Revolver

by Duane Swierczynski

  “You get me a DNA sample and I can try to match it against either,” Baxter says.

  The parents are due here any minute. Jesus. Do you tell the Farraces that? That her daughter was one of those “do-me feminists”? Jim recalls some drunk idiot journalist kid at the Pen & Pencil Club the other night joking/whining, How come all these do-me feminists aren’t doin’ me?

  What’s now clear is that they need to build a complete picture of Kelly Anne’s social circles. There’s the magazine staff. There are friends outside the magazine. And there are (potentially) the dozens of people she talks to on a daily basis. Any life bumps up against hundreds of lives, once you start looking.

  But most importantly, there are MS and JDH.

  To Jim, this is looking less like a random attack and more like someone who knew her. (They said Terrill Lee Stanton randomly chose that bar, but of course that wasn’t true—he knew Jim’s father and his partner.) Maybe the killer even told her he loved her, then changed his mind. Please let it be someone overconfident, Jim thinks, so that they can find him and fry his ass, posthaste. To do that, they need to construct a complete timeline of her last twenty-four hours. From work that morning, to her movements that day throughout Center City, right up until the moment she ends up in a stairwell on Pine Street.

  Kelly, no matter what you did in your life, you didn’t deserve this. I’m going to find the monster who ended your life. Your case isn’t going to go unsolved.

  Now help me fact-check your last day.

  Wednesday, November 1, you report to work just before 8 a.m.

  You’re always one of the first ones in the office, according to Marie, the sweet older woman who runs the front desk. You like to get an early jump on your fact-checking calls. People are sharper, less harried, first thing in the morning. Lots of restaurants and shops aren’t open quite yet. You take your job seriously. You like to sip coffee as you make your to-do lists. You’re sharp, focused, determined.

  You remain in the office at 1919 Market until twelve thirty, when you and the editorial assistant, Lauren Feldman, take the elevator down to Market Street and walk two blocks to Berri Blues deli on the corner of Nineteenth and Chestnut, where you both hit the salad bar and pick up Snapples and return to work. Deadline week; can’t spend too much time away. Production needs facts so they can finalize the text and send around full galleys for corrections. Even though you’re gone only a short while, there will be four galleys waiting on your desk by the time you return.

  You work steadily all afternoon.

  You make little bracket marks in pencil around each individual fact in a manuscript.

  You make phone calls, and as you confirm each fact, you make a little pencil check mark in the middle of the bracket.

  You make corrections in pencil, too.

  For larger corrections, you attach a yellow Post-it note to the side of the manuscript for later review with the editor.

  Do I have all this right, Kelly Anne?

  The magazine is preparing the December issue, and you work late—until almost 7 p.m. This is confirmed by the managing editor, Marcy Lombardi, who cracks the whip on deadline week.

  Then finally you go home to change. We know this because the clothes you were wearing to work that day—black skirt, maroon turtleneck sweater, flats—were in your apartment, on the couch.

  Have you had time to have sex so far? Unlikely. Lew Baxter says the window is only twenty-four hours, so unless you had an early-morning session, you meet up with someone after work.

  Do you eat something? Or do you head right out?

  Help me out. Give me some clues as to where you’re headed…

  The weekly minder Jim found at her desk only gives two cryptic suggestions about the rest of her evening. There are the initials MS for 9 p.m., and then JDH at 11.

  Who are they?

  Meanwhile the local media are busy following their own leads. The story is on the front pages and at the top of every radio and TV news hour. Jim will keep an eye on this—once in a while the media digs up something new. People will always talk to some reporter more freely than to someone with a badge. On the downside, all the attention will mean that the mayor—and Sonya Kaminski—will be further up his ass with every column inch published.

  The Farraces are not what Jim expected.

  For starters, they’re not even Farraces.

  The father is tall and doughy and, as a result, almost boyish, which he tries to offset with a long blond beard. Is he old enough to have a daughter Kelly Anne’s age? The wife, meanwhile, looks at least a decade older, with gray streaking her long dark hair, and her clothes pulled on like an afterthought—oh, I should wear something in public. Understandable, given the circumstances. But to Jim’s eye, her soul wasn’t just broken in the last twelve hours. It’s been broken for a while.

