Sex and Murder.com: A Paul Turner Mystery (16 page)

Turner and Fenwick rushed out. It took them extra minutes to navigate the crush of Saturday afternoon traffic on the near north side. Finally, Fenwick took Wacker Drive out to Lake Shore Drive and came back in on LaSalle Street from the north.

Manny Merlow, a beat cop from the Eighteenth District, met them at the east entrance to Werberg’s considerable mansion.

“What happened?” Turner asked.

“We got a call about twenty minutes ago that there was something suspicious going on here.”

“From whom?”

“Some guy who said he found a strange message on the Internet. He was surfing the web and got into a chatroom. The guy he was talking to claimed he was being attacked.”

Fenwick asked, “Werberg was being attacked, and all he did to defend himself was type on his computer?”

“Maybe he was trapped,” Turner said. “Why don’t we wait until we see what happened? Did you see any security system?”

Merlow said, “All we saw was a closed circuit television next to the front gate. We tried knocking and ringing the bell, but that didn’t get any response.” He pointed at the closed circuit monitor. “That was off. We tried the door and it opened. If it was a distress call, we figured we’d better check it out. He’s in there dead all right.”

“Lots of city officials, police brass, and the press are going to show up in minutes,” Turner said. “We had better establish a perimeter.”

Merlow said, “I called for backup as soon as we found the body.”

“Call Dylan Micetic, the department’s computer expert,” Fenwick said, “get him over here. Then, no matter who shows up, do not let them into this house. I don’t care if the mayor and the cardinal show up. They are not to be catered to. You can let in the ME and the evidence technicians. Your stay in hell will be expanded by extra eternities for each wrong person that appears inside this house.”

“How can you expand eternities?” Merlow asked.

“Watch me,” Fenwick said.

Turner and Fenwick stepped inside. The large foyer was silent, the smell antiseptic, as if the occupant had a powerful and unpleasantly aromatic odor-eater running full blast.

As Merlow had said, they found Werberg in an office on the second floor. Someone had shoved his head through the screen of a twenty-nine-inch monitor on his desk.

“Maybe the computer finally got its revenge,” Fenwick said.

They approached the body carefully. Turner felt for the carotid artery. The skin was cold. There was no pulse.

Werberg wore gray boxer shorts, a gray T-shirt, and white athletic socks. All were tattered and flecked with blood.

Fenwick pointed at the wet stains on the boxers. “Smells like piss.”

Turner nodded agreement. “He’s been stabbed, but not nearly as much as Lenzati.”

The room looked like a category five hurricane had lingered for several hours before moving on and then decided to make a return trip just in case it left anything even remotely close to upright. The paper strewn about would eliminate the need for anyone to make confetti anywhere in the country for several New Year’s Eves to come. Every page had been ripped from every book. The paper shredder was jammed to overflowing. Someone had taken the fax machine and broken it over the printer. Hundreds of CDs and their cases had been smashed and flung about. Two impressively large stereo speakers were now little more than kindling. They found a baseball bat broken in half. By the date and signatures, Turner realized it had been signed by each member of the 1969 Chicago Cubs. Presumably the bat had been used to cleave through the receiver, CD, and tape player, plus anything else that the killer felt like destroying. The guts of a cordless phone were scattered across the rug.

Turner and Fenwick could see nothing that was once whole still intact.

“Anger,” Fenwick said. “Anger like I’ve never seen before. More pissed off than I get at the Cubs during an entire season, which is a very great deal.”

“They always lose,” Turner said, “why don’t you give up on them?”

“One of the great philosophical truths of the universe,” Fenwick said, “is that being a Cubs fans teaches a person the true meaning of life. Most of us are not champions, the good guys lose as many as they win, and all we can really do is go out and endure day after day, no matter how hopeless things look.”

Turner said, “You’re dangerously close to being a philosopher as well as a poet.”

Turner heard his name on the police radio. It was Merlow. “I’ve got paramedics out here. Do they get in?”

“Yes,” Turner said.

The paramedics were quick to assess the situation. They were trained enough to know to be careful at a murder scene. They did not try to revive Brooks Werberg. He was very obviously dead.

