Turner and Fenwick stopped at Aunt Millie’s for lunch. Three beat cops from the First District were singing bawdy songs in the front booth.
“You could join them,” Turner said. “Maybe form a singing group.”
“Let’s just eat and get out.”
As Fenwick wrapped his paw around a tuna melt, which he claimed was healthy and noncaloric because it was seafood, he said, “Maybe Schurz was following Meade around.”
“Schurz is at the top of my suspect list along with Judge Wadsworth.”
“And Francis Barlow.”
“Frank the snob. We should invite him to eat here.”
“Aunt Millie would ban us from the place permanently.”
“And that’s bad?”
After lunch they drove north, through the numbing cold. “Supposed to get up to zero today,” Fenwick said. “Don’t think it’s going to happen.”
“It’s called winter, Buck. It’s supposed to get cold.”
At Judge Meade’s home, they found friends of the deceased gathered. Turner and Fenwick took some time to question each of them briefly. None claimed to have seen the judge on the night in question. They all claimed that recently he was very happy. None of them knew of any problems.
After they finished talking to Meade’s friends, Mrs. Meade led them to the judge’s den. She left them alone to inspect the room. The den was much like the judge’s chambers at the Kennedy Federal Building. Lots of wood, stained a bit darker here, bookcases filled with rows of similarly bound books.
“He ever read anything for pleasure?” Turner asked.
They found only nonfiction. In the middle drawer of the desk they found a calendar. They studied it carefully.
When they finished, Fenwick said, “Met with Wadsworth when Barlow said he did.”
“Calendar says he was going to Canada for the conference,” Turner said. “He was supposed to deliver a paper on international law. So, it was a spontaneous change of mind?”
“Or he is very devious.”
“He came back to go to a gay bar? A severely closeted man can go out of his way to do all kinds of things, but a totally bogus trip? Not if he was supposed to deliver a lecture. On bogus trips you don’t make commitments that have to be fulfilled.”
“Maybe he had a second airline ticket for the next day. If he flew on New Year’s Day, he still would have been on time for his talk today.”
“We haven’t found any such thing.”
“Or his luggage.”
“That is kind of goofy. Maybe he checked his luggage, and, in between luggage check-in and boarding the plane, something stopped him.”
The desk and the rest of the room revealed nothing of interest.
They met Meade’s son and daughter in the living room where they had spoken to Mrs. Meade the day before.
Pam Meade was in her middle to late twenties and Mike Meade, a few years younger. Pam had long flowing golden hair, while Mike’s blond mane was pulled into a small pony tail. Both were slender and looked well muscled. Pam wore faded blue jeans and a hand-knit horizon sweater. Mike wore a
slightly oversized bombay stripe shirt with a white T-shirt underneath. He wore black polar fleece pants.
Before they could begin questioning, Pam spoke. “Why hasn’t my father’s killer been found?”
For the next several minutes, she gave an extremely good rendition of the aggrieved relative giving the cops hell. Turner and Fenwick had heard the drill numerous times. She would stop eventually, and they would ask their questions.
Pam’s mother sat on one side of her and her brother on the other. In the middle of her tirade, she began to cry. Mrs. Meade put her arm around her daughter, and Mike patted her arm.
When equilibrium returned, Mike said, “What can we do to help?” This was said with manly assurance, mixed with an awkward quaver he couldn’t completely conceal—I’m the surviving male adult here—with tears lurking just underneath.
“We know this is a difficult time, but we need to ask a few questions,” Turner said.
Mike nodded.
“Do you know if your father had any enemies?” Turner asked.
“Not that I know of,” Mike said.
Pam said, “Well, all those left-wing groups were mad at him at one time or another. They were always denouncing him. One of the groups even demonstrated in front of the house once.”
“Which group was that?”
“I don’t remember. The police were here. They’d have a record. Some group that thought they knew best.”
“You agreed with your father’s politics?” Turner asked.
“When we were kids we fought some,” Pam said. “But over the years, I learned he was doing his best in difficult situations and that there were seldom clear-cut answers to many questions. Sometimes he had to make difficult choices. He thought deeply, read a lot, put a lot of himself into his decisions.”
“How about you, Mike?” Fenwick asked.
“I loved my dad. We didn’t discuss politics a lot.”
“Where were you both on New Year’s Eve?” Turner asked.
“I had volunteered to go back to school for this week,” Mike said. “I was in Bloomington-Normal. I’m a fifth-year senior at Illinois State University. I’m involved in a major project this summer for my degree and had to do a lot of the preplanning. It involves a lot of youngsters at a camp in Vermont. I was staying at a friend’s house off campus.”
