Gene Killers (Joe Henderson Mystery)

Gene Killers (Joe Henderson Mystery) by Lawrence Kaplan

He ran a hand through his regulation length Marine flat-top, then scratched a face full of stubble. His cell phone rang. He flipped open the phone and hit send. “Henderson.” “For Christ’s sake, Lieutenant, I’ve been trying to raise you for a half an hour. We have an officer down along with five civilians in the Gap. One of which is the shooter,” the female dispatcher said, her voice shaking. Joe looked at the cell’s screen. The message indicator was blinking. “Who’s the casualty?” “Arnie…Clark,” she said between stifled sobs. Good old Arnie Clark had the post at Broad and Central, the heavy traffic area in the center of town. Joe wasn’t surprised that Carol McCann sounded on the edge. It was common knowledge that Arnie was banging the chunky bottle blonde switchboarder on a regular basis. Joe blew a silent sigh. An investigation by the county prosecutor’s office fingered Arnie in a prostitution and numbers operation. An indictment was in the works. Arnie was saved from doing the perp walk. He’d get a bronze plaque on the Wall of Fallen Heroes at headquarters. Arnie the Hero. He felt like puking. “I’m on the way.” Joe flipped the phone shut. He snatched the letter from the printer, tore it into four pieces and dropped them into the coffee can. “You can clean the bathroom upstairs, I’ve got to go.” “Your shirt,” Rosa said, pointing to his white shirt streaked with beer and what looked like stray dabs of mustard. Joe looked at the spots that made the rumpled cotton-blend mimic a canvas in the Museum of Modern Art. “My jacket will cover it,” he said, slipping on his shoes. He grabbed a blue blazer slung on the back of the desk chair. “See you Monday.” He cut through the dining room that led to the center hall, pausing to take a look at the mirror near the front door. Not bad for one month shy of forty-eight. One-seventy-five was a touch on the heavy side. He sucked in the gut that threatened to edge over his belt. Ten pounds wouldn’t be missed. The gray in his temples, he felt, added to the aura of no-nonsense – despite Elaine’s barb that an old man has to get his start somewhere and her strong recommendation for hair dye for men, advertised between commercials for erectile dysfunction and $19.95 abdominal de-flabbers. Joe snatched his keys from the door-side coat tree. Feeling woozy, he kept a hand on the doorknob, steadying himself, as he stepped onto the landing. The crisp morning air cleared a couple of cobwebs, but did nothing to the combination of beer, coffee, and Percocet creeping up from his stomach to the back of his throat. He took a deep breath for the next challenge—six steps down to the driveway. “Hey Joe!” came from across the street. Ed Stovall, next door neighbor of Preston Swedge, waved a bamboo rake. An ever-present WWII 82nd Airborne Veteran cap was planted on his head. Ed fought in weather so cold that three of his toes turned black and broke off like twigs during the Battle of the Bulge. His brother lost a leg on Iwo Jima. Ed hated anyone who drove a Mercedes, BMW, or any Japanese vehicle. He loved the flag and the big Buick parked in his driveway. A young eighty, he treated Joe as the son he never had. He pointed the rake in the direction of the Swedge Tudor. “You gotta do something about the shithead.” “No time, Ed.” Joe’s unmarked Crown Victoria Police Interceptor was parked nose to the street. He slid behind the wheel. The dashboard clock read 8:50—well before the 9:30 standard opening time for the downtown shops. The dispatcher’s call wasn’t heavy on details. What crazy bastard would attempt a stickup at the Gap and shoot a cop in the process? Ed stood ramrod straight, snapping off a stiff salute. It was part of the daily shtick. Joe returned the salute, hit the siren and wheeled onto the street. Westfield had its share of teen mischief, slashed tires and an occasional breaking and entering. The hamlet of 28,000 inhabitants hadn’t had a homicide for thirty years. Not since the religious zealot John List shot his three kids, wife, and mother-in-law, an act so demonic that the one-time stagecoach stop between Elizabeth and Scotch Plains was catapulted across every front page and newscast in America. In Joe’s Brooklyn neighborhood, smoking a butt and driving were a right of passage into manhood. He lit a cigarette. Distance to headquarters was half a smoke. The center of town was to the filter. The big engine Ford spit the centerline of Broad Street. A sea of flashing lights loomed three hundred yards ahead. Joe slowed the Crown Vic, easing around one of the cruisers blocking Mountain Avenue. Two uniformed officers were holding a crowd in check at the Rialto, the movie theater on the opposite corner from the site of the shootings. Two ambulances, comprising the town’s rescue squad, were in front of the Gap. Joe parked on the opposite side of the street. The Gap’s plate glass front doors were shattered. It was obvious that shots from inside the store smashed them to bits—shards littered the sidewalk. Coffee, purchased at the adjacent Starbucks, was