Angel of Death

THIRTEEN

The news got out that the cop who had caught the killer was now sitting beside him in the Racine County Jail, holding his hand while a liberal professor and the public defender appointed by activist judges took part in a seance. They called to angels and to demons to testify in court to free the killer – or so said an unnamed guard. Donna’s phone began to ring; her answering machine filled with death threats. She changed her number to unlisted. Threatening mail arrived, and Donna opened only bills.

Except when a small square package showed up in her mailbox. It was wrapped in brown paper, and its return address simply read, “From a Friend.”

“There’s something about this one,” said Donna, holding it in her hand as she walked into her kitchen.

“Feels – soft.” She got a knife from the drawer and gingerly sliced into the paper. Then she shone a flashlight into the slit. Inside lay something that looked like an old wallet.

No apparent booby traps, no anthrax…

Donna cautiously cut two more slits and lifted the paper away.

Inside was a billfold, worn and brown. She opened it and found an Indiana driver’s license with a very familiar face.

“Mother of God – Azra.”

It was more than a driver’s license. The whole thing was stuffed with ID – Social Security, library cards, video rental clubs, grocery check cards, blood donor cards, grocery receipts, thirty-eight dollars in tens, fives, and ones, and a short shopping list.

“William B. Dance, male, six foot one, one hundred eighty-five pounds, black hair, gray eyes, no sight restriction, Social Security number…”

Donna went into her home office and scooted her chair up to her computer. A few bookmarks, a few passwords, and she was into the Burlington Police Intranet. She began by typing in the driver’s license number. His name is William Dance. The little boy with the bike was named William Dance. In moments, the information began scrolling up:

No record of parking citation.

No record of traffic citation.

No record of misdemeanor arrest.

No record of felony arrest.

She picked up the phone and flipped through her Rolodex. Her fingers stopped on the address and phone number of Jason Knight, IRS inspector. She dialed.

“Extension five forty-seven. Thank you. Hi, Jason. This is Detective Leland from Burlington. Right, the Pizza Hut arson case. Yeah. Oh, fine, how about you?

Yeah, I’ve got a Social Security number I need a check on. Sure. All right? You’ve got it. Okay.” She read him the number, and he repeated it back. “Yeah, that’s it. Okay, I’ll wait.” She leaned back in her chair. It creaked wearily, an extension of her tired body.

“You got it? Good. None whatsoever? This guy is – let’s see, the license says he’s thirty-five. You sure you’ve got nothing? How could he have a Social Security number and never file taxes? Yeah, I’ll wait.” She fiddled with a pen on the desk before her.

“MIA? From what war? Desert Storm? That would have made him… yes. A Marine? Are you sure? That was over fifteen years ago, which would have made him twenty. July 22, 1992 is when he disappeared? All right.

“Well, Jason, if you dig up anything else, let me – oh, wait, have you got his serial number and unit? Yeah. Thanks. Got it. Good-bye. Yeah, the arson for profit scheme was more fun. Sure. I’ll see you. Bye.”

Leland hung up the phone and stared at the ceiling. A veteran, missing in action for fifteen years. A POW. Scorpions and Marines with waterboarding and wires and fists and wounds coming faster than saints…

Oh, Azra. No wonder you forgot everything. No wonder you became a monster.

She punched another number into the phone.

“Hello, this is Detective Leland of the Burlington Police Department. Burlington, Wisconsin. I’m investigating a multiple – that is, I’m trying to find the owner of a lost wallet, and I need some information about a Marine that served during Desert Storm. Yes, the National Personnel Records Center? And the number? Who should I ask to speak to? Thanks. Yeah. I need all the luck I can get.”

She worked past dinnertime and into the night. There was no window in her home office, no skylight to look into and see the speckled blackness of a Wisconsin sky. Only her grandfather’s old wooden cuckoo clock told her how late it was. She had ignored the ten chirps, the eleven, and the twelve. But when there came only one, and then only two, the creeping morning could not be denied.

