The Cruelest Cut (4 page)

Eddie watched from a distance as the skinny cop ran up to Murphy and tossed his cookies.

“Must've found the stuff we left behind,” Eddie said to Bobby. “Took 'em long enough.”

He watched Murphy pull something out of his back pocket and hand it to the skinny cop. It was a handkerchief.

“Oh, ain't that special? He's helping that young cop clean hisself,” Eddie said.

“Better get some rest,” Bobby said. “We got a lot to do tonight.”

Eddie turned toward the parking lot where he'd left the van.
Murphy's one cold son of a bitch
. He had expected a stronger reaction when Murphy saw the kid's body, but instead of getting angry, or crying or getting excited in any way, Murphy had just squatted down and checked the kid out. Like he was looking at a dead dog. It was very disappointing. Bobby'd said that killing the kid would get to Murphy. And this particular kid should have been special.

“I know what you're thinking, Eddie,” Bobby said. “But before we're done, we'll get that bastard's attention.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

The room smelled of bleach and formaldehyde and something more unpleasant. Death could not be scrubbed away or covered up, and Jack had learned over the years that the smell of a violent death was as much in the mind as in the air. He knew he'd smell the corpse of this poor kid every time he closed his eyes for the next week. Or at least until the next corpse came along.

“Need this?” Carmodi asked, holding out a small glass container of mentholated cream. Carmodi had dabbed some under his own nostrils.

Jack shook his head. “Let's just get to it. The longer you try to fight the smell off, the longer it takes to get used to it.”

“Your partner's a little testy today,” Carmodi said to Liddell.

Ignoring Carmodi's remark, Jack said to Liddell, “Call dispatch again and see if anyone's reported a missing kid.”

“I just got off the phone with them, pod'na,” Liddell answered.

“Well, then try the shift commander,” Jack said angrily. “Are those guys checking the schools?”

Liddell nodded his head. “I talked to him right before I called dispatch. No one has a missing kid.”

“Well, someone's missing a kid!”

Liddell put a big hand on Jack's shoulder. “You okay?”

Jack looked at the body on the table. The boy was about ten or twelve years old. No one knew he was dead except the cops. No, he wasn't okay, but he lied through his teeth, “Yeah. I'm just great.” To Carmodi, Jack said, “Sorry, Doc. I've been off work a while.”

Carmodi shrugged and pulled on latex gloves. He was used to cops. Some of them joked, some cried, and some got angry. It was a way to deal with the stress of the job. It was like a pressure release valve, and a good thing to have. If you couldn't let it out, the things these guys saw in their careers would make most people blow their brains out. Actually, he'd done autopsies on a couple of those.

Two crime scene techs were busy snapping digital photos while Carmodi and his assistant turned the body onto its side to remove the body bag from underneath. Having done that, he began removing the muddy clothing.

Jack had been to several hundred autopsies, but this was the part he hated most. Stripping the clothing from a dead body was dehumanizing in a way that nothing else could be. As a policeman, he was supposed to protect people, and in death, a person was at their most helpless. Although, in his rational mind, he knew he couldn't save everyone, he always experienced a personal sense of failure that he had not kept the person safe.

He forced himself to look, to pay attention, to discover any clues, as Carmodi and the assistant prepared the body to be dissected. He wanted to scream at them to stop and just bury the poor kid. Instead, feeling like a pure bastard, he pulled on some gloves and searched the mud-stiffened clothing as it was removed.

Carmodi and his assistant turned the body onto its back. The autopsy table is almost seven feet in length, and slightly tilted toward a huge stainless-steel sink with a filter on the sink trap. A microphone is suspended over each of the three stainless-steel autopsy tables, and the forensic pathologist can start recording by simply stepping on a foot pedal. Carmodi stepped on the pedal and spoke into the mike, saying the date, time, and location of the autopsy, as well as his own name and those of everyone present during the procedure.

“The body appears to be that of a young white male, age approximately eleven years old…”

And so the autopsy began. After giving the overall description of the body, Carmodi instructed the assistant to help him wash the body clean. A length of hose was coiled under the sink, and the assistant used this to start washing the mud and other detritus from the body to enable closer examination. The mud was washed away from the face and neck, revealing a considerable cut running down the neck and chest, continuing into the abdomen.

A crime scene tech snapped high-resolution digitals of the wound while Carmodi spoke into the microphone again. After the dictation was finished, he spoke to Jack and Liddell. “Almost took the boy's head off.”

“Can you put that in layman's terms, Doc?” Liddell said and chuckled.

Carmodi was about to respond when he noticed Jack fingering the scar on his own neck. “It's no contest, Jack. His is bigger than yours.”

Jack shot him an angry look and was about to respond to his callous remark, but Liddell put a hand on his shoulder.

“Jack, I got this. Go back to the scene if you want—you know—coordinate things,” Liddell offered.

“Yeah. Leave the Cajun behind and scoot,” Carmodi said to Jack. “You're ruining my normally pleasant demeanor.”

Jack ignored the men and walked around the table, getting a good look at the boy's face for the first time. His own face went white.

“What's the matter, Jack?” Liddell asked.

Carmodi was staring at him also.

