Murder Me Sweetly
by Gary Clifton
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Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 |
part 3
The day after Big Bud’s demise, Zerelda Wasthasler showed up at DPD Headquarters on South Lamar. Lobby Security called the basement Dead Bin to tell McCoy another clone of Bride of Frankenstein was standing by to call him a Zionist murderer and several other names.
McCoy, busy with paperwork and Internal Affairs following a fatal shooting, ignored her. Zerelda, fat and reeking of whiskey breath and foul body odor, stood around an hour or so each day until she got too hoarse to shriek.
McCoy, who genuinely would have offered her his condolences, had no way of knowing the murky circumstances of her visit at the time. Protesters have a strange tendency to look alike when they’re shouting hate speech. Only long after she’d abandoned the lobby, he learned what she’d been protesting. But it would prove to be more complex than “what.”
McCoy was no stranger to death threats, particularly those via telephone. The day after Big Bud had joined the hereafter, also the day of Zerelda’s first appearance, McCoy got the first telephoned death threat associated with the demise of Big Bud Kincaid. More would follow. The trap system on the office telephone could barely get enough bite on the burner cellular phones to retain the number; even microtechnology wouldn’t function in a vacuum.
All told there were seventeen calls. The words of the caller, a male, always the same, was definitely not original: “You gonna die, you imperialist government puke.” Each call was terminated with a reference to McCoy’s mother using the “F” word
Life is fraught with undeniable facts. The sun comes up in the east and water flows downhill. If you call Dallas Homicide and threaten the life of an officer, your location may escape, but they will capture your voice on tape.
* * *
Not far away by big-city measurement, Mendoza Elementary was dismissed each day at the normal time, children pouring out the metal gate like salt from a shaker at the corner grill. The Dallas Independent School District couldn’t possibly afford to bus every child. Hundreds of kids traipsed along busy Gaston Avenue, few with any design, but all happy to be sprung for another day in the sunshine.
The old, tan Chevrolet sat at a corner. The driver, face mostly covered by the red hoodie, studied the horde of kids walking home in youthful innocence. The extra Dallas police car detailed specifically to watch the pedestrian students cruised slowly by. The driver casually looked away from the young officer who passed by without noticing the old Chevrolet. Worn-out cars were common in the area.
Daily, just before dismissal, the school principal reminded the whole bunch, via the P.A. system, of the need for caution. Freshly aware, then, of the abduction and murder of their classmate two weeks earlier, they collectively pushed the incident and the warning to the back burner in fifteen seconds.
A ten-year old’s attention span is variable. No child was molested or approached in any way that day or for days afterward even though they walked within arm’s length of eternity.
* * *
Two more months passed, the threat calls to McCoy stopped. The daily temperature warmed. He had other fish to fry or to catch, at least. He had spent the afternoon before a grand jury inserting evidentiary screws in a fat husband’s coffin for feeding his wife enough arsenic to kill a bull elephant so he could be free to marry his mistress. McCoy was unaware of the vigil at Mendoza Elementary or of extra Dallas Police vigilance along Gaston Avenue.
Feeling pretty good about things, he walked up Commerce Street to Nicole’s building for a drink and dinner. The weather was spring beautiful. The two skinheads in an old Buick, double-parked in an end zone were invisible against the glut of traffic.
Nicole emerged, a smiling snapshot of life and optimism. She reached out to give McCoy the usual hug, grasping the front of him with a quick flourish. He was big, a lot to get hold of.
The Buick lurched forward. The driver leaned out and fired three quick rounds from a .12 gauge pump shotgun at McCoy, the ejected shells scattering along the curb.
Nicole, leaning across McCoy in a last heartbeat of love and emotion, was cut nearly in two. McCoy took three double-ought buckshot just over the heart, plus lesser lethal penetration of five more after they passed through Nicole’s body into his.
As her lifeless body slid out of his grasp, McCoy remained on his feet. He drew his Glock .40 caliber and put six through the windshield of the Buick. The driver, shot through the forehead, lost the Buick and swerved up across the curb, a car length from McCoy.
The shooter, Houston skinhead, Tommy Wayne Wagers, called “Cannibal,” was wounded in the upper chest. He bailed out of the Buick, waving an old Colt revolver. McCoy emptied his clip in the bleeding man’s chest. Wagers fell beside the Buick, spasmodically kicking his way into Hell.
Horrified bystanders reported McCoy slipped another magazine into the Glock and gave Wagers five more at point-blank range. He staggered around the front of the Buick and fired three more rounds into the driver’s head. With ghost-like movements, he stumbled backward and fell across Nicole’s body. Sirens, wailing their song of despair, drifted in on the afternoon breeze.
Three double-ought buckshot, each one-third inch in diameter, plus five of reduced velocity, fired at less than thirty feet into a human chest, are universally fatal from blood loss and traumatic shock. Except in McCoy’s case it was not. Extinguishing life can be an uncertain business. No buckshot had actually penetrated any part of the heart. Four hours of surgery, two weeks in intensive care, and two months off-duty rehab saw McCoy up and around. Maggs and Harper visited him every day.
