Blue Blood, page 7
part #20 of John Jordan Mystery Series
“We’re not moving.”
“Hell yes you are,” the cop says, and grabs the closest man by the arm.
As he does, all the members of the group lock arms and ease to the floor, creating a large mass of interlocking deadweight.
“If you don’t let me move them it’s gonna be a while,” Merrill says. “He’ll have to wait for enough cops to come and help him cuff and carry all of these morons to a police van."
She shakes her head. “We’ll wait.”
“It’s going to delay your signing and throw off your schedule for the rest of the day, and chances are whoever came for the signing isn’t gonna wait around for it anyway.”
“But I am,” she says. “And I’m going to do it. Even if I’m the only one in there. No way these little fuckers are stopping me from going into that library today. No way.”
15
“We’re in most places about two weeks on average,” Tana is saying. “Eventually people find out where Malia is staying and begin to come by to try to see her or to leave things for her. Not just letters either. Gifts and flowers and candy too. Clothes sometimes. Mixtapes. Homemade arts and crafts. It’s crazy how much love she gets. Hate too, I guess.”
I nod.
Tana and I are in Malia’s room about to go through the recent mail that has arrived. Rodney, who was in here when we started, has been in and out since then.
“We’ve never watched it particularly closely,” she says. “Have no idea who drops off what. Never been especially careful with any of it. I just open and read it. Pass along anything I think Malia needs to see or would like to have.”
“Except for the oatmeal cookies,” Rodney says. “They’re all for me.”
I didn’t realize he had slipped back into the room.
“Yeah, there are certain things she doesn’t want,” Tana says. “She’s good about letting us take anything we want.”
“I might get certain kinds of chocolate too,” Rodney adds.
“I take anything with coconut in it,” Tana says. “Neither of them care for it.”
“So,” I say, trying to get her back on track, “Malia receives three types of mail and—”
“Three?” she asks.
“Mail forwarded from the home office in L.A.,” I say. “Mail sent to the hotel she’s staying in. And mail hand delivered to the hotel.”
“Oh, yeah, I guess so.”
“And it all comes to the front desk and is placed in a box that you then get and go through?” I say.
“Yeah,” she says. “Depending on the hotel size and staff, sometimes they’ll have someone run it up to me, but most of the time I pick it up. And sometimes it requires me to get a luggage cart to be able to.”
Rodney retrieves some papers off Malia’s desk and without another word is gone again.
“And the three vintage postcards with the typed threats on them were hand delivered?” I ask. “Left at the front desk?”
She nods. “They were inside envelopes. There was no postage on the postcards or the envelopes. In fact, there was nothing on the envelopes at all. No name. No address. No markings of any kind.”
“So whoever delivered it would’ve had to verbally tell the desk clerk who it was for,” I say.
She seems to think about it. “Yeah, I guess they would. Unless . . . Sometimes the box is big enough to be visible behind the desk. Almost always has her name on it. It’s possible he could’ve tossed it in the box when the desk clerk was away.”
“Were the envelopes sealed?” I asked.
She nods. “They were. I’ve been thinking about them since you told me about the connections and . . .”
“Yeah?”
“Well, I can’t swear to it—like I said we haven’t been the most organized with any of it—and I wasn’t even aware of the connections until you pointed them out, but . . . I’m fairly sure that while the postcard threats in Madison and Chicago came before the attempt on Malia, the one in Atlanta came afterward.”
“Really?”
“Not sure what it means—if anything—but yeah, I’m fairly certain. Didn’t stand out or mean anything at the time, but thinking back . . . I don’t know. I think so.”
“That’s very interesting. Thanks for letting me know that. Have you been able to remember if there have been any other vintage postcards from any other towns?”
“Sorry,” she says, shaking her head, “but not that I can recall.”
“What happens to the mail after it’s opened?”
