Sex and Murder.com: A Paul Turner Mystery (14 page)

Turner shrugged, “Maybe he just needed to connect with someone who he thought didn’t actively dislike him.”

“A very small list on this planet,” Fenwick said.

“And he might be dying,” Turner said.

“I do feel sorry for him,” Fenwick said, “and I am going to do everything I can to avenge the creep. I’m just saying that no matter what condition he’s in, he’s still a creep. Did he remember anything about his attacker? White, black?”

“Nothing. He got him from behind.”

“We’ve got two stabbings,” Fenwick said. “There were probably ten or fifteen more in the city last night. We could try and connect them all. I have no notion that these two were related in the slightest.”

“Which is always the best time to be suspicious that they are related.”

“Nuts,” Fenwick said. “I love it when you do circular logic. I’m starting to think you’ve been taking lessons from Carruthers.”

Turner said, “We need to stop using that man as a crutch for all of our failures.”

“I didn’t think we ever failed,” Fenwick said.

“Not this week, yet,” Turner said.

Molton rejoined them. He said, “The meeting with the reporter is all set.”

“We’re questioning him, right?” Fenwick said. “He understands that we are not being interviewed?”

“I leave that delicate task in your competent hands,” Molton said. He gave them the address of the Caribou Coffee shop on the northwest corner of Aldine and Broadway.

Once there, it took only a few inquisitive glances to establish who was looking for whom. The young reporter sat at one of the tables just inside the room on the right. Noah Morgensen was in his late twenties. He had short red hair, more freckles than someone who had spent a childhood out in the sun, and didn’t look big enough to stand up against a strong wind in a blizzard. He seemed to bounce in his seat. One foot was crossed over his left knee; the foot was constantly in motion. A laptop computer sat with its lid up in front of him. Turner saw lines of type on the monitor. The young reporter constantly fiddled with a pencil he held in his right hand. He had a smile filled with perfect teeth.

They sat at a table next to a floor-to-ceiling window. They had a perfect view of the passersby on Broadway.

“I’m glad you guys came to talk,” Morgensen said.

“We need to get some information from you,” Fenwick said.

“I’m not revealing my sources.” Morgensen moved his. computer closer to himself and hit the sleep command. The screen winked out.

Turner said, “We aren’t interested in violating or even attempting to violate your First Amendment rights.”

“I’m not sure I should trust you guys.”

“Why? What do you think we’re going to do to you?” Fenwick asked.

Morgensen pointed at Fenwick. “I’ve heard about you specifically.”

“All bad, I hope.”

“Pretty much. Did you really dangle a reporter outside of a window from the tenth floor of a high-rise off Division Street?”

“That’s a lie,” Fenwick said. “It was not the tenth floor, and it was most definitely not Division Street.”

Morgensen touched a button on the computer and the screen flicked back to life.

“This is not an interview,” Fenwick said. “You want police brutality and corruption, you’re going to have to come back another day.”

“You were kidding, right?” Morgensen asked, his fingers poised above the keyboard.

“Look,” Turner said, “we’re interested in details about what you discovered connected to the cop killings. We want to put it together with what we know and see if we can find a pattern.”

“What you know about what?”

“Any connections with crimes here in Chicago.”

“I want to be in on any news story. I’m not giving out information for free.”

Fenwick said, “You’ll be in on everything the moment we know anything.”

“I don’t believe you,” Morgensen said.

Turner said, “We’re not going to cheat you out of a scoop. If what you know helps us, we can reciprocate in kind.”

Morgensen’s blue eyes searched his. His foot rattled a bit faster for a few seconds, then he nodded. “Okay,” he agreed. “That’s fair enough.” Turner knew that reporters could be helpful, although the relationship between them and the Chicago police was not what it once was.

