Another Dead Teenager

by Mark Richard Zubro

  “Nothing particular in the voice. No background noises that I remember.”

  “We recording the calls?”

  “Yeah, we’re tapped into the emergency system,” Blessing said. “We’ve got everything. I’ll get it for you.”

  “Does this justify our talking to the guy?” Turner asked.

  “Better get a state’s attorney and the Commander up here,” Fenwick said. “We got no physical evidence on this.”

  “We’d never get a search warrant based on an anonymous tip,” Turner said.

  “Like to have a microscopist go over his car,” Fenwick said.

  Assuming the killer was bright enough to erase all fingerprints in the car that drove Goldstein to his place of death, then their next best bet was a microscopist. The microscopist could, as Sherlock Holmes suggested, find things out from the smallest detail. In this case the microscopist could go over the seats in Daryl Logan’s vehicle. He or she could compare the minutest threads found in the car with Jake Goldstein’s pants and jacket. If Goldstein had been in the car, a microscopist should find traces.

  “Lots of immediate pressure on this one,” Blessing said. “Should be able to shake something loose.”

  But half an hour later in the commander’s office, Blessing’s comment seemed essentially untrue.

  “You have absolutely no physical evidence,” the assistant state’s attorney said. “You have no justification for a warrant of any kind. I don’t see probable cause in an anonymous phone call. How many calls have you gotten? Probably hundreds, maybe thousands? Not one has led to a real break in the case, has it?”

  Turner, Fenwick, and the commander shook their heads.

  “You might be justified in talking to him, but I would be very careful.”

  Poindexter said, “You know the pressure we’ve been under on this case. You’re in a political office. You know we’ve got to have something.”

  “But if you have no justification for a search or if you try something illegal and blow the case, it’ll be worse. You know what the media will do if you announce you have a suspect or if you’re even questioning someone. I still don’t know how you avoided anything with that Waverly guy from the team.”

  “We were careful.”

  “Well, you’ll have to be careful again.”

  Fenwick asked, “Do we call him and ask him, please, sir, to come in so we can chat, or do we find out where he lives and bust down his door?”

  The assistant state’s attorney did not smile. “Go talk to him at his house. Don’t search for anything. Don’t touch anything. Unless he’s got a dead body hanging in the parlor, don’t do anything.”

  Before they left, Blessing gave them a preliminary report on Logan’s background. He’d lived all his life in the Chicago area.

  Fenwick grumbled about “dead body in the parlor” for over half the drive from Area Ten to the Golden Ridge subdivision south of New Lenox in unincorporated Will County.

  “This is going to be useless,” Fenwick said.

  “We’ve got to try,” Turner said.

  “What’s the deal on Jose Martin and his dad?” Fenwick asked.

  “I intend to find out,” Turner said. “I’ll have that answer before I go to bed tonight.”

  They took the Dan Ryan Expressway to Interstate 57, picked up Interstate 80 west, and exited at Maple Avenue in New Lenox. Using his Chicago & Vicinity 6 County Street Finder, Turner found Daryl Logan’s address.

  Some of the condos in the subdivision were half finished. Piles of wood and bricks surrounded a few of the structures. Immense clots of mud left by construction vehicles littered the street.

  The light was on in Logan’s condo. He answered their knock and looked quite surprised to see them. He led them into a sparsely furnished living room. He had only a black leather couch, an easy chair, and a compact-unit stereo system in it as furniture. No pictures hung from the wall. No bodies hung from the ceiling. Logan turned down a symphony playing on the stereo.

  Turner said, “We need to check a number of things with you, Mr. Logan.” The man wore a St. Basil’s University sweatshirt, faded blue jeans, white socks, and running shoes. He didn’t need a belt for the jeans to hug his narrow hips.

  Turner thought, He’s got enough of a build to carry around a struggling teenager, if he had to.

  “I’m surprised you’re here,” Logan said.

  “Someone told us the boys went back to the sky box after going to the locker room.”

  “Who told you that?” Logan asked.

  “We received a call,” Turner said. “It said you had gone to the car with the boys after the game.”