“I was in California at a Young Republican woman’s symposium,” Pam said.
Turner wrote down the basic information and would check it out later.
In the car Fenwick said, “Kids seemed okay. Cried at the right moments. Properly indignant.”
“Wouldn’t want them to be improperly indignant.”
When they walked into Au Naturel, all the lights were on. Two fully clothed young men were hard at work. One pushed an industrial-strength floor waxer and buffer. The other was busy dusting and polishing. They found Dana Sickles in her office.
She gave them a sour look. “Business was shit last night. Thank you very much.”
“Just trying to help out,” Fenwick said.
“What do you want?”
“We have another confirmation that the judge was in the bar last night.”
“I know I’m supposed to care about this.”
“Just following where the facts lead,” Fenwick said.
Turner said, “Our source says the judge was talking to one of the dancers about nine o’clock.”
“Here?”
“No. In the Loop.”
“You’re source really gets around. He following the judge?”
“We don’t think so.”
“We need you to tell us if you recognize the guy. We’re looking for somebody with huge pecs, reddish-blond hair, flat stomach, and wearing a red thong.”
She burst out laughing.
“I missed the funny part,” Fenwick said.
“That describes half the boys. In the light around here the blonds can go from dark to light. Red thong? They often trade outfits. Something looks hot on one, or somebody makes a lot of money wearing a certain thing, they all want to wear it. Your description isn’t going to get you anywhere.”
“We haven’t talked to all the guys who work here yet,” Turner said, “and we need to talk to all the others again.”
“Why don’t you just bring your source down here and have him identify the suspect?”
Turner looked sheepish. “We’re having trouble locating our source. He seems to have disappeared.”
“Are you guys serious?”
“Most of the time,” Fenwick said.
“We need the guys here,” Turner said. “If you could have them here by four, we could be done by the time you wanted to open.”
“The implication being that if I don’t get them here then I don’t open?”
“We know you want to help the police,” Fenwick said. “We know good Republicans are supposed to be on the side of the upholders of the law.”
“They let cops be sarcastic with the public?” she asked.
“Only me. I have a special permit.”
She agreed to do what she could to get all the dancing boys assembled by four.
Turner and Fenwick walked down the street to the used bookstore. A huge Going-Out-of-Business sign hung in the front window. Inside was a mass of confusion. About half the books were in boxes while the other half were still on the shelves. Mounds of maps and charts were strewn on the front counter. A large, gray, long-haired cat lay curled in the open cash-register drawer.
They found a stooped man in his late seventies in the back feeding a pot-bellied pig. Turner noticed the place had a distinct
barnyard odor. If the place could remain open a little longer, he thought he would recommend it to Francis Barlow.
The man smiled at them from under bushy eyebrows. He wore a tattered cardigan sweater over faded blue jeans.
Turner consulted his notes. “Mr. Hays?”
“Yes, gentleman. Everything is half price. I can help you with what is on the shelves, but you’ll have to look through the boxes yourselves.”
Turner showed him his identification.
Hays brushed the dirt off his hands. “Don’t know much. You guys must be really reaching for something. Course, big case like this, must be lots of pressure. Not as much as that nonsense in Los Angeles. Course, that means you won’t get as famous.”
“What do you know, Mr. Hays?”
“They must of told you it wasn’t much. All I know is I was working here until after three last night. They’re foreclosing in days. Some people’s retirement dreams come true. Mine didn’t. Luckily I didn’t let myself go broke with this operation. Got a nice little place in Texas where I can do some fishing and not have to live through another of these hellish winters.”
“The report said you heard something.”
“Little before two. I was listening to the New Year’s Eve Midnight Special on WFMT. They’d just got done with the live portion, that’s how I remember the time. I was in back there. He pointed to what resembled an office—desks, calculator, ledger books.”Trying to squeeze a dime or two more out of the business.” He shook his head.”Like I said, it was just after two. Heard this car. Didn’t think much of it. It’s an alley you know, supposed to be cars. Heard this kind of crush or crunch. Loud, you know. Thought it was those damn kids setting off firecrackers, or maybe shooting guns. Hell of a way to celebrate a New Year, making noise. I always prefer quiet celebrations with friends.”
“You didn’t investigate?”
“No. It was loud, but it was just the one.”
“Could have been a gun shot?”
“Maybe. The young cops that were here earlier asked me for ‘anything.’ That was as much ‘anything’ as I could come up with.”
They gave him their number and returned to Area Ten Headquarters.
The woman at the downstairs desk greeted them with, “Commander wants to see you.”
