by Thomas Laird
“A lieutenant can sign out a Jeep without too much difficulty,” Pete says.
“Someone would have seen that Jeep in the vicinity of the killings, no?” Thomas grins again.
If he were an opossum, his back would be raised now.
“Maybe. Most of the Kuwaitis shuttered the places up at night for security. It was a dangerous place at the time.”
“Yeah, I remember. I was there too.”
“You’re fishing.… Isn’t that what the NCIS cops would’ve called what you three are doing now? And there are lots of sport fish in this vicinity.… But I’m not one of them. If you have any other questions, you need to talk to my lawyer.”
“I think that’ll do for now,” I respond. “But I’d appreciate it if you’d let us know of a change of address. I’d hate to have to bother your sister again. Looks like she’s going through a bad time of her own.”
“You go to her house again and I’ll slap a suit and a restraining order on the three of your asses.”
“Knock yourself out,” Jack tells him.
The three of us rise and leave Carl Thomas’s premises.
*
“I’d like to shoot him, whether he did the girls and their folks or not,” Pete admits.
“But you’re not a murderer,” I remind him.
“I’d like to shoot him in the face,” Jack says.
We laugh briefly.
*
The Captain wants to know the story. We tell them we have no story, but that we like Carl Thomas as a suspect.
“Because you found him unpleasant?” the Captain asks.
“He’s too slick,” Pete admits.
“He’s very oily,” Jack adds.
“Not grounds for an arrest,” Pearce concludes.
“No, Sir,” I agree. “But he’s worthy of our interest. He was there when it all went down. They were all accessible in his area of operations. He’d be a poster child for all of our profilers. You’ll see his picture next to ‘sociopath’ in the Webster’s.”
“Very adroit, Will, but still nothing of weight with which to swing Mister Thomas from the scaffold, no?”
“You’re correct, Sir.”
“Then dig his shit out from under him. Where it stinks, there’s shit. Am I right?”
We grin at the boss, and then we get the hell out of his office.
*
Philip Brandon has no family. There’s no one to contact. We check with the local constabulary in Refuggio, Texas, his hometown. They contact us with the Texas Rangers near Victoria, Texas, and the Rangers say he had left a forwarding address for his government checks. Brandon was wounded, and therefore he has disability checks from the G sent to him monthly. The checks have been sent to an address in St. Louis, Missouri.
*
We arrive in St. Louis on a wet, muggy August morning. It was a seven hour ride this time. But the good news is that there’s no sister to tip Brandon off that we’re coming.
His address is for an apartment near The Hill, an Italian neighborhood in St. Louis. It’s a lot rougher-looking than Thomas’s sister’s hood. We get eyeballs from some of the Black and Hispanic teenagers who hang on some of the corners as we drive to the location.
When we arrive, we ring his bell. He lives in the upper of a two-flat. His name is on the bell, so we know which button to push.
No answer after a dozen rings by Jack Clemons.
We ring the lower apartment, and we receive a quick response. A guy in a Dago tee shirt sticks his head out of the door.
“What the fuck is it? I work third shift, goddammit!”
He’s fifty, maybe. Balding, pooch stomach… And now a blonde female sticks her head out next to his.
“Joey… Who’re dese guys?”
We show our IDs.
“Jeez Chris’,” the man utters.
“You know where the upstairs tenant is?”
“Why you wanna know?” the blonde says.
The male shoves her back inside.
“Sorry. She don’t trust strangers in this neighborhood.”
“You the landlord?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
“Let us in his place.”
“Got a warrant?”
“Want us to get one and bring the local gendarmes with us? That blonde looks a little underage,” Jack says.
“You guys are outta your jurisdiction,” he smiles.
“Good. We’ll be right back,” I warn him.
He huffs out some air.
“Shit, let me get some pants on.”
