Finally Burke said, “I’m afraid to stay at the dorm.”
“Don’t you have a friend you could stay with, or I’m sure the university would put you up somewhere else.”
Burke’s deep voice became very soft. “I’m not sure. I guess I could ask around.” This didn’t at all sound like what he had in mind. Turner didn’t pursue the topic. Silence fell between them, and Turner let it build.
“One thing,” Burke said as the waitress brought the check. Turner nodded.
“I saw a picture of Mrs. Giles in the paper today. I’d never met her before. She never came around the office. I’m sure it was her I saw in the quadrangle the day before with Mr. Giles. I had an extra long lunch that day too. I saw the two of them in front of Swift Hall.”
“Could you hear what they said?”
“No.”
“Could she have been up to the office to meet him?” Turner asked.
“Maybe. He was still there when I left for lunch. You think that she was there the day before is important?”
“I don’t know,” Paul said. “We have no proof she went upstairs. We don’t know if or where they had lunch. The office is open during noontime. Anyone could have stopped in, planted the poison, and left.”
They walked to the dorm. Their bodies bumped incidentally as they strolled along. Turner couldn’t tell if these touches were accidents or deliberate or had any meaning at all. He asked the woman at the front desk in the dorm to call security. Burke’s room was the last one on the right on the fifth floor.
In the room the words FAGGOTS DIE glared in bright yellow from the wall to the left of the door. Strewn across the top bunk were shirts, socks, jockey shorts, and handkerchiefs. Two drawers from the dresser stood at angles leaning against the walls. Ripped and torn remnants from the bottom bunk’s mattress and pillow covered much of the floor. The closet door dangled from one hinge. The rest of the can of yellow paint had been dumped on the heap of clothes and twisted hangers. On the desk the smashed computer screen gaped helplessly at them.
“Must have made a lot of noise when this happened,” Turner said.
“I asked the guys. Nobody was home. Do you think whoever did it knew that?”
“Probably,” Turner said.
Burke had tears in his eyes. “I didn’t think hate like this existed.”
Several of the other dorm students murmured in the doorway. Turner asked them a few questions but as Burke had said, none had been around. The students reassured Burke of their concern and support, then left. Turner shut the door, seated himself on the corner of the desk. Burke stood at the window looking out.
“Who on campus knows you’re gay?” the cop asked.
“My friends.”
“Gay or straight or both?”
“I only know a few gay people. I joined the gay organization on campus for a while, but with work and studying I just didn’t have the time. I guess most of the guys on the floor knew. Nobody really cared. I thought.”
“Any trouble before this?” Turner asked.
“No. I’d heard about the trouble you mentioned, but I never thought it would happen to me.”
“I’m sorry it did,” Turner said.
Nothing in the room was missing, as far as Burke could tell. “I saw the mess and called you. I only touched the phone.” Burke assured him he hadn’t handled anything else since he’d discovered the destruction.
“Let’s get you a place to stay. Meanwhile I’ll have evidence techs go over the room. Maybe they can find something useful.”
Burke hesitated. He caught Turner’s eyes, then quickly dropped his own and looked at the floor. He cleared his throat once or twice, reached to rearrange a stack of textbooks. Turner caught the hand and said, “It’s best not to disturb anything.” Burke didn’t flinch at the touch. Turner didn’t let the closeness linger.
They talked with campus security and the housing administrator. They found Burke temporary quarters and promised something more permanent by the next day. Turner reassured Burke, then left.
He drove to Area Ten headquarters. Fenwick greeted him with, “Where the hell have you been?”
Turner told him about the destruction of Burke’s room. Fenwick asked, “Connected with the murder?”
“I don’t know. Why would the killer bother? We’ve got no connection of any significance between Giles and Burke. Nobody’s questioned Giles’s credentials as a certifiable straight man. I don’t see a gay connection here.”
“Odd coincidence,” Fenwick said.
“Not if a nut case heard about Burke’s connection to the murder and decided to be cruel at this time. Who knows? He also told me he saw Mrs. Giles the day before, talking to her husband in the quadrangle during the noon hour.”
“Why didn’t he mention it before?” Fenwick asked.
“Said he didn’t know her. Saw a picture in the paper today and put the two together.”
“Or he could have been lying yesterday,” Fenwick said.
“Why lie?” Turner asked.
Fenwick shrugged. “I guess we have to interview Mrs. Giles again.
Turner found the Giles’s phone number and called. No answer. “Probably with a friend,” Turner said. He remembered the woman who brought Mrs. Giles to the office the day before. He got Lilac Ostergard’s number from his notes and called. No answer there either. He’d try again later.
“What’d you find out on background?” Turner asked.
Fenwick tossed over a computer printout. “You were right. Our buddy Ricken does have a criminal record. I’ve got a call out to pick Ricken up again,” Fenwick said.
Turner glanced at the printout. “An assault case? Nearly fifteen years old? For this you’re having him picked up?”
“He attacked a cop,” Fenwick said.
“At a campus demonstration when he was still in his teens. How do you connect that with murder now?”
“Attacking a cop. He could be capable of violence.”
