Johnny Blade Page 14

  “Not likely,” Cocuzzi said. “The women were victimized in a nearly identical pattern.”

  “So how about it?” Cage asked as Cocuzzi pulled into the police parking lot. “Feel like masturbating into a little cup for us?”

  Michael said, smiling, “Feel like lending me a hand?”

  He did not feel comfortable, and thought now might be the best time to call in an attorney. The police made everything to date seem informal and casual. He knew they were, hour by hour, attempting to build a case against him. Though he knew he was innocent, he did not want to act foolishly. “I think before we do anything, I want to talk to my lawyer.”

  Chapter 30

  Michael saw it in her face right away and inwardly cringed while trying to display a warm, happy smile. He stood up when she had entered the room, and now, like a fool, just stood there, smiling stupidly. He did not know if he should approach her and attempt hugging, or if he should put out his hand and settle on a friendly, if not, cordial shake. Instead he ran his palms nervously on the front of his jeans. “Ellen, I’m glad you came. For a while there, I thought for sure you’d ignore my message.”

  Ellen turned to face the detectives that had escorted her into the room. “Could you excuse me and my client for few minutes,” Ellen said, accentuating the word client with as strong a repulsed tone as she could.

  Michael watched Cocuzzi and Cage look at each other with puzzled expressions. He was sure they did not anticipate seeing Ellen enter the precinct as Michael’s attorney. When the police left, Ellen set a briefcase down on the steel table and stared long and hard at her ex-boyfriend in a powerfully intimidating silence. “I wasn’t going to come,” was what she finally said. “In fact, give me one good reason why I should stay. The entire drive down, I kept asking myself, and I mean out loud—I’m driving and talking to myself—why am I doing this? You know what? I didn’t come up with one reason why I should be here right now.”

  “I’m glad you came.”

  “I didn’t say I was staying. What’s going on? These guys came to see me a few hours ago. They wouldn’t tell me a thing. They wanted to know why we’d broken up, what kind of a guy you were. I told them the truth—basically. I didn’t go off and tell them I thought of you as a complete shithead. Michael, what’s going on? Did you call me to help?”

  “You’re an attorney,” Michael said.

  Ellen snapped open the locks on her hard-shell briefcase, and flung open the top. She took out a ream of papers. “I do paperwork, real estate closings, contracts . . . Michael, I handle contracts. I don’t go in front of judges. I don’t handle criminal cases. I’m not a trial lawyer.”

  “Trial? Slow down, Ellen. There’s no trial. There isn’t going to be a trial. I haven’t even been arrested. The police want to have me give them some specimen samples. I just want an attorney present to make sure this is how things are done, that my rights haven’t been violated, or aren’t being violated. That’s what I need, guidance.” Michael sat down in the chair, crossing his arms over his chest.

  Ellen’s temper faded quickly. She sat down across from him. “Michael, what’s going on? Does this have to do with that robbery?”

  “I wish.” Michael brought his ex-lover up to date. He explained to her everything. Of course she knew about his ulterior motives for taking the night job at Jack’s. Unlike the police, she believed him. “Now they want semen, a pubic hair, finger prints . . . Ellen, what the hell is going on? I was so sure once they heard I was a reporter trying to advance my career, they’d realize I wasn’t a sick serial killer.” He laughed. “It looks like the exact opposite of that is true.”

  Compassionately, Ellen reached out and touched his hand. “There was a journalist who logged onto a kiddie-porn site. He was writing an article on how easy it was to access this kind of thing on the net. One of the sites he hit was an FBI site. They arrested the journalist. They didn’t care that he had more than half his research article written at the time either. He didn’t go to jail, but he went to trial and was sentenced to, I don’t know, a few years on probation. That journalist now has a pretty sick criminal record.”

  “Great story, Ellen. A real confidence builder.”

  Ellen was not smiling. She wore one of the most serious facial expressions he had ever seen on her before. “Michael, if you give them these samples, what will the police find out?”

