The Reign of the Kingfisher

by T. J. Martinson

  “Care to expound on that?”

  “Man’s got a head thicker than concrete. He doesn’t listen to anyone. Except maybe the mayor, I guess. But even then, not really. He plays everyone like those little puppets on strings—you know, the goofy Pinocchio things—”

  “Marionettes.”

  “Right. Marionettes. I mean, the whole department is pretty much the Stetson show. Acts like everyone beneath him, which is just about everyone in this city so far as I can tell, is always in the way of his spotlight. Not to mention he acts like we don’t know what the hell we’re doing. He treats us detectives like we’re kindergartners with badges and deadly weapons. Doesn’t give us an inch of rope. Word I’m looking for is micromanage. Breathes down our fucking necks like you wouldn’t believe. Everything has to go through Stetson, doesn’t matter what it is.”

  Nothing Marcus didn’t already know. “I’m curious what you know about Stetson before he was police chief. When he was an officer and a detective.”

  “That was long before my time.”

  “But I’m guessing word gets around. These things travel. Are there any veteran detectives who talk about all that?”

  Jeremiah thought about it and smiled. He seemed to be enjoying the shit-talking. “Yeah, there’s a few on the force who were around back then. Maybe two or three. I don’t interact with them all that much, but I know they hate Stetson. But so do most of us, so it doesn’t seem all that strange to me.”

  “What do the older detectives say about Stetson?”

  “They say all sorts of stuff about him. Like he’s a neurotic asshole, a bureaucrat, a con man. You know, that sort of stuff.”

  “A con man?” Marcus tried to rein in his piqued interest. “Any idea why they’d say that?”

  “Like I said, I don’t talk to them too much, at least not about old history. But that’s just one of those things they say. They say all sorts of things, though, those older guys on the force. I don’t give it too much weight, personally.”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t get me wrong, I’m not fond of Stetson, but I get the sense that the older guys hate him out of simple jealousy. You know as well as I do that Stetson leapfrogged up the chain of command when he was appointed chief. Some of the brass he passed along the way weren’t too pleased.” Jeremiah smiled, perhaps at the image of his superiors shaking with rage. “What are you asking about Stetson for?”

  Marcus glanced at Jeremiah’s expectant posture, his insistently curious gaze, anticipating a benign answer to a simple question.

  Do what you think is best.

  “I’m going to ask you to look at something, with the understanding that you tell no one else, at least for now.”

  “What are we talking about here? You have a lead?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Let me take a look.”

  Marcus pulled up the letter on his phone. “I don’t think this needs much context.” He slid it across the table to Jeremiah, who held it up to his face. His lips moved silently as he passed through the words.

  The kettle began whistling over the stove. Marcus stood up and prepared the coffee while Jeremiah read the letter, with the occasional grunt or click of his tongue. Finally, after a minute, Jeremiah looked up with a blank expression and slid the phone across the table.

  “Where’d you get this?” Jeremiah asked.

  “Anonymous source,” Marcus said, pouring the steaming water into the press.

  “Probably the same kids who took the ME report.”

  “I wouldn’t know. You recognize any of the names of the detectives who signed the letter?”

  Jeremiah nodded. He reclined in his chair, folded his arms, and craned his head to the ceiling. He let out a heavy sigh. “There’s already talk of protests tonight against the police. When this letter gets out, it’s going to be mayhem. Torches and pitchforks.”

  “I don’t think it will get out. Whoever sent it said they were only sharing it with me.”

  Jeremiah leaned forward as if he had misheard. “Why the hell would they do that? Those kids could destroy the police department if they share it. Isn’t that their endgame?”

  “I honestly don’t know anymore.”

  Jeremiah shook his head slowly, scratching his neck. “It does sound like Stetson, though.”

  “What does?”

  “The stuff the detectives in that letter said he did. Doing some sneaky shit to look good for the chief and the mayor. Pissing most everyone else off and not giving a single, solitary fuck. Did that letter ever actually make its way to the chief’s desk back then?”

  “No idea.”

  “I didn’t know Chief Gonzalez, but if he was anything like Stetson, he wouldn’t have given a damn about any of that so long as Stetson’s arrests made him look good, too.” Jeremiah laughed, drumming his fingers on the edge of the table. “At least it makes sense now.”

