He found the jogger shivering, hands in his pockets, waiting. The man was a schoolteacher, out for his daily run in the neighborhood before heading for downtown Chicago. But this morning finding one of his neighbors dead, killed in a most gruesome way, shattered his daily routine. The man was dressed in a running outfit, Nike running shoes on his feet and a balaclava on his head to conserve heat, but he was still shaking and Turner deduced it wasn’t at all from the cold.
“People must be crazy…running in this fucking weather”, Turner mumbled to himself, shaking his head. He had other ways of staying in shape, but running in the cold weather was not one of them.
He glanced at the man’s shoes; encrusted with snow now, and then he made his way back to the body, examining the footprints in the snow again. Something about the prints in the snow puzzled him and he stood still, a frown on his face now. Running shoe prints were visible and he glanced at the runner standing close by. He signaled the man to come to him.
“I’m Lt. Turner, homicide”, he said and the man extended his gloved hand.
“Thomas…Thomas Goetz…sir. Good to meet…you”, the man said, his voice trembling, a nervous tic on his left eye telling Turner that the man was almost in shock. But then you don’t see people decapitated everyday, he thought, shaking his head slowly.
“What can you tell me…Mr. Goetz?” he asked softly, looking at the man’s eyes. Mr. Goetz was a tall, skinny man, and the sight of dead men was not something he was accustomed to seeing during his morning runs. His face was pale and his lips trembled as he tried his best to regain composure.
“I live…live two blocks down. Run this way everyday. This morning, when I came by I noticed the body…laying…laying on the ground. I…I approached it, thinking something was wrong.” He paused for a second, swallowing hard, and his prominent Adam’s apple bobbled up and down. He shook his head and continued. “That’s when I saw the head.”
Turner nodded his head in assent, a part of his mind still preoccupied with the footprints. He pulled a cigarette from his pocket, lighting it, inhaling the smoke deeply into his lungs, and giving himself time to think. He looked at the man’s shoes again, bending down close to the ground.
“Raise your foot”, he said and the man, startled, did as he was told. Turner glanced at the pattern on the man’s shoes, his eyes searching the snow in front of him for the pattern, finding it easily, close to where the body lay and then he realized that there was another pattern on the snow, a smaller one, also from running shoes. His eyes darted, seeing the footprints again, close to the body, immediately behind, mixed with the longer prints that he thought would be Goetz’.
He signaled for Goetz to approach again and the man did, stopping close to Turner. His hand went into his pocket, searching, finally giving up. He stood up, glancing around, locating Holt.
“Holt”, he called, getting the man’s attention. Holt raised his eyes to him, his left eyebrow coming up in expectation.
“A tape measure please”, Turner said and a few seconds later, a small tape measure sailed through he air, Turner catching it deftly.
“Raise your foot again”, he said and Goetz did as requested. Turner flicked the tape, measuring the shoe size. It was an eleven. He dismissed Goetz momentarily, bending down, measuring one of the footprints in the snow. It was size eleven or very close to it and he snorted, nodding his head. He measured again, this time the footprint that was smaller, size eight and this time a grin flickered on his face.
“The killer’s shoes,” he told himself softly, shaking his head slowly. “I’ll be…damned.”
He called out, “Holt…here,” and Holt Lambert raised his eyes to him, coming over.
Turner pointed at the footprints, saying, “Looks like the killer had running shoes, too.” Holt glanced at the two prints, bending down and blowing away some of the snow that had accumulated on top of them, making the prints more pronounced. The snow below had hardened some, while the top was still fluffy. It was obvious now that one print was larger than the other.
“I’ll see what I can do with this,” he said, turning his head and signaling one of the crime scene investigators over to him. They would take some pictures and maybe an identification of the shoe brand could be made. Turner kept his eyes on the shoe pattern a while longer, his brain trying to come to grips with what was in front of him. He bent down again, ideas running through his mind. The man that had killed Dunbar had to be a big man, strong, probably taller than Dunbar in order to be able to swing the axe or machete and decapitate the body the way he had. The footprint in front of him was small in comparison to the one of the schoolteacher or the one from Dunbar and he shook his head, puzzled. He had expected something different, something bigger…but then some tall men have small feet, he told himself. Even so…this one was about a size seven or eight, more like a…woman’s size. He thought about that for a moment, holding the thought, and then finally letting it go. A woman had to be extremely agile, strong and capable of moving fast to be able to kill Dunbar in this fashion. She also had to have the killer instinct, he said to himself again. He had seen women killers before, plenty of them…but one using an axe…or a…machete…a damn sword maybe? But then…‘anything is possible in this crazy world we live and work in’, he thought, his fingers massaging his tired eyes, while his brain dealt with the problem at hand. He knew enough about murder investigations to realized that any thing was possible and that sometimes the things you thought were not pertinent to the investigation were the ones that came back to haunt you later on. So thinking about a woman killer was not out of the question. Still, his mind rebelled at the thought, knowing well he didn’t needed to be jumping to conclusions this early into the investigation.
‘No…that is beyond me right now’, he thought. An axe or a machete was a personal weapon and a person using one had to be extremely familiar with it; the weight and the way it handled. He just couldn’t see a woman using either one of the three weapons to kill a man in cold blood, and a cop no less. The killer had come to the man’s house, had in all probability, waited for him to get home, had brought the weapon with him, either an axe, a sword or a machete, a weapon that the killer was confident with, one that would not make any noise. Any of those weapons were hard to handle, awkward, especially for a woman. A better weapon of choice for a woman would have being a pistol or revolver. He mulled those thoughts for a while, the questions coming fast.
And then, what was the motive? He knew well that motive was of paramount importance when dealing with murder. There was something in here he was missing and if he could find the motive for the killing, then maybe he would be able to pinpoint the killer or at least work on a suspect. ‘This one is going to be a hard one to crack’, he thought, knowing that records of Dunbar’s arrests and cases would have to be combed. People would have to be checked to make sure someone that Dunbar had arrested wasn’t holding a grudge, a grudge bad enough to kill a cop in cold blood. He was also going to have to dig into the man’s personal life, see about girlfriends, other women in his life besides the wife. If Dunbar was banging somebody’s wife, then they had to look into a jealous husband or boyfriend somewhere.
Turner turned his attention back to the jogger, talking to him some more, finally letting the man go. The poor devil had a bad case of nerves and he could not really blame him for that.
Once the jogger was gone, he made his way back to the street. Now that he had identified the second set of footprints, he was able to follow them on the street, his eyes darting here and there. Some of the prints were obliterated, but the great majority of them were still visible. Some of the small footprints were heading in the direction of Dunbar’s house, which was to be expected and some of them were heading away from the area. He followed the ones heading in first, toward Dunbar’s house, reaching a house on the right hand side of the road. He stopped then, turning around to look at the crime scene from where he was standing. Whoever the killer was, he had a long stride, eating up the distance to Dunbar in no time. He swiveled his head again, bringing his attention back to the house in front of him. The steps to the doorway were full of snow and he could see the prints now clearly; small, the sole pattern quite visible. There was ample room at the top of the stairs in front of the house to hide and a person driving on the road and passing the house would be unable to spot anybody waiting patiently in the door entrance unless that person was moving. He glanced around, checking the mailbox and finding it empty. He walked around the house, peeking inside, and walked back around to the front. His right foot connected with something protruding from the snow and he bent down, reaching for it, his hand coming up with a real estate sign indicating the house was sold. He shook his head and sighed, inhaling deeply of the cold air. Some killers had all the luck and this one had been lucky. He had chosen the house next to Dunbar and it had been empty. He walked back to the front steps, bending down carefully this time, the green eyes fixed on the prints, searching for any thing that could give them a clue about the killer. No cigarette butts anywhere around, meaning the killer wasn’t a smoker or if he was, he was a careful one, taking the butts with him, leaving nothing. Turner left the house, his eyes taking in the footprints again, this time coming back from Dunbar’s place. He walked with his hands in his pockets, eyes glued to the ground and for several feet he was able to keep the prints in sight, until eventually they were gone, obliterated. He looked back to the crime scene, realizing that he was almost a block and a half away from them. The killer had walked to the crime area and had probably parked a vehicle somewhere close, away from the scene, of that he was now sure. He made his way back, talking to Holt, who sent a man immediately to the house. They would search the small entrance with a fine-tooth comb, and if something was there, they would find it. The way things were going for them right now, Turner thought dourly, the damn area would probably be sterile too. He turned his attention to the first officer on the scene, Seaman, a patrol officer with plenty of experience, looking at the pad with the names of people that had come to the scene
The noise of a car made him raise his head, the green eyes resting on a man in civilian clothes coming out of an unmarked unit. The Assistant Chief of Police had arrived.
