A Winsome Murder Read online

  “James!” Coose said, stepping closer.

  The words were gone. “Do you mind?” Mangan said, looking up. “I was having a moment there.”

  “A moment of what?”

  “A moment of—I don’t know—of trying to catch this guy before he kills someone else.”

  “Someone else? We don’t even know if the lady’s dead yet. We don’t have a body.”

  “We will, believe me. I got a bad feeling about this one.”

  “You got a bad feeling about everything, James. You were born with a bad feeling.”

  “All right, Little Miss Sunshine, just—” There was a knock at the door. “What?!”

  Mickey Eagan stuck his head in the doorway. If you had to draw a caricature of what an overweight middle-aged Irish cop from Chicago looked like, it would look like Mickey Eagan. Reading made him sweat.

  “Special delivery,” Eagan said, winded. “Mr. Kevin Lachlan. I got him outside.”

  Out in the hallway, Kevin Lachlan was on his cell phone. He looked impatient and bothered. At a glance, Mangan didn’t like him. He knew his type: the church-going North Shore businessman who liked to meet with associates in Chicago for conventions and trade shows, which were really just excuses for them to whore themselves for a weekend. And after the CEOs got tired of whacking their johnnies off to the twenty-four-hour porn stations, provided at their all-expense-paid hotels, they’d turn to the local escort services, just a computer click away, major credit cards accepted. Scum like Lachlan were all over Chicago, and Mangan couldn’t do very much about them. If the girls were of age and consenting, he and his men left the tricks and pimps alone or turned them over to vice. But under-agers, or girls forced into the business, well, that was a very different story with Mangan. He’d seen girls beaten unconscious, arms broken, faces pounded into walls, skulls crushed. It angered him irrationally and brought out the worst in him as a cop, or perhaps the best—the distinction was always a little hazy.

  Early in his career, he and his team had busted up a strip joint in west Chicago called the Blue Throat. Up on a second floor they’d broken down the door of a room called the Dessert Bar and found about a half dozen girls inside, mostly naked, slumped in wooden chairs. The girls barely moved when they crashed through the door. They didn’t look scared or even surprised that the room was suddenly crowded with police. They looked dead. On a filthy mattress, on the floor, was a girl lying on her side, naked from the waist down. Blood stained her thighs and the mattress beneath her. She couldn’t have been more than thirteen years old, maybe ninety pounds.

  Not a man easily moved, Mangan had always prided himself on being inured to the things that would make most other officers lose their lunch. He’d seen horrific murders, mutilations, decaying corpses, mob slayings—things done to human bodies which no person should ever have to see or think about. Habit, the great deadener, had numbed him. But on the second floor of the Blue Throat that day, looking down at a listless blood-soaked little girl, a strange pressure pushed upward in his chest and throat. He felt nauseous and sweaty. He reached for the wall to steady himself. He was going to pass out, he knew the feeling, he was going to faint right in front of all of these other cops. He struggled to hold on—

  And for the first time, he heard the words.

  He didn’t know why they had come to him, but when he listened to them they seemed to steady him. They stopped his mind and heart from shutting down. They helped him to somehow express the inexpressible. His nausea passed, and under his breath he actually spoke some of the words aloud.

  I was not angry until this instant.

  And then he nearly beat the club owner to death.

  He had felt nothing but heat, a kind of heat in his stomach and balls as he sprinted down the stairs. He grabbed a liquor bottle off the bar and took it to the club owner’s head. There wasn’t much of the guy’s face left when he was done—bottles don’t break like in the movies. If Coose and another officer, Willie Palmer, hadn’t stopped him, Mangan would have killed the man. That thing, that darker thing inside Mangan had a tricky on-off switch, and it didn’t always work right. It was the same thing that helped keep him alive as a kid growing up on the streets of Chicago. It was the same thing that, when kept in check, made him a good cop. It was also the thing that would probably get him killed one day. It was a nasty line to walk, given his kind of work. Not a thin blue line, but a thick fat fucking black one. He’d waded through the shit of it all his life.

  This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine.