“We box it all up, and before we leave an area, we ship it back to the office,” she says. “We keep everything. There’s a woman in L.A. who sends Thank You notes to everyone and even writes letters to certain critics—especially when there’s been a misunderstanding and we can clarify our position on something. Like most things, I write a lot of those—the main body of the responses anyway—then she sticks in the addresses, salutations, the complimentary close, etc.”
“Do you think you could have someone at the office go through the old mail and look for vintage postcards?”
Her wide-eyed, opened-mouthed expression says yikes. “There’s so much of it. I can ask, but even if she’s willing . . . it’ll take a while.”
“Okay,” I say. “It will help if she can.”
She makes a note to call the office about searching through the mail. “You ready to go through today’s mail?”
I nod.
“How would you like to do it?” she asks. “I thought we could just pour it out on the extra bed and carefully rummage through it.”
“That works,” I say, handing her a pair of latex gloves, “but put these on first and be very careful with everything.”
As she snaps on the gloves, she says, “This should be almost or completely exclusively from the office. Since we’ve only been here a few days, most people won’t even know we’re here.”
“But what does it say about them if they do,” I say.
“True,” she says, and gives a little seemingly involuntary shudder.
We dump the contents of the two gray plastic mail crates onto the bed and begin to scatter it around and organize it.
“For now let’s just separate it based on the exterior of the packages only,” I say. “If you see anything obviously or particularly threatening put it to the side, but I’m most interested in seeing if anything has been mailed to or dropped off at this hotel.”
It takes us a while but eventually we find only a single piece of mail that had been hand delivered to the hotel—a plain white sealed envelope with a vintage Greetings from Panama City, Fla. postcard inside. The typed note on the postcard reads, “Florida, where people move to die. Rally all you want, you’ll never survive your brief visit to the Redneck Riviera.”
16
That night Anna and I go out on a date.
Actually, it’s a kind of parallel double date.
Malia and Young Denzel are on a date. I am providing security from a nearby table, and Anna is with me.
“Sorry our date is under these circumstances,” I say.
“Hey, I’ll take what I can get,” she says. “I’m very happy just to be here with you.”
We are sitting on the upper back deck of Uncle Ernie’s in St. Andrews overlooking the bay as a perfect late April day fades into evening.
To the west, beyond the bay and the tall buildings of Panama City Beach bordering the far side, the setting sun is slowly inching toward the gloaming of the horizon.
Uncle Ernie’s is in a late 1800s house built on the edge of the bay. It had been the home of Uncle Ernie and Jessie Morris in the early 1900s and is one of the oldest buildings in St. Andrews. And though the indoor part is air-conditioned, the back porch has the view and the music.
The advantage of providing security on the upper deck is that there is only one entrance/exit. The disadvantage is there is only one entrance/exit. If someone tries to attack Malia, I will see them coming, but if they get the jump on us, we’re trapped.
Malia has a table in the far back corner overlooking the bay. I was set up a few tables away between her and the entrance.
“Young Denzel and Malia sure seem to have hit it off,” Anna is saying.
“Yes, they do.”
“What’s his real name by the way?” she asks.
“Khyree Todd,” I say.
“Perhaps we should start calling him that,” she says.
I nod.
Though I’m having to look around continuously, scanning the area for potential threats, I spend as much time staring at Anna as possible.
“You are so beautiful,” I say.
“Thank you,” she says. “I’ll never ever get tired of the way you look at me.”
From a small stage area on the opposite side of the rooftop dining area, Jace Smith, the regular troubadour here, is performing an acoustic cover of the Statler Brothers’ “Flowers on the Wall.”
An accomplished musician and singer, and an excellent entertainer, Jace toured the world as part of Rick Springfield’s band in the mid-eighties.
“Is it difficult not to order a drink?” Anna asks.
I shake my head.
“How’s that going?” she asks.
“Haven’t made any real headway toward sobriety or recovery,” I say. “Haven’t been to a meeting or addressed it in any way other than talking to Dave. But . . . I also haven’t had a drink since we started working for Malia.”
