Broken Monsters (32 page)

TK sits
on the bench, a new one, underneath what's left of Ramón and waits for the police to come. He has tried to be patient. He's already read all the cards for the kid, the tributes and prayers and outpourings of love and the police notice with the hotline number, squinting to make out the fine print under the sodium glare of streetlights.

He stares at his shoes, the scuffed black ones that keep blurring through his tears. It has taken all his willpower not to rip down the shit attached to Ramón's body and lower him to the ground. He doesn't have the heart to call Diyana, who called him late yesterday, worried, begging him to go out looking. Not yet. He can't face it.

Please, Jesus, I know we ain't had much truck of late, even at St. Raphael's. I know I've used your name in vain a shitload, and called you out as a phony for people who need comfort when the world don't got any. Like the huggie pillow they give little kids in kindergarten when they crying for their mommas. I never asked you for anything before. Not lately anyhow. Not since my momma. But I need you now. I need you to show me the way. I need a burning bush or maybe a giant flashing neon arrow. That would be good. Help me find the bastard, excuse me, Jesus, the sinner who did this to Ramón. The man Ramón's been working for, the crazy one. I won't shoot him. I don't even have a gun. Not this time. You can judge him, Lord. I'll let you handle that. You and the justice system. But help me find him. Show me the way.

He looks up, hoping for, he doesn't know, an archangel floating in a golden sunbeam, but the scenery hasn't changed; just shabby buildings, and the sky fading up to dawn and a gimmicky billboard for Debbie's Diamonds Dealers, a woman with take-me-to-bed-daddy eyes and tits popping out of a shiny gold dress, holding up her hand to show off the giant fake bling that flashes like Christmas lights.

It would be easy to overlook the faded sign behind it. Office Plus: for all your office furniture needs. It has a woman joyously spinning across the room on a bright red office chair, having
so
much fun at work. Her arms are outstretched, as if reaching for something. To the west.

“If that's the best you got, I guess that's the best you got,” TK sighs. He gets up from the bench and turns to face Ramón, somewhere under that grotesque mask, like a bobblehead toy or a piñata. He hasn't been able to bring himself to try to pull it off. He's too afraid of what might be underneath. He forces himself to put his hand on Ramón's shoulder. “I'll find him, buddy. You hold the fort till the cops come, okay?” He bites back a sob.

He phones the police hotline to try to explain, calmer now, but the woman on the other end of the line is as useless as she was the first time, so he walks down the road Happy Secretary on her red chair was pointing to—and walks and walks.

Past a shuttered Rite Aid, a small church, an apartment building with the jabber of morning radio shows leaking faintly through the double glazing as the yellow light sneaks up the edge of the horizon.

He walks until the sun is fully up, bringing the first morning traffic with it, sullen metal animals migrating toward the highways, and walks and walks, until he sees the second sign.

An old chair, set out as if awaiting an occupant. Battered, but well made, the wood dark and heavy.

It is at the entrance of a dusty parking area. No entry, the signs say. Condemned. Set back between the trees is a blocky building with broken windows and barbed wire.

TK looks askance at the chair. The brown leather of the seat is cracked from years of use. “Here? For real?” The chair doesn't answer.

He clambers over the chain and walks up the driveway toward the building, glancing back at the street. The traffic has thinned again. There's no one to see him go in.

He tries the police hotline again. Five times. It's engaged over and over. Motherfuckers. Fine. He's been through worse, on his own. This is God's plan, right? If only he believed in God.

He walks right to the entrance. Someone has cut open the padlock, but kept the chain looped around the gate, so it still looks locked to a casual observer. TK knows this place; he knows men who used to work here in the nineties, back when they were installing all those fancy new robots. The Fleischer Body Plant. There are trees and thick bunches of ivy clinging to the sides, like the hanging gardens of Babylon. Nature finds a way back. He is thinking about this as a way of distracting himself from what he's doing, which is slipping through the gate, leaving it wide open behind him in the hopes someone notices, strolling down the driveway like he is not forcing himself to take every step.

The entrance is boarded over. He saw that already from the outside. He knows from personal experience that when someone is squatting in a place, they'll prop it up loosely, make it look like it's still sealed up. But this one actually is. He yanks at the chipboard, but the nails are immovable. Job for a crowbar. He pulls at it again, for luck, but it doesn't give.

He walks around the back and spots a white pickup truck half-hidden behind a collapsed wall. The windshield is cracked and the canopy has a heavy dent in it, as if someone went over the top. Shit. He can't do this alone. He ducks down and hits redial on his phone and halle-fuckin-lujah, the call goes through.

“Detroit PD hotline,” the operator says. “This better not be another crank.”

