Naked Justice (6 page)

Well, best to get it over with. He pulled his black-and-white up into the driveway of 1260 South Terwilliger. Nice house. Nice neighborhood, in fact.

Barrett, the name on the mailbox read. Barrett. Good God, this wasn’t the mayor’s place, was it? He’d heard rumors about him down at the police station. Some of the boys had been called out to his house before, but so far, it had all been hushed up.

He radioed his arrival to the Box and climbed out of his car. He noticed a man in the upstairs window next door watching him. Dollars to doughnuts he was the one who made the anonymous call.

Calley rang the bell and waited. He rang it again.

No answer.

Now that was odd. According to the Box, the altercation in progress had been so loud it could be heard outside the house. But Calley didn’t hear a thing.

Calley tried to remember what he had learned at the academy. Did he have probable cause to enter without a warrant? It was a tough call. He could easily see some lawyer arguing that he didn’t. He didn’t need a black mark on his record the first week.

He rang the bell again. Still no answer. Damn.

It was probably just a mistake or a prank or a false alarm. He should just get back in his car, make his report, and drive on home.

But what if something was going on in there? The Box had told him there were supposedly a woman and two kids involved.

Damn!
Marie would be so angry if he got suspended. He wouldn’t get laid for a month.

He rang the bell again. “Police,” he barked.

No answer.

He pressed his ear against the door. He didn’t hear anything, but the pressure of his head nudged the door open. It hadn’t been shut, at least not all the way. Like someone had thrown it closed in a hurry.

The door creaked open about a foot wide. Well, hell, Calley thought. You can’t have any reasonable expectation of privacy when your front door is gaping open, can you?

He pushed the door the rest of the way open and stepped inside. “Police,” he repeated, but there was still no answer. There was a smell, though, a pungent, putrid smell. Well, he thought, I’ll just make a quick tour of the house and make sure there hasn’t been any—

He turned a corner and drew in his breath.

There she was. The lady of the house. The first lady of the city.

Formerly, anyway.

She was sprawled backwards over a dining room chair, her feet on the floor, her hands above her head. Her face was bruised in several places; her lips were cracked and caked with dried blood. Her blouse was torn, exposing her left shoulder and brassiere. Blood was smeared all over her body and formed dried puddles on the floor. Her lips were parted and her eyes were wide open, staring at him.

Calley pressed his hand against his mouth, suppressing his gag reflex. What the hell had he stumbled into?

His brain raced. His respiration quickened; panic began to overwhelm him. What should I do? He tried to think; he knew he should do something. He should get to a phone and call headquarters. No, that would leave prints. He’d use his car radio. No, he couldn’t leave the house. What about the kids? What if the killer was still here?

Calley fell to his knees and started retching huge dry heaves. It was more than a minute before he could stop himself. What was he doing here? He didn’t know anything about homicides. He’d never even seen one before, except in pictures. Why did it have to be him? On his first goddamn week on the job!

Calley took deep, cleansing breaths and tried to steady himself. Pull yourself together, Calley, he told himself. Think of it as a test. A test to see how good a cop you’re going to be. When the going gets tough, the tough get going.

He would like to get going, he thought, way far away from this place. But he knew he couldn’t. He had to check the rest of the house. He had to make sure …
God!
He couldn’t even think about it.

Slowly he covered the rest of the downstairs, making a wide berth around the dining room. Nothing else seemed unusual. With his heart pounding in his chest, he started upstairs.

The first room on the left clearly belonged to a little girl. It was covered with stuffed animals and pink chiffon and Barbie doll accessories. But where was the girl?

There she was. She was lying on top of her bed in the middle of a sea of teddy bears and lions and giraffes. She was barely bigger than they were.

Calley knew even before he touched her that she was gone. Unlike the woman downstairs, there was no sign of blood, no obvious indication of violence. But she was motionless and still—much too still for a little girl. Her skin was pale, as if she’d been drained of blood. Her eyes were closed.

Her wrist was ice cold. Calley searched for a pulse, but there was nothing. He held his hand over her mouth and nose. Nothing.

She was dead. Just like Mom.