She nods, but there is nothing in it but non-judgmental acknowledgement of what I’ve said.
I look around again and we each take another bite of our food.
I’m having the grilled grouper imperial, and she’s having the grilled mahi-mahi.
“I did have a couple of drinks just before we started working for her, but none since,” I say, “and it hasn’t been an issue.”
She nods again, again without communicating anything but transmission received.
“I’m not ready to climb up those steps again,” I say. “Not ready to go back to AA.”
“Okay,” she says. “I understand.”
“Do you?”
“I think I do,” she says. “It’s not something you can do until you’re ready to anyway, and I so get wanting a break from a program. And as you said . . . it’s not an issue at the moment.”
“Your understanding makes me want to be sober,” I say.
“That’s so sweet.”
“It’s just my reaction to your unconditional love. Let’s have a drink to celebrate.”
At first, she’s not sure if I’m serious, but starts laughing as I do.
After our main courses, Malia and Khyree come over and join us at our table for dessert.
“I love this place,” Malia says to me. “Another great choice. And the music . . . he’s so good. And so funny.”
“He takes requests,” Khyree says. “Something you want to hear before we go?”
“Well,” Malia says, “we’ve got to get him to do “Jesse’s Girl.” I mean come on.”
I step over and make the request, which Jace agrees to under one condition—that Anna and Malia sing it with him, which they gladly do.
As they finish, they receive an enthusiastic round of applause from all the patrons and wait staff.
When they return to the table laughing breathlessly, Malia says, “That’s the most fun I’ve had in—all of this, the date and everything—is the most fun I’ve had in . . . I can’t remember the last time I’ve had this much . . . Who’m I kidding? I can’t remember the last time I had fun.”
After we’ve finished our desserts and paid for our meals and tipped Jace for the great entertainment, Malia informs me in front of Khyree that she will be riding back to the hotel with him.
“But you just met him,” I say, then turning to him, “It’s nothing personal. I like you a lot, but she just met you and—”
“John,” Malia says, “I just met you too. I’ll be fine. I’m a good judge of character.”
“Everybody thinks they’re a good judge of character,” I say.
“You’ll be following us,” she says. “Besides, he’ll be coming up to my room, so if he wanted to do anything to me . . . that would be the—”
“Oh, I plan to do things to you,” Khyree says.
“But—” I begin.
“John,” Malia says again, “I wasn’t asking. I was informing.”
17
“I love hotel room sex,” Anna is saying.
Our naked bodies are still entwined on the firm bed in the dim, cold room.
“Me too,” I say. “I mean, I love sex with you anywhere, but hotel sex is amazing.”
While Malia and Young Denzel are in her room doing whatever they are doing—probably something not unlike what Anna and I had just done—Merrill is in the chair at the end of the hallway sitting sentinel.
Since Taylor is spending the night with my dad and his wife Verna and Johanna is at her mom’s, Anna gets to stay for an extended visit. She plans to leave when I go out in the hallway for the overnight shift, and Merrill comes in here to sleep.
“Can we do it again?” she asks.
“Absolutely,” I say.
“Do we have time?”
“We do,” I say. “And I’m going to need it. Give me just a few minutes and . . . we’ll commence with round two.”
“God, I’m so much happier when I’m with you,” she says.
She leans down and takes hold of the closest corner of the mass of covers at the bottom of the bed and draws them up onto us.
“I am too,” I say.
And in that moment of both happiness and the expression of that happiness, I am struck with an overwhelming and oppressive sense of guilt.
Unbidden and unexpected in this ecstatic and serene moment, images of Derek Burrell dying fill my mind.
Me running up. Him turning, aiming his gun. Me raising my weapon. Aiming. Firing. The return blast of his shotgun. Deafening. The high-pitched hum following. Him falling. His parents appearing on the floor beside him. His mother yelling, You killed him. Why? Why did you kill my kid?
