Powers of Arrest

by Jon Talton

  “There’s always overtime.” Dodds carefully undid the latches. The case was fiberglass, purple, and well worn. What was inside wasn’t.

  “So Mister Music, it’s a cello. You’re right. Now, go get those fucking reporters out of here.”

  Will stared at the instrument and didn’t speak for several seconds. “That’s a Domenico Montagnana.”

  “So? Sounds like a baseball player from the Dominican Republic.”

  “It’s one of the finest cellos in existence,” Will said, a tingle running across his chest. “Yo-Yo Ma plays one. I think he calls it Petunia.”

  He stared at the fine wood, the intricate workmanship on the scroll at the top, the neck, and fingerboard. Dodds exhaled heavily. He knew what Will was going to say next.

  “Maybe it was dumb luck this didn’t get stolen, like with his wallet. But this is no freshman at CCM.” The College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati.

  Dodds stared at the ground.

  “Music Hall is two blocks away,” Will added.

  Dodds waved a finger in his face. “Now don’t try to make this some hoity-toity symphony thing, Mister President. You know as well as I do that most homicides are simple.”

  Will smiled mischievously and walked back to his car.

  Yes, most were simple. That’s why cops didn’t read murder mysteries or watch police television dramas: they made the business sound too interesting. In real life, the homicide beat was tedious, repetitive, and unexciting. Most victims knew their killers. Drugs were a big motive: A deal gone wrong, a mule stealing from a dealer, a small-time dealer ripping off a bigger supplier. Domestic violence was another common denominator. Husbands killed wives and their new boyfriends, and often finished the job with a bullet in their own mouths. Sometimes wives and girlfriends killed their men.

  If a person turned up in a suspicious death, their lover was always the prime suspect, and that bias on the part of the detectives rarely turned out to be wrong. When couples didn’t fight about sex and jealousy, they fought about money. Sometimes a slap became a kick became a bullet. Cops themselves were no different. They offed their exes and then ate their guns. Cops also slept with a lot of other cops’ spouses or girlfriends or boyfriends, and then things went lethally bad.

  Most victims and suspects came from the same socioeconomic class, and, in a city like Cincinnati, from the same race. Most were black, living in the poor and forgotten neighborhoods overrun by drugs and offering no jobs. The cops knew the suspects and victims already. In most cases, the homicide had been only a matter of time.

  Hold-ups went wrong. Some kid with no impulse control wanted to play gangsta. He thought pulling the trigger was no different than what happens in a video game. Concepts like mortality, forever…forget it. It wasn’t wired in their brains these days. Try to get ahead of it and the ACLU and the ministers and all the do-gooders who never spent a night in the ghetto would be all over you. But the same things happened in the white-trash neighborhoods like Lower Price Hill. The really lurid stuff occurred out in the suburbs, but don’t try telling that to the average Cincinnatian.

  Cops burned out of homicide. Not because of blood or gore or being outwitted by criminal masterminds. No, because of its monotony: The same easy suspects, the same filthy apartments, and same kinds of people doing the killing. The pressure from the brass to clear cases. And the paperwork. And that forever part, dead, gone completely… if they let themselves think about it too long.

  The younger cops didn’t know much about real investigations because DNA solved everything, or so nearly everyone was convinced. The really gifted homicide investigators were mostly retired or close to it. Then, the endless time with the D.A. and in court, and a sentence that never seemed like justice. Traffic division was much the same but the stakes weren’t as high.

  It’s not that serial killers weren’t out there or that some homicides weren’t true mysteries. It’s not even that criminal masterminds didn’t exist. A person could get away with it, if he was really careful, disciplined, and, especially, didn’t know the victim. But that wasn’t the day-in, day-out of working homicide.

  The truth is, most murder is boring. Except when it’s not.

