A Deadly Development (6 page)

The rest of Sunday Burke felt he had only
been chasing his tail. The day had started promising enough, but
soon had spiraled downward.

He had arrived at Police Headquarters by
eleven o’clock, in time to answer his office phone which was
ringing upon his arrival. On the line was the coroner with the
official cause of death. “Multiple blunt trauma wounds to the back
of the skull, Tommy,” the coroner said, for once sounding actually
interested in the case. “Some sort of blunt object, like a rock, or
maybe a bat. Blood splatter shows whoever did it was really angry.
Five, maybe six blows to the back of Vithous’ skull. We found blood
remnants on the ceiling, and in the cubicle next to Vithous’, some
of it came to rest a full 15 feet from the victim.”

“Jesus,” Tom found himself saying.

“Yeah, like I said, whoever killed him was
very angry at him. Does that help you?”

“Unfortunately,” Tom Burke sighed, “a lot of
people fit that description.”

Burke spent a large amount of time comparing
notes with Jack Thurber. Thurber had spent his Saturday
interviewing all those who had a close connection to John Vithous.
Co-workers, the live-in girlfriend and Vithous’ ex-wife.

“What’s she like?” Burke inquired.

“I sensed a lot of hostility from the former
Mrs. Vithous,” Thurber snorted and a broad smile covered his face.
Reminds me of a couple Mrs. Thurbers I used to know. Apparently he
ran around on her one time too many. She lives out in Leawood in a
townhome. Said she hadn’t seen him in over two years.”

“Any kids?”

“Nope,” Thurber went on, “I also talked to
his girlfriend. She was a wreck. Sobbing all over the place. Could
hardly get her to make any sense at all. Hate to break it to you
Tom, but don’t think the ex-wife, the girlfriend, or for that
matter anyone I talked to yesterday killed our buddy.”

Next, Captain Michaels showed up and spent
most of the afternoon grilling them.

“The Chief is ruining my weekend, gentleman,”
Michaels snarled, “which means I’m going to ruin your weekend.”
Michaels signaled that they enter his dank, cramped office. He
spent the next three hours having them go over, point by point, the
case. Eventually, he became totally exasperated.

“Tell me what we know,” Michaels said, “not
what we fucking guess, or suppose, or think, but we actually
fucking know to be true.”

“We know that John Vithous got his skull
bashed in on Friday night right after he emailed a Star reporter
named Bethany Edwards,” Burke replied. “He got his brains beat in
with some sort of blunt instrument…”

“That we haven’t recovered,” Thurber
interrupted.

“That we haven’t recovered,” Burke agreed.
“We’ve got a city full of people who have or had an axe to grind
with Mr. Vithous, but we don’t have any of them at scene.”

“In fact, and Tom this is going to be news to
you, too,” Thurber interjected, “the City Hall logs show no one
checked in after hours, and even better -- their closed circuit
monitoring system has been broken for weeks, so there is no tape
showing anyone leaving the building right after the murder.”
“Which means you don’t have shit,” Michaels said.

“Which means we don’t have shit,” Burke
concurred.

“Well, the head of security did say they had
a rash of stolen property from City Hall last fall,” stated Thurber
while opening his notes, “they caught a cleaning guy doing it. Name
of Thomas Miller Douglas. Might be a start.”

Captain Michael responded with a shrug, which
Burke knew meant he didn’t think much of that lead..

“His first name definitely sounds sinister,”
Thurber offered, hoping some levity might help Michaels’ mood. It
did not.

“Well, gentlemen,” Michaels said while
standing up and opening his office door, a long familiar cue for
his men to leave, “I am going to enjoy the rest of my weekend. I
suggest you spend the rest of your weekend here figuring out who
the fuck did kill Mr. Vithous while we all still have jobs.”With
that, Burke and Thurber slinked out of his office and back to their
desks.

The rest of the day didn’t go any better.
Burke was buried in paperwork, and Thurber wasn’t having any
success with finding any new witnesses. They were, at the moment,
hopelessly stuck.

“Jack, when you said the City Hall log didn’t
have any entries after hours, does that mean that they only keep a
log once the business day is through?”

