Punish the Deed (24 page)

Forty-Five

Charles Sinclair Murphy opened the door of the clinic and walked into the waiting room. The weight of the gun wedged in the small of his back pulled down on the waistband of his pants. Although he was at no risk of actually losing his pants, it felt that way to Charles. Every few steps, he’d tug on them to make sure they stayed in place.

Having a gun both excited and frightened him. He was practiced in their use but disdained those who liked blowing people away. He preferred to strangle, beat, cut or slice a person to death. As he’d recently discovered, even hanging can be an intimate act. Firing a bullet into someone’s head or chest seemed so impersonal. He didn’t plan on using his gun as a murder weapon, though. He brought it along for the power it gave him over others – the kind that makes people do what you want them to do without a struggle.

He knew the police were looking for him. They knew his name now. It no longer mattered if someone recognized him. He could boldly go where he wanted to go with his revolver leading the way. He planned to case out the rhythm of the office and, at the correct time, to remove the Goodie Two Shoes from the premises at the point of a gun.

The big question in his mind was: which Goodie Two Shoes should he choose? Normally he preferred the head honcho, the Executive Director. But from studying news clippings, that person seemed more like a behind the scenes yes-man rather than the seat of power. The do-gooder that really hogged the spotlight was the Director of Program, Dr. Alan Hirschman, a dentist who worked here and shone his shiny white teeth at any camera he could find.

The number of people coming in and out of the busy clinic made him nervous – not because he feared being caught but because he simply didn’t like to be around people. Still, he sat in his seat observing the movements of patients, analyzing the patterns of the staff and planning his moves.

No one appeared to be paying any attention to him except a man across the room. The kid with him kept his nose buried in a comic book but the man kept looking over his way. Charles didn’t like that, no matter what the man’s motivation. Charles got up and went to the restroom so he could get a closer look at him.

Charles caught the man staring at him when he stepped out of the lavatory. He suppressed a rising sensation of panic.
People stare in the direction of opening doors all the time
, he told himself. But he kept an eye on the man across the room. Charles did not like it when that man suddenly got busy with the keypad on his cell phone.
Coincidence? Maybe
.

Then that man whispered to the boy, pressed car keys in his hand and gave him a push toward the door. The boy went outside.
Going to fetch something for the man? Maybe.

A couple of minutes passed. The boy had not returned.
What’s up with that?
Charles wondered.
Now, that man was whispering to a woman.
What is he doing?
The woman looked at Charles and quickly looked away. She rose and wrapped an arm around a little girl. Keeping her eyes on the floor, the woman hurried the child outside. That man moved on to a woman with a little boy and whispered to her. The woman gasped.
Something’s up. What?

Charles got to his feet and went to the front door and looked outside. He saw nothing out of the ordinary. He started to walk towards that man to eavesdrop when he heard a tire screech on the pavement. He went back to the doors and looked out again. Cars were filling the parking lot. Some looked like ordinary cars but others were marked cop cars. Uniforms jumped out and pulled their weapons.

Shit!
Charles spun around and grabbed a little girl with stringy blond hair and Kool-Aid red lips. He jerked her up to his chest and held his gun to her temple.

The other man pulled a gun and leveled it on Charles.
Bastard. He’s a cop.
Charles jerked the squirming little girl up a little higher to protect his head from a fatal shot. He stepped backwards toward the door to the examination rooms. He didn’t have a hand free to open the door and didn’t dare drop his grip on the girl for a second. He waited beside the doorway. A staff member would be out of there soon.

“Drop the gun, Murphy,” the cop said to him. “You don’t want to hurt any of these children.”

“Why don’t I want to hurt them? So that you guys can leave them behind? So that you and the damned system can screw them kids over at your leisure?”

“Just set the little girl down, Murphy.”

“The second I do, you’ll put a bullet in my head. Thanks, but no thanks.”

The girl in his arms started kicking. He put his nose right in her face and hissed, “Listen, you little brat. You kick me again and I’ll put a bullet in your head and you’ll never see your mommy or daddy again. You got that?”

The child made a feeble, testing kick at the man’s chest. He grabbed her foot and twisted it hard. The girl screamed. “See. I’m not playing with you. Shut up and do what I say.”