In Chicago the old boy network of cynical, hardened reporters and tough, brutal cops working together in a conspiratorial haze of silence to deal with the dregs of human life had changed since the Democratic convention in 1968. That symbiosis had been missing since those long ago days. It wasn’t that individual cops didn’t remember details of those days, although there were some still working from that time. It was a change in institutional memories and behaviors. Over thirty years may have passed, but the atmosphere between cops and reporters had never returned to what it had been. Many said this was not necessarily a bad thing. Turner didn’t think it was bad or good. He just knew it was generally better to keep on an even keel with the press. At times they could be useful to you in your job and there was no reason not to reciprocate whenever possible.

“How did you get the insight that a serial killer was on the loose?” Turner asked. He didn’t rule out the notion that Morgensen himself could be the killer. It would not be the first time that a murderer had deliberately drawn attention to himself. He had no notion if it was logistically possible for Morgensen to have committed the crimes, but it was too early to close off any line of speculation.

Morgensen leaned forward. “It was serendipitous. It was so cool. When they hired me at the
Tribune,
they assigned me to the police beat. It’s pretty much one of the entry level positions and I knew nothing about city cops. I grew up in a wealthy enclave near Green Bay, Wisconsin. But my dad had connections at the paper here and that’s how I got my job at the
Trib
right out of college. The boss they forced me on didn’t like it, so I got assigned a lousy beat. He thought I’d get fed up and quit. I decided I’d be the best damn cop reporter on the planet. Every day for years I cut out every cop article from the
New York Times, USA Today,
the
Washington Post,
and the
Los Angeles Times
. In fact, I still do. I filed all of them under specific headings: police corruption, killings of police, killings by police, police heart-warming, all kinds of things.”

Turner said, “Sounds very thorough.”

“Yeah. So, I had all these articles. Most of the cop shootings were part of random gang things, or part of domestic squabbles, or explainable in some simple non-mysterious way, until three years ago. The unexplained murders started in Boston. After the third one, I began making special references about each death listing every detail I could find. I made a big chart. Everything I could find out, I put down.”

“I’d like to see it,” Turner said.

“I guess, maybe. I got most of the information from the newspaper articles themselves. Some of the stuff I got from interviews I did with reporters and officials in the different cities. The killings started in the northeast and moved west. At first no one here would listen to me, so I just kept records. Finally, even my dim-witted boss realized there was a story in all this. Although without the final connection, I don’t think they would have printed the story.”

Fenwick asked the inevitable, “So what was the final connection?”

“It was hard to find. It wasn’t reported in any of the newspaper stories. I interviewed hundreds of people, no matter how peripherally connected they were to the crimes. A reporter in New York who had talked to an assistant ME just happened to mention this one little detail. Then I went back and dug for it in all of them.” He gazed from one to the other of them. They waited for the revelation.

Morgensen announced, “The killer had pissed on all of them.”

Turner and Fenwick did not gasp with recognition. Big light bulbs did not flash over their heads, but they knew a connection when they heard one.

“Are you sure?” Turner asked. “You didn’t put it in your story here.”

“After I talked to police in all the cities, and after consulting with my boss, and the paper’s lawyers, we decided not to print it. It is one of those things that only the killer would know. We want to keep it quiet.”

“It’s a solid connection,” Turner said. “Is there anything else?”

“I put everything that was verifiable in the article. For instance, the killings were all done with those large hunting knives, the kind with a nasty serrated edge. Since the article appeared yesterday, I’ve been getting calls from all over the country about cop stabbings, some going back over thirty years. We’re trying to put it all together. It’s going to take some time.”

Morgensen picked up his pencil and opened his laptop. “What can you tell me about the cop who was knifed here this morning?” He began tapping his pencil against the table top. “An attack on him could easily be connected to what he’s been accused of. I know the uncle of the victim has made all kinds of threats in very public places.”

“Or it could be a random nut,” Fenwick said.

Morgensen said, “Or our serial killer.”

Turner felt no obligation to mention Lenzati’s murder and the possible connection there. He said, “I think assuming Smythe is part of the pattern would be premature.”

Morgensen nodded then said, “I don’t have any reports of failed attempts, although unsuccessful attacks on cops probably wouldn’t make the national papers.”

