Unpunished

by Lisa Black

  “Just wham, bam, thank you, ma’am?”

  “Yes.”

  “Drugs ’r’ bad,” Patty summarized. “Well, he had people lined around the block with reasons to take him out, beginning with D’Andre Junior. The street crimes guys will be your best buddies for this one, Rick.”

  “I know it.”

  Patty had a way of managing without managing, necessary when working in a pit of egos such as a detective unit. “Okay. Anybody need anything else?”

  “Winning lotto numbers?” Riley suggested.

  “A team in the playoffs?” another detective said.

  He and Riley discussed sports as everyone else stood to leave. Maggie saw a window of opportunity and ducked her head toward Jack, speaking as quietly as she could. “I have to talk to you.”

  “Not here,” he hissed, then stood up and walked away in one hasty motion.

  Nonplussed, she gathered up her notes and left the table. But not before she noticed her ex-husband watching them with narrowed eyes.

  Chapter 13

  The wind whipped around her, prodding and pushing, reminding her with every step that the world could be a cruel and unforgiving place. Trees whispered as she passed, and each shadow at the corner of her vision had to be stared at until it resolved into something benign—a dog, a kid shooting hoops in their driveway, a husband taking out the trash. Or those two boys huddled near the corner of a house, conversing, smoking, watching her. Not benign, perhaps, but they let her pass.

  Jack’s house sat four blocks from the bus stop. Not all the streetlights worked, but a pleasant spring night in a working-class neighborhood seemed safe enough. Except that a woman alone is never safe enough, and Maggie knew that only too well. She fingered the pepper spray in her pocket and stopped in front of his address.

  A simple bungalow with a million siblings throughout the Cleveland area. It had white siding, a detached garage, and probably six rooms total, not including the basement. For the fiftieth time she questioned her decision to pay him a visit. What if he didn’t live alone? What if this wasn’t even his house? He probably gave a fake address to the police department. He had faked everything else, including his name.

  She had hoped she could just walk away from Jack. They would go back to being model employees, each doing their jobs and studiously avoiding the other. Instead she obsessed in her mind, tried desperately to sort through the jumble in her head, walked around in a daze and unable to clear her thoughts for more than a few seconds at a time. Her coworker Carol, her boss Denny noticed, but felt it normal after what had happened. She had seen things no human ought to.

  She had said nothing to her brother; eventually, however, he would call, maybe stop by on a layover and would know from her first word that something had gone badly wrong. She could not tell him, of course. Alex must never know, and at the same time she had never been able to keep anything from him. Texting, words without inflection, had saved her so far, but at some point he would want a real-time chat. Maggie worried more about facing her brother than facing the entire criminal justice system. It didn’t know her like he did.

  How much less complicated her life would be if she had never met Jack Renner.

  But now she stood in front of his home, and waiting on the sidewalk all night didn’t seem like much of a plan. She walked up the driveway, climbed the three steps to the storm door on the side of the house, and knocked.

  She heard activity. His large figure loomed behind the frosted glass and the door opened.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Jack demanded.

  She swallowed. “We have to talk.”

  “About what? And—” He pushed the storm door open, nearly hitting her. “Get in here before anyone sees you.”

  He reached out a hand as if to hustle her in but drew it back, letting her brush past him without even the slightest physical contact. She entered a kitchen stocked with the barest essentials—coffeemaker, dish drainer, a ragged towel, an old Formica-topped table with a couple of chairs. A scent she couldn’t identify lingered, probably from his dinner. Fairly clean for a bachelor. Even with the subject at hand gnawing at her insides, she found herself fascinated by how Jack lived. Did he watch reality shows? Did he cook for himself or live on takeout? Did he have girlfriends? Family? What was he—a human being with one warped area of himself, or a killing machine 100% focused on ridding the world of crime one criminal at a time?

  Eggs, she realized. Perhaps he had made an omelet.

  He had turned around, blocking her from going into the rest of the house, waiting for an explanation. He wore old jeans and a navy sweatshirt and athletic socks, but seemed no less intimidating than he did in his detective getup of dress shirt and suit coat. And definitely not pleased at her presence.

  “Ronald Soltis,” she said, and watched for his reaction.

  He didn’t give one. “What about him?”

  She waited. He raised one eyebrow at her.

  “You and Riley were assigned to his case. I saw that in RMS.”

  Still he said nothing. He seemed almost amused, which ticked her off.

  “Well?”

  “Do you want to know if I killed him, Maggie?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then ask me,” he said with no amusement at all.

  She forced herself to speak. “Did you kill him?”

  “No.”

  They stared at each other. A white cat wandered into the room.

  “Anything else?” Jack asked.

  She was afraid to say that she didn’t believe him, because part of her did. She just wasn’t sure. She couldn’t be sure of anything where Jack was concerned. He had killed quite a number of Cleveland’s worst, until she had made the connection between the vigilante-like murders. Her existence had put a stop to his “work.” No wonder she felt terrified to approach his house, to be anywhere around him.

  Yet sticking her head under the covers could not be an option. Not for her. “I thought we had a deal. If we’re going to do this—”

  “Do what? We’re not going to do anything. We’re not partners, Maggie. We’re not friends.”

  With a frown she said, “I know that.”

  He ignored her scowl and spoke more calmly. “Look, we intersected at one point, and that point is in the past. I’m sorry you’re all discombobulated because you’ve always been the good girl, thought following the rules would pay off. But it doesn’t. I can’t help you deal with that. Right now all we need to do is maintain absolutely zero connection between me, you, and what happened. That means you don’t show up at my house.”

  She kept her voice as level and matter-of-fact as his. “What choice did I have? You said no phones, so I can’t call you. I don’t even have your number.”

  “And we’ll keep it that way. Cell phone records live forever. And Riley’s girlfriend lives out this way—what happens if he just happens to drive by and sees your car in my drive?”

  “I don’t have a car.”

  “How’d you get here?”

  “Bus.”

  “You walked here in the pitch-dark? Are you crazy? Jeez, Maggie, don’t you see enough of what this city can do . . . ?” He ran a hand through his hair, so exasperated that she almost smiled.

  In a way this demonstration of normality calmed her, and she said, “I thought we needed to get some things straight.”

  Either Jack felt tired—unsurprising since they’d both been up all night—or willing to take some pity on her, because he gestured toward one of the kitchen chairs. “Sit down, Maggie. Want a drink? All I have is bourbon.”

  She couldn’t stand the stuff, but that didn’t matter right now. “Sure.”

  She sat on the hard kitchen chair. The cat tensed at her feet, readied itself, and jumped into her lap.

  Jack set a shot glass in front of her and put down one for himself, taking the other chair as he opened a bottle of Four Roses. “That’s Greta.”

  Maggie petted the animal, stroking the top of its he
ad, and sipped from the glass. She grimaced.

  “Not a bourbon lover?”

  “Not much, no.”

  “You must have gone to the same seminar Riley did.”

  She didn’t ask what he meant. They sat and listened to the cat purr.

  “So, what is our deal, Maggie? You don’t tell your coworkers about my murders, and I don’t tell them about yours. In return you give me six months to get my affairs in order and clear out. In return for that, I stop killing people. Is that an accurate summary?”

  She sipped. “Yes.”

  “Okay, then. My end of the bargain’s holding up. I didn’t kill Ronald Soltis. I’m glad someone did, but it wasn’t me. And by the way, I was with you at the Herald offices all last night, or did that escape your notice?”

  “He’d been there for at least two days.”

  “Good for him.” He drained his glass, poured another.

  “He was shot in the back of the head with a twenty-two, Jack. What was I supposed to think?”

  “You should think—first of all, I don’t care what you think, because you’re already in this up to your neck. You want to keep that very clear in your mind.”

  “I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t,” she said in her most withering tone.

  “Just making sure. But you should think that twenty-twos are a very popular caliber and Ronnie had amassed a lot of enemies in his short life, and that that’s what happens when stupid kids who think they’re tough try to throw around their weight in the territories of people who really are. That’s what you should think.”

  “Wouldn’t he have had a posse? Some muscle to go with him? All thugs do.”

  “Posses can be bought off. That honor among thieves thing has always been an urban myth. Every single one would sell every single other one out for a dime bag.”

  The cat snuggled deeper into her stomach. She believed him, but was that only because she wanted to, because she so desperately wanted to wash her hands of all Jack’s crimes? If Ronald Soltis had died because she hadn’t turned Jack in, then that spattered his blood over her face. No amount of rationalizing could bury that shining fact.

  Jack had lied every day to everyone around him and done such a good job. He lied to people who listened to lies all day long. Her abilities and intelligence and experience, so effective against inanimate evidence such as blood and fibers, were those of a rank amateur against someone like Jack.

  “All right,” she said, and bit back I’m sorry. She would not apologize for doubting him where any sensible person would. Any sensible person who hadn’t flung themselves into a web of the deepest deceit possible. “There’s something else. I need your fingerprints.”

  “Hell no!”

  “Jack. They wouldn’t let me back into the crime scene. Josh and Amy processed and collected all the prints. They ran the prints through our AFIS. All of them. The only hits were your—victim’s. Of course they didn’t hit on you because personnel prints aren’t in my database.”

  “They wouldn’t anyway.”

  “But—”

  “The prints turned in with my application packet aren’t mine. Long story.”

  “Okay,” she said, letting her voice express her deep and abiding disapproval at someone who dared to mess with her fingerprint database. “The catch is, Rick wants to send them to the FBI. Unsolved serial killer case, that’s not unreasonable.”

  As luck would have it—or wouldn’t—investigation of the series of murders had been assigned to Rick Gardiner and his partner. Not ideal, but that didn’t worry her much. Rick lived in a perpetual state of too much occupation with his own thoughts to be able to guess at hers. Better he investigate than a detective like Patty Wildwood, who might actually pick up on nonverbal clues.

  “You can’t let him do that,” Jack said.

  “I figured as much. But I can’t pull yours out of all the prints left at the scene if I don’t know which ones are yours. The only way I can eliminate your prints is if I identify them first.”

  He digested this. “I see your point. I got into the scene with the first responders, so my prints can be explained—”

  “—but not if they don’t match what’s in your file.”

  “Take a new set. Just for elimination purposes.”

  “How am I going to explain that?”

  “I realized I wasn’t wearing gloves at the scene, came to you and confessed to contaminating the evidence.”

  Maggie sat, working out different scenarios in her mind. It felt sketchy, but it could work. She could always ask a few other people who had been at the scene for their prints as well in order to disguise the process. She could say that inking a new set in her office would save a headache trying to get HR to release them. The biggest factor in their favor was that no one at the department, no one, would ever suspect that the killer had been a cop. They would not be looking for suspicious activity within their own walls; therefore, they wouldn’t see it. It almost scared her, how easily she could see it working.

  The cat purred.

  “She doesn’t usually like anyone except me,” Jack said. “And she only makes an exception for me because I feed her.”

  “They know a cat person when they find one.”

  They regarded each other.

  “Don’t come here again,” Jack warned.

  “Don’t kill anyone.”

  He burst out with a snort of laughter, quickly stifled, and Maggie smiled. But only for a split second. Then Jack stood and grabbed his jacket from the back of a different chair, his abrupt movement startling the cat. “Come on. I’ll drive you home.”

  “I thought we shouldn’t be seen together.”

  “Yeah, but you getting mugged two blocks from my house wouldn’t help our case any, either.”

  She set the cat on the floor as gently as possible, but still the feline stalked off with an aggrieved air. Maggie brushed hair off her dark jeans. “Don’t wait too long to get this place on the market. Sellers aren’t having an easy time of it.”

