Cruel Justice

9

BEN WALKED BRISKLY THROUGH the downtown office of the Tulsa Police Department Central Division and turned the corner around the gray office partition bearing the nameplate of LT. M. MORELLI, HOMICIDE. He was pleased to find the detective was in.

“How goes it, shamus?”

Mike looked up from his desk. A toothpick was cocked in the side of his mouth. “Surviving. Yourself?”

“I had a morning like you wouldn’t—” Ben stopped short. “Wait a minute. Something’s different.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Something’s not right.” Ben snapped his fingers. “Your pipe! Where is it?”

Mike shifted the toothpick to the other side of his mouth. “In my safe. Locked.”

“And you’re sucking on a sliver of wood?” The light dawned in Ben’s eyes. “You’re trying to quit.”

“Yeah, well, all my friends were doing it.”

“Is it hard? I always assumed that tobacco inhalation was just part of your macho two-fisted facade.”

“That, plus a major nicotine addiction.”

“So you’re having trouble quitting?”

Mike grunted. “Gained ten pounds last week. That’s when I switched to toothpicks.”

“Well, I’m proud of you, pal.” He laughed. “One of the boys at the desk told me you were kind of grumpy today. This explains why.”

“This has nothing to do with it. Got a sicko chickenhawk who’s costing me a lot of sleep.”

“A what?”

“Chickenhawk. A pedophile. And, in this case, a pornographer.”

Ben’s face crinkled. “Do I want to hear about this?”

“Probably not. This perverted bastard has already snatched four little boys and he’s still at large, like a nightmare haunting every child in the city. You wouldn’t believe the disgusting things he does to these kids. It’d tear your heart out. This goes way beyond your run-of-the-mill pedophilia. We’re talking about a major-league pervert with a taste for violence. And torture.”

“Do you have a description?”

“Not yet. None of the kids was alive after this creep was done with them.”

Ben’s throat suddenly felt dry. “How does he … get them?”

“We don’t know how he picks his victims, but once he does, he grabs them, molests them, and makes them pose for dirty pictures. We found some photos in some homegrown magazines.”

Mike opened his top desk drawer, then thought better of it. “Never mind. They’d make you sick. I guarantee it.”

“Can’t you go after the publishers?”

“Not anymore. Pornography’s become a cottage industry. Anyone with a computer and a desktop publishing program, or even a typewriter and a photocopier, can print pornographic magazines. They distribute the stuff through the mail, or fax machines. Even computer bulletin boards. Makes it damn near impossible to trace.”

“How can you be sure the dirty pictures are connected to the child molestation and murders?”

“I’m sure. Every single kid snatched to date has ended up in a magazine spread. That can’t be a coincidence. And even if it was, we’d still hunt these kiddie-porn creeps. The line between child-porn fan and child molester is thin and quickly crossed. Show me a guy who’s obsessed with these pictures, and I’ll show you a guy who’s probably going to act out his dreams someday with some poor little kid. He may be fantasizing, working up his courage, but mark my words, it will happen. These pictures feed it. They whet the appetite. They make it impossible to put these ideas out of their sick little minds.”

Mike pressed a hand against his forehead. “This slime killed his first three playthings. His last victim ran out into the street and got creamed by a car on Memorial. We looked all around, but never found the pervert. We don’t know where the kid was running from. We think he might’ve jumped out of a car while it was stopped at a light. Probably trying to escape.” Mike shook his head. “He’s been in a deep coma since the accident. He’s not expected to—” Mike looked up suddenly.

Ben gripped Mike’s shoulder. “Hang in there, pal.”

Mike’s face twisted. “Yeah.”

“Do you have any leads?”

“Not to speak of. The last boy was wearing a red baseball cap when he disappeared. Wasn’t wearing it when the car hit him. What I wouldn’t give to find that cap in the trunk of some schmuck’s car.” He bit down on his toothpick. “And the odds of that are probably only about a hundred million to one.”

“I’m sure you’ll catch him in time,” Ben said. “No one works harder than you.”

“Yeah. But I want to get him before he ruins another little kid’s life. Or ends it.” He slapped the top of his desk. “But enough about my problems. How’s my favorite piano player turned pettifogger?”

“Managing. As best I can, under the circumstances.”

