Rusty Nail

CHAPTER 31

MS. PEDERSEN WAS painfully clear on prisoners’ rights to privacy.

“They have none. They’re prisoners.”

So Lorna Hunt Ellison stayed in isolation, and we raided her footlocker. We found some stinky clothes, a collection of empty candy wrappers, a faded Polaroid of a younger Bud standing in front of his ancient pickup truck, and two letters from Caleb.

I donned a single latex glove and appropriated the picture and the letters. They had no return address on the labels. The postmarks came from Detroit. The first relayed, in some of the worst handwriting ever, that Caleb was sorry he hadn’t written before, because he was busy, but he’d write more often from now on. It was dated eight years ago.

Apparently he’d lied, because the second letter was dated three months ago. According to the chicken scratches, Caleb’s PO had made him get a job and he was working at a car wash, but wouldn’t for very much longer because he was planning on killing the fat prick who ran it.

That didn’t make sense. I checked with Detroit PD, and according to them, Caleb Ellison didn’t currently have a parole officer. So was Caleb lying to his mother? Or did he recently do time under another name? And how could I find that out?

I put thoughts of Caleb on the back burner, threw the letters and the pic into a paper bag that Ms. Pedersen supplied, then used her office phone to call the Indianapolis PD. I talked myself up the chain of command, and eventually got a captain on the other end, a gruff-voiced woman named Carol Mintz.

“Talk fast, I’m busy.”

“You’re following the story in Gary?”

“The whole state is.”

“I’m here at IWP, and just had a heart-to-heart with Lorna Hunt Ellison, who was Bud Kork’s common-law wife. They lived together for more than a decade. She claims to know where more victims are buried, but there’s a catch. She wants to visit Bud.”

“That’s doable. The catch will be keeping the media out. I’m surprised they aren’t camped outside the prison.”

“I don’t think they know the link yet.”

“You want a piece of this?”

“No. But I’m in bed with the Feds on this one, and they’ll be in touch.”

“Great.” She said it like an expletive.

Ms. Pedersen showed me out, and we exchanged good-byes and I consulted the MapQuest directions I’d printed earlier, which would supposedly lead me from Randolph Street to Kellum Drive and the address of Mike Mayer, who supposedly rented the Titanium Pearl Eclipse supposedly seen fleeing Diane Kork’s house.

MapQuest did me proud. I went west on Washington Street, merged onto the expressway, merged off the expressway, and wound up in a pleasant little housing development filled with two-bedroom ranches on green-lawned quarter-acre lots. I parked in Mayer’s driveway and knocked on an aluminum front door.

No answer. Not too surprising, considering Mayer just rented a car in Chicago.

I had a few options. I could break into the house, breaking the law in the process. I could call Captain Mintz back, explain the situation, have the IPD obtain a warrant, and die of old age waiting to be allowed entrance. Or I could assume that in a nice neighborhood like this, Mayer had nice neighbors.

I chose the house on the right first, traversing the well-maintained lawn and knocking on their aluminum door. A young girl answered, maybe ten or eleven, long brown hair and a face full of freckles.

“Is your mom or dad home?”

She nodded, eyes big, and then belted out, “Mom!” with all the force of a foghorn.

Mom looked like an older, pudgier version of the little girl, with just as many freckles.

I showed her my badge, hoping she didn’t look close enough to notice I was from out of state.

“Ma’am, my name is Lieutenant Daniels. Your name is?”

“Linda. Linda Primmer.”

“Linda, can you tell me the last time you saw your neighbor Mike Mayer?”

Her forehead crinkled in thought. “Been two or three weeks, it seems. Is Mike okay?”

“We’re not sure. Tell me a little about Mike.”

“Single. Keeps to himself. Kind of a loner. Seems nice enough.”

Which was the exact description all neighbors gave of the serial killer living next door.

“Is this Mike Mayer?”

I showed her the Identikit photocopy.

“That sort of looks like him.”

“This may sound unorthodox, but we’re worried Mike might be in some kind of trouble. Did he ever give you a spare key to his house? In case he locked himself out, or to water his plants while on vacation?”

“No. But he did lock himself out once, last year. He came over here to call the locksmith. The locksmith sold both of us a key rock.”

“A key rock?”