  His face darkened, and that slight air of comradeship that had drifted up between them evaporated. “It’s a rental.”

  “Didn’t mean to nag.”

  “Come on.” He shut the door behind them with a bang and led her to his car. They rode most of the way in silence.

  Around East 30th Jack’s phone rang. Maggie could hear Riley’s excited voice from the passenger side.

  “You won’t believe this,” Riley said. “We got another one.”

  “Another what?”

  “Another Herald employee.”

  Maggie’s phone trilled as well.

  Chapter 14

  Jerry Wilton had been Director of Advertising for barely two years, responsible for maintaining a cash flow that dried up a little more every day in this new digital paradigm. He had to cajole, promise, and deal to the best of his ability in order to bring paying customers to the pages of the Herald. He was also responsible for monitoring, verifying, and, the corporation hoped, increasing the numbers of papers bought on a daily basis.

  Had been, that is, until someone strung him up from a weightlifting frame in his own living room. Now he hung perfectly still, facing the side of the room with the eighty-inch flat-screen and the Bose speakers and the kitchen with the gleaming espresso machine and stainless-steel pots hanging over the island. Some fault in the floor’s level kept him from watching his own blood as it spread across the floor because it traveled in the other direction, behind him. If he had been able to peek straight downward, if the strap around his throat gave just enough for that, he would have been able to see his internal organs slipping onto the polished hardwood after his killer sawed his midsection open with one slightly jagged cut. The knife lay on the floor next to the offal. The pricey apartment now smelled like an autopsy suite in full swing.

  Maggie stared, taking this in.

  Jack took a step forward.

  “Don’t,” she ordered. “There’s not much I can do about the first tw
o cops on the scene, but I could still get some usable shoeprints.”

  “How long’s that going to take?” Riley muttered.

  “It’s worth it,” she promised.

  The living room had been sparsely furnished in order to leave Wilton plenty of room to work out—nothing other than a leather couch, coffee table, end table, and workout equipment.

  Fifteen minutes later she had covered the beautiful hardwood with enough black powder to keep the crime-scene cleanup people cursing for an hour, photographed and lifted several prints, and spread disposable drop cloths so that she and the detectives could walk their bootied feet around the body without tracking the stuff through the rest of the apartment. Only then could they approach the dead man.

  Jerry Wilton had light brown skin, close-cropped hair, and a figure that came from spending a lot of time using the chin-up bar from which he now hung. He was tall—his toes barely cleared the floor, the noose hiked up to within six inches of the bar. The strap had been looped over it and then tied off on the base.

  He was dressed in sweats and a T-shirt as if he had indeed been working with the bar when the killer called, so he might not have been expecting a visitor, or if he had it was someone Jerry Wilton knew well enough not to care what he looked like when they arrived. There were no signs of a break-in, indicating he had opened the door without any fuss, but neither were there any signs of shared snacks or drinks. None of the neighbors reported hearing an argument. The killer could have had a key, but after a quick check of the rest of the apartment, Maggie doubted that anyone else lived there. No women’s items, no makeup or panties around, and all the male clothing seemed the same size. The bed had been made, sort of, and the bathroom was tolerably clean. The medicine cabinet held a store aisle’s worth of vitamins and supplements, but no prescription or illegal drugs.

  Wilton had an appreciation for imported beer and Jack Daniel’s whiskey, but not to excess—there were no piles of empties to be found. The kitchen appeared neat at first, but then Maggie noticed a smear of butter on the island and toast crumbs on the counter, and the few dishes in the sink had dried and crusted. She found Wilton’s—or maybe the cleaning lady’s—secret: a large drawer stuffed with junk mail, bills, receipts, menus, and a few greeting cards from someone named Natasha who wrote with a looping feminine script and who really wanted the two of them to get back together. The garbage smelled of takeout that needed to be taken out. Bachelors, Maggie thought.