  “An anonymous call? This is an insult! After the game, I escorted the university’s guests to their rented limousine and then went to my car and drove home. You can check with the guests about who went where. I can give you the list.”

  “Please,” Turner said.

  Logan stared at the cops for a half a minute. Finally he said, “I’ll get it.” He ascended stairs in the hallway and returned moments later. He handed Turner a list. “There are their home addresses. I can get you the numbers in the morning or I suppose directory assistance in their cities could get the numbers. You realize if you do that calling, people could begin to think I had some connection to this. I see no need for my reputation to be destroyed because you have been unable to come up with a suspect. If word of this gets out, my career at the university would be in jeopardy. And don’t tell me that if I’m innocent, it can’t hurt me. We’ve all seen what a media frenzy can do. If a whisper of this gets out, cameras will camp outside my door for days on end. Media people will attempt to talk to me, my family, and anyone who knows me.”

  Turner said, “I understand the media problem, Mr. Logan. We will do our best. You aren’t a suspect. At the moment we just have some questions.”

  Turner and Fenwick asked their questions. Logan’s answers gave them no cause to arrest him or treat him as a suspect and certainly gave them no excuse to go to a judge and ask for a warrant. They left after an hour.

  Fenwick slammed his car door. “Into the fiasco column with another one.”

  The entire ride back to Area Ten passed in depressed silence.

  Back on the third floor, Turner sat with his elbows on top of the desk and his head cupped in his hands. Fenwick plopped his bulk into his chair and swung his feet up onto his desk. He entwined his fingers and placed them behind his head. He stared at the ceiling.

  “Is there much point to sitting here like this?” Fenwick asked.

  “We’re getting just as far doing this as we were running around the countryside.”

  “Did we eat lunch?”

  “I thought we had something.”

  Commander Poindexter entered the room. They told him about their session with Logan.

  After their conversation with the commander, Turner said, “I’m going home to check on this Jose Martin thing. I’ll probably grab a bite to eat.”

  “I’m going to stay here for a while and go over reports and statistics. Maybe something will leap out at me from our list of killings,” Fenwick said.

  “I’ll be back in a couple hours at most. I’m going to try and keep this day to one that ends at midnight. We’re at a big dead end. I don’t need to ruin my health for this.”

  In the parking lot Turner saw Ian drive up in his green Range Rover. Turner climbed into the seat next to his friend.

  “You look like hell,” Ian said.

  “I feel like it.”

  “Want to go for a drink?”

  “No. I need to get home. We can talk here for a few minutes.”

  “What happened today?”

  “More nothing. The creepiest kid on the planet confessed to the murder.” Turner told him about his day.

  “I’m sorry your idea didn’t lead to something more concrete. If it is a serial killer working around the country, that’s going to be tough to solve,” Ian said.

  “Yeah. I’m more worri
ed about my kid. I’ve still got uniformed cops at the house. We won’t be able to keep that long. My son and his buddy Jose are both there. Jose is the kid you were lusting after. Speaking of which….” Turner told Ian about visiting the Martin home the night before.

  Turner finished, “Plus, Blessing can only find identification for them from four years ago to now.”

  Ian said, “Tell me about the picture on the television again.”

  “It was just them smiling.”

  “No, the background.”

  “I don’t know.” Turner thought a minute. “It was just a crowd scene at a parade. Right behind them was a booth with a guy selling magazines and tapes, I think.”

  “Big guy at the table with one of those huge handlebar mustaches? Leather vest, no shirt underneath?”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  “That’s Mrs. Sally, by day a chunky leather man, by night an overweight drag queen. He has a booth at every Gay Pride Parade in Chicago. He’s not supposed to. The parade organizers and/or the police always chase him away.”

  “Why is this important for me to know?”

  “The picture was taken at the Gay Pride Parade.”

  “Lots of people go to the Pride Parade who aren’t gay.”

  “I didn’t say they were gay.”

  “Would they have the nerve to live openly together if they weren’t father and son?”

  “Describe what you saw of Mr. Martin’s tattoo,” Ian commanded.

  “I couldn’t see it real well.”