4
Kuwait, Desert Storm
The girl cringes when her picture is snapped. Her parents are dying, bleeding against the living room wall where they were shot. Hasim, her father, looks at the girl from his propped up position with a pleading look on his face. Her mother is already unconscious and she’s lapsed into shock. Her feet quiver and shake, and the girl, Kali, knows Marta, her beloved mother, is bleeding out.
Her photograph is taken once more, and the sound of the click makes Kali, the adolescent, scream. She feels the slap just seconds later, and then she hears the snap of the gun pointed at her head.
She dares not look up. She knows what she will see.
Then she hears the roar, and her head flies back against the wall and the force of the gunshot crashes her head into the plaster behind her.
5
His apartment is squared away, military. No debris, no trash, no waste. The bed in the bedroom is made so you could bounce the quarter off the blanket. The pillowcase is white and immaculate and freshly laundered.
A Marine lived here or still dwells here. There are clothes hung in the closet, but not many. Brandon doesn’t appear to be extravagant in his apparel. He’s downright cheap. Tee shirts you could buy from a mart, tennis shoes, blue jeans nothing for a night at the Ritz-Carlton.
He has no job that we could find out about. He must be living on his savings from a previous job as a security man in Edwardsville, Illinois, just across the border from here. In the few years he’s been back in the States, there haven’t been many jobs, and he seems to wander from city to city in about a three hundred mile radius. He doesn’t meander too far from the St. Louis area, which he calls home.
“There’s nothing here,” Pete says.
There is nothing here, nothing incriminating. Brandon and Thomas and Anderson made my list from an initial roster that included thirty-seven possibilities. The thirty-seven were officers who were in the vicinity of the murder of Kali Kazim and her mother and father in Kuwait. The list dwindled to twelve when the second kill occurred. Only a dozen were left in the crime area for both murders, and my list melted to three when I read their psycho profiles.
Of course, I may be all off. The killer might be a non com, but I just think it would be much more difficult for a private or a lance corporal to wander off by himself and then whack families of civilians in Kuwait. He simply wouldn’t have the opportunities to go it alone that a higher-ranked personnel would. That’s my theory, and as the wiseguys say: I could be wrong.
We leave the apartment. Joey, the greaseball landlord, says he has no idea when and if Brandon is returning. He says all he knows is that Philip Brandon hangs at a bar on The Hill known as Pookers.
*
Pookers is a biker/gay bar. There are women inside as well, and some are with male escorts, so I figure Pookers is a mixed scene. It attracts people from the wild side. And there are apparently all kinds of hitters and switch hitters in the joint. It’s dark, lit with red bulbs. There are strobes running across the ceiling. It takes a few minutes for my eyes to adjust. I see Pete and Jack blinking, too.
I approach the bartender on the far left side of bar slab. He’s bald; he has multiple piercings in his face and ears. It must be a bitch for the guy when he heads to the airport.
I take out a photo of Philip Brandon. I show him my badge. He’s not impressed. He says he knows this guy, but Brandon isn’t here at the moment. I tell him we’ll
take a look for ourselves.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see a figure dashing for the rear exit, back by the johns. Pete has already joined the chase. Jack is right behind me, and the three of us bolt out the back door.
It’s early evening, and the light is becoming dim, just before it’s fully dark outside. We’re racing down an alley in hot pursuit of a male who’s got the speed of a sprinter.
We’re gaining on him anyway as he bolts around the corner from the alley, and suddenly we’re in a small public park.
Just as suddenly we’re surrounded by six males, all white, it appears in the dimness. All bald. All displaying the glint of facial piercings. I can’t make Brandon in the group. They walk toward us. I see there’s no one else in this neighborhood playground that has trees surrounding us on all sides. It’s as if the park had suddenly erupted from the earth like some island volcano. We were on a sidewalk, and abruptly we landed in this copse, an island of green in the middle of concrete and blacktop.
I show them ID.
“Can’t read,” the middle one says.
They’re good-sized men. Leather jackets on a sweltering St. Louis evening. No shirts beneath the jackets.
