The Creep, page 2
“I want this stuff picked up before you go to school, Robbie.”
“I kept it in the corner,” the boy said. “It wasn’t in your way.”
“If you bring your toys in here, they’re going to get stepped on and broken.”
Robbie looked glumly at his plate.
The kitchen was fairly spacious, with built-in oven and stove. The house had been a bargain. Anxious to sell, the previous owner had accepted a ridiculous offer for the place. It was a large single-story three-bedroom home with an attached two-car garage and a large lot. In the back yard, Stephen had planted a vegetable garden from which they enjoyed fresh corn and peas and lettuce. And tomatoes. That was the best thing in the garden, the wonderful vine-ripened big red tomatoes.
“We could have the first frost any day now,” Kelsey said.
“This weekend I think we should spend a few hours getting stuff in the freezer,” Stephen replied.
Kelsey nodded, and at that moment she felt quite content. In most ways, their life was a simple one, the highlights being things like a trip to Disney World, an impromptu Sunday afternoon picnic, Hope’s first garbled baby words, Robbie’s first wobbly toddler steps.
Suddenly they were staring at the TV set—even the kids—listening to the woman who’d just come on to give a few minutes of local news. A Philadelphia policeman had been killed last night, blown away by a man with a shotgun when the cops answered a routine family disturbance call. On the screen were pictures of the scene; flashing red lights, the covered body of the dead officer, other cops milling around. “… surrendered immediately after gunning down the officer,” the newscaster was saying. “He’s scheduled to be arraigned this morning on an open charge of murder.”
The woman on the screen went on to talk about other stories, but no one in the McNeils’ kitchen was listening anymore. Kelsey knew what was coming, and she waited for it. Avoiding her eyes, Stephen looked at his plate, his hands, the wall.
“There’s an opening at the store,” he said softly, finally allowing his eyes to meet hers. He had recently been promoted to manager of the appliance department at a big store in Maple Grove’s largest shopping mall.
“This isn’t Philadelphia,” Kelsey said. “The last time a Maple Grove officer was killed was over four years ago, and that cop made a dumb mistake.”
“They have family disturbances here, too, don’t they?” Stephen asked.
“Yes, but patrol officers answer those calls. I’m a detective now.”
She glanced at the children, who were sitting very quietly and listening, then gave Stephen a look that said, Not in front of the kids, dammit!
They’d had this conversation many times before. She would explain that she made more money than a secretary or a sales clerk and that this money was what had enabled them to buy the house. Stephen would say that he was making a lot more money now, so there was no longer a need for her to continue in such a dangerous job. She would reply yes, they could scrape by now if she made less money, but who wanted to scrape? Besides, being a cop was her career; it was what she did, what she was. And as it always did, the discussion would end in an impasse, each seeing the other’s point of view, but each convinced the other was wrong.
“I’ve gotta go,” she said, glancing at her watch.
Stephen stood up, and she hurried over and kissed him, then bent down and kissed the kids. Hope looked up at her solemnly. “Be careful. Okay, Mommy?”
Picking the girl up, Kelsey hugged her tightly. “I will,” she promised.
She didn’t think Stephen would try to use the kids, to pressure her by winning them over to his point of view, but they overheard much of what was said, and they picked up the general vibrations. She had no doubt that if a family vote was taken on whether she should change jobs, the result would be three-to-one in favor of her finding a new line of work.
Rushing into the bedroom, Kelsey got her gun from the closet shelf. Although the shelf was too high for either child to reach, she kept the weapon locked in a metal box just to be on the safe side. She had never really said much to the kids about the gun, in part she supposed because she didn’t want them to think about her carrying one. One of these days she would have to sit down with them and have a heart-to-heart, let them know that touching the gun could bring down the wrath of Mommy as they had never known it before. After removing the .38 from the box, she got her purse, which was hanging from the knob of the closet door, and slipped the revolver inside.