Ben had known Mike since their college days at the University of Oklahoma. They had been the best of friends—even roommates one year. In those days they played music gigs:—Ben on piano, Mike on guitar and vocals—in some of the Norman beer joints and pizza parlors. Everything was fine—until Mike fell in love with Julia, Ben’s younger sister.

Once married, Mike canceled his plans for graduate school and began concocting one plan after another for earning enough money to accommodate Julia in the manner to which she had become accustomed. It didn’t work. The marriage disintegrated shortly after Mike graduated from the police academy. It all culminated in a nasty, protracted divorce—with Ben caught in the middle.

“I’ve been asked to take over the Leeman Hayes case,” Ben explained.

Mike winced. “Boy, you know how to pick ’em, don’t you? You must’ve been sitting around thinking: What could possibly be grimmer than representing a white supremacist? I know! The Leeman Hayes trial!”

“So you remember the case?”

Mike’s eyes became hooded. “That, my friend, is a killing I will never forget. Never. It happened one of my first nights on patrol. First murder victim I ever saw.”

“Really? You were the investigating officer?”

“No. I was the third man on the scene. Still—” His voice dropped. “If you had seen that victim, seen her blood-soaked body skewered up—” He looked away. “Well, it’s a sight you’d never forget, I can guarantee you that. God knows I never have.”

“Sounds like this case really left its mark.”

“Changed my life, if you want to know the truth. That was the night I decided I wanted to work homicides.”

“So you could prevent more horrible murders like that?”

“No. I knew murder would always be with us. I wanted to be in a position to guarantee the inhuman scum who did these hideous things didn’t go unpunished.” Mike gradually raised his head. “Lots of luck, pal. You’re looking at a case I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.”

“Who’s handling it at the district attorney’s office?”

“Last I heard Myrna Adams was prosecuting.”

Ben heaved a sigh of relief. “I was afraid Bullock might get it.”

Mike switched his toothpick to the other side of his mouth. “I heard about your little run-in with him this morning.”

“Already?”

“Gossip travels fast. After all, Ben, we’re government employees. We don’t do any real work.”

“Right. So what evidence does the state have?”

“Don’t you think you should ask Myrna?”

“I will. And I know what she’ll tell me, too. As little as possible.”

Mike stood up and stretched. “Well, I suppose I could help a bit. After all, the state is duty bound to come forth with exculpatory evidence.”

“That’s what the books say. But I usually have to file a ton of motions to get anything, and frankly, I don’t have time for that rigmarole.”

Mike ran his finger through his curly black hair. “Fair enough. Do you know how this crime was committed?”

“I know the victim was a woman. And—she was killed at a country club?”

“Correct. Utica Greens. Near the golf course, in the caddyshack.”

“And the victim was …?”

“Maria Escondita Alvarez.”

“Where was she from?”

“Peru. About six months before she had applied for a visa to the United States. I guess red tape in Peru is even thicker than it is here. She didn’t get it until about a week before the murder. Then she flew to Tulsa.”

“But why?”

“We never found out. We investigated, both here and in Peru, but it all came a cropper. She had no family to speak of, and few friends. She spent almost every cent she had just to get here. And as soon as she did, she got axed.”

“Speculation?”

“You’re asking me to guess?”

Ben nodded.

“Well, a lot of illegal drugs come to the United States via the Peru connection. Especially cocaine. She might’ve been involved. They say the average life span of a drug trafficker after he—or she—starts running drugs is less than ten years. God knows those country-club types are probably the only ones who can afford to be addicted to cocaine anymore.”

“How was she killed?”

Mike stared at him. “You really don’t know anything about this case, do you? You haven’t heard?”

“Not the details.”

“I keep forgetting you’ve only lived in Tulsa a few years. Anyone who was around ten years ago would remember. Maria got beat over the head with a golf club. A nine iron, as I recall.”

Ben’s eyebrows rose. “And that killed her?”

“No. She died when the broken shaft was driven through her neck.”

Ben’s hand reached tentatively for the nearest chair.

“Nailed her to the wall,” Mike continued. “Like she’d been crucified in some grisly satanic ritual. She was still hanging upright—clothes torn, blood splashed all over her sagging body—when I arrived. The location and the weapon suggested that the crime wasn’t premeditated. A spur-of-the-moment murder by an angry assailant with a deadly violent temper.”