“You’re just pissed because he roughed you up a little bit.” Fenwick growled.
Turner stifled a sigh. “I guess it won’t hurt to talk to him. What did you get on the university people?”
“Preliminary check on them showed all clean records. Same for the campaign people. I had time to get to the most important ones.”
“We have the interviews of all the other people in the building?” Turner asked. He’d assigned several uniforms to questioning anyone who had been in the English department offices or in the building the day before.
Fenwick handed him a sheaf of papers.
“They find anything?” Turner asked.
“Nobody remembers any strangers, but there’s people in and out of that building all the time. There’s a small cafeteria in the basement, so all kinds of people use it.”
Turner looked at the list of contacted people. Fenwick had divided them up into a columns, one for people from the ward organization and campaign staffs, the other for the university community.
Turner heard a thump and then Fenwick swearing. He glanced across the double desk. No Fenwick. He looked on the side. Fenwick was on his hands and knees, picking up the hundreds of brochures he’d taken from the campaign headquarters. He got up puffing and red-faced. “I’ve been going through these,” he said, as he restacked them on his desk. One slipped off the tallest pile, but he managed to grab it before it fell to the floor. “There’s something odd about these,” he said.
“How so?” Turner asked.
“I don’t know. I spent a long time going over them while you where gone. Something I can’t figure out, I don’t know what it is.”
Turner was willing to spend a great deal of time checking into any insight or hunch Fenwick might have. They’d been partners long enough to respect each other’s cop intuition.
“I just can’t put my finger on it,” Fenwick said. He shrugged.
“Maybe you’ll think of it later,” Turner said. He switched topics. “We get anything from the medical
examiner or from the crime lab?” Turner asked.
“Not yet,” Fenwick said.
Turner reached for the phone. He glanced at the clock on the wall. After five. People might be gone for the day. He waded through several layers of bureaucrats before he got to Sam Franklin.
“Poison,” Sam told him. “Nicotine. In the opened unlabeled juice jar.”
“Nicotine,” Turner said. “I didn’t know you could do that.”
“Sure,” Sam said. “I know of one case where a woman took the residue of several cigarette butts, put them in a jug of water, strained it, and put the poisoned water where the victim would drink it, and bingo. One dead body. Doesn’t take much.”
“I guess not. He wouldn’t notice the taste?” Turner asked.
“Real doubtful,” Franklin said. “What he concocted you’d have to gulp down practically holding your nose.”
Turner thanked him. When he hung up, Fenwick said, “I’ve got the full-time political people meeting us at his campaign headquarters.”
Turner checked his watch. Already five-thirty and nowhere near done for the day. He called home and checked with Brian. He also talked with Ben Vargas briefly. They had no plans for the night, but Turner wanted to hear his voice.
At the campaign headquarters, twenty people milled around the front room. Fenwick entered, called for silence, and told them they’d be interviewed one by one.
Turner had checked the list of political people with Fenwick before they left Area Ten. He assigned two more uniformed cops to interview the part-time volunteers. He’d rather have interviewed all of them himself. You never knew when a right question would trigger a unique response that might yield a clue or a suspect. No way he’d have enough time to get to all of them.
By eight they had two left to talk to. They’d been using the inner office. Turner rubbed his hand across his eyes then asked, “Who’s next?”
Fenwick said, “I saved the biggest for last. The media consultant and a brother-in-law.”
Turner said, “So far tonight we’ve found out he was an absolute saint, and every single person we talked to had an alibi. I was hoping to get a little more from that Audrey and Hank who were working here yesterday. Their alibis seem good.” Turner thought of all the forms they’d have to fill out for everybody they’d interviewed in the past few hours. He groaned.
“You okay?” Fenwick asked.
“Yeah. Let’s get it over with and get out of here.” Fenwick ushered in a tall, white-haired man in an impeccably tailored charcoal suit. If he was annoyed at being made to wait for hours, he didn’t show it.
“Jack Stimpson,” Fenwick announced.
He’d been the media consultant for every one of Giles’s tries for office.
Stimpson spoke in pleasant but firm tones. He explained that Giles was congenitally unable to lose his temper. That the former alderman could listen to every side of an issue and see reason on everyone’s part.
“He didn’t look like that at city council meetings I saw on TV,” Fenwick said.
“All an act for the media. Giles was always a master at manipulating them. He could get more done, more attention for a cause with a simple press conference than many groups who worked for years.”
“Did they resent him for usurping their turf?” Turner asked.
“Far from it. They appreciated his support. Attention from Gideon could skyrocket an organization’s fund-raising ability and effectiveness.”
“His bills never got passed in the city council,” Turner pointed out.
“But the causes were put forward. Attention was paid. That’s why he’s got the largest political staff in the city. He received lots of money from the causes. He could afford all this hired help.”
Turner asked about the Giles’s married life.
“I was his best friend. My wife and I spent many pleasant hours with them. They were very happy.”
“How about Frank Ricken?” Turner asked.
