A Winsome Murder Read online

  “Stop trying to analyze me and tell me what you’re talking about.”

  “You know what I’m talking about, James, it’s not brain surgery.” Rhys took up the autopsy photo. “Well, actually, I guess it is.” He pointed to a caved-in area around and below the victim’s eye. “She was severely beaten. Her bones aren’t just broken, they’re crushed.”

  “I can see that,” Mangan said, the words, thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold, running through his head.

  Rhys exchanged photos, sliding another horrific picture across the table. Mangan winced at the image, the same area of the face, but the left eyelid was pried open wide with a stainless steel specula.

  “Medical examiner in Wisconsin made a good catch,” Rhys said. “Coroner overlooked it in the prelims. Easy to do with catastrophic injuries.” He took a pencil and pointed to a spot on the victim’s eye. “What do you see?”

  “I don’t have time to play games.”

  “Neither do I, I’m tailgating at Harry Caray’s in an hour. What do you see?” Mangan tried to see what Rhys was alluding to. “Look at the sclera—sorry, James—the big white part of the eye. It’s easy to miss.” He touched the tip of his pencil to a fine threadlike line in a small patch of white in the eye. It was barely visible, a few strands of red spider webbing.

  “Petechial.”

  “Look at you, using big words.”

  “So she was strangled.”

  “Yes.” Rhys put another photo in front of Mangan, a wider shot of Debbie Ellison’s massive facial wounds. “Blunt force trauma, predominantly on the left side. He used a rock or a piece of cement or something. The wound edges are ragged, and abrasion marks are scratched into some of the bone fragments. My guess is he sat on top of her, straddled her, keeping her arms down with his knees. There’s bruising on her forearms and biceps.” Rhys acted out the scene. “He strangles her, takes a rock to her face, and then gets to work with the knife.”

  “Was she alive? When he stabbed her?”

  “I don’t think so. There’s not much vascular constriction or bleeding into the surrounding tissues.”

  Mangan picked up another photo, a mass of blackened flesh that was once the Ellison girl’s torso and hip area. He studied the body, upon whose dead corpse there was such misuse as may not be spoken of. Despite the decomposition, he could make out numerous tattoos on her breasts and stomach, around her genitals down the inner thighs. Most were of birds, small colorful birds in flight, or clinging to leafy vines that wrapped around her limbs.

  “There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow,” Mangan said quietly.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Anyway,” Rhys continued, “there were no clothes on the body when she was found and no jewelry. No earrings either, despite the fact that she had numerous piercings.” He rifled through another stack of photos. “Here’s a teaser. This little flap of skin on her neck. See that? Those dots.” On a small section of the front neck there were about a dozen tiny bruise marks, cylindrical, and not much bigger than the typed letter o of a keyboard. “They’re organized,” Rhys said. “There’s a pattern to them. Equal distance apart.”

  “What are they?”

  “An impression mark of some kind.”

  “Are they anywhere else on her body?”

  “No.” Rhys checked his notes again. “Her stomach contents were partially undigested. She was found early Saturday morning, August eleventh, around twelve forty-five a.m. So, time of death, they’re guessing, maybe four to six hours after her last meal, a little room either way. Sometime between five and ten o’clock the night before, Friday the tenth.”

  “You should be a detective.”

  “I am. Kind of.”

  Mangan considered what he knew so far: A young girl from a small town is killed. Most of the mutilation committed postmortem. I am burned up with inflaming wrath; a rage that nothing can allay, nothing but blood. “This is significant overkill,” he said to Rhys, “this is rage.”

  “I’d assume so, but then again, somebody could want it to look like that.”

  Mangan mused aloud. “Why would he do that?”

  “Why is your department, James. I do the what and how.”

  “I wasn’t really asking you why, I’m just talking out loud. Don’t you know that by now?”

  “Sorry. Forgot.” Rhys slid another Wisconsin file before Mangan. “They also report no signs of rape. And that’s about all they have right now. Their chem analysis is still in the works.” Rhys opened yet another file. “Now, as for us, and our little orphaned body part.” He laid out photos of the severed hand. “Why are you so interested in this anyway?”