dumped on the sidewalk, paper cups and plastic lids trailed from the tragedy. Unlike the chaos of a disaster drill run two months before, the scene was eerily calm and controlled. “Turner, who’s in charge?” Joe asked, as he approached Arnold Clark’s blanket-draped body sprawled on its back in the gutter. “Detective Fredericks is in the store,” Vance Turner said. The rookie patrolman was pale and weak in the knees. The majority of the men on the force had never seen a dead human, no less a multiple homicide. “Get someone to relieve you and get a coffee,” Joe ordered. Turner spun on his heels and hustled toward a group of patrolmen checking parked cars a hundred yards down the street. Sgt. Bill Fielder emerged from the Gap, side-stepping a puddle of congealed blood and glass. A rivulet led from the doorway back to the corpse. Fielder had known Joe from the day the New York cop transferred to the suburbs. The thirty-year veteran was one of the cops who found the “List” victims, after a month of not being missed. “God damn, I didn’t think you were going to show,” Fielder said, annoyed. “Fredericks is being Fredericks.” Dan Fredericks was the most junior of the Department’s detectives. Keeping cool under fire wasn’t in the man’s DNA. Joe met guys like him in Nam, second lieutenants straight out of R.O.T.C. who couldn’t distinguish their asses from their elbows. Some learned, some didn’t, and those who didn’t came home in black bags, dead from enemy, or convenient friendly, fire. “He’s a work in progress.” Fielder looked over the disheveled detective. He wanted to ask if Elaine had sent him on another bender. The woman knew how to push buttons, even from the other side of the country. “Clark never knew what hit him.” He wiped his face with a red-checkered handkerchief retrieved from his back pocket. “It’s not going to be an open coffin.” Joe knelt and lifted an edge of the blanket, studying the dead man’s massive wounds. “A large gauge shotgun?” Clark’s neck was nearly severed. Only the remnant of his spine held his head on his shoulders. “A fully automatic ten gauge Remington,” Fielder said, “is on the floor inside the store.” Joe replaced the blanket. “We need to locate his wife. I don’t want her to find out from the television.” “A couple of guys are on it. The last I heard, she was shacked up with a college professor in Montclair,” Fielder said. “They deserved each other,” Joe said with a shrug. Fielder knew of Clark’s pending indictment. “This saved everybody a boat load of trouble.” Town maintenance men began setting up wood sawhorses on the far corner of Elm Street. The center of town was in lockdown mode. “I want every pair of eyes that were in the vicinity, talked to. After their interview, they are to go home. This section of town is closed.” Joe ordered. A black and white was parked diagonally in front of the Starbucks. A male and female sat in the rear. “Who are the civilians?” Joe asked. “The two lucky devils witnessed Clark’s final moment up close and personal. Both were within five feet of the store when the perp and Clark played shootout at the O.K. Corral. This is for you,” Fielder said, handing Joe a business card. “I forgot my damn glasses,” Joe said, holding the card at arms length. “Mr. Emanuel Eisen is lucky he didn’t meet his maker.” He put the card into a jacket pocket. “Is the lady his wife?” “Mr. Eisen should be so lucky. Her name is Alenia Gilbert,” Fielder said with a whistle. Joe heard from Ed Stovall that “a broad moved into the Gilbert house.” Harry Gilbert was an elusive sixty-ish character who lived at the end of Tanglewood Lane, the kind of guy that you knew but really didn’t. He was in “some kind” of business, traveled a lot, and exuded money. Joe hadn’t realized that Harry had gotten married. “Let’s take the tour.” “It isn’t pretty,” Fielder said, carefully stepping through the blown-out glass door. Joe stopped at the threshold, the acrid smell of gunpowder still hanging in the air. He counted four dead females between the ages of twenty and twenty-five. From his blazer, he removed a pair of latex gloves and squeezed his hands into them, then approached the checkout counter, where one of the salesgirls was pinned against a register with a hole the size of a grapefruit in the middle of her chest. A fifth body, unmistakably male, was crumpled face down on the sweater table. The collar of a brown full-length raincoat obscured his face. Six spent shotgun shell casings were scattered on the floor next to the corpse. Joe stared at a nose clinging to a pair of blue jeans. “Six shots, five dead,” he said, pointing to the shell casings. “Not bad shooting.” “Seven.” Fielder pointed to a hallway leading to the back office and fitting rooms. Wallboard was blasted away exposing the metal beams. “Where’s Danny Boy?” Joe asked. Fielder diverted his eyes from the sight of brain matter on a manikin, “Must be with the store manager.” Thirty-four year old Dan Fredericks emerged from the hallway. Pencil thin, wearing grasshopper glasses, with slicked backed hair —he resembled the 1950s rock n’ roller, Buddy Holly. “Morning, Lieutenant,” he said, unnaