The Subtle Art of Brutality, page 11
“It doesn’t fit the MO,” I say. “The whole family bopped just hard enough to keep them unconscious while the fire was set. Left alive at that point. If the arsonist was there to directly murder as well, why the dad? And why risk just soaking him and leaving the wife and kid a chance for survival? Why not shoot or stab? Slit his throat?”
“Beef with the dad alone? Couldn’t bear the thought of hurting a woman? A child?”
“Maybe. But if so he had to of known they’d just die in the fire.”
“You’re right.”
“Maybe he intended to let them die, but the dad fought back first.”
“Struggle. DNA.”
“The arsonist just wanted a slick night: in, set the fire, get out—but Dad woke up and threw down.”
“Arsonist gains the upper hand. Which isn’t hard, considering he’s fighting a guy just waking up, transitioning from lying down to on his feet in a hurry, probably in his underwear.”
“But Dad makes him hurt anyways. Maybe gets some DNA under his fingernails. Spills blood.”
“Arsonist gets one good whack on Dad, knocks him out. Clocks Mom and the kid, who are of course awake. Soaks Dad along with every floor inside the place. Lights the house.”
“We should be telling Riggen’s kid brother all this.”
“I will.”
“Were his fingers left after the fire?” I ask.
Clevenger shrugs and looks off in the distance.
Almost an afterthought: “Paramedic pronounced him at the scene. Obvious mortal injury. I got a peek at him. No argument.”
“A good man.”
“To the end.”
“Any motive?” Abigail’s agony begins to siren higher than the cacophony of the scene. Another paramedic stands beside her, talking in that detached-but-trying-to-be-compassionate way the ones do who have a hard time faking they care.
“None so far. What do you think?”
“Looks amateur. Leaving the gas can. Attacking but not killing the family. Cowardly. New to the game. I wonder if he tossed the place.”
“Can’t tell. The burn job was thorough.”
“Yeah. A blaze like this, I’ll bet there was more than one gasoline can.”
“Probably. Jimmy thought as much. He’s checking around.”
“It’s either melted or taken from the scene after he emptied it.”
“Got five black and whites canvassing now. None of the neighbors recalls a vehicle parked in the driveway or on the street nearby,” Clevenger says, puts out the cigarette. “And I agree on the amateur angle; some losers this green to the whole murder/arson thing would park in the driveway.”
“Yeah. I doubt they brought this on themselves, but who knew what kind of enemies they might have had. Not to mention that dirtball Benny.”
Looking off into the distance, avoiding what I’m thinking: “If this was a dope beef with Benny and Nicky...they’re not going to spill it now.”
“It’s not your fault, RDB.”
“We’ll see when it shakes out if it’s my fault or not. Keep that angle in the back of your head.”
“I will. If you get anything let me know; I’ll filter it to Riggens’ kid brother.”
“And if it’s connected...I’ll tie the loose ends.”
“That’s the RDB I know.” He claps me on the back.
We’re done here. I rub my scalp; kick at some snow the inferno didn’t melt. Look around. A bad scene. Poor Abigail.
“I’ll drive you home,” Clevenger says. “Give me another cigarette, would ya?”
“The other one was your only one, right?”
“It was. I heard the mom crying, looked at her. She was looking over there at the other ambulance, so I looked too.”
“And?”
“And I forgot. Right before you showed up, the EMTs said the little girl took her knock like Mom and Dad...but her skull didn’t work as well as theirs.”
“Jesus Christ,” I say.
I hand him another cigarette. We drain the flask.
25
The next day I wake up and call Elam Derne.
Let him know about the blaze. He can’t come to the phone.
His house burnt down as well.
26
Elam Derne survived his fire.
His terminally ill wife did not. A different investigator caught this one: a guy named Volksman. I know Volksman. I can’t stand that guy. I wouldn’t piss in his ass if his shit was on fire.
