Head Shot (A Thriller): A Crime and Suspense Thriller (5 page)

Fourteen

Carrie DeMarinis stood outside the baggage claim with an expression that caused other travelers to give her a wide berth.  Her ankles hurt, her knees hurt, her back hurt, but most of all, she was pissed.

Harriet Bednarski was her best friend, but she also loved to party.  Carrie knew that.  But she was surprised that her friend had apparently forgotten about her. 

She used her cell phone to call Harriet again, but there was still no answer.  Carrie blew out a long breath, trying to calm herself, and not think about the fact that it had been almost an hour since she'd gotten off the plane.

Slowly, her anger began to turn to fear.  What if Harriet had overdosed?  What if she was lying face down in her own puke, some hashish on the table, her face pale and eyes staring blankly at the carpet?

Carrie pushed the vile images aside.  The sign ahead had arrows directing passengers to ground transportation.  She followed the last arrow and walked down another long sidewalk to an escalator that deposited her in front of a long row of rental car booths.  She looked to her left, spotted a taxicab sign and followed it through a set of automatic doors to a row of taxis waiting on the street. 

A slight breeze stirred Carrie's long black hair as she got into the nearest cab, gave the driver the address, then settled back into the seat, pulling out her pocketbook to make sure she actually had enough money for the fare.

One time, she and a friend had gone into Manhattan and taken a cab across town only to be shocked by the thirty-three dollar fare.  They were left with six dollars between them and a long walk back to the bus station for the return trip to Newark.  What a pain in the ass that had been.  Another trip that had ended up going directly into the toilet, she thought to herself.

The taxi merged onto I-94 headed downtown. 

They passed over neighborhoods of small houses packed together, and they reminded Carrie of her own neighborhood back home.  They topped out on the Boehn bridge and Carrie got her first glimpse of Milwaukee, not a bad skyline, she thought, as well as the beautiful blue of Lake Michigan to the right.

A smell like sour bread wafted into the window and the driver told Carrie it was from a factory that made yeast for the breweries in town.  The smell made Carrie's stomach churn.

They exited the freeway and made their way to a quiet, tree-lined street lined by duplexes with the occasional single family home nestled between their bigger neighbors.  The taxi pulled up outside the address Carrie had given and she noted the lights with what looked to be a person moving around inside.

The fear instantly vanished and anger took its place.  She couldn’t believe Harriet.  Too stoned to remember to pick her up.

Carrie paid the man and got her small bag from the trunk.  She walked up the sidewalk leading to the house, set her bag down, and rang the doorbell.  There was no answer.

She could hear the stereo going inside.

"Harriet," she yelled, "open the goddamn door!"

Nothing.

"You are pissing me off!” she yelled.

The door remained shut.

She tried the doorknob and it turned all the way, the door cracked an inch and she pushed it open.

The smell of pot attacked her senses and she stepped inside.

"Harriet, what the hell–"

Something shot out from behind the door but Carrie yanked her head back instinctively, and the blow merely grazed the point of her chin.

She grabbed the arm and pulled it toward her and her right hand automatically bunched itself into a tight fist.  The man behind the door was pulled off balance and Carrie threw everything she had into an overhand right that hit its target on the mark, the bridge of the man's nose, and he sank to his knees.

Still holding his arm, she reared back and kicked him as hard as she could in his solar plexus, the sharp point of her pump sinking in hard, and she heard the whoosh of air being expelled from his lungs.

And then she saw Harriet lying in a pool of blood, her face a mess of blood and torn flesh, and she ran.

Her heels pounded down the pavement until one shoe flew off into the air and she kicked the other one off.  She didn't know if the man was chasing her but she imagined she could feel his hot breath on her neck.

Halfway down the block she saw a house that had its light on, and she saw through the living room's picture window that an old man and an old woman were watching television.  She pounded on the door, then took a chance and tried the latch.

It was unlocked.

She sprang into the living room and the old man, in boxer shorts and a T-shirt, jumped out of his chair as his wife began struggling to get up from hers. 

Carrie slammed the door shut behind her, found the dead bolt and rammed it home.

"Where's your phone?" she asked.

