Case of the Claw

by Keith DeCandido

  Now that he knew his number was up, Charlie actually raised his hand along with everyone else. "One more. Charlie?"

  Charlie stood up and held his Zap in front of him for easy reading. "Mr. Mayor, a source on Congressman Wert's staff has said, and I'm quoting here, 'The Claw's continued freedom proves that we need to pass the congressman's registration bill, and quickly, before more people are killed.' Do you have a comment on that?"

  Sittler gripped both sides of the podium and looked down for a second, then looked up, shaking his head. "I've never met Mr. Wert, Charlie, but I can't believe that he'd actually use this tragedy to further his own agenda. I hope that source of yours is fired from the congressman's staff posthaste."

  Not much chance of that, Charlie thought, since the call he'd gotten had been from Wert himself. He would only give the quote if Charlie attributed it to a staff source.

  "As for the quote itself, I'm sure that the congressman's bill makes sense in Montana, which hasn't had any significant super-powered activity in fifty years. But in New York, in Los Angeles, in Chicago, in New Orleans, in Houston, in Atlanta, and especially right here in SuperCity, I don't see how its passage could possibly help matters. The Claw thinks nothing of murdering innocent people without rhyme or reason, in defiance of our harshest laws. What makes this source of yours think that, should the bill pass, he'd be more likely to obey that law and register himself?"

  Not bad. Charlie hadn't expected that clever an answer. It still avoided the meat of the question, something Charlie fully intended to point out for the op-ed piece that would appear in tomorrow's Gazette. After all, a big part of Wert's registration bill included officially deputizing certain cape groups into local police forces. In cases like this, the SCPD wouldn't have to "consult" with the Six or the Trio, they would already be an official part of the investigation.

  Several more people raised their hands, but Sittler had already headed for the door. "No more questions, ladies and gentlemen," the press officer said. "Thanks!"

  Charlie hoisted himself up from the folding chair, feeling the snap-crackle-pop of his spine and knees as he did so. He definitely had plenty of fodder for tomorrow's column.

  I just hope that somewhere in all this crap they actually, y'know, catch the guy…

  3pm

  Kristin Milewski tried not to shift uncomfortably in the old wooden chair at the Barker kitchen table. If she did, the chair would creak, and draw attention to her squirming.

  But this was agony. She had known intellectually that being murder police meant dealing with grieving relatives on a regular basis, but she hadn't realized how stomach-twisting the process would actually be. When she was in Narcotics, she had to have regular conversations with junkies, which tended to bounce from topic to topic, and it took a certain amount of patience and verbal dexterity to stay even in the same county as the topic. Milewski had figured going from that to the occasional crying mother would be a walk in the park.

  Not so much. She and Peter MacAvoy had been sitting with Aimee Barker for half an hour now, and most of what had come out of the latter's mouth had been sobs, punctuated by the occasional platitude regarding what a good boy Monte was.

  "I remember last year," she said after blowing her nose for the thousandth time, "he said there were some people comin' 'round the block—they was lookin' for what they called 'street muscle.'"

  This was something Milewski knew about. "Henchmen."

  MacAvoy looked at her. "You gotta be kidding me."

  "Where do you think the bad guys get flunkies to help them out? I saw that in Narcotics all the time. I can't begin to tell you how many CIs I lost 'cause Apollo or the Clone Master or the Pantheon or one of them went on a recruiting drive."

  Aimee said, "Well, Monte, he didn't go for that. Some of them boys tried to get him to go, but Monte said no. He was a good boy."

  This prompted another crying jag. So far, nothing Aimee told them had been in any way useful, mainly because there was really only one question that mattered. Milewski had already asked it twice, but she gamely hoped the third time was the charm. "Ms. Barker, do you know what your son was doing last night?"

  "He—he said he was goin' out with his friends. I don't know which ones—he had a lot of friends, and I couldn't ever keep track of 'em, y'know? Such a good boy. He got great grades, too, did you know that?"

  Milewski managed to refrain from pointing out that Aimee'd mentioned his grades enough times that she all but had his transcripts memorized—mostly because MacAvoy spoke first: "Were these friends of his from Drake?"