“I know this kid,” Jack said.

Mayor Thatcher Beauregard Hensley's office wasn't as spacious as he would have liked, but to move to a larger office he would have had to give up his private bathroom, and that would never do. His middle name, Beauregard, had come from a French great uncle on his mother's side of the family. It meant “beautiful outlook.” Unlike his namesake, he had not seen any beauty in life, except what he could buy or control. So he had opted for commandeering the office next to his and had the wall replaced with thick soundproof glass and a heavy glass door. The stolen office was now his private conference room and made his domain look twice its original size.

Mayor Hensley informed his secretary that he would not be taking calls and had her usher his waiting visitor into the conference room via a private and seldom-used entrance.

Deputy Chief Richard Dick took a seat across from the mayor. Hensley forced a smile, and said, “What have you got for me, Richard?”

“I think we may have an opportunity here, Mayor.”

Dick outlined what he knew of the murders for the mayor, explaining how he felt the current chief had handled the investigations poorly. He omitted the fact that he, Richard Dick, was the commander of the investigations unit and had done nothing to solve the murders himself.

Hensley smiled. “Malfeasance,” he said, as if tasting the word. “That might work, Richard. But what if this detective…”

“Murphy. Jack Murphy,” Dick said.

“So what if this Detective…Murphy…catches the killers?”

Dick made a dismissive gesture with his hand. “Murphy's not as good as he thinks he is.”

“But what if…?” the mayor persisted.

“Well,” Dick said, “if he does, then you and I take the credit. But if he doesn't…” He paused deliberately. “And God forbid there is another murder…well…I am the commander of the detective unit, and Chief Pope is breaking policy by not allowing me to run the investigation. If it blows up in his face, we can point that fact out in his dismissal hearing when you appoint me as the new chief of police.”

“Has the chief ordered you not to work on these murders, Dick?” the Mayor questioned.

Instead of answering, Dick shrugged and gave Hensley a sardonic smile.

Hensley's sources within the police department had told him that Dick wasn't respected and that behind his back the men called him “Double Dick.” Obviously some play on his name, Richard Dick, but in any case it wasn't good that he had no support within his own ranks. Dick was a bumbling, arrogant asshole, but he was a cunning asshole, too, and could be a useful ally. Hensley made a mental note to keep an eye on him and wondered if his choice of a new chief of police wasn't made a little hastily.

“Keep me informed, Deputy Chief,” the mayor said.

 

“You know this child?” Carmodi asked.

Jack stared at the face of the little boy. He'd first seen the kid about a month ago. It was one of those early mornings. The sun was not quite up, and Susan had gone for her run. He'd taken advantage of the quiet to make coffee and go out to his back porch to watch the threads of brilliant red and crimson colors spread across the horizon to the east. That's when he heard someone down near the riverbank, cursing a blue streak. The voice sounded young. He'd looked over the porch railing and seen a kid yanking the end of a long, thin stick for all he was worth.

He remembered how amused he was, watching as the kid wrestled a large catfish from the river and then had to chase its flopping body around the bank.

“Timmy,” Jack said. “His name was Timmy.”

“Last name?” Carmodi asked.

Jack thought about it, but didn't think he had ever asked. “Just Timmy,” he said. “That's all he told me.”

Then Jack told them everything he knew about Timmy. How he had found him fishing on the riverbank below his cabin, and how the kid never seemed to run out of questions once he found out Jack was a cop.

“He was always asking things like, ‘Have you got a gun?' ‘Have you ever shot anyone?' ‘Have you ever killed any bad guys?' You know stuff like that,” Jack said. “I lied to him and told him it was mostly boring paperwork, but he saw my scar and started asking questions about that.”

While he spoke, Jack absent-mindedly began going through the pockets of the muddy jeans. In the right pocket he felt something mushy, but grittier than mud. He pulled out his gloved hand and saw something yellowish on the fingers.

“What's that?” Liddell asked.

“Fish bait,” Jack said and looked at what was left of what had once been several cornmeal balls. He had taught the kid how to mix cornmeal with a little egg white and roll it into balls. Overnight it would harden and make bait that catfish couldn't resist.

“Ah shit,” Jack said, and left the room.

 

Jack stood in the hallway near the coroner's office. He pulled the latex gloves off and pitched them in a biohazard container. He had never walked out during an autopsy before, but this one was getting to him. There were other things he could do.

Jack almost laughed at that thought. “What to do next?” he said in the empty hallway. There was a long list of what needed to be done. None of it would bring back the curious little boy who would rather hang around a broken-down cop and ask questions, or fish in the river with a long stick and fishing line he'd found along the riverbank.
Why couldn't he just go to school like other kids his age?

He needed to make a bathroom stop. Then he would call the motor patrol lieutenant at the crime scene and juvenile detectives to tell them who he suspected the deceased child might be. They could get busy shaking the bushes again. He had only a first name for the kid, but he knew Timmy lived somewhere in the area of the museum. There were a lot of large, older homes that had been divided into apartments around there. Juvenile detectives would canvass the schools. Maybe they'd get lucky and find the kid's folks.

