Turner and Fenwick stopped by Cook County Morgue on the way back to Area Ten headquarters. Three A.M. No hint in the eastern sky that dawn would ever arrive. The oppressive humidity continued.
They entered the morgue through the front entrance, where the bodies came when they first arrived. It was a twelve-by-twelve room tiled halfway up then the rest of the way to the ceiling was clear glass. Down a corridor to a classroom-sized space with desks topped by computers where morgue workers ate snacks and meals while staring at screens. Then they went through a room the size of a small gymnasium, which was filled with floor to ceiling metallic bookcases, each shelf filled with dead bodies in plastic covers. Occasionally they could see a foot or hand sticking out. The back wall was filled with four-foot-by-six-foot cardboard boxes, some labeled feet, others arms, legs. The random leftovers from the criminals of Chicago.
They entered the pristinely clean autopsy room. The ME had Belger’s body opened on the stainless steel slab. The ME saw them and raised an eyebrow. “You’re not dead.”
“Should we be?” Fenwick asked.
The ME said, “You’re investigating a cop killing in Chicago in which another cop is most likely the killer. I’d consider every new breath a triumph.”
“He’s kind of right,” Turner said. “Breathing is part of the job description.”
Fenwick said, “Okay, I’m pro-breathing. What have you found so far?”
The ME said, “We’ve got an interesting case here. His butt tells an interesting story.”
“An unfortunate picture,” Fenwick said. “That I would not give up a thousand words for.”
Turner said, “Gives meaning to the term blow it out your ass.”
The ME harrumphed. “Something very large, presumably the dildo, went up there just before his death. I presume it was the dildo although it could have been other things not in evidence that went up there as well. Whatever it was, it tore him up. The dildo got rammed back up his butt after he was dead.”
“You’re sure about the sequence.”
“Reasonably sure. The lack of lubrication makes it seem someone was deliberately being vicious. There was a lot of ripping and tearing up his ass and evidence of bleeding.” He pointed to a stainless steel bowl on the stainless steel counter. Turner noted the pale pink dildo with bits of blood and brown spots.
Fenwick said, “So you could say the thing fucked-up his life.”
“Is that a pun?” the ME asked.
Turner said, “An attempted Fenwick pun. A class A Felony. The puns are bad, but attempted puns worse. In this state, the death penalty is considered mild punishment for that.”
The ME said, “If either of you do another one of those stupid puns, I may shove something unpleasant up your asses.”
Turner said, “Punless in Chicago. A dream come true.”
Fenwick said, “You’d enjoy it too much.”
“Getting butt fucked or never having to listen to your puns again?” Turner asked. “Hard to choose.”
“Is that an attempted pun?” Fenwick asked.
The ME harrumphed again. He said, “I saw no evidence of unusual sexual activity in the distant past. There’s no scarring up his butt which could simply mean all the other times weren’t violent. Nor does it mean he didn’t take it up the ass, but my guess is, he wasn’t used to being fucked.”
Fenwick said, “That dildo doesn’t look that large.”
“Compared to whom?” Turner asked.
Fenwick and the ME gave him a look.
The ME said, “I don’t think it was that dildo that went up his ass the first time. Whatever went up there was bigger.”
Turner said, “Could it simply have been a very well-endowed guy?”
“I doubt it. Too much tearing. Whatever was used would have to have a rougher surface than a human penis.”
Fenwick said, “Using a dildo to stimulate his ass doesn’t prove he was gay or straight.”
The ME said, “I have no idea what it proves. I leave that to you guys. I just give you data. If there was that much tearing of the lining of his rectum while he was alive, he would have bled a great deal. He must have, but my guess is it happened away from where they found him. We’ve got bleeding at the site, but this much damage would have caused more. Also, I think he was dead when the dildo went up there for the last time.”
Turner said, “Then why shove the dildo up his ass? He’s not going to feel any pain after he’s dead. Gotta be somebody trying to divert the investigation. Cops would have to assume we’d connect his being killed with cops who didn’t like him. They might think dildos, leather, and whips would lead us to conclude the killer was gay, or he was killed because he was gay. Or it could be a smart gay guy. The smart gay guy would know we’d think it was cops. But the smart gay guy thinks, cops would be bright enough to try and switch suspicion away from themselves. Where better to place suspicion than on the gay community connected with a peccadillo of the dead gay guy. So, it goes round again and comes back to cops.”
Fenwick said, “Anybody with that convoluted sense of planning, I want on my team.”
“What did kill him?” Turner asked.
The ME pointed to another stainless steel bowl. “There you have the graduated series of orgasm balls that I pulled out of his throat.”
Turner saw five balls, the largest slightly smaller than a pool ball, the four others diminishing in size. They were a translucent, slightly bluish color, held together with a dark blue nylon cord.
The ME said, “You saw the large one at the scene. All the others were down his throat. That’s what killed him. He choked to death.”
“Was he conscious when they went in?” Turner asked.
“Yes,” the ME said. “Look at the fingernails. Definitely traces of someone else. We’ll get DNA from them. You get a suspect, we’ll match them. And he’s got blood on him that isn’t his.”
Fenwick said, “Then his killer must have been incredibly strong to hold him down and be shoving those things in. Belger wasn’t a small guy.”
“Or it was several guys,” Turner said. “So then we wouldn’t necessarily find a site at the station with tons of blood. He didn’t die from the whipping.”
“Nope,” the ME said.
Turner said, “So they could have killed him anywhere, at the party, in his own basement. And just maybe left a few flecks of blood as they dragged him in. The residue of the blood would be tough to find. In a place that huge. In a place that filthy. Nuts.”
“Has to have been more than one person,” Fenwick said. “Somebody had to be holding him down when they did this.”
“You’d think,” Turner said. He gazed at Belger’s body. He wasn’t a small man, but he wasn’t in the kind of shape going to a gym five days a week would make you. Nobody said he was an athlete.
The ME said, “People didn’t like him. Cop people.”
Turner asked, “What’s the story on all the bruising?”
“Somebody beat the crap out of him just before and after he died. He got the hell kicked out of him.”
“Kicked?”
“By someone with tough leather boots. We got residue of black polish where he’s bruised.”
That was the limit of what forensics could tell them at the moment. Just before they turned to go, Fenwick asked, “You sort of knew these guys. You ever hear of them tasering a suspect?”
The ME said, “Nobody can cover up that kind of thing. Not in this day and age. Can they?”
Fenwick shrugged. “We don’t know.”