TK turns away, hunching over the phone, whispering. “I know where he is. I found him. There's a truck— No! Don't hang up on me. Don't you dare! Godfuckingdammit!” He stares at the phone in disbelief and resists the urge to hurl it to the ground. “Sorry, Jesus,” he says.

He phones St. Raphael's, but Reverend Alan's line rings and rings and rings and finally goes to voicemail. His service informs him he has one minute of call-time left.

He could call 9-1-1, but the answer is right there in his contacts list: he saved the number after they watched the video together, him and Ramón and Dennis. “YouTube Guy $$$.”

“This is Jonno Haim,” the voice answers immediately.

“The cops won't listen to me.” He is on the verge of tears again.

“I'll listen. What's your name?”

“TK. He killed Ramón. Just as bad as the others. Maybe worse. But I followed him here. He's inside. I know he is.”

“Okay, TK, I believe you. Where are you now? Who is Ramón? Where is he?” His voice is calm, in control.

“Some place called the Fleischer Body Plant. Ramón's at the bus stop. Where the little boy was killed.”

“Can you wait for me? I need to check this out.”

“This place makes me feel sick,” TK says. And yet he's stepping under the avenue of trees that runs down the side of the building. Drawn in. The bare branches are knitted over his head, like a tunnel. He can see the windows upstairs, also bare. There are people watching him through the dirty glass. Hundreds of them.

“I found it,” Jonno says on the other end of the phone. TK had almost forgotten he was there at all. “Big abandoned factory, near the freeway.”

“That's the one. Hey, Mr. Haim, I can hear someone inside.” Or something. Tik-takking. Skittish chairs, cantering across rotten wooden floors. He can't think like that. “I think there are people upstairs. Children maybe.” They're so slight. Bony, he thinks. With malformed heads. Balloon heads. Like Ramón's head. TK tastes bile in his throat.

“I'll be there in twenty minutes. Just wait for me. Can you do that?”

“I don't know, man. I think we need the police.”

“Twenty minutes max. I'll call the cops. I promise. I'll see you soon. We'll be in a blue Hyundai. Watch out for us. Hang tight, TK.”

He wants to. He really does. He could go back out the front, past the chain and the lounger and wait for Jonno to come to the rescue in his blue car, the police behind him. But he's drawn into the tunnel of trees. Deeper.

The children watch. Leaning over at crazy angles.

I'm coming to get you, he thinks. There's a door at the end of the tunnel. It's drawn on the wall. Just an outline in chalk, but it's glowing, and he knows it will open for him.

It's like
a puzzle. Where's Waldo. You have to look really closely to see the man hidden in the debris of affection. It doesn't help that his head is gone, replaced with a remarkable approximation of a teddy bear, an oversize bobblehead made out of papier-mâché and painted baby blue, peeking out among the forlorn stuffed toys bunched up around him, as if he's trying to fit in. The head has big round ears and a soft blue fuzz growing on it, like bread mold. The sockets are hollowed out and painted over with dollar signs. The mouth is a red painted X.

You have to look carefully to see that the head is resting on human shoulders in a puffy black jacket, which has other toys stapled to it. The hands, like the head, are missing, and have been replaced with fat balloon fingers, like Mickey Mouse gloves. Two of the fingers have popped already. The real clue is the feet, red sneakers with an oil stain on one toe, sticking out the bottom, brushing the chalk rectangle drawn on the sidewalk, like a hangman's trapdoor.

Mainly, she's relieved that it's not Marcus. But that means he's still out there. Still alive. Maybe. Boyd fills her in. The victim's name is Ramón Flores, if their anonymous informant is to be believed. They have people working to confirm that, on the information they've been given, starting with phoning all the local churches to track down “Reverend Alan.”

The man who called it in is long gone, just as he said he would be—and he is not answering his phone.

“You should have heard Stricker crapping out the operator. He's plenty mad,” Boyd says.

“He should be.” She feels restless, not sure where she stands now. Luke is crouched down with Evidence Tech, examining the sidewalk. She wants to remind them that the blood spatter might be old, might be Daveyton's, but it's not her case now. Croff is pacing up and down in agitation, talking into his cell phone.

They've cordoned off the street. Again. But this isn't a tunnel. There isn't a way to control the news vans with their telephoto lenses or the people crowded outside the police tape, craning their necks to see. She goes over to the paramedics who are standing by, smoking, and asks if she can borrow a medical screen to shield some of the scene, at least.

“Fuuuuuuck!” Croff yells. “That motherfucking blogger!”

“What's that about?” Gabi asks.

“It's out,” Boyd says. “On the Internet.”

“
This?
Already?”

“Your boy—Jonno. Mikey's taking it very personally.”