After they left, the ME and the evidence technicians arrived. While waiting for them to finish, Turner and Fenwick spent the time inspecting the mansion. They began with the bedroom next to the office. Compared to the mess next door, it was startlingly neat. Along with a Palm Pilot they found an address book and other personal data in neat piles that made sense.

Fenwick asked, “If the rest of the place isn’t a mess, I presume the killer was just angry and not looking for anything?”

“We can’t be sure yet,” Turner said.

Dylan Micetic arrived and joined the inspection tour. The downstairs was cleaning-service neat with nothing out of place. They found a large room without any windows. It was luxuriously furnished with a king size bed, overstuffed chairs, and pillows in warm bright colors. They found a room with a bank of television screens filling an entire wall, each tuned to a different station. Turner thought many of them looked like they originated in international locations. The opposite wall was floor-to-ceiling monitors with numerous computers and controls sitting on a low, twenty-foot-long table in front of them. All of the monitors showed different images. Some were filled with vibrantly colored graphics the likes of which Turner had never seen on a computer monitor. He thought some looked like Web sites. Others were filled with complex equations or dense with single-spaced ten point prose.

Fenwick pointed at the wall of monitors. “He didn’t use screen savers?”

“No need in this day and age,” Micetic said.

“Why doesn’t anybody ever tell me these things?” Fenwick asked.

“In the computer industry if you blink, you’re behind the times,” Micetic said.

Fenwick said, “Or maybe if you blink, you miss the point that all the hype about out-datedness is because lots of slick sales people are trying to get you to buy useless junk.”

Micetic smiled, “Perhaps that does happen.”

They found an ashtray shaped like a profile of Bill Gates’s head, with a picture of the Microsoft CEO laminated in the middle. Someone had mashed a cigarette butt into Bill’s left nostril then glued it in place.

“Why have all this electronic stuff in here, and all the other junk in the room we found him in?” Fenwick asked.

Micetic said, “My guess is that this was more for display rather than actual work. Kind of a bragging rights thing, I suppose. He’s got the top of the line model from most, if not all, of the computer manufacturers in the world in here.”

After checking the machines to make sure Micetic’s guess was plausible, they met with the medical examiner. He said, “Werberg was restrained before he was killed, probably by a piece of rope, although there is no longer any at the scene. Both his wrists and his ankles were tied.”

Fenwick said, “He was alive while someone was destroying this room? Someone wanted him to see everything wrecked?”

“Very possibly,” the ME said.

“What killed him?” Fenwick asked.

“He was alive when his head was thrust into the computer screen. I think his head was rammed into the thing several times before the blow that actually killed him. Your murderer kept banging away until he was dead. The stab wounds strike me as an afterthought. I don’t see a lot of bleeding from them. I can’t be totally sure just yet how much the stab wounds contributed to his death.”

Turner said, “I didn’t see anything under his fingernails that would have indicated that he fought back. No scratches on his arms or bruising that would indicate there was a fight.”

The ME said, “He’s been dead a couple of hours.”

Turner said, “I wonder if he went to work like he told us, or came back here first.”

“That I can’t tell you.” The ME left. The detectives watched them remove the body.

Fenwick asked Micetic, “How about the computer itself? We were told that someone who was with him in a chatroom on the Internet called the police.”

Micetic said, “The monitor is wrecked but the computer itself might be okay. I’ll try and follow his logs, or he might have the kind of computer that keeps track of where he’s been on the Internet.”

“Precisely where he was probably isn’t going to be a big deal,” Turner said. “My question is why he used a chatroom and didn’t simply call the police?”

“If Werberg was surprised by whoever it was,” Fenwick said, “then how could he have time to keep typing, or why did the person let him keep typing? If he was trapped in here, why not use a cell phone? He’s the kind of guy who always has one on him.”

“He was in his underwear,” Turner pointed out. “Or maybe he knew the killer and let him in. Maybe he realized he was in danger and couldn’t risk making a call or get to his phone. You can type quietly. The bedroom’s right next door. If you’re having sex with your killer, and you get suspicious, you dash to the nearest thing you have to send a message from. You don’t want to risk making noise, so you use your computer.”