“Yeah,” Thurber replied, “the rest of the day
they’ve got security with metal detectors. If you are a city
staffer, you show your badge and they let you in, but if you are a
visitor, you have to go through the metal detectors.”

“But what if our killer got there before five
and hid?” Burke asked, “Or even better, what if he actually works
in the building?”

“So you are thinking some worker smuggles in
something like a baseball bat, sits around in their cubicle waits
for all his coworkers to leave, then goes up and uses Vithous’ head
as a piñata?” asked Thurber.

“Maybe. Or maybe he already has something in
his office heavy enough to bash in his brains, like a door stop,”
Burke replied. He could see that it had gotten dark outside;
another day had turned into night and they didn’t have any solid
leads.

“I guess a good place to start would be to
check to see if the elevators are automated and they can give us a
log of all six elevators and when any went up to the
29
^th
floor,” offered Thurber.

“If they took the elevator and if there is
log, we might be able to narrow it down to one floor,” Burke
replied, “it’s a long shot, but at least it is a start.”

“There ain’t going to be anybody over there
tonight,” Thurber said. “Let’s go home.”

“You go ahead,” Burke said, “I’ve got some
more paperwork to do.”

Thurber grabbed his sports coat, which was
two sizes two small but he was too cheap to buy a new one, squeezed
his enormous girth into it, and headed out into the night.

Burke had stayed for another hour and a half.
He spent most of the time organizing his notes, establishing a
timeline and thinking about possible suspects. Councilman Murray
seemed like a logical interview. And, he thought he should at least
talk to the former chief of staff. Losing your job might be a
motive.

He had picked up the phone more than a few
times and started to call Julie, but thought better of it and hung
up. He wasn’t ready for that just yet.

Eventually, he realized he wasn’t being
productive, he was just stalling. He called a favorite Indian
restaurant close to his apartment for takeout. He headed out into
the night for home. Thoughts about the case so occupied his brain
that he drove right past the Indian restaurant and he had to drive
around the block and circle around. The restaurant was fairly dead;
he realized it was Sunday night. The days and nights now all bled
into each other. Friday night seemed like two weeks ago.

After dinner, he decided he wasn’t quite
ready to call it a night. There was a used bookstore only three
blocks from his apartment. It stayed open late, even on Sundays,
and Burke found it to be a great respite from his apartment.

The owner, a man in his early thirties, with
reddish brown hair and wan skin was behind the counter. He was
engrossed in a book propped up next to the cash register, but he
looked up at Burke momentarily and nodded. They did not know each
other’s names, but over the past few months they had gotten to know
each other by their reading likes and dislikes. The other employee
of the bookstore tried too hard to show he was a rebel. He was a
man in his early fifties who – no matter what the weather –
traipsed around the store barefoot and in shorts. His large stomach
gave away the fact that he was a great aficionado of beer, and his
unwashed, uncombed hair was a signal that he didn’t give a shit
what anyone thought of him.

The bookstore owner was a science fiction and
horror fan, two genres that Burke hated. Burke loved history and
biographies. One night, the owner suggested Burke might like a
newly acquired book in the true crime section. Tom had politely
declined; he didn’t tell him why he didn’t want to read it. Books
were an escape for him; he got enough true crime in his real life.
Enough for two people or more.

He found himself back in his apartment far
too soon, with a Winston Churchill biography under his arm. He
stared at his phone for a full ten minutes. Eventually, he told
himself “fuck it” and dialed the number.

“Hi, Tom,” she answered on the first
ring.

“Hey, Julie,” he answered, rushing the words.
He wanted the conversation to be short.

“I heard we got an offer on the house.” There
was silence on the other end.

“How are you doing, Tom? I hope you aren’t
working too hard.”

“I’ve got a fresh case, but I’m doing ok.”
Why was he telling her this? He needed to stick to the topic at
hand and get off the phone.

“About the offer?”

“Tom, it’s way too low. We figured it out and
you and I both would only net $25,000 from it once we paid the
realtor.”

“Works for me,” he was staring at the TV. The
volume was off, but they were showing college basketball
highlights.

