested the sturdiness of the table and thought of ways he could use the velvety smooth rose pedals until he had to quit stirring his imagination.
This time, being with Ethan would be real.
When the music came to its memorable climax—and his blood warmed his body to a fevered pitch—he had to slow things down. He felt dizzy with his excitement and too much liquor. Now he mixed it with wine. Shit!
He imagined the horrors of coming too fast or not getting it up and keeping it up for a boy who’d been his fantasy for years. What would he do if that happened? He collapsed to a chair, out of breath. The rooftop spun, and the city lights blurred. That’s when he heard the door open and shut with a faint creak. Footsteps crunched the gravel and got louder.
Tim tried to keep his head up as a black silhouette came toward him. He squinted to focus, but the shadow blurred into a swelling darkness. He fought to stay conscious, until he realized he couldn’t move. Something was wrong.
Very wrong.
***
Morning
The call from dispatch came as Angel headed out her front door and locked it behind her.
“Detective Ramirez.” She answered her cell knowing it wouldn’t be good news.
Hearing the words that a dead body had been reported wasn’t new, but when she recognized the building address as Ethan Chandler’s, she nearly lost it.
“Anyone ID the body?” Her voice cracked and she felt sick.
“No ID yet. DB didn’t have a wallet on his person. Looks like an apparent suicide. That’s all I know.”
Angel ended the call and got into her vehicle. After she caught a glimpse of her eyes in the rearview mirror, she almost didn’t recognize her face. She tried Gabe on his cell, but when her call rolled into his voice mail, she didn’t leave a message. Angel headed straight for the scene.
The drive downtown took all her concentration. Every stoplight that didn’t go her way grated on her nerves. Her mind made things worse when she pictured Ethan as a corpse with dead filmy eyes. His concert music played in the background of her memory, a haunting and brooding undertone to the horror that crowded her mind. Only a few blocks from the building, she gripped the wheel tighter to keep her hands from shaking.
With cops called to the building and the promise of a dead body on premises, reporters were gathered like sharks on a feeding frenzy circling the smell of blood. Angel didn’t look any of them in the eye as she shoved through the line and headed inside to find her partner.
A cop in uniform checked her ID and let her into the building, saying, “The body is on the roof, but evidence techs are also at the vic’s residence. The elevators are—”
Angel interrupted him. “Which residence?”
“I don’t have a number, Detective. All I have is the floor.”
When he gave her the same floor as Ethan’s place, she felt her stomach clench. Angel got on the elevator and punched a button with her game face on, something she’d learned from Gabe.
***
Cronan had been delayed getting to the scene because of a phone call from the chief. Another body linked to the Olivia Davenport case hadn’t improved the man’s disposition.
“I want results, Cronan. The media is rippin’ me a new one.”
Cronan didn’t appreciate the visual.
“We can’t have that, sir.”
He listened and gave the man what assurances he could before he ended the call. When he got to the scene only minutes ago, he heard that Angel hadn’t arrived yet. That gave him time to grab a quick look at the body before he called his partner to break the news, good or bad. A dead body was always bad news to someone—especially the dead guy—but if the DB turned out to be Chandler, Cronan wanted a head start to figure out how to soften the blow for Angel. She’d take it hard.
After he saw the body, he staked out a quiet spot on the top floor and was about to call his partner when he heard the ding of the elevator doors. Cronan caught a glimpse of Angel down the corridor when she fixed her eyes on him. She would’ve looked normal to anyone else. Her face was all business, but he knew better. He closed the gap between them and blocked her as she craned her neck to see past him.
“It’s not him,” he told her in a hushed voice. When she still pressed to get by him, he repeated, “It’s not the fiddle player. It’s that neighbor, Tim McFarland. I recognized him from the concert.”
Angel stopped and looked at him. A subtle touch of relief warmed her eyes before the cop in her took over. When she was ready, he headed out the open exit door and escorted her to the body. Evidence techs hovered over the corpse. The ME hadn’t bagged the body. He’d been waiting for them.
