Cheese Wrestling: A Lt. Jack Daniels/Chief Cole Clayton Thriller Read online

  While this particular case seemed to be about as open and shut as cases came, I asked the question anyway.

  “How about foul play? A staged B&E.”

  “And the perp made off with what? Hamburger Helper leftovers?”

  “Back to food again.”

  “This guy’s TV is older than my house. He’s wearing pants he inherited from Teddy Roosevelt. There’s nothing here to steal, Jack.”

  “Their children did it. Wanted to get the insurance money.”

  “You know there are no family pictures on the walls. You’re just going down this path because you’re bored.”

  “I’m not bored,” I said, stifling a yawn because I was so extremely bored.

  “I know that look, Jack. When was the last time a crime scene challenged you?”

  “Maybe it wasn’t the husband. Maybe it was a twin brother who did it to cover up an affair with a crime boss.”

  Herb nodded as I spoke, the thick folds of skin under his chin compressing like an accordion. “Want me to ask him? Here, I’ll ask.” Herb walked down the length of the tape to the other side of the living room and bent down to where a man’s body was face down on the floor. “Hey,” Herb said, poking the man in the shoulder. “Hey, you. Was it your twin brother, staging the scene to cover up an outfit sex scandal?”

  He looked back at me and held up his hands like, what’s wrong with this guy?

  “Does this show have a two drink minimum?” I asked. “Because I’ll need double that.”

  Herb snapped his fingers and said, “Wait, I see what the problem is.” He reached behind the crime scene tape and picked up one of the man’s ears. It had been blown off with the rest of his head by the shotgun still clutched between his rigid fingers. Herb picked up the ear and held it in front of his face and said, “Can you hear me now, buddy?”

  “Jesus, Herb. Show some respect. You’re acting like McGlade.”

  “You sound irritated, Jack.” He held out the hand. “Need me to lend you an ear?”

  The uniform standing in front of the door leaned back, watching us with a mixture of fascination and horror. He wasn’t a rookie but he hadn’t been in the gallows long enough to get the joke. It was a sick sense of humor you picked up along the way, because it was either learn to laugh at it all or do a half-gainer off your apartment fire escape.

  “You can come in,” I said. “This case is closed..”

  “You figured it out already?” he said, tucking his pen back into his vest pocket, eyeballing the carnage behind the tape.

  “Why, you think differently?” Herb nudged me. “Maybe you were onto something with the twin brother scenario, Jack.”

  The uniform shook his head. “No, it’s just, you didn’t do anything.”

  Herb and I exchanged a look, and I took a deep, patient breath. “How would you have worked this scene, Officer?”

  “I don’t mean to offend, ma’am,” he said. “What I meant was, you didn’t spray any luminol or swab for DNA or try and get a thermal image of the blood spatter to analyze it for its pattern.”

  I looked back at the bodies and said, “Very astute. Why would we need to do any of that?”

  “Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do for a murder?” he said.

  He didn’t look like an idiot. He also didn’t look like an insubordinate ass. But somewhere between the police academy and the street he’d gotten something very wrong. In my Prada heels I was eye-to-eye with the kid, and I walked toward him, unsnapping my rubber gloves and tucking them into my blazer pocket.

  “You watch television, right?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

  “Crime scene shows,” I said.

  He nodded.

  “I’m going to give you a tip, cop to cop. You’ve got a better chance of seeing my partner over there in a Speedo than you do of lifting a useable fingerprint from an active blood-soaked crime scene, and we don’t do any of that thermal-spectral-voodoo nonsense unless we are absolutely required to. We use our eyes and our ears and we talk to people and then we sit back and use what is called common sense. This case is shut, because I have the experience and expertise to say it is shut.”

  “I do have pictures of me in a Speedo,” Herb said, “if you wanna see them. I look like a husky Tom Selleck.”

  Herb looked like he’d eaten Tom Selleck, but I kept the comment to myself.

  The kid look confused, then said, “Does that mean you want me to dust for prints?”

  I stifled the sigh and deadpanned, “Yes. Dust the whole place, top to bottom.”

