Sex and Murder.com: A Paul Turner Mystery (22 page)

“Why didn’t you just leave town?” Fenwick asked.

“On top of the business losses, the house was an albatross. Our car was repossessed. Our savings were gone. We both had huge college loans to pay back. Then Lenzati showed up one night. We’d figured he was behind what was happening. He apologized profusely for everything that had gone wrong. He assured us over and over again that he knew nothing about it. He told us that it would all stop,
if.
”

“If what?” Fenwick asked.

“If we both agreed to have sex, my husband with Werberg and me with Lenzati. We said ‘no’ and showed him the door. We realized our situation was hopeless. There was nothing we could do. The next day we made plans to sell the house and move. Real estate agents wouldn’t return our calls. We visited one, who was very kind and helpful, but we never heard from her again. We thought our house was being watched. The neighbors were complaining about the garbage. We told them the problem, and they began letting us use their trash cans. Then they began having problems.

“We grew up in California. We’d never seen political power used like this; we were beaten. I called Lenzati and told him we’d give in. The day after we performed our rituals with those two creeps, everything stopped. All our bills were paid, and ten thousand dollars appeared in our bank account. We immediately put the house up for sale. We tried hiring a lawyer again, but it was useless. I wish I’d taken pictures or had some proof, but I didn’t. Nobody would listen to us, and I was afraid that if we started making more official complaints, things would go wrong again.”

“Did you take a job with his company?”

“No. They offered, but I wasn’t willing. It was enough that the harassment stopped. My goal for the rest of my life centered around working for their rivals and bringing them down. I’m glad they’re dead, but I’ll keep working until that company is in bankruptcy.”

“Even after all that money?” Fenwick asked.

“How much made no difference. I hated him.”

“Was there anyone else present when you had sex with him?” Fenwick asked.

“No, but I heard Lenzati did have orgies.”

“From whom?” Turner asked.

“I found that information on the Internet. I began hunting for anyone who had something bad to say about him. In secret little chatrooms we would talk. You look up sleaze in the dictionary, and you’ll find a picture of those two.”

“Did he use threats and coercion to get all the others into bed?” Turner asked.

“With all the ones I chatted with.”

“Can you give us their names or addresses?”

“I never met any of them.”

“How can you be sure they were telling you the truth?” Turner asked.

“I believe anything nasty about that man.”

“What did he make you do that night?”

“He began the night with a simple statement. He told me I could lie on the bed like a cold fish, or I could get into it. He wasn’t very aggressive. I didn’t get into it: I think he got kind of bored or disgusted. He stared at me naked for a long time and then performed. I made him wear a condom—he didn’t like that.”

“What did Werberg make your husband do?” Fenwick asked.

“He never told me. I didn’t want to know. I still don’t.”

“You haven’t seen either of them since that night?”

“No.”

“Where were you and your husband Thursday night into Friday morning, and yesterday afternoon?”

For the first time, her flow of words stopped. She gazed at them carefully. “What are you trying to say?”

“We aren’t trying to say anything,” Turner said. “The question is a simple one.”

“Oh, no,” she said. “I tried to get a good job and the world went to hell. I am not going to let myself be taken down for life by being accused of doing something to that man. I didn’t kill him. We were here with each other that night and yesterday afternoon.”

“We’ll need to talk to your husband.”

“He’s out shopping.”

“Why not take your complaint to the press?” Fenwick asked.

“After the press conference fiasco, we tried individual reporters. Nothing worked. The man was rich enough to insulate himself completely. If I had a cum-stained dress or a tape of something, that would be great, but I don’t. I guess they get people trying to trash celebrities all the time. One even came to the house and took some notes, but I think they all dismissed me as a disgruntled job hunter. I think somebody got to them before we did.”

“Why didn’t you leave town afterwards?”

“My husband landed a dream job with a financial firm in the Loop. In spite of that, I swore I’d leave town if I ever saw either Lenzati or Werberg again.”

“Do you know anything about computer hackers or sabotage against Lenzati and Werberg’s company? Especially a guy named Eddie Homan?”

