Sex and Murder.com: A Paul Turner Mystery (26 page)

“You’re probably right.”

“We’re going to have to watch all of these?” Fenwick asked.

“You drooling or complaining?” Turner asked.

“Yes,” Fenwick said.

“Where do the all these cables lead?” Turner asked. “There must be a taping room.”

They found a largish booth with taping equipment, much of it looking new or little-used. There was no blood or destruction there.

Dylan Micetic showed up a few minutes after the ME. He set to work at the computer terminals after the crime lab technicians had dusted them for fingerprints.

An hour later the ME reported. “Obviously, somebody took that very large hunting knife and gutted him as if they were preparing to fillet him. He’s been dead at least several hours, probably since sometime early this morning. The smears of blood on the outer door and at various points in the building could be his or not. We’ll have to type them and then do DNA testing.”

“He died after Werberg,” Turner said.

The ME said, “He died in this room. He’s got one big entrance wound in his back. That was probably the fatal blow. Then there’s that mess from his balls to his sternum. Your killer swished that thing around inside of him.”

“He was leaning over and looking at the computer when he was stabbed,” Turner said.

“Very possibly,” The ME said.

“Did you find evidence of sexual activity in Werberg or Lenzati?” Turner asked.

“Lenzati’s was his own semen. Werberg’s shorts had evidence of his own semen. It was dried. I can’t say precisely when it would be from, certainly within hours, but not much more than that. In neither case did we find evidence that they had a partner. I can’t say for sure if they were just beating off, or if their partners took their own body fluids with them.”

Fenwick looked at the body. “Pretty hard to imagine any sexual activity here, but then I’ve seen killers do a lot of nutty stuff.”

“We’ll check. We always do.” The ME left.

“Why is the body here?” Turner asked. “Was he living in some little cubbyhole we haven’t found? Did he break in and get caught and stabbed? Did the killer bring him and why? Was Homan working at this location for Lenzati and Werberg?”

Turner said, “I don’t see any evidence of him fighting back or struggling.”

Fenwick said, “No sign of any damage either. The killer didn’t try to break up the place. Lenzati was turned into a human pincushion, Werberg’s place was smashed to smithereens, and this guy’s practically gutted.”

Turner suggested, “Maybe the killer was done. This was it. Just a final punctuation mark.”

They searched the place thoroughly. There was no sign anywhere of permanent habitation.

“Of course,” Fenwick said after they were finished looking, “someone could have just lived in a number of those different little scenarios.”

Turner said, “Other than the souvenir room, we haven’t found anything personal—a toothbrush, shampoo, a used razor, fingernail clippers—little things that you’d expect if a person actually lived here.”

“Whoever got in was able to get past the card-swiping deals at the door,” Fenwick said.

“Why didn’t they have security cameras here?” Fenwick asked.

“Maybe the whole place was supposed to be secure,” Turner said.

“None of the sexual contacts we talked to mentioned this place,” Fenwick said. “Werberg entertained at his house.”

“Maybe this place was built or put together since then, maybe just recently,” Turner said. “Some of the VCRs and stuff are still in their boxes. This place could be pretty new.”

Turner and Fenwick approached Micetic. “Wow,” Micetic said.

“Wow what?” Fenwick asked.

“This is unbelievable. You know how they were working on security for all those companies?”

“Yeah,” Turner said.

“They installed the programming in such a way that they could hack into any of the computers at any time they wanted.”

“I’m not sure I if I prefer intellectually-gifted felons, or moronic gangbangers,” Fenwick said.

“Other than a few IQ points,” Turner said, “I’m not sure there is much difference, but that is extremely clever. The security people become the ultimate betrayers.”

“There’s more,” Micetic said, “lots more. Because of what I’ve learned at their home computers, this is easier to break into. There are records of them hacking into companies before they bought them. They hacked into anything they wanted, whenever they wanted. Sometimes they waited years to use the knowledge they had. They stole ideas for everything—software, operating systems, everything. This is fantastic.” He pointed and explained for ten minutes.

When he finished, Fenwick said, “They weren’t geniuses on their own.”

