PRECINCT 20: DEAD STRANGE
(Web serial, 2002 - ) - stories by A.R.Yngve
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THE SPITEFUL DEAD
By A.R.Yngve
I
When Innis Garris woke up, he could not tell how many times his cell phone had just beeped. It was around six in the morning; he was sleeping alone in his own bed in his apartment, as usual. The old cathode-ray TV set standing in the far corner of the room was still on, with the sound turned off.
As he reached for the beeping phone which lay on the bedside table, he knocked over a bottle of gin he had left there before he went to sleep.
Garris had deliberately picked gin, the taste of which he loathed, so that he wouldn't enjoy getting drunk too much.
"Garris," he said into the phone before he had awakened completely. His voice sounded hoarse, gritty, unfamiliar to him.
"It's me - Rob." The reporter sounded very upset. "Send cops over to my office, quick. Somebody's dumped a f***ing corpse outside the door!"
Garris answered without being fully aware of his own actual words: "Who, what, when, where."
"I can see it from the window," Rob Ferment's voice became more urgent. "It's bleeding all over the gutter!"
Garris wasn't fully awake and went through the motions. "Don't panic. Don't tell anyone but the police. And don't move anything."
"Damn right I'm not going near that thing - what if it's one of my guys who's been murdered? Is this a mob hit? I want police protection, now!"
"I'll be right over," said Garris without enthusiasm or interest. "Call the desk sergeant, you know the number, and tell him I'm on my way."
Garris picked up the empty gin bottle and threw it in the waste basket. He dressed quickly, left the apartment and wondered if he had forgotten to lock the door.
He really, really did not want to go to work today. A corpse outside a newspaper office - that could only mean lots of media attention, only making his work harder.
His head hurt from the gin. He needed a shower and a shave.
Garris was slowly coming apart at the seams - he could feel it. The drinking had to stop before it ruined his brain. He had to get a life away from work. If he didn't get a life soon, a sense of being a grounded, real person, living a real ordinary life, he might lose his mind.
Garris had seen cops lose it before. Just thinking about it terrified him. Perhaps he had already burned out. Perhaps better to resign before he became a work hazard to the public and his own colleagues...
He felt a yearning to be around ordinary people. When he passed a bus stop where passengers were getting on and off, he stepped in and paid the fare for a two-block ride.
Seated next to a middle-aged black woman, he heard her talk on the phone:
"I hear you, honey. Ain't that the truth. I hear you. You've got to keep on trying, honey, no matter what. You hear me? Find another job. I dunno, honey, why don't you find something different to do? Find a new angle. Just keep on trying! Why? Why, you ask? Cos' that's what it means to be alive! Cos' you love life! You hear? I love you too, honey."
His mood had improved somewhat when he stepped off.
***
Dr. Schmidt from Forensics was already at the scene when Garris arrived on foot. He was wearing rubber gloves and a fur cap tied around his head; the wind blew strong this morning. Also present were Sergeant Bolland, holding a bag of donuts and a large paper mug, and Captain Detective McKinnick wearing her old NYPD baseball cap.
Two patrolmen were busy erecting a makeshift riot fence and sealing the sidewalk with yellow tape. Behind the fences and tape, a crowd of curious civilians and media crews was growing by the minute. Both sides of the street were packed with parked vehicles and more were cruising past the block while cameramen poked their lenses through car windows. Drive-by reporting, thought Garris. High above, a helicopter joined in and started circling the area.
Garris took a donut and the coffee mug from Bolland, nodded his thanks and turned to McKinnick.
"Where's the body?"
Patricia McKinnick looked harried. She pointed to a black plastic sheet in the gutter, where Schmidt was down on his knees with a UV lamp and dark glasses.
"Can you please get the crowd to disperse?" Schmidt shouted in an unusually testy tone. Everyone's nerves were on edge today.
The sky above looked ominous and dark with thick clouds; the autumn wind blew leaves, litter and wet cold air across the street.
"Look here," said Schmidt loudly, urging McKinnick and Garris closer to the corpse. He lifted the sheet enough for them to see, and took photos while they watched.
"Jesus," said McKinnick but she did not flinch. "This is worse than the guy who got skinned. How soon can we get fingerprint ID?"
"Check his wallet," said Schmidt and handed it to her in a clear plastic bag. The wallet had been folded open, so they could clearly see the ID card inside. The photo showed a bald, bearded man with an impish, rounded face. The name on the card read Finn Thomeland, 64 years old U.S. citizen, born in Minneapolis. "Seen him before?"
Garris shook his head. "Wait for the fingerprint check before we say that's the body. Just to be sure."
The corpse in the gutter had been decapitated and the head was nowhere in sight. It was dressed in a black sweater, jogging pants and sneakers, and its stubby hands had been tied behind the back with duct tape.
The headless body was tall, Garris estimated over six feet.
"Find anything else on him?" he asked, and Schmidt handed him a sheet of paper in a clear plastic envelope. On it was a printout of a poem:
No dawn in sight
I only see the gleam in the mind's weeping eye
And by that dying light I write this prayer
Will you be there on my final day?
Will you mourn this soul?
I shall be there to see
if you can shed a tear for me
For the earth is so cold
and she hates me
And the other poets in their marble tombs
Mutter that I bring down the property value.
Garris did not recognize the text, but instinctively he guessed:
"The victim's last words?"
Schmidt flashed a tight-lipped smile. "Yes."
Garris squatted, put on surgical gloves and examined the corpse's hands. If victim and killer had struggled, there might be scraps of blood, hair and tissue under the fingernails...
"I've checked that already," said Schmidt and held up another sample bag from his suitcase. "Can you do something about the crowd?"
Rob Ferment elbowed his way out of the mass of onlookers and waved for Garris's attention. As soon as Garris moved toward him, reporters rushed and scrambled in that direction. Camera flashes blinded him and a torrent of shouted questions came from all directions. He could barely hear Ferment shout:
"Who's the stiff? Is it one of ours?"
So that's why they're all so concerned, thought Garris. Professional camaraderie.
"It's not one of your staff!" he shouted. "We'll ID him today and have a press conference! You'll all get to know when. Okay? Now disperse! You're impeding the investigation and I will arrest anyone who might step on evidence at the crime scene! Scram!"
Immediately, the crowd scattered. Garris grabbed the sleeve of Ferment's trenchcoat, walked him over to Bolland's patrol car and told him to get in.
It was much quieter inside the car, apart from the incoming calls on the police-band radio. "Who was the first one to see the body?"
"Me. I'm the one who unlocked the office door this morning."
"Have you called all your staff? Is anyone at the Surveillor missing?"
Ferment's phone beeped and he checked the list of unanswered calls. "Seems everyone's accounted for. So who's the stiff?"
"Ever heard of Finn Thomeland? Friend of yours?"
Ferment's pasty features went rigid, then he brightened up. "Thomeland, the sci-fi author! He wrote those children's books, my son loves them! Have you read The Cowardly Microwave Oven? And he wrote a cop show too... was it NYPD Red or Stalk Silking?"
"You've met him?"
"Only once when I interviewed him for an article. It wasn't about him. He spilled lots of juicy gossip about other writers." Ferment made a chuckle. "Not that our readers care about writers... He had this beef with a rival author he claimed ripped him off..."
"Who?"
"Doesn't matter - that guy died thirty years ago."
"You're the news man. So give me the story here. Who is still alive and might've hated Thomeland enough to cut off his head and dump the body in the street?"
Ferment made a blank face. "Who knows... writers attract loonies like shit draws flies. If you're going to check up on Thomeland's enemies, start with his most rabid fans. If he died, in this sick way, the fans are bound to turn up soon and pay their last respects - the Princess Di routine, you know."
Garris nodded. "You'll get your protection. We'll place a 24-hour stakeout in your office window to see if the killer shows up. Ditto at the author's home."
***
Ferment stepped out of the patrol car and Bolland stepped into the driver's seat.
"Where to, sir?"
"Finn Thomeland's address. Do you read, Bolland? Fiction, I mean?"
The sergeant made a thoughtful face. "Does the National Surveillor count as fiction?"
"Let's stop by the library right now. I need to read up on this Thomeland."
***
II
Garris and Bolland came out of the large Antonioni University Library. Garris carried two of Thomeland's novels and a poetry collection. Bolland had borrowed a DVD of The Cowardly Microwave Oven.
