“You need to know that, Kate. You need to know that despite how afraid he was, he helped stop Eddie Herzog from killing any more young women.”
And in turn, Kate thought, he himself was slaughtered.
CHAPTER
TEN
Kate poured Detective Janek another cup of coffee while trying to sort out a flood of conflicting emotions. She wouldn’t have wanted John involved in any way, but on the other hand her brother had done something good, something truly worthwhile. It bothered her that John had been burdened with such a terrible secret, but what was most distressing was that the kind of men he had feared since he was little had been brought into his life. AJ had brought those men into his life.
“So you never told anyone on the police force about John helping identify Herzog or any others?”
AJ gave her a look. “If I had told anyone in the department I’d likely have been fired and a flock of lawyers would have descended on us, demanding that every one of the convictions I’d worked on be thrown out—and they probably would have been. I’d have been condemned by the press for manipulating a helpless mentally handicapped man who didn’t know any better.
“Worse, though, word would have gotten out and John would have been dragged into a public spectacle. I’d have been sent off to traffic duty—if not the unemployment line—and John would have been prey for every kook, sleazy reporter, and religious nut within a thousand miles. His house would have been a circus and John would have been at the center of it, terrified, without me able to protect him any longer. Secrecy was essential to protecting him.”
“Then why is he dead?”
AJ let out a heavy sigh as she merely shook her head.
Kate rubbed a thumb up and down the side of her coffee cup. “I guess I can see the spot you were in. But that still doesn’t make it right.”
AJ stared at Kate for a long moment, then broke the gaze and reached over to her satchel, bringing out a white envelope. She pulled out a smaller stack of photos than she had the first time and again drew the rubber band back over her wrist.
AJ carefully took a photo off the top and slid it across the table so that it was facing Kate. She didn’t say anything. The face of the man in the photo looked unremarkable.
Kate knew what the detective wanted. She looked up and reached across the small table to take the stack of photographs out of the woman’s hand. She picked up the first photo AJ had shown her, put it on the bottom as she leaned back, and then looked at the top picture. It too, was unremarkable. She moved it to the bottom. She quickly shuffled through the stack, one at a time, briefly looking at each face. She only had to look at each one for a second to know that she felt nothing before moving it to the bottom of the stack.
When she recognized the first photograph and knew she had been through the entire stack, she handed the deck of photos back to the detective.
“Nothing. I didn’t feel anything from any of them. I guess I can’t really do it. The other one, the one of Herzog, must have been a fluke. Is that what you wanted to know?”
AJ was slow in answering. “What I want is for you to tell me the truth. If you didn’t have a reaction to any of the photos, then that’s what I want to know.”
The detective returned the photos to her satchel, but came up with another envelope, this one manila.
Kate heaved a sigh and snatched the envelope from AJ’s hands before she could even take out the photos. Kate drew the rubber band back over her own wrist and started shuffling quickly through the photos, growing irritated that the detective kept pushing this right after John had been murdered.
She hurried through the stack of photos as scattered thoughts raced through her mind. Life was going to seem empty without having to do all the things she had done for John. What was she going to do with John’s house? She had grown up there. She could move back, but she couldn’t imagine living in the house where he had been murdered. Should she sell the place, maybe do the same with her uncle Everett’s place?
She was hardly paying any attention to the procession of men she was seeing, when the eyes of a man rocked her like a lightning bolt. The photo brought her thoughts to a sudden halt.
Her hand with the photo froze. She couldn’t look away from the eyes in the photo. Her insides felt as if they twisted into a knot. Her mouth went dry as a sheen of cold sweat broke out across her face.
“What do you see, Kate?”
Kate finally looked up from the terrible eyes in the photo to the detective’s dark, steady gaze.
Kate swallowed. “Him. This is the one you want.”
She handed the photo to AJ. The detective turned it over to read the name on the back.
“Really,” she whispered to herself before taking another look at the face. She finally took the rest of the photos from Kate’s trembling fingers.
“Like Herzog?” she asked. “You had the same kind of feeling that you had when you looked at Edward Lester Herzog?”
Kate nodded weakly. She was shaken by the eyes in the photo but managed to find her voice. “Is he someone you have in jail? A test the way you did with John? Someone already convicted?”
AJ shook her head. “No. Not yet, anyway. He made me a little suspicious, but no more than a lot of other people.”
“John’s body is hardly even cold, yet. Do you really expect me to step right in and take his place, now? Is that it? You expect me to help you ferret out killers?”
AJ leaned back in the booth and folded her arms, the stack of photos still in one hand. She fixed her dark gaze on Kate. In that moment she looked very much the intimidating police detective, a woman of focused intensity.
“Recently,” she said in a soft voice, “the decomposed remains of a child were found by workers in a landfill—just a few random bones. We brought in cadaver dogs to find the rest. Instead we found another boy’s body, a more recent kill that was still mostly intact. I’m looking for who killed them.