  Chapter Five

  The murders caused the campus to go on alert. Classes were canceled for the day, and that included Cheryl Beth’s meeting. Students were told to stay in their dorms, faculty to remain in their offices. Cheryl Beth’s office was at the Hamilton campus, so she walked into town, past the cordon of police at the university’s entrance, and ordered coffee at a bagel shop on High Street. An Enquirer was sitting on the table, and she absently thumbed through it. “Couple arrested after flagging down cop,” a headline on an inside page read.

  It went on, “A couple who flagged down police to report that they had been robbed at gunpoint early Saturday evening got more than a sympathetic ear from a Cincinnati police officer. According to Detective Will Borders, Karole and Stephen Sweigert, both 27 and from Cleves, were arrested because the couple drove from Cleves to purchase drugs on McKeone Avenue with their three children in tow.” Cheryl Beth drummed her fingers on the newsprint and sipped the coffee, scalding the inside of her mouth. She popped the lid off to let it cool.

  When her cell phone rang, it showed a number she didn’t recognize. She keyed it to voice mail and drank the coffee, re-reading the news article. In a moment, the message icon appeared and she listened to a male voice, exuding authority. The coffee lost its taste.

  The voice identified itself as Detective Hank Brooks of the Oxford Police Department. He took the time to spell his last name. Would she please come to the station as soon as possible? He gave her the address and his number. “Please come to the station, ma’am,” he reiterated. As a nurse, she had been calling women ma’am for her entire career, and came from a small town where “sirring” and “ma’amming” were as expected as church attendance. But now when she heard it, she felt old. The pretty young woman behind the counter had called her that when she had poured the coffee. Ma’am. It was a vain thought, she knew. Hearing it from Detective Hank Brooks—B-r-o-o-k-s—rekindled the dread in her stomach.

  She could carry it off well. A bystander would see a woman in a black pant suit, pleasant face, idly watching the street through the window, tapping her fingers on the newspaper, slowly sipping her coffee. Cheryl Beth locked all her crises deep inside. Her training had taught her to mask emotions when necessary, to do the job. That was the way to be effective, the way to help people. But inside, she could feel her stomach muscles trembling.

  Two girls dead in the Formal Gardens, hidden by a blue tarp. One of her students arrested. A crime so lurid it made her friend, the campus cop, look as if he were going to vomit. She thought more about Noah Smith. He seemed dependable and smart. He was getting good grades. A nice guy. Good-looking with an easy smile—too young and too skinny for her tastes—but he seemed popular with the women in class. He made them laugh. But she didn’t know him. Did you really know anyone? She couldn’t say she really knew her own mother. The blackness of her drink stared back at her. She pushed it aside and stood to go.

  The Oxford Police Department was a short walk, sitting beside the quaint city hall at High and Poplar streets with its pitched roof, small tower, and white columns in front. The flowerbeds were blooming violet and white. The station itself was simpler, a squat addition with two windows and a door facing the street. She walked through the door and asked for Detective Brooks. She started to sit, studying the department’s shoulder patch with its American flag and eagle, “Police, City of Oxford, State of Ohio, Est. 1810.”

  “Ms. Wilson?”

  A man stuck his head out of a doorway and beckoned her inside. He was short and solid, somewhere around forty, with wavy brown hair and a bushy moustache. His handgun stuck out from his sport coat when he shook her hand. Hank Brooks mostly looked her in the eye, but also he gave her an appraising once-over. Up close, she realized he was only a little taller
than her five-feet-five-inches. He moved with nervous energy barely contained.

  “Come back, please. Thanks for coming in so soon.”

  She said something polite. Then, “Is Noah here? Is he all right?”

  “He’s fine,” Brooks said, walking ahead of her down a hallway. “They’ve taken him to the Butler County jail.”

  He led her into a room with a table and modern wheeled office chairs, upholstered in black. Bulletin boards and white boards lined the walls. She didn’t take the time to study their contents. He invited her to sit and left the door open.

  “Did you know Noah Smith well?” Brooks asked. “How long did you know him?”

  She told him all she knew. Noah was a third-year student, in her NSG 362 class, Nursing Care for Adults with Health Alterations. She typically team-taught with a woman with more academic experience. They made a good pair, Cheryl Beth bringing the real-world experience, leading the clinical part of the course that took place in the hospital. Noah was in his second semester with her.

