Sex and Murder.com: A Paul Turner Mystery (23 page)

In each city cops were scrambling to assemble details and cross-reference data based on Morgensen’s story. The reporter was cooperating with all of them.

“Had any of the cops been getting threats or unsolicited gifts prior to the killing?” Turner asked his contact in Albany.

“The reporter who broke the story called and asked the same thing. We’re checking it out. We all get threats once in a while. We’ll let you know.”

After the calls, the detectives finished some paperwork. Fenwick broke the silence saying, “I don’t know if there’s much we can do to prevent an attack by an anonymous serial killer.”

Turner leaned back in his chair. “I know. I thought of that.”

A murder by someone not known to the victim was the toughest to solve. Discounting gang shootings, most murders are committed by someone who knows the victim, and are therefore relatively easy to solve.

Fenwick said, “Locking up the usual suspects isn’t going to cut it?”

“Not.”

“Does the attack on Dwayne fit into this? I asked about attacks on cops in those other cities before the ones that succeeded. I got two yeses and one no.”

Turner said, “I got two noes and one yes. It could have been just some random violence against a cop. The stabbings are still out of the ordinary. Violence against cops occurs almost daily. Being a cop doesn’t prevent violence from happening to you.”

Fenwick said, “All these stabbings combined with all this piss? These can’t be just coincidences.”

“What’s the last crime coincidence you believed in?” Turner asked.

“Goldilocks and the three bears,” Fenwick said. “And the bitch was guilty.”

“But that wasn’t a coincidence,” Turner pointed out.

“Close enough for me,” Fenwick replied.

“We still have no proof that our cop stabbing and Lenzati’s and Werberg’s deaths are connected to each other, or to the other murders around the country.”

“We need facts,” Fenwick said.

Turner and Fenwick met with the cops who’d been interviewing other possible sexual partners. The beat cops had questioned seven women and eight men. They had found no one who admitted knowing Lenzati or Werberg. They’d been working on the more common names on the list. Turner figured this was all they’d get.

Turner said, “I want to concentrate on the crossovers we’ve got. Two couples in the area made it with each of them. We talked to Korleski. The other was that couple that wasn’t home earlier. We need to try them again.”

“Questioning people about kinky sexual practices is what I’ve dreamed of being able to do,” Fenwick said.

“Let’s get on with it,” Turner said.

Before they left, they asked Commander Molton to permit two clerks to research every murder along Interstate 90 east of Chicago during the month prior to the deaths of the detectives in the listed cities, and to examine every injury to every cop in any city along Interstate 90.

“Why?” Molton asked. “That’s an awful lot of possible murders and injuries.”

“Looking for patterns,” Turner said. “There probably aren’t any, and there’s always the possibility of random chance intruding, but I want to check as much as we can.”

Fenwick added, “Get Micetic to help: He’s got a computer. Let him use it for something besides surfing porn sites.”

“Is that what he does?” Molton asked.

“Isn’t that what they all do?” Turner asked.

“And you never do?” Fenwick asked.

“I’ve got a block on the computer so the kids can’t. It’s too much of a hassle to figure out how to undo it.”

They grabbed fast food at Beef on the Hoof and ate it as they drove.

The couple they wanted to interview lived in Berwyn, a near western suburb of Chicago. They took the Harlem Avenue exit from the Eisenhower Expressway and turned south. They turned left on Cermak Road and drove several blocks east, parking in front of a solid home of refurbished red brick. Alberto Zengre and his wife Conchetta were listed as having had sex with Lenzati and Werberg over five years ago.

Steam billowed out the door when it opened. A man holding a squirming, nearly naked three-year-old glared at them. After IDs and introductions, the man said he was Alberto. Turner thought he had the most soulful puppy dog eyes he had ever seen. He was five foot six, and looked like he was in his mid-twenties. He had a dark mustache and hair cut close to the scalp on the sides, with a longer dark covering on top. His skintight black T-shirt and the left leg of his faded skintight jeans were almost completely soaked. The jeans hung low on narrow hips. He wore white socks and no shoes.