  “What?”

  “You’ve got plenty of actual bodies to keep you busy, what’s with the hand?”

  The phrase, the bug which you would fright me with, I seek, scurried through Mangan’s thoughts. “I don’t know, it’s just bugging me,” he told Rhys. He spied a copy of the letter that had been found with the severed hand. “Have you read that?”

  “Yes. Pretty weird.”

  “That’s what Coose said. What do you make of it?”

  “You really asking or just talking out loud?”

  “Really asking.”

  “Okay. Well, I’d say he feels justified in what he’s doing. And he might do it again.”

  “Yeah, I’m thinking the same. You find any trace on the letter?”

  “No.”

  “The envelope?”

  “Nothing. No saliva, it wasn’t sealed. We got a few latents, but they were all civilians’ who’d handled the envelope. And the prints of the hand aren’t in the system.”

  “What about the knife?”

  “Hard to say.” Rhys scanned the Wisconsin report. “But it’s a different knife than the one used on the Wisconsin victim. There are indications of a serrated edge used on the severed hand. Not so on the Wisconsin victim. They approximate the knife used on Deborah Ellison at about eight inches. An inch wide at the hilt, single edged. A fillet knife maybe, a boning knife. Also the wound patterns are chaotic, wild, a frenzied kill. But the hand was severed very cleanly, no slicing or sawing motions, no preparatory cuts.” Rhys started entering data into his computer. “Whoever did it knew what he was doing.”

  Mangan lost in thought, walked the room. “What’s he, a doctor? A surgeon?”

  “A vet, a butcher. Who knows? A chef.”

  “A forensic pathologist.”

  “Possible.”

  “Any trace on the hand itself ?”

  “No.”

  “No trace on the Wisconsin victim. He was wearing gloves.”

  “Yes.”

  “So, it’s premeditated. He knew what he was going to do. He sought her out. Yes?”

  “I would assume. Look, James, I actually have Chicago cases I have to—”

  “She was living in Chicago, so she could’ve been killed here. Right?”

  “Well, she could have—”

  “Did they have a last known whereabouts on her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What was she doing in Winsome Bay? Or was she even there?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “No missing persons reports. Where’s her family, the Ellison girl’s family?”

  “James, please, it’s not even our case, so if you don’t mind, I—”

  “Why do you keep interrupting me? I’m thinking here.”

  “I’m sorry, I’ve got work to do.”

  “So do it already, go. Nobody’s stopping you. Go.”

  “This is my office, James.”

  Detective Cusumano came in late the next day. “Friggin’ traffic. Put a man on the moon, we still can’t figure out how to merge.” He tossed three copies of American Forum on the table.

  Mangan took one up and flipped through it, looking for an article by Jillian McClay. “What did you get on that girl at the Bank Street Diner?”

  “Not a whole lot.” Coose
tossed a paper bag on the sink counter and washed out a coffee mug. “Street name, Fenyana Petrakova. Real name, Petra Nadzenia. Where’s the cream?”

  “We’re out.”

  He flipped Mangan a police mug shot and poured a cup of coffee. “That’s her. Picked up a few times for the usual.”

  Mangan looked at the photo. “Jesus.”

  “Right?” Coose said. “She’s beautiful. What’s she doing on the street is what I’d like to know. She works a lot the northeast side. Lives in the Dearborn projects.”

  “You check it out?”

  “Yeah. Nothing much. The landlord—who is a dick by the way— hasn’t seen her for a while. And the guy who runs the Bank Street, whatever his name is …” Coose checked his notes. “Baratov. Savva Baratov. Sells a little more than coffee at his joint, but he’s a nickel-’n’-dimer. Caters mostly to white-collar johns. Pretty straight up. Doesn’t hurt his girls from what I could tell.” He took a bagel out of the bag and tore it in half. “Want some?”

  “No thanks. Where’s the girl now?”