Fifteen

He thought about burning the place down.  Joe had read once that Mafia criminals did that when they killed someone.  Just torched the whole place.  But Joe hadn’t killed anyone at his apartment.  Well, technically he hadn’t, but he’d had a few trophies here from time to time, he thought.  Besides, if the cops showed up at his place looking for evidence, it was already over.

Standing in the bathroom, he looked again at his face in the mirror.  The bridge of his nose was only slightly swollen from where that bitch had sneaked in a punch.  There was maybe a slight discoloration under one eye but he knew his nose hadn’t been broken.

Just a bruise, same as the kick in the stomach he’d gotten.  Who would have guessed that a friend would drop by the lawyer’s house?  Joe had scouted the place and new the woman kept strange hours and he’d never seen her once have people over to the apartment.

More proof that his hobby was not a perfect science and that there would always be risk, no matter how much preparation was involved.

In the end, he didn’t feel like it.  He would have to go get some gasoline, douse the whole place, and what if a cop just happened to be driving by when he touched it off? 

No, he wouldn’t burn the place down.

But he would be sure to take the most damning items he had.

Ferkovich gathered a few of the items in question, and brought them out to the vehicle he had borrowed from work.

His car was no longer an option.

Ferkovich dumped the boxes into the back of the truck with more force than he had intended.  He realized he was suddenly very angry.  Why were they doing this to him?  It wasn’t his fault, none of it was.  They had made him into this and he was doing what they had intended for him.

The thoughts bounced around inside his brain but they came across more as red-hot emotion and he struggled to make sense of any of it.

The rage bubbled inside him and he flexed his hands as he walked back into his apartment.

He would need to find another girl as soon as possible.  The satisfaction from the last one hadn’t lasted as long as the others.

It was because of the pressure.

Now he had to disappear.

But look on the bright side, he said to himself with a smile.

New territory meant new hunting grounds.

Sixteen

Ray Mitchell slammed the phone down and grabbed his sportcoat, hitting his office door at a dead run.  It took him less than thirty seconds to get down the staircase to the main doors of the police station and in another thirty he was speeding down Wisconsin Avenue in his unmarked squad car, the bright cherry red flasher bouncing light off the old buildings of the historic Third Ward.

A woman had called 911 saying she'd just escaped from a man who had killed her friend and tried to kill her.  Officers had quickly been dispatched, and the woman, although badly frightened, had been able to provide a description that sounded remarkably similar to the description of the man last seen at the Java House shortly before Lisa Young's disappearance.

Ray took a hard left and heard his tires squealing. 

If this man turned out to be the same one who killed Lisa Young, then Ray Mitchell knew he had a serial killer on his hands.

Although Milwaukee was considered a small city, it was no stranger to serial murder.  In 1994 there was Jeffrey Dahmer, the serial murderer who killed, dismembered, and sometimes ate the flesh of his victims.  Those murders put Milwaukee on the map, and for a brief time, the case hung like a black cloud over the city.

But Wisconsin's ties went even further back to the 1950s, when the infamous Ed Gein began killing his neighbors and hanging them, after he butchered them to look like dressed deer, in his barn.  News of Gein's attempts to make lampshades from human skin and a necklace made of human nipples, shook America at the time. 
Psycho
, the Hitchcock thriller, was based on Ed Gein.

For Ray Mitchell, the first inkling that he may have a serial killer on his hands first reached him after his conversation in the pathology lab with Herb Kellen.  But the call that had been passed along to him from the officers currently on the scene, mentioned that the deceased victim's face had been mutilated.

Along with the eyewitness description of the perpetrator, this could be the break that would provide Ray's escape route from the shitstorm his life had become following the discovery of Lisa Young's body.

After Nancy Bishop had broadcast her story, Ray's office had been inundated with calls from civic groups, the mayor's office, and one especially angry message from his Chief.  No one wanted a repeat of Dahmer, in which the Milwaukee Police Department's performance in the case had gotten poor marks from the public.  It didn't help matters that the Chief's right hand man, Lieutenant Soergel, was probably right now sticking a knife into Ray's back over his handling of the case.  Soergel played the political game to perfection, and certainly had something to do with the bug currently residing up Chief Trimble's butt.

Political ambitions aside, everyone involved wanted this killer caught., right now.

