The Sons of Jude

by Brandt Dodson

  Steve nodded. “Then this might be related. The deputy coroner is already here. She was on her way to the office when she got the call. That’s two in two days.”

  Campello brushed past the officer and into the narrow hallway leading back through the apartment. He shouldered past a tight grouping of officers congregating in the hall and entered the bedroom. Rita lay under the covers on her right side with her back to the door and Campello. He walked to the other side of the bed, past the same technician who had photographed the scene at Navy Pier, and paused to acknowledge the deputy coroner.

  “How come you always get the exciting ones, Frank?” she asked.

  He knelt at eye level to study the victim’s face.

  Her eyes were partially open and fixed in the same vacant stare as Trina’s had been. The blankets were pulled down to her waist and her hands were tucked prayer-fashion under her pillow as if to support her head while sleeping. She was lying in a partial fetal position and was wearing a sheer pale-blue gown. A bracelet encircled her partially exposed left wrist. He gently pushed the overlapping edge of the pillow aside. The inscription on the jewelry read: To Rita from mom and dad. We love you.

  “What’s the time of death?” Campello asked.

  The deputy coroner was standing over him, holding a pad and pen in hands that were gloved in latex. “I would say six to ten hours ago. Give or take.”

  “Any signs of a struggle?”

  “Other than the bruises on her face? No. Those are old, though.”

  He stood to full height, but did not take his eyes off the victim. “I know. I interviewed her yesterday morning. Almost twenty-four hours ago.”

  “She tell you who did that?”

  “Her boyfriend.”

  “It always is, isn’t it? It seems the pretty girls like this one usually hook up with losers.” She stepped around him to the bed and knelt. She motioned him closer. “Let me show you something.”

  He knelt beside her and she pushed the pillow back to reveal the girl’s arms and a small puncture wound with surrounding bruises. “I would say this girl died of an overdose of something and it was probably an injectable. But she wasn’t a junkie. There aren’t any other wounds or needle tracks. If she injected herself it’s a first-time thing. More likely, it was done for her.”

  “Then she would have had to be subdued. Any other injuries?”

  She pushed the pillow farther back to reveal deep discoloration on the girl’s right wrist and forearm. “Given the degree of bruising here, I’d say it took considerable force to subdue her. They’re fresh and some of them are defensive.” She gently pulled Rita’s hands free of the pillow to reveal lacerations on the heels of her palms. Then she stood and handed him a medicine bottle that was capped with a rubber stopper.

  “Take a look at this.”

  Campello took the bottle. It was empty. “What is it?”

  “Insulin.” She nodded to Rita. “This little thing was a Type I diabetic.”

  The label was in Rita’s name and indicated the availability of multiple refills. “It’s finished.” He counted back to the date of the prescription. “But, it shouldn’t be.”

  “My guess is that she was injected with the entire bottle.”

  “Would she die quickly from that?”

  The deputy coroner shook her head. “Eventually, but not immediately. She was likely subdued until the drug took effect and then the scene was staged.”

  He stood and glanced about the room. The plush cream carpet matched the living room and flowed seamlessly with the peach color of the walls. Heavy draperies hung over the room’s only window and the open closets were full. Shelves lining the walls were crammed with stuffed animals of all kinds. Rita may have been a working girl, but in many ways she was still a child; still innocent. “I didn’t get this far into the apartment yesterday.”

  “I’m going to move her to the morgue after we get a few more pictures. Do you need to look around?”

  He spotted a computer on a nearby desk. “Yeah, just for a few minutes.” He hesitated.

  “Something bothering you, Frank?”

  “This girl was a dancer at Silk ’n Boots. But… this place. It’s nice. Way too nice for the income she’d make.”

  The deputy coroner agreed. “Dancers can make a nice buck, but not in a place like that. It’s not particularly upscale.”

  He feigned surprise. “Oh? And how would you know?”

  She grinned. “Don’t give me that. You wouldn’t catch me dead in a place like that.” The remark, given the situation, was not lost on him.

  “Sorry, Frank. I wasn’t thinking. That place caters to a rougher crowd. A lot of the girls there are taking some heavy stuff to help them overcome their fears and work up the bravado to go on stage. Most of them come from bad homes. Some of them are shy. nearly all of them have a need to be recognized. To be noticed. Sometimes they choose that line of work to fill those needs and sometimes to make a quick buck. It’s hard to generalize, but I’ve seen my share of overdoses coming from places like that. But this little girl didn’t do that. It was done for her.” She looked at Rita. “Of course, I won’t know for sure until I complete the autopsy.”

  He patted her on the shoulder. “Thanks, Barb.”

  He moved past her and the other officers in the room to the computer. A technician had the machine booted up and was scrolling through the address book. Campello stood behind the woman but off to one side to avoid annoying her.

  “Can you print the list?”

  “Sure.” She checked the printer for adequate paper and then turned on the machine. It kicked on and then hummed and buzzed before spitting a couple of pages of addresses into the tray. The technician handed them to Campello.

  He scanned the list. Trina’s name and cell number featured, along with several others. But when he was halfway down the page he suddenly felt a rush.