“What’d you guys do this time?” a uniform asked.
“Arrested the mayor,” Fenwick said.
Upstairs they found the acting commander. He invited them into his office. He sat behind a cluttered desk. Turner and Fenwick rested in metal chairs in front of him.
“Got a call about you both,” Molton said.
“Who wants to give us a medal now?” Fenwick said.
“Judge Wadsworth called to complain.”
Fenwick said, “Golly shucks, we’ve been bad. Screw that stupid shit.”
Molton said, “What have you got so far?”
They told him.
When they finished he said, “You’ve been doing fine. I can’t think of anything else you should have done or could be doing. Forget about the judge. I only told you because it adds a dimension to the case, and you need to know everything. He didn’t like your way of questioning him. I may not like it either, but calling me sure as hell made me suspicious.”
“He claims he was having a quiet evening at home,” Turner said.
“Doesn’t anybody go out on New Year’s any more?” Molton said. “Confirm everybody’s whereabouts. Copies of all of Meade’s decisions are here, and so are most of the reports from the medical examiner.”
The first thing they checked was the ME’s reports. They flipped through their copies and traded bits of information as they read.
“Blood on the pavement was definitely his,” Turner said.
“No drugs, moderate amount of alcohol, was not drunk,” Fenwick added.
“Didn’t recover the bullet. No definite type on the gun. Big. Killed him instantly.”
They read for ten more minutes.
“Anything in this we didn’t know already?” Turner asked.
“Not much. Having a hard time telling the time of death because the body was frozen. Took more time to do the autopsy because they had to thaw the body. Weird.”
“If the old man is right, we’ve got a time of death around two.”
“If what he heard was really the shot that killed him, and we don’t have a mess in the alley, it means the killer has a very messy car.”
“Judge Meade had been drinking.”
Fenwick said, “Presumably not drinking at home.”
“Unless his wife is lying.”
“I think she was telling the truth. Most probably, he was out somewhere. No friends have come forward to say he was with them. If they were telling the truth, then he was drinking in a public place, which we have concluded was Au Naturel.”
“Could have been another bar.”
“I’m not going to send a cop to every bar in the city.”
“Who’s the resident expert on the nut groups in the city? Those abortion people are crazy enough to kill. We’ve got to check them out.” Turner spent several minutes calling bureaucrats at police headquarters before he got Melissa Baker, detective in charge of loonies traveling to the city.
“You the terrorism squad?” Turner asked.
“No, just a cop like you trying to make a living. What can I do for you?”
Turner explained about needing to know about possible attacks on federal judges.
Baker answered promptly. “At this time, none of the known troublemakers from any anti-abortion or other terrorist group is in town.”
“You know this off the top of your head?”
“That’s what they pay me to know. What I, of course, can’t tell you is if there are any unknown crazed killers in town. You can always get some loony in some fringe group trying to be a hero. I can tell you we haven’t gotten one call from any group claiming to have offed the judge. I’ll do some checking, but I think this is all I’ll be able to get for you in the way of information. This case doesn’t feel political to me.”
Turner thanked her, hung up, and filled Fenwick in.
Wilson and Roosevelt walked in and came over.
“No luck on Carl Schurz,” Wilson said. “Not easy to find a homeless drifter. Lot of these runaway kids show up at the bus station. Got a mini-lead. An old guy named Roman Ayres hangs out there. In his seventies.”
“You have a source who’s a child molester?” Fenwick asked.
“Have all your sources been saints?”
“He ever been busted for trying to have sex with the kids?” Fenwick asked.
“No, but he’s our source,” Wilson said. “One of the cops that works that beat knows him. Supposedly this guy doesn’t want sex with the kids. None of the teens he’s worked with have ever complained. Very few of the boys he’s helped have gotten in trouble with the police.”
“Sort of a one-man halfway house,” Roosevelt said.
Wilson continued, “He has a decent reputation with the cop we talked to. He said the guy’s story is that his parents threw him out of his house back in the thirties. He had no place to go then. Now that he’s retired, he wants to help these kids who are just off the bus, like he was. We couldn’t get a lead from any of Schurz’s peers. We were lucky to find this guy.”
Turner wrote down the name and address. “We’ve got to interview the people at the bar again.” Turner explained what they’d learned that day.
Judy Wilson said, “Any studly black guys are mine.”
“You’re married,” Roosevelt said.
“I didn’t say I wanted to mate with them, but I could dance with them.”
Turner called Ian and asked, “You ever heard of a Roman Ayres? Supposedly, he works with the kids just off the bus, runaways. Gay kids who’ve been thrown out of their homes.”