  He nodded and went to trot off, but Herb grabbed his arm.

  “Don’t take it too hard,” Herb said. “She’s just grumpy today. Do you need to talk to someone about it?”

  “No,” he said. “I’m fine.”

  “Well, if you change your mind,” Herb said, and with that he took the kid’s hand, turned it over, and dropped the severed ear into it. “Have a good night.”

  We walked out to the car, silent, as Herb pulled off his latex gloves. I climbed and we buckled up. Neither of us said anything for at least ten seconds.

  “So, should I scold you or should you scold me?” Herb asked.

  “You go first.”

  “It was very mean-spirited of you, Lieutenant, to make that poor kid lift prints at a closed scene.”

  “And it was very unprofessional of you, Detective, to joke around with body parts.”

  “But was it a little bit funny?” Herb asked.

  I managed a grunt. “A little, I guess.”

  “Sometimes I don’t know how far to take it,” Herb said, starting the car. “So I play it by ear.”

  “If you weren’t a cop, I’d be worried for you.”

  “Self-preservation, Jack. Either laugh, or go insane.”

  I mulled that over, and also reconsidered what he’d said earlier. “I think you’re right, Herb. We’re both bored. It’s day after day of senseless death, without a lead to follow or a puzzle to solve.”

  “Or a life to save,” Herb added. “Serve and protect? I feel more like a guy who mucks out the stables.”

  “Maybe we need some vacation time.”

  “Maybe we need a case worthy of our talents.”

  I pressed my lips together. He was right. But, unfortunately, a decent case for a Homicide detective meant someone had to die. I’d be fine with not dealing with death for a while.

  Herb stopped at the next red light and waited, stroking his mustache with his chubby forefinger until the light changed again. When he spoke, his voice was soft and he said, “How’s the insomnia?”

  “Last night I had a dream that I couldn’t fall asleep. I woke up exhausted.”

  “I think you used that joke on me before.”

  I didn’t reply. It wasn’t a joke.

  When we finally pulled into Headquarters, I told Herb to drop me off at the door. “I’ve got the paper on this. Go home.”

  “You sure, Jack?” he said.

  I studied the stupid look of concern on his face and didn’t want to deal with it. “Yeah. Give your wife a hug from me.”

  I shut the door and held up my hand as I walked to the side door entrance. I raised my ID card to the scanner and let myself in, finally able to relax. Home was pressure. Home was do I lay in bed tossing and turning getting frustrated or turn on some mindless television show to kill the hours until the sun came up? Home was do I have too many drinks and scroll through my phone to see who I could drunk text and wind up doing something stupid.

  Here, at the stationhouse, all I had to do was settle in at my desk and knock out the reports. Here, my lack of wanting to sleep would be celebrated by the other cops. She must be dedicated to be here so late working on this, they’d say. She must be hot on the trail of another big case.

  Sorry to disappoint you, boys. I’d just rather be here than going out of my mind at home.

  I walked past the desk sergeant and looked at the man sitting in the lobby, because he w
as looking at me. Older but fit. His haircut made me think he was military, except for the goatee. Handsome, and I liked the way his tanned skin made the silver of his hair and beard stand out. More than any of that, he had the sharpest blue eyes I’ve ever seen. As I looked at him, all I could think was, Cop. Definitely a cop. But no one I recognized.

  I tapped the duty sergeant on the shoulder and said, “Who’s he?”

  “Some Chief of Police from Podunk, Pennsylvania. Says he needs to talk to someone about a kidnapping investigation.”

  “Okay, and…?” I upturned my palms, expecting more.

  “And that’s it. I’m waiting to get a uniform available to see what he wants. After that, we’ll run it up the chain and see who wants a new shit sandwich.”

  I rolled my eyes and said, “Forget it. I’ll deal with it.”

  “You sure, loot?”

  The banality of typing up a murder-suicide report vs. the chance to do something potentially interesting? I was already heading out to the lobby, walking with my hand extended, saying, “I’m Lieutenant Daniels. Sorry to keep you waiting.”

  He took my hand and squeezed it firmly. A lot of men shake women’s hands like a woman, forming their hands into some kind of duck-like formation to only touch her fingers.

  “I appreciate you seeing me. I didn’t mean to just show up like this tonight, but I didn’t want to wait until tomorrow morning.”

  “Do you want some coffee, Chief?” I said.

  “Please, call me Cole. And yes, ma’am, I would. I got a little bit of sleep on the plane, but it wasn’t much.”

  “I can relate,” I said.

  “My wife says I snore anyway, so it was probably lucky for the people sitting around me that I couldn’t sleep.”

  I could relate. To the not sleeping part, not the snoring part. Or the married part. I used to be married, and I was dating a guy who was suitable husband material, but we’d been together for less than a year and were taking it slow. He was out of town—at an accounting convention that sounded slightly more boring than watching dust settle on furniture. Only gone for three days, and I missed him, which meant something.

  I led Cole to my office and fired up my coffee machine, using some bottled water I kept next to the filters and grounds.

  “So what can we help you with, Cole?”

  Clayton reached into his shirt pocket to remove a photograph of a girl. She had light blonde hair, a bright smile, disgustingly pretty. The kind of little girl that had captain of the cheerleading squad stamped on her head the moment she was born.

  “Alice McDermott. I played football with her dad in high school. Him and his wife run the weekly bingo game.”

  “Sounds quaint,” I said. “She’s cute.”

  “Not anymore. This was taken the summer before she got into heroin. She weighs about a hundred and ten, hundred twenty in this picture. Her rap sheet lists her current weight at seventy-eight pounds.”

  “She ran off to Chicago?”

  “No,” Clayton said. “She was brought here and sold to the Russians by some bikers out my way. They call themselves the Sin Serpents. I got lucky and interviewed this cute little couple named Poop and his old lady, Property of Poop, who are part of the club and they told me where the house was.”

  I looked at him, waiting for the punch line. “Are you serious? That’s really their names?”

  “I’ve heard worse,” Clayton said with a shrug.

  “Out here all our gang bangers are called Murder-Dog, Six-Gangsta-Tre, G-187, that kind of thing.”

  “Yeah, but do any of them have to cheese wrestle in their clubs?” he said.

  I looked at him, “What’s cheese wresting?”

  Clayton’s bronzed face got a little red in the cheeks as he reached back into his pocket and dug for a piece of paper with writing scribbled on it, “It’s nothing. I shouldn’t have mentioned it. Anyhow, I’ve got this address where the Russians are, and I was hoping−”

  “I’m serious, what is it?” I said.

  The cheeks were full on red right now and the eyes were gleaming as he looked at me and said, “Listen, I’m really sorry I said anything about it, Lieutenant Daniels.”

  “It’s Jack.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Jack. Short for Jacqueline.”

  He looked at me for a moment and said, “Okay.”

  I waited. When he didn’t comment on my name, I said, “Go ahead. It’s fine. Everybody does it, so just get it over with.”

  “Get what over with?”

  “You know.”

  He shook his head and said, “I truly don’t.”

  “All right,” I said, putting my hands on my hips. I found myself spreading my blazer a little and sucking in my stomach to make my chest stick out, but just slightly. I looked down at the picture and then at the address on the paper and said, “I’ll take you over there to get eyes on the place. That neighborhood is Russian, all right. I never heard of any white slave traders there, though.”

  “No?” he said. “The Russians out my way mainly stick to alcohol and tobacco smuggling. Whiskey, mainly.”

  I looked at him, searching for any sign of sarcasm. “I thought they liked vodka.”

  He nodded, completely straight-faced, and said, “Right, right. I get the two mixed up sometimes.”

  ALICE MCDERMOTT

  Alice opens her eyes.

  The heroin has almost worn off. What was warm and good had become just a little fuzzy.

  She’s thirsty.

  She has to pee.

  She tries to stretch, but she’s still in the cage.

  “Hey,” she says. Then louder. “Hey!”

  One of the girls who isn’t locked up goes to her.

  “Shut up. You’ll wake Sergei.”

  “I gotta go to the bathroom.”