“The man in the photo has a little boy. I suspected that he beats the boy even though I had no proof of that. But I saw the look in that little guy’s eyes. He lives in an area of the city with lots of unattended kids, lots of fatherless kids. The last boy we found had lived with his single mother about a mile and a half from the man in the photo.
“We haven’t identified the first boy, yet, but we did the second. I’m the person who showed up and introduced that boy’s mother to what would turn out to be the worst day of her life.
“Having a little boy of my own, I could understand her reaction and sat with her for a couple of hours. Not that it did much good. She was hysterical and in shock. She said her son had come home from school and was at home when she got in from work. Once she was home, he was allowed to go out to play with his friends. That was the last time she saw him.
“Her ex-husband is a drunk. She lived with her mother for a time after he left her. She moved several times. He never came to see his son. She hasn’t seen him in years. He lives out of state, now. She had one ex-boyfriend who was a womanizer and had simply moved on to other women. She couldn’t imagine anyone having a grudge against her, or who hated her. She seemed like a quiet woman, minding her own business, with a job, doing her best to make ends meet.”
AJ turned the stack of photos in her hand, showing Kate the one on top, the one that had rattled her. “The only reason I even interviewed this guy is because he called the sanitation department complaining about his trash not being picked up. That put him on our radar. It was simply another of many clues that we routinely follow up.
“He seemed like nothing more than an irritated guy who works nights as a tractor-trailer mechanic and wanted his trash picked up on schedule. I told him that I was questioning him because I wanted to know if he could tell me anything unusual about the sanitation workers who picked up his trash. A few of them made me suspicious. He said he only knew that they missed his trash a lot and he wanted something done about it.
“So, you tell me, Kate. What would you like me
to do about the man in that photo? What should I do about you picking him out? Should I just forget about him until someone else’s child is murdered? Let another life be cut short? Let another mother have to go through that kind of hell?
“Should I pretend you didn’t have a reaction to that photo in the hope that maybe we’ll catch the killer after he kills the next boy, or after he kills a few more? Maybe we’ll find a good lead, then. Is that okay with you? Should I forget about the guy you just identified because John’s body isn’t even buried yet and instead wait for some more bodies to show up?
“You tell me, Kate. Is that what you want me to do?”
“No, of course not,” Kate said in a quiet voice as she cleared her throat. “I don’t want him to hurt anyone else.”
“Well neither do I. John was just like you. He didn’t want those men to hurt anyone else, either.”
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
“I’m sorry if it seems I’m being insensitive to your loss today. I know it may seem that way, but it’s not true. John was your brother, but I thought of him as a friend, and I thought of myself as his protector. I feel that I failed him.
“Sure, there are bad cops, lazy cops, cops who don’t care, just like there are bad doctors, crooked lawyers, and lazy bricklayers. But most cops sincerely want to get the bad guys. That’s why we become cops in the first place. We fight to put these animals in cages where they can’t hurt anyone. We fight to protect innocent people from predators. That’s our calling. That’s what we’re born to do.
“I don’t think most people begin to understand how fragile civilization really is. Depravity and mayhem are always there, just below the surface. We fight to suppress it.
“Killers are relentless, so I have to be relentless. I have to press. I have to ask tough questions of people who are hurting, just like that mother was, just like you are right now.
“If I had a photo of the guy I thought might be the one who broke in the face of the woman you work with—Wilma, the one you visited in the hospital, the one likely to die—wouldn’t you want me to bring you the photo before he can do it again?”
Kate simply nodded, feeling at a loss for words right then.
“I’ve seen the things these kinds of monsters do,” AJ said. “Every night when I close my eyes to go to sleep I see them again. Tonight when I try to go to sleep I’ll see what your brother looked like when I walked into his living room today.
“If I had photos of the man I suspected in John’s murder, wouldn’t you want to see them? Wouldn’t you want someone else to have helped stop John’s killer if they could have?
“You just did that for some other unsuspecting family, some other mother and father, some child who is alive right now who might otherwise soon end up in a landfill. Should I not use what I just learned and instead let other people be murdered?”
Kate swallowed before answering. “Of course not.”
“The reality is that most criminals get away with their crimes most of the time. Every day serious crimes are committed but never reported and if they are they’re rarely solved. The public usually only hears about the ones that are solved. Victims are hurt all the time—beaten, stabbed, choked, shot. They frequently don’t want to file charges or testify for fear the attacker will come after them again.
“We find bodies all the time dumped in streets or empty lots and the killer is never caught. No one knows anything. Everyone usually remains silent.
“Don’t get me wrong—we solve a lot of murders. A guy kills his wife or girlfriend, we figure it out. They leave a lot of forensic evidence. We’re pretty good at what we do and we solve a lot of really difficult cases. But you rarely hear about the stacks of cases that go nowhere.
“When we do catch one of those criminals with a long history of arrests, they’re protected by ever-increasing layers of lawyers, regulations, and procedures. Much of the public is in favor of even more restrictions on the police. More and more we’re made out to be the bad guys.”
Kate pressed her lips tight for a moment. “I don’t know if I believe that’s true—that most people think the police are the bad guys.”
