Punish the Deed (23 page)

Forty-Two

The two investigators got busy learning all they could about Charles Sinclair Murphy. They sat back to back pulling up data on computers. The suspect had a lengthy rap sheet going back to a drunk and disorderly charge when he was eleven years old.

His most recent incarceration had ended with his release on parole four years and a couple of months ago. After that, he seemed to disappear from the face of the earth. There was a warrant out for his arrest in North Carolina for violation of parole.

It appeared as if the medical emergency in Philadelphia had derailed his plans for another victim. Who knew when or where he would strike again. In light of his recent frustration, though, both of them believed it would be soon.

Lucinda and Jake got busy calling around to prisons, jails and jurisdictions that had interfaced with their suspect in the past. Within a couple of hours, they had a wealth of anecdotal information and a pile of documents faxed and emailed for their perusal. The ugliest part of his life story was revealed in reports filed by prison psychologists. One officer summed it all up when he said, “Every time Murphy got a glimpse of life outside of the gutter, someone kicked him in the face and knocked him down in the muck again.”

Murphy’s mother, Cynthia, a bitter and self-destructive woman, dumped him with his grandmother when he was only thirteen months old. Granny Ren had a long history of serious chronic depression, and as a result wasn’t the best surrogate mother in the world but she offered him affection when she could, kept a roof over his head, clothes on his back and food in his stomach. He lived with her until his fifth birthday. Right after Granny Ren sang “Happy Birthday” and Charles blew out the candles on his cake, there was a knock on the door and Cynthia had breezed in with John Langern. Jake and Lucinda studied photographs of them both. Cynthia had a brassy smile, too much make-up and hair like straw. John was a greasy-looking man with slicked-back hair and a crooked, leering smile.

Cynthia announced that she and John were married and now wanted to pick up their son and live like a family. Cynthia and her mother argued over Charles’s fate, but in the end Cynthia left with her son in tow.

For a few years, the little boy lived a vagabond life with his mother and her husband. He’d go to school for a couple of months, then suddenly, when the couple’s current scam went bad, they’d be on the move again. The presence of a young boy was just what they needed to get shelter, food and other necessities from various non-profit agencies and churches along the way until they found a place to set up shop again and start bringing in the ill-gotten cash. Charles would go back to school for a few more months and the furtive pattern of life on the run would start up again.

One morning, Charles awoke and his mother was gone. For days, he kept waiting for her return. He finally had to accept that it was just him and John. At first, nine-year-old Charles was nothing more than the target of John’s physical abuse, taking the blows that used to fall on his mother every time John was drinking. Charles was miserable and lonely, aching for his pathetic excuse of a mother, longing for a return to his grandmother. But when he asked John to take him back to Granny Ren, John backhanded him and laughed when he cried.

Charles didn’t think his life could get any worse but then John decided Charles made an appropriate sexual surrogate for his missing wife. John called Charles “Cynthia” and battered him until he would respond. John raped him roughly and when he’d had his pleasure, he left Charles curled up in a fetal position where the little boy cried himself to sleep.

That was when Charles started sneaking sips from John’s bottle. He developed a great fondness for alcoholic oblivion. He only stopped drinking when he was arrested. Every time he got out of a juvenile facility, a prison or a jail, he’d pick up his habit of drinking and taking drugs to excess. The substance abuse landed him behind bars over and over, until the last time. He went to prison in North Carolina for car theft. There, he learned to read and write during his five years of incarceration. When he walked out a free man, he seemed more self-assured, more confident and definitely craftier.

On parole, he no longer got intoxicated – at least not enough to get in trouble – and he came up clean on his mandated drug tests until the day he simply did not show up.

Now, years later, a menacing note bearing his name had appeared in the parking lot of a non-profit agency and seemed to tie to several homicides. But North Carolina did not have his DNA profile on file to confirm. “So where are you now, Charles Sinclair Murphy?” Lucinda muttered.

“It felt great for a few minutes to know who we were looking for, but now, how can you feel good when you don’t know where to look?” Jake complained.

“Are we sure it’s really him?”

As if on cue, the phone rang. Lucinda answered. It was Sergeant Blocker with additional information. “They found a fingerprint on the duffle bag. We got a hit on AFIS. The owner of the bag is Charles Sinclair Murphy.”

Forty-Three

Lucinda slept fitfully the night after her confrontation with Ellen. She tossed and turned so many times that Chester lost his patience with her and abandoned the bed to sleep on the sofa. In the morning, he meowed incessantly, issuing an incredible range of sounds; some Lucinda didn’t think she’d ever heard from him before. His tone and persistence, though, made his message clear to Lucinda. He was not happy that he’d had to spend the night away from her body heat. She gave him an extra scoop of tuna feast along with her apologies before she left for work.