Pete has his Nine unholstered.
“Fuck off,” he tells them.
“We got guns too,” the same thug replies.
“Reach for it and you’re dead,” Pete tells him.
Jack and I have our Nines palmed now.
“Nobody has to get shot,” I tell the six leathered punks.
“I don’t need a fuckin’ gun, do you?” the same guy spits at me.
He wants to dance.
“Forget it, Will,” Jack says. “I say we shoot the cocksuckers.”
They’re not laughing anymore.
They take a few steps back.
“That’s good with me, sweetheart,” I tell the bald, iron-pocked banger.
Now I’ve done it, and Pete sighs loudly.
“Shit,” Pete laments. He knows what’s coming.
“Look. We didn’t mean nothin’,” the mouth says. He’s trying a graceful retreat, but for some reason I’m balking at just letting them go.
I hand my piece to Pete.
“You armed?” I ask him.
“Look. I told you.…”
“Do you squat when you piss, sweetheart?”
That sends him flying at me. He can’t look bad in front of his boys.
He tries to tackle me and bring me to earth, but he succeeds in getting an elbow alongside his temple that flattens him face first in the grass. I’m on top of him before he can scramble away. I flip him over and punch him in the face twice, shattering his nose. I can hear him gurgling, and then I see the blood, and it’s black in the dimness of dusk. I slap him three times, and then I rise and find his ribs with the toe of my shoe. I hear an audible crack with the third blow, and then Pete is dragging me off.
“You’re under arrest,” Jack tells them. He dials his portable phone for the local Mounties, and we wait just under eight minutes for them to arrive.
*
The St. Louis police are a bit out of joint that we arrested some locals out of our jurisdiction, but when we tell them about the case we’re involved with, they become much more cooperative. They allow us to interrogate the six gangbangers, with one of St. Louis’s homicide dicks in attendance with us.
One by one, they deny knowing Philip Brandon, until the fifth banger sits down with us. We can see he’s frightened, that he was just going along for the ride when we got accosted in the mini park.
“Look. I know Brandon. He came running out of Pookers and found us where we always hang. Then when the three of you run up at us, he keeps going, right out of the park. Johnny is always looking for shit. I don’t want no trouble.”
This one is younger than the other five. He might not be eighteen.
“What’s your name?” I ask him.
“Terry. Terry Larson.”
“Why’re you with these assholes?” Lt. Mark, the St. Louis cop, asks him.
“Johnny is my older brother. I’m… I’m in college at SLU.”
“SLU?” Pete asks.
“St. Louis University,” Mark explains.
Mark is sixty, thin, with a full head of white hair.
“Maybe you better go back to campus,” the St. Louis detective tells him.
“You know Brandon?”
He looks at me hesitantly.
“Sorta.”
“Well?” Jack probes.
He looks at the four of us nervously, as if he wants to bolt the interrogation room.
“We’re looking at Brandon for the murder of young girls, here and overseas,” I explain.
“I don’t know anything about any murders. Shit… I know Philip is strange.”
“Strange?” I ask.
He looks at all of us suspiciously once more.
“Yeah, as in weird. I think he’s into kiddie porno. Shit like that.”
“You’ve seen this stuff?” Pete Donato queries.
“I’ve seen some of his mags. Makes you want to puke. I don’t like being around him.”
“He a friend of your brother’s?” I ask.
“You’re not going to mess with Johnny any more, are you?”
“No,” I smile.
“Because I thought you were gonna kill him.”
Lt. Mark shoots me a look.
“He got aggressive. He charged me,” I shrug.
Mark smiles his approval.
*
Johnny isn’t nearly as fearful of us. He’s talked to lots of cops before.
“You on probation, right?” Mark says.
“Yeah.”
“So you’re going back,” Mark smiles.
“Why? He beat the shit outta me! You oughta be cuffing him. But you won’t because he’s one of your bros.”