“Bye,” she called as she hurried past the doorway to the kitchen and into the laundry room; then she was out the door and into the garage. Stephen, who left for work later than she did, would wash the breakfast dishes and drive the kids to school. They had two cars, a station wagon and a somewhat battered red Honda. She took the Honda.
Pulling away from the white frame house with the big garden in back, Kelsey drove past the homes of her neighbors, some of whom were engineers and accountants and business people. Oh, Stephen, she thought, without my job we couldn’t live like this. Why can’t I make you understand?
Then, pushing these pressures aside for a moment, Kelsey steeled herself for the pressures she would have to face when she arrived at the police station.
Like many suburban cities, Maple Grove had little identity of its own. It was a collection of homes and shopping malls and supermarkets, none of which would be there if it weren’t for Philadelphia. Once, when fewer people lived here, it had a real downtown, with a drugstore, a theater, a dry cleaner’s, and a railroad station. Kelsey had seen pictures of it, although having lived here only thirteen years, she had never seen the real thing. Today the site was marked by City Hall and the Police Station, two-story brick buildings separated by a large paved parking lot. Kelsey parked her car in the part of the lot designated for police department personnel.
The detective division was on the second floor, in a large room containing a number of those metal desks governments of all levels seemed so fond of. Some of them were gray, some brown. Three detectives stood at the coffeepot, talking.
“Morning, guys,” she said.
“Hi, Kelse,” Guidarelli said. He was a tall muscular man with thinning hair that he combed up from the sides in an unsuccessful attempt to hide his bald spot.
A young detective with thick dark hair and a pleasant smile handed her a cup of coffee. His name was Resnick.
“Thanks,” she said, taking the Styrofoam container. “Anything happening I should know about?”
There was general agreement that nothing much was happening.
“Old Prick’s in a particularly shitty mood this morning,” Hart said. He was a tall green-eyed man with reddish-blond hair so perfectly curly that Kelsey wondered whether he permed it.
The man Hart had said was in a bad mood was the lieutenant in charge of the detective division. His name was Eldon Peters, hence the nickname, Old Prick. He was an old cop, close to retirement. He should have been a deputy chief or at least a captain by now. That he wasn’t said a lot about his abilities as a cop. The detectives disliked him to a man—and woman.
Glancing toward Peters’s office in the back of the room, Resnick said, “Maybe this’ll be the week he announces his early retirement.”
“Why not?” Guidarelli said. “That magazine chose Pittsburgh as the best place in the country to live. Anything can happen.”
“Maybe we should have shown the article to Old Prick,” Hart suggested. “Maybe he’d retire there. It’s a lot cheaper moving across the state than going all the way to the South.”
“I’d rather he went south,” Guidarelli said. “Pittsburgh’s too close.”
Abruptly, almost as if he’d been listening to them talk about him, Lieutenant Peters emerged from his office, striding purposefully toward the four detectives. He was a thin man, grayish-white hair, a ruddy complexion
“We’ve got a signal one,” he said. “Guy was shot twice. Some kids taking a shortcut to school found the body a little while ago. In the woods about a hundred yards or so off Schuylkill Loop. Guidarelli, you and Resnick got it.”
“What block on Schuylkill?” Guidarelli asked.
“Sixteen-hundred. By the way, one of the kids says he knows the victim. He says the guy’s a priest.”
The detectives exchanged glances. It wasn’t that killing a clergyman was any worse than killing anyone else, but when a priest was murdered, the media usually got real interested and there could be a lot of public pressure.
“One more thing you should know,” the lieutenant said. “There was a note pinned to the victim’s chest. One word was written on it. Creep.”
“If the killer was going to leave us a message, I wish he’d signed it,” Resnick said. “Would make things a lot easier.”
He and Guidarelli gulped the last of their coffee, put down their cups, and headed for the door.
Taking her coffee with her, Kelsey went to her desk, sat down, and slipped her purse into the drawer. The odds that Peters would have assigned her to the homicide had been zero. He was of the old school. He didn’t like women, thought they had no place on a police force. Her present cases were pretty typical of what she was assigned. A child abandonment, a rape, and a contributing to the delinquency of a minor complaint against a lesbian living with a sixteen-year-old girl.