  "I think so. I think he said something about studying, so it was probably some of his classmates."

  Another crying jag later, they excused themselves. MacAvoy gave her a business card in case she remembered anything.

  As soon as they were outside her apartment door, Milewski let out a long breath. "That was a nightmare."

  "Get used to it. Half this job is standing there while women cry their eyes out for two hours."

  Milewski looked at MacAvoy with something like disgust. "And back in the real world, men cry, too."

  "Sure, sometimes." MacAvoy shrugged. "Mostly, though, it's the chicks who cry in front of you. Men, they wait till you're gone. See, you gotta budget your time—if you're giving a death notice to a woman, make sure you got at least an hour. On the other hand, if it's just a man, you'll be in and out in five minutes. Once you've left, then he'll bawl his eyes out."

  "That's ridiculous," Milewski said. In her experience, death didn't have any predictable results.

  Shrugging, MacAvoy reached into his denim jacket pocket and took out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. "Fine, don't believe my years of experience. You don't wanna learn, you'll be back in Narcotics before you know it." MacAvoy stuck a cigarette in his mouth, cupped the front with one hand while lighting it with the other.

  They got to their department-issue Chevrolet Malibu, which was parked in front of a hydrant, with their SCPD credentials in the dashboard to avoid towing. Milewski headed to the driver's side, but MacAvoy said, "You're not driving. We talked about this."

  "What, don't like women drivers?"

  MacAvoy puffed smoke out of his mouth. "Spare me the feminista bullshit, okay? The fact that you're a woman is of very little interest to me. Talk to anybody in the squadroom, I always drive. I get in the passenger seat, I get seasick."

  "Uh huh." Milewski had been a cop too long to believe that. For her entire career, she'd been listening to the snide remarks. She walked back around to the passenger side. "You think I can't cut it 'cause I'm just a girrrrrl, right? I only got into Homicide because I blew Dellamonica."

  "Actually, the story I heard was that you and Zim had a thing." MacAvoy grinned as he got into the car.

  Milewski climbed into the passenger seat, trying to keep the bile down. She'd heard that story, too. "She's not my type."

  "Glad to hear it. 'Sides, if you and Zim did have a thing, you'd be honor bound to share any pictures with your partner." MacAvoy actually waggled his eyebrows as he said that. "Seriously, though, you could do worse for a rabbi than Zim. I knew her back when she got her gold shield. Not great police, but she knows how to play the game." MacAvoy put down the window—Milewski was willing to put up with him smoking in the car as long as he kept the windows down, though it was right on the edge of it being too chilly to do so—and then pulled out into the traffic on Giacoia Street.

  "What's that supposed to mean?" Milewski didn't really know much about Zimmerman, indeed hadn't had any significant encounters with her until she offered Milewski the job in Homicide.

  "She caught a call back about ten years ago—the Bruiser brought in a heroin dealer. Problem was, this dealer was the commissioner's nephew."

  Milewski's eyes widened. "Dellamonica's nephew's a dealer?"

  Shaking his head, MacAvoy said, "No, the commissioner before him. Anyhow, it was made abundantly clear to Zim that it would be good for her career if she buried the case. The
nephew was sent to rehab in another state, the press never got wind of it, and Zim kept everything on the down-low. And now she's the youngest lieutenant on the job, and the only woman."

  "Well, I didn't blow anybody or suck up to the bosses or anything like that. I'm good police. I worked my ass off getting the Pusher busted. I earned the promotion."

  "Yeah, but you ain't earned the stay yet. And it's got nothin' to do with where your plumbing is. Know who the best murder police I ever worked with was? Missy Howard. Only person in the history of SCPD Homicide to have a hundred percent clearance rate in one year, and she did it twice."

  Milewski had been reaching into the glove compartment, where she'd stashed some protein bars. She knew she could easily forget to eat when she was on a case, and her hypoglycemia made that dangerous, so she always stashed some in the glove of whatever Malibu she signed out to forestall that. She never heard of this Missy Howard woman, and said so with her mouth full.