  CHAPTER 17

  Christy’s morning began like any other, hurried against the clock. She was not an early riser; never had been. But her job required access to the people who were, and she needed to get to the office ahead of them. Her deadline for a series of articles on the riots was fast approaching and she needed an interview with Aaron Green.

  She was heading south on LaSalle when she received a call. She maneuvered the phone from the outside pocket of her purse and punched the key. “Yeah?”

  “Christy, it’s Tracy from Orlando. I have something for you.”

  Christy had contacted The Orlando Daily News for background on Janek Polanski after additional research had uncovered the man’s connection there. She had put in a call to Tracy, a friend from her college days.

  “Shoot.”

  “Janek Polanski was a police officer with the Orlando PD. He served as an army sniper, then joined the department after his military discharge. After ten years on the road, he was promoted to detective and assigned to vice. I went as far as back as twenty years researching the newspapers down here. I’ve also interviewed a couple of grizzly old cops who knew him back when and who are still on the force. By all I’ve been able to find, he was a good cop. The old cops said he was diligent and got along well with everyone. But somewhere along the line, things went sour. He was investigating a high-level dealer when the dealer was gunned down under questionable circumstances. The cops never got the guy who did it. But Polanski was caught with the dealer’s supply stash in the trunk of his car. According to the police, he was trying to make a deal with an undercover officer from another department, on loan to the Orlando PD.”

  “So he took the guy’s drugs?”

  “Looks like it. The police tried to make a connection by tying him to the murder of the dealer, but there was no evidence. No ballistics, no witnesses, no forensics, nothing.”

  “But he was a cop. He had the knowledge to cover his trail.”

  “Exactly. That’s what the two guys I talked with said. At any rate, he was arrested and tried. The jury came back hung and the prosecutor declined
to retry the case. The family moved to Charlotte and the old man became an alcoholic. The two guys I talked with are still burned by it. They said he cast a cloud on an otherwise good department.”

  “Anything on the son?” Traffic slowed as she neared the city.

  “He’s a graduate of the University of Chicago with a major in business. He was recognized by the University for a ground-breaking thesis he wrote on corporate finance. By all accounts, he did quite well and was recognized as someone who could think outside the box. He was heavily recruited, but after college he enlisted in the army. He became a sniper and apparently, was quite good. But when his term was up he got out. It seemed like an abrupt deviation in his career plan. There were articles about him in all the Charlotte papers. You know, hometown boy makes good? And everyone was expecting great things from him when he moved back to Chicago. He was hired by Lockstar as a division head and oversaw the financing of their weapons control systems. But then, for some unknown reason, he left Lockstar just a couple of years later and joined the CPD.”

  The morning traffic was becoming increasingly congested.

  “I’m willing to bet he joined the PD because of his father,” said Christy. “That’s probably why he joined the army too. Anything on him since he joined the department?”

  “Nothing you don’t already have. His testifying on the two cops…”

  “Caine and Dorchester.”

  “Right. That made some national news as those kinds of things always do, but in this case Polanski attracted a bit more in the way of media attention. I figured that’s probably because of the riots.”

  “I think those are being laid at his doorstep.”

  “Undoubtedly.”

  She steered around a slow-moving truck. “Do you have a feel for this guy?”

  There was a moment of hesitation, followed by a sigh. “He’s an enigma. He has a head for business, does well in a great school, but then joins the army, which is about as far from the business world as you can get. Then, after he gets out of the army, he moves back to Chicago, not Charlotte or Orlando, mind you, and hires on with one of the biggest defense contractors in the country. He has a good position there, does well, and then, just like before, he leaves to become a cop.”

  “Just like his old man.”

  “That’s what I’m saying.”

  “It’s almost like he’s paying penance.”

  “Exactly.”

  “That could explain why he did what he did.”

  “Definitely.”

  “He’s a man of principle who can’t live with the shame of his father.”

  “That all sounds logical, Christy. But I’d be careful with this guy.”

  “Careful? What do you mean?”

  She hesitated, then said, “He may be principled, but he’s also not someone to mess with. He trained as a sniper. In my opinion, he has the heart of a cold-blooded assassin.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Campello sped through the morning traffic in the Vette, aware that he did not have the benefit of a squad car’s emergency lights. He called Lopez on his cell, phoning directly to the man’s desk.

  “Julio, I’ve got something and I don’t think we can sit on this any longer.”

  “Shoot.”

  “The deputy coroner is pretty certain that we’ve got another homicide and that it was made to look like a suicide. I ran the girl’s computer and our other victim, Trina, turned up.”

  “Could be coincidence.”

  “She denied knowing the victim, Julio. And I have phone calls on Trina’s phone coming from the club.”

  He swerved around a truck, passing it on the right side. “There’s more.”

  “Why don’t you just spill it, Frank?” There was agitation in Lopez’s voice.

  “Rita’s last phone call was to Silk ’n Boots. She placed the call a few minutes after I left the apartment.”

  “She works there, Frank. It’d be natural for her to call the club.”

