Perfect Sinners

by Rick Murcer

  Garcia turned and walked away, heading for another group of blues and detectives standing near the wide doors leading to the foyer.

  She turned back toward the two newly assigned bodyguards, this time her smile showing for the world to see as she settled between the two officers.

  What was the old saying about loving it when plans came together? People like Detective Garcia were always key in those plans.

  She folded her hands in front of her waiting as patiently as any saint. Saint Amanda. She loved how that sounded. Especially tonight. And maybe even a bit prophetic.

  One hell of a night indeed.

  ***

  Some nights were better than others. This one was on the far end of the horrible scale, however.

  The Father sat behind his rickety old desk staring at the senseless scribbles he’d spent an hour or so creating on the desk calendar. The scent of his vanilla candle wafted throughout the small room.

  The aimless blue designs flowed together then quickly separated as a new train of thought invaded his thinking. He sometimes wondered, as a long-time doodler, if there was some secret, divine message or language unrevealed in those shapes and seemingly random forms. Perhaps that was more true than he suspected. Maybe God’s version of the Rorschach test that was created from within was far more telling than the ones the psychiatrists used to test emotional status.

  He raised his eyebrows and sighed. There are those who say he’d flunk such a test of mettle. They might be right. One must be a little crazy to do what he did. So be it.

  But he’d always passed the love test. Love was straightforward and he’d never met anyone who had turned it down. True love and caring that is. There were certainly wolves wearing sheep’s clothing in the realm of love, but people were surprisingly perceptive when it came to love and all it carried. Not religion. Even Jesus rebuked religion, but rather pointed out that loving God and your neighbor equally was what He desired. Those things he could do. And he’d loved many of his children without judging them.

  Moving the pen, he started a small edge of a new star.

  He’d seen too much to think one judgment fits all. That was akin to raising all your children the same way or treating all your employees alike. One had to know their differences and build on that. Yet, life could always raise its ugly side and destroy what was being rebuilt. It’s how the devil worked.

  Take this evening for instance. There was much love and his healing message was well received inside the mission, yet he’d sent out two of his most faithful to bring a couple that needed to be here. To be protected and embroiled in the Spirit inside. Something he’d usually do himself. But instead, they were both dead, savagely killed by someone who had actually been inside his mission. His residence of safety.

  His blood began to burn like the days of old when his temper and violent nature ruled him more often than not.

  That promising young couple who had finally reached the point of facing their addiction, their demons, and trying to win back the life that belonged to them. Those lives didn’t belong to the dark, drug infested world they so desperately wanted to leave in the rearview mirror.

  He clenched the pen so hard that it broke, spilling blue ink over his fingers. Yes, they were now gone to be with the Lord. And it was his fault.

  He knew. Didn’t he? He knew.

  He had seen where this was heading after he’d taken the large donation to help start the mission. The little favors that seemed innocent enough, and probably were.

  He stared deeper into the designs on his desk.

  The funny thing about large donations and subsequent innocent little favors was that the favors can take on a life of their own. Help me with this. Turn your head at that. Let this one see how you do what you do. Share some personal information. Nothing too serious and after all, what will those bits of reciprocation truly hurt?

  Then, suddenly, those requests are not so innocent and not so tiny. It’s much like the frog in the kettle. Set the frog in room-temperature water and then turn up the heat slowly and, because of its physical nature, the frog will stay where it is, eventually boiling to death and really not understanding its misfortune until it’s far too late.

  The Father stood, felt that light-headed feeling wave over him. The doctors said it would happen more often towards the end.

  He tossed that thought out of his mind, regained his balance, then walked slowly over to the large blue marble cross he often sat in front of when he was truly bothered and needed God to listen to his troubles. Lately, that had been far more often than at any stretch he could remember in his life as a shepherd of God.

  This time he wasn’t going to pray. It wasn’t necessary. Over the years, he had learned to recognize a change in seasons. Just as Ecclesiastes said.

  “A time to kill and a time to heal,” he whispered, knowing that one would accomplish the other. And he’d known that truth for a while. There was no hiding from righteousness, even if it were unclear whose righteousness was in question.

  He reached out and pushed the tiny button on the backside of the horizontal arm of the cross. The black stand that the cross rested upon opened a small hinged door and the drawer slid out about eight inches. He snatched the object from the drawer and closed his eyes, taking a deep, steadying breath.

  After a few more seconds, assured that God had given him sufficient strength, he opened the side door leading from his office and disappeared into the night.

  CHAPTER-52

  Brice raced past Ellen, responding to the panic in the blue’s voice.

  What the hell else could go wrong tonight?

  He wasn’t sure he wanted the answer to that one, but he was going to get it.

  Reaching where the two detectives held Henry, he quickly bent to one knee where one of the detectives, a short, stocky woman with brilliant green eyes, straddled Henry’s unmoving body, pressing on his chest in an obvious attempt to get his heart pumping.

  “What happened?”

  “We don’t know,” said her partner, an average-sized man with thick black hair. “He just started coughing and then convulsed a couple of times, then no more breathing.”

  Brice turned back to Henry. Even in the sketchy light of the vehicle’s beams and the streetlamps, he could see the blue tint in his lips. His eyes were wide in a look he’d seen far too often in this job.

  “I can’t get him to respond. EMS is still a few minutes out,” said the female detective.

  “Move,” said Brice.

  She jumped out of the way and he took over, hitting the man’s chest with his fist, then again, and again, and again with more energy. It became apparent that Henry wasn’t coming back to this life.

  By then, he felt Ellen over his shoulder. He glanced back to her. “What do we do?”

  “Let me look at him closer. Something triggered this,” she answered in that calm voice she held most of the time. No panic, no real emotion. Just the facts. She was keeping together better than him regarding this new development, at least on the outside. Especially given all that had gone on tonight.

  He climbed off from Henry and Ellen took over.

  She bent to examine the two wounds on his leg, one from each of their weapons. Grabbing the torn blue jeans, she ripped the bloodied pant leg all of the way up to the top. She then pulled the little flashlight she carried with her at all times out of her pocket and shone it on the wounds. There was a measured amount of blood, but nothing that was life threatening.

  “Sometimes, in rare cases, people develop a blood clot directly after a traumatic wound and it can race to their lungs or heart, killing them,” she said.

  “None of you did anything else to him? Just kept him restrained?” she asked looking up to the two detectives. They both shook their heads. “Not a thing. We just kept him here, like we were supposed to,” said the woman. “We did take his cuffs off when we flipped him over after noticing he wasn’t breathing, and put them back on.”

  “She’s right about
that. This guy might have been a shitbag, but he gets a trial like everyone else,” said her partner. “Well, maybe not now.”

  Ellen didn’t answer. He watched her check Henry’s neck, his shoulders, and his arms right down to the cuffs securing his wrists. Then she looked up to Brice.

  “I don’t know. He obviously was asphyxiated, somehow, but until we get him to the morgue and get the ME’s office involved, I don’t see anything.”

  She began to stand, then bent back down. “Wait. There could be one more thing.”

  He watched as she put her nose a couple of inches from his mouth and took in a breath, then another. She frowned, then looked up to Brice.

  “Help me turn him back on his stomach.”

  Kneeling close to her, he put his hand under Henry’s body, right beside hers, and they turned him over.

  Ellen immediately began examining his neck, then down to his hands. A moment later she pulled his shirt up past the small of his back. He saw it just after her. The small patch, maybe two inches by two inches, rested directly above his tailbone. It was raised slightly, but he could tell by the slack in that patch, that it had been larger at some point.

  She sniffed the patch and jerk away from it, rubbing her nose. “Unbelievable,” said Ellen under her breath.

  “What?”

  “It’s cyanide. The patch has a slight bitter almond smell, like his breath. The patch was, by my guess, full enough to kill him in a few minutes. He must have broken whatever was under the patch and the cyanide absorbed into his skin.”

  “That’s a thing?” asked Brice.

  She nodded. “It is.”

  Brice looked down at Henry and shook his head. “Damn coward.”

  “Yeah, there’s that. But it could be more than not wanting to face the music.”

  “You mean protecting someone or hiding something else?”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time. For instance, he wasn’t going to give up whoever shot at us and killed that detective.”

  “Loyal to a fault,” said Brice.

  “True. It didn’t help our cause that he was under the delusion that he was serving God by killing those people,” said Ellen.

  “He may even have thought he was doing them a favor. Seen that before, too.”

  “We’ve all seen that,” said the woman detective.

  “True. We’ll dig into his history when we get back to HQ.”

  He looked at the two detectives. “Stay with him until were done talking to the one who tried to take me out. As crazy as this day and night have been, he might come back as a zombie or a damned vampire.”

  They nodded. “A bullet to the head or a stake in the heart takes care of them, right?” smiled the other detective.

  “That’s what I hear,” said Ellen.

  With that, Brice strolled over to where the young cop was now sitting up, hands cuffed behind his back, still circled by the other blues.

  He kneeled down on the cold concrete, focusing on the young cop’s face. Even in this less than perfect light, he could see the young man was defiant, afraid, and even a trace regretful.

  Time to unravel this lead.

  “What’s your name, son?”

  “Adam Tilly.” His voice was shakier than his expression.

  “How long you been a cop, Adam?”

  “Seven months, sir.”

  “How did you get this detail?”

  “I volunteered, so they assigned it to me.”

  “So you could kill me?”

  His face fell and he looked down to the ground. “Sort of, sir.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Adam just stared at the earth.

  “I asked you a question, officer,” said Brice, his impatience rising. He’d had enough tonight. He was tired. He was hungry. He’d seen enough bodies to fill half a morgue in the last two days. On top of all that, if Beaux hadn’t been there, he’d be the latest corpse.

  Before the young cop could answer, Brice felt a hand on his shoulder.

  Ellen.

  “Let me handle this,” she said, softly.

  Looking up at her, he saw Beaux, recovering a bit more, leaning on her leg. He also saw those violet eyes peering at him like she did when she really wanted him to hear her.