“You’re looking at aiding and abetting a possible murderer, Johnny.”
I look right into his ruined face when I say it.
“Who? Philip?”
“Could be,” I answer. “And if you tell us where to find him, I’ll drop the charges and ask the Lieutenant here to let you walk.”
He watches my eyes to see if I’m lying about letting him avoid the penalty of assaulting a police officer when he’s already on pro.
“Philip lives near The Hill.”
“We already know that, numb nuts,” Pete tells him.
He stares at Pete and Pete returns the glance in this brief pissing match.
“How did you get to know him?” I ask.
He shifts nervously in his chair. His eyes are already black, and he’s going to need cosmetic surgery on the beak. He’s breathing heavily from the bruised or broken ribs, as well.
“We supplied him with the shit he reads.”
“Porno? Kiddie porno?” I ask.
“Am I gonna take a hit for this shit too?”
“Not unless you suddenly go deaf and dumb,” Jack warns him.
“Yeah. He has strange tastes. Young girls. You know? He likes them before they bleed on their own, if you know what I’m saying.”
“You like little girls too?” Mark demands.
“Fuck, no! I like my stuff legal, and that’s no bullshit either. I’m not some teeny-bop faggot, if that’s what you’re saying. I ain’t no pedo-whatever.”
“No. You’re a solid citizen,” Pete smiles.
“Look. That’s all I know. He hangs with us because I know where his supplier lives. I’m just the middle man with him, and that’s the fuckin’ truth, I swear.”
“You’re going to need a nose job,” I smile.
He doesn’t smile back at me, this time.
*
We wait in Brandon’s apartment near The Hill for twelve hours. Then we figure he won’t be coming home any time soon, so we go back to the stationhouse and see Lt. Mark. He says they’ll be happy to look for Philip Brandon, and they’ll be happy to call us down to St. Louis if they nab this prick.
W
e head toward I-55 North, and then we drive the whole long way home.
*
Brandon has vanished. Thomas remains in his Wisconsin hideout. We still have nothing hard and true on either man, but at least we know Brandon has the taste for adolescent females. The three of us understand it’s no guarantee he’s a murderer as well. He might just be a voyeur of porno mags. That’s a felony when it comes to kiddie porn, but it doesn’t nail the bastard who killed all these entire families.
I want to bring Thomas to Chicago for questioning, but I’ve got to come up with something evidentiary in order to do so. Cops can be sued too, just like private citizens. The burden of proof is on us, of course.
I’m rerunning the scenes from Kuwait and Chicago in my head as I sit at my desk and peer out my window that overlooks the Loop. I’m never bored by the sights I see on the streets beneath my cubicle here. The other side of the building has a prettier vista, Lake Michigan, but I like the buildings that lie outside. I like their size and their design and their vertical strength. A shrink might call it sexual, the vertical, phallic thing, but I just consider it powerful and awesome in appearance. Chicago is no frail sister. It’s the “city with big shoulders” that we read about in grade school. I never liked Carl Sandburg, but he got it right about this city.
Kuwait looked nothing like home. The heat of the day could literally wither you. The cold of night could freeze you solid. It was a country of extremes, the way all of the Middle East is, I think.
Philip Brandon and Carl Thomas. Two suspects. But that’s all they are right now. And all the time we spent looking for them both might have been wasted effort. We could be looking at the wrong guys there’s always that possibility.
But I’m liking Brandon more all the time.
That’s when the call from St. Louis comes ringing through on my desk.
6
They’ve located Philip Brandon at last. So the three of us pile into the navy, unmarked Ford LTD and we head down south I-55 once more.
Brandon has been arrested for possession of child pornography and is awaiting bail for release. Since he has no family, bail has become prohibitive. He told Lt. Mark that he has a government check coming that would help him get the ten percent that he needs to get himself sprung. The check has still not arrived, however, so we finally get a break on Brandon.
