Cruel Justice

67

LIEUTENANT MIKE MORELLI PLODDED down the pavement of Third and Nowheresville. He was following the route outlined on his map, following a trail of ever-widening concentric, circles radiating from Tulsa International. He was hot and sweaty, his feet hurt, and he had blisters on both big toes. He told himself to ignore his discomfort. He wasn’t going to stop until he found what he was looking for.

Mike might have been more willing to rest if a superior had imposed this impossible mission upon him, but since he’d thrust it upon himself, and since he knew it was only a matter of time until Blackwell brought it to an end, he couldn’t give up. He did feel bad about dumping Abie on Christina, especially when she already had Julia and what’s-his-face’s baby to worry about. Abie was pretty cute, even if he was a kid. It was hard to get too grumpy with someone who worshiped everything about you, including the rumpled coat you normally hid deep inside of.

He had an obligation to give Abie some hope of long-term safety. And that hope could come about only if the man who had kidnapped him was caught. Or dead.

Mike thought he was getting closer. He couldn’t explain why, but that didn’t particularly trouble him. The longer he served on the force, the more he realized that data was not as important to a police officer as instinct. Maybe he was deluding himself; maybe he subconsciously assumed he must be getting close because his feet felt as if he had crisscrossed the whole city three times over. Then again, maybe his subconscious was zeroing in on something his conscious mind hadn’t discovered yet. Whatever. He thought he was getting close.

Mike turned a corner too quickly and brushed shoulders with a burly teenage boy in a jeans jacket with the sleeves cut out. He was holding a can of spray paint.

“Excuse me,” Mike said.

The boy whipped around, then growled in a low voice. Yes, growled.

Mike checked the emblem sewn on the back of his jacket. A snake curled around a handgun. He was a Cobra.

Mike hated the Cobras. They pushed drugs. And they killed kids.

And now this punk had the gall to growl at him. It would have given Mike great pleasure to call that an assault and give me clown a swift punch in the chops (in self-defense, of course), but for once, better judgment prevailed. Business before pleasure. Child molesters first; thugs second.

He let the Cobra pass.

Mike resumed walking. A few seconds later he turned the corner and noticed the stop sign:

Obviously Cobra handwork. Now Mike wished he had stopped the creep; he was marking his territory and declaring his deadly intentions. Mike had learned that gang graffiti was neither random nor meaningless. You just had to know how to read it. The big letters at the top, the placa, was the territorial marker. The CB was the Cobra’s marker, KING was the kid’s gang name; DK meant Demons Killer, BOBA was undoubtedly the name of the poor Demon who had been targeted. And for what?

No question. 187 was the penal-code number for homicide.

After the hit, King would draw a cloud around Boba’s name, or perhaps add the letters R.I.P.

Mike had been right. The Cobras were on the move, planning hits to undermine the Demons’ rival drug-distributing network. If something didn’t happen soon, it would be too late for Boba. And a lot of other kids as well.

Mike punched the LED button on his digital watch and checked the time. He’d been walking for over six hours. Add that to the seven hours he’d been clocking each night for the last three nights and … well, it was probably best not to dwell on it. He’d been at it for a while. And so far all he had was … sore feet and two major blisters on his toes.

And a chance to get reacquainted with some of the worst parts of north Tulsa. What a panoramic display, Mike thought, scanning the streets surrounding him. Urban blight. Poverty. Crime. Human misery. All his favorite scenery. After all, why go to the beach when you can go to—oh, say, Dino’s Hubcap Emporium, or the Wizard’s Smoke Shop, or the crumbling remains of the ABC Taxicab Company, or—

Wait a minute. Some half-remembered detail was nagging at him. What?

The taxicab company. That was it.

Without looking, Mike plunged off the sidewalk and crossed the street. The front of the stone building was crumbling; the faded paint lettering identifying it as the ABC Taxicab Company was barely visible. The door was bolted and the windows were blocked. It didn’t look as if ABC had been in business for years.

Mike peered down an alley beside the building. It was dark, even though the sun was blazing overhead. The alley was littered with trash and debris. Mike found a huge pile of broken booze bottles stacked against one wall, along with spoiled food and human waste.