  In that moment, bodies and criminals, and for that matter, the world be damned, he realized that he loved this beautiful woman. Truly loved her.

  Realizations have a will of their own. He knew that. This one smacked him in the face.

  She’d been heartbroken and fought back against the pain, teaching him to do the same. They were still fighting those years of hurt, but doing it together.

  It took only a micro-second for him to realize he was going to do what he should have done a month ago. Maybe not tonight, but when this shithole case was over. And if they lived through it. But he was going to do the right thing. Maybe for the first time in a long time.

  He looked back at Adam, then turned to where Henry lay.

  “Brice?”

  Her voice brought him back to the moment. He nodded. “Yeah, just trying to get my thoughts together. You’re right. I’m too close to this one. Have at it.”

  ***

  Ellen guided Brice out of the way, wondering about the strange look he’d just given her. She supposed he’d tell her what that was about at some point.

  Reading something different than a cold, hard killer, in his posture, Ellen dropped to her knees and reached for Adam’s face.

  “Careful, Ellie. He has teeth you know,” said Brice.

  “Yeah, I know.”

  Beaux limped closer, hovering just above Adam on his other side. He sniffed his jacket, his shoulder, then his hair. He then sat back down on his haunches, winced, and looked at Ellen like he wanted her to keep going. That she was safe.

  At first, Adam resisted Ellen’s gentle pull of his chin to look in her direction. A second try found less resistance from their suspect, but he still wouldn’t look into Ellen’s face.

  A third time revealed reluctant compliance and something more. A hesitating surrender driven by an emotion Ellen had only truly heard about; fear and relief intertwined with neither giving in to the other. This man was in serious conflict with himself.

  She reached out and held his hand. “Adam. We only want to help. This whole thing isn’t you. I know it.”

  “I wasn’t going to hurt anyone. I wasn’t supposed to really . . . they’re going to kill my . . .” His eyes darted to Ellen’s face, the pain seemingly worse than a moment before.

  “Adam. Talk to me. Who wants to hurt who? Kill who?”

  His eyes grew wider. “I-I can’t say. I can’t. These people are-aren’t someone to. . .oh shit, I’ve already said too much. Too much. They have ears and eyes everywhere.”

  “Who are you talking about? Tell me. We’re the police. We can protect you. Tell me what’s going on.”

  “Protect?” Adam laughed as if he’d lost his mind. “What the hell world are you living in, Harper? You can’t protect anyone from anything that is evil from the inside out.”

  The instant indignation Ellen felt at Adam’s remarks caused the temperature inside of her to rise. “We can. We can. No one is bigger than the law.”

  Ellen bent closer to his face, getting her own emotion under better control. “Is this about family? Do you have one?”

  It took a few seconds, but he finally nodded. “A wife and a beautiful daughter.”

  “Are you protecting them?”

  This time his eyes met hers. “I-I’m so proud of them. They make me what I am. I’d do anything I could to keep them safe.”

  “So whoever they are, threatened them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. One day, a big, rough looking man was sitting on my squad car. He handed me an envelope and said if I knew what was good for me, I’d better take a look. I told him he couldn’t threaten a Chicago cop. He laughed at me and just walked away.”

&nbs
p; “What was in the envelope?” asked Ellen, her dread rising.

  “Sick shit. They had pictures of my Beth and Little Lily as my wife dropped her off at preschool. They had several of us making love. They even had one of Lily taking a nap, for the love of God,” he whispered.

  Ellen let out a breath and kept going. “When did you get the envelope?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “How did they communicate with you?”

  “Notes. There were two in the envelope. One told me if I wanted to see my kid grow up, I’d do what they asked.”

  “Which was?”

  “Since I was in this precinct, to get on any detail that had to do with these murders and to—”

  His voice trailed off.

  “To what?” asked Ellen.

  “To get close enough to shoot a detective if we made an arrest in the murders.”

  He looked past her toward Brice. “I swear I wasn’t going to kill you. I just wanted to wing you. To keep my family safe. I’m so sorry.”

  “I believe you,” said Brice.

  As a forensic tech, hearing about insidious circumstances like this was rare. She supposed living in the science world offered its own protection from this kind of evil.

  Not anymore.

  What was going on here sounded more like a third-world crime lord situation then murders in her fine city.

  Ellen gathered her thoughts and put her hand on Adam’s. “No matter what you say, if there are people like that threatening you and your family, it will never stop. Eventually, they’ll rip your insides out and do what they do anyway.”

  He raised his head toward Ellen’s face.

  “I’ve thought that too,” he said, flinching as he lowered his head, the bruise on the side of his face more visible.

  Beaux nudged Adam and offered a soft sound of comfort. The young cop looked at him and almost smiled. “He’s smart, isn’t he?”

  “He is.”

  Big Harv had always told her that there was a time to talk when interviewing a suspect and a time to let them make the next move. She felt this was his time. She’d been right. Thirty seconds later, he broke the silence.

  “I’ve never even had a parking ticket before. What’s going to happen to me?” he asked with a weak voice.