Calley pushed himself out of the room. His gorge was rising and he honestly, sincerely didn’t know if he was going to make it. His eyes were clouding and the walls were beginning to spin. He was losing what little equilibrium he still had. But he had to press on. A test, he told himself. And you don’t want to fail.

He continued taking deep, steady breaths, but he still knew he was going to be sick. He pushed his way toward the bathroom he had passed in the hall. His foot made a crackling noise when he lifted it. There was something sticky on the floor. Dark and red and sticky. He followed the sticky trail into the bathroom.

And found the other one. Sprawled inside the tub, her blood splattered across the porcelain. Everywhere.

Calley turned and ran. All notions of logic and duty and honor had been erased by the hideous sight in the bathtub. All he knew now was that he had to get out of there. He had to run and run and run until he couldn’t run anymore, until he couldn’t remember, until he had purged this grotesque madness from his brain.

He jumped over the banister at the halfway point and crashed down into the living room. Scrambling to his feet, ignoring the ankle he twisted upon landing, he bolted across the room. He careened into a small end table and knocked it over, sending a small framed photo flying across the room until it smashed into the opposite wall, the glass shattering into pieces.

Calley never noticed. He was already outside. He knew he needed to get to his car and call this in. But he couldn’t. Not yet, anyway. For now, he just had to escape. To get away. To keep putting distance between this house of horrors and himself until there was nothing left to see, nothing left to know, and most of all, nothing left to remember.

B
EN ENTERED HIS APARTMENT
and carefully threaded his way through a minefield of toys, trains, tracks, blocks, action figures, board books, stuffed animals, and security blankets. Joey was sitting on the floor in a corner, arranging his small plastic animals in a straight line. When he finished, he would take them one by one to another corner and line them up there. Sometimes he did this for hours.

“Where’s Joni?” Ben asked. Joey, of course, didn’t answer, but Ben’s nose inspired him to investigate the kitchen.

In the kitchen, Ben found Joni stirring a copper pot on the stove. Her boyfriend, Booker, was sitting at the table.

“How’s it going, Booker?”

“All right, my man.” They slapped hands.

“How’s the shoulder?” Booker’s shoulder was slowly mending from an injury he’d received in Ben’s living room several months ago. He’d managed to save Christina and Joey’s lives, but he’d gotten a nasty knife wound in the process.

“Only hurts when I laugh.” Booker was a big, muscular man; he worked out regularly at a gym downtown. “And I only laugh when Joni does her striptease routine.”

“Booker!” Joni whirled around, aiming a wooden spoon at his head.

“Just a joke, Joni. Just a joke.” He turned his head and gave Ben a pronounced wink.

Joni was wearing jeans and a T-shirt
(R.E.M. RULES!)
that covered her tall, lean figure like a drape. The ensemble was completed by ten-hole utility boots and the usual baseball cap turned backward. Her short black hair was tucked behind her ears. Joni had a twin sister, Jami, but since Joni had cut her hair, they had gone from being seemingly identical to being barely discernible as members of the same family.

Ben leaned over the stove and inhaled. “Boy, that smells good. But you’re not supposed to do the cooking. That’s my job.”

“Well, you had that conference today, so I knew you’d probably be late. So I started dinner.”

“That was very considerate of you. I didn’t know you could cook.”

“Actually, Booker did all the cooking. All I’ve done is stir.”

“Booker! You?”

Booker shrugged. “What can I say? I’m a Renaissance man.”

“Evidently.” Ben took another deep whiff. “What is it, anyway?”

Joni peered intently into the pot. “Uh … soup.”

“Soup. Good. What kind?”

“Uhhh … you know … just soup.”

“Just soup? C’mon, what is it?”

“I’m not clear on all the details.”

Booker interrupted. “Beer cheese soup. The best.”

“Beer cheese? As in beer?” Ben frowned. “We don’t have any alcoholic beverages in this house.”

Booker smiled. “Brought my own.”

“But we can’t give Joey something that has beer in it!”

Booker smiled. “I prepared young Master Joseph the usual assorted vegetable platter.”

Along with his other eccentricities, Joey had an astounding (for his age) preference for food that was actually healthy. “Well, still. You know I don’t approve of having alcohol in the house.”