  After the episode at the Blue Throat, Mangan was suspended for six months and put on paid leave, then brought up on charges. He lied on the stand. Cusumano and Palmer swore to it. What had happened, they’d said, was that the club owner had rushed at Detective Mangan with a bottle of Slivovitz, which Mangan barely had time to grapple out of his hands. He was then forced to beat the man senseless with it in self-defense. Mangan was acquitted. He received the Cook County Distinguished Service Award and was offered complimentary anger-management counseling.

  He accepted both.

  Mangan knew there were plenty of things in his life that he wasn’t very good at: The nicer things, the lighter things. Smiling, for example. They’d passed him by somehow, or maybe he’d refused to let them in, he didn’t know. Shrinks would have a field day with him. A few of his friends, and most of the women in his life, had at some point taken it upon themselves to help fix him. He’d worked a long time at trying to change himself, and now, if he were honest, and he was, he was tired of it. His new outlook on life, arrived at through the wisdom of age—or sheer exhaustion more likely—could pretty much be summed up as, Fuck it, this is me. He was born with a little gloom around his heart, and he knew it. He’d fought it when he was younger. He’d set ideals for himself, honorable ideals, and tried to rise to them, but his other self, the kid from the street, was always tagging along just a few skips behind him, calling out, “And where do you think you’re going?”

  He often wished he’d have turned out to be a better man.

  “And screw that too,” he’d think in the very next second. He was a middle-aged cop and good at it. All right, so he’d missed out on some of the nicer things in life. All right, so he wasn’t the oh so virtuous guy he’d started out to be. Guys like that don’t always have what it takes to catch bad guys, the really bad guys: to roll around with them in the muck and the blood, to bite a nose off if that’s what it took, or stick a gun into a meth-crusted mouth until the guy vomited and confessed where a missing child was. That’s what it often came down to, because real bad guys eat good guys for breakfast. You blink, you’re dead. This wasn’t TV or some cock ’n’ cunt crime novel with a vampire love triangle at the end. This was Chicago, and the sign over detective James Mangan’s door said Room 70, Violent Crimes Task Force—emphasis violent.

  Mangan stepped into the hallway when he saw Kevin Lachlan start to make another phone call. “Mr. Lachlan,” he said, gesturing him into the room. “Thanks for coming in today.”

  “Sorry,” Lachlan said, putting the phone away. “I have a lot going on at work.”

  “No problem. I’m Detective Mangan.” He gestured to Coose. “My partner, Frank Cusumano.” Coose pulled out a chair at the table and Lachlan sat. Mangan sat across from him. “Sorry it’s so hot in here. The AC’s out. I keep calling maintenance. They don’t like me.”

  “Uh-huh,” Lachlan said, glancing around the office. He stood, took off his jacket, and sat back down.

  “You okay?” Mangan asked.

  “I’m afraid I … I’m not feeling too well.”

  This is a subtle whore, echoed in Mangan’s head, a closet lock and key of villainous secrets.

  Coose asked him, “You want I should get you some water?”

  “Please.”

  Coose took his cue and left the room. Mangan waited. He let the silence sit. He learned a lot about people from their silences. Lachlan kept wiping his forehead but there wasn’t anything the
re. Coose came back in, gave Lachlan the water, and left the room. Lachlan sat up a little higher in his chair and drank.

  “Better?” Mangan asked him.

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  “Good. So. Look. I’ll try and get you out of here as quick as I can, all right? So, to start with, Mr. Lachlan—is that Irish? You Irish?”

  “Scotch Irish.”

  “Uh-huh,” Mangan said, the words we have scotched the snake, not killed it darting through his thoughts. “So to begin, Mr. Lachlan, I want to apologize right off the bat because I’m going to have to ask you some things, and I’m kind of a straightforward guy in my work, because, you know, it just saves a hell of a lot of time.” Mangan opened the case file and placed it on the desk. “And, tell you the truth, I got a friggin’ blivit times three here that I’m trying to clean up. You know what that is, a blivit?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Ten pounds o’ shit in a five-pound bag. My shop teacher told me that in seventh grade. Mr. Manfrey. Never forgot it.” Mangan sorted through his notes. “So, help me out here if you could, Mr. Lachlan. Oh, and one more thing,” he added in as pleasant a voice as he could muster, “don’t bullshit me, okay? Because I might not catch it right now, you know? But I will, eventually. And then that’s just not good for anybody. Because then I gotta get you back in here, and then I’m not so personable, and it’s just, you know, it’s just no fun all the way around. All right?”