I need a quiet place to make a call,
he thought, and remembered that the closest phone was in the office of the chief deputy coroner—a diminutive woman named Lilly Caskins whom everyone called “Little Casket.” It was a nickname that suited her well, for she was evil looking, with large dark eyes staring out of extra thick lenses, and horn-rimmed frames that had gone out of style during the days of Al Capone. But the thing that bothered Jack was her bluntness at death scenes. For a woman, she had absolutely no compassion for the dead, or the living.

He decided he didn't want to run into Lilly. At the other end of the building there was a bathroom, and after going there, he could take his cell phone out into the garage.

He headed in that direction, and as he passed the conference room he spotted the pale face of the rookie cop that had thrown up at the crime scene. He was little more than a kid, and Jack guessed his age at barely twenty-one, just old enough to be hired by the police department. He was shirtless and sipping ginger ale from a can. His uniform shirt lay stretched across a couple of chairs, drying.

Scratch the bathroom stop,
Jack thought, not wanting to smell vomit on top of everything else today.

“You feeling better, Officer, uh…?” Jack asked. He'd forgotten the rookie's name.

The young man looked up with red-rimmed eyes and said, “Kuhlenschmidt,” then returned to staring at the floor.

Kuhlenschmidt was a wreck. He had just seen his first murder victim, his first mutilated body, and had the bad luck of humiliating himself in front of the news media and his peers by soiling himself and screaming and crying hysterically. Eventually he would have to be interviewed and file a complete report as he was the one that had found the actual scene of the murder. But Jack could see that questioning him right this minute would be fruitless.

Not everyone is cut out to be a cop
. He wanted to tell Kuhlenschmidt he should look at other career options, but instead he said, “Look, Officer Kuhlenschmidt, don't be so hard on yourself.”

The young cop looked up hopefully. “This ever happen to you, Detective?”

“No,” Jack said, and watched as the darkness crept back into that face. “But I can tell you some whopper stories on your training officer when you get off probation.”

Kooky looked up and said, “I'm sorry I screwed up out there, Detective Murphy.”

Jack had to turn away from the tears welling up in the young man's eyes. It had been a long time since Jack had seen his first ugly murder, and had become the hardened bastard he was today. It was a cop's lot in life to lose faith in humanity to the reality of evil.

“You married?” Jack asked, changing the subject.

“No. Got a girlfriend though.”

“Go home,” Jack said. “Take a shower. Have sex. Drink a beer or two. Have some more sex.”

Kuhlenschmidt looked up and grinned.

“Did I mention that you should have sex?” Jack said in a very serious tone, and Kuhlenschmidt chuckled.

“Yeah, I get it, Detective Murphy. Thanks.”

“Do not get drunk,” Jack said sternly. “That's not the way to deal with this.”

“I understand,” he said, “but what about Corporal Timmons? I'm on shift until three.”

“I've already taken care of it,” Jack lied.

Kuhlenschmidt picked up his shirt and started to get up.

“Wait here,” Jack said. “I'll have someone take you home. You can come back to get your personal car later.”

Jack was about to leave when Kuhlenschmidt said, “The deputy chief will never let me be a detective because of this, will he?”

Jack pulled out a chair and sat down beside the man. “Let me tell you a story about Double Dick.”

Kooky glanced up, and a grin spread across his face. “Double Dick? Are you talking about the deputy chief, sir?”

“Yeah,” Jack said, and told the young officer how Deputy Chief of Police Richard Dick had earned the nickname Double Dick. It wasn't because Dick was short for Richard, which would make his name Dick Dick. The name had come about because Dick had a reputation for screwing everyone over and fouling up every case he was involved with. He also briefly told the story of how Dick had screwed up the last robbery stakeout that Jack was on and the lawsuits that were still being settled because of it.

“So you're saying that when he shows up at a scene, everyone gets Dick'd, sir?” Kuhlenschmidt said with a crooked smile.

“You got it, partner.”

Kuhlenschmidt smiled brighter at the word
partner
.
Maybe Kooky isn't such a bad nickname, after all,
he thought.

“Gotta go pee, Kooky.”

Jack left the rookie in the conference room. He hoped the poor guy was in better shape, mentally at least, than he looked.

Jack walked into the garage and punched the numbers for the motor patrol shift lieutenant into his cell phone. He passed on the first name and information they now had for the victim, and the lieutenant promised to get some guys out re-canvassing the area around the museum. Before he hung up, Jack told the lieutenant that Officer Kuhlenschmidt would need the rest of the day off and a ride home. Probably needed some time with the department shrink, too.

Having done his good deed for the year, he called the Juvenile Division and got some good news. And a lot of bad news. The good news was that juvenile detectives already knew the kid's last name and where he lived. The bad news was there was no missing persons report on Timothy Ryan, and the kid's mother had taken off years ago and left him with one of her boyfriends. There was no mention of a father. The juvenile detective working this was trying to find the boyfriend to come and identify the body, but so far had been unable to locate him.

Jack hung up thinking that couples should have to apply for permits and prove they have a collective IQ over twenty to have children. Unfortunately, they don't even have to have a full set of teeth between them to breed.

His cell phone rang. “Murphy,” he said. It was Liddell.