"I'll let the kids watch it tonight and you'll have it back tomorrow, sir." They got into the car. "Why are we in such a hurry to borrow these?"
"Because any moment now, the news breaks about his possible murder, and people will rush to read and watch everything the man ever wrote. As for bookstores... look." He pointed across the street to a shop. Already, a line was forming up outside the entrance while the staff was putting up a large handwritten notice on the shop window: ONLY A FEW FINN THOMELAND BOOKS LEFT.
"That was quick," said Bolland and started driving to their next stop.
***
On the sidewalk outside Thomeland's apartment, someone had already stacked flowers and photos of the author.
Garris wondered whether people were now using the Internet to "speed-mourn" celebrities - rushing from one public death to another as a kind of addiction.
The landlord paled when Garris showed up, though he had already heard about the author's death. He quickly unlocked Thomeland's apartment and let them in. Garris and Bolland did not expect trouble, so they walked in without ceremony or caution.
The place was a mess and had a musty smell, but that did not surprise Garris. On the walls hung many drawings, paintings and art photographs of naked men in various poses, but that hardly surprised him either.
As expected, the deceased author's home was filled with books and had a writer's desk with both a typewriter and a PC.
Bolland went into the bathroom and shouted: "Sir! Look at this!"
Garris went into the bathroom, and finally he felt real surprise.
The two police officers looked at the dirty bathroom mirror, on which was scribbled with a marker pen:
DEATH IS MY ANGEL
FOR HE SHALL MAKE ME IMMORTAL
GOODBYE CRUEL WORLD!
-F.T.
They searched the apartment for traces of blood or a fight. There were no such things. While Bolland photographed the apartment and its surroundings, Garris questioned the landlord about Thomeland's comings and goings.
"I didn't see much of him," said the landlord, a frightened-looking old man. "He'd been living here for three years, since he moved in from New York. Don't know where he was. I asked him once what kept him so busy. Then he started ranting about his wild and decadent orgies, in lots of detail, just to piss me off I guess, until I got so sick I had to leave. He had imagination, let me tell you. But a prickly temper. One time I saw him chase some young man out of his apartment while he yelled and cursed - very eloquently, but still..."
"Did he ever seem persecuted or threatened by anybody? Did someone show up here frequently in recent times?"
The landlord hesitated. "Can't recall. For the past week he only came home two, three times in the day and only for a brief time, like he was sleeping over somewhere."
"Did family members come to visit him?"
"He had no children that I know about, and I never saw his relatives. If you know what I mean."
Garris noted the disapproving tone of the landlord's voice, and asked: "You realize that you're a prime suspect? Did you have reason to hate him? Should we search your apartment too?"
The landlord shook his head and began to stammer. "I was going to throw him out for neglecting the apartment and being late with the rent. I heard someone say he was very depressed, but he was hard to read. You know, the kind who's laughing on the outside."
Garris did not know whether to trust the landlord, and kept pushing his patience to see if he'd crack. "Horrible way to die, though. Decapitated. Lots of blood. Who do you think did it?"
The landlord made a disgusted face and had trouble controlling his voice. "Why do you ask me? I don't know! Sci-fi writers must be kook magnets. Could've been anybody!"
"I've only read his poetry."
"He told me once that he wrote an episode of a TV show. And I watched it. Weird. Couldn't make sense of it."
Garris asked a few more questions and let the landlord go. He went outside for fresh air and waited for Bolland to finish.
Just as the sergeant came out of the house, Garris's phone beeped.
"You're getting help," said McKinnick over the phone. "The FBI sent a profiler over to supervise the investigation."
Garris wouldn't have lost his temper so easily if he had been healthy. "What the hell's going on? I'm on track here! I don't need to babysit a..." He paused. "I'm sorry."
"Take the rest of the day off." McKinnick sounded colder than usual. "And then I want you to see a psychiatrist. If you refuse, I'll suspend you immediately. You're burning out, Garris."
He wanted to say "Yes, you're right." He wanted to say "No, you're wrong." Instead he just hung up.
"Where to, sir?" asked Bolland.
"Please drive me home, then go back to the precinct."