  “Excuse me, did I do something wrong here?”

  “I don’t know, did you?”

  “What kind of a question is that?”

  “It’s just a question. I’m a detective. I ask questions.”

  “Look, I found a hand in my apartment. I called you.”

  “I understand that, Mr. Lachlan, and I’m very sorry for the trauma, the obvious emotional trauma which I’m sensing this has caused you. I apologize. You’re right. You’re very right. I was assuming. I was projecting. Bad habit of mine. And I think maybe I was doing that because I was starting to sense a kind of, I don’t know, a kind of hesitancy in your demeanor. And I’m probably completely wrong about that. So, I apologize. Please, let me start again.” Mangan took out a sheet of notes from one of the files on his desk. “And you understand, of course, that you don’t have to answer anything, right? I just thought I’d try and get you in here early to talk, because there might be some things about this case—and there I go assuming again, so please correct me if I’m wrong— there might be some things that you’d prefer to maybe keep out of the newspapers.” Mangan waited for a response. Lachlan’s silence told him all he needed to know. “I’m nothing if not discreet,” he said, skimming the preliminary reports. “So, this young woman, Mr. Lachlan. Who was she?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “The woman who left your apartment at approximately six twenty-five that morning, jeans, T-shirt, midtwenties, long black hair, very attractive. You didn’t mention her in your statement to the police.” Mangan paused a moment. “I’m assuming she wasn’t your wife. Or your daughter.”

  Lachlan twisted the cap back onto his water bottle. “No.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “… Fenyana.”

  “What’s that, like Cher, Prince, or something? Just Fenyana?”

  “I don’t know her last name.”

  Mangan jotted the name down in a small notebook. “A professional, yes? The Slovak social club? Where’s the tochka you picked her up at?”

  “I didn’t pick her up. She comes—I know her through a friend.”

  “This friend got a name?”

  Lachlan hesitated. “I think I’d like to call my lawyer now.”

  Mangan stopped taking notes. He put his pen down.

  “Mr. Lachlan,” he said, “did you read the sign over my door when you came in? It says Violent Crimes. That’s me. That’s what I wake up for. You really think I care about some little baruxa-bun you’re banging up in your apartment? No, the answer to that is no. Now when I talk to the press—which I’m going to have to do eventually—I really wouldn’t want to slip and maybe mention something that I shouldn’t, which unfortunately happens to me at times when lawyers get involved. They make me nervous. And here I go again assuming, but I’m thinking that maybe you might not want your wife and—let’s see, how many kids you got?” Mangan flipped to a page in his notepad. “You might not want your wife and three kids to know that you’re dicking a girl about the age of your youngest daughter in a very nicely situated and, if I might add, very nicely furnished apartment, which I assume—there I go again—is perhaps a business expense? Tax write-off ? We wouldn’t want the IRS to get involved in this, now, would we? That would be just terrible. So, if you could just help me out a little, I’d feel a lot better because I really wouldn’t want to say something that I shouldn’t say. Accidentally.”

  Lachlan slumped slightly in his chair.

  “Tick, tock,” Mangan said, tapping his watch.

  “Savva Baratov. The Bank Street Diner. It’s on the corner of—”

  “Bank Street, right? Wow, I’m good at this.” Mangan took a quick note.

  “She, um, she works there, sometimes, and he, he arranges—”

  “I’m way ahead of you, buddy. You been with her before?”

  “Yes. About once a month. But not always her.”

  “Alrighty, we’re cooking with gas now.” Mangan ripped out a piece of paper from his notepad. “Coose!” Cusumano came back in and Mangan handed him the note. He took it and left again. Mangan watched Lachlan’s eyes. “Did you read the note that was in the envelope?”