“Probably not,” Turner said.

“Did the guy try to piss on him?” Morgensen asked.

“I don’t know. Dwayne put up a fight. He managed to fend off the attacker, or at least last long enough for someone to stop the assault. The area was too open, too public. He might not have had time.”

“Where was he attacked?”

Fenwick replied, “In a parking lot near the Fraternal Order of Police headquarters. Not as public as the street, and not very busy at that time of day.”

“What other patterns were there to the killings?” Turner asked. “Even if you put them in the paper and we can read them, sometimes it just helps to talk about them. I’d also like to hear what you think might be connections, but weren’t sure enough of to print. Or what you couldn’t verify.”

“I can speculate a lot if you want. Some details vary greatly. There were lots of little connections, but lots of differences as well. The locations aren’t the same. Sometimes it’s near their home. Once it was inside. All the cops had kids living at home. The time of day is different from city to city.”

Fenwick asked, “Were there a lot of these variables that didn’t fit any pattern?”

“Yeah, bunches of differences: age, race, ethnic background, religion, left-handed, right-handed. Lots.”

Turner said, “I wonder how much of that variety and consistency are deliberately planned or pure happenstance. A smart killer could really screw up an investigation.”

Fenwick said, “Half the time, I think the serial killer profilers are full of shit.”

Morgensen said, “I don’t think they claim to be infallible, but lazy reporters take those guys’ professional opinions or best guesses and state them as facts and set them in concrete. To make it worse, the press tends to characterize the possible or probable as fact to get people to read their paper or watch their newscast.”

“What other sure connections were there?”

“They were all plain-clothes cops. All were male. They all had among the best conviction records in the departments they worked for—they were good cops. All had more than five years on the job.”

“The killer must do his homework.”

“I think he or she is very organized,” Morgensen said. “Frighteningly so. If I were a cop, I’d be worried.”

Turner asked, “Is there any specific forensic evidence that links all the crimes?”

“My article just came out. The cops in some of the cities are dismissing it but most are scrambling to begin cross-referencing data. I’m not sure who’s got DNA of what. It would be absolute proof if we could get a DNA match in every city. Of course, even after we establish a forensic connection, the DNA won’t be much help until someone is caught to whom we can compare it.”

Turner nodded. DNA worked the same as fingerprints. You might have a national registry with which to compare prints, but if the prints you found weren’t on file, then they did little good until you found a suspect.

Fenwick asked, “When can we see the flow charts with the information you’ve gathered on these cases?”

“I’ll talk to my editor and get back to you.”

The detectives left.

In the car Fenwick said, “We can set up our own goddamn flow charts. He’d save us time, but we don’t have to rely on him. Or we could just arrest him.”

Turner said, “To the ME’s office post haste.”

“Already got it covered,” Fenwick said. “We need more details.”

12

I’d like to go to an autopsy. I’d like to see my victims opened up. I’d like to see them more defenseless, more helpless, and more dead than they probably ever imagined. I’d like to see mostly indifferent medical examiners handling the most vulnerable and inviolate parts of those who thought they were so high and mighty just a few hours before.

They met with the ME at the Cook County morgue. In the autopsy room, Lenzati’s body was on the slab. Various internal parts were visible. Bits of him lay in sterile containers. The stainless steel throughout the room gleamed, as it always did, as if it had been burnished five minutes before. The blood on the floor and the table, the hanging meat scales, and the chalkboard with dripping blood became all the more vivid against the stark metallic background.

The ME said, “My best guess is your killer got in a lucky blow early on, or maybe your killer knew exactly where to strike. After that Lenzati would have been mostly helpless. The shock itself would have immobilized him somewhat, but he didn’t die right away. I think your guy had him pretty helpless and then began stabbing randomly. Perhaps trying to see how many wounds he could inflict without actually killing him. Brings a meaning to the word disgusting that even around here, we don’t often see. The actual death wound was most likely one in the middle of his upper back.”