Despite a massive, multi-agency task force, the only suspects identified were Wagers and the driver, also a skinhead, also from Houston. The three guns the shooters had in their possession had been purchased through gun shows and were untraceable. No voice comparison with the snippets of recorded threat-calls was possible with both shooters dead.
The investigation was clouded because, in addition to McCoy’s enemies — the line stretched around the corner — Nicole as a litigant on the losing side of very large case in U.S. Tax court was a possible issue. A jury of twelve saw readily her firm’s client, a wealthy immigrant from Eastern Europe and also a thief and grifter, left a trail of green slime wherever he slithered. They voted accordingly. But it was a civil case: money only. He made threats, then evaporated back to safe territory.
But McCoy always knew they were after him, not Nicole. The catalyst was Jeremy Ben Fred, still languishing in the Sterrett Center, plus Big Bud Kincaid, languishing in the county cemetery, and their merry band of murdering riffraff. A condition of allowing McCoy back to work was he remain hands-off on the murder investigation of his wife.
He recovered enough to pass the physical and satisfy the shrinks in those damned squeaky chairs. He went back to working out of the Dead Bin with Maggs and Harper.
But after the trauma, no such thing as “back to normal” could ever be quite achieved. Inwardly, he described his give a damn factor as dead-even with the floor. He would never tell another human of his grief.
Maggs both knew and felt his pain, but characteristically, said nothing.
He carried Nicole’s photo in his badge case, but McCoy, the tough guy, lacked the will to ever look at it. His outer hide, already elephant thick, simply grew another layer.
McCoy went to Harper’s house for dinner and TV ball games. They took Harper’s grandson to a couple of Texas Ranger baseball games. He even had dinner and a movie with Maggs and her partner. But he was too shot in the emotional ass to hold up even one corner of society.
Then, a hot spring turned to a hotter, blazing Dallas summer, and school was dismissed.
Although incredibly not a soul seemed to notice, the old tan Chevrolet was often seen roving or parked at various locations around the area, the driver intently watching kids in parks or other gathering spots. Battered old cars remained the norm in the area, and no description of an involved vehicle was known. Nobody could have seen much of the driver with the red hoodie pulled up, an odd behavior in the blazing Dallas summer heat.
Predators survive by caution. Even though the urge became unbearable, there was no hurry. Wait and then wait some more. Haste could prove fatal. Wait... wait... until the time was right. Wait. Measure... measure... measure. Then act. Then blissful satisfaction!
In late August, school started again.
* * *
McCoy was sleeping off a ten-beer bender at 3:39 a.m. He’d spent far too much time studying the bottom of a bottle since Nicole. The Dallas Central Alarm Office was summoning him to a fire-bombing arson/murder on Fitzhugh, right off Gaston. The dispatcher said she’d already notified Maggs and Harper. The Dead Bin was in, and the ensuing journey would be wild and heartbreaking.
Surrounded by uniformed cops and flashing lights, Harper was waiting in the alley, fogging a long, nasty cigar. Late August swelter had not given up its previous day’s grip. The alley temperature was stifling, humid, and smelled like the sewage treatment plant times two.
When Maggs drove up and slinked up the alley, the usual round of cheers from the mostly male crowd of cops went up. McCoy and Harper, journeymen in going about unnoticed, smiled. Maggs nodded, waved good-naturedly, and the business of murder went forward.
“You get run over by a bus on the way down here?” Maggs studied McCoy’s hangover.
“Stayed up late, reading the Bible. Took some aspirin.” McCoy massaged his forehead.
Harper stepped away from the smoldering dumpster. “This one’s hell, guys,” he said, exhaling toxic cigar smoke. “I suppose Oliver sees it as jolly good enough for the Dead Bin. Kid wrapped in a blanket, then burned, in there. Wino down the block saw the perp toss in the gasoline bomb. Did not see the kid thrown in.”
“Wino?” Maggs asked, peering down the alley.
“Too drunk and incoherent to make much sense. Alley was dark and no ID possible.”
At the mention of “wino,” McCoy had a passing vision of himself, sitting on the curb next to the man. He needed to get a grip on the booze spigot. But then, he needed to get a grip on a number of foibles.
Too big and too hungover to fit in the entry door, McCoy heaved his bulky body over the lip of the dumpster. He reached back up to help the pudgy Medical Examiner struggle over behind him with the aid of a fire department ladder. The blanket was burn-damaged and revealed a patch of flesh, but still covered most of the corpse.
They worked the package out the dumpster side hole and onto the M.E.’s gurney. The M. E. gently unfolded the bundle. Better to verify the package as human at the scene than to haul somebody’s discarded Airedale to the morgue.
“Male, white, about nine or ten years old,” the M.E. announced tersely.
Survival in the murder business required the players freeze any outward show of emotion at such atrocities. Cops who couldn’t cope needed to move on. McCoy ratcheted up his stone face and managed not to vomit. Behind him, he knew Maggs and Harper were doing the same.
McCoy got a glimpse of the lower body. “Male or female, doc?”