  “They’ll find out that I’m innocent,” he said.

  She seemed to study him, was perhaps waiting for a tell-all reaction. When Michael Buzzelli remained somber looking, she sighed. “Let’s give them what they need then and get this over with. All right?”

  They both stood up. He hugged her. “I’m sorry about what happened between you and me,” Michael said in her ear.

  “I wish it could have been different,” she said. When Michael did not reply, she added, “I still hate your rotten guts.”

  They kissed, on the lips, the way two friends might.

  _____________________________

  While waiting for Buzzelli and his attorney to finish talking, Detective Jason Cocuzzi heard the phone on his desk ring from across the room. He made his way around desks and picked up the receiver before the end of the third ring. “Detective Cocuzzi.”

  “Hey Jason, it’s Harvey.”

  The forensics tech. “What have you got Harvey?”

  “We finished a run down on the soap used to wash Casey Hawthorne. The soap was easily identified as a product made by Tortoise. It’s used all over the country. However, I talked with the representative for the region, he told me that his biggest customer was a company known as Car-U-Wash. That’s the letter ‘u’,” Harvey explained.

  “I know of the place,” Cocuzzi said. There were many of them around the city. Like a giant six-car garage. People pull their vehicles into independent stalls. They deposit money into a time-limited washing machine, where they can use the water and soap to clean their cars.

  “Well, it turns out there are seven locations in Rochester.” Harvey rattled off the locations. Jason Cocuzzi jotted down the addresses. “The soap supplied comes in a big tank. When the water is turned on for a customer, pumps proportionately distribute the water with the soap and it sprays out the end of the hose.”

  “Thanks for the mechanical lesson,” Jason said. “What about other places the soap is used?”

  “Well, the representative explained that those are his steady customers, but the Tortoise product is found on supermarket shelves, at car part stores, your K-Mart and Wal-Mart’s carry the stuff. It comes in liquid, and a concentrate formula. When the soap is mixed with water, it’s not easy to differentiate which type was used,” Harvey said.

  “It’s not easy, but you can do it?” Jason asked.

  “Or course, and I have. From samples taken, I would say that, almost ninety-nine percent positive, the soap used on Casey Hawthorne came from one of the Car-U-Wash facilities.”

  “Why didn’t you just say so in the first place?”

  “Because, detective, there is always that one percent chance that I’m wrong, and I want you to have all the information so you can make an educated decision,” the tech said, as if tacking on mild sarcasm was for good measure.

  Hanging up, Detective Cocuzzi wondered how he could effectively respond to this information. With several Car-U-Wash locations, he would need to enlist help from surrounding police departments. This could work to his advantage. Rather than gather a handful of men from the department and post them at each site, a combined effort could prove a more resourceful use of manpower.

  Chapter 31

  Sunday, January 20

  Michael called in sick to Jack's. He hated doing so. He had been at the part-time job for less than a month. There seemed little else he could do. His mind was in shambles. Too much was going on. He could not think straight; he could not remember a time when he had ever felt more confused or scared.

  Though he showered, Michael dressed only in a clean pair of boxer shorts
, socks, and bathrobe. He lounged around the apartment all day. He still had the pizza from Felicia wrapped in foil in his refrigerator. He ate some slices for lunch, and finished the rest up at dinner. Sipping a beer and smoking a cigarette, Michael sat on the sofa with his feet propped up on the coffee table.

  Ellen had been great yesterday. He knew it killed her coming down to the police station on his behalf. He was glad she had. In a way, he knew they had begun to patch things up. They might never be good friends, or friends, but he knew she would no longer hate him, or hate him too much. There would perhaps come a day when he could call her as a friend, when the two of them could go out, have some beers, play some pool and shoot some darts. It might never happen, but then again, it might.

  The hardest thing about calling in sick to work tonight was the fact that Michael would not get to see Felicia. They were on some unstable ground. You could not even say they were in a relationship. He knew they were not. He wanted more from her. She was an amazing lover, but it was more than that. So much more, and it intrigued him. He wanted to find out as much about her as he could, but she wanted nothing to do with him. Whether she meant it or not, he could not go against her wishes or reasons.

  Or could he? Or should he? Or would he?

  He did not know what to do. Nagging at the back of his mind, more and more lately, was the fact that if Felicia did not change careers he could not be positive how the ‘relationship’ would progress. It had nothing to do with wearing a condom. He had always done so, even with Ellen. Wearing a condom when making love to Ellen was for obviously different reasons. With Ellen, Michael did not want to get her pregnant. With Felicia, yes, Michael did not want her pregnant, but neither did he wish to contract any type of Venereal Disease.

  He finished his beer, put out his cigarette and went to his bedroom. He closed his eyes. It was not even seven o’clock, but Michael was ready just to sleep away the rest of the worthless day. When the telephone rang, he let it. He did not feel up to running to the living room to answer it. He waited for his answering machine to pick up the call. He heard someone talking, but softly. He could not tell who it was. It could be Ellen. It could be Felicia. He jumped out of bed and ran down the hall. He got to the phone just as he heard Felicia say ‘good-bye’. He picked up the telephone. “Hello? Felicia?”

  Dial tone. “Damn,” he muttered. He saw that a number one was flashing on his machine. He pressed ‘Play’.

  “Hi Michael. It’s Felicia. I just wondered if you were planning to attend Vanessa’s funeral. It’s on Tuesday, at St. Theodore’s Church, on Spencerport Road, in Gates. Bye.”

  Of course he knew about it. His task at the paper had been to write the obituary. There would be a service, but no calling hours. Michael had not planned on attending the services. Now he saw no way to get out of going. He did not like funerals, which would be a stupid excuse, because who did?

  _____________________________

  Martin Wringer felt itchy. The insides of his fingers and wrists itched. Inside his ears and throat itched. He kept rolling his fingers and scratching at the surface of the skin, but to no avail. He kept rolling his tongue, and running its tip along the roof of his mouth, but relief continued to allude him. So instead, Wringer drove with a white-knuckle grip. The cold steering wheel, if nothing at all, at least numbed the skin some.

  He had an unopened bottle of Jack in a brown bag under his seat. He wanted to find a secluded spot, drink as much as he could and pass out. Drunk and passed out seemed like a reasonable solution to cure the nagging itch that persistently kept at him. Drunk and passed out would also take up more of his time on this godforsaken planet.

  What he wanted, though, was not to be alone. When he parked the van a block away from Jack’s Joint anticipation swelled within him. Never taking his eyes off the corner, he reached under his seat for the bag. Smiling anxiously, he opened the bottle and took a long swallow. At first the coffee-colored fluid burned going down his throat. He thought he might start drooling. He wiped his mouth across the sleeve of his coat. For the next fifteen minutes his mood changed drastically. It was close to midnight, and not one girl had stood out on the corner. Wringer wondered, Where in the hell are all the whores?

  Now, continually looking from the time displayed on the dash, to the corner, he thought he should find loving somewhere else. He did not owe the hookers at this location any kind of loyalty. In fact, he could not even figure out why he kept coming back to this same location. The last two he had picked up had been major disappointments. It was not often that a man like him required this kind of attention, but when he did—he should be satisfied with the product received, right? He was not made of money. He could not just go throwing money away, right? Damn straight that’s right!

  Twisting the cap onto the bottle and placing it in the bag and under his seat, Wringer pulled away from the curb. He threw the diner the finger and honked his horn as he drove by. Rochester was not a huge city, far from it. However, the city streets were loaded with women of the night. As he turned right onto Lyell Avenue, Wringer slowed the van to twenty-five miles an hour and began prowling the streets.

