Rusty Nail

CHAPTER 34

ON THE WAY back to Chicago, Detective Maggie Mason filled me in on the Jensen homicide.

“Stabbed over thirty times. Found in the Benson Hotel for Men on Congress, in a room rented to his name.”

“How long had he been living there?”

“Nineteen days. It’s a pay-per-week hotel, more rats than tenants. Landlord came by to collect rent, found the corpse.”

“Anything?”

“Nothing. Door-to-doored the whole building, wasted three days interviewing Sterno bums and crackheads. No leads.”

“Autopsy?”

“Still waiting.”

The cell phone got crackly, and Mason asked if I was still there.

“You view the body?” I asked.

“Yeah. Nasty.”

“Impressions?”

“Went beyond a crime of opportunity or anger. This was a deliberate attempt to inflict pain.”

“Defense wounds?”

“Ligature marks on the wrists. He was tied to a chair.”

I thought of Mike Mayer in Indianapolis.

“Did he still have his fingers?”

“I think so. I didn’t notice them missing.”

“How are the walls at the Benson?”

“Tissue paper. You can read a book through them.”

“Why didn’t his screaming attract attention?”

“Sorry, Lieut. I forgot to mention the hooks.”

“Hooks?”

“The victim had a mouth full of fishhooks. Lips, tongue, throat, all torn to hell and stuck together. Must have been a hundred of them in there. He couldn’t have opened his mouth with a car jack.”

Nice. And an obvious nod to the Gingerbread Man case. I’ll never forget what Charles Kork did with fishhooks. “Trace?”

“Nothing leading. Scraped his fingernails. Found a black hair. There was some kind of white crust on the wounds, got a sample of that. Rogers at the lab is getting back to me.”

“Prints?”

“Ran them locally. Nothing. Going through the National Fingerprint Database, but you know how long that takes.”

“Check Jensen in the NCIC?”

“Lots of arrests. Drugs. Banging. Battery. Classic repeat offender – until a few years ago.”

“What happened then?”

“Don’t know. Guy seemed to just drop off the face of the earth.”

That sounded a lot like Caleb Ellison.

I thanked Mason, then got on the horn to county. Max Hughes wasn’t in, but the M.E., Phil Blasky, was.

“Good evening, Jack. I heard about Herb. How’s he doing?”

“Stable, last I heard. You burning the midnight oil?”

“Paperwork. Just got a memo, telling me that efforts are being made by the county to reduce the amount of paperwork. The memo came with a twenty-six-page report I have to fill out, in triplicate. I’m not a fan of irony.”

“Have you taken a look at Steve Jensen, transient hotel death from five days ago?”

“Mackerel man? He’s scheduled for tomorrow morning.”

“Mackerel man?”

“A joke one of the attendants made. Mouth full of hooks. Guy obviously took the bait. I’m not a fan of humor either.”

“Then why did you call him Mackerel Man?”

“I try to fit in.”

Strange bunch, coroners.

“Any chance you can tear yourself away from that interesting report and do a prelim for me?”

“When do you need it?”

I checked the dashboard. Coming up on nine o’clock.

“An hour?”

“I’ll check my tackle box for my hook remover. Could use some fresh coffee, you got any.”

“See you at ten.”

I hung up, then plugged my phone into the cigarette lighter to charge it.

“Are we going to the morgue?”

“No. I’m going to the morgue. Note my use of the singular, rather than the plural.”

“I’m free.”

“And I’m not. I’m working.”

“Come on, Jack. I can’t go home now. It’s probably wall-to-wall naked midgets.”

“Doesn’t that bother you?”

“Why should it? Little people need love too.”

“I meant that Harry’s cheating on you.”

“We’re not married yet. But just because it doesn’t bother me doesn’t mean I want to see it.” She placed her hand on my arm. “Let me go in, Jack. It will be like my bachelorette party.”

“Viewing a dead body?”

“I’ve seen bodies before.”

“And it’s something you’re eager to do again?”

“Not really. But if you don’t let me come with you, I’ll keep you up all night asking a bazillion questions about what I missed.”

“Holly… it’s against the law for a civilian to enter the county morgue.”

“I won’t tell anyone. Cross my fingers.”

She did, indeed, cross her fingers. I sighed.

“Don’t talk, don’t touch anything, and don’t let the M.E. know you’re not a cop.”

She hugged me, and I almost swerved off the road.

“Holly, if we’re going to be friends, we need to talk about this hugging thing.”

We didn’t talk about the hugging thing. Instead, the conversation shifted to tae kwon do.

“I’m working on my fourth dan. My pyonson keut chireugi are getting there. I busted a finger last year, breaking boards.”

That impressed the hell out of me. Pyonson keut were thrusting strikes using the fingertips. If Holly could break boards using her fingers, she was way ahead of me.

“I’m better at kagi than chireugi.” Though, if I were being honest with myself, my leg strength and flexibility weren’t what they used to be.

“Where do you train?”

I couldn’t remember the last time I set foot on the mat. “I haven’t trained in a while. I should probably get back into it.”

“It would be fun to spar with you.”

Maybe, if I equated bleeding with fun. Holly had two inches, more experience, and about fifteen pounds on me. And from what I could observe, that extra fifteen pounds was all muscle. She’d kick my ass.

Instead I said, “Yeah. That would be fun.”

We stopped at a chain donut shop to pick up donuts and coffee for Phil. I also got a coffee. Holly got a frozen mochaccino with extra chocolate, and three glazed donuts.