  “Was he moody? Did he have a temper?”

  “Never that I saw.”

  “Ever seem to be on drugs?”

  Cheryl Beth shook her head. As a pain-management nurse, she was very good at spotting that kind of behavior, and Noah had never displayed it.

  “What about with women? Was he hostile?”

  “Not at all,” she said. “He got along well with the women students.”

  “I guess that’s one reason to become a male nurse.” Brooks leaned back, stretched, and cradled the back of his head into his outstretched hands.

  “We call them all nurses,” Cheryl Beth said. “It’s like not calling out gender differences between police officers.” That was the stress in her stomach talking. She tamped it down and smiled. “But, sure, men are still outnumbered by women in the program, and Noah is a good-looking guy.”

  “Think that’s why he did it? To meet women?”

  She couldn’t stop herself from making a face. “How about a personals ad in CityBeat? These students who have reached this level have worked very hard and they want to make nursing their career.”

  He nodded, leaned forward, and opened a beaten-up brown portfolio. A yellow legal pad was filled with handwriting in blue ink. He flipped the page and began making new notes. Outside the door, she saw police officers walk past but the station seemed oddly quiet.

  “What about you?”

  She felt the sudden defensiveness of a driver going the speed limit who sees a patrol car behind her. “What about me?”

  “You’re new to Miami.”

  So he had checked on her. She wondered why.

  “I was at Cincinnati Memorial Hospital. When it closed, I decided to try something new.”

  “You’re not from Ohio, not with that accent.”

  “Where I come from, it’s not considered an accent.” All those years in Cincinnati and she couldn’t get Kentucky out of her voice.

  “So you’re what, an adjunct?”

  She nodded. The money wasn’t great, but she had some saved and had welcomed the change of teaching. She could get a new nursing position again any time.

  “No tenure,” he sighed. “That’s why they call those jobs, ad-junk.” He didn’t smile. “That was where they had those murders. Cincinnati Memorial, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  He made more notes.

  “Why did Noah Smith call out to you, Ms. Wilson? Do you prefer Ms., Mrs., Miss?”

  She was fine with “Cheryl Beth,” but something about Detective Hank Brooks didn’t sit right with her.

  “Miss is fine,” she said. “And I have no idea. I was standing there…”

  “Why was that?”

  “I was going for a morning walk to the Formal Gardens.” She worked to keep the irritation and anxiety out of her voice. “He saw me and recognized me. He asked for my help. He seemed afraid.”

  “I might be afraid if I had murdered two girls and was caught napping at the crime scene with blood all over me, Cheryl.” He stared at her and stroked the edge of his moustache with his right index finger. His shoulders were a straight line of tension.

  “Is that what happened? You found him there asleep?”

  Brooks sat back straight and hesitated. She knew he had told her more than he had intended. But that only made her want to know more.

  “The Formal Gardens seem like a pretty public place.” She looked at him evenly and let the silence fall between them.

  Finally, “You don’t know the campus very well, do you, Cheryl?”

  “My name is Cheryl Beth.”

  She didn’t like him well enough to tell the story of how in the first grade, the teacher had been confronted with three girls named Cheryl, so she called them by their first and middle names: Cheryl Ann, Cheryl Sue, and Cheryl Beth, and how the name had stuck and she liked it. If she were back at the hospital, back in her position as pain nurse, she would have added: Are you trying to piss me off?

  “Sure, okay, Cheryl Beth,” he said. “There are times of the day when parts of the campus can be very isolated. All the trees and shrubbery and open spaces. Even so more at night and in the early morning.”

  “So the girls were killed overnight?”

  “I can’t discuss the details,” he said, but she got the point: The killings had not occurred soon before she arrived.

  “And Noah fell asleep in the bushes, naked?” she said. She raised her hands to calm him. “I know, you can’t tell me anything.”

  “I can’t get over him calling to you and asking for your help.” He leaned forward on his elbows and stared at her. She looked back at him, wearing her pleasant face.