  It seemed a shame that nearly all of the storefront windows of small, local businesses were imprisoned behind wrought iron bars. Wicked graffiti colorfully, and often obscenely, marked the sides of most of those same buildings, while many of the businesses without bars had graffiti-free walls. Was it a message to the owners? Was there a trust issue there?

  Wringer found it sad the way people desecrated their own neighborhoods. He understood those who lived in the city were poorer than the rest of the people in the area, but why did they chose to deface property? Why was the crime rate so high? Why did they insist on killing each other? Hell, if he lived in the city and was poor, he would be in towns like Pittsford and Perington, the rich suburbs on the East Side of the tracks. He would be desecrating and defacing their property and homes, not those found in his own backyard. Wringer knew he would never understand people. Sometimes people acted the way they did with no reasonable explanation.

  Though it had not snowed in a while, the street, houses and buildings along Lyell Avenue looked like something out of an arctic ghost town. The wind was picking up, rocking the van with its massively powerful gusts. The heavy streetlights dangling over the road swayed continually, as if threatening to fall onto an unsuspecting car. Each time Wringer drove under one, he sped up some. He had heard of people dying when those things have fallen. They weigh enough to crush the hood of a car and then some.

  Not many people were out around here, either. The wintry weather must have them all holed up inside tonight. Maybe Sunday nights were not big money making nights, anyway. Wringer had no intention of giving up. The bottle under his seat, still mostly full, would keep until he found suitable company.

  He knew if he headed back the other way, deeper into the city—into the poor projects in the area—he would have better luck. Though most of the women in that section of town had severe drug problems. They were more than just drug users. Their arms and legs and bellies were riddled with needle marks. Their skin looked bruised. They looked dumb, unable to stand up straight and barely able to walk or talk. He had been down there before, and there was little that appealed to him. He doubted he would find any jewel, but as a last resort he could cruise around and see if any diamonds stood out from the rest of the ruff.

  Just when he was about ready to turn and head deeper into the city, he saw a lone woman standing outside on the side of a small bar. The place was open, but looked dead. The woman was smoking, leaning against the building, trying to keep out of reach from the harshness and relentless fury of the bitter wind.

  Wringer drove by the bar, slowly. He looked out his window at her. She knew he was looking at her and looked right back at him. She stopped leaning on the wall and instead stood in a provocative pose, one thumb hooked through the front belt loop of her jeans. She exhaled a plume of smoke, that the wind sent into a crazy dance before blowin
g away.

  He passed the bar and turned around at the next light. He approached the bar again, pulled up to the curb and stopped a few feet past the establishment. She was still outside, still smoking, but had gone back to leaning against the wall—until she saw him.

  Hesitantly, she came forward. Wringer lowered his window. “What are you doing outside on a night this cold?” He asked. He wanted to sound charming. He could not tell for certain who this woman was. She might be a whore. She might not. Either way, he found her cute.

  “Got tired of the losers in there,” she said, nodding her head back toward the bar.

  Wringer produced his bottle of Jack. “Interested?”

  Her eyes lit up. Her tongue wet her lips, as though she were thirsty—lost for days in the middle of a desert—and oh, so thirsty. She took a puff on her cigarette. While she exhaled she looked away from him, as if checking out traffic down the road. “I ain’t no whore, you know?”

  “Did I say you were?” Wringer said, smiling, as if stunned by her testimony. “I’m either going to find a place to park and drink this alone, or . . .”

  She bit on her lip. “Will you give me a ride home later?”

  “I’m going to have to be honest here. When I’m done drinking this bottle, I won’t be fit to drive, better still, I may not be awake. I can give you a ride in the morning.”

  She smiled. “That was a real honest answer.” She walked closer to the van. She was looking at him. Her eyes seemed to say, Yeah, you look okay to me. “Where do I hop in?”

  He unlocked the doors. “Right in front.”

  She climbed into the van. “Where we going to drink this?”