Thomas Volksman: shitbird. Saying he was a poor street cop is like saying Clay Aiken was hiding his homosexuality well. Volksman would get dispatched to calls and deliberately drag his feet until his back up arrived first. Then he’d show up, radio that he was on-scene, get credit for the call and not be the responsible officer.
Volksman is the guy who would take felony drugs off of a suspect and flush them. Throw away paraphernalia. A lot of cops will empty a small baggie of weed rather than do all the paperwork and evidence processing. But Volksman would toss heroin.
Volksman pulled a guy over one night who was so drunk he drug his car’s passenger side along a forty-foot stretch of retaining wall. Even back then DUI’s were a lot of paperwork. Volksman has an allergy to paperwork. He let the guy go with a warning.
The next county over, deputies spent hours processing the wreck Volksman’s drunk got into. The investigator theorized the drunk got off on the wrong exit, wandered off into the country. He hit a cow who was fortunate enough to find a break in the pasture fence. Cow died. Drunk died. Volksman slipped by.
There are always reliable sources entrenched in the rumor mill. Nameless, faceless cops, janitors, dispatchers and others who make it their business to know the business of others. Faint rumors, as quiet as a mouse-fart, popped up one day saying that Volksman, who wouldn’t investigate his own mother’s murder, who wouldn’t do the paperwork necessary to claim a million dollar cash prize, got promoted.
It was fast. It was without fanfare. It was odd. It was kept hush-hush. But it was. Volksman was promoted to an arson investigator’s position.
The mouse-fart quiet rumor mill also stated the baffling reason for Volksman’s promotion: he has some Grade-A dirt on an arson captain. Something that greased the path into his promotion. I don’t know what it is; the arson captain might have been boning a TV evangelist while Rome was burning. I don’t know. But it was powerful stuff.
Stuff that needs to be kept buried to the point where Volksman could use it to buy himself a cozy gig sifting through ashes and turning over charred timbers, getting fatter and more useless with each passing day. Something cozy where he can pontificate and play with his molester ’stache while directing his subordinates to do everything he should be doing.
The arson captain probably hopes Volksman winds up meandering around some burnt building and steps on a fire-weakened floorboard and takes the Grade-A dirt with him on his fall down.
Three obvious arsons last night. Three different MO’s. Derne’s place had an attached garage whose back door was unlocked. It was opened and left that way. Neither Derne nor his wife was assaulted. Their possessions were rifled through. It’s hard to tell what is missing and what was incinerated now.
While three in one night is a rarity in these parts, the different MO’s will be the monkey wrench in the works. Clevenger told Riggens about the Delilah Boothe connection. Riggens is a lightweight at Bomb and Arson, Volksman is an egomaniacal cocksucker. The third investigator, Jennifer Rudd, I don’t know.
Elam Derne suffered smoke inhalation while trying to pull his wife from the blaze. He also did a number on his back. I guess his wife was heavy. Cancer hadn’t had time to whittle her down yet. He’s in traction, on muscle relaxers and pain meds.
In the hospital he cradles his head. Nurses said if he keeps sobbing the way he is, they might just medicate him. “Just a little something to calm him down so he can sleep.” I asked if there was anything you couldn’t get doped up for nowadays. One mumbled, Being an asshole. The others didn’t answer.
Derne’s not much help. What he does say is all sobs; the vowels losing their identities in his anguish. Crying and consonants, when that’s all you speak, are not good storytellers. My patience more than anything drives me from his room. He says something. I turn around.
He holds a faded picture of his wife, looks like it was removed from his wallet. He clears his throat and whispers, “Darla’s house burnt down.”
I already know; called Clevenger when I found about Derne. Clevenger checked in on it. Fire number three.
Busy night for the demons that feed off of lives burning. I leave the hospital. I need to be in Three Mile High.
27
A note on me: cops, like firemen and EMS, are always looking for good calls.
What might be the best call of your life might be the worst headache of your supervisor’s life. That just might be that kind of outlook that got me in trouble so much. I handled things old school while the rest of the law enforcement community steered away from that playground of fists and intimidation and headed towards the nicer, gentler new school.
There was a day when tuning up some asshole was the correct way to fix the problem. Nowadays cops fear scrutiny just a tad less than they fear death. Actual death. They fear scrutiny with good cause, to be sure, but still. The best way to teach a child abuser to stop abusing is not counseling. It is not therapy. It is a mouth full of broken teeth, and arms that when the bones heal cannot produce the force necessary to hit or burn another child. The gift that keeps on giving. That is how I sleep at night.
So, the good calls, they just pop up. They pop up five minutes ’til the shift is over. They pop up while you’re taking a simple burglary report and you do everything you can to rush the report without making the burglary victim feel like he is what he is: the lowest priority ever.
I had a good call one night. Maybe it was the last good call for me. Because it was also my supervisor’s worst nightmare, and she, in turn, made it mine. That nightmare had resounding effects. Made little ripples in the water of my life. Those ripples still lap at the shores today.
Jefferson Stoke and his boy Thomas popped up while Clevenger and I were two blocks away, interviewing a witness about a completely separate case. The mom called in, said her soon-to-be ex-husband Jefferson was rough-handling his boy and she wanted it stopped. I never pass up an opportunity to become a fearful memory in the mind of a man big enough to hurt a child.
Even though we were homicide detectives, we snatched up the call.
Any real cop will say this matter-of-factly: what is reported to dispatch and what you actually find can sometimes be two hugely different things. Case in point: Jefferson Stoke.
Two months prior to that night, Jennifer Stoke found her bank account drained into two separate funds: her husband’s private alcohol reserve, and her husband’s private erotic dancing reserve. When she confronted him about it she found out two interesting facts about her husband: he had lost his job five months previously for threatening to kill his boss with a shotgun, and he had been lying to her about going to work while actually going to strip clubs and spending their savings, their investments and her inheritance from her recently deceased mother.
Don’t ask me how these shenanigans go on for almost half a year undetected. But when she did find out, Mrs. Stoke decided to go back to her maiden name. Jennifer screamed divorce, took their son Thomas, moved in with her sister. Jefferson got to see the boy here and there while squatting in their almost-foreclosed on home.
Fast forward to the good call night. The worst headache of my supervisor’s life night. Jennifer and Thomas go to their former home and visit Jefferson. Clevenger and I are a few blocks away, Jennifer calls 911 and says Jefferson is being aggressive with his six-year-old. We take it.
Jennifer meets us on the lawn, disheveled, hair a mess, her face the kind of red that comes with a good backhand, crying. Something about Jefferson inside beating up the boy. Something about him drinking, hating his life, blah blah blah.
I mount the steps. The screen door has been torn from its hinges. Hole in the drywall. The room at dusk is lit only by the cockeyed light from an overturned table lamp; the conical shade now on its side and pressing an oval of light against the wall horizontally.
The place smells of a broken home, torn in two by lies. Even now, I can still fill my nostrils with the acrid, stale air of that house. It makes me snarl and grit my teeth. I can hear the whimperings. Even before I see Jefferson Stoke I can hear him adjust his one-handed grip on the shotgun. The weight is getting to him; he has to support the pump action weapon with his strong arm only because in his off-hand he holds his boy still.
Better to keep the muzzle pointed at his head that way.
“One more step and I’ll fucking do it, I swear,” he says, the voice of a man who is desperately searching inside for the balls to end this thing with bloodshed. Suicides come in two categories: the ones who think they want it but are stilling working up to do it, and the ones who have already found their peace with it.
“I can rack rounds in this gun faster than you can regret showing up here,” he says, looking me in the eye. “This doesn’t involve you; it’s my damn family, and I will do what’s best. To all of us.”
Not for all of us. To all of us.
The hippies got it wrong: peace does not solve things. It clears the path to do what apprehension was formerly holding at bay. Reference the suicide typologies. Stoke was not really ready to kill his boy yet, but he was running down that road faster than I could keep up.