  “That’s what happened. Actually, he seemed disoriented. I don’t really get your point, Detective Brooks.”

  “This is a small-town department, but we’re not idiots, Cheryl Beth.”

  “I didn’t say you were, Hank.”

  He flipped back a yellow page of handwriting and studied it.

  “I don’t think you told me where you’re from with that accent? Originally.”

  “I didn’t tell you. Corbin, Kentucky.”

  “Corbin, Kentucky,” he said, neutrally. “Never been there.”

  “I haven’t lived there in twenty-five years.” She realized she was nervously playing with her hair. She forced her hands back to the top of the table.

  “Noah Smith is from Corbin, Kentucky.”

  “What?”

  “That’s right, Cheryl Beth. And you’re telling me you don’t know him? Must be a pretty small town.”

  Noah had never told her that. His accent was as Midwestern as most of her students.

  Brooks persisted. “Want to tell me more, now?”

  She took a deep breath but maintained her composure. “There’s nothing to tell, Hank. I don’t live in Corbin. I haven’t lived there in a very long time. I didn’t know he was from there. Lots of people named Smith in every town, probably even Oxford.”

  She ran through her mental Rolodex. In fifth grade, she had a crush on Billy Smith. His family moved away. She knew Donna Smith all through school; Donna had brothers but none was named Noah. Joe Smith owned the filling station on Main Street before it was shut down. It was an impossible task.

  “You still have family in Corbin?

  She hesitated. “Yes, a brother.”

  “Noah Smith doesn’t,” he said. “He claims he has no living relatives. Did you know that?”

  She told him that she didn’t.

  “He was a loner, I guess.” He leaned back and the chair gave a creak that seemed at odds with its newness. He started shaking his right leg.

  “Kept to himself in class?”

  “No, he was quite outgoing. He seemed normal.” She heard herself talking too fast. She slowed down and added: “I know that’s what people always say.” She smiled, the insincerity of it hurting her facial muscles.

  “Mmm-hmmm.”

  “He was never disruptive,�
� she said. “He never missed a class. He was good with his clinical work. Don’t tell me he has a record or something.”

  “That doesn’t tell anything,” he said. “Lots of killers have never had a parking ticket.”

  He wiggled in his seat, reached into a file, and slid two plastic bags onto the table. Each contained a small card. A driver’s license.

  “Do you know these girls?”

  The shock radiated down her legs. One license showed Holly Metzger. The other was Lauren Benish. She tried to keep her breathing even.

  “Are they the ones who were killed?”

  He nodded and stroked his moustache. If it were a little longer, he could play Simon Legree.

  “My God.” Her hand went involuntarily to her mouth. “They were in my class.”

  “With Noah Smith.”

  “Yes.”

  He pulled back the licenses and slid them back into the folder.

  “I can’t believe it,” she said.

  He swung the portfolio closed and slid his pen in his shirt pocket. He stared hard at her. “What I can’t understand is why he was calling for you out there. And you happened to be there.”

  She stared back at him until he spoke again.

  “The thing is, Cheryl Beth, he’s asking to see you.”

  Chapter Six

  The quick movement caught Will’s eye as he was crossing the wide expanse of Central Parkway headed into downtown. On the far corner, a man was down on the sidewalk. Another man, twice his size, was kicking him. Will instinctively hit the siren, a quick blurt, called for backup, and parked his unmarked car at the edge of the curb, partly blocking a traffic lane. The bumper was five feet from the fight. He swung himself out, pain and spasms clinching his strong right leg. He raised himself to his full height and used the car door and roof as support.

  “Police, step back.”

  The assailant was huge, with baggy black jeans and a dirty Reds cap. His pockets, embroidered with what looked like sequins, drooped nearly down to the backs of his knees. He looked over at Will and mouthed a profanity, again swinging his leg hard into the other man’s side. He was in his mid-twenties, wearing heavy black boots, with thick toes and heels, and silver buckles and chains ornamenting the tops. His rap sheet was long.