“They were smart enough to steal everybody else’s ideas and not get caught,” Micetic said. “I never heard of them even being suspected of this.”

“Download everything and print it,” Turner said. “Print every goddamn thing you can find. Back it up to disks. Do whatever it takes. I’m not going to risk losing stuff like we lost that list of sex contacts on Lenzati’s computer.”

Fenwick said, “We’ve got to talk to all those computer people again and find out who knew about this place. I’m tired of racing around this city. I want people to come to me.”

Micetic agreed to keep working on the computers and call them as soon as he found anything more.

23

I’ve made a couple of mistakes. I’ve missed a few. I’ve struck too soon. No one has noticed the mistakes yet.

They returned to Area Ten. There was another box of chocolates.

Turner called the crime lab. No fingerprints on any of the boxes. No identification of any kind. The white substance from last night had been plain ordinary sugar, available at thousands of stores in the metropolitan area. He sent the new box over with no hope of obtaining any useful information from it.

He turned on his e-mail. The message this time simply read, “Fear.” He turned off the computer and made a note to tell Micetic about the message the next time he saw him. He choose not to unplug the computer. If the killer was communicating with him, better to leave it on and hope whoever was doing it made a traceable mistake.

Turner’s phone rang. It was Vinnie Girote sounding many decibels below his usual bellow. “I want to apologize to you guys. I’m sorry. You won’t be bothered by me again.”

Turner asked, “Did you orchestrate the cover-up of the Korleski case?”

Girote revived a bit. “Don’t press your luck,” he snapped, then hung up.

Turner told Fenwick. “What the hell was that all about?” Turner asked.

“He got a conscience?” Fenwick asked.

“That’s an oxymoron in a politician,” Turner said.

“Did you just use that word correctly in that sentence?” Fenwick asked.

Turner said, “Besides being Mr. Wisdom, you do not get to be Mr. Grammar Person. I wonder.” He picked up his phone and punched in Mrs. Talucci’s number. He remembered her set lips and clenched jaw when they’d discussed Girote earlier. He said to her, “I just got an apology call from Vinnie Girote. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that.”

Mrs. Talucci’s rumored influence was legendary. When she made promises something would happen, it always did. She didn’t promise often, but she always made good. Her contacts were beyond legendary.

Mrs. Talucci said, “I made a few calls, including to his mother. She owes me a favor or two. I explained what a nice boy you are. She saw reason.” That’s all she would tell him. Mrs. Talucci had never revealed her sources to Turner. He thought it best not to probe too deeply.

Randy Carruthers staggered to the top step of the third floor.

“He looks even more ghastly than usual,” Fenwick commented.

Turner gazed in Carruthers’ direction. He was pale and trembling. Turner got up, went to him, held out a hand, and asked, “Are you all right, Randy?”

“Dwayne Smythe is dead.”

“When did you hear this?” Turner asked.

“The guys on the admitting desk. I heard right. I’m not screwing up. They just got the news. Reporters are starting to gather downstairs. Dwayne was a friend of mine. I visited him just last night in the hospital. He looked like he was getting better, but they told me Dwayne was too messed up inside.”

“How’s the investigation going into his murder?” Turner asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t know. He was a friend. The only one I had around here.” Tears started down Carruthers’ cheeks. Turner would never tell him that behind his back, Smythe disparaged Carruthers as much as any of them. “He was nice to me. Jesus, I shouldn’t be crying. People around here will never let me forget it.”

“It’s okay, Randy,” Turner said. He placed a hand on Carruthers’ shoulder. “It’s okay. I know it’s tough to lose someone you care about.” He led Carruthers into the coffee room, and poured him a cup. “You gonna be okay?” Turner asked. He felt more sorry for Carruthers than he ever had before.

“Yeah, thanks,” Carruthers said.

Turner rejoined Fenwick at their desks. He gave him the news.

“Is this the cop killing for Chicago?” Fenwick asked. “Does this mean we’ve met our quota?”