A voice inside my head saying, How can you let yourself be happy after what you’ve done? What kind of man can do that to a kid and then go on like nothing happened?
“I’m sorry,” I say to Anna, “but I may have to take a rain check on a return engagement.”
“What is it?” she asks. “Are you okay?”
18
“I don’t think it was a serial,” Detective Blake Greeley is saying. “Don’t think it was random neither. That man was in that room to get that woman. Not sure rape was part of his plan either. Could’ve been. No way to know for sure, but I think he was there to slice her up.”
Blake Greeley is a detective with the Chicago Police Department.
It’s early the next morning, and I’m speaking to him by phone in the hallway a few minutes before Merrill relieves me and I get a couple hours of sleep before the day’s activities.
“What makes you say that?” I ask.
“You gonna rape a woman and you have a weapon,” he says, “whatta you use the weapon for?”
“To control her,” I say. “Subdue her if you have to.”
“Exactly,” Greeley says. “You say, Hey, see this big fuckin’ knife? Be still and let me stick my dick in you, or I’ll cut you with it. Scream or fight me or try to get away and I’ll cut you with it. He didn’t do any of that. Just started attacking her. No warning. No threat. Just an attack. A vicious one at that.”
I think about that. The guy could’ve been a frenzied rapist killer or a killer who rapes post mortem, but in general Greeley’s right. The modus operandi isn’t usual.
“And another thing,” he says, “the guy’s a fuckin’ acrobat. Breaks into her third-floor room through her balcony. Your average rapist ain’t gonna do that, am I right? If he’s gonna break in at all, it’s probably gonna be a dwelling or maybe an apartment, but whatever it is it’s gonna be on the first fuckin’ floor. He’s not gonna Dick Grayson some shit into some random room he had no idea who’s inside of.”
He’s right.
“Nah, he was there for that lady in particular,” he says. “He knew which room was hers. And he was there for her. Cut her up. Kill her. Violently rape her. I don’t know, but whatever it was, it was for her.”
“You have any leads on who it might have been?” I ask.
“I gotta guy I’m looking at,” he says. “Don’t have much on him but I like him for it. He’s one of these white nationalist survivalist dudes. He’s protested some of her rallies. He’s sent her some hate mail. He’s a loner—not part of any group. Physically, he could do it. He’s young and strong and agile. I’m watching him. Closely. If he leaves town or anything I’ll give you a heads-up, but that’s all I can do. I can’t give out a suspect’s name or anything. ’Specially since I’m the only one who thinks he’s a suspect.”
“Understood. Her assistant said he left behind a big hunting knife.”
“Biggest bastard I ever seen,” he says. “We lifted a partial from it, but no match. Must not be in the system.”
“Has the guy you like for it been in the system?”
“Nope. He ain’t. But get this . . . the partial we have . . it matches a partial a state cop in Wisconsin sent me that he lifted from a truck used in a hit and run on the same lady.”
“So the same guy attacked her in both places,” I say. “That’s helpful to know.”
“Not until we find the guy, it ain’t,” he says. “As far as anything else, we got too much, you know what I mean? I mean, it’s a hotel for Chrissakes, so we got more than a few prints, but none we can match to anybody in particular. All kinds of hairs and fibers too. Forensic nightmare.”
He pauses, and I wait.
“Tell you one thing for sure,” he says. “Guy’s good with locks. He was able to pop this one no problem. Good with locks and a fuckin’ climber.”
“Does that fit with your suspect?”
“I think so, but not everybody here is as convinced. I gotta be honest with you. Some of the other guys like this Aryan Brotherhood banger—supposedly even bragged about it inside after he was popped for somethin’ else, but . . . you know how jailhouse snitches are. I don’t know, I just get the sense that this is a quiet boy obsessed with this lady in particular, not some gangbanger doin’ it for the hell of it, gonna brag about it afterward.”