“Relax, Ben. We just put in a smidgen. And we poured the rest down the drain. And sterilized the drain with Lysol.” She poked him in the stomach. “What an old woman you’ve become. You’re worse than Mrs. Marmelstein.”

“I don’t mean to be a pain. But it’s a big responsibility, looking after a little kid.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” she said. “After all, I’m his nanny.”

And a darn good nanny she had been, too. Ben had had doubts when, out of desperation, he had promoted her from occasional babysitter to full-fledged nanny status, but she had proven herself time and time again. Almost overnight she had gone from goofy, irresponsible teenager to dedicated, mature caregiver. She fed Joey, bathed Joey, changed Joey, and put up with his odd behavior whenever he wasn’t at school and Ben couldn’t be at home.

Ben felt a furry nuzzling at his feet. “Hi there, Giselle.” Giselle was his cat, a black Burmese who was a past birthday present from Christina. “Are you telling me that you love me, or that you’re hungry?”

Foolish question. Ben took a can of Feline’s Fancy out of the cupboard and scraped it into her bowl. She gobbled it down in well under a minute, then plodded out of the room.

“Not very friendly today,” Ben commented.

“Giselle is undergoing a lot of stress,” Joni explained. “She’s never had a rival for your affection before.”

“A rival?” Joey.

“Oh. Has she been … misbehaving?”

Joni laid down her spoon and turned off the heat. “Let’s just say it’s best to keep them in separate rooms.”

“I had no idea. Thanks for the tip.” He glanced into the soup pot. “Is dinner about ready?”

“Ten more minutes,” Joni replied. “Why don’t you get out of the monkey suit?

“Deal.” Ben left the kitchen and walked toward his bedroom. On his way, he noticed Joey in the living room. He was still playing with his animals, obsessively lining them up. The expression on his face suggested that he was deep in thought, contemplating some weighty matter. But what?

Ms. Hammerstein’s words came back to him unbidden.
He isn’t like the other children.

Ben could fuss and fume all he wanted in public, but privately he knew she was right.

I can’t help wondering whether Joey might not be better off in a more stable environment.

Well, who wouldn’t be? Ben threw his coat onto his bed. Where was his box, anyway?

He lay down on the hardwood floor and reached under the bed. A moment later, he withdrew a shoebox-size wooden box.

Ben lifted the metal clasp and peered inside. This was his childhood treasure chest, the place where he kept his most cherished belongings. There was a Captain Action action figure, a Frisbee, and a Magic 8-Ball. An almost complete deck of Mars Attacks trading cards. A toy phaser. A genuine Superman Krypto-Ray gun. There was a picture of Ben in the third grade, gap-toothed and towheaded.

All the treasures of his childhood. All the things he loved best. Sorted and counted and organized a thousand times over.

Memories were so unreliable. Sometimes he felt like this was all he had left of his childhood, all that remained. He had been a very shy kid, very quiet. Didn’t socialize, didn’t play well with other children. Seemed to be in a world of his own.

Hmmm.

Ben closed the box. He didn’t have time for this indulgence. He should be out there playing with his nephew, trying to engage him, to draw him out of his shell. Being the best substitute daddy he could be, and ignoring …

I can’t help wondering whether Joey might not be better off in a more stable environment. You want what’s best for Joey, don’t you?

He did, of course.

Ben wanted to do the right thing.

But sometimes it was hard as hell to know what that was.

H
E GRIPPED THE STEERING
wheel with such intensity that the cold white knuckles of his hands shone in the moonlight. His face was flushed and sweaty; his head was pressed forward so far his nose nearly touched the wheel. He drove in a blind panic, with no conscious thought in his brain except the one central overwhelming one that was more instinct than thought.

…
gotta go
…
gotta get out
…
gotta go
…
gotta get out
…
gotta get away
…

He still couldn’t sort it out in his head. It had all been so violent, so fast and final. He tried to retrace the events of the day, the afternoon, the evening, but it was all a blur, a confused random assortment of images he didn’t understand, like a computer that had short-circuited and spewed out all its data in one instantaneous jumbled mess. The only thing he remembered clearly was the one sight burned in his brain—Caroline draped over the chair, blood dripping from her mouth.