Kelsey stared sullenly at her desk top. It wasn’t that she particularly wanted to be burdened with the hassles of the priest killing. It was that detectives needed to work major cases if they were to advance in their careers. She had never been assigned to a major case. And suddenly she was angry about it.
Getting up, she strode to Peters’s office and then stopped at his open doorway. Apparently unaware of her presence, he sat at his desk, studying some papers. Abruptly her resolve faded. What was the point? The man’s mind was closed, locked, hermetically sealed.
“Yes?” he said, noticing her. “Do you want something, Mrs. McNeil?”
“I, uh, I just wanted to point out that I have a lighter caseload than Guidarelli or Resnick.”
“So?”
“So I could have handled the signal one.”
He frowned. “I assigned the people to it I wanted to assign. I know what the caseloads are, Mrs. McNeil.”
For a moment she wasn’t sure whether to drop it or plunge in. Then she plunged in. “Look, Lieutenant, women are doing just fine in police departments all around the country. All the old worries about their physical strength and their strength of personality haven’t panned out. The women do as well as the men. Why won’t you give me a chance?”
He studied her, his blue eyes filled with contempt. “I wouldn’t want my ass on the line with a woman for backup, Mrs. McNeil. Nothing you can say will ever change that.”
“That’s your privilege to feel that way. But the men in the division know me and trust me. I worked patrol with some of them. I don’t think they’d have any objection to working any kind of case with me.”
“When you’re a supervisor, Mrs. McNeil, you have to do what you think is good for your men, not what they may think is good for them.” He leaned forward, his eyes softening. “Look, Mrs. McNeil, you’re a mother with two children—”
She cut him off. “Resnick has two. Guidarelli has four.”
He slowly shook his head. “It’s not really the same, though, is it?”
“Fathers are less valuable than mothers?”
“This conversation is over, Mrs. McNeil.”
Kelsey was standing in front of his desk now, though she was uncertain at what point she had actually moved into the room. She turned to leave, and Peters said, “Mrs. McNeil.”
“Yes,” she said, again facing him.
“Let’s not discuss this again.”
She left his office.
TWO
Ronnie Bunder sat in the weedy grass behind the billboard, smoking a cigarette. He was big for a high school kid, bigger than a lot of grown men. Until this afternoon, he’d been a linebacker on the Eastridge High School football team. Until a little shit named Eddie Deere had turned him in for smoking in the locker room. Ronnie was waiting for Eddie Deere. He was going to kick Eddie’s dear little ass.
The billboard behind which Ronnie was hiding stood in a grassy area along a two-lane road on the outskirts of Maple Grove. The school bus would leave Eddie Deere and some other kids off at a path that cut through the grass to a group of houses a few hundred yards away. The path passed a few feet from the billboard, which proclaimed that McCallister Chevrolet had the best deals in the area.
Discovering that he’d smoked his cigarette down to the filter, Ronnie threw it away and lit another with the Zippo lighter his brother had sent him. Carl was in the Air Force, and the lighter had the USAF insignia on it. Ronnie thought he might join the service as soon as he was out of high school, but not the Air Force. Too many pussies in the Air Force. Ronnie would be a Marine.
If he could, he’d quit high school and join up right now. There were two reasons he couldn’t do that. He wasn’t old enough. And his father would kill him.
Football was the only thing Ronnie had ever liked about school. He liked the noise and the crowds. And he particularly enjoyed sacking the other team’s quarterback. Especially if it was some little blond pussy like Tim Daniels, who played for Maple Grove High. He’d hit Tim Daniels so hard one time that they’d had to carry him off on a stretcher. Recalling the incident made Ronnie grin.
He took a big drag on his cigarette, inhaling deeply and blowing the smoke out through his nose. Other than joining the service, the only thing he could think of that he might like to do was be a cop. Maybe he could even do something important like catching the guy who killed the priest a few days ago. He imagined himself slamming the guy against the wall, then punching him a few times before putting on the cuffs. Cops weren’t supposed to do that, he knew, but he was sure they all did. All you had to do was be careful not to leave any marks. And if you did make a bruise or two, you could always say the scumbag resisted arrest.
