Authors: Jon Talton
Powers of Arrest (18 page)
Melissa spent three hours with Dodds and a police artist. More overtime for Fassbinder to bitch about. She kept protesting that she hadn’t gotten a great look at the suspect, that the bar had been too dim, but a sketch was produced. At five p.m., Will called all the television and radio stations, as well as the city desk at the
Enquirer
: a press conference would be held in an hour regarding the Gruber murder. That would be enough to draw a crowd. It was agreed that Will would conduct the briefing, the chief overruling Fassbinder’s objections. Will was the one the killer knew, the one he had threatened.
Once again, the room at police headquarters was flooded with television lights. Will wore a dark suit and French blue shirt with a blue-and-burgundy rep tie. He was flanked by the brass and tried not to tilt or hold on too tightly to the podium.
“Thank you for coming,” he began. Cheryl Beth sat in the front row and gave him a secret smile. “Tonight we want to tell you about a new development in the investigation of the murder of Officer Kristen Gruber. What’s being passed around is a sketch of a person of interest in the case. You can also see it on the screen to my right. He’s a white male, twenty-five to thirty years of age, at least six-feet-three inches tall, muscular build, and bald.”
The room rustled with paper and whispers. He waited for it to die down. “Based on our investigation, witness interviews, and a profile of the murderer, I can tell you a few things. He’s a loner and has an anger-management problem that would be noticeable to his friends and family. He might have threatened them. This person might have been seen around the Seven Hills Marina last weekend. He might also have been on the Loveland Bicycle Trail.” He slowed down the next part: “This suspect is impotent and was probably sexually abused as a child.” Maybe those words would smoke him out. He heard a still camera clicking. “It is entirely possible that the person of interest shown in this sketch is our murderer. He is extremely dangerous. If you see this man, you should call nine-one-one immediately. We won’t be taking any questions tonight. Thank you for coming.”
***
It was eight before they had dinner at Joe’s Diner on Sycamore. The old standby with its chrome walls and a neon sign had been revived from the riots. It was only a few blocks from home. The night was gentled by light rain, and the streets shone. Inside, they got a table without a wait and talked about the day over burgers, fries, and onion rings. “I’ll eat onion rings if you will,” she said, and it was decided. He praised her again for finding the witness and convincing her to come down immediately. She asked about his shadowing of Kenneth Buchanan, and he told the story.
“Do you still think Buchanan did it?”
Will took in a deep breath, took stock. “I don’t know. Sometimes in this job you have to avoid the hammer and nail thing…” She smiled widely, a beautiful thing. “When you’re the hammer, everything looks like a nail.”
“I feel for that girl,” Cheryl Beth said. “But ten thousand dollars is a lot of money.”
“Not in Buchanan’s world. And, he wants her to go away. I wonder how many other times he’s had to bail out his son’s stupid mistakes.”
He talked about John and the parallels.
“You love him,” she said. The words made him uncomfortable in that context. He couldn’t say exactly why. It was something to do with the many separations and alienations of recent years: Cindy drawing apart, then a complete rupture, John’s sullen and difficult adolescence, and then the reappearance of his biological father.
“I think my old man would have let me spend a night in jail to get my mind right,” he said. Comfortable in her presence, he talked about his dad. He wasn’t cruel or abusive, a typical father of his era. He didn’t want to be your buddy and you damned sure weren’t his equal. “We didn’t have a bunch of stuff. We didn’t go shopping for recreation. I don’t know. I see kids like John, or this Buchanan son, or the one who was piloting the boat on Saturday night. They’re ruined by money.”
“I never got that chance,” she said.
“I hear you.”
He went on. “My dad really disapproved of me becoming a police officer. He wanted me to be a lawyer. ‘Something respectable,’ he’d say. I never understood why he devalued himself that way.” He felt safe enough with her to go on. “I was working the night he was shot. I was on patrol, District Five, up around Winton Hills. He was a patrol sergeant in District One. Could have been a captain, a fine detective. But he couldn’t stand the politics, he disliked the detectives, and he liked the street. So, that night was busy in his district. He was the first on the scene. A couple was mixing it up in the projects, dad went in and separated them, and the man came back with a gun in his hand and shot him. Once right in the heart.” He had to slow down. “And that was that.”
She reached across and took his hand, holding it tight.
The food arrived and Will let her take the first onion ring; she preferred the small ones. “A perfect match,” he said. “I like the big ones.”
He lowered his voice. “If Buchanan’s not our guy, I don’t even know where to begin. Her two other boyfriends have solid alibis. They’ve found another guy she had an affair with a year ago. He moved to Denver last August, swears it was an amiable separation, he hadn’t heard from her since. He has an alibi, too.” He bit into the ring and soon the whole thing was gone. “Except for your witness, nothing’s going our way. If he doesn’t make a move against me, we’re screwed.” He sighed. “And here I am putting you at risk, too”
“We’ve been through that,” she said. “I hope you don’t have that many girlfriends going.” She put a straw in her mouth and sipped Diet Coke.
“Only one, but she’s really hot.”
“So tell me how you tailed this guy, got an emergency call, and didn’t get caught.”
He laughed loudly and any weight of the day or the past flew off.
They were still laughing as they left an hour later. The rain had stopped so they did not get soaked as Will did his slow-walk with the cane to the car, which was parked in a lot across Grear Alley. One big building, once the School for Creative and Performing Arts, filled the view to the north. Sirens were yowling off to the west. He opened the door for Cheryl Beth and closed it. Then he walked around the car, making an inventory of their surroundings, touching the raindrops on the trunk and fenders. His right hand was hurting from holding the cane. A couple was fighting fifty feet away. A man yelled, “You think because you’re beautiful and men want to fuck you…”
As he started to open the door, he felt something hard and cold right behind his left ear.
“Hello Detective Borders.” The voice was low, barely audible. “Your friends aren’t tailing you tonight.” A small laugh. “I guess they went for donuts. You’ve been searching for Kristen’s gun. I thought I’d bring it to you.” The barrel tapped hard against his skull. The fighting couple got in their car and drove away. They were alone in the lot now.
“Now don’t think about doing anything cute,” the voice said. “You’re going to do exactly what I say.”
If Will were not crippled, he would teach this man cute. If Will didn’t yearn for a future with Cheryl Beth, and couldn’t take chances with her so near, he would give this a lesson. When somebody was holding a gun that close, it was possible to quickly step inside the reach of his arm, inside his firing radius, and disarm him. It was easier when done from the front, but he could do it. He once could have done it.
The hoarse whisper continued: “The first thing you’re going to do is pull out your gun, left hand, please. Then toss it in front of you.”
“That’s not going to happen.” Will decided not to attempt to turn his head and look at the man.
“You’re going to do it, or I’ll shoot you now. Is that your friend, Cherry Beth, sitting there? She’s going to find out if I’m impotent like you said. I’ll fuck the little cunt in every orifice and then watch her die slowly. There’s nothing you can do about it. How does that make you feel, detective?”
He almost looked back, stopped himself. Will was very conscious of each breath, how it barely seemed to fill his lungs. He could see Cheryl Beth’s legs and lap, but couldn’t tell if she could make out his predicament. He asked, “Why did you pick me to send your messages?”
“Later. I may answer your questions, or not. But right now, quit stalling and pull out your gun with your left hand, toss it on the pavement in front of you.”
Breath in, breath out. His right wrist was aching, his hand gripping the cane tightly. His gun was an impossible six inches away.
“Agh!”
Will heard this half-grunt, half expression of pain as the gun that had been behind his ear went airborne and landed a few feet in front of the bumper. Somehow it didn’t go off. A black-clad figure fell to his side and rolled.
Another man yelled, “Motherfucka’, what you think you doin’?” Then he kicked Will’s assailant in the side. “This here’s an officer of the law. Don’t you be disrespecting the po-lice!”
Will said, “Junior?”
“I made bail. Glad to see me?”
Indeed, it was the gang thug he had stopped from stomping the man beside Central Parkway on Monday. The shadow on the asphalt vaulted up and ran. Oh, to see a face, but there was none. And he had hair.
“Yes,” Will said, drawing his service weapon, “glad to see you. Get down.”
But big Junior was chasing the other man and blocking Will’s aim.
“I’m gonna nail you, sucka’. Citizen’s arrest! ”
“Get down, Junior!”
Junior’s three-hundred-pounds made the chase last, at best, a third of the way across the parking lot. Then he was bent over, struggling to catch his breath. The time elapsed for the clumsy pursuit, with Junior’s huge body in the way of Will’s aim, consumed no more then ten seconds. But it was enough. The man in black was gone.
Two hours later, the twenty marked and unmarked units that responded to Will’s broadcast had scattered. The suspect was gone. The unmarked unit shadowing Will and Cheryl Beth had been drawn off by a report of a shooting three blocks away. It wasn’t a shooting. Someone had rigged a fuse with a cigarette to a string of M-80s which did a good job of impersonating gunshots. By the time the unmarked car from Central Vice got back to the parking lot, Will had already taken off, searching for the man who had held Kristen Gruber’s gun to his head. And it was Gruber’s—the serial number matched.
Now they cruised slowly through Over-the-Rhine. Cheryl Beth sat in the passenger front seat, Dodds in back. Nobody talked at first. She was certain that if she were hooked up to an EKG her heart would still show tachycardia. She blamed herself for those moments when Will was in mortal danger. The car had cloaked her from the threat he was facing. She couldn’t see what was happening until the gun flew in front of the car and the big black man was chasing someone. Will had given her gloves and told her to retrieve the gun, then, when she returned, he had revved the car across the parking lot, its spotlight sending a dazzling white cone against buildings and into alleys. After that, it seemed as if the entire police force had descended upon them.
“Here we are again,” Dodds said. “The three musketeers.”
“Let’s hope it’s a little easier this time,” Cheryl Beth said. “Last time, we were trapped in the basement of the hospital, nobody knew where we were, the killer had knocked you out, he was beating the crap out of me, and Will, who was stuck in a wheelchair, had to save us.”
“Details, details,” Dodds said.
Cheryl Beth prided herself on a professional steely calm, hard won in the five years she had spent working in the emergency department. But that was a controlled environment compared with this, even when a gang member would try to barge in and finish off the guy he shot an hour before. She hated to admit it: she was over her head. She stuffed her shaking hands into her lap. Her emotions roiled in a wild bundle of fear and adrenaline, some anger was down in there, too. The son of a bitch had nearly killed Will and he got away, almost as if he were a ghost. The city seemed bathed in an invisible evil.
Will stopped at Central Parkway and Vine, where he pointed to the grand mural on the building on the southwest corner. It looked like a statue standing inside a temple.
“Cincinnatus,” he said. “The entire face of the building is blank, and everything you see is a trompe l’oeil painting. ‘Trick of the eye.’ Done by Richard Haas to mark Kroger’s centennial.”
“I like the statue of him down at Sawyer’s Point better,” Dodds said. “Looks like a real bad-ass. He saved Rome, refused to be dictator for life, and went back to his plow. If it hadn’t been for Cincinnatus, we’d be called Losantiville.”
“Well, technically, we were named after the Society of the Cincinnati, the Revolutionary War veterans,” Will said.
“Okay, know it all,” Dodds said. “What was that building called?”
Will shrugged.
“The Brotherhood Building,” Dodds said. “Which is appropriate as the gateway to Over-the-Rhine, where all the brothers are hoods.”
Cheryl Beth felt her face smile. That was a start, at least, to feeling human again.
Will turned north onto Vine and began an impromptu tour of Over-the-Rhine. A turn of the wheel, and they entered a different world. He pointed out this building in the Italianate style, that one in federal, a hidden garden behind another, and the commercial buildings with their cast-iron fronts. Renaissance revival, Romanesque, Queen Anne. Some had been restored, most had not. She thought the neighborhood was stunning, despite its problems. It held an intimacy and living history that appealed to her. Its streets were meant to be walked to be really appreciated, but the slow drive with Will’s narration was the next best thing. He wore his knowledge lightly and it was coated in the sweetness of his joy of the place.
A man who liked something other than sports and cars: that was a find.
She also realized he was doing this to calm down, and it was helping to calm her, too.
He jigged over to Walnut and lingered in front of the Germania Building with its statue, a woman in a robe, holding a shield. She stood on a setback in the second story of the ornate building.
“This was the German Mutual Insurance Company,” he said. “In World War I, the anti-German feeling was so hysterical, the company became Hamilton Mutual and they draped the statue. They renamed a bunch of the streets, too. English Street used to be German Street. Bremen Street became Republic…”
“You see what it’s like to ride with Mister President,” Dodds said.
“Cheryl Beth, do you know what J.C.’s nickname was when he played football at UC?”
“Now don’t start that!” Dodds grumbled.
“It was ‘Sweet Dreams’ Dodds.”
“Sweet Dreams.” Cheryl Beth suppressed a laugh. “I assume that’s because you hit the other guys so hard it sent them to nap time, along with a potential concussion.”
“Damn straight.” Dodds adjusted his posture. “See, she gets it.”
“Then why are you aggravated when I bring it up?”
Dodds faked a punch at the back of Will’s head. “Man, Borders knows every building, every cobblestone here. He’s a frustrated architect.”
“Maybe an architectural historian,” Will said. “I hate most modern architecture. Except for the Contemporary Arts Center and the P&G headquarters.”
“Which looks like Dolly Parton’s…” Dodds stopped himself.
“Oh, please,” Cheryl Beth said. “Everybody calls them the Dolly Parton Towers. Nurses can match cops any day in inappropriate language. We’re as weird as you guys.”
Dodds chuckled.
“If we’re going to have to do this,” he said, “Why don’t you drive over to the Samuel Adams Brewery. While you regale Cheryl Beth with Over-the-Rhine’s beer history, I’ll break in and get us a six pack.”
“This is the heart and soul of the city,” Will said.
“It’s the heart and soul of scumbaggery,” Dodds said.
“Jeez, Dodds, some guy killed five people in a little town in southeast Indiana last month. Crime happens anywhere. The city has to warehouse so many of the poor and uneducated because they’re zoned out of suburbia…”
“Complex socio-economic-cultural drivers behind this.” Dodds face dropped into mock seriousness. Then his teeth gave an 880-key smile. “My travel tour would be to point out every building where we had a dead body. I could put up about a hundred red targets as a tourist attraction. See that intersection? Three homicides in one week a couple of years ago. That building: stinker on the fourth floor, middle of July…”
Cheryl Beth laughed, glad for the release. “If you do that, I’ll tell you really nasty E.R. stories…”
Will drove on slowly. The streets were deserted, a steady rain now coming down. Not even a wino was sleeping inside a doorway.
“He told me he had ‘Kristen’s’ gun,” Will said. “Not the woman I murdered, or the lady cop, or even Kristen Gruber. But ‘Kristen.’ He said it familiarly. He called me ‘Detective Borders,’ like the letter-writer and the voice on the phone. Then he called you ‘Cherry Beth.’ Has anyone called you that?”
“Not since I was teased in fifth grade. It sounds like a soft drink.”
He went on, “You know what else he said to me? He has the gun to the back of my head, he’s making threats, demanding that I give up my weapon, and he says, ‘How does that make you feel, detective?’ Those are the exact words Kenneth Buchanan used the first time I met him and he wanted me to know he’d already leaned on the chief.”
Dodds took it in and said nothing. Cheryl Beth was interested in the dynamic between the two of them, imagined how effective they had been as partners, but she also checked again to see that her door was locked.
“What else did he say about me?” she asked.
Will hesitated. “It wasn’t good. I would never let anything bad happen to you.”
“I know that.” At that moment, she felt strangely unafraid for herself. She was more concerned for Will. “Did he mention your father?”
“No. No, he didn’t.”
“So he doesn’t know you that well,” she said. “Otherwise, he would have used that to get at you.”
“Good point,” Dodds said. “That might mean he’s not law enforcement. I still don’t know why he chose Borders. So how do we get probable cause that will let us really go after Buchanan?”
They passed a marked unit. Two officers were standing on the sidewalk, talking to three young black men. All were soaking wet.
“I’m not sure,” Will said.
“So let’s find something. Screw Fassbinder.”
“I mean, I’m not sure a man Buchanan’s age could have absorbed that punishment from Junior and still outrun him and gotten away. Also, nothing from ViCAP about homicides in the Atlanta area that match the M.O. here.”
Cheryl Beth asked about ViCAP, and Will told her of the FBI database. Buchanan came to Cincinnati from Atlanta when his wife took the job with the symphony.
“Our guy has killed before,” Will said. “He knows the right moves. He’s disciplined. But Buchanan was in Atlanta for thirteen years and nothing. He only decides to start killing now because he’s in Cincinnati? I don’t know…”
“So you’re doubting yourself now?” Dodds sounded annoyed.
Will shook his head. “I’m missing something…”
“Don’t go soft on me, Borders. It’s becoming a bad habit. You don’t believe I caught the cello player’s killer, either.”
“No,” Will said. “I don’t. Your golden gut is lying to you.”
“Oh, fuck you.”
“Calm down, boys,” Cheryl Beth said. A dark shape caught her eye: some kind of bundle or bag. “What’s that?”
They were at Fourteenth and Sycamore, back near the diner. Will swung the spotlight toward some bushes at the edge of the Cutter Playground. He pulled across the street and put the car in park. Dodds got out, snapping on gloves.
The intersection was completely empty. A pair of headlights lingered several blocks south, and then turned.
He came back toting a black gym bag and something else.
It was a wig.
He tossed them in the back seat and climbed back in.
“More ammo against Buchanan,” Dodds said, holding out a wig of long, dark-brown hair. “The cure for baldness. Got any large evidence bags?”
Will shook his head.
Cheryl Beth heard a long zipper.
“What have we here,” Dodds said. “Two pairs of handcuffs, his and hers. Two ball gags. Gloves and footies to put over his shoes. He’s very methodical. A folding combat knife that I bet will match the wounds on the four vics. And a bottle of lye.” He carefully placed the items and the wig back in the bag and re-zipped it.
“There won’t be any prints,” Will said.
“You never know,” Dodds said. “I will say you owe Clarence Junior your good word to the D.A. He saved your lives.”
Will was quiet for a long time. The rain was now coming down hard enough that it sounded like small pellets hitting the roof.
Finally, he spoke quietly, all the exuberance of the tour drained from his voice. “We’re not going to get another chance. This was it and we blew it. He won’t be careless enough to come back again.”
“Unless,” Dodds said, “he really has a thing for you.”
Will stared into the wet windshield. Cheryl Beth took his hand and squeezed it. He returned the pressure, but she could tell his mind was elsewhere.