At the sound of the scream, a couple of kids in the waiting room erupted into sniffling tears, a few others began whining, but one child topped them all by letting out an ear-shattering shriek. Charles turned the gun from his hostage’s temple to point at the screaming child. “You want that kid to live, asshole?” Murphy said to the police officer. “Then get it out of here. Get every one of them out of here.”

“Just set down the little girl . . .”

“No!” Charles shouted. “I’m keeping her. You can have the rest. But move them out right away. I’ll start shooting at the count of ten.”

“Okay, just give me some time here, Murphy.”

“One. Two. Three,” Charles said as he watched the fearful parents. First, they looked like enchanted statues, terror and confusion carved into their faces, frozen in place by a wicked witch. Then, they all animated at once, most of them racing for the door. A handful of parents shifted their weight but didn’t move toward the exit. “Four. Get out of here,” he said, pointing his gun at the stragglers. “Five. Six.”

Still those adults did not budge. Charles eyeballed the cop as he stepped up to the remaining adults.

“Seven. Eight. Get them out of here, asshole.”

“Murphy, you gotta understand. All their kids are in the back. Except for him,” he said, pointing to a man whose expression alternated between anger and fear. “His daughter is in your arms.”

Charles jerked the barrel of the gun into his tiny hostage’s head, making her cry out. “Get them all out of here now or she dies and you can take her corpse with you.”

Just then the door to the back opened and a blue-smocked woman, with a big smile on her face and a patient file in her hand, opened her mouth to call out a patient’s name. Before she made a sound, bewilderment raced across her face. As she scanned the room with a furrowed brow, Murphy knocked her away from the doorway and on to the floor. He darted through the opening and latched it when it shut.

Forty-Six

Lucinda and Jake began the next day with a stop at the school district building. Instead of going straight to the break room, the scene of Shari Fleming’s murder, they walked further down the hall to make a courtesy visit to the school district superintendent. “Hello, Mr. Irving, this is––”

“You, again? Do I need an attorney,” Robert Irving asked immediately.

“Now why would you need an attorney?” Lucinda responded.

“Why? You told me I was a suspect.”

Lucinda sighed.
Why do innocent people assume we’re out to frame them for a crime they didn’t commit?
“I told you that you were one of hundreds of suspects, Superintendent. And at the moment, every one of you have taken a back seat to the person we think committed the homicide.”

“Well, if that’s true, why did you need to bring along back-up?”

“Special Agent Jake Lovett is not back-up. He is with the FBI and is my partner in this investigation.”

Jake stepped forward and stuck out his hand. “Pleasure to meet you, Superintendent.”

Irving absent-mindedly held out his hand and shook the other man’s but his focus was still on Lucinda. “You’ve brought in the FBI and you tell me I don’t need to worry. You tell me that I don’t need an attorney. I think I’d better give him a call.” He lifted the receiver on his telephone.

“Do what you want, Mr. Irving. We just want to ask you about our suspect and I wanted to show Agent Lovett the scene of the crime.”

“Is your suspect one of the district’s employees?”

“No.”

“A member of our school board?”

“No.”

“Someone I know?”

By this time, exasperated by his attitude, Lucinda’s hands were on her hips, her elbows jutting out. “I don’t know until I ask you, Superintendent. Do I need to talk to the chairman of the school board or are you going to sit down and talk to us?”

Robert Irving stared at Lucinda, darted a glance over to Jake, then returned the receiver to the cradle and sat back down in his chair. “Okay, I’m sorry. The media’s been tearing me up over the murder and the drug bust of a department head on the same day. It’s all made me a bit paranoid. What can I do for you?”

“We’re not here to cause problems for you, Mr. Irving. We are here to solve a crime, find a perpetrator and secure justice for someone who worked with you every day,” Lucinda told him.

“Again, Lieutenant, my apologies.”

Lucinda doubted his sincerity but continued just the same. She pulled out a photo of Charles Sinclair Murphy and slid it across the superintendent’s desk. “Does this man look familiar?”

Irving studied the picture for a moment, shook his head and said, “I certainly can’t recall ever seeing him.”