  “Says he doesn’t know, but he’s lying. A girl like that? She’s the money.” Between bites of bagel and swallows of coffee Coose read through the rest of his notes. “One of my girls on the street says Baratov’s in with the Russian mob. Says he’s always shoving it in their faces. So I talked to Nazarkov to check him out.”

  “You talked to Nazarkov?”

  Coose grinned. “I did.”

  “How the hell’d you get to him?”

  “I know a guy. I made a call. You don’t get any higher than Nazarkov, and he says this asshole ain’t in the club, and if he keeps saying he is, he’s gonna wind up in a fucking caviar can.”

  “All right, put Palmer on this,” he said. “He knows the prostitutes on the Gold Coast and Boys Town. See if any of their friends have gone missing. Then get started on the Hicks case.”

  “You get started on it.”

  “I’m busy.”

  “So am I.”

  “I’m busier.”

  “I’ll do it later.”

  “Do it now.”

  “Why are you being such a prick? What’s your problem today?”

  “It’s just that I got a file full of dead bodies here and we’re wasting our time on a friggin’ appendage. Get someone else on it.”

  “Okay, I’ll take care of it.”

  “Okay.”

  Coose, halfway out the door, said, “Hey, we’re heading over to Dugan’s tonight, bunch of us. Why don’t you get out of your cave for a little while and come along?”

  “I got plans.”

  “Female plans?”

  “None of your business.”

  “C’mon, give me details.”

  “I’m discreet. You know what that means?”

  “Yeah, but it’s no fun.”

  “Go away.”

  As soon as Coose stepped out of the room, a rush of words slammed into Mangan’s thoughts. They came at him like a gale. He grasped at them, trying to trammel up their meanings, but they flew by—too many, too fast—a wreckage of words hurled across his mind—and then they were gone.

  Just as quickly, nothing. He quieted himself and concentrated harder, willing them to return, trying to force them into showing themselves again.

  They wouldn’t come.

  So he ignored them.

  He knew their game. Sometimes, to hear the words more clearly, Mangan needed to listen less closely. The words that circled behind his mind’s eye sometimes behaved like diminutive stars that disappear when looked at too directly. But if one focuses on an area just slightly to the side of them, these shy stars will sometimes show themselves again. Murderers were like that, Mangan believed. In a case with a profound lack of evidence, if he focused on some larger thought, or on some seemingly innocuous piece of evidence, and not just on who committed the crime, sometimes a glimpse of the killer might appear.

  You had to come at murderers sideways.

  Mangan turned his thoughts to the Chicago case, the handless victim, wondering who she might be, wondering what her connection was to the Wisconsin murder. He had a hunch the Chicago victim was a prostitute. They frequently have no family to speak of and their bodies often go unclaimed. If there even was a body, that is. Coose could be right. It’s possible that this was a kidnapping—no, no, Mangan knew the woman was dead, whoever she was. He took a sip of coffee, as cold as it was shitty. He dumped it in the sink, watching the rust-brown liquid swirl into the drain—

  It will have blood, they say.

  There they were …

  Blood will have blood.

  They were back.

  See thy mangled daughter, sweet father.

  See thy mangled daughter … and cease your tears.

  The words came to him very clearly now. And he knew them. He’d just read them. “Thy mangled daughter” was a line was from Titus Andronicus. “Blood will have blood” was from Macbeth. Given his line of work, that play often spoke to him, or Shakespeare did, Mangan couldn’t really say who was doing the speaking. Of course he knew it wasn’t actually Shakespeare, he wasn’t crazy, but when he wondered about this phenomenon of his brain, and the mental gymnastics that often played out there, he had to consider the possibility of whether something larger than himself was at work, something that was trying to contribute to his thinking or lead him in a particular direction.

  Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm?

  Or were these just the foolish musings of his mind? Was he merely assigning a meaning to these obsessive thoughts of his?

  What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it?