Zengre had a mellow tenor voice. “If you want to talk, we’ll have to do it while I give the kids a bath. My wife’s mother is coming to get them soon to baby-sit. If I don’t have them cleaned up, I’m dead.” He scooped up a one-year-old from a playpen in the living room and led them to a bathroom on the first floor. All the furniture looked to be about five years old. At the time of purchase it must have been of the highest quality. Now it looked as if it had years of heavy use. The wall hangings were religious icons: a Jesus on a crucifix with a loincloth so low on his hips as to be nearly obscene, holy cards blown up and framed, pictures of the Virgin Mary in various poses, and one framed picture of a pieta. The floors were polished oak and looked as if they’d been restored.

As Zengre ran some water, he asked, “What’s this about?”

Turner said, “We’re investigating the deaths of Craig Lenzati and Brooks Werberg.” He showed him pictures of the two men. Zengre’s eyes flicked from one to the other of the cops. He tested the water, finished undressing the three-year-old, and placed him in the two inches of water in the tub. Chatting soothingly, he handed the child a brightly-colored ball, a pink plastic cube, and a bar of soap. The latter immediately skittered away. The child happily splashed about with the other two items. Zengre sat on the edge of the tub. He placed the one-year-old in a small basin inside the tub into which Zengre gently poured a stream of luke-warm water from a plastic container.

“Did you know either of these two men?” Turner asked.

“You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t think I did.”

“Which one did you know?” Turner asked.

“Both, actually.”

Turner asked, “When was the last time you saw either of them?”

“Five, maybe six years ago.”

“Not yesterday afternoon, or Friday morning, or the night before that?”

“No.”

“Where were you two nights ago?” Fenwick asked.

“Home with my wife and children.”

“And yesterday morning?”

“I got up early to get in the unemployment line. It took until nearly noon.”

“How did you meet them?”

“I met Werberg when I was part of a crew delivering some furniture to his house.”

“How’d you wind up in bed with him?”

“Is nothing private anymore?” The younger child gazed placidly at the adults. The three-year-old ignored them.

“They were murdered,” Fenwick said. “We need to know all the connections in their lives if we’re going to piece together what happened to them.”

“I don’t have to tell you anything.”

“Look,” Fenwick said. “We know they paid you and your wife to have sex with them. We don’t want to arrest you unless you killed them, but we need information. Let’s skip to the details that are going to help us catch the murderer and forget this macho posturing crap.”

Zengre sighed. “This is crazy.” The cops waited. The kids were quiet. Finally, Zengre began, “I was dating my wife at the time. I needed some money. It’s not like I’d never …”

While Zengre was lifting the three-year-old out of the tub, the child began to splash and stomp. The man reached for a towel with one hand, and steadied the kid with the other. The one-year-old put out his hands toward the action, and the basin he sat in began to tip. Turner squatted down and held the child upright while the father finished with his brother.

“If we’re going to get into this, I need to finish with the kids first.” He proceeded to change, dress, and set the little ones on the floor back in the living room.

With the children playing quietly on the floor, Zengre sat on a hassock and explained, “Here’s what happened. I was working for a furniture delivery company. We were at this big mansion. At one point, my buddies left to get more furniture. I stayed to begin setting up the frame for a specially designed bed, a heart-shaped thing. Werberg watched for a few seconds then said, “I’m gay. I think you’re hot. I’ll pay you a lot of money to spend the night with me.”

“He was that bold?” Fenwick asked.

“Yeah. I said no way, I said I had a girlfriend, and we were getting married. He said I could bring her along, then the guys came back with more furniture. We had to put more things together, which took a while. The guy was rich, and it seemed like he was refurnishing half his house. The next time I was alone in a room, he reappeared. He asked if I wanted to know how much he was willing to pay. Okay, I hadn’t lived a sheltered life. I fooled around once or twice with guys. I let one blow me once when I was sixteen and horny. He wasn’t very good. Werberg offered me a thousand dollars if I would agree to spend the night, ten thousand if it included my girlfriend.

“We were young, planning to get married in a couple of weeks. We each had minimum wage jobs, and we had wedding bills, a house to buy or rent. We had no furniture. Nothing. He said, you don’t have to do anything, just lay there, although the more you do, the more you’ll make. I told him I’d ask my girlfriend. I only said that to shut him up. He said it didn’t have to be a package deal. I never mentioned it to Conchetta. Nothing happened for a couple of days, then one night I get home from work and Werberg is sitting in my living room.”

