Jack Daniels Six Pack (8 page)

It could have been just bad luck. Some random freak I never met decides to express his hatred for cops by dropping off treats in the police parking lot. But an earlier call to the district killed that theory. No one else seemed to have gotten candy. I faced the disturbing truth that it was meant for me specifically.

“How about rethent catheth?” Herb asked.

“Recent cases?”

He nodded. Herb’s lower lip had swelled up from the stitches, causing him to pout. His tongue was also swollen, making him look like his mouth was full. But a full mouth was the normal look for Herb, so it didn’t detract too much.

“The only cases we’ve had in the last few weeks are gang deaths and suicides. Except the Gingerbread Man case. But how would he even know who I am?”

“Newth?”

“I don’t think I’ve been mentioned in the news.”

He shrugged. A line of drool was running down his chin; Herb was still too numb to feel it. I made the universal wiping motion on my own face, and he got the hint and cleaned himself off.

“Do you want to keep our appointment with Dr. Booster’s daughter, or call it a day?”

“Bootherth daubder.”

I nodded, glancing to the right as Benedict’s doctor approached. In one gloved hand was the bag of candy bars. In the other was a manila folder.

“This may sound callous,” he said, handing us the folder, “but you got very lucky. Not only could it have been much worse, but it might have been fatal. I’ve never seen anything like this.”

I opened the folder, taking a look at an X ray of the twenty-one remaining candy bars, including the one I’d almost bitten into.

“Jethuth,” Herb said.

“We counted over forty needles, thirty fishhooks, and ten X-Acto blades.” The doctor shook his head. “Only one candy out of the bunch was untampered with. If a hook or a blade got lodged in the throat, it might have easily severed an artery.”

I stared mutely at the X ray, feeling myself grow very cold. Someone had spent a long time doctoring up this candy. Hours. I tried to imagine that person, hunched over a table, inserting fishhooks into chocolate bars. All this trouble, hoping I’d eat just one. Or maybe hoping I’d pass them out to people. I thought about Herb, almost dropping off the candy at the children’s ward. Both my hands clenched.

“So, Doctor”––I tried to keep a lid on my rage—“if we find the person who did this, in your professional opinion, could we charge him or her with attempted murder?”

“Lieutenant, there’s no question in my mind. I would say that you’d have a better chance of surviving a gunshot than one of these candy bars.”

I thanked him, making sure I got his card in case we needed to talk again. Herb and I walked out to the parking lot in silence, leaving Mercy Hospital for the second time that day.

“Lunch?” I asked.

Benedict nodded. Eleven stitches in the mouth weren’t nearly enough to stop him from eating.

Before we ate, we stopped at Herb’s house so he could get cleaned up. I waited in the car. I liked Bernice, his wife, but her idea of small talk was asking dozens of personal questions, none of which I felt like answering at the moment.

When Herb came out, his bloody shirt had been replaced and he wore a new tie, this one too thin by at least twenty years.

We went to a sub place, where I got a meatball sandwich and Herb got a hoagie with double meat and cheese.

“How is it?” I asked.

Benedict shrugged. “I can’t tathte anything. But it smellth great.”

After feeding ourselves, we headed for Reginald Booster’s house in Northwest suburban Palatine. To do that we had to get on Interstate 90 going west. It was also called the Kennedy. The other big expressways in Chicago were the Edens, the Eisenhower, and the Dan Ryan. Naming them after politicians didn’t make them any more endearing.

The Kennedy had been under construction for the last two years, so the normally awful traffic was twice as bad. But then there has never been a time when at least one expressway wasn’t being repaired. “Expressway” was a misnomer.

Even with my cherry on the roof and the siren wailing, I couldn’t get past the single-lane traffic. Driving up on the median was another perk of being a cop, but the medians were swarming with construction workers and yellow machines. I beared it, but I didn’t grin.

Benedict went over the file with me as we drove, his lisp improving as he practiced his enunciation. On August 9, a person or persons unknown broke into Dr. Reginald Booster’s house at 175 Elm Avenue in Palatine. Booster lived there alone, his wife having passed away three years earlier in a car accident. The perp tied up Dr. Booster and slit his throat. Before death, he was stabbed in the chest and abdomen area twelve times, not deeply enough to kill.