“Well, McFarland can’t be a fluke. Is this our case?” Angel asked. “It’s gotta be connected to Olivia Davenport.”
“Yeah, it’s ours. I already heard that from the chief. Apparently the media is reinventing his anatomy. He wants the attention to go away.”
Cronan pulled on his crime scene gloves and Angel did the same as they approached the body. Tim McFarland lay sprawled at a roof deck table, barely confined to a chair. His head and neck were tilted back at an odd angle, with his mouth gaped wide. He stared into the sky with his eyes dry and stuck open. A bloodied knife—something many men carried folded in their pockets—had been dropped at his feet with the blade open. A thick dark puddle of congealed blood had drained onto the gravel and made a gruesome pool beneath him.
Deep gashes, cut length-wise, had been carved into his wrists. The slashes shredded his flesh and exposed muscle and bone.
“If the guy intended to off himself, he wasn’t doing it half way.”
Cronan used the word ‘if’’ because he wasn’t prepared to call it a suicide. He had a hard time understanding how a guy could mutilate his body with a knife and wait for his life to drain when a well-placed bullet would’ve done the trick in a split second. Hacking into your own flesh had to hurt. Damn. When he leaned toward the body to get a closer look, he smelled the potent odor of stale booze mixed with the stench of blood. Not even the fresh air masked the smell.
The liquor might’ve numbed the pain, but why come to the roof to do the deed?
“Looks like he’s wearing the same suit as he had on last night,” Angel said. “You check his pockets yet?”
“Techs did. They bagged what they found. He had nothing in them except this.”
Cronan handed her an evidence bag with an envelope and a note inside. The envelope had the words ‘I’m sorry’ typed across it and the note inside read, ‘My solo performance on the rooftop is meant for only you.’
“This sounds like he intended it for someone specific. It reads like a suicide note, but is it?” she asked.
“Don’t know. Good question.”
He liked that Angel hadn’t jumped to the easy conclusion that McFarland had punched his own ticket. She questioned everything as he did.
“He reeks of booze, but there’s not a bottle in sight. Why did he stumble to the roof to finish it?” Cronan looked around. “There’s nothing up here except a few tables and chairs. Where did he get soused?”
“I can answer that.” Crime scene tech, Sam O’Brien, joined them. “Looks like he pounded a few at his place. He was pissed, too. He busted a bottle of the expensive stuff, but you gotta check out what else we found there.”
As they headed for the elevators, Cronan thought about the contents in the dead guy’s pockets. Sometimes it wasn’t what was there, but what was missing that raised more
questions.
“The guy came to the roof with nothing except a knife to slice and dice and a note stuffed in his pocket, but something was missing. He didn’t have a key to his place.”
“Guess he didn’t figure on making a round trip. We had to get the manager to open his door,” O’Brien said.
“Was his front door dead-bolted?” Cronan asked. “You’d need a key for that.”
“Now that you mention it, that is strange.” O’Brien furrowed his brow. “The manager had to unlock the deadbolt. I saw him.”
Cronan made a note of the key anomaly and so did his partner.
“Is this door always locked?” Angel pointed to the exit leading to the rooftop as they walked back through it. “Looks like residents have to enter a code to open it.”
“Yeah, rooftop access is secured, but it’s a code they all have. Anyone who lives in the building can use the outdoor deck anytime.”
“I noticed a surveillance camera out there. Anything on it?” she asked as they got into the elevator and O’Brien punched a button.
“We got the manager pulling the digitals now, but I’m not holding my breath. The building perimeter has monitored security after hours for break-ins, fire and other emergencies, but the surveillance cameras they have only record on motion and are an independent system. No one watches it. According to the manager, it’s meant as a deterrent to the criminal element, not to record the comings and goings of their residents. They like their privacy.”
O’Brien told them that the only camera with a shot of the rooftop door had been shoved into the wall. The building manager said they had no idea when that even happened. A wind storm could have done it.
“That’s the only feed they have for the roof?” Angel asked.
“Yeah, unfortunately.” The evidence tech raised an eyebrow and smirked. “Guess if the residents get a wild hair to throw a romantic party for two on the roof, they don’t want to run the risk of surveillance footage going viral on YouTube…unless they’re into that kind of thing.”
“Reality TV careers have started with less,” she said.
Cronan saw the activity of a crime scene down the hall as they got off the elevator. Larry Schumacher, senior forensic investigator and partner to Sam O’Brien, stood at an open door waiting for them. As they passed Ethan’s door, Cronan noticed Angel glance at it with the same relief in her eyes when she’d found out the DB hadn’t been the fiddle player. He clenched his jaw and shook it off.
Cronan had no right to be jealous, but he was. Being the King of jerk wads gave him a sense of entitlement.
“McFarland had a special room you gotta see.” Schumacher nudged his head inside.
Following the lead investigator through the front door, Cronan checked out the residence of the dead man. It had a high-end feel and a great view, but nothing like the designer touches of Chandler’s place. McFarland liked living well. His furnishings were top notch, and he had art pieces and paintings that looked original.
“You find his keys…the ones to the front door?” Cronan asked.
“No. Not yet. Anything in particular we should look for?”
“No, but if you find his keys, let me know.”
When Schumacher took them into a small room off the living area, Cronan saw what Tim McFarland treasured most.
“Holy shit.”
Cronan stared in disbelief at a room filled with the many faces of Ethan Chandler. Any place else, the compact space might’ve been used for storage, like a large walk-in closet, but apparently Tim McFarland had other ideas. Inside, the room resembled a bar lounge with framed memorabilia on the walls. It was cramped and dark and had the feel of something very private for McFarland. With the door closed and locked, the hidden parlor could remain private if he had guests over and no one would be the wiser. McFarland had painstakingly built a secret shrine to Ethan Chandler.
“Yeah, the guy had a serious man crush on his neighbor,” Schumacher said.
“Well, I’ll be damned.” Cronan stared at the countless souvenirs and images of the violinist that occupied every inch of the space. “This guy could be our stalker.”
“Looks like his fixation has gone on for years,” Angel added. “Some of these pictures are of Ethan when he was a kid. There are ticket stubs and dated souvenirs that go back. Unbelievable.”
“Looks like the guy took it pretty hard that he got turned away backstage.”
“What are talking about?” Angel asked him.
Cronan pointed to shards of glass strewn across the room and a broken liquor bottle with its neck still intact. Someone had tossed it at a large photo of Ethan Chandler and cracked the glass on the portrait. The frame hung at a slant on the wall. McFarland hadn’t bothered to clean up the mess.
“He got pissed off when Bryce got in his face backstage after the concert. McFarland may have turned that anger on our fiddle player.”
Angel nodded without a word.
“There’s a gift box you need to see too,” Schumacher said. “It’s addressed to Ethan Chandler, but with McFarland’s home address. A bottle of Scotch. There’s a brochure inside from an auction house. Whatever came in this box had to cost some coin.”
Angel caught Cronan’s eye.
“That confrontation McFarland had with Bryce didn’t look like a new thing. It had roots. Bryce said he knew about his good neighbor policy. Maybe this package sparked something.” She glared around the room. “Ethan Chandler lived next door to his number one fan. I wonder if Bryce and Rachel knew about this guy’s hobby.”
Angel had made a good point on what might’ve fueled last night’s altercation. After McFarland tried to crash Chandler’s party backstage and got turned away by Rachel’s pit bull, Bryce Peterson, that ugly confrontation could have antagonized an already contentious neighbor relationship. Given Chandler’s obsessed entourage, the scenario could have turned ugly for any number of reasons, but at the center of it all was Ethan Chandler.