"Are you all right, sir?" Bolland sounded genuinely concerned.
"I'm fine. Just make sure that Fed gets all the information we've gathered about Thomeland. I guess he'll take it from here."
Bolland nodded. "I see."
***
As soon as he had returned to his apartment, Garris gathered all bottles of booze and emptied them into the kitchen sink. Then he took three aspirin tablets, washed them down with several glasses of milk, and lay down on the couch. He felt utterly exhausted.
And he slept.
In the afternoon, he woke up and called Dr. Schmidt. Schmidt knew about the FBI taking over the case, but he answered Garris's questions anyway.
"The cut in the corpse's neck was made with a fine, very sharp saw. Also, the nature of the cut suggests that the neck or the entire body was frozen when the head was sawed off. There are several small puncture wounds on the wrists, neck and chest. They seem to be from medical equipment." He had nothing more to say.
Garris thanked him and ended the call. His mind was working again. Had the killing been done in a hospital, or by some demented physician? And where was the head?
He went over to his computer, checked the local news, police and hospital records - but no human head had been located recently.
He made a few Internet searches and quickly found out that Thomeland had left behind a weblog. The same cryptic poem had appeared on the weblog - dated two days before the headless corpse appeared. It was the very last thing Thomeland posted.
He switched on his TV. The local and national news networks were all over the murder, speculating wildly about crazed fans and serial killers. A news anchor said that Thomeland's final, as-yet-unreleased book had just been approved for immediate release.
Garris warmed a frozen TV dinner and strolled around his apartment for a while. He was still exhausted, but his mind would not let him relax.
Finally, he had an insight.
***
III
McKinnick let the FBI profiler and Garris into her office.
Before she could start speaking, Garris said: "It's so obvious... we're being led by the nose. This is all staged for maximum publicity. He's mocking us."
"Who?" asked the profiler, a man so bland and emotionless that he might have been a shop dummy if he wasn't breathing.
"Thomeland. He arranged his own death. It was suicide."
McKinnick snapped. "He sawed off his own head? Are you out of your mind?" She shook her head. "Garris, you are to stay away from this investigation as of now. The FBI will be handling it, with my assistance. Please leave. Get back on that Sanford Bay case, now."
The Fed did not even raise an eyebrow. Garris was too tired to get angry; he left the office and the precinct station, took a bus and then walked the rest of the way home.
He continued to search the Internet. Thomeland's weblog had many visitor comments, and new comments were being added as Garris watched the computer screen.
He scanned the comments farther back in time, and came upon one that was signed "Smitty."
Garris was shocked. He read "Smitty"'s brief comment over and over:
An angel shall come for you and make you immortal. And you shall watch them mourn.
"No," Garris said to the screen. "It can't be that easy."
He decided to wait until the funeral; only then could he be certain.
While he waited for three days, he read Thomeland's weblog and his books more thoroughly. The more he read, the more certain he became.
***
The funeral of Finn Thomeland's headless corpse lasted hours, with speeches and readings of his poetry, and a song written and sung by an ardent female admirer. Reporters and TV crews flocked outside the packed church.
In the far corner of the church sat an elderly fat figure in a wheelchair, wearing dark sunglasses, hat and gloves. He did not speak, and he was breathing through an oxygen tube. The man's skin was covered with make-up which resembled spray-on tan. His head occasionally wagged a little from side to side.
The wheelchair was held by a bearded man wearing smoked glasses.
Garris waited with the other visitors in the back of the church, until there was a lull in the schedule. Then he suddenly strode up to the casket, grabbed a microphone from a stand and said:
"One should not speak ill of the dead, but... Thomeland was not a great poet and not a great man. He was petty, vindictive and hated humanity. He mocked Creation. He saw us fellow humans as nothing more than vermin. And he expressed this conviction with great eloquence, so as to make us confuse his misanthropy with wisdom.
"All these flaws are present in his writings. His final book is mostly a cowardly attempt to badmouth a more successful rival. In plain English - Finn Thomeland was a creep and he was looking forward to causing you all as much grief as possible with his demise. I do not mourn... but I pity him. That's all I have to say."
The audience stared at Garris as he turned around and walked out. He did so because he was following the wheelchair-bound man and his caretaker outside.