She picked up Jake at his hotel and just listened as he threw out ideas about the direction of the investigation. The ride was short enough that he didn’t notice her lack of response. She walked into her office feeling drained before she even started working. When she saw Ted sitting at his computer, she wanted to turn tail and run.

When he saw her, Ted jumped to his feet and rushed to her side. “Lucinda, I am so sorry for what happened . . .”

“Don’t apologize to me, Ted,” she said, taking a step back away from him.

He stepped toward her. “Lucinda, I know you are upset and I don’t blame you. I am very sorry.”

“Ted, I am emotionally drained and physically exhausted. I really do not want to discuss this right now.”

“I understand. I just wanted you to know that I am here for you and I am very remorseful about what happened to you.”

“As I said, Ted, you may need to apologize but you don’t need to apologize to me.” Lucinda turned her back to him and sat down in front of her computer busying her fingers on the keyboard.

Jake hadn’t known Lucinda long, but he instinctively knew trouble was brewing. He stood back from both of them, eyes bouncing back and forth.

Ted leaned over her desk. “I think now you can understand why I didn’t think there was any hope for my marriage. Now you know what I was up against.”

Lucinda clenched her jaw and jerked to her feet. Spinning around, she punched an index finger into Ted’s chest. “You still don’t get it, do you? You are a Neanderthal. A cretin. Is it just you or are all men this stupid?” She kept poking him with every pause in her speech. Ted backed up with every poke. Now he was up against his desk. Lucinda flashed her eye in Jake’s direction. He put both palms in the air and shook his head. She almost grinned at him before turning back to Ted. “What do you think I’ve been telling you for months? Did you ever listen to a word I said?”

“I did, but I . . I . . .”

“You just thought it was woman-babble, didn’t you?”

“Uh, well . . .”

“You thought it was meaningless woman-babble.”

“Not exactly . . .”

“Blah, blah, blah, just another woman running her mouth. You should have listened. I told you that woman needed help. I told you she needed you. I told you that she needed help to heal from the loss of her child. And what did you do?”

“I . . . I . . . I . . .”

“You did nothing. You made no allowances for her. You just used anything she did as a reason for you to do nothing. You disgust me.”

“Gee, Lucinda, I didn’t realize that she was this . . .”

“Then why the hell didn’t you listen to me? I
told
you.”

“Well, sometimes you women just don’t make any sense to us, Lucinda,” Ted said with a nervous laugh and turned to the other man in the room. “Do they, Jake?”

Jake raised both palms in the air again. “Look at me. Not involved. Innocent third party here. Just a bystander.”

Lucinda now turned to Jake. “You could tell him I’m right.”

“Aw, man,” Jake moaned. “Cut me some slack, Lucinda. Even though I know what happened yesterday, I’m still not sure what you two are arguing about. Just pretend I’m Switzerland. Or pretend I’m not here. Or better yet, I’ll leave,” Jake said, making a step toward the door.

“Don’t you dare, Special Agent Lovett! We have work to do,” Lucinda snapped. She turned back to Ted. “And what the hell are you doing here? You have a wife. In jail. She needs you. She needs a lawyer. She needs to get out on bail. And you need to assure her attorney that Ellen’s so-called victim does not want charges brought against her and, in fact, I promise you when Lieutenant Lucinda Pierce takes the stand she will be a crappy witness for the state.”

“Okay,” Ted said in a tone of voice he usually reserved for potential jumpers on the edge of a bridge.

“So what are you waiting for, Sergeant Branson? Move it. Get her out of jail. Every minute Ellen is behind bars is a travesty of justice and a mockery of our mental-health system. Go!” Lucinda said, raising an arm to point to the doorway. “Go now!”

Ted nodded and sidled across the room, keeping as much distance between himself and Lucinda as possible as he slipped out into the hall.

Lucinda turned her still-angry visage over to Jake.

Jake smiled weakly. “Hey,” he said.

“Oh, please,” Lucinda said.

“Remind me to never piss you off.”

“Oh, you already have. More than once. You survived.”

“How did I piss you off?”

“Oh, c’mon. You know this. Your employer pisses me off on principle. Your title, Special Agent man, ticks me off whenever I think about it.”

“So, dare I ask why you haven’t dressed me down like that?”

“Simple, Jake. You’ve pissed me off but you’ve never pissed me off because you hurt another person. You start pulling that shit and I’ll be all over you like a duck on a June bug.”

“Being a city boy, I’m not sure if I totally get all the nuances of that analogy. But I do believe I get the gist. Is that sufficient?”

“You are such an ass, Lovett. Let’s get to work. We’ve got a suspect to find.”