“Great…just fucking great,” he said softly, throwing the cigarette butt on the ground and stepping on it. He jammed his hands inside the coat pockets and started walking back to the scene. The sooner he got this unpleasantness out of the way the better off he would be, he thought grimly. He gritted his teeth and thrust his jaw forward. The Assistant Chief of Police, Thomas Crowley, was his ex-wife’s uncle and ever since the divorce he had been giving Turner the cold shoulder and had made a few remarks that told him that his ex was talking a lot of crap that wasn’t true about them, but then…that was the way of some women, especially the ones that couldn’t take no for an answer. He knew that the marriage was dead long before she decided it was and that no matter how much he loved her, he was not going to quit his job or do anything different than what he was doing now. He was a cop when she married him, she knew the work he did, the ugliness of the world he inhabited. She hated his work and the long hours spent tracking killers and after two years it was over. She had moved back to the family mansion for a while and soon he realized that he was being perceived as the bad boy of the marriage, that the split was entirely his fault for not quitting the force, for not pleasing his wife.
“Yeah…sure, it was all my fault”, he told himself softly, approaching the group of men already clustered around the Chief.
“Assholes”, Turner murmured softly, hunching his shoulders against the bitter wind, breathing deeply of the cold air, the Chief’s eyes following his progress toward them.
January 13, 1995 Chicago
6:30 a.m.
She stood still in front of the glass window, feeling the rush of adrenaline running through her body, still high, making everything crystal clear, her breathing coming slow and steady. From where she stood, she could see the small lights of boats docked on the lake frontage and she could see them swinging back and forth as the waves pushed them, only to be held by their anchors. Her apartment, on the twentieth floor, faced the lake, the main reason she had acquired it. During the summer months the vista was incredible, making her feel small and insignificant. The place was furnished in chrome and metal, impossibly clean and ordered. Everything was in its place, evidence of the orderly mind of the occupant and looking almost as if no one lived there, austere in its sterility. There were no prints on the walls, no flowers in vases, and the place gave a strong illusion that it was just a cold emptiness, void of any love or the warmth of a real home.
Outside, a watery sun had shown its face briefly, only to be pushed away by the dark clouds again and the snow that still lingered. The snow was still coming down hard, which was something she loved. She didn’t care about cold or snow, jogging five miles everyday no matter what, just before going to work. Today would be different, though; today there would be no run. Today was her day; the day she was finally free from the nightmares that had haunted her every waking moment for as long as she could remember. The death of the ‘man’ was going to be cause for celebration. In the dark recesses of her mind, the human being she had killed in such cold blood was not human, was nothing, just something that had crossed her path, creating havoc with her life and now, it had paid with his.
Now she stood as still as a Greek marble statue and just as beautiful. Her blue eyes were fixed on nothing, huge and luminescent in the semidarkness of the apartment, like a person in a trance. She had killed a man; a man that signified pain and rage for her and the emotions that it had stirred in her were incredible. She felt liberated…almost like a young girl caught in her first look at the world, her first date, her first love…her mind floating in a surreal world. There was no remorse; no feeling of sorrow for the man that she had killed, only exuberance, as she had never known it before. It had taken her fifteen years to do it, but now it was done and she felt…free, clean. Or almost clean, she thought briefly, her beautiful face etched in disgust now, as she thought about the other man, the other cop who was still out there. But she would be clean, she said to herself, the blue eyes hard and cold, the body starting to sway slightly. She laughed a mirthless laugh as her right hand tightened on the wooden handle of the axe by her side. She brought the ancient weapon to her face, the beautiful face of the axe marred by the dried blood of the man she had killed. She smelled the dry blood, nostrils flaring as she fixed her eyes on the weapon, caressing the dark, wooden handle in a most intimate way, mumbling words of endearment as her mind relived the killing one more time, feeling the wetness spreading in her loins, the increasing tempo of her breathing and the wild staccato that was her heart pounding painfully against her ribs. Her whole body seemed to be on fire and she could not recall a time in her life when emotions threatened to overwhelmed the iron control that she could exert over herself. Her breath came in small gasps as the incredible sensations coursed through her like molten lava. In all her life she had never experienced anything remotely like what she was feeling now and the moment left her trembling, wanting to hold the sensations rippling through her body forever. She took a deep breath of air, controlling her raging heart, a smile playing on the soft planes of her face now.