Turner said, “I don’t know if I hope that’s true or not.” He called Area One and got hold of the detective on the case, Bryant Karnetis. Turner said, “You heard about Dwayne?”

“Just got the news a minute ago,” Karnetis said.

“You got anything on the investigation?” Turner asked.

“We’ve got no conclusive forensic evidence. Right now, I think it was one of the brothers of the crippled kid. The whole family was furious at Dwayne. Supposedly, for twelve hours the night before the stabbing, they had a family powwow and things got pretty heated, but no one admits to doing anything violent.”

“Nobody ever does,” Turner said. “What about connecting it to the string of cop killings across the country?”

“I’ve got absolutely nothing on that,” Karnetis said. “We have tried to match what we’ve got here to the pattern from the reporter. We could send you over our chart.”

“Yeah. Do that. We’ll send you what we’ve got. You also need to see if they can find any trace of piss on his clothes.”

“You’re kidding?” Karnetis said.

Turner told him about the connection with the cop killings around the country. Karnetis said he’d check it out.

If this were a cop show on television, they would be working on one case at a time. As it was, they were real cops, and murders piled on top of murders. They worked on as many as they could at one time, and most were unconnected to each other.

Turner hung up. “What do we know about Smythe and his murder?” He walked over to the spreadsheets on the other police murder cases. “Let’s put what we’ve got so far up here as a possibility and see what it gets us. When we get Karnetis’ chart, we’ll add more. I don’t think the attack on Smythe is connected to our case or the cop killings, but we have to rule that out for certain.”

They filled in Smythe’s age, birth date, marital status, number of children and their ages, data about the crime against him, and every other category that had already been posted that they had information about.

Turner examined their handiwork. “With Smythe up here, the only things they all have in common are they were all cops with kids. That, and they were all breathing before they were killed. I don’t think that last one is a clue. There’s got to be a connection we’re missing. Unless the killer is really angry about cops with kids, in which case we’d have more dead bodies than I ever care to think about.”

Fenwick said, “We’ll have to keep adding things as we find them out.”

“What if we put up Lenzati, Werberg, and Homan on this?” Turner asked.

“They weren’t cops. Doing that probably wouldn’t tell us anything.”

Turner said, “As soon as you say it won’t, it usually does. What if there is some kind of inter-relation? I don’t know what it could be, but we need to know about everything connected with these killings. What were the cops who were killed investigating? What kind of cases did they work on? Were other famous people killed in their cities before they were? We need all kinds of information.”

Fenwick said, “In light of what we know now, we may have to call those places again.”

While they waited for the workers from Lenzati and Werberg’s business to show up, they examined the data on the cop killings, doing everything they could to see if there was a connection to Lenzati, Werberg, and Homan.

Turner printed out the spreadsheet data on the three murdered computer geniuses, and faxed it with their other data to Bryant Karnetis.

They called other cities, gathered information, and added it to the spreadsheets on the corkboard. They also included new columns for more comprehensive information as it came in. In less than an hour their grid had grown exponentially. They cross-referenced any kind of connection to each city.

Early on, Turner eyed the columns of data and said, “I feel like I’m playing an immense game of bingo. Filling in each little blank. Racing against death.”

Fenwick said, “Let’s hope we win.”

The first person they interviewed late that afternoon was Terry Waldron, the man in command of the business end of Werberg and Lenzati’s company.

He shook his head as he sat down next to their desks. “Last week at this time we were in perfect shape. Now it’s all going to collapse.”

“The business will go bust without them?” Fenwick asked.

“Oh, yes. They were the heart and soul of it. They really were creative, computer geniuses. Most of the rest of us simply did a lot of the basic work that led to the final product. Without them, there would be no product.”

Fenwick said, “We heard they had some odd hiring practices.”

“Oh?”

Fenwick said, “That they liked to play sexual games with people. We’ve got at least one job applicant who claims it happened to her.”

“I don’t know anything about that.”

“You didn’t hear about a sexual harassment suit?” Turner asked.

“No.”

“For the past twelve years, they were playing a game of sexual conquest against each other.”

“I’m not anybody’s sexual conquest.”