Mitchell raced through a red light and turned onto Lisbon Avenue.  All of the people that were putting pressure on him for fast results had apparently forgotten that catching a murderer usually required a substantial amount of legwork.  Ray knew the Mayor and his Chief were far too old to be a part of the younger generation's constant quest for instant gratification, but they sure as hell weren't acting like it.

Their attitude was hey, screw the whole painstaking police procedure crap, just catch the guy, now. Period. 

Ray shook his head at how preposterous the situation was.  Pissing on the guy beneath you seemed to be everyone's modus operandi.  Ray figured that if he ever made it into a position of management, he could quite possibly be the first person in history to actually take responsibility for his subordinates.

Ray had filled in his superiors on the details of the case.  Lisa Young's car had been found at the Java House, and he had been able to track down who had been working the night of the girl's disappearance, and then was able to find the customers, regulars, who had also been there that night. 

He interviewed them and they all reported seeing a man alone, drinking coffee and reading a newspaper, but were unable to give much of a description.

The Java House employee who had served the man his coffee said he was about six feet tall, somewhat handsome in a rugged kind of way, with a medium build and dark hair.  Ray, however, was most interested in the possible observation another patron had offered.  There had been a couple at the Java House that night who also reported seeing the man alone, reading the newspaper, at the time Lisa Young entered, and he left shortly after Miss Young left. 

But the woman who was there with her husband said that the man had taken off his tinted glasses briefly to clean the lenses and she said that something seemed to be wrong with his one eye, like it was crooked, but she said she couldn't be sure because the man put his glasses on so quickly. 

No one saw anything else after the two left the Java House.  The buildings surrounding the coffee shop were commercial, not residential, a real estate office across the street would have had the best view if the victim had been abducted from the parking lot, but the building had been vacant, everyone was home for the evening.

He saw the lights of the patrol cars ahead and pulled in behind them.  This was a decent neighborhood, mostly duplexes and a large tenant population, but these weren't absentee landlords, the lawns were kept up and there wasn't a lot of crime, the biggest problem being teenagers breaking into parked cars.

Ray walked up the sidewalk, ducked under the crime scene tape and entered the apartment.  He detected the faint smell of marijuana, not surprising considering the way the apartment was decorated. 

A large, tie dye flag of the Grateful Dead took up a good portion of the living room wall, a bookcase was overrun with lava lamps, candles and junk food took up most of the opposing wall, and a futon was spread out in the middle of the floor.  Ray guessed the futon served as sleeping quarters even though there appeared to be a bedroom off the kitchen.

The young woman sprawled on the futon was a bloody mess, her lips were torn apart revealing gaps that once held teeth, and her face was bruised and battered.

Ray stepped carefully across the deep shag carpet and squatted next to the body.

He didn't need Herb Kellen to tell him that this woman had been killed by the same murderer who ended Lisa Young's life.

He left the apartment and walked outside, spotting two patrol officers who were flanking a young woman whose strikingly beautiful face was marked by long mascara streaks, giving her a ghoulish appearance under the circumstances.

"Mitchell, homicide," he said, flashing his badge to the two patrol officers.

"Hi Miss...?"

"DeMarinis.  Carrie."  She clearly had been crying at one point, but now her voice was cold, flat, and emotionless.

"Can I get you anything, Carrie?"

"Yeah, you can get me out of here, I'm tired of everyone staring at me," she said, her lips trembling slightly, and she cast a glance at the neighbors who had come out to watch the action.

"I was just thinking that myself, Carrie." Ray answered, taking her by the arm and leading her to his car.  She had her arms crossed and looked to be shivering, so he took off his jacket and she shrugged it on.

"What do you say we give you a seat in my car, I’ll get you some hot coffee, and you can wait until I’m done?" he asked.

"Fine," she said.  "It doesn't really matter what I want to do, does it?"

Ray shrugged.  "I'll be back in a second," he said.

He saw the Channel 6 news van and hurriedly sent an officer over to intercept the reporter, who Ray was sure would turn out to be Nancy Bishop.   He sent another officer off to get coffee for the young woman.

He went back inside the apartment, took a closer look at the scene inside, jotted some notes down and went back to his car.  He got in the backseat and looked at the young woman who was still trying to recover from what she’d seen.

"Are you Sicilian?" she asked him.

The detective smiled.

"Part English, part Native American." 

"I never knew they let Indians, or Native Americans, be cops," she said, a question in her voice.