“Why don’t you dash out the front door?” Fenwick asked.

Turner said, “We’ll have to ask the killer when we find him. For some reason he came in here.”

Turner called the number for Lenzati and Werberg’s company. He spoke with Terry Waldron, the CEO. Turner said, “Mr. Werberg told us he was going into work after our interview this morning.”

Waldron said, “We had a meeting scheduled for noon. He never showed up. I called his house and e-mailed him. I got no answer. With things so chaotic, I didn’t know what to do.”

Turner spoke softly, “I’m sorry to tell you this. Mr. Werberg is dead.”

There was a slight gasp and a choked, “No,” then silence.

“Mr. Waldron?” Turner inquired after several moments.

“This is unbelievable. Are you sure?” Waldron asked.

Turner didn’t comment on the absurdity of this last question. Anyone hearing such news was not required to be intelligent, witty, or sensible. He gave him a few, bare details.

Waldron said, “I have to call some people,” and hung up.

Turner reported the conversation to Fenwick.

Micetic informed them, “The computer is still working.” They moved one of the monitors from the display room to the office. Micetic hooked it up. After a few moments, he said, “The computer is still connected to a chatroom. I can download a list of all the things he’s done recently on the computer. He didn’t need to actually type. The word processing program is voice activated, probably keyed to his own vocalizations.”

“A computer can do that?” Fenwick asked.

“His could probably design programs to take rocket ships to the stars and cook his breakfast in the morning—maybe simultaneously. Lenzati’s could do more than any machine I ever saw. I bet this one is the same. I can’t wait to get further into it. I doubt if there are many computers like theirs in the whole world. Mine at home can’t come remotely close.”

“So his could be recording everything,” Fenwick said. “We better watch what we say around it.”

“I’ll save everything on his hard drive to several highcapacity Zip disks. I can get you copies. I imagine his software disks are going to take a long time to analyze and decipher. My guess is at least as long as Lenzati’s did.”

“Maybe we’ve got the killer’s words on there,” Turner suggested.

Micetic said, “I didn’t see anything, but if Werberg’s machine is voice activated, it could be. He wouldn’t have to be typing to send a message.”

Turner said, “But if he was in the chatroom and it was recording because it was voice activated, wouldn’t it take down whatever was said in the room, and wouldn’t then the people in the chatroom have been privy to the whole conversation?”

Fenwick said, “Or maybe the killer was typing in the chatroom to announce he was here or was trying to send a message. Macho bravado crap.”

“We’ll have to talk to the guy who called it in and find out exactly what was being said,” Fenwick said.

“If I can find him,” Micetic said.

“Be sure to check for secret codes,” Turner said.

“Absolutely,” Micetic said.

To the evidence tech Turner said, “I want you to crossmatch every fingerprint and DNA sample here with what we found at Lenzati’s house. If nothing else, that could help us rule suspects out.”

The evidence tech nodded.

Fenwick said, “Two guys in the same company meet violent ends within less than forty-eight hours of each other. If they aren’t connected, I’ll become a hula dancer.”

“I do not want to think about you in drag,” Turner said.

“I’d pay to see it,” the evidence tech said.

“How he’d get him restrained in the first place?” Fenwick asked. “No other room shows any sign of being disturbed. I think it began and ended in here.”

Turner said, “If it began in this room, how did Werberg get free to type in a call for help?”

“How about if Werberg was trapped?” Fenwick suggested.

“Possible,” Turner said. “If he was free to type and the message went out, the killer was taking a big risk. It took time to do all this destruction.”

Fenwick said, “Maybe all this stuff was wrecked in the fight, and the killer didn’t need to go on a rampage.”

Turner said, “The timing of all this isn’t working for me yet. Even a fight in here with all the men currently on NFL rosters couldn’t cause this much damage. I think it had to be deliberate.”

Fenwick said, “I still want to know why the security system wasn’t working.”

Micetic said, “The security system is over there.” He pointed at a console covered in twisted plastic and smashed glass. In the maelstrom of destruction, this was possibly the most pulverized part. The killer had left the plastic tape holders on the scene, but the actual tapes were missing from all of them.