  Or perhaps the nature of the mind was inherently larger than one’s own self, and if so, these thoughts might be part of a larger collective conscience, part of the deeper, faraway things in Mangan, the occasional flashings forth of the intuitive truth, as Melville said, for that author’s words were now tacking through his mind also. Or, if he were really honest with himself, this could actually be some mild form of insanity, a fluttering of the wings of madness. He entertained the thought … then scuttled it.

  There is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will.

  Mangan knew these works of literature so well that he couldn’t tell if it was merely his memory correlating poetry with evidence—a sort of involuntary associative leap—or if the poetry was actually guiding his thinking, helping him to draw conclusions from the evidence he’d gathered. He really didn’t know. And he really didn’t care, because it quite often worked. Like a placebo that cures: if it works, who cares? The words that came to James Mangan’s mind sometimes led him to the truth of things, and that’s all that mattered, for in this world of lies, truth is forced to fly like a scared white doe in the woodlands; and only by cunning glimpses will she reveal herself.

  Mangan had memorized those words. They were Melville’s personal musings on Shakespeare, whom he’d called the master of the great art of telling the truth, even though it be covertly, and by snatches. That’s how Mangan most often discovered the truth about murderers, covertly and by snatches. Mangan loved Melville’s writing, yes, but Melville never seemed to lead Mangan to any conclusions. Melville was all questioning, all observations and fruitless graspings at something deeply inscrutable, always gathering evidence, trying to figure out what it all meant, but never having it add up to anything, like a frustrated detective whose life’s work turns out to be one massive unsolved case. Shakespeare, however, was a little more ballsy. He took a risk and actually posed some answers. He took a shot at the truth.

  And Mangan liked that.

  Whenever Mangan was teased about this literary eccentricity of his, which was quite often, his stock reply was always, “If anyone knows about murder, it’s Shakespeare.” And if anyone knew about Shakespeare, it was Mangan. He’d read all his plays, many of them a number of times, and had seen nearly all of them on the stage at one time or another. He’d traveled to Shakespeare festivals arou
nd the country, and also Ontario and London. He had a private goal to see all of the plays acted on the stage before he died. He’d seen thirty-three of Shakespeare’s thirty-seven plays, if he didn’t count Two Noble Kinsmen (questionable authorship). Mangan often told his water cooler hecklers about the fact that Shakespeare had written extensively about some of the most horrendous crimes imaginable: infanticide, patricide, mutilations, tortures, cannibalism, rapes, and beheadings, to name just a few. If people continued to razz him, he liked to rattle off the following stats, at which point they usually either shut their mouths or were left with them slightly agape: “In Titus Andronicus alone there are fourteen murders, six dismemberments, three rapes, and one live burial.”

  Mangan’s world.

  This somewhat unorthodox connection between Shakespeare and police work started back when Mangan was a student at Strayer University. One of his law professors, using Othello as a case study, ran a mock trial in class. An actor from a local theater played the role of Iago, who was put on trial for the murder of another character in the play, Roderigo, and also for inciting the murder of yet another character, Desdemona. There was a preponderance of evidence against Iago, but as it turned out, it was all hearsay. The plaintiffs were all dead. Iago also couldn’t be compelled to incriminate himself after he’d said, “From this time forth, I never will speak word,” which was undeniably his right. There had also been verbal commands, witnessed and recorded, ordering the torture of Iago. So any confessions obtained by such means would be inadmissible. The witnessed stabbing of Iago’s wife, Emilia (Iago killed her too), could be presented to the jury in a sympathetic light as a crime of passion, an uncontrollable burst of rage brought on by her false accusations against him. In today’s judicial system, Iago would have walked on at least the first two counts.

  Later, Mangan found Shakespeare’s plays a great way to study the psychology of evil: power, jealousy, insanity, revenge, the motives of thwarted ambition and sexual jealousy. He also discovered that they were a great way to get laid. Women seemed to like the contradiction, the no-shit tough guy cop, classical theatergoer. A Mickey Spillane–type character twisting the cuffs onto bad guys while quoting Twelfth Night: “And thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.”