The caretaker glanced over his shoulder and saw him, but continued to slowly roll the wheelchair toward the ramp by the church steps. Apparently the wheelchair was very heavy.
Garris raised his voice: "Why, Schmidt? I was going to unmask you in church, but I lost my nerve."
Dr. Schmidt stopped but did not turn around. "You lack vision, Innis. But then, most policemen are unimaginative. I helped him achieve the posterity that a great artist deserves."
Garris rushed ahead, down the steps, and stood in their way.
Schmidt cursed under his breath, removed his smoked glasses and reached inside his overcoat. "Step aside. I don't want to shoot you."
Garris could see the concealed gun poking through the fabric of Schmidt's overcoat.
"So you helped him, by staging his death... by extended suicide? All set up so that he could attend his own funeral and indulge in other people's grief? I assume he can hear us now?"
The man in the wheelchair neither spoke nor moved.
"Yes," said Schmidt. "As long as the machine inside the dummy keeps pumping oxygenated blood through his head, he'll stay conscious. But of course he cannot control his jaw, what with the neck tendons being cut off. I've added a morphine drip to his blood, to ease the pain. I warned him that he wouldn't last long, and that he might experience phantom-limb symptoms. But he insisted. He has that inner strength."
Schmidt's voice, which otherwise used to be calm and detached, trembled with emotion. "He deserved this moment, Garris. His last triumph over the small souls of this stupid, heartless world."
"Only a writer could be so petty. Were you two lovers?"
Schmidt scoffed. "I know all your tricks and routines, Innis, they won't work on me. Now step aside. I'll have to refill his oxygen supply soon."
Garris smiled at him. "So it's true what they say: writers attract loonies like shit draws -"
He saw Schmidt's gun arm move and ducked to the side just before he rushed him. The concealed gun went off with a subdued noise. A burning pain in Garris's arm told him that the bullet had winged him. But he still reached Schmidt, wrestled the gun from his hand and knocked him over. They bumped into the wheelchair...
...and Thomeland's head fell off the seated dummy. With tubes attached, the author's severed head rolled down the church steps in front of the cameras. The sunglasses came off, and the author's bloodshot eyes blinked and squinted. Somehow he scowled, pulled his remaining facial muscles into a rigid grin, and died.
Garris stared at the head on the sidewalk, while he was pinning down Schmidt to the top of the stairs with his own weight. He wanted to throw up.
Briefly he wondered what Thomeland's head was trying to communicate during its last living moments. Regret? Horror? Shame? One final rush of nihilistic glee?
No one would never know.
***
Schmidt was arrested for the murder and mutilation of Thomeland, while Garris was taken to the hospital for a minor gunshot wound to the arm.
In the evening, McKinnick and Bolland came to visit him with flowers. Behind them came a half-dozen other officers from Precinct 20.
"Where's the Fed?" Garris asked McKinnick, and she winced.
"He's gone back," She put a hand on his healthy arm and squeezed it. "I'm sorry."
"You're right about me," he said. "I need help."
"We're here for you, sir," said Bolland. And he smiled and added: "You didn't have to get yourself shot to prove that."
Garris laughed and nodded at him. "Yeah, sorry about that." He frowned. "Have you questioned Schmidt?"
"He practically bragged to me about what he did," said McKinnick. "How he and Thomeland cooked up this plot, first as a joke, then for real. Schmidt had the equipment, the know-how, but Thomeland encouraged him and convinced him to follow through. When he'd told me everything, Schmidt broke up and cried. Maybe he'll plead insanity later."
She looked him in the eye, and for a moment Garris thought he saw something like deep affection in her face.
"Did you really mean it, what you said at the funeral? Or were you trying to provoke a reaction from Schmidt?"
Garris paused for a moment, breathing calmly. His colleagues watched in silence. And he replied in carefully measured words: "Yes, I was trying to provoke Schmidt. And I meant every word. It was too late to stop the crime. Too late to put the head on trial. So I did the only thing I could... I spoiled Thomeland's moment of glory before his dying eyes. I just couldn't let him get away with it!"
When the colleagues had left, Garris found himself having nothing to do. He picked up one of the books from the bedside table, and started reading Three Men In a Boat.
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