Forty-Four

Officer Rodney Sykes never regretted his decision to sign up at Big Brothers and Sisters. He enjoyed being a big brother to a fatherless boy. Nonetheless, he was not looking forward to this afternoon. He had agreed to take Derek in for his dental check-up so that his mom wouldn’t have to take time off from work. Rodney wasn’t wild about going to the dental office but Derek flat out hated the idea. Like kids everywhere, when Derek was miserable, he wanted everyone around him to be miserable, too.

Rodney picked up a couple of new comic books to distract Derek while they sat in the waiting room at the pediatric dental clinic. The non-profit facility offered inexpensive or free dental care for the working poor in the city, which meant they were always busy and the waits were never short. Rodney also promised Derek an after-appointment trip to the mall for an ice-cream cone and a visit to the toy store if he behaved.

He met Derek in front of his school. When Rodney first spotted the ten-year-old boy, he was with a couple of friends, laughing and appearing to be in a good mood. As soon as Derek saw Rodney, though, his laughter faded, his shoulders slumped and a petulant look, complete with thrusting lower lip, transformed his face into an unwelcome expression. Derek was going to make Rodney pay for this loathsome, unwanted excursion.

Rodney sighed and waved his arm in the air. “C’mon, Derek. We don’t want to be late.”

Derek mumbled, “Sez who?” With slow, plodding steps that allowed the toes of each shoe to drag across the ground, he moved forward with all the energy of a sleeping slug. When Derek got close, Rodney threw an arm around the boy’s shoulder and applied a little pressure to try to speed up his forward momentum. That was the wrong move. It provoked an escalation of resistance. Derek planted his feet in the pavement and turned rigid. Rodney pulled back his arm. “Okay, okay. I give. Move at your own pace, Derek. If we’re late, it’s on you. I’m not going to worry about it.” Rodney climbed into the car behind the steering wheel and waited patiently for Derek to drag himself into the passenger seat, close the door and fasten his seat belt.

Derek remained sullen and silent throughout the short drive over to the office. The large waiting room, decorated in early garage-sale, was a cheerful although mis-matched place. About every style of chair created in the last five decades was represented for seating. On the walls, staff had framed and hung artwork from patients – from multi-colored scribbles of the pre-school set to carefully rendered pencil sketches of eagles, deer and people by teenagers. Behind the counter, the comfy chaos disappeared in a world of white and stainless steel – every inch sparkling and smelling of antiseptic.

When Rodney and Derek walked inside, Rodney exchanged nods with a few people he knew from around the community and found a pair of empty chairs up against the far wall. Most adults had a child by their sides just as he did. He assumed that those sitting alone were waiting for a young one in the back getting treatment.

Minutes after their arrival, a single man entered through the outside door and took a seat on the opposite side of the room from Rodney and Derek. The man’s clothing was worn but tidy. His sandy hair was tousled and either he had fast growing facial hair or he hadn’t shaved that day. In short, he looked like a normal blue-collar worker down on his luck. But something about him jiggled the suspicion switch in Rodney’s mind – and it was more than the fact that he’d arrived alone.

The man had an edgy, nervous energy. He crossed his leg and jiggled his foot. He switched legs and twitched the other foot. He folded and unfolded his arms. He looked all around the room, staring often at the front desk. But he never met anyone’s eye. The longer Rodney sat across from the man, the more uneasy he felt about him.

Rodney turned his attention back to Derek, looking over his shoulder at the comic book. “Is it good?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Derek said, looking up at him with a grin. “It’s real good.” He flipped back through the pages, pointing to panels and giving a synopsis of the plot line complete with sound effects.

Rodney nodded and made mouth noises in response, amused at the boy’s excitement and how easy it was to divert him from his earlier foul mood. Busy with Derek, Rodney didn’t notice right away when the man who’d captured his attention earlier rose from his seat and went to the restroom.

Rodney kept his eye on the door until the man re-emerged. When he did, he turned his face in Rodney’s direction. The officer knew he’d seen those features before. While Derek continued his monologue, Rodney focused on excavating the memory remnant from his mind. The vague image of a mug shot floated just beyond his reach. No matter how hard he tried he could not resurrect sufficient detail. He pulled out his cell phone and typed a text message to a friend in the police dispatch department.

“Hey, guy! Look 2sday’s mugs. 5”8’, sandy hair, wh, 160–170 lbs?”

In a couple of minutes, he got a response. “2 fit.”

“Send plz,” he responded. He waited while the mug shots loaded into his cell. The man across the room was definitely not a match for the guy in the first shot, but he was a dead ringer for the second one – Charles Sinclair Murphy, wanted for questioning in a murder case. Rodney knew that “Person of Interest” usually meant far more. Odds were that the man across the room was a killer.

Rodney’s big thumbs got busy on the tiny keyboard again. “He’s here,” he noted, then typed in the address of his location. He added, “Send back-up. No lights. No sirens.”