How many cups of coffee? The stuff had kept her awake but had leant a jittery fear to the process. Most of her work had been the web equivalent of paperwork – online indexes, pentagon records, requests for information, directory searches, postings to recruiters and schools, even a conversation with the military liaison at the American Embassy in Baghdad. Most of the queries came up with no immediate aid, though the Veterans Administration had found Azra on one of their newer lists of “Missing in Action and Presumed Dead.” That list had indicated no known family, and that he’d been recruited out of the enlistment office in Alexandria, Virginia. There, she found a 1991 file that included a grainy photo of a young, thin, dark-haired recruit, and an enrollment record that identified him as William B. Dance.

The supposed nineteen-year-old had had no Social Security number when he enrolled, but the file indicated it had been applied for. His place of residence was listed as Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In the space for parents’ names was the phrase “Ward of State.” The enlisting officer’s comments included the notes that,

“William is a level-headed and solid-seeming young man. He should do well in combat.”

“If he weren’t delusional,” Leland told herself grimly. He would be listed as MIA the very next year. The file also indicated he had an interest in covert operations, including strike-force tactics and disguise and camouflage maneuvers. “He says he would like to be a spy.”

A spy for the Marines.

But how could he have gotten from MIA in 1992 to killing in Burlington in 2008?

The phone rang so loudly she leapt up from her seat. Her heart hammered. “Hello? This is she. What? Another one? Mother of God. Yeah, yeah, I’m on my way.”

It was no joy to kill you, my friend, but it was your time.

Yes, you slept peacefully. You might not ever have woken up enough to know what I was doing. Or, perhaps you thought I was raping you and decided to hold still until you realized you were strangling. I should have known you would bite down on my thumb when I held the penny in your throat. Of course, I wouldn’t have guessed you could bite it clear off.

Now that I think of it, it was probably the thumb more than the penny that suffocated you. I could see the bone and sinew jammed in your teeth. You tried to spit the thumb out, but it was stuck. You tried to pry it out, but I was sitting on your stomach by that time. My own agony was terrible. I can’t imagine what you were going through, to look up and see me sitting there on top of you, holding the stump where my thumb used to be and waiting for you to suffocate on the penny and the thumb, both.

You probably thought me mad. Or, you thought I did this so you couldn’t testify against me. In truth, I did it because it was your time, and as an embezzler, you deserved to die at the hand of a confidante, choking on a penny, victim of a crime that was anything but calculating and economic. In fact, I suspected even then, as my blood dribbled from your mouth and my hand, that this had not been a test from God. It had been a trap. I’d been proven guilty. At last, the prosecution would have a crime that only I could have committed.

I waited for five minutes after you stopped moving, even felt for a pulse with that thumbless hand of mine.

“I’m sorry, Derek. I hope I’ve given you a good end.”

I caressed one of your bloated cheeks, incidentally smearing the blood there.

Enough of this self-indulgence.

I stood and went to the adjoining cell. They lay asleep, black bundles. I prodded Lawrence. “Hey, wake up. I need you to call a guard. I’ve just killed Billings.”

SON OF SAMAEL SLAYS CELL MATE

AP International

Photo and Story by Blake Gaines

The accused killer of four in Burlington, Wis., has struck again, police say.

Derek Billings, the cell mate of the so-called Son of Samael, was found dead late last evening in the Racine County Jail. The cause of death is yet to be determined. Sources in the corrections department say the man seemed to have strangled on the Son of Samael’s thumb. The thumb had been bitten off in a fight. It was removed from the man’s throat for surgical reconstruction. Billings was awaiting trial on a charge of embezzling over forty million dollars from his company, Halliburton. Other prisoners on the cell block said Billings and the Son of Samael seemed to be “friends.”

Joseph Lawrence, in the adjacent cell, said the Son of Samael “woke me up and said, ‘Call a guard. I just killed Billings.’” He said he was surprised because the cell mates had been “thicker than thieves.”

The Son of Samael will be moved to solitary confinement. He is undergoing reconstructive surgery at St Mary of Mercy. An intern who asked not to be identified said the delicate and time-consuming surgery would cost taxpayers “in excess of forty thousand dollars.” He went on to say, “In some countries, they cut off a thief’s hand. In America, a murderer gets it sewn back on.”