The reason I’d recalled Booster’s name was that he was all over the news as the “Palatine Torture-Murder.” The media loves a torture-murder.

Booster’s body was discovered the next day by a weekly maid. There was no sign of anything stolen. No suspects, no witnesses, no apparent motive.

“What was he tied up with?” I asked Benedict.

He flipped through the report. “Twine.”

Twine fibers were found embedded in Jane Doe’s wrists and ankles. A possible link.

“Was the weapon serrated?”

“No. The wounds were smooth. But they weren’t as deep as the girl’s.”

I thought about this. “The jagged edge on a hunting knife, it doesn’t start until a few inches up on the blade. At the tip, it’s like a double-edged knife.”

“So it could be the same knife.”

“How did he get in?”

“Means of entry unknown. Place was locked when the maid arrived. She had a key.”

“Did they run that angle?”

“To death. The maid, no pun intended, was clean. In her deposition, she mentioned Booster sometimes kept his patio door open at night to let the breeze in.”

That struck me as odd, but I was a city girl. Suburbanites didn’t have a lock-and-key mentality. Pay half a million for a house in a nice neighborhood and you figure crime will never happen to you.

“No prints at the scene, right?”

“No. But a few smudges on his body that could indicate latex gloves.”

“Does the daughter live there now?”

“Nope. She lives in Hoffman Estates. She’s a kindergarten teacher.”

“Brave woman,” I said, recalling all of the screaming children back at the doctor’s office.

“So what was that bit with Quasimodo at the pharmacy?”

“Oh. That was Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dumber.”

“The Feebies?”

“They’re profiling again.”

Herb shook his head. He’d had some run-ins with the Féderalés last year on a murder case. Sixteen-year-old girl shot in the head, the same MO as another murder in Michigan. The FBI BSU ViCAT profile predicted the killer was a sixty-year-old white male truck driver, former enlisted man, bearded, and a bed-wetter.

The perp turned out to be two clean-shaven black gang members under eighteen, with no military experience between them, both untroubled by enuresis. Neither Herb nor I had much faith in profiling. In fact, neither of us had much faith in the FBI.

“So they profiled the Gingerbread Man with a curved spine.”

“It’s just a hunch,” I said.

Herb didn’t laugh at the joke either, but at least he got it.

“Well, maybe we’ll get an ID now,” Herb said. “People are bound to recognize the name Quasimodo.”

“Why is that?”

“Because he rings a bell.”

I winced.

“That one actually hurt.”

“Well, Hugo your way, and I’ll go mine.”

“Let’s not talk for a while.”

We came to a toll booth and I found forty cents in change in my ashtray. State troopers didn’t have to pay tolls, but us lowly city cops weren’t immune. Yet another reason to avoid the suburbs.

The Kennedy intersected Route 53 with the usual cloverleaf, and I took the leaf going north toward Rolling Meadows. Finally out of construction traffic, I released some pent-up tension and gunned the engine. It didn’t startle Herb too much. Probably because the acceleration on my Nova was comparable to pushing a boulder up a hill.

Palatine Road going west took us off the expressway and into the heart of middle-American suburbia. I drove past housing developments, and strip malls, and shopping centers, and more housing developments, and a strip mall development, and finally found Elm Street without difficulty.

It was a little before two o’clock when we pulled into Dr. Booster’s driveway, sandwiched between two mature spruces. The house was two stories and brown, partially obscured by an overgrowth of trees and bushes that needed trimming. The unkempt lawn was covered with brown leaves, and they crunched underfoot as we walked up to the front door.

Melissa Booster answered after the first knock, apparently having seen our approach. She was robust—add a hundred pounds to Rubenesque and you’d have her figure. I suppose the PC term would be glandularly imbalanced or calorically challenged. She wore a red housedress that hung on her like a set of drapes. Her makeup was simple and expertly applied, and her brown eyes crinkled at us through the layers of doughy skin that made up her face. Her three chins waggled in a cheerful smile and she invited us in.

“Sorry we’re late.” I offered my hand. “I’m Lieutenant Daniels, this is Detective Benedict.”

“No apologies needed, Lieutenant. It’s been a while since the police have contacted me. I’m happy to know the search is still on.”