AJ sat back, studying Kate’s face for a moment. “About six months back I was working a home-invasion case. Someone broke in, robbed an elderly lady, raped her, and then stabbed her to death. Her family was in shock and couldn’t understand why anyone would do such a thing to the old woman, why they didn’t just steal her money. Why did they have to hurt her or kill her?
“We’d been there all day. A couple of the uniformed officers, Hickman and Rodrigues, were changing shifts and asked me if I wanted to go with them to get a bite to eat. I’d been on my feet all day, was running out of steam, and knew I was going to be there until late that night, so I took them up on their offer. We went to a sandwich shop on a busy street not far away.
“When we walked in, the young woman behind the counter looked the uniformed officers up and down as they were looking up at the menu. Then she said, ‘You can’t come in here.’ ”
“They were puzzled and asked what she was talking about. She said, ‘Didn’t you see the sign on the door? This is a gun-free zone. You can’t come in here with guns. Especially cops.’ Before Rodrigues could say anything, Hickman tapped him on the arm and said real quiet-like, ‘I’d rather get home to my kids than file a complaint. There are plenty of other places along this street.’ Rodrigues made a sour face but they both turned to leave.
“I leaned an arm on the glass case covering the area where the young woman made the sandwiches and said to her, ‘I’d like you to give your family and coworkers a message.’ The young woman made a face and asked what I meant. I said, ‘Tell them that if a wide-eyed tweaker, all the muscles in his face twitching from a big hit of meth, ever comes in waving a gun or puts a knife to your throat, I’d like them not to call these officers and instead call me.’ ”
“Real snotty like, she asked, ‘Why, what do you do?’ I opened my jacket so she could see the badge on my belt, then leaned in a little and said, ‘I’m a homicide detective. I’m the one who will come to draw a chalk outline around your corpse.’ ”
Kate couldn’t help smiling a little. “What did she say?”
AJ flicked a hand dismissively. “Oh, you know, she called me the usual names. Hickman and Rodrigues liked it, though. Cops love good sarcasm.”
“Well, you could have gone to the shop owner or the company and I’m sure—”
“That’s not the point. Of course I could have complained and I probably could have gotten her fired. But that’s like spitting into the ocean. The point is, our culture is changing. People more and more view law and order, and view the police who are representatives of law and order, as oppressors rather than protectors.
“I see countless glares, rolled eyes, and middle fingers directed at us. Go for a ride with me in a cop car sometime and see how many times you hear people yell names or that they hope I get shot or raped.
“Those are the cracks appearing in civilization.
“We call it sympathy for the devil.
“Despite all that, we still do our jobs, because most of us want nothing more than to protect innocent people from harm. That’s our calling in life, what we want in our hearts to do.
“This kind of thing with John—with you—is outside the rules. Yet how can I ignore it and still live with myself?”
Kate stared at her hands for a while without really seeing them. “I never thought of it that way.”
“You shouldn’t have to. I don’t like showing you those photos any more than I liked showing them to John. I wish I could put a lot of the things I’ve seen out of my mind.”
“I guess that I can’t imagine the things you’ve had to see,” Kate said. “I don’t know how you can do it.”
“Because if I can stop a killer,” AJ said as she leaned in on her forearms, “then it’s all worth it. But it seems like more and more we’re losing and the bad guys are winning. Cities hav
e broken down into feudal fiefdoms where thugs and gangs control large parts of them. Their numbers grow by the day.
“There are places in Chicago I can’t go to investigate a murder without a whole platoon of backup, like the king’s sheriff riding into hostile territory with a full complement of armored knights. There are lots of innocent people in there just trying to live their lives amid chaos and ceaseless violence.
“Their lives are hell. I do my best to fight for them and take the devils out of their lives.
“I lie awake at night, going over every detail of cases I work, trying to think if I’ve missed anything. I lie awake thinking about those two boys in the landfill, their bodies buried in garbage, and about my own little boy sleeping in the next room. I want to catch killers before they can kill again.”
“And John helped you do that,” Kate said, as the enormity of it all pressed in on her.
AJ nodded. “I don’t like doing this to you any better. But despite my initial skepticism, I came to know that what John could do was not only real, it was absolutely reliable, and because of him I was able to catch killers before they could kill again.
“It’s obvious you have that same ability.”
As AJ turned to put the manila envelope with the photos back in the satchel, Kate stretched her arm across the table. “Wait. Give them back.”
AJ looked up. “Why?”
“I didn’t look through them all.”
When the detective handed them back, Kate shuffled the photo of the man with the terrible eyes to the bottom of the stack and continued looking through the remainder.
Three photos later, she was jolted by that same, sickening sensation, that same ice-cold flash of fear as she looked into the eyes of a monster. She held it off to the side, turning it over, and quickly went through the remaining photos to see if there were others. None of them looked anything but ordinary.
“This one,” she said, leaning in to hand the photos to AJ. “He’s like the others, like Herzog and that last man, the one who killed the two boys. I got a similar feeling from him.”