“How’d he find you?” Turner asked.

“I’m not sure. I guess it wouldn’t be hard for him to find out who was on the delivery crew. When he first propositioned me, I asked the head of the crew who he was. The name didn’t mean anything to me. As far as I knew, he was another rich guy who wanted to get his rocks off. That night he seemed to know an awful lot of stuff about us: credit card numbers, the name of our caterer for the wedding, how much money we made, how much was in our bank accounts—which wasn’t much.”

“Was it blackmail?” Turner asked.

“He’d already convinced my girlfriend. She wasn’t upset or anything. With my fiancée in his corner, I didn’t feel like I had much of a choice.”

“Why not?”

“Conchetta was no virgin when we met. She was a party girl.”

“She a prostitute?” Fenwick asked.

“Hey, don’t get personal,” Zengre said. “She wanted nice things. She wanted money. For one night she said she didn’t care. She’d got him up to twenty thousand dollars. That’s a lot of money for two people with minimum wage jobs. Conchetta said yes, so I didn’t give a big shit. I was kind of dazed that night. It wasn’t like a big moral dilemma. Werberg insisted it had to happen that night. He had a limousine outside, and we picked up this Lenzati guy. The four of us had dinner at some fancy restaurant. Then Conchetta went to Lenzati’s, and I went to Werberg’s.

“At his house he had some clothes for me to wear. He gave me a pair of size twenty-eight pre-faded jeans and white jockey shorts a size too small. He had several sizes of clean white T-shirts and clean white socks. The only thing I wore of my own was my running shoes. At his place he had me shower and change. The whole night was strange.”

“How so?” Fenwick asked.

“We watched television for a couple of hours, like we were just a couple spending the night at home. Once in a while he would ask me if I wanted a little snack or a soft drink. During that time he only wanted to snuggle together but not continuously, just once in a while. Finally, he had me lay on the couch with my clothes on. He spent over an hour touching me and caressing me all over with only his fingertips. He barely got near me after that.”

“Over an hour?” Fenwick asked.

“Closer to two hours,” Zengre averred. “The craziest thing came when we were getting ready for bed.”

“You spent the night?”

“It was part of the deal. The craziest thing was when he wanted to watch me take a piss. I had to be fully dressed with my dick hanging out of my fly. Before I left, he paid me to piss on everything I’d worn. When we got to bed, he had me take all my clothes off except my shorts, then had me turn around a few times before I got into bed. I think he stayed awake all night. I slept off and on. Whenever I woke up, there was a little night light on. He was either reading or watching me.”

The door opened and a startlingly beautiful woman walked in. Turner and Fenwick rose. Zengre introduced them.

“We’re here,” Turner began, “to talk about your involvement with Craig Lenzati and Brooks Werberg.”

Conchetta Zengre glared at her husband. “We don’t know any such people.”

“I told them—” Zengre began.

“You did
what
?” The three words rose in volume, ending in a shriek. The one-year-old began to cry. Zengre looked stunned and helpless. Conchetta thrust her purse onto a chair and picked up the wailing child. When the baby was finally cooing quietly, she whispered savagely, “How could you be so stupid?”

Turner intervened. “We already knew. How else would we have known to be here?”

“How did you find out?”

“They kept track of their conquests.” Turner briefly explained the computer printout, and breaking the code.

“We did nothing illegal,” she insisted. The whisper was still harsh.

“Actually, you did,” Fenwick said. “A bunch of stuff. With your husband’s admission and with the computer files, we’ve got plenty of broken laws.”

“But we’re not interested in arresting you for prostitution,” Turner said. She visibly relaxed. “We just need information about Mr. Lenzati. You know he died?”

“I saw it on television.”

Turner asked, “Where were you Thursday night and early Friday morning?”

“Here. Asleep next to my husband.”

“You have any other witnesses?” Fenwick asked.

“No.”

“And yesterday afternoon?”

“I was working. Al was looking for work.”

Turner asked, “Did you ever try to contact Werberg and Lenzati after that evening?”