Her eyes shifted in the classic suspect-lying-mode. “I have nothing to do with that.”

“Why didn’t you try those investigative shows?” Fenwick asked.
“Sixty Minutes,
or
Twenty-Twenty?
”

“We did. Nothing ever came of it. They didn’t return our calls.”

Turner and Fenwick left, promising to return to talk to her husband.

Turner asked, “Why did Lenzati pursue her with such fervor?”

“She’s hot. She’s smart. She was tough to catch. Part of some games is the thrill of the chase. The harder the fight, the greater the glory.”

Turner said, “I’d give a great deal to find this Eddie Homan guy. I want to ask him a few questions.”

19

It isn’t always necessary to follow someone around. Sometimes you can anticipate their moves. Sometimes you simply miss out. Sometimes you just get lucky, and sometimes you have to take whatever you can get. Sometimes you screw up and miss somebody completely. No matter how awry your planning may go, it really doesn’t make any difference, because you know somebody’s going to die eventually.

They headed for the LaSalle Street office of Lenzati and Werberg’s accountant. Early Sunday afternoon was quiet in the financial heart of Chicago.

Claud Vinkers they had met. The accountant, Evelyn Jasper, was a woman in her fifties who seemed to be brisk and efficient. The lawyer wore a dark business suit obviously expensively tailored. The accountant was dressed in a beige suit that was cut perfectly for her model-slender figure.

They met in a fifty-fourth floor conference room.

“How can we help you gentlemen?” Jasper asked.

Turner said, “We’re wondering what financial shape Mr. Lenzati and Mr. Werberg and their company were in.”

“All were in excellent shape. Their current business had shown a profit every year since it began, something unusual in a dot-com business. Of course, they were wealthy from the sale of the first company. They never had to touch the principal from that sale. That money was wisely invested and continued to grow. Craig in real estate and Brooks in precious metals and municipal bonds.”

“Who inherits all this?”

“Craig’s and Brooks’ wills were very similar. Their current company gets a half of everything. It doesn’t need it. If you’re thinking anyone needed their deaths to provide an infusion of money into the business, you would be wrong. There is no motive for murder there.”

Turner asked, “Who inherits the rest?”

Vinkers said, “Just like Craig’s. A variety of charities are going to be very happy. None of them knew they were getting the bequests. There is no motive there. Sorry.”

“The relatives get nothing?” Turner asked.

“They’d both provided for any living parents some time ago. All the other relatives of either one got the same thing: a thousand dollars. Counting distant cousins of both of them, there would be about thirty thousand. Not much to kill for, if they even knew they were going to get it, which I doubt.”

Turner asked Vinkers, “We spoke with a woman about her sexual harassment complaint against Mr. Lenzati.”

The lawyer said, “You’re talking about the rumors on the Internet. I can find you rumors on the Internet that would make even the toughest cops in this city quail, and those are about sweet little grandmothers who love their grandchildren.”

“Mrs. Korleski says she couldn’t get anybody to listen to her.”

“I know the whole story there. She was a disappointed job seeker. She wanted to work for the best and most cutting edge computer company in the world, but she didn’t get the job. She was unstable, and she kept harassing him. After a while, we had her investigated. She was a wacko.”

“She seemed pretty sane to me,” Fenwick said.

“You’re an expert?” Vinkers asked.

“Enough to know that I need to be suspicious about anything a lawyer tells me,” Fenwick responded.

“Nancy Korleski had an ax to grind,” Vinkers said. “We were suspicious that she put a lot of the rumors on the Internet herself. We could never prove it. Whoever was doing it was very clever. We also had trouble with attempted hacking and sabotage—she was suspected.”

“Are either of you aware of late night sex parties at Lenzati’s house?”

“I find that hard to believe,” Vinkers said.

“Why?” Fenwick asked.

“He was the consummate nerd. Every once in a while he’d squire around a very beautiful and very stupid woman for a short while, but he always was far more interested in his work, not sex.”

Turner asked, “Do you know anything about a sexual conquest game the two of them played?”

“This is getting beyond absurd,” Vinkers said. “Although I’ve never heard that bit of ridiculousness before.”