  “Just tell me what you saw.”

  “Maybe the wing of a bird or a butterfly. The bottom half of a wheel. Why, is that the totem of a gay motorcycle group?”

  Ian did not laugh. He said, “Two butterflies, the tips of their wings barely touching and then a motorcycle racing between them, is the symbol for a very sweet group of men who ride motorcycles. They also happen to be gay.”

  “Maybe Mr. Martin is gay and Jose is his straight son. It can happen, you know.”

  “I’d bet my baseball autographed by all of the 1969 Cubs that they are not father and son.”

  “I don’t want to know that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because in the state of Illinois, police, schoolteachers, nurses, what-all, have to, by law, report any case of abuse they know about or suspect.”

  “This is abuse?”

  “They’ve been living together since at least Jose’s freshman year. He is still underage.”

  “You would turn them in?”

  “The law says if a person who is aware of abuse doesn’t report it and is caught not reporting it, he or she loses their job.”

  “You don’t know their story. They may love each other. You can’t simply turn them in.” They were silent several moments.

  “Brian’s been Jose’s best friend for more than three years.”

  Ian gazed at his friend. “Are you worried about Brian being gay?”

  “No. You know the statistics. The kids of gay parents are as likely to be gay as the kids of straight parents.”

  “Are you worried that Jose and Brian might have had sex?”

  “I don’t know if I want to talk about that. I don’t want to know the details of what my kid might have been doing. Lots of straight kids fool around in their early teens. If they didn’t, your life would have been a lot different.”

  “Brian protecting Jose and Mr. Martin’s secret means he understands, cares for them, has an open mind, doesn’t get frightened by people who are different. Brian’s a good kid. I think you can trust him. I wouldn’t trade him for half the teenagers on the planet.”

  They sat in silence for a while. Finally Turner said, “I should get home.”

  Ian squeezed his knee. “If I can help, call me.”

  Nine

  At home, Paul found Jeff playing electronic games with Ben. Paul hugged his younger son and his lover.

  “Got time for a game, Dad?”

  “Maybe later. Is your homework done?”

  “Yeah, we ate at Mrs. Talucci’s. I like the police around the house. Mrs. Talucci made them come in and eat dinner with us. They were nice.”

  “I’m glad. Where’s your brother?”

  “Upstairs. They’re studying for a test.”

  As Paul ascended the stairs, he didn’t hear any sounds coming from his son’s room. He tapped lightly on the door. He got a lazy “Yeah” in response.

  He opened the door. Jose was sitting at his son’s desk. He was staring at a page of a paperback copy of Great Expectations. Brian had a hand casually draped over his friend’s shoulder while pointing with his other hand to a passage in the book.

  “I told you it was Pip,” Brian said.

  “Okay, yeah.”

  Paul thought back to the numerous other times he’d seen his son and Jose having physical contact. Horsing around at the neighborhood pool. Wrestling, punching playfully, sitting next to each other on a couch with their legs and knees touching.

  Jose turned to Paul and grinned. He said, “Hey, Mr. Turner. How’s it going? Tough case you got. I like the protection when I go everywhere. I feel like the President with all the security guards.”

  “Jose, I need to talk to you,” Paul said.

  “Okay.” Jose glanced at Brian. “Is something up?”

  “He’s my dad. He’s a cop. He asks questions. He wanted to know about you and your dad, and I wouldn’t tell him anything. I told him to ask you.”

  The two friends looked at each other. Jose nodded, then turned to Paul. Jose’s smile was gone and his black eyes glittered.

  “Did Brian know you wanted to talk to me?” Jose asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And he didn’t say anything to me about it?”

  “He wouldn’t tell me your secret. I asked him not to tell that I wanted to talk to you. Don’t blame Brian.”

  “Okay, I guess,” Jose said.

  “That picture of you and your dad on the television set,” Paul said. “That was taken at the Gay Pride Parade.”

  “This is bullshit,” Jose said. His face was twisted in anger and his fists were clenched. He stood up. “I don’t have to listen to this. You better talk to my dad.”

  “He’s not your dad, is he?”