  “What does?”

  “Why Stetson is handling the investigation the way he is. I couldn’t figure it out before.” Jeremiah took a drink of his coffee and leaned over the table, lost in thought. “See, he could have just released the report today and ended this. Everyone is treating it like a ransom, but it isn’t. He could have just released the report and said that he was going to declassify it soon anyway. Or he could have said that its confidential status was a filing error or some shit. He could have done it. But even if that had stopped the gunman from killing the hostages, it would still mean that everyone knew he had been lying about the contents of the report, and then everyone wonders why the police said one thing and the ME report says another.” Jeremiah tapped his chin, a revelatory smile. “But if Stetson could just kill the gunman, maybe people would forget all of it eventually. The media would run a few days of coverage on the lunatic, interview his family, interview his victims’ families. Meanwhile, Stetson washes his hands and goes about his merry way, looking to the whole world like the hero he thinks he is.”

  Marcus couldn’t argue Jeremiah’s logic. “Well, it doesn’t seem likely that scenario will happen now,” Marcus said. “The report is out there. Stetson will have to address it.”

  Jeremiah shrugged. “Stetson’s a lot of things, but he’s not stupid. I wouldn’t put it past him to find a way around it. You know, sweep it all under the rug. What’s funny is that if he knew about that letter you got in your hands there, he’d be sweating bullets right now. I can tell you that much. He can only stave off so many accusations before they start sticking. Yeah, if he knew you had that letter, he’d be shitting his trousers.”

  Marcus couldn’t help but smile at the image. “You want to know something I remembered today?”

  “Shoot.”

  “Stetson was the first responder when the call came through about a body in the Chicago River. And he was the one who told me it was the Kingfisher.”

  “Motherfucker,” Jeremiah said in a sort of whispery singsong. “You think it’s possible?”

  “What?”

  “That Stetson helped the Kingfisher fake his death?”

  “That’s not what I’m saying. I guess I actually don’t know what I’m saying. It’s just a strange coincidence, if it is a coincidence at all.”

  “Tell me something, Marcus,” Jeremiah said, leaning his elbows on the table. “You think the Kingfisher could still be alive?”

  “No.” Marcus shook his head. “I really don’t. It’s possible that the police, or maybe just Stetson, was somehow involved with the Kingfisher’s death and autopsy, but I don’t believe for a second that the Kingfisher faked it. It just doesn’t make any sense why he’d do that. Even if he just wanted to leave, he would have just left. He wouldn’t have to make such a spectacle of it. That doesn’t seem like something he would have done. He was not theatrical. Granted, I never got close to the man himself, but I think I got close enough to know him in some small way. Enough to know that he wouldn’t have faked his death just to retire.”

  There was the sound of a car passi
ng by outside on the street, the burden of a muffler. Jeremiah scratched mindlessly at his neck, looking at Marcus. A saturated stare, the weight of a world, and a question lingering on his lips, struggling to pass into open air.

  “What is it?” Marcus asked.

  “If I tell you this.”

  “What?”

  “Something I never told anyone.”

  “What?”

  “Not even my mother. Never told her.”

  “What?”

  Jeremiah hesitated, stuttering over the words, “I had a run-in with the Kingfisher.” He smiled, casually, as though inviting Marcus to disregard it. “I was thirteen years old, walking home later than I ought to have been from a Bulls game. They’d just beaten the Bucks. It was a game, man. A good game. Sort of game you remember forever.”

  “When was this?”

  “This would have been December of—let’s see—1983. I know that, because it was just a few days before he died or…” He paused, shook his head. “I don’t remember too much of it. It happened pretty quick.” He began to laugh, crossing his arms more tightly. “It’s funny though, because what I remember most from that night isn’t the Kingfisher, but a woman. Sounds dumb, all things considered. But I was a teenager and this was the most beautiful woman I ever saw in my whole life, I swear. She had this bright red hair like a stoplight, man. I couldn’t keep my eyes off her.”

  “Red hair?” Marcus asked, leaning his elbows on the table. “You said she had red hair?”

