Authors: Jack Kilborn
Truck Stop (12 page)
“What is it?” Herb stood next to her. He wasn’t built to squat.
“I have no idea. Some sort of disk. A poker chip?”
She looked closer. It was white, maybe three centimeters in diameter. If it hadn’t been stuck in a floater’s throat, Jack would have guessed it was a Communion wafer.
Without prompting, Herb handed her a plastic evidence baggie and a wrapped pepperoni stick. She used the jerky to poke it. Metal. And thick, about a centimeter.
She flipped the circular object over.
Herb said, “Holy Guacamole, Batman.”
Her partner’s comment was appropriate. On the other side of the disk was a picture of Batman. A close-up of his face, the caped crusader in three-quarter profile, looking suitably heroic. Jack maneuvered Batman into the baggie.
Herb nudged her. “Should I call Gotham City, tell Commissioner Gordon that the Dark Knight has gone bad?”
Jack stood up, smoothed out her skirt with one hand while holding up the baggie with the other.
“You, my friend,” she said to Herb, “are too old to be such a big geek.”
“Batman is cool. Can I have my jerky back?”
Jack complied, then caught movement out of the corner of her eye. Two men were approaching. One, a uniform she recognized as a beat cop named Gordon. The other, a man about forty, medium build, with strong Cuban features punctuating a slightly sad face. Jack knew him as well. She shoved the baggie into the coat pocket of her blazer and put her hands on her hips.
“This scene is off limits to members of the press.” She had some steel in her voice, and though her words were to Gordon her eyes were on the reporter.
“Lieutenant, Alex, uh, Mr. Chapa here, he says he knew the floater, uh, the deceased.”
“He can pay his respects after we release the body. In the meantime, if he’d like to go for a swim himself, the Chicago Police Department would be happy to assist him.”
Alex Chapa took a step forward, something Daniels viewed as brave but not wise.
“Officer Gordon, tell the Lieutenant I just saw this man alive a few hours ago.”
Jack narrowed her eyes. “Did anyone see you two together?”
“I’ll save you the trouble. He owns a collectible shop on Clark, has a closed circuit camera. You can view the tape, which will show you he was still alive when I left.”
“That doesn’t prove anything,” Herb said, stepping up to meet Chapa. “You could have killed him after he left.”
“I didn’t kill him, Sergeant. I want to help.”
“Do you like Batman?”
“Batman? Why?”
Jack stepped forward, standing shoulder to shoulder with her partner.
“Officer Gordon, take Mr. Chapa down to the station and get a statement. If you make him wait for more than six hours, I’ll buy you lunch.”
“Sorry, Alex,” Gordon said. “Let’s go.”
Gordon placed a hand on the reporter’s shoulder, pulling him backward. Chapa shrugged away.
“Lieutenant Daniels, I know in the past the Suburban Herald hasn’t treated you with the respect you deserve…”
“Here’s the direct quote. ‘If Daniels paid as much attention to her job as she does to her wardrobe, maybe Chicago wouldn’t have so many unsolved homicides.’”
“I didn’t write that. But it’s nice to know that someone still reads the papers.”
“Not me, Mr. Chapa. My boss. He wasn’t amused, and neither am I.”
Chapa attempted a smile. “I apologize. Still, that suit you’ve got on is very flattering.” He looked over at Jimmy, who was studying his shoes.
Jack turned to the uniform. “Make him wait ten hours, I’ll see to it you get a promotion.”
Officer Gordon again tried to lead Chapa away, and again the reporter twisted out of the hold.
“Don’t you find it odd, Lieutenant, that this is the fourth reported floater in eight weeks?”
“Potentially unrelated,” Daniels said. “If you knew anything about floaters—”
Chapa interrupted. “—I’d know that bodies in water tend to sink for the first several days. They only float after bacteria begin to decompose the tissue, releasing gas. Those other bodies had been dead for weeks before they bobbed to the surface. Preston’s clothes should have weighed him down, kept him on the bottom for a while. I know this because I attended a forensics lecture you gave at the U of C about five years ago. You were excellent.” Chapa added, “And your outfit was killer. Red. I think it was Armani.”
“It was Fendi,” Jack said.
Chapa glanced to his right, viewing the corpse as Blasky fussed with a black body bag.
“What is that?” Chapa asked, pointing to Preston’s right foot.