“Tom, I need more than that if I am going to
buy a nice place.”

“Julie, you can find something with that. And
if not, you can rent for a while. We can’t sit on this house
forever. It is time.”

“This is just like you,” she replied, her
voice raising sharply, “You always have to make a snap decision and
once you make your mind up, then that’s it!”

He sat there for a moment. Originally, Julie
had wanted to keep the house through a legal process called a quit
claim deed, but Burke wasn’t interested in that. He worked too long
rehabbing the house; he wasn’t going to let her stay in it.
Instead, his lawyer and her lawyer negotiated back and forth until
it was agreed that Julie could stay in the house until it was sold.
Then the proceeds would be split equally between the two. In
Burke’s mind, Julie was getting the better end of that deal, but he
didn’t fight it. He just wanted out.

“Look,” he said, “I know you are attached to
the place. So was I. But, we can’t live in the past. We have to
move forward. Promise me you will think about it some?”

There was a long silence.

“Julie, are you still there?”

“Yes, Tom. I’m still here. I’ll think about
it, but I’m not promising anything.”

“Ok,” he replied, knowing it was time to go
before she tried to change the subject, “I will call you tomorrow
night so we can finalize. Have a good night.” He pressed the ‘end’
button before waiting to hear what she said back. He turned the
phone off for the night. He didn’t want her to call him back.

Monday, March 13, 7:30 a.m.

“Tommy”

Oh shit

“It’s your mother”

Obviously

“Are you there? If you are there, please pick
up.”

She still hasn’t figured out the answering
machine is digital and I don’t hear it when she leaves a
message

“We missed you at Aunt Helen’s yesterday. I
thought you were going to stop by. Call me, ok? Love you.”

Burke hit the button to delete the message.
Shit.
He had totally forgotten about the family float. With
the murder and the lack of sleep and everything else going on it
had completely slipped his mind. Friday was St. Patrick’s Day. And
that meant another year of the Burke/Sullivan family float in the
parade. How long had that been going on? As long as Tom Burke could
remember.

What had started as a small family-style
parade had grown into a 3 hour long, drunken excess of a march that
over 200,000 people showed up to watch. KCPD hated the parade; a
headache of traffic detours, drunk and disorderly calls and a bevy
of elected officials who expected to be protected as they rode
along Broadway for three miles amongst the masses.

For the Burke and Sullivan clans, St.
Patrick’s Day was a national holiday. If it fell on a weekday, all
the school age children would be pulled out of school. Vacation
days were used for the working adults. Not showing up was
unthinkable.

Tom had found himself in his mom’s dog house
for the few years he had not made the parade, either by working or
simple neglect. His mother’s displeasure amused him greatly because
she wasn’t even Irish. Her maiden name was Wood, which was English.
But, she wasn’t having any of it.

“Tommy, everyone is Irish on St. Patrick’s
Day,” she would exclaim, “why are you trying to ruin my fun?”

This would usually be met with an eye roll
and a sigh, but after a while he just gave up fighting with her
over it. His father, who was 100% Irish and fit the stereotype of
the drunken Irish cop to a T, had been a no show for years. So, in
the odd dynamic that was the Burke/Sullivan clan, Mary Burke, a
woman who kicked Tom Sr. out of the house in 1981, would be at the
festivities every year with the Burke family, while Tom Burke Sr.
usually held court at Murphy’s with his Irish cop friends.

If Tom had his druthers, he wouldn’t be at
either location, but barring death or a move at least 2,000 miles
away, that wasn’t going to happen. He enjoyed seeing family,
running into some cousins that he only saw this one day each year,
but he hated having to juggle family loyalties between his mother
and his father. He had nothing to do with their break up, but even
at forty-one felt he was still being used as a pawn in their game
of which parent could drive the other more crazy.

To this day, he wasn’t sure exactly what had
broken them up. He suspected his father had cheated on his mother,
but he didn’t have any evidence. At the time she kicked him out,
Tom Sr. was still only a moderate drinker, and had always treated
his kids well -- when he was around. Tom knew his father was a
workaholic, so it wasn’t odd that he put in long hours.