The Dead Caller from Chicago

Sixteen

No cops were waiting at the turret.

“I don’t understand,” she said, looking down the street at city hall.

Jenny’s lines into law enforcement throughout northern Illinois had never been the ordinary wires reporters worked at keeping taut. Hers were thick, like bundled high-speed information cables. It wasn’t like her to have gotten wrong information.

“Look,” she said, “your priority’s your friendship with Leo. I understand that. But the Tebbins murder is going to get big. You’re sure Leo couldn’t have killed Tebbins?”

“Leo’s no killer.”

“I like Leo. I hope you’re right.”

She drove away, and I walked down to city hall. The police department was out of sight, around the back. In Rivertown, law enforcement wasn’t so much a civic necessity as it was a payroll to feed lizard relatives. I walked past a municipal Dumpster adorned, like so many things, with the image of my turret, and up to the door.

It was locked.

I peered in the window. There was no desk sergeant inside, but that was normal. There were very few uniformed officers in Rivertown. The department had lieutenants, mostly, because the pay grade was higher. Almost always, they were to be found safeguarding the taverns along Thompson Avenue, no matter what the hour.

The locked door, though, was odd, even for Rivertown.

There was a doorbell, just like a house. I rang it twice.

Nothing happened.

I tapped it two more times. A little speaker scratched to life. “Huh?”

“Dek Elstrom,” I said, like I was delivering pizza.

“Who?”

“Isn’t this a police station?”

“Who is it?”

“Dek Elstrom,” I shouted.

The electric lock clicked open, and I stepped inside.

A chair scraped in back, and feet landed hard on the linoleum. Footsteps started up the hall, grew louder, and stopped. Someone was pausing to make sure it was I before coming further.

“Hello?” I shouted. “Dek Elstrom here to see somebody.”

The footsteps resumed, and finally Benny Fittle emerged from the gloom of the hall. He was about thirty, short and big-bellied. He wore his usual cold-weather outfit of a hoodie sweatshirt, sagging cargo shorts, and scuffed running shoes. It was the same as his hot-weather outfit, except then he swapped the hoodie for a T-shirt.

Everybody in town knew Benny. He patrolled the city’s parking meters-one dollar for fifteen minutes-bagging the quarters and making sure the timers were running fast. Though he was naturally slow moving, the lizards prized Benny for his efficiency. He rarely paused to distinguish between meters that had already expired and those he was certain were likely to do so sometime soon.

He was no police officer, but Benny was pleased with his role in law enforcement. The last time he’d ticketed me, for being parked in front of a meter whirring in overdrive, its clock gone berserk, he’d given me a business card. BENNY FITTLE, it read. PARKING ENFORCEMENT PERSON. It, too, was adorned with the image of my turret.

Benny’s was an outdoor job. Never had I heard of him being left in charge at the police station.

“Hey, Mr. Elstrom,” he said, rubbing too hard at a sugary crumb stuck to the uppermost of his unshaven chins. Benny was never far from a doughnut.

“Tebbins,” I said.

“He was kilt,” he said, looking over my shoulder at the entrance door.

“I know. I heard I might be a person of interest.”

“A what?” he asked, his eyes still on the door.

“Someone the police want to talk to about a crime.”

He swallowed hard, and for once I didn’t think it was from processing a doughnut.

“Benny, are you all right?”

“There’s nobody here now.”

“They’re all at Tebbins’s house?”

He shook his head. “Only two. The rest might be in a meeting.”

“Here?”

“No way.”

“Should I go there?”

“Where?”

“Where they’re having the meeting.”

“Someplace on Thompson Avenue is all I know.”

Thompson Avenue was code. The first-shift officers were at a bar, drinking like on every other day. Even in Rivertown that made no sense. On such a day, the cops should have been out combing the town for leads in the killing of one of their own.

“Tebbins’s house? I’m a person of interest.”

“You could go there.”

“Where is it?”

“Tebbins’s house?”

“Yes.” He was looking at the door again, and I realized it was fear that was worrying his eyes, like he was afraid someone bad was going to charge into the police station.

“I’ll get the house’s address,” he said. He fairly ran to the back and returned with it written jerkily on one of his cards.

I was barely out the door before the electronic lock clicked on.