  The girl frowns. “You gonna cause trouble?”

  Alice shakes her head.

  She picks up the keys on the table and opens Alice’s door. Alice crawls out, dizzy. She tries to stand up and almost falls over. The girl catches her.

  Alice is lead down the hallway, to the bathroom. The smell is disgusting. Alice closes the door. She pulls down her underwear and sits on the toilet, but not a lot of pee comes out. When she’s done she goes to the sink, drinks from the faucet. As she does, she sees a ghost in the mirror.

  No. That’s not a ghost. That’s me.

  So thin. So pale. Dead eyes. Brittle hair.

  “Hey!” The girl, pounding on the door. “Hurry up in there!”

  I should run. I should run away from here.

  But Alice was so tired.

  And worse. Her hands were already starting to shake.

  When high, sleeping in a cage didn’t matter. The world was perfect.

  But withdrawal was hell.

  “Hurry the fuck up!”

  Run away, and go through hell?

  Or stay, and hope for more smack?

  “If you make me come in there, I’ll cut you off cold turkey, bitch!”

  Alice made her decision.

  JACK DANIELS

  They sat in her car without speaking, watching the house, watching the neighborhood itself. The windows on this block were all dark at that hour, except for the flickering television lights of a few upstairs bedrooms. Ukrainian Village wasn’t as isolated as it had once been, back when it was one of the few places immigrants from the Eastern Bloc could find housing. Times had changed, and money talked, and now there were all cultures and creeds mixed in. But tradition was tradition and if you were looking for a Russian in the city of Chicago, that was one of the first places you looked.

  Long-legged blonde women walked hurriedly back to their houses from their cars, stumbling after a late night of partying. Their skirts were so short Jack was able to tell the color of their underwear. The Copper didn’t seem to notice, or at least, he didn’t make any comments. Herb would have commented on how they should cover up, and maybe even gotten out and offered them clothes. Her ol
d partner, Harry McGlade, would have been snapping pictures. Back in the old days, some guys put mirrors on their shoes to see up girls’ skirts. Harry had shoes with movie cameras in the toes.

  But Clayton said nothing, did nothing. Jack thought he came off like some kind of old-school throwback. He was the kind of guy you’d turn on a television show about cops back in the day when they walked the beat in long trench coats doing tricks with their nightsticks to impress the neighborhood kids. A copper, who called people “ma’am” and “sir.” She pictured a desk sergeant cranking an enormous radio broadcast unit as he said things like, “Attention, all units. Be on the lookout!” and such. She turned to him and said, “So you’re a chief? That’s impressive.”

  “Yeah. Not as much as it sounds,” he said softly. “There’s only a few other officers in the department. It’s a little town.”

  “Is that why you’re out here in the middle of the night instead of one of your detectives?”

  He chuckled and said, “What detectives? One of my guys is the mayor’s son, and he just sits around playing computer games all night, and the other is a raw recruit who just graduated the police academy. He won’t last long though. The state police are already telling him about all their special units and such. They take all my good guys. Hell, they take anything with a pulse, it seems.” He looked at her and said, “Big heads, little hats.”

  Jack laughed and said, “Sounds like the Feebies out here. They flaunt all their Special Agent anti-terrorism taskforce crap and our guys fall for it. Next thing you know, they’re in the middle of some Idaho potato farm counting raindrops.”

  “You know what FBI stands for, right?”

  Fine Bunch of Idiots, Jack thought.

  “Famous But Ineffective,” Cole continued. “I should know, I trained with them at the National Academy.”

  “You went to the NA?” Jack said.

  “Yep. That’s one of the benefits of being the chief. You get to send yourself to all sorts of stuff.” His right pocket lit up and buzzed and he said, “Excuse me, one second” as he pulled out his phone and started to talk.

  His voice was low and sweet as he spoke and Jack tried not to listen, making sure her eyes were glued to the target residence’s dark, empty windows and void of activity. She heard Clayton say, “Yeah, I’m just sitting in a car in some neighborhood with one of their Lieutenants. Yes, he’s sitting right next to me.”