He spotted a burlap bag that looked as if it were someone’s bedtime blanket. A homeless person must be using the alley for shelter.

Holding his breath, Mike trudged onward. About halfway down the side of the building, he found the hole. A large hole, as big as a door, in the side wall.

And then we walked through the wall.

Mike looked inside.

There was no movement, no sign of life. Of course there wasn’t, he told himself. What were you expecting? Shake out of it. He was not in danger here. He was just poking around.

Mike stepped through the hole. There were no signs of life, true enough, but there were many taxicabs. Old yellow cabs, most on blocks, the tires having long since been lifted.

Mike looked under one of the hoods. Nothing. Anything of value must’ve long since been removed. Still, there was something about this place. …

Mike snapped his fingers. He was looking at this all wrong. He was thinking like an adult, viewing it as an adult would. Abie was only ten; he had an entirely different perspective on the world.

Mike crouched down and surveyed the room from a height of, oh, say, four feet. The view was very different. You didn’t focus on the cars, because you weren’t looking down on them. All you saw were the doors.

Yellow doors. With numbers.

Mike raced through the building: 54-28X. 54-76X. 64-99C. The numbers flew past.

Abie had been here.

Mike checked the opposite wall. Sure enough, there was a hole in it, too, even larger than the other one. They must’ve passed through this building as a shortcut.

Mike ran through the second hole. His excitement was mounting. If there had been any doubt before, it was gone now. He was close.

The hole led to the back end of the block. On the opposite side, Mike spotted a row of low-income houses.

Mike tried to concentrate. Why would it make sense to go through that building?

He checked his map. The deserted building in Rockville where he found Abie was due north from his current position. Someone could stay away from the major streets and still get there from here in half an hour easily. But they wouldn’t cut through this building unless they were coming from …

Directly south, Mike spotted the backyard of a white plasterboard home. The yard was barely big enough for the clothesline strung across it. Extending out from the house on the upper level, though, Mike saw some sort of … attic? No.

Extra room. With a separate set of stairs.

That was it. That’s why the police weren’t finding him. They were looking for apartments. There was probably no way to tell from the front of that house that it had an extra room. The police wouldn’t even stop.

Mike jumped over the chain-link fence. He was happy to find there was no dog. The staircase allowed the tenant to come and go without communicating with the people who lived in the main house. Perfect for a kiddie pervert. He could go about his business … well, unmolested.

Complications would arise only when he was bringing a boy home and thought there was a possibility of some … noise. That was undoubtedly when he used the abandoned building in Rockville. He would walk there to prevent anyone from spotting his car. And once inside, the boy could scream and cry as loud as he was able. …

No one would hear him.

Mike checked the garden by the staircase. Eureka!

Statues of two dwarfs. Or trolls, if you prefer.

Mike ran up the stairs to the private room. He pressed his ear against the door. At first, he didn’t hear anything. Then he did. Someone was talking in a low voice, barely audible.

Mike reached inside his coat and withdrew his Bren Ten automatic. By all rights, he should get a search warrant, then come back and knock politely

Aw, screw it. For all he knew, there was another exit. The pervert could get away, and he would never come back.

Sorry, no warning today. Mike knew he was violating about thirteen different judicial decisions, but this time he just wasn’t taking any chances. What had the Supreme Court done for him lately, anyway?

Mike took a running leap and threw himself against the door. It splintered like dried twigs. He crashed down inside the room, then rolled. He sprang to his feet, gun clutched in both hands.

“Freeze!”

He looked left, then right. He whirled around.

Nothing.

There was another room. A kitchenette. Slowly, gun still poised, Mike stepped through the passageway. …

Still nothing. There was no one else here. There was no other way out, either. But he was sure he had heard voices. Was he totally hallucinating?

When Mike returned to the front room, he saw it. The radio.

The son of a bitch had left the radio on.

Mike checked it out. It was an alarm radio. The alarm probably started while the boarder wasn’t here to turn it off.

Where was he?

Mike fumbled with the radio, trying to shut off the noise. He punched all the buttons. Nothing worked. Finally, in frustration, Mike picked it up and threw it across the room.