“A loser, but he had presence. He could fool the media with the best of them, but a whiner. Ricken may have been Gideon’s first volunteer. Much of the success with the campaigns came about because of him. He was a master at milking a photo opportunity. The past few months he became enamored with several pet causes. Wanted more attention for them. Began neglecting his job.”
“Do you know anything about Ricken’s private life?” Turner asked.
“Whenever an attractive young woman volunteered for the organization, you could see Ricken zeroing in on her. He didn’t have a great deal of charm. My impression is that he failed more often than not.”
Turner asked about Giles’s relationship with his wife.
“He often talked about how happy he was. He mentioned his good relations with his wife, not in a vulgar way, but I could tell he was happy.”
“Any disagreements with anybody else?” Turner asked.
“No. We all worked well together,” Stimpson said.
“We were told the various groups fought for his attention,” Turner said.
“Only because people believed, not because people were angry with each other or willing to do murder,” Stimpson said.
Last was the brother-in-law, Alex Hill. He was somber and soft-spoken. He shook hands with the two police officers gravely. He looked to be about five years younger than his sister Laura.
“I’m willing to do anything I can to help you find the killer,” he announced. He sat down, crossed his right ankle onto his left knee, and favored them with a solemn look.
They asked about his duties with the campaign. He’d been a speech writer and, before that, worked for a suburban newspaper writing articles mostly on meetings of small local groups. “I was the tea-and-crumpets reporter. If any kind of group got together, we went out and took their pictures. People love to see their names in the paper.”
They asked him about the campaign and possible enemies. He didn’t know of any. He’d simply come to the office and write speeches appropriate for whichever occasion and group. The detectives didn’t find him helpful and let him go.
It was nine. He’d tried calling Laura Giles several times during the interviewing and gotten no answer. He tried again with the same result. As they climbed into the car, Turner said, “We’ve got time to get to the former ward committeeman’s house. We’ve gotten nowhere so far today. I want to give him a try.”
FOUR
Turner looked up the address on his master list. Five minutes later they pulled up in front of the home of the former Fifth Ward committeeman on Woodlawn Avenue just north of Fifty-fifth Street. The house covered three normal-sized lots and had driveways on both sides.
Fenwick whistled. “Old Mike McGee sure did okay for himself.”
“I didn’t know you cared about politics,” Turner said.
“Usually I couldn’t give a shit what these politicians do,” Fenwick said, “but everybody knew Mike McGee. I grew up on the southwest side hearing stories about the fights he won for the little guy.”
Turner sighed. “We never heard much about him on the near west side.” Chicago neighborhoods tended to be tremendously insular. Denizens of ethnic or racial enclaves not your own were at best totally ignored, at worst outright enemies.
McGee as committeeman would be less well known than the alderman, but possibly more powerful. The alderman was simply a legislative representative with set duties. The committee man was an unpaid party representative who controlled patronage. This meant an army of precinct workers whose civil service—exempt jobs depended on how well they performed on election days. No law gave the committeeman such power over jobs, but custom and the Democratic party did. Being both alderman and committeeman was the ultimate combination.
As they walked up to the front porch they saw a lamp shining in the front room. The light gleamed off rows of books in floor-to-ceiling bookcases.
Fenwick punched the doorbell. Turner heard soft distant chimes. A young woman answered the door and looked at them curiously. They showed her
their identification. In the light spilling from the interior, she examined each star carefully. Finally satisfied, she let them into a dimly lit front hall.
Turner thought she looked to be about thirty, slender and blond, with tortoiseshell glasses and a grave smile. He explained why they’d come.
She spoke softly. “I take care of my grandfather. He’s not well, and he is usually asleep in his chair by this time. I’ll see if I can wake him.” She walked down the hallway, opened a door, light streamed out for a moment. Darkness returned as she moved into the room and shut the door.
“Hot stuff,” Fenwick whispered.
“Attractive, but not my type,” Turner whispered back. He examined his surroundings. They were in a foyer with a coat and hat rack. Dark wood paneling ran halfway up to the ceiling. Light yellow wallpaper with a repeating dark-green ivy pattern covered the top half of the entry-room walls. The door reopened. The woman reappeared. You didn’t hear her footfalls on the thick dark-green carpet.
She said, “He’ll see you for a while. He gets tired very easily.”
She ushered them into the room she’d returned from.
“Bring them here, Molly.” The old voiced rasped and crackled. They entered the room with the bookcases they’d seen lit from outside.
Mike McGee wore a gray suit, white shirt, and green tie, all neatly pulled together as if he might leave in a few moments for a day at the office, but he also had a shawl around his shoulders and another around his knees, as he sat in an overstuffed chair with his feet flat on the floor.
A ten-inch television screen near the man’s elbow showed a press conference. Mike McGee made a shushing motion and hunched a little closer to the picture. Turner listened and watched. On the screen a gaggle of alderman stood in front of a bank of microphones. Each of the city’s representatives in turn made angry denunciations of the mayor and the police while demanding bodyguards and twenty-four-hour protection for themselves. Turner swallowed his annoyance. Each theatrical display like that only added pressure to the cops, but never helped solve a case. McGee waited until the segment was over, then shut off the television and leaned back.
Political Poison Page 7