  "Before your time. She was me to her you."

  Somehow, Milewski parsed that. "She partnered with you when you came up into Homicide?"

  "Yeah, and I was as wide-eyed and stupid as you. Thought I was hot shit, right up until the Jane Williams case."

  That Milewski remembered. Jane Williams was a ten-year-old girl who was vaporized in the middle of Nantier Boulevard in front of a dozen witnesses in 1992. There was no noticeable cause, no costume activity in the area. Plenty of theories flew back and forth. Milewski remembered reading that it was on the same spot where the Red Menace killed the first Old Glory back in the 1950s, and also where Amelia Van Helsing had her final battle against Dracula in the 1980s. "That was your case?"

  "Howard was the primary, I just backed her up. That was the one that broke her first streak, actually."

  "So, if it's not that I'm a woman, what, exactly, is your problem with me, Mac?"

  "You're a rookie. You don't know shit. Worse, you think you know shit. Right now, you're in the only part of police work where you can't interview the victim. You can't just be a good cop anymore, you have to be a great cop. And the only way to be a great cop is to realize that you're a lousy cop."

  Swallowing some more of the depressingly dry protein bar, Milewski said, "That doesn't even make sense."

  "Which proves you don't know shit." Cigarette dangling from his mouth, MacAvoy turned onto 40th Street. Drake High was located at the end of the next block. "When that does make sense, then you'll be real murder police. Till then, you're just someone with frizzy hair who looks good in a pantsuit."

  Unconsciously, Milewski's hand went up to her ponytail. "My hair isn't frizzy."

  "Believe what you want." MacAvoy turned the Malibu into the high school parking lot. Milewski noticed that there was already a shrine up for Monte Barker against the chain link fence on the north side of the lot. It consisted of soda bottles full of flowers, a few crosses and rosaries, and a big picture of Monte that looked a lot better than the grisly crime-scene photos she'd been looking at that morning. It was probably a blowup of his yearbook photo.

  "This just feels like a waste of time," Milewski said, blowing out a breath as she walked toward the front door, pulling her linen jacket tight. It had gotten colder since they left the squadroom, and she wished she'd brought her leather coat. She also hoped that the school had soda machines or something, as the combination of the protein bar and MacAvoy's smoking had completely dried up her mouth. "It's not like there was a reason why this poor kid was targeted. He was just unlucky enough to be the latest victim."

  "Prob'ly, but maybe somebody saw something." MacAvoy took one final drag on his cigarette, then dropped it to the pavement, stepping on it. "And it's not like we got anything else to go on. That's the other problem with not getting to interview the victim, you gotta sort through a metric ton of chaff to get to the wheat."

  "That's always true," Milewski said as they approached the big metal door.

  "Yeah, but it's worse here." MacAvoy grabbed the metal handle and yanked open the door. A security guard directed them down a hallway with a linoleum floor and walls lined with green metal lockers to the principal's office, where they were supposedly expected. To Milewski's relief, there was also a set of vending machines on the way, and she slid a dollar bill in and got a Superior Cola.

  "And what if somebody did see something?" Milewski asked after sipping the soda, and suppressing a belch. "All that'll tell us is what we already know: it's the Claw."

  "Maybe, but we do what we do."

  Milewski snorted. "That's either very Zen or very cliché."

  "No reason it can't be both." MacAvoy used his finger to push his glasses further up his nose as they entered the reception area outside the principal's office.

  About seven kids, all either African American or Latino, sat there on metal cushioned chairs. They looked uncomfortable and unhappy, which was to be expected, though how much of it was due to the death of a classmate and how much was because they were seated outside the principal's office was an open question.

  A hefty Hispanic woman said in a harsh tone, "Can I help you?"

  Stepping forward Milewski pulled her jacket aside to reveal her gold badge, clipped to her belt. "I'm Detective Milewski, here with Detective MacAvoy. We're supposed to see Principal Pettitte."

  The woman's face softened at the sight of their shields. "Just a minute." She picked up the phone on her desk, pushed one button, then said, "The police are here. Okay." She hung up. "He'll be right out."