  “Note? I … I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You didn’t see what else was in that envelope?”

  “No, I didn’t. When I felt the, when I saw what it was, I dropped the envelope and got out of there and called the police.”

  Mangan pulled out the copy of the note. “Well, there was a note in it. This is a copy. I’d like you to read it.” Mangan placed it in front of Lachlan. “Normally we wouldn’t do this, but, well, this isn’t very normal. Tell me what you make of it.”

  Mangan watched Lachlan read the note.

  When Lachlan reached the end of it he mumbled, “Winsome.” A puzzled look drifted across his face, then a shock of recognition. “Jesus, that’s the name of the town. Winsome.” He shoved the note back to Mangan. “Winsome Bay. We’re running a series on it right now. That’s where she was killed, the girl, that’s where they found her. She was—”

  “Slow down, Mr. Lachlan, slow down. What are you talking about? Who was killed?”

  “The girl from Wisconsin. Deborah Ellison.”

  Sorry,” Jillian said as she fumbled with her digital recorder. “I think it’s the battery. I have another one here.” She was new at interviewing people, more nervous than she thought she’d be. “Just a second.”

  Wesley Faber waited while Jillian dug through her purse. He had agreed to meet after his shift, at 8:00 p.m. Inconvenient for Jillian, yes, but she hadn’t had much choice. When she called to confirm, Faber had tried to cancel the interview altogether, but Jillian gently reminded him that as well as being the chief of police in Winsome Bay, he was also the town’s public information officer. They met at the police station, only blocks away from where Deborah Ellison’s body had been found. Faber had been police chief for the last seventeen years. This was his first murder case.

  “Almost got it,” Jillian said, smiling at him.

  He didn’t smile back.

  Balding, graying, and stiffly polite, Faber sat very erect and very still at his desk. Behind him, mounted high on a dark paneled wall, were two large, antlered deer heads. Next to them were some fanned-out turkey-tail mountings, and on a low shelf beneath were at least a dozen shooting trophies and a number of engraved gold plaques for police marksmanship.

  “Okay,” Jillian said, testing the recorder. “It works now.” She placed it on the corner of Faber’s desk. “Sorry.�
� She read through her list of prepared questions. “Um … okay.”

  “You want anything?” Faber asked. “Something to drink?”

  “No. No. Thank you. I’m ready now.”

  “Okay.”

  “So. Do you have much crime out here?”

  “Not much. But some.”

  “Any violent crimes?”

  “Bar fights mostly. A suicide now and then. Domestic abuse.”

  “Any drugs?”

  “Well, drugs are everywhere, aren’t they? We’re no exception.”

  “What kind of drugs?”

  “Marijuana and OxyContin mostly. In the high school.”

  “Heroin?” Jillian knew the answer to this. She wanted to see if Faber would answer honestly.

  “Well, yes,” he said, “we’re starting to get the heroin out this way too.”

  Drugs, Jillian knew, were one of the dirty little secrets of small-town America. Well, not so much a secret as a profound misconception that things like that don’t happen in small towns, as if all the rah-rah ball games, corn dogs, and flag-draped porches somehow granted rural America immunity from the horrors going on around the rest of the country. There weren’t any fewer drugs, just less media coverage. Jillian had done her research before coming to Winsome for the interview. In 2007 Wisconsin had about thirty heroin deaths. In 2013, two hundred and twenty-seven. The drug is just too cheap. Oxy might cost forty or fifty dollars, while a hit of heroin might go for twenty. And with cheap drugs come the addicts, and with the addicts, crime. There’s just no honest way to afford a three-hundred-dollar-a-day habit.

  “What about crystal meth?” Jillian asked.

  “Less of that now,” Faber said. “It was a big problem for a long time. They can’t cook the stuff in the city, the smell is too strong. So they all started coming out this way. Hard to know where they are, though. They move around a lot, setting up out in the woods and the old farms, campsites, hauling in gallons of hydrochloric acid, acetone, methanol, kerosene, propane.”