35

Rick walked with Coop across Jackson Park toward the courthouse downtown on Thursday, October 16. “What do you make of it?”

“He’s trying to save his skin.”

“Yes, but it is plausible.”

“Then we’d better put security on Penny Lattimore.”

“Marvin is rich enough to hire his own. I’ll call him. Remember, if we go over budget I have to face the commissioners; you don’t.”

“If I did, I’d wear a low-cut dress and show cleavage. Works every time.”

Rick laughed. “How would I know? I’ve never had the privilege.”

She laughed, too. “Really. They’ve done studies to show that when men think of sex they can’t think.”

“They needed to do studies for that?”

“Is pretty silly, isn’t it? How many thousands of years have we known what we are?”

Rick pulled out a cigarette, stopping to light it. He handed it to her for a puff. “Best damned things.”

“I used the five dollars I won from you when Jonathan Bechtal turned himself in.”

“You used more than that.” He took it back, inhaling deeply. “Murder is a sin and a crime, but I’ll be forced, on Judgment Day, to answer for leading you to cigarettes.”

“I smoke one a day.”

“You’ll smoke more.” He closed his eyes in pleasure after another long, long drag. “Well, we have a fascinating situation on our hands.”

“What’s funny is that Mike’s panty fetish has people more in an uproar than the murders.”

“New news.” Then Rick smiled wryly. “And it’s all about sex. That’s a lot more interesting than crimes committed over ideology, money, property. Sex makes everyone perk up.”

“Does, doesn’t it?”

“Lorenzo must have called.”

“You know,” she paused, “he did. I’ve seen him once for lunch, on my day off, and I like him. More than that I don’t know.”

“But you know if you’re attracted to him. You can’t invent that. Either it’s there or it isn’t.”

“Sex.” Coop smiled. “I think that’s why it’s so difficult for women to understand men like Mike. Intellectually we know why he did what he did, but emotionally it doesn’t compute. Never will.”

“Let me let you in on a little secret: it doesn’t compute with a lot of men, either. I find Mike more disgusting than Jonathan Bechtal. Bechtal is a fanatic, a lunatic. Mike abused public trust as well as abusing women. He’s a liar, a thief, in my mind a rapist, and a corrupt official. Anything that breaks down trust in government, to me, is a sin. And God knows, there’s a lot of it out there.”

“I agree. Without trust you have nothing in any kind of relationship. You know what I see now that I didn’t see before? I see the trust that Harry has with her pets and they have with her. Those animals may well have saved her life.”

“They did.” Rick’s cell rang and he flipped it open, listened intently, flipped it shut. “Come on, partner.”

She followed him at a run.

Closing the squad car door behind her, Coop breathlessly asked, “Penny?”

“No.” He hit the sirens and roared off. “Mike.”

They reached the jail. Mike’s crumpled body lay on its side in the outdoor exercise area. His bloodshot eyes testified to strangulation even before Rick knelt down to examine the bruises on his neck.

The guard, Sam Demotta, stood helplessly next to the body. “I turned my back for a minute. Chief, honestly. I heard a gurgle and Jonathan had his hands around his throat. I couldn’t stop him. I blew my whistle. By the time Tom got here, Mike was toast.”

“Snitch,” was all Rick said as he rose, heading toward the cell block.

Coop followed.

No need to explain the judgment reserved for snitches in prison, or the armed forces, for that matter.

Smugly sitting on his bunk, Jonathan did not rise to greet them.

Rick said, “You kill him?”

“I did.”

“Would you like to give me a reason?”

“Oh,” Jonathan airily commented, “I tossed him a few morsels, knowing he’d run to you when he could, and that way I had reason to kill him. He was a pervert. He deserved to die.”

Coop said, “Couldn’t you have killed him without tossing him morsels?”

“I could.” Jonathan spoke patiently, as though to a dim-witted child. “But it’s boring in here. This helped pass the time, and he deserved to die. It’s God’s will, you know.”

The two law-enforcement officers walked outside the cell block, shutting the door behind them.

“Jesus Christ, he’s crazy. He’ll get off because he’s crazy!” Coop uttered in total despair.

“He knows it, too. He’ll be spared the death sentence and spend the rest of his worthless life in a high-security mental ward.” Rick appreciated the twisted prisoner’s intelligence. “And there’s not a damned thing we can do about it. But I am going to do something he doesn’t like, even if we have to strap him down, and I bet we will.”

He did, too. One hour later, Sam Demotta had the honor of cutting off Jonathan’s beard, then shaving him. Tom had to hold his jaw tight, but they did it. A few cuts appeared on Jonathan’s good-looking face.

“I should have done that when we first arrested him,” Rick declared. “All right. I want photographs and, Sam, the best one better be in tomorrow’s paper. I’ll call them right now.”

“They won’t run it,” Coop told him as they hurried to the jail office. “Newspapers always use their own photographer.”

“They’ll use this, because I am going to tell them that the prisoner is far too dangerous for anyone to be near him and he has killed again.”

The next day, Friday, October 17, the newspapers, the television news, and the radio carried the story of Mike McElvoy’s murder.

The photo in the paper startled Benita Wylde. She remembered where she’d seen Jonathan Bechtal.