  Aisha takes the lead.

  “Detective Walczak and I are very sorry for your loss,” Aisha says, “and please know that we’re doing everything in our power to find the man who did this to your daughter.”

  The father extends a hand. “George Linden.”

  Aisha blinks. “You’re not Mr. Farrace?”

  The wife shakes her head. “I remarried.”

  “Does Kelly Anne’s father know what happened?”

  “I don’t think he knows much about anything,” Mrs. Linden says.

  “Kelly Anne’s father hasn’t been in the picture for quite a while,” Mr. Linden says quickly, not so much stepping on his wife’s last syllable as merely continuing her sentence.

  Jim thinks about Kelly, her prematurely aged mother, her pompous stepfather, her deadbeat dad. Yeah, I’d leave Beerfart, Ohio, too.

  “When’s the last time you heard from Kelly Anne?”

  “She calls home every week.”

  “And the last time was…”

  “Last week,” Mrs. Linden says, as if it’s the most obvious answer in the world.

  Aisha’s asking the questions, but the Lindens keep looking at Jim when they answer.

  “What I’m getting at is,” Aisha says, “did she mention anything strange to you the last time you spoke? Maybe trouble with a boyfriend, or at work? Anything like that?”

  No, there was nothing like that. Round and round they go and the deeper they get the clearer it becomes that the Lindens had very little idea what was going on with Kelly Anne once she moved to Philadelphia. Out of sight out of mind. Apparently there are three other daughters, all younger, to deal with. Kelly Anne is the only Farrace; the other three have a different father. Who is not Mr. Linden here. Seems this college professor stepped into their lives to bat cleanup.

  Jim wonders, Did you flee Ohio to get away from beardo here? Was he lingering in your doorway? Married the mom but wanted the oldest daughter?

  “What do you teach?” Jim asks Linden.

  “Nineteenth-century literature. Why?”

  “College?”

  “Community. Look, is this important? What does this have to do with finding Kelly Anne’s killer?”

  College guys. Jim doesn’t understand people who pay all that money and spend all that time to dick around. Sure, he wants Staś to go to college, but for something useful.

  Jim shakes his head. “Nothing.”

  The mayor’s office wanted to put them up at the Four Seasons on the Parkway, but they insist on returning home to make funeral arrangements and see to their other daughters.

  “Any idea where we can find Kelly Anne’s father?” Aisha asks.

  Mrs. Linden blinks. “You would know better than us.”

  Jim sits up. “What do you mean?”

  “He’s here,” Mr. Linden says. “Here in Philadelphia, somewhere.”

  Jim and Aisha exchange glances. After the Lindens leave, he asks her to check out the father.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I need to follow up on something,” he says, and doesn’t elaborate. Aisha knows better than to press him on it.

  Come on,
Terrill Lee Stanton, rise and shine, you scumbag.

  According to your record you’ve got a job at a soup kitchen all the way over in West Philly. If you’re going to make it on time, you’re going to have to be leaving this halfway house near Erie and Castor in a few minutes to catch the El.

  Jim sits across the street in his car, waiting, feeling vaguely guilty about lying to Aisha, knowing she’s left alone to handle the press and everything else. But this can’t wait. Jim’s already waited thirty years for this moment.

  At the small reception after Stan’s funeral, Jim was approached by Officer Billy Taney, his dad’s former partner. He needed a cane to walk and steadied himself on Jimmy’s shoulder as he leaned down.

  “Your father saved my life,” he said solemnly, his eyes buttery and unfocused, his breath like cold whiskey. “Anything you need, you come find me.”

  Over the next five years, Jim did just that on a regular basis. They met once a month for breakfast at the Aramingo Diner, not far from where Taney lived. Jim always ordered oatmeal—the cheapest breakfast item on the menu. Taney stuck with black coffee, augmented by some “syrup” he kept in a silver flask.