Ray wanted to tell her that they usually didn't, but made an exception in his case.  He didn't tell her about all the "Tonto" and "Geronimo" jokes he'd had to endure, how he'd had to be better than anyone else to make detective.  Instead, he just smiled.

"Well they should, we make the best trackers," he said.

Carrie DeMarinis, with her black eyes set inside a pale face, peered at him.

"Are you going to catch this guy?" she asked.

Ray didn't hesitate.

"Yes," he said.

She looked out the window, the streetlights momentarily illuminating her face before it sank back into the darkness.

"OK, let's start at the beginning, Carrie,” Ray finally said.

For the next forty-five minutes, Carrie DeMarinis, with brief interruptions from Ray, described Harriet's invitation to come out for a weekend.

She filled Ray in on how she and Harriet had grown up together and the nature of the relationship.  She said how surprised she was when she got off the plane and she wasn't there, then told him that since she had her address she decided to just take a cab.

After Carrie described the brief struggle with the strange man, and seeing Harriet's body, Ray asked her to be very specific in describing the man.

"He was probably a little over six feet and short brown hair, kind of a square face."

"Anything else?" Ray asked.

"Yeah, he had a lazy eye, his left one.  I only got a quick look at him, when I punched him, and I noticed that his eye was rolled to one side, it looked weird, you know?"

Ray nodded.

She started crying.

"Why did he have to kill her?" she said, sobbing between breaths.

"Tell me more about Harriet," he said.

"Everyone thought she partied too much, but she isn't...wasn't...she was just a nice girl who only really cared about having a good time, and there's nothing wrong with that."

She used a Kleenex to wipe her nose.

"She always hung out with weird people, you know?  She told me she had been scrounging around for clients, she was a lawyer, just passed the bar, and she said she'd been meeting some freaks.  Which means for Harriet to call them freaks they had to be pretty fucked up, you know?"

Ray nodded, realized he didn’t have any other questions at the moment, and told Carrie to wait.

He got out of the car and quickly returned with a female patrol officer.  He had Carrie get out of his car. “I'm going to have Officer Eves here take you to a nice hotel for the night.  It's too late to get you on a plane back to Newark tonight, but tomorrow, if I have questions I'll come and talk to you in the morning.  I may also want you to look at some mug shots.  If I don't have anything to go over with you, then Officer Eves will get your stuff and get you on a plane first thing, OK?"

Carrie nodded.

"You were brave tonight,” Ray said.  “Your fast thinking and that mean right hook probably saved your life."

She looked up and met Ray's eye.

"Harriet didn't deserve that."

Ray nodded.  Carrie DeMarinis stood and left, a bit shakily, with the female officer.

It took him several hours to finish at the scene, interview the neighbors and have a brief chat with Kellen.  Ray then drove back to headquarters and logged into his computer to follow a hunch.  He punched in the name Harriet Bednarski and then accessed court records.  Once the computer was logged onto the court system's database, he asked it to compile a list of all court cases where Harriet Bednarski was one of the lawyers, and then supply the list of people she had defended.

With the word "processing..." on the computer screen, Ray left to get another cup of coffee.

My stomach's going to look like the surface of Mars by the time I retire, if I keep this up, he thought.

He walked back to his computer where the screen told him his request was still processing.

He checked his cell phone to see if there were any messages for him, but there weren’t any.  That was good.

How, if at all, were Lisa Young and Harriet Bednarski related?  He'd gotten nowhere on the Young case, but he had definite hopes that the murder of Harriet Bednarski would help fill in the picture.  He wanted to catch this guy and catch him fast, before anyone else died.

The computer beeped, telling Ray that it had his answer.

A list of court cases came up with the names of the defendants highlighted in boldface.

Ray's eye went to each name first and then to the crime.

Speeding.

Possession of a controlled substance.

Driving under the influence.

Clearly, Harriet Bednarski had been no F. Lee Bailey.

Ray continued to scan the list of offenses until he got to the third to the last entry.

Trespassing.  Ray eyes went to the name.

Joseph P. Ferkovich.  The name meant nothing to Ray.  He scanned the court record which stated Mr. Ferkovich was seen in Cedarburg, lurking in someone's backyard.  Cedarburg, where Lisa Young had been abducted.  Was this guy a peeping Tom or something much worse?