Linda stepped past me and onto her front stoop. Next to the door was a holly bush, surrounded by stones. She squatted and picked up a four-inch stone and showed it to me.

It wasn’t a stone at all. It was a plastic replica, and on the bottom there was a slot, hiding a spare house key.

“Mike uses one of these?”

“He bought one. I don’t know if he uses it.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Primmer.”

I gave her a cop nod, letting her know that I was in control and everything was okay, then walked back over to Mike’s house.

Even with a key, it was still unlawful entry. If I found something, and defense counsel knew I’d illegally been in the dwelling, any evidence in the house would be inadmissible.

Or, if Mike Mayer turned out to be innocent, and discovered I entered his house without a warrant, I could be swimming in criminal and civil charges.

Of course, I also had a maniac threatening to kill me, and stopping that from happening was higher on my priority list than avoiding legal action.

Near Mike’s front door, in the dirt by a window well, was a key rock identical to Mrs. Primmer’s.

I thought about it for less than a second, then picked up the rock and opened the door.

I needn’t have worried about illegal entry. Once the smell hit me, probable cause was assured.

There was something dead in the house.

Now I went by the book. I locked the door, returned the key, and dialed 911, explaining that I was a cop following a lead, and I smelled a dead body through the door.

It took four minutes for a squad car to roll up. Two Indy uniforms, a man and a woman, got out of the car. The woman pulled out a notepad and asked me my name.

I showed them ID, explained that the neighbor told me about the key rock, and pointed it out.

They both sniffed the door, and enough residual death odor made entry a no-brainer. They didn’t object to my tagging along.

The air was heavy with decay, and several insects buzzed around us. Blowflies. They laid their eggs in dead flesh.

We found the corpse in the kitchen. And it was ugly.

It sat in a chair, and was recognizable as a male, barely, because a few patches of hair clung to its face. The torso was bloated, the skin on the bare chest split as if sliced open. Maggots squirmed in the wounds, and black and yellow carrion beetles scurried over ruined flesh in tiny roadways. They’d devoured much of the face, the lips, the eyes, the nose.

Blue jeans, stained black with putrefying fluid, hugged the thighs. The feet were bound to the chair legs with wire, which cut to the bone.

The male cop went running for the door, hand over mouth. The female cop, her name tag said Lindy, also put hand to mouth, but stood firm. I held my breath and walked closer.

Cause of death wasn’t easily apparent. I concentrated on the ruin of a face, trying to see past the mottled flesh, past the insect activity, searching for some evidence of trauma. Nothing stood out.

I walked around to the other side of the corpse. The hands were wired together behind the chair. All ten fingers were missing, and a pool of dried blood stained the floor beneath them.

The insects hadn’t eaten the fingers; there were defined cuts along the knuckles. I scanned the floor for digits, not finding any.

That made me wonder again about the cause of death. I took a closer look at the face, still holding my breath, my heart beating faster and faster in an attempt to squeeze some extra oxygen from my blood. I peered inside the mouth, partially obscured by blowfly larva and beetles scuttling over stained teeth, and proved my hunch correct.

Outside on the front porch I sucked in clean air and tried to ignore the Indy cop fertilizing the lawn with his breakfast.

Officer Lindy called for a Crime Scene Unit and the coroner using her lapel mike, and then walked up to me.

“How’d he die? The chest wounds?”

I shook my head. “The rents in the chest occurred after death. Gases were released while he decomposed, and they stretched the skin and broke through. This guy died of suffocation.”

“How?” Her pallor resembled the sidewalk, but I gave her points for trying to learn from the situation. “Killer put a bag over his head?”

“No. Someone jammed his severed fingers down his throat. Probably tried to make him eat them.”

I looked across the lawn, down the street, at all of the middle-class suburban homes. A nice community that would never fully recover from the notoriety once this story got out.

I could have stuck around, kept an eye on the investigation, but there was no point to it. If the killer left evidence, I’d hear about it eventually. I had no doubt the deceased was the unfortunate Mike Mayer. Perhaps he had some connection to the killer, something that provoked his awful death. Or perhaps he was simply murdered for his identity, and tortured just for fun.

Either way, the guy I sought wasn’t in Indianapolis. He was in Chicago.

I gave Officer Lindy my card, then hopped in my car and headed north.