Then Ronnie decided that being a cop was probably a dumb idea, since his relationship with the police had never been very good. They were always hassling him about his loud mufflers or about having beer in the car or about drag racing on Old River Road. Cops were too uptight about stuff; they didn’t know how to have fun.
Taking another drag on his cigarette, Ronnie recalled what had happened this afternoon. The coach had called him in, said: “Were you smoking in the locker room this afternoon?”
“Smoking?” Ronnie had replied, suddenly feeling very uncomfortable. Having been caught once before, he could be in big trouble.
“Yeah,” the coach said. “Smoking. You want me to explain to you what it means?”
“No, sir.”
“So were you smoking in the locker room this afternoon?”
“No.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not lying.”
“You were seen doing it.”
“Who said I was smoking in there?” Ronnie demanded.
“I looked in your locker and found these,” the coach said, tossing a half-full pack of Marlboros on his desk. “You’re not allowed to have cigarettes in your locker. You know that.”
“I thought you had to have a search warrant to look into somebody’s locker,” Ronnie said, then immediately wished he hadn’t.
“So take me to the Supreme Court.”
“I won’t do it again,” Ronnie said.
“Damn right you won’t,” the coach snapped. “Because this is your second offense. You know what happens the second time you break the rules?”
“I … I get disciplined?”
“You get kicked off the team.”
Ronnie stared at the floor, said nothing. He hoped the coach was just trying to scare him, that maybe he wasn’t really going to throw him off the team.
“Clean out your locker,” the coach said, his eyes hard, unyielding.
Ronnie said nothing.
“Here,” the coach said, pushing the Marlboros at him. “Take these with you. If you’re not on the team, I don’t give a damn if you smoke or not.”
Grabbing the cigarettes, Ronnie had rushed out of the coach’s office and out of the building, where he smoked a Marlboro and cussed the coach while fighting to hold back the tears that kept welling up. And slowly it dawned on him who had told the coach that he was smoking in the locker room. Only three people had been in the room with him. Larry Collins, Tony Antonelli, and Eddie Deere. He’d been shooting the shit with Larry and Tony. Although they weren’t buddies of his or anything like that, they were okay; they knew that you didn’t go running to a teacher or the coach every time you saw somebody breaking some stupid rule. But Eddie Deere was a little shit who sucked all the teachers’ asses. Eddie Deere was the sort who would run to the coach: Oh, oh, oh! Nasty old Ronnie Bunder is smoking in the locker room!
Little faggot, Ronnie thought. Probably gave the coach a blow job while he was in there.
Hearing the sound of an approaching vehicle, Ronnie peeked out from behind the billboard, hoping to see the school bus. But the only thing in sight was a gray car. His own car was a fifteen-year-old black Pontiac with numerous primer splotches and rusted spots. Because it was so highly recognizable, he had parked it out of sight around a bend in the road.
Ronnie knew Eddie Deere would be coming this way because he’d asked Tom Jamison, who lived near Eddie and had ridden on the same school bus before Tom’s dad had bought him a car. Tom, who ran around with the guys who smoked a lot of grass, said there were rumors that Eddie Deere was a snitch, that the cops paid him for the names of kids who smoked dope.
Now that he thought about it, that was another thing Ronnie didn’t like about cops. He was really glad now that he’d dropped the notion of ever becoming one. It would be better to be a Marine and learn to blow away the commie sonsabitches. He heard another vehicle approaching and glanced around the end of the billboard. It was the school bus.
He heard its brakes squeak, its doors flap open. Then the motor roared as the massive vehicle pulled away, and as the sound of the bus grew fainter, he heard the voices of the kids who’d gotten off. Absently, he wondered whether you could say someone had debussed—like you said deplaned. Then he decided the matter was too stupid to be worthy of consideration.