“Does the name Charles Sinclair Murphy or Chuck Murphy or Cheese Sinclair or Gas Pump Murphy mean anything to you?”

Irving looked sideways and then up before shaking his head. “No, can’t say that they do. Are those all aliases for that guy?” he asked, pointing to the photograph.

“Yeah,” Lucinda nodded.

Jake asked, “So to the best of your knowledge, this man would not have a key to this building.”

“No he would not and I think that if I don’t recognize him it’s impossible that he had a key.”

“But the building’s been here longer than you have, sir,” Jake objected.

“Oh yeah – by a long shot. But part of our safety and security protocol is to change the locks at a minimum of once every two years and I’ve been here a lot longer than that.”

“So how else could a person get in here without leaving signs of a breakin?” Jake asked.

“It’s a public building. Anyone can get in here during the day.”

“And possibly hide away until the building was locked up for the night?”

“Sure. Might get caught. Might not. But like I told Lieutenant Pierce, Shari often met here with parents when they got off work. If she thought that he was the father of a student, she would have let him in the building.”

Lucinda and Jake exchanged a glance and rose to their feet. “Thank you, Mr. Irving. I’ll just take Agent Lovett over to the break room now. The only other person we’d like to talk to again is Sammy Nguyen. But I’m sure we can find him on our own.”

“Well, I’m not going anywhere till lunch time so just stop back in if I can help you with anything else.”

As they walked away, Jake asked, “Who’s Sammy Nguyen?”

“The custodian who found the body.”

“Why do we need to talk to him?”

“We may not need to. But it gives us a good excuse to roam around the building if you think of any reason why you’d want to do that.”

Lucinda pointed out where the body had lain on the floor, where the blood spatter hit the walls and cabinets and where the custodian had dropped the mugs. Several school district staff members stepped into the room while they were there. Every one of them recognized Lucinda and backtracked out of the room without saying a word.

Lucinda took Jake on a tour of the building, drawing his attention to all the entrance ways and the many places to hide throughout the two floors and the basement. When Jake was satisfied that he had a good understanding of the buildings layout and the physical limitations of the crime scene, they went to the station to plan their next steps.

The call they wanted but did not expect came in on Jake’s cell. At the time, he was down in the café in the basement of the Justice Center picking up a couple of coffees to carry upstairs. He’d set them down on an empty table to answer the phone. He abandoned the hot, steaming cups after he got the word. He couldn’t bear to wait for the elevator. He hit the stairway, bounding up the steps two at a time, until he reached the third floor.

“They found him,’ he blurted out as he stepped into the office. He bent forward with his hands on his knees as he struggled to catch his breath.

“Charles Sinclair Murphy?” Lucinda asked as she spun around to face him.

“Yes.”

Lucinda jerked to her feet. “Where?”

“In a pediatric dental clinic in Roanoke.”

“Damn. All the excitement will be over before we can get there.”

“Naw. It won’t take us more than half an hour.”

“Nobody can drive it that fast, Jake.”

“The state cops are sending a helicopter. Due here in two minutes. We need to get up on the roof to the helipad.”

Lucinda slipped her jacket on over her holster, made sure her badge was in her pocket and said, “Let’s go.” They raced up three more flights of stairs. As they opened the door to the rooftop, they heard the unmistakable noise of the rotor blades approaching the building.

The force of the wind generated by the landing copter knocked them both back a step. A man in a flight suit stepped out of the hatch, bent over and ran to where they stood. “I need to see I.D.,” he shouted.

Lucinda and Jake didn’t understand him over all the noise. They both pointed to an ear and shook their heads. The man pulled his badge out and flashed it. Lucinda and Jake nodded and pulled out theirs. He looked at both of them and swept his arm in a follow-me gesture. They ducked down as he did, went over to the hatch and stepped into the chopper.

At first, Jake and Lucinda made a couple of stabs at conversation. When neither could hear the other, they gave up and watched the scenery pass, occasionally pointing out sights down below. In a shorter time than Lucinda believed possible, the helicopter began its descent to a helipad atop a brick building. Soon, she would confront Charles Sinclair Murphy. She prayed there would not be a repeat of her last encounter with a serial killer.