The words in Leeman’s psychiatric report came back unbidden to Ben. A sudden, explosive temper. Hmm.

How long can you go on representing the scum of the earth?

“Why did the police arrest Leeman Hayes?” Ben asked.

“Leeman worked as a caddy at the country club. He’d been there for a couple of months. He wasn’t the most brilliant caddy in the world—mentally retarded, you know—but by all accounts, he tried hard and managed the essentials. Everyone liked him. Until he turned up at the scene of the crime, in the middle of the night, and they found his fingerprints all over the murder victim. And the murder weapon.”

“But if he was a caddy—”

“That wouldn’t explain why he was there after midnight.”

“But surely the fingerprints—”

“Granted, Leeman might have held the club before the murder occurred. But if so, where were the murderer’s prints? If he had wiped the club clean, he would’ve wiped away Leeman’s prints as well. And why would his prints be all over the victim? No, it just doesn’t make sense. And there was more evidence—I forget the details. I think they found some of the woman’s possessions in Leeman’s locker.”

“So that’s the prosecution’s case?”

“That—plus the confession.”

Ben felt a sudden heaviness on his shoulders. “He confessed?”

“In a manner of speaking. We brought him in for questioning, but he wasn’t capable of answering the questions. Not verbally, anyway. But then one of the officers asked him to show us what happened. He did that—pantomimed the whole scene.”

“And?”

“You can see for yourself. It’s on videotape—one of the first our department ever made. But I can tell you what you’ll see. You’ll see a reenactment of Leeman Hayes clubbing Maria Alvarez to death.”

Ben decided to get that tape as soon as possible. “Thanks for the inside scoop, Mike. I won’t forget it.”

“No problem. Put in a good word for me next time you see your sis.”

Ben raised a finger. “Speaking of whom—” He briefly told Mike what had happened that morning in his office.

Mike listened to Ben with astonishment. “I can’t believe it!”

“Yeah. Hard to believe she’d leave her baby behind like that.”

“Oh, I can believe that,” Mike replied. “That part is pure Julia. I just can’t believe she’d leave him with you.”

Ben lowered his chin. “And what, may I ask, is wrong with me?”

Mike slapped him reassuringly on the shoulder. “Oh, you’re nice enough, in your own stiff, mildly neurotic way. But you’re hardly what I’d call a family man.”

“I resent that.”

“Come on, Ben. You’ve never gotten along with anyone in your family. Certainly not your sister. And when was the last time you visited your mother? Most guys would trip over themselves kissing up to a mommy with as much moolah as yours. But you see her, what? Maybe once a year. If there’s no snow on the turnpike on Christmas Day.”

“My mother and I have an understanding.”

“And what about your dad? You upset him so badly he wrote you right out of his will!”

All traces of good humor disappeared from Ben’s face. “You really don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, Mike.”

Mike held his hands out. “Did I hit a sensitive spot? Sorry, chum. I was just attempting to explain my mystification that Julia would choose you to be her indentured baby-sitter when you’ve alienated every member of your family. Is there some family member I’ve omitted?”

Well, Ben thought, there was someone I thought of like a father, but that was hardly worth bringing up now. I’m so disappointed, Ben. How could you let this happen to you?

“Julia will be back soon,” Ben said. “I’m sure she will. I bet she’ll be back before nightfall.”

“You’re deluding yourself, kemo sabe.”

Ben fidgeted with his briefcase. “I remember you told me you saw Julia not too long ago. Did she seem … distraught? Stressed out?”

Mike shrugged. “No more so than usual. But that was over a year ago. Becoming a mother changes women.”

“If you say so.” Ben started to leave, then stopped. “If worse comes to worst, I don’t suppose you’d care to do some baby-sitting?”

“For my ex-wife’s new baby?” Mike’s look of amazement slowly faded into a soft smile. “There was a time when I would’ve done anything in the world for Julia. Anything. If she just would’ve stayed with me one more night.”

He took a deep breath, then slowly released it. “Sure thing, pal. I can help look after the little booger. Just tell me when to show up. I’ll bring the pizza and beer.”