“Old habits die hard. I’ll do a thousand extra sit-ups tomorrow.”

The county morgue was in Chicago’s medical district, on Harrison. I pulled into the circular driveway behind the two-story building and parked in a spot designated for hearses and ambulances. Before we got out of the car, I had a heart-to-heart with Holly.

“Morgues aren’t very pleasant. Do you have a weak stomach?”

“I haven’t thrown up in years.”

I hoped she was telling the truth. I’d hate to see those donuts again.

“Try to stay professional, and if you do need to hurl, don’t hurl on a corpse. Phil hates that.”

“Got it.”

We went in.

After I signed the check-in book for myself and Holly, the attendant took us back through the loading station and into the cooler. It smelled like a butcher shop, which essentially is what it was; racks and racks of refrigerated meat. They were operating at capacity, and over two hundred bodies lay on metal shelves, warehouse-style. Some leaked fluids. Some seemed frozen in bizarre poses. Some looked like they might open their eyes and start talking.

Holly took it all in, wide-eyed and slack-jawed.

“This is pretty freaky.”

“Shhhh. Act professional.”

“Check out that guy. He’s hung like an elephant.”

“Holly-”

“Jesus, Jack, look at it. You’re single. Grab a knife and take it home.”

Phil Blasky poked his head out of the autopsy room, and I elbowed Holly in the ribs to shut her up.

“Hi, Phil.”

“Hello, Jack. Who’s your friend?”

Holly waltzed over to him, hand outstretched. “Detective Holly Frakes. I’m a cop. Really.”

I tried not to wince. Phil glanced at her hand, then glanced at his own, covered by a bloody latex glove.

Holly noticed this and patted him on the shoulder instead of shaking.

“Nice to meet you, Phil. I hear people are dying to get into this place.”

Ouch. But Phil seemed just as entranced with Holly as everyone else she met, and he even offered a weak chuckle.

“A pleasure to meet you too, Detective. I’ve found out some interesting things, if you’ll step into my office.”

We followed Phil into the back room, where the body of Steve Jensen lay naked on a metal table, a block propping up his head. Beneath him was a small puddle of what I called people juice; not blood, but a pink, semiclear fluid that looked like the stuff at the bottom of the package when you bought a steak at the supermarket.

Phil hadn’t made the Y-incision on Jensen yet, or sawed open the skull, but the body had been washed down.

Jensen had been a trim man, muscular, with straight brown hair and tattoos covering both arms, the motif running to guns, skulls, and naked women with devil horns.

“Average.” Holly frowned. She was looking at his joint.

Phil missed it. “As you can see by the condition of the body, the body bears over thirty stab wounds of various sizes and depths. I can safely assume that the inquest jury will rule out suicide.”

He chuckled again. The second chuckle I’d heard in the ten years I’d known him.

The only place to set the coffee and donuts was on a medical tray, next to some bloody implements. I hoped the cardboard box was thick and nothing leaked through.

“What’s wrong with his mouth?” Holly asked.

Jensen’s cheeks were sucked in, as if he were about to blow us a kiss. His lips were shredded and resembled hamburger.

Holly bent down for a closer view. “Looks like he’s in serious need of some Chapstick.”

Phil grabbed onto the lower lip and pulled, revealing half a dozen brass fishhooks, skewering Jensen’s mouth closed. He picked up a scalpel and wedged it between the teeth, levering the mouth open, tearing the lips even further. He positioned the head so the overhead light could penetrate the mouth, and then used a water squirt pen that hung from the ceiling on a spiral hose to spray out the excess blood.

It wasn’t pretty. Jensen had a puckered appearance because his tongue and inner cheeks were hooked together.

“He was alive at the time.” Holly pointed. “See the bruises on his face? Someone shoved hooks in his mouth, then slapped him around to get them stuck.”

Blasky put his hand on the victim’s neck.

“I can feel some bumps in the throat. He probably swallowed, or inhaled, hooks as well.”

I finally spoke up. “What’s the cause of death, Phil?”

“This wound right here.” Blasky tapped a two-inch puncture on Jensen’s chest. “Thin-bladed knife, slipped between the ribs and ruptured the heart. Won’t know what exactly went wrong until I crack the chest.”

“He was tortured.” Holly swallowed, then walked over to the corpse’s legs and peered at a stab wound. “These cuts have salt rubbed into them.”

Phil frowned. “Kind of silly, to interrogate a man with fishhooks in his mouth. How was he supposed to talk?”

“He wasn’t supposed to talk,” I said. “He was supposed to hurt.”

“He hurt, all right. I ran a blood sample and did an enzyme immunoassay. His histamine levels were off the charts. This man died in agony.”

“Why do some of the stab wounds look different?”

“It appears that two weapons were used, a thin, double-edged blade and a thicker one with a serrated back.”

The hunting knife that Benedict’s attacker left behind had a serrated back.

“Must have gotten bored with the little knife, gotten something bigger,” Holly said.

“Can you tell by the angle if the perp is right-handed or left-handed?” I asked.

Phil picked up a stainless steel protractor and worked out some angles.

“The big blade was wielded by a lefty. The smaller blade, by someone right-handed.”

Holly nodded. “So the killer had a knife in each hand.”

“Then how could he rub the salt in?” I shook my head. “No. I have a different theory.”

“We’re all ears, Lieutenant.”

I frowned. “I think we’ve got more than one killer.”