“Hell yes you are,” the cop says, and grabs the closest man by the arm.
As he does, all the members of the group lock arms and ease to the floor, creating a large mass of interlocking deadweight.
“If you don’t let me move them it’s gonna be a while,” Merrill says. “He’ll have to wait for enough cops to come and help him cuff and carry all of these morons to a police van."
She shakes her head. “We’ll wait.”
“It’s going to delay your signing and throw off your schedule for the rest of the day, and chances are whoever came for the signing isn’t gonna wait around for it anyway.”
“But I am,” she says. “And I’m going to do it. Even if I’m the only one in there. No way these little fuckers are stopping me from going into that library today. No way.”
15
“We’re in most places about two weeks on average,” Tana is saying. “Eventually people find out where Malia is staying and begin to come by to try to see her or to leave things for her. Not just letters either. Gifts and flowers and candy too. Clothes sometimes. Mixtapes. Homemade arts and crafts. It’s crazy how much love she gets. Hate too, I guess.”
I nod.
Tana and I are in Malia’s room about to go through the recent mail that has arrived. Rodney, who was in here when we started, has been in and out since then.
“We’ve never watched it particularly closely,” she says. “Have no idea who drops off what. Never been especially careful with any of it. I just open and read it. Pass along anything I think Malia needs to see or would like to have.”
“Except for the oatmeal cookies,” Rodney says. “They’re all for me.”
I didn’t realize he had slipped back into the room.
“Yeah, there are certain things she doesn’t want,” Tana says. “She’s good about letting us take anything we want.”
“I might get certain kinds of chocolate too,” Rodney adds.
“I take anything with coconut in it,” Tana says. “Neither of them care for it.”
“So,” I say, trying to get her back on track, “Malia receives three types of mail and—”
“Three?” she asks.
“Mail forwarded from the home office in L.A.,” I say. “Mail sent to the hotel she’s staying in. And mail hand delivered to the hotel.”
“Oh, yeah, I guess so.”
“And it all comes to the front desk and is placed in a box that you then get and go through?” I say.
“Yeah,” she says. “Depending on the hotel size and staff, sometimes they’ll have someone run it up to me, but most of the time I pick it up. And sometimes it requires me to get a luggage cart to be able to.”
Rodney retrieves some papers off Malia’s desk and without another word is gone again.
“And the three vintage postcards with the typed threats on them were hand delivered?” I ask. “Left at the front desk?”
She nods. “They were inside envelopes. There was no postage on the postcards or the envelopes. In fact, there was nothing on the envelopes at all. No name. No address. No markings of any kind.”
“So whoever delivered it would’ve had to verbally tell the desk clerk who it was for,” I say.
She seems to think about it. “Yeah, I guess they would. Unless . . . Sometimes the box is big enough to be visible behind the desk. Almost always has her name on it. It’s possible he could’ve tossed it in the box when the desk clerk was away.”
“Were the envelopes sealed?” I asked.
She nods. “They were. I’ve been thinking about them since you told me about the connections and . . .”
“Yeah?”
“Well, I can’t swear to it—like I said we haven’t been the most organized with any of it—and I wasn’t even aware of the connections until you pointed them out, but . . . I’m fairly sure that while the postcard threats in Madison and Chicago came before the attempt on Malia, the one in Atlanta came afterward.”
“Really?”
“Not sure what it means—if anything—but yeah, I’m fairly certain. Didn’t stand out or mean anything at the time, but thinking back . . . I don’t know. I think so.”
“That’s very interesting. Thanks for letting me know that. Have you been able to remember if there have been any other vintage postcards from any other towns?”
“Sorry,” she says, shaking her head, “but not that I can recall.”
“What happens to the mail after it’s opened?”