  At first Taney just spun “Stan Walczak stories” from their days on the force. They both became cops the same year, 1951. Bounced around various districts—including a wild tour of the Tenderloin 1950s—until they joined the vice squad in the mid-1950s, mostly working the clubs and bordellos around Juniper Street. Frank Rizzo’s turf, Taney would add with pride. Taney loved to talk about rousting drunks, hookers, and “slick boys”—ethnic gangsters who would run numbers, pimp, and embroil themselves in stupid little dramas.

  As a kid, Jim listened politely. The stories were interesting; his father had never told him much about those days. But what Jim really wanted to hear about was his father’s murder investigation.

  “I can’t tell you about that, Jimmy,” Taney would say at first. “Just know that we’re going to catch the son of a bitch who did this. Your father saved my life.”

  But gradually, as the months wore on, Taney’s tongue loosened slightly. “I heard that homicide is looking at a guy.”

  And then: “I didn’t tell you this, but I think homicide found the gun.”

  And by the summer of 1968: “Pretty sure they know who did it.”

  “So why aren’t they arresting him?” a fifteen-year-old Jimmy asked.

  “They don’t know that it’s enough. Look, we’re going to catch this black son of a bitch. Your father, he saved my life.”

  “Tell me his name.”

  “Jimmy, come on.”

  “I deserve to know his name!”

  But Taney held back.

  For a few years, at least.

  One morning in early 1972, not long after Jimmy himself joined the force, a drunk Billy Taney slipped and gave him the name of the “person of interest” in the murder of Stanisław Walczak and George W. Wildey.

  The name was Terrill Lee Stanton.

  Which filled Patrolman Jimmy Walczak with a cold kind of energy. Immediately he wanted to know where this Terrill Lee Stanton lived, what he’d been doing for the past seven years.

  “Thing is,” Taney said, “he’s already in prison.”

  Doing thirty to life for another murder.

  “He’s paying for it, believe me,” Taney added.

  Not enough, Jim thought.

  So for the next few decades he’d dream of the day they let Stanton out of prison, so that he could look him in the eye and ask why why why…

  And there he is, bold as day.

  His father’s killer steps out of the halfway house, fists shoved into the pockets of a fleece jacket. The weird thing is, he looks nothing like the mug shot Jim knows in vivid detail (obsesses over). The guy in the mug shot looks feral, ready to punch you in the gut as soon as say hello. But this later, postprison version is just a skinny old man, walking down Erie Avenue with his head hung like there are invisible weights attached to his forehead, presumably headed for the El so he can ladle out chicken noodle to the less fortunate.

  Don’t let him fool you, Jim. This is the man who pointed a revolver at your father and pulled the trigger, repeatedly.

  Probably liked it.

  Probably still gets off on it…

  Stop it.

  Jim watches Terrill Lee Stanton shuffle down Erie. Pathetic old man. It’s a shame for someone his age to be walking out here in the cold like that. Maybe Jim should scoop him up, give him a ride, save him the token money.

  Outer Jim commands: No. Don’t be an idiot. There are a million reasons you shouldn’t do this. You shouldn’t even be out here this morning.

  And in the end, Outer Jim wins. He has a murder case to solve. This sorry old man? He’s not going anywhere.

  While he’s been gone, Aisha’s been busy.

  Robert Raymond Farrace, turns out, has priors. B&E guy, picked up a bunch of times over the last ten years.

  And as it turns out, he’s still behind bars, so there goes that idea.

  Jim and Aisha split the next jobs at hand. Aisha goes through Kelly Anne’s friends and/or possible boyfriends, while Jim works on a timeline of her movements the last day of her life. He scrawls out times and puts them on a dry-erase board. This part of the job always reminds him of high school. The paper’s already way late, and all you’re doing is racing to catch up.

  And then sometimes, you get a free pass from the teacher.

  Aisha rushes into their cubicle all excited.

  “Think I’ve got something good here.”

  Audrey Pries

  May 9, 2015

  Audrey arrives at the pizza joint bright and early and relatively hangover-free, fully prepared to tear it the hell apart.