That worked. And now, in addition to breaking and entering, he could add property damage to his list of crimes.

Mike took a long slow breath. He really needed to get a grip. He was letting this search get to him, letting this case get to him. It was just so horrible. Little boys. Total innocents. They don’t know what’s going on. They can’t protect themselves. They’re helpless. And alone. How did that line by Olive Schreiner go? “The barb in the arrow of childhood suffering is this: its intense loneliness, its intense ignorance.”

He searched the outer room and the bathroom, but found nothing of interest. Then he tried the bedroom.

The room was dark. The curtains were drawn, and the overhead light didn’t work. Consequently, he almost missed it at first. Then, when his eyes made contact, he gasped.

He had read about this, of course. He had read that pedophiles loved to look at pictures. That they kept souvenirs. Abie had even mentioned that the creep had pictures. But Mike had no idea.

Wallpaper could not have covered the wall more efficiently. From floor to ceiling, the wall was layered with pictures of little boys.

They didn’t vary much. All were in the eight-to-ten range. All were dark-haired, dark-eyed, pretty. Some of the pictures had obviously been torn out of catalogs—underwear ads and such.

But most of them were photographs. Slick, professional work. Big smiles, cheesy grins. Bland backdrops.

They were school photos, most of them, anyway. Did the creep know the photographer—or was he the photographer?

Mike had to find out. He began jerking drawers out of the desk in the bedroom. When he drew open the fourth drawer, photos slid out from the back.

Mike picked them up, then suddenly felt as if someone had squeezed his heart in their fist. It was not until some minutes later that he realized he was weeping.

Mike recognized the boys at once. They were the victims. Andy Harden. Jimmy Whalen. The Connell boy.

These were Polaroids, and they had been taken at that goddamned building in Rockville where the pervert kept his mattress. The boys were naked, or stripped down to their underwear. They had been arranged in a variety of sickeningly obscene poses. But that wasn’t the worst of it.

All the photos except Mickey Connell’s were smeared with blood. Mike knew with instant certainty that the blood was the blood of each child. Smeared on by his killer.

That was why the Connell boy’s didn’t have any. The car had gotten him before the killer could.

Mike reached back into the drawer. Pieces of a photo were strewn about. Someone had ripped a picture into shreds.

Mike didn’t have to reassemble the pieces to identify the subject. It was Abie.

Mike slammed the drawer shut and began tearing the room apart. He had to find something. Something, anything, damn it! There was no way in hell that Chris Bentley lived in this dive. It was someone else. Someone else!

He wiped his eyes and tried to think clearly. He had to focus. This man was out there, damn it! And his plan of action was clear; the torn photo left no doubt about that. Mike had to figure out who this sick bastard was before he got to Abie.

Like he had the others. The little boys in the Polaroid parade.

Smeared with blood.

Mike spent the next half hour searching every nook and cranny. While groping about in the bedroom closet, he accidentally dislodged a shoe box. When it tumbled to the floor, the lid fell off and out spilled two pairs of socks, two rolls of pennies, and two keys on a chain.

Mike clutched the keys in his hands. A piece of tape on one key read: C-D-Y-S-K.

The key chain bore a regal lion pennant. And the lettering read: UTICA GREENS COUNTRY CLUB.

There was a connection.

Mike shoved the keys into his pocket and raced out the door. Even if his big toes protested, he would run all the way back to his car. From there, he could call Tomlinson and tell him to get a warrant. With a warrant, Tomlinson could cover up Mike’s illegal search and bring in a proper crime-scene team. Surely they could find more identifying clues.

If not, they could just wait till the chickenhawk came home. But it was always possible he wouldn’t. It was possible he would realize his lair had been discovered.

It was possible he already had.

In the meantime Mike was heading to the county courthouse. He remembered Ben saying something about the importance of the caddyshack keys, but he couldn’t recall the details. Ben would know what it meant. Who it was.

That was what Mike wanted to know, what he had to know.

Who it was they were looking for. He had to know that, before it was too late.

Before Abie became just another bloody photograph.