“We box it all up, and before we leave an area, we ship it back to the office,” she says. “We keep everything. There’s a woman in L.A. who sends Thank You notes to everyone and even writes letters to certain critics—especially when there’s been a misunderstanding and we can clarify our position on something. Like most things, I write a lot of those—the main body of the responses anyway—then she sticks in the addresses, salutations, the complimentary close, etc.”
“Do you think you could have someone at the office go through the old mail and look for vintage postcards?”
Her wide-eyed, opened-mouthed expression says yikes. “There’s so much of it. I can ask, but even if she’s willing . . . it’ll take a while.”
“Okay,” I say. “It will help if she can.”
She makes a note to call the office about searching through the mail. “You ready to go through today’s mail?”
I nod.
“How would you like to do it?” she asks. “I thought we could just pour it out on the extra bed and carefully rummage through it.”
“That works,” I say, handing her a pair of latex gloves, “but put these on first and be very careful with everything.”
As she snaps on the gloves, she says, “This should be almost or completely exclusively from the office. Since we’ve only been here a few days, most people won’t even know we’re here.”
“But what does it say about them if they do,” I say.
“True,” she says, and gives a little seemingly involuntary shudder.
We dump the contents of the two gray plastic mail crates onto the bed and begin to scatter it around and organize it.
“For now let’s just separate it based on the exterior of the packages only,” I say. “If you see anything obviously or particularly threatening put it to the side, but I’m most interested in seeing if anything has been mailed to or dropped off at this hotel.”
It takes us a while but eventually we find only a single piece of mail that had been hand delivered to the hotel—a plain white sealed envelope with a vintage Greetings from Panama City, Fla. postcard inside. The typed note on the postcard reads, “Florida, where people move to die. Rally all you want, you’ll never survive your brief visit to the Redneck Riviera.”
16
That night Anna and I go out on a date.
Actually, it’s a kind of parallel double date.
Malia and Young Denzel are on a date. I am providing security from a nearby table, and Anna is with me.
“Sorry our date is under these circumstances,” I say.
“Hey, I’ll take what I can get,” she says. “I’m very happy just to be here with you.”
We are sitting on the upper back deck of Uncle Ernie’s in St. Andrews overlooking the bay as a perfect late April day fades into evening.
To the west, beyond the bay and the tall buildings of Panama City Beach bordering the far side, the setting sun is slowly inching toward the gloaming of the horizon.
Uncle Ernie’s is in a late 1800s house built on the edge of the bay. It had been the home of Uncle Ernie and Jessie Morris in the early 1900s and is one of the oldest buildings in St. Andrews. And though the indoor part is air-conditioned, the back porch has the view and the music.
The advantage of providing security on the upper deck is that there is only one entrance/exit. The disadvantage is there is only one entrance/exit. If someone tries to attack Malia, I will see them coming, but if they get the jump on us, we’re trapped.
Malia has a table in the far back corner overlooking the bay. I was set up a few tables away between her and the entrance.
“Young Denzel and Malia sure seem to have hit it off,” Anna is saying.
“Yes, they do.”
“What’s his real name by the way?” she asks.
“Khyree Todd,” I say.
“Perhaps we should start calling him that,” she says.
I nod.
Though I’m having to look around continuously, scanning the area for potential threats, I spend as much time staring at Anna as possible.
“You are so beautiful,” I say.
“Thank you,” she says. “I’ll never ever get tired of the way you look at me.”
From a small stage area on the opposite side of the rooftop dining area, Jace Smith, the regular troubadour here, is performing an acoustic cover of the Statler Brothers’ “Flowers on the Wall.”
An accomplished musician and singer, and an excellent entertainer, Jace toured the world as part of Rick Springfield’s band in the mid-eighties.
“Is it difficult not to order a drink?” Anna asks.
I shake my head.
“How’s that going?” she asks.
“Haven’t made any real headway toward sobriety or recovery,” I say. “Haven’t been to a meeting or addressed it in any way other than talking to Dave. But . . . I also haven’t had a drink since we started working for Malia.”