  Fear chased all other reactions off Jose’s face.

  “Mr. Turner, what are you talking about? He’s….” Jose took a step toward Paul and tipped over the chair he’d been sitting in.

  “There are no records of identification for you or Mr. Martin before four years ago. You both appear out of nowhere.”

  “That’s not your business,” Jose said.

  “Jose,” Paul said very quietly. “Please, sit down.”

  “Don’t you try and wreck what we’ve got, Mr. Turner.” A tear crossed Jose’s right cheek. He brushed at it with the sleeve of his white sweatshirt.

  “I just want to find out what’s going on,” Paul said.

  “You’re gonna screw everything up.” Jose said this with quiet defeat.

  “I want to help.”

  “You’re gonna screw everything up!” Now the words were repeated with a trace of defiance. “I’m not going to let that happen,” Jose said. Now he was angry and loud. “I’m not gonna let you or anybody ruin what I’ve got!”

  “I don’t want to ruin anything, Jose. Please, sit down.”

  Brian said, “He’s my dad, Jose. You know you can trust him. He’s okay. You’ve always trusted him. I have. You know I do.”

  Jose yanked the chair off the ground and straddled it backwards. He pointed a finger at Paul. “You don’t have to ask me anything. I’m going to tell you. Nobody’s gonna ruin what I got. Nobody. I’m going to tell, and we’ll run if we have to. You can’t stop us.”

  Paul said nothing to this angry frontal attack.

  “Come on, Jose,” Brian said. “It’ll be okay.”

  “You should have warned me,” Jose said.

  Brian looked agonized. He gazed from his dad to his f
riend. “I kept your secret,” he finally said.

  “Big deal.”

  “Why don’t you wait in the living room, Brian,” Paul said.

  “I don’t care if he hears this,” Jose said. “He knows most of it.”

  “Jose,” Paul said, “I don’t want to make trouble for you. I want to listen and understand.”

  Jose pulled in a deep breath, spread his arms wide on the back of the chair, and looked at Paul intently. His gaze seldom wavered from Paul’s eyes as he told his story.

  “I grew up to be a wild kid. My parents didn’t know how to handle me, and after a while, they didn’t want anything to do with me. They had problems of their own. I’d been placed in two different juvenile homes by the time I was nine. By age eleven I spent most of my time in foster homes and being passed around by state and city departments of child welfare. It wasn’t in this state and Martin wasn’t my last name, so you won’t be able to trace me. The first time I had sex was with a thirteen-year-old in the basement of a child welfare center. I was ten. They had seventeen of us staying where there was supposed to be only five. He showed me how to hustle guys for money. Others showed me how to steal, sell drugs, live on the streets, and on my wits.”

  “I’m sorry,” Paul said.

  “I don’t know if I want you to say anything, Mr. Turner. I’ve never told any adult besides Will all this. I think I’d just like to tell it.”

  Paul remained silent.

  “No foster home could hold me. I ran away to somewhere warm and lived with a series of guys who were happy to keep me as long as I returned sexual favors. When I was twelve, I met Will. He didn’t want to have sex with me. He was this nice gay man who lived next door to the guy who was keeping me. Will would do carpentry work out in his garage every night after he got home from work. I would go over there and watch and talk with him. I offered myself to him. He said no. He showed me how to carve, measure, hammer, and put things together. I’d screw my sugar daddy at night and run around on the streets all day, then spend an hour or so with Will after he got home.

  “My sugar daddy got tired of me. I was too wild. I wouldn’t settle down even for a safe roof over my head. Then I got in trouble with the cops again. They sent me to another foster home, but I ran away the first night. On my thirteenth birthday I used a gun to rob somebody. The cops were after me. I ran to Will. He said I’d have to turn myself in. I said I would if I could live with him. He told me that no one would sanction a gay man just bringing a kid into his home. He was afraid of the law. I did turn myself in. I got sent to a juvenile place for six months. While I was there, I thought about Will a lot. He could be gruff, but he always took time to explain things to me. I’d had enough of chaos. I wanted the calm life he had. In that juvenile home I had time to think and plan.