Something was wedged between the victim’s ten dollar loafer and his wet sock. Blasky carefully removed it with some forceps and held it up. A small key.
“Bag it,” Jack told him.
“He doesn’t appear to be beaten up like the other victims,” Chapa stated. “The other three floaters had facial lacerations, indications they’d been worked over.”
“No comment.”
“And the others were men with money who turned up wearing polo shirts with country club emblems, and Italian leather shoes. This guy shopped at thrift stores.”
“Still another reason why there may not be a connection. How many ways do I have to say, ‘no comment’? Officer Gordon, now, please.”
“Look, Lieutenant Daniels, I really am trying to help. Don’t you want to know what Preston and I discussed? It could be relevant to the investigation.”
“Officer Gordon will take your statement, possibly sometime within the next few days.”
This time Gordon managed to get Chapa several steps away before the reporter slipped his grasp and came storming back
“Why was he floating? Lungs full of air because something was caught in his throat?”
Now Herb got so close his nose almost touched Chapa’s.
“And how exactly do you know that?”
“I saw something fly out of his mouth, watched the Lieutenant pick it up. Could be a pog.”
“A what?”
“Let me see it, and I’ll tell you.”
Jack thought it over, couldn’t see the harm, and pulled the bag out of her pocket. Chapa held it by the edge, bringing it close.
“Well, is it a,” Herb hesitated, “
pog
?”
Chapa looked up at the four of them and shook his head.
“It’s not a pog.” He smiled smugly. “It’s a slammer, a member of the pog family.”
Jack looked down at the small round piece of metal, then back at Chapa with a gaze that was equal parts awe, bemusement, and pity.
“That’s it,” Jack’s voice was calm and steady. “Officer Gordon, get him out of here and keep him away from normal people until we take his statement, sometime around Labor Day.”
“Pogs were made of cardboard, this one’s metal, and heavier, that’s what makes it a slammer,” Chapa was talking fast, trying to get the words out before Gordon could grab his shoulders again and drag him away.
Jack snatched the bag back, returned it to her pocket. “Your turn. What, exactly, is a pog?”
Chapa folded his arms across his chest and looked like he was getting ready to hold court.
“They originally came from fruit juice in Hawaii. The treated cardboard milk cap beneath the screw-on bottle top of passion fruit-orange-guava juice. They had different designs, kids began to collect them and trade them by playing a game. You’d pile up a stack of your opponent’s pogs face down, then hit them with a heavier piece called a slammer. The ones that turned face up you got to keep.”
Herb grunted. “Never heard of it.”
“Really big, back in the early 90s. Companies made millions of them. They were a fad for a while, some of the rarer ones sold for big bucks, like baseball cards. The one that popped out of Preston features a Bob Kane drawing. Classic Batman, before they turned his cowl from blue to black.”
“And you know this because…?”
“I’m a reporter,” Chapa said through a smirk. “That means I’m as close to being omniscient as any human being can possibly get.”
“If you’re omnipotent you know that if you print any sort of speculation before we release an official statement I’ll come down on you so hard your ears will bleed.”
Chapa smiled. “You can’t repress the truth, Lieutenant. The people have a right to know.”
“They also have a right to be safe from murderers, which are a lot harder to catch if crime scene information leaks out. Now go take his statement, Gordon, and if he gets away from you again you’re going to wish you didn’t come to work today and instead stayed home and licked all the hair off of a monkey.”
Chapa laughed, then said, “Don’t knock what you haven’t tried, Lieutenant,” forcing Jack to suppress a smile of her own.
Gordon nodded, grabbed Chapa more firmly than possibly necessary, and pulled him off the scene.
“Want to get a smoothie?” Herb asked. “I’ve got a sudden urge for passion fruit-orange-guava juice.”
Jack didn’t answer. She watched Chapa leave. While shooing away reporters was second nature to her, this one wasn’t as annoying as most, and it seemed like he might have had more to offer. It didn’t matter really. Gordon would do a decent interview, and if there was a follow-up needed Jack could always do it herself. Besides, real murders weren’t like TV or books where the crime was solved an hour after it happened. It often took days, weeks, months, before an arrest was made.
Still, watching Chapa walk away left her with a nagging doubt that perhaps she should have pressed the man further.
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Copyright © 2009 Joe Konrath
Cover art copyright © 2009 Carl Graves
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the authors’ imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the authors.
Edition: February 2011