“Don’t kill the boy,” I say. Use the word “kill” rather than “hurt” or “injure.” It brings the situation home. It makes it real. Clevenger behind me, staying back far enough to give Stoke a sense of security. Best not to have him get rash until the boy is clear.
“Don’t tell me what to do!” Stoke says, readjusts his grip. Somewhere, a million miles behind me, Clevenger backs up further and gets on his radio. We need more cops.
“Fine,” I say. “Kill yourself. But let your son come over here. He’s got no business with your final solution. Stop scaring the child and let him go outside.”
“None of this is my fault. I was forced into this. Do you hear me? You think I picked getting shitcanned? You think I wanted Jen’s mother to get fat and diabetic and get her feet cut off and drop dead and make my wife all cold and withdrawn? You think I wanted to start fucking chicks out at the damn strip club? Where they give mercy jerks for a twenty spot?”
People will say the darndest things in situations like this. They deflect blame and culpability like they were oil and water. Let them talk; it takes energy to be spastic, crazy and angry. They wear down. Drop their guard. Then come in with the haymaker.
“That bitch stole everything from me! Everything! I can’t afford food! I can’t afford this house! She won’t even let me keep the kid overnight! I get all the problems and all the bullshit, and she just packs up and leaves when it gets tough! Well she ain’t fucking getting my boy! SHE AIN’T!”
Ten minutes ago Clevenger and I were interviewing witnesses. That might as well have been in the 1950s it feels so long ago. I look at Stoke.
“Listen to me. My name is Richard. I’m a policeman and I want to help you. Okay?” My first name. Rapport building. He doesn’t really acknowledge me beyond simply shutting up, and that’s fine. It’s a start.
“Sure. The woman backed you into this. They all did. Let me make sure I’ve got this right. Let me start with her mother, okay? Gets sick because she doesn’t take care of herself, right? Doesn’t take care of herself even after she’s sick. Her body speaks up when she needs her feet amputated. That’s what you said, right? Good. She still doesn’t take care of herself even after all that and in the end she just dies.
“Then your wife, she gets all upset about her mother. Now, this is the same woman who had all the signs in front of her and didn’t notice. You all could see that coming a mile away and yet your wife still gets bent out of shape? How? Why would your wife be upset about that?”
Stoke has no answer. I fix a knowing eyeball on him and say: “Because she can be, and she can take it out on you. So she does. She steals the little man here—the only other man like you in this sea of women—and goes and lives with yet another woman. Who is, by the way, probably feeding your wife more lies about you.
“So you go and find a titty club. Perfectly reasonable. Your wife ain’t taking care of it, so you have to spend her mom’s money to get it taken care of. Makes sense, right? Mother-in-law caused all the problems, might as well be her dime that fixes those problems.”
Paraphrase and summarize. Rapport building. He nods.
“Now, tell me what happened at work, Jefferson.” His first name. Rapport building.
“I was drunk,” Jefferson says. “Not a lot, not any more than Todd is every damn day. But the boss loves Todd and hates me so I get caught with a beer on my breath and get fired, boom, just like that. What was I supposed to do? Fucking cunt. What was I supposed to do?”
“Okay. Tell me something else, Stoke: was your boss a woman?”
“YES! Yes, damnit, I fucking said that! Why would I call a man a cunt?”
“Just checking. Like I said earlier, I want to make sure I understand you completely.” People will never listen harder than when they hear their own words coming out of someone else’s mouth. By asking questions and repeating things people know you are really listening rather than just waiting for a chance to interrupt.
Rapport building.
“See your problem pattern here?” I ask.
“Yes, I do.” He says this matter-of-factly, shoots a glance at the boy. The boy is small. Brown hair trimmed into a bowl cut. Slicks of bright red blood from both nostrils. He’s shuddering like a man who has just been stabbed clear through in the eye.
He is cradling his left arm. I see the purple discoloration just below the elbow. Not good. He turns another tint lighter towards pale. His eyes have cried so hard they are bloodshot and sandpaper dry. He has run out of tears.