“Don’t leave our fiddle player off that list,” Cronan told her. “He’s the one who lives next door. If he got unwanted attention, he’d be the first to know. If he talked to Bryce about the guy, he could’ve said something to Rachel, too.”
“Or Bryce passed on what he knew, without Ethan knowing it. When Evelyn Carmichael and her cabana boy asked about the guy who’d caused a scene, Rachel said McFarland was Ethan’s neighbor, and she’d fill her in later. I don’t think Ethan heard her say that.”
Angel had ignored his not-so-subtle hint that Ethan Chandler remained on his suspect list. She was still painting him as a victim. If McFarland had intended to make a public rooftop display of his death by suicide, Cronan could now understand who the note had been meant for. His ‘solo performance’ would’ve been aimed at the young musician he’d centered his world on, if it had gone that far. How much Chandler knew about his neighbor, Cronan had no idea, but he intended to find out.
“I found something to narrow your suspect list to a party of one.” Schumacher held a plastic evidence bag in his hand and swung it.
The bag had a cell phone in it.
“He had more than one cell. He had a personal one on a charger in his bathroom, but when I found a second one in this very private room, I recognized the number. It’s the prepaid burner phone that texted the Davenport girl.” With a broad grin, Schumacher handed Cronan the bagged cell and said, “He didn’t toss it, thus making another memorable entry in the chronicles of stupid criminals.”
Angel looked relieved, but she asked, “You sure it’s the same phone?”
“Yeah. Confirmed,” the senior investigator said. “I’ll check it for prints and see what else I can find to make it solid, but I’m thinking this is pretty damning evidence in the Davenport case.”
With the circumstantial evidence piling high and the chief chewing on his ass for results, Cronan knew Tim McFarland had become a homicide detective’s wet dream—a slam dunk case that would satisfy the man in charge and the DA’s office. On the surface
, his death looked like the suicide of a man who obsessively stalked a celebrity, but finding the burner phone in his possession linked him to Olivia Davenport’s murder.
If the knife he’d used to slice his wrists turned out to be consistent with the depth and width of the blade that killed Olivia—whether or not there was blood evidence to link the weapon to the murder—the DA and the chief would push to point the finger at McFarland. Most detectives would’ve been thrilled, but something triggered Cronan’s hinky vibe.
He didn’t like the tidy explanation that came with evidence wrapped in a bow. There were too many players with secrets to suit Cronan and all of them had an unnatural obsession to protect Ethan Chandler.
Why?
Chapter 13
Downtown Chicago
Cronan had plenty on his mind and since he thought better on a full stomach, he convinced Angel to join him at one of his favorite stops. Slim’s on Montrose was located in the trendy neighborhoods of Ravenswood and Lincoln Square. They had burger joint prices with homemade goodness and a chef’s touch of quality that never changed.
The distinctive awning on the outside had the name of the place in red and white. Inside the brick building, Slim’s had a black and white checkerboard floor, an order counter in front of the sizzling grill, and plasma screens running sports at every angle. Every time Cronan walked into the place, it brought back good memories.
“Manny’s Fire Dogs, coming right up.” Dressed in a black polo with the Slim’s logo, the guy behind the counter grinned and yelled his standing order to the short order cook before Cronan opened his mouth.
“What about you, Angel?” the man asked.
“I’ll have the grilled chicken pita, Vinny. Gabe’s buying.”
“Smart man.” Vinny rang up their order and made change.
Cronan was addicted to the Chicago-style hot dogs at Slim’s, but when Manny ordered a double dog basket with curly fries and added a heaping pile of jalapenos—on top of the usual concoction of mustard, relish, onions, tomatoes, pickles, sport peppers & celery salt on a steamed bun—that’s when the order deserved recognition. After Manny got diagnosed, Vinny added his fire dog special to the menu. His best friend had called it ‘being immortalized in mystery meat.’