  “I can see it when I close my eyes, to this day. And the reason I hesitate to tell you all this is because she asked me that night to keep the whole thing between us. Not to mention I don’t expect you to believe a word of it. I know that I wouldn’t, if I were you. Only reason I would tell it is because I honest-to-God don’t think he’s dead. The Kingfisher. I never once believed he was dead. Not ever. And now, with all of this”—he pointed back at the television broadcasting into the empty room—“I’m damn near sure of it. And I’m not sure who else can fix this fucking mess except for him.”

  “Tell me the story.”

  “Well, like I said”—Jeremiah breathed in and out, closing his eyes as though willing himself into some lost past—“I was walking home later than I ought to have been. I’d gone to a Bulls game. They’d beat the Bucks. It was a great game. Reggie Theus was on fire that night.”

  * * *

  Jeremiah’s story ended abruptly without ornamentation or speculation. Just the drip of a sentence into resolute silence. As he was talking, Jeremiah had been staring down at the grain of the wooden table like a mystic reading tea leaves, but when finished, he turned his gaze up, a sense of wonder that lasts through the years, and Marcus felt as though he were seeing the boy who had sat in the back of that Lincoln Continental on a snowy December’s night.

  Jeremiah broke from his pensive arrangement and took a sip of coffee. The mug said in plain black type: I GOT ELEVATED IN DENVER, COLORADO. It was from one of the last vacations the entire Waters family had taken together before the youngest went off to college. They’d taken a monorail up to Pikes Peak and smiled in front of a camera, as families often do.

  Marcus held a finger out across the table as though tracing Jeremiah’s story in the air. “You said the woman’s name was Miss May?”

  “I’m sure of it. Or I think I am. It’s funny, sort of, talking about it now. I’ve never talked about it with anybody, and I always felt like I knew the story inside and out. But when I’m sitting here across from you, trying to get it all out there—I don’t know—it just doesn’t feel like I’m doing it right. It’s all coming out weird and sounds sort of crazy. It’s all trapped up here.” He tapped his temple. “Shit, I’m not making an ounce of sense anymore.”

  But Marcus knew what he meant, even though he said nothing in response. The way that memories of memories stagnated in the mind’s still waters. “And you didn’t see what happened to the two men in the car?”

  “Nothing. No trace. Like they vanished in thin air. But judging by what little I saw, I’m guessing they got beaten bad. I’ve never seen a thing quite like it.”

  It was this detail that puzzled Marcus most. He’d never heard of this Kingfisher encounter.

  “Well, as far as I know,” Marcus said, “they didn’t turn up on some street corner like all the other criminals the Kingfisher apprehended. Someone would have called me had that happened. But surely they went to a hospital or, if not there, a police station or morgue. I just don’t understand how I could have missed this.”

  Jeremiah shrugged and then checked his watch. “Shit, it’s getting late. Shift change. I have to go check up on a friend.” He stood up, drank the dregs of his coffee, and made off to the door.

  Marcus cleared his throat. Jeremiah turned around.

  “So you really think he’s still out there somewhere, Jeremiah?”

  Jeremiah paused, reaching his hands into his pockets, jangling his keys. “All I know for sure is that what I saw that night wasn’t the work of a human like you and me. I don’t know what the Kingfisher was or is, but I’m just about certain he isn’t like us in any way except that he could hurt us the way we hurt ourselves.” He smiled and shrugged. “He’s either alive or he isn’t. And if he’s dead, then God rest his soul. But if he is alive, well, God forgive him. Because I’m not sure what the hell he’s waiting for.”

  17 LIKE THEY ALREADY ALWAYS WERE

  WHEN HE WAS NOT SIMPLY A VOICE in a window, Baxter Bedford was a tall, skinny, sloping man who moved about his home in hurried, lunging steps, as though walking through quicksand. He picked up a few empty fast-food bags in the kitchen, mumbling under his breath angry condemnations, embarrassed apologies, or some mixture of the two.

  Tillman sent Jeremiah a quick text: Baxter Bedford safe. Talking with him. Dad OK?