“Male. Genitalia’s been mutilated, before he was strangled, I’d wager. Plenty of duct tape remnants left on the body to restrain the victim.”
McCoy’s screeching ears blended into the last of the comment. As casually as possible, he leaned against the dumpster wall to steady himself; no way a time to show weakness.
Over the years, he’d tried to condition himself not to let the next thought creep in. It had to count against him in Hell: God, how could you let this happen? He quickly quenched his mind of such blasphemy. Such thoughts were beyond his pay grade.
Harper strolled over, exhaling black cigar toxic waste in ominous quantities. “Kid, uh... Daniel Garcia, 9. Stopped in the park to play on the way home from school. Never came home. Somebody’s been holding him around here some damned place.”
“Jesus!” Maggs spat. “Holding him? Hard to think about that.” She pointed back to the south. “Buncha kids around here. Dunno how the hell somebody managed to grab one out of the crowd. We got an extra squad car working this street.”
McCoy said, “This garden spot’s got no shortage of creeps and suspects.” He looked around. Obviously, the perp had managed to stay invisible.
Behind him the M.E. and a uniformed cop were loading the burned blanket/bundle into an unmarked van. McCoy hadn’t been to confession in months. He mentally vowed to go. Secretly, he knew he wouldn’t. He wasn’t sure he wouldn’t go off on the priest.
Harper’s comment finally fully penetrated McCoy’s hungover brain. He looked idly at Harper.
“Why extra squad cars in this neighborhood?”
“They had a similar case around here several months ago,” Maggs said. “Kid disappeared and was found burning, wrapped in a blanket out south. Homicide upstairs handled it. Never got cleared.”
“I remember reading about that case in the newspaper back in the spring.” McCoy snapped back to attention. “Upstairs told me to stay out of it.” He looked up. Maggs was studying his face.
Harper said. “Think the kid was from this same school — Mendoza, I think — just a couple blocks over that way.” He head-gestured. “I can check that out easy enough.” He rolled the nasty cigar stub across his mouth and thumbed his murder file folder.
McCoy shrugged and gestured to Maggs. “Wish we’d had a chance to take a look at the first kid’s murder. Mighta done something about this.” He gestured at the dumpster.
When the office opened, McCoy called in on his cellular. Mindful of Oliver’s oversight, he instructed the clerk to tell the Lieutenant what Harper, Maggs, and he were doing. Oliver could hide beneath his desk until needed.
A thermometer in a bicycle shop window promised to best a hundred degrees by noon.
Neighborhood canvass by uniformed officers had identified a used car dealer a block away, suspected in several rapes out on the north side and a school crossing guard with two peeping-tom arrests. Neither were child molesters. Then, McCoy found live game in the trap.
McCoy strolled into Guidry’s Auto Body Repair. Tom Bob Guidry wheeled his creeper from beneath a bent F-150 pickup. He was sixty, disheveled beneath gray, bushy brows. Despite piercing yellow eyes, he seemed unable to bring his gaze to bear long enough look another human in the face.
McCoy towered over the greasy repairman. “Where’s all your hired help?” McCoy asked for no real reason as he flashed his badge.
Men like Guidry could smell cops from two hundred paces. “That’s what the damned cops come out here for, to count working folks, so you steal more tax money?” He studied McCoy’s feet, flicking sporadic reptile glances upward at him.
“No, sir. We’re looking into the murder of the kid they found in the dumpster down the street this morning. Another kid from this school got the same treatment a few months ago.”
“You ain’t gonna try to put that on me?”
McCoy stepped back to appraise the grimy little man more closely. “Well, not exactly, but since you’ve volunteered to be a suspect, what do you know about it?”
“Nothin’, I was framed on that other case.”
“That’s sort of what I figured. Framed. Where and when exactly did all that happen?”
“Guess y’all gonna find out anyway. Lyin’ kid up in Muskogee said I molested him. Got me a year at Stringtown.”
“We put you back in for this one, it’s gonna be rough for you inside,” McCoy smiled. “Two falls for kid grabbing, this one a murder. Thing about waiting on death row for the three-needle cocktail, some alpha con might just be able to slip a shank into your guts. But since you’ve already been inside, I guess you already know that.”
“I ain’t did squat. Dunno ’bout no kid in no dumpster!” The yellow eyes were silver-dollar wide in terror. Child abusers are low man in the joint.
“School kids walk past here every day. Any come in?”
Guidry shook his head like a dog working on a rat. “All them school kids hang out at ol’ Granny LeBeck’s place, the gas station down on the corner. She gives ’em candy and the like.”
McCoy turned toward the door. “We come back and talk to you, and you’ve split, I’ll find you and walk around the block with my foot in your ass, maybe twice. Understand?”
Guidry’s eyes darted around the room, stabbing McCoy several times with hate-glare in millisecond bursts. “You sure big enough to do it.”
On the sidewalk, McCoy stepped out of the sun to call the Homicide clerk on his cellular. He asked her to start expanded record checks rolling on the sack of weirdoes they’d harvested so far, including Guidry.
* * *
Copyright © 2021 by Gary Clifton