“How the hell did he get it so fast? Is he here?”

“I'm not sure. The post went up half an hour ago. Before we got here. You ever think he's the one doing it?”

“That idiot? No. No way in hell.” But isn't that what policing is about? The uncomfortable truth that anyone is capable of anything. Croff is now screaming at the Fox News Detroit reporter to back the fuck off, so Gabi takes the initiative and looks up the blogger's number on her phone—and his little girlfriend's.

Infuriatingly, neither of them is answering.

“Mr. Haim. This is Detective Versado. Gabriella. Call me back please. You're not in trouble. But I need to know where you are, if you're with the man who called in this new murder, it's—” The service cuts her off.

She phones again, it rings and rings and finally goes to voicemail. “Jonno. I need to know where you are. You might have the information we need to take us to the killer. We have a missing officer. We need to find him. Please call me back immediately.”

She hangs up before the infernal message system has a chance to interrupt her again.

“Detective? Can you help me out here?” A female uniform approaches her. “This is Reverend Alan from St. Raphael's.” She introduces a wiry man with a white collar under his black shirt and the deep calm of the true believer.

“Hello,” he says, shaking her hand. “I'm so sorry about this.”

“Me too, reverend. Believe me. But I think our lead investigator should probably be interviewing you.”

“Can you handle it?” Luke calls. “We're a little busy here.” The team is trying to get under the body to see how it's attached to the bus stop without disturbing any evidence.

“Yes, detective.” She walks the priest over to the bus stop, close enough to see without getting in anyone's way. She indicates the body. “Can you identify this man?”

He is appalled. “No. I don't… How could anyone? My God.”

“How about the shoes. Do they look familiar?”

“I…I don't know. I don't really pay attention to shoes.”

“Someone in your congregation?” She leads him away again.

“I'm sorry.”

“Do you know a Diyana?”

“Diyana? Yes. Diyana Green, she's a regular at the soup kitchen. But
this
isn't Diyana. This isn't a woman, is it?” It sinks in. “Oh, no. Is that Ramón?”

“Do you know how to get hold of Ms. Green?”

“The office might. Can I call my office? TK would know.”

“Who is TK?”

“Thomas Keen. He works as our community liaison. He does several hours a week with us. Computers, job advice, general dogsbody. He knows everyone. He's close to Ramón. He could probably identify him.”

“Does he have a cell phone?”

“Yes. One of those subsidized phones.”

“Do you happen to know the number?”

“Hold on.” He takes out his phone and scrolls through the address book, his hands shaking. He reads out the number that the hotline logged.

Gabriella writes it down as if it is new information.

“Do you know where he lives? Do you know any other way to get hold of him?”

“What is this about?” he says, as if he's not standing in front of a dead man bound to a pole with a hundred teddy bears stapled to his body.

“We believe he's an eyewitness. But it's also possible he may have been involved.”

“Not TK.”

“Thomas Michael Keen,” Boyd calls out from the squad car, reading from his file on the computer. “Served ten years for murdering a man when he was fourteen. Since then, breaking and entering, drugs, assault. Most recent charge was a year ago, fist fight at St. Raphael's, but the charges were dropped.”

“It was a misunderstanding.”

“This guy works for you?”

“Everyone deserves a second chance. Or a third one or a fourth, or however many it takes. God doesn't have a three-strikes law.”

“He's a convicted killer and you have him working in your church?”

“No one else would take him. Would you?”

“You think he's capable of this?”

“Absolutely not. Under no circumstances. He was a kid when he shot the man who murdered his mother, but he called it in right away. He gave himself up. And after that, the system failed him. He could never do this. Ramón was his friend.”

“How close was he to Diyana?”

“No. I know that's your job. To imagine the worst things you can. But there was no…romantic rivalry or whatever it is you're trying to suggest. TK didn't do this.”

“Well, he called it in, and he's not answering his phone. Maybe he was trying to give himself up again.”

“Isn't this the work of your serial killer? The Detroit Monster? And you're trying to pin TK as an accomplice? That's absurd. I won't help you do this.”

“We don't know anything until we do. If you can help us find Thomas, we can exonerate him. But we need to know what he's seen, if he saw the killer. And we need to identify this body. Can you help us with that?”

His shoulders sink in resignation. “Let me phone the office.”

“I'm going to have to leave you with my colleague, reverend.” She checks the time on her phone. “Bob, can you take over? I have to take Layla to the airport.”

“Want to pick up the FBI agent while you're there?” Boyd says.

“Not particularly.”

“Kidding. He's only flying in this afternoon.”

“Detective Stricker? May I be excused?” She can't keep the gall out of her voice.

“Of course.” And he can't keep the awful sympathy out of his.