  A dappled mastiff followed Bedford around at his hip, long nails clicking on the linoleum, casting paranoid glances over her haunch at Tillman, who was seated at a card table in a corner of the kitchen. Tillman returned the dog’s uncertain stare with her own. Moments ago, the dog would have torn her throat from her skin like a plaything. But now, the dog’s tongue hung from its mouth in a bookstore-calendar pose.

  Jeremiah texted her back: Checking on your dad now. And then another immediately after: ME Report was hacked. Long story. Not sure what happens next. Be safe, Tilly.

  Bedford turned around in the kitchen. “You thirsty?”

  “No.” She set down her phone. “Thank you.”

  “Good. All I got is water and the water around here is shit.”

  When he’d sent her the names and addresses, Jeremiah had also sent her one of Bedford’s mug shots. The photo was from 1986—possession of a criminalized drug with the intent to sell. And for whatever reason, Tillman had expected Bedford to look exactly as he had in his mug shot from thirty-some years earlier. An untamed afro and playboy snarl. But she found instead a man with a shaved head and a gray beard that he twisted with his fingers when perturbed, which thus far seemed to be quite often.

  Yet the longer Tillman watched him clean up his kitchen, the more she could see his resemblance to his old mug shot. There remained the same unapologetic defiance in the narrowing eyes as he cleared his countertop of McDonald’s wrappers and stuffed them into an overflowing trash can.

  “So you’re not really a cop,” Baxter Bedford said in a matter-of-fact tone, his back turned to her. “What are you, then?”

  “Why do you think I’m not a cop?”

  The faucet was on and he seemed to be searching for a clean glass, slamming cupboards. The kitchen smelled strongly of gunpowder from the shot that still rang in Tillman’s ears.

  “Call it a sixth sense,” he said.

  He found a glass and inspected it beneath a light bulb hanging from the ceiling by its wires, turning the glass over in his fingers like a jeweler inspecting a fraudulent stone. He shrugged and poured himself a drink. His Adam’s apple bounced up and down in his long neck.<
br />
  “I’m actually on leave from the force at the moment,” she said. “Administrative leave.”

  “Don’t know what that means, but my sixth sense tells me it means you fucked up.”

  Baxter sat at the card table across from Tillman. The dog pranced around his legs nervously, emitted a repentant bark. Baxter hushed the dog with a snap of his fingers and it lay down on the floor reluctantly. A pink tongue lolled out the side of its mouth, wet and glistening. Its muzzle was speckled with gray.

  “Bambi is old, but she’s got spunk for days,” he said, petting the dog with his foot. “Now, on the matter of my front door, I’ll need money for it. The lock is busted clean through. Torn to shit. And this isn’t an area you want to live in without a lock on your front door. Bullet hole I could live with. But I need a lock.”

  She reached for her wallet and slid the fifty she’d managed to save for next week’s groceries across the table. “That’s all I have.”

  He stuffed the bill into the breast pocket of his flannel shirt. “I need to go to bed before too long, so I’m hoping this little powwow doesn’t last a second longer than it needs to,” he said. “But first tell me what you did to get yourself get kicked off the Chicago force?”

  “I didn’t get kicked off,” she corrected. “I’m on leave.”

  He dismissed the semantics with a shake of his head. “Whatever you did must’ve been pretty bad, seeing as how I remember you Chicago badges getting away with all sorts of shit.”

  “It isn’t important. I didn’t come here to talk about me.”

  “It’s important to me. And if you want me to tell you anything, maybe you should start by telling me what sort of hell you unleashed to get kicked off that hellspawn of a police force. Those assholes could shoot someone that looks like us in broad daylight for no good reason, blame it on arthritis or the wind, and be back on the job in the morning.”

  She wasn’t about to defend those on the force who had done much worse than what she had done and suffered much less, if at all, as a result. “I wasn’t kicked off the force—I was put on administrative leave,” she reminded Bedford, the words feeling suddenly plastic atop her tongue. Bedford stared back at her, waiting. Tillman thought of a thousand lies she could tell. But instead, she settled on the truth. Or whatever was closest to the truth. “Excessive force. That’s what the Police Board called it, at least. But they weren’t there when it happened. They didn’t see what I saw. If they had, they wouldn’t have called it ‘excessive.’”