  Hey, it’s not her fault she has to do a little remodeling. The new owners should have kept it a bar.

  She’s relieved she didn’t have to sleep with Pizza Counter Guy to get him to open up extra early. Not that he isn’t handsome—he is. Warm smile and soft eyes. But Audrey’s got too much crazy in her life to invite more. What exactly is she supposed to do with a Pizza Counter Guy here in Philadelphia when she has ongoing drama back in Houston?

  Audrey crouches down, mini-crowbar in hand. She tucks one end under a lip of paneling and begins to pry. Hard, fast, quick, move move move. She needs this bar naked and quick.

  KEEERRRAAAAAAK.

  She can tell Pizza Counter Guy is normally a very chill dude, but you can see him getting all worked up.

  “Whoa! Take it easy!”

  “Sorry, man, but I told you we had a deadline.”

  “Yeah, but you’re denting the hell out of that stuff.”

  “Look, I’m going to put everything back the way it was. I’ve got a hammer and everything. Coolio?”

  Pizza Counter Guy blinks.

  “Did you just use the word coolio in terms of asking me if I agree?”

  Audrey doesn’t reply.

  KEEEERRAAAAAAAK.

  This, appropriately enough, used to be a shotgun bar.

  Main entrance off Fairmount, side entrance off Seventeenth. Long skinny place. Bar running down one side, almost all the way to the back. Rows of bottles in front of the mirror. A couple of tables in the back. But the main business was done at the bar, on stools. Tile floor. Little off-white square tiles, interrupted by a small burst of blue and green tiles in a geometric pattern.

  The bar, though. It’s beautiful. What a crime to cover it up with these cheap panels.

  Legend has it that this place was the preferred watering hole of poet and writer Charles Bukowski back in the mid-1940s when he worked at the Fairmount Motor Works. Bukowski supposedly used it as the basis for the Golden Horn in his original screenplay for Barfly, which would star Mickey Rourke. (Audrey has a friend who insists the movie is pronounced Barf-lee.) The name of the bar back in Bukowski’s day has been lost to time. Nor did it have a name back when her grandfather was shot to death here.

  Pizza Counter Guy watches her w
ork. What else does he have to do? It’s 7 a.m. and he doesn’t have to start slinging dough for another two hours.

  “What’s with the string?”

  What’s with the string is that Audrey is approximately 2,500 miles from her college campus and is unable to use the university’s fancy-pants 3-D laser scanner that would map this entire pizza joint in a couple of hours. Audrey loves it. The thing spins around, making millions of ridiculously accurate measurements. The end result: 360 degrees of cold hard data. The entire crime scene on your laptop.

  So instead, she has to go old-school.

  “It’s highly technical,” she says. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  Pizza Counter Guy says uh-huh.

  She might be a lousy student, but Audrey remembers quite a lot from her forensic science classes. Her favorite six words, courtesy of her favorite professor: “We’re basically a bag of water.”

  In terms of a bullet striking a human being.

  (He made this awesome SPOFFFF sound effect while slowly bringing his splayed hands apart.)

  Audrey truly enjoys shooting guns into ballistic gelatin, which is the closest you can get to human tissue. She loves ballistic gelatin so much she wants to slice it up and grill it, put it on a bun.

  But back to the double murder at hand.

  “In a bullet murder, there is no area of evidence more important than the autopsy,” said the same professor. “With the wounds, you can infer the trajectory of the bullet.”

  Well, as the song goes, she ain’t got no body. Unless she goes for a double unearthing. Which would please exactly nobody.

  “Examination of the victim’s clothing is a very important part of that autopsy.”

  No clothes, either.

  Nor fingerprints…nor prime-time TV’s favorite, blood splatter.

  Which is fine, because all that bullshit is “more art than science,” according to one of her profs. The fingerprint lecture was particularly eye-opening. Everyone grows up thinking that no two sets of fingerprints are alike. Well, guess what, chief: that all depends on the methods of taking said fingerprints. With the most commonly used methods, parts of fingerprints can be so similar that two different chumps can be linked to the same latent print. No cop wants to admit it, but it’s true.