“Unfortunately,” Fenwick said, “that little bitty-bit of ridiculousness happens to be annoyingly true.”

“I beg your pardon,” Vinkers said.

“We discovered a coded scoring record on Lenzati’s computer,” Turner said. “We made a copy before Mr. Werberg could erase it—he tried to. Our computer expert has broken the code, and we’ve talked with a number of people they used for their game.”

The accountant said, “Unbelievable.”

The lawyer asked, “They really kept score?”

Fenwick said, “Yep.”

Vinkers said, “They must have been out of their minds.”

“Neither of you knew a thing about it?” Fenwick asked.

Both insisted they hadn’t.

Fenwick asked, “Do you have a list of properties that Mr. Lenzati owned?”

“Yes, for here and around the world. Mostly here. Their two main residences you already know about.”

“Can we get the addresses for all of those in the metropolitan area? We’ll want to check them out.”

“You think a real estate deal might have gone bad?” Vinkers asked.

“No,” Turner said, “but we have reason to believe they had a separate site for their love nest.”

“I can make copies of the addresses for you,” Jasper said. “They’ll be the places they had to pay taxes on.”

After she did, Turner and Fenwick left.

On the way down in the elevator Fenwick said, “He wasn’t killed by a grasping relative waiting for an inheritance.”

“I could have told you that,” Turner said. “That would have made this too easy, but this whole concept of sexual need is making this almost as gritty as you like it.”

Fenwick said, “I can hear the crowds in the background chanting, ‘more grit, more grit, more grit.’ I want it for the mantra on my tombstone.”

“That’s ‘epitaph,’ and ain’t nobody chanting in this neighborhood.”

“That’s because it isn’t gritty enough.”

“Not very ethnically diverse, either.”

“Worse luck. And,” Fenwick added, flourishing the list of property addresses as they approached the car, “they did not own half the Loop. Not anywhere near it. Ha!”

“I’m glad to see you feel triumphant about their lack of real estate holdings. They were still millions of dollars ahead of you or me in this city, and that ain’t bad in this day and age.”

20

What I’m really doing is what all the rest of you want to do, getting even. The rest of you are too frightened or too complacent. You’ve got to get beyond the fear. It’s a beautiful, pure country beyond fear.

It was the middle of the afternoon when they returned to the station. Turner found another box on his desk, small, compact, and tightly wrapped. On the outside were the words Nutty Chocolate with the dancing cocoa bean logo.

“What is this shit?” he demanded.

Fenwick said, “How the hell does this keep happening?”

Bokin from the front desk said, “It came through regular channels, departmental mail.”

“Somebody in the department is sending this to me?”

“Hell,” Bokin said, “somebody could walk in off the street and dump it in the interoffice mail, but they’d probably be seen.”

“Was anybody?”

“No.”

“Who the hell?” Turner asked. “If this is a joke, somebody’s going to be very sorry.”

Bokin said, “You could try and check the places where these are sold.”

Fenwick said, “This stuff is sold in every grocery store and convenience store in the entire metropolitan area. Do you have any concept of how many that is?” To Bokin’s silence, he said, “A lot.”

As with the others, Turner sent the package to the crime lab for analysis.

“Better check the e-mail,” Fenwick said.

The message this time was simple, “Eat shit and die.” Turner swiveled the computer around so Fenwick could see.

Turner said, “I think I prefer the chocolate.”

“We gotta get Micetic down here again,” Fenwick said.

They called in the beat cops and detectives who had been working on the other interviews. While waiting, Turner phoned the police in the other cities where cops had been killed. In each city it took a while to connect with someone official who had worked on the investigation. It was also Sunday afternoon, and many of the cops were off duty.

First, Fenwick and Turner confirmed the data they had. Like good cops, they were determined to verify every fact. They weren’t about to let lack of attention to detail screw up a case. Each conversation took time. All the cops who’d been killed had children under twenty living at home. Turner added the detail that they’d all had more than one child. There were no fingerprints that were unidentified at any of the scenes. He was able to confirm that all had been pissed on.