She spoke in the singsong voice that people used when reading to children. I suppose that being around five-year-olds all the time made it hard to switch off. We followed her to the living room, where she sat us on a sofa in front of a dusty table and waddled off to the kitchen, insisting on getting us coffee.

Herb nudged me quietly. “That’s a whole lot of woman.”

“Spoken by a man with a forty-six-inch waist.”

“Are you referring to my washboard stomach?”

“Don’t you mean washtub stomach? Shh, she’s bringing doughnuts.”

Melissa Booster returned, carrying two mugs of coffee on top of a Dunkin’ Donuts box.

“I hope I’m not offending you.” She handed me a cup.

“Miss?”

“With the cop/doughnut thing. I don’t want to play on a stereotype.”

“No offense at all.” I smiled.

“Got any jellies?” Benedict reached for the box. He fished out something sticky and emitted a satisfied grunt. Other people would be wary of food after taking a bite out of an X-Acto knife blade, but not Herb.

“I’m sorry about the house.” Melissa plopped her bulk down on the love seat opposite us. The framework screamed in protest. “The maid never came back after finding Dad dead, and things have gotten dusty. This is the first time I’ve been back myself. I guess enough time has passed, but I’ve kept putting it off. Any new news?”

“Possibly. We’re following a lead on another case that may be related. Did your father ever fill out prescriptions off duty?”

“Sure. Whenever there was a family get-together he brought his prescription pad with him. Half the hypochondriacs in Illinois are related to me. That’s probably why Dad became a doctor.”

“What did he prescribe for family members?”

“The usual. Painkillers, sleeping pills, laxatives, cold medication, acne cream, birth control, all the standards. The current hot ones were Propecia and Viagra. He didn’t seem to mind the family doing it to him. Both my grandmothers thought he was a saint.”

Benedict finished enough of his doughnut to aid in the inquiries.

“Did he ever prescribe injectionals?”

“You mean like for diabetics?”

“Any at all.”

“Not to my family. Most of my relatives would faint at the thought of getting a shot.”

I sneezed thoughtfully, if such a thing is possible.

“How about Seconal?” I asked. “It’s a powerful sedative, like Valium.”

“Not to our family. Not that I know of.”

“We believe your father may have written a very large prescription for Seconal the night he died, possibly for someone who knew him. Do you know anyone named Charles or Chuck?”

“Sorry, no.”

“Any relative with that name, or friend of your father’s?”

“No. Not that I know of.”

“Ms. Booster . . .”

“Melissa.”

“Melissa, this is a hard question, but do you think there was any chance that your dad may have been selling prescriptions?”

She shook her head, as if saying no to a child. “Dad? No way. Look around you. It’s a nice house, but not extravagant. My father made good money, but it’s all accounted for. He lived within his means. Besides, Dad just wasn’t like that. I had it drilled into my head from a baby on that medication and drugs were very serious and dangerous.”

She reached into the doughnut box and removed a powdered, biting into it gently.

“Would he have had a prescription pad in the house?”

“Probably. His desk is in the den. Would you like to see it?”

“Please.”

Melissa placed the doughnut on the table and rocked twice on the sofa, pulling up her considerable body on the third try. We followed as she waddled to the den, down a hallway, and into a room the size of a large closet.

“Actually, this is just a large closet,” Melissa said. “Dad put a desk in here and it became the den.”

She didn’t enter, probably because if she did, she wouldn’t have room to turn around. I thanked her and went in alone, leaving Herb behind to small talk.

The desk was old and bore the traits of many years of faithful use. It was a rolltop, with five drawers and half a dozen cubbyholes to squirrel away bills or mail. I gave it a quick toss, finding a lot of junk for my efforts, but no prescription pad.

“A prescription pad wasn’t listed as items in evidence taken during the original investigation, was it?”

Benedict glanced at me and shook his head, then resumed his conversation with Melissa. They were talking, go figure, about food.

I went to the file cabinet next to the desk and commenced a once-over, finding tax forms, a few medical charts, and a smattering of appliance instruction manuals. No prescription pad.

“Pardon me.” I interrupted an argument about stuffed pizza. “But which room was your father’s body found in?”