  “Maybe,” he said, conceding the point. “But my sixth sense tells me that her call was about me. I had just talked to her, after all. But there’s something else. I also found hoppity T’s girlfriend, Juanita, in the address book.” He passed a string of slowing traffic by moving around it. There was a long pause on the other end of the phone.

  “OK,” Lopez said. “That’s too much of a coincidence.”

  “That’s what I was thinking.”

  “How do you want to play it?”

  “I’m going to interview Juanita, if I can find her.”

  “Just be careful, Frank. Remember, you killed her boyfriend. She backed you once, but… we don’t want any allegations of harassment.”

  “And that’s a second problem. Why did she back me?”

  “Everyone doesn’t hate the police, Frank. There are people who will tell the truth.”

  “Maybe. But I killed her boyfriend. Doesn’t that color it just a bit?”

  There was another pause as Campello worked toward the center of the loop.

  “Who do you think killed the girl?” Lopez asked.

  “Rita? If I had to guess, I’d say it was Peter Green.”

  Lopez sighed. “I was afraid you’d say that.”

  “Come on, Julio. This guy’s involved in this one way or another and you know it. He owns the club and there’s too many connections to it to be coincidental. Juanita, Trina, and now Rita. And some of them are denying even knowing the others. Plus, when you consider that Peter attacked Rita, that tells me he has a tendency toward violence, certainly toward women. Add that Trina was beaten to death, and something’s going on at that club and it’s tied into both murders.”

  “Polanski’s here and he just showed me the security camera tapes taken from the shops at the pier. Two of them are on the north end of the pier and three on the south end. All but one of them catches a man moving across the pier. Whoever was there is not identifiable on the tape. He’s wearing a Chicago Bulls hoodie and the hood is pulled over his face. The sleeve is torn so it shouldn’t be too hard to Id the sweater. If we find it, we’ll also find the man on the tape and I’m betting he’s the killer. But whoever it is, he was at the pier at around the time the girl was dumped and that makes him interesting.”

  Campello passed another slow-moving truck, honking and cursing as he did.

  “What was that, Frank?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Keep me posted on the interview.”

  “I will.”

  “And be careful, Frank,” he admonished again. “You may not be well received by our girl.”

  “Four marriages, Julio. I’m used to it.”

  Campello reached the girl’s apartment and parked curbside. The area had suffered urban blight and he was aware that the classic car stood out like a flawless diamond in a convention of jewel thieves. And worse, because it was a classic, the Vette had no alarm or other protective device.

  He got out of the Vette and locked the car, glancing around for possible predators. He was determined to keep the interview to fifteen minutes or less.

  He entered the lobby and ran a finger down a series of names stenciled next to a row of mailboxes. Though the shooting had occurred at this address, it had happened outside the building. He had never been in the girl’s apartment.

  For the third time in two days, he climbed the steps to an apartment and rapped on the door. Just as he had on his first visit to Rita’s, he stepped to one side and kept his hand poised to draw his weapon. The door opened and Juanita recognized him immediately.

  “Detective?”

  “Can I come in?”

  She was hesitant, glancing briefly over her shoulder as she stood at the partially opened door. “Is this about the shooting?”

  He shook his head. “No. I may have some bad news.”

  She hesitated as though she were weighing the decision, before opening the door and allowing him to enter.

  The apartment was much smaller than Rita’s and not as nicely furni
shed. A play-pen was sitting in one corner of the living area, near a radiator that was hissing and filling the tiny space with moist heat. An alcove that was probably meant to serve as a dining-room held a collection of stuffed animals and other toys. Juanita had a child and revealed that Hoppity was not the father during a post-shooting interview.

  “How’s the baby?”

  The girl folded her arms across her chest in a posture that was more self-hugging than defiant. “She’s fine.”

  “She asleep?”

  The girl nodded.

  She was tall – he guessed her height at five nine or ten – and trim with shoulder-length brown hair that was pulled in a ponytail. Her sky-blue eyes were light, but penetrating. She was dressed in a long-sleeve shirt and jeans.

  He maintained a respectful distance to avoid any hint of crowding or intimidating her.

  “Juanita, I’m no threat to you. I have some information I think you should know and I figure you may know something that could help me. I have no legal interest in you. I just need to talk.”

  She nodded.

  “Did you know Trina Martinez?”

  The girl glanced at the floor and shook her head.

  “How about Rita Chavez?”

  She pursed her lips and tightened her arms around herself.

  “Juanita?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you know Rita?”

  She redirected her gaze to him. “Did? What do you mean?”

  “Rita’s dead.”

  Her eyes reddened.

  He continued. “Rita and Trina knew each other, Juanita, and now they’re both dead. Trina’s name and phone number were in Rita’s address book, along with several other girls, including yours.”

  He showed her the printout. “Do you know any of them?”

  Her eyes quickly swept over the list and then she turned her head away. “No.”

  “Some of these girls have connection to a place called Silk ’n Boots. Have you heard of it?”

  She continued to clutch herself. “Yes.”

  “Do you have any connection with it?”

  She bit her lip and shook her head.