  A moment later, a very short man—Milewski was actually a couple of inches taller—came out from between the large double doors behind the Hispanic woman. Also African American, his face looked ashen, his eyes haunted.

  Somehow, Milewski managed not to laugh. She knew Pettitte's name from talking to him on the phone earlier, but it was a great deal funnier now, since that name derived from the French word petit, meaning small.

  "You must be Detective Lovsky," Pettitte said.

  "It's 'mah-LOV-skee,'" she said, slowly pronouncing her name as she had been for most of her life, especially to people who insisted on Anglicizing it. "This is my partner, Detective MacAvoy."

  Shaking each of their hands in turn, he said, "Thanks for coming. It's such an awful tragedy."

  Milewski wondered what the point was of modifying the word tragedy with awful. Was there really another kind?

  Indicating the kids in the chairs, Pettitte said, "These are the people who saw Monte last, Detectives."

  MacAvoy glanced at them, then looked at Pettitte. "There somewhere we can talk to each of them in private?"

  Pettitte nodded. "Dean Gevlin's out sick all week. You can use her office."

  The dean in question had a small office with a big wooden desk that was piled high and deep with papers and a desktop computer that looked like it was at least ten years old, and three guest chairs. MacAvoy quickly arranged the guest chairs so that two of them faced the third, bypassing the dean's desk altogether, which Milewski silently agreed was the wisest course. Meanwhile, Milewski finished off her soda, and tossed the can into the metal garbage can under the dean's desk.

  The first kid they talked to was a young man named Alberto Gonzalez, who shrugged a lot. "We just be studyin' over at Frieda's, 'cause her Moms ain't never home. We a study group. We was studyin' for our history test on World War II, and Monte was helpin' us 'member who got hit with them A-bombs, tellin' us it's super-Hiroshima, and that kinda thing, y'know?"

  "When did you last see Monte?" MacAvoy asked.

  "We was done studyin' around eleven, and Monte just walked home. Didn't see nothin'."

  "Where does Frieda live?"

  "She at that big building on 37th and Roth."

  Next was another boy, Jay Bond, who wouldn't stop looking at the floor.

  "What were you doing last night?" Milewski asked.

  "Studyin'."

  "For what?"

  "Hist'ry."

  "Where were you studying?"

  "Frieda's."<
br />
  "What was the test on?"

  "Second World War. Monte showed us how to 'member Hiroshima."

  "You see anything when Monte went back home?"

  "Nah."

  After that was a girl, LaWanda Jones. "We was studyin', you know, over at Frieda's. Her Moms works all'a time, so we got the whole place to ourselves, you know. Better'n my place, that's for damn sure, my Moms is always up in my face."

  "What were you studying?"

  "History, you know, Mr. Costello's class, which is just crazy, you know. He a kooky man, you know, givin' us weird tests all'a time. We doin' World War II, you know, and Monte was tellin' us how to remember Hiroshima with one'a them demonic devices."

  Milewski smiled. "Mnemonic devices, you mean."

  "Whatever, you know, helpin' us remember. Worked, too."

  "What happened when Monte left?"

  "He left, you know, went straight home from Frieda's. I last saw him walkin' down 38th toward Giacoia, and that was it."

  Before the next kid came in, Milewski looked at MacAvoy. "So what do you think they were really doing last night?"

  Sarcasm dripping from his tone, MacAvoy said, "Studying World War II, obviously."

  Then the next one, a girl named Ashanté Till, came in. She gave the same answers as the others, down to Monte's mnemonic device. When she got up to leave, MacAvoy said, "Have Principal Pettitte come in, will you please, Ashanté?"

  Nodding, the girl left. The principal came in a minute later. "Yes?"

  "Who's left out there?" Milewski asked.

  "Frieda Jackson and Corey Robinson."

  "Before you send Frieda in, can we see her school records?"

  Pettitte nodded. "Sure, I guess. Why, is something wrong?"

  Milewski was about to say yes, when MacAvoy cut her off. "No, we just want to verify some things. Procedure stuff."

  "Of course." Pettitte walked out.