“I heard of him, but I never met him. We wanted to do an article on him. He wants no credit, notoriety, or thanks. Usually that means he’s diddling the kids, but my sources say he’s a genuinely kind man who just wants to help quietly. He connected to this?”
“Maybe.” He told them what Roosevelt and Wilson had.
The detectives had an hour before they were due back at the bar. Turner and Fenwick spent the time catching up on paperwork. Wilson began thumbing through the judge’s decisions. She made notes of groups she thought might have been angered by a decision. Roosevelt went through the mountain of press clippings one of the researchers had assembled. Most were from the two local newspapers, the Tribune and the Sun-Times , but a few were from the New York Times. He also made notes summarizing possible groups that the judge might have made angry and wrote down the names of anyone from a group that made statements after the rulings.
They assigned beat cops to meet with leaders of each of the groups for preliminary interviews. Turner agreed with Baker that this was not a political murder, and talking to these people was probably useless, but it had to be done. At this time in the investigation they had at least thirty cops, either full or part time, at their disposal. If somebody got lucky and broke the case, they could get themselves on all kinds of newscasts.
Turner and Fenwick left half an hour early for the bar. They drove to the address they had for Roman Ayres. He lived on Racine Avenue just north of Diversey. His apartment was on the top floor of a three-flat.
Ayres moved, spoke, and acted with quiet dignity. His face
was pock-marked and wrinkled. His white hair was cut short. Tufts of hair stuck out of both ears. The fabric on his cloth-covered couch and chair was threadbare. He had a twelve-inch-screen television. The apartment was humid to the point of uncomfortableness and the walls were barren.
After identification and introduction, Turner explained about Carl Schurz.
When he finished Ayres said, “You’re the gay cop, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Turner said.
“I could tell. I can always tell. Carl told me about you. You care about this kid?”
“I don’t want him to be hurt.”
“I don’t have to be careful about my emotions with them. I can give them my heart. Doesn’t matter if they break it or disappoint me. I’m old.”
“When did you see Carl?” Turner asked.
“He came to see me last night. I tell them they can come anytime they want. When people are in need, they don’t always have a good sense of time. He talked about you a lot, Detective Turner.”
“I didn’t lead him on.”
“Carl laughed about that. He thought you might fall off the end of the desk.” Ayres frowned. “He talked a great deal about you holding him.”
Turner began a protest.
“I believe you didn’t want to lead him on. He just talked about you holding him. Your confidence and self-assurance. Your good looks and how sexually attracted he was to you.”
“Look, Mr. Ayres …”
“I’m not saying this to embarrass you. I’m just reporting. He said he wanted to be like you when he grew up.”
Turner sat back for a moment. “I only talked to him for that short time.”
“He was in desperate need. All these runaways are. They can
quickly form very powerful attachments. You’d be surprised how many of these kids are looking for an older man. You could probably get all Freudian and talk about looking for love and approval from their fathers. Maybe that would be on target. At any rate, you did nothing wrong, I’m sure. Not from what Carl said. I know Carl and how he can be—how they can all be.”
“I wish I could help him.”
“Don’t we all desperately want the world to come out right—for it to be perfect in ways it can never possibly be? You did your best. How can I help you?”
“Do you know where he went?”
“Not specifically. He didn’t stay here the night. I can give you a couple places to check. I know the boys hang out several places. One of the most common is on Lower Wacker Drive. Lot of drugs down there.”
“In this cold?”
“Drugs know no season. Try there. He probably won’t be there, but the local drug pusher will know him. Wouldn’t your beat cops be able to help with that? The cross street aboveground is Monroe. On Lower Wacker there’s a narrow recess between buildings that turns into a walkway which meanders deep beneath the streets. Follow it back and it opens up to a larger space. If the pusher gives you trouble, well, I’m sure you have ways to get him to be cooperative. You may have to use them. Now, in this neighborhood, I’d try on Broadway north of Belmont. There’s a halfway house for runaway teens which he stayed at for a while.”
“He into drugs?”
“He isn’t an addict. I have some hopes that he’ll escape that. I always have hopes, though. If he’s lucky, he isn’t hooked. Those are the two most likely places in this weather.”
In the car Turner said, “I feel so sorry for that kid. I hope we find him. I don’t know if I can help him, but maybe at least we can find him a warm place for a few days.”
“Lots of people have tried to help him,” Fenwick said. “Some people who need help don’t know what they want. Some won’t take the help. You’re not a social worker.”
“I know. I just …” Turner stared out at the cold while Fenwick drove.