She nods, but there is nothing in it but non-judgmental acknowledgement of what I’ve said.
I look around again and we each take another bite of our food.
I’m having the grilled grouper imperial, and she’s having the grilled mahi-mahi.
“I did have a couple of drinks just before we started working for her, but none since,” I say, “and it hasn’t been an issue.”
She nods again, again without communicating anything but transmission received.
“I’m not ready to climb up those steps again,” I say. “Not ready to go back to AA.”
“Okay,” she says. “I understand.”
“Do you?”
“I think I do,” she says. “It’s not something you can do until you’re ready to anyway, and I so get wanting a break from a program. And as you said . . . it’s not an issue at the moment.”
“Your understanding makes me want to be sober,” I say.
“That’s so sweet.”
“It’s just my reaction to your unconditional love. Let’s have a drink to celebrate.”
At first, she’s not sure if I’m serious, but starts laughing as I do.
After our main courses, Malia and Khyree come over and join us at our table for dessert.
“I love this place,” Malia says to me. “Another great choice. And the music . . . he’s so good. And so funny.”
“He takes requests,” Khyree says. “Something you want to hear before we go?”
“Well,” Malia says, “we’ve got to get him to do “Jesse’s Girl.” I mean come on.”
I step over and make the request, which Jace agrees to under one condition—that Anna and Malia sing it with him, which they gladly do.
As they finish, they receive an enthusiastic round of applause from all the patrons and wait staff.
When they return to the table laughing breathlessly, Malia says, “That’s the most fun I’ve had in—all of this, the date and everything—is the most fun I’ve had in . . . I can’t remember the last time I’ve had this much . . . Who’m I kidding? I can’t remember the last time I had fun.”
After we’ve finished our desserts and paid for our meals and tipped Jace for the great entertainment, Malia informs me in front of Khyree that she will be riding back to the hotel with him.
“But you just met him,” I say, then turning to him, “It’s nothing personal. I like you a lot, but she just met you and—”
“John,” Malia says, “I just met you too. I’ll be fine. I’m a good judge of character.”
“Everybody thinks they’re a good judge of character,” I say.
“You’ll be following us,” she says. “Besides, he’ll be coming up to my room, so if he wanted to do anything to me . . . that would be the—”
“Oh, I plan to do things to you,” Khyree says.
“But—” I begin.
“John,” Malia says again, “I wasn’t asking. I was informing.”
17
“I love hotel room sex,” Anna is saying.
Our naked bodies are still entwined on the firm bed in the dim, cold room.
“Me too,” I say. “I mean, I love sex with you anywhere, but hotel sex is amazing.”
While Malia and Young Denzel are in her room doing whatever they are doing—probably something not unlike what Anna and I had just done—Merrill is in the chair at the end of the hallway sitting sentinel.
Since Taylor is spending the night with my dad and his wife Verna and Johanna is at her mom’s, Anna gets to stay for an extended visit. She plans to leave when I go out in the hallway for the overnight shift, and Merrill comes in here to sleep.
“Can we do it again?” she asks.
“Absolutely,” I say.
“Do we have time?”
“We do,” I say. “And I’m going to need it. Give me just a few minutes and . . . we’ll commence with round two.”
“God, I’m so much happier when I’m with you,” she says.
She leans down and takes hold of the closest corner of the mass of covers at the bottom of the bed and draws them up onto us.
“I am too,” I say.
And in that moment of both happiness and the expression of that happiness, I am struck with an overwhelming and oppressive sense of guilt.
Unbidden and unexpected in this ecstatic and serene moment, images of Derek Burrell dying fill my mind.
Me running up. Him turning, aiming his gun. Me raising my weapon. Aiming. Firing. The return blast of his shotgun. Deafening. The high-pitched hum following. Him falling. His parents appearing on the floor beside him. His mother yelling, You killed him. Why? Why did you kill my kid?
A voice inside my head saying, How can you let yourself be happy after what you’ve done? What kind of man can do that to a kid and then go on like nothing happened?
“I’m sorry,” I say to Anna, “but I may have to take a rain check on a return engagement.”
“What is it?” she asks. “Are you okay?”
18
“I don’t think it was a serial,” Detective Blake Greeley is saying. “Don’t think it was random neither. That man was in that room to get that woman. Not sure rape was part of his plan either. Could’ve been. No way to know for sure, but I think he was there to slice her up.”
Blake Greeley is a detective with the Chicago Police Department.
It’s early the next morning, and I’m speaking to him by phone in the hallway a few minutes before Merrill relieves me and I get a couple hours of sleep before the day’s activities.
“What makes you say that?” I ask.
“You gonna rape a woman and you have a weapon,” he says, “whatta you use the weapon for?”
“To control her,” I say. “Subdue her if you have to.”
“Exactly,” Greeley says. “You say, Hey, see this big fuckin’ knife? Be still and let me stick my dick in you, or I’ll cut you with it. Scream or fight me or try to get away and I’ll cut you with it. He didn’t do any of that. Just started attacking her. No warning. No threat. Just an attack. A vicious one at that.”
I think about that. The guy could’ve been a frenzied rapist killer or a killer who rapes post mortem, but in general Greeley’s right. The modus operandi isn’t usual.
“And another thing,” he says, “the guy’s a fuckin’ acrobat. Breaks into her third-floor room through her balcony. Your average rapist ain’t gonna do that, am I right? If he’s gonna break in at all, it’s probably gonna be a dwelling or maybe an apartment, but whatever it is it’s gonna be on the first fuckin’ floor. He’s not gonna Dick Grayson some shit into some random room he had no idea who’s inside of.”
He’s right.
“Nah, he was there for that lady in particular,” he says. “He knew which room was hers. And he was there for her. Cut her up. Kill her. Violently rape her. I don’t know, but whatever it was, it was for her.”
“You have any leads on who it might have been?” I ask.
“I gotta guy I’m looking at,” he says. “Don’t have much on him but I like him for it. He’s one of these white nationalist survivalist dudes. He’s protested some of her rallies. He’s sent her some hate mail. He’s a loner—not part of any group. Physically, he could do it. He’s young and strong and agile. I’m watching him. Closely. If he leaves town or anything I’ll give you a heads-up, but that’s all I can do. I can’t give out a suspect’s name or anything. ’Specially since I’m the only one who thinks he’s a suspect.”
“Understood. Her assistant said he left behind a big hunting knife.”
“Biggest bastard I ever seen,” he says. “We lifted a partial from it, but no match. Must not be in the system.”
“Has the guy you like for it been in the system?”
“Nope. He ain’t. But get this . . . the partial we have . . it matches a partial a state cop in Wisconsin sent me that he lifted from a truck used in a hit and run on the same lady.”
“So the same guy attacked her in both places,” I say. “That’s helpful to know.”
“Not until we find the guy, it ain’t,” he says. “As far as anything else, we got too much, you know what I mean? I mean, it’s a hotel for Chrissakes, so we got more than a few prints, but none we can match to anybody in particular. All kinds of hairs and fibers too. Forensic nightmare.”
He pauses, and I wait.
“Tell you one thing for sure,” he says. “Guy’s good with locks. He was able to pop this one no problem. Good with locks and a fuckin’ climber.”
“Does that fit with your suspect?”
“I think so, but not everybody here is as convinced. I gotta be honest with you. Some of the other guys like this Aryan Brotherhood banger—supposedly even bragged about it inside after he was popped for somethin’ else, but . . . you know how jailhouse snitches are. I don’t know, I just get the sense that this is a quiet boy obsessed with this lady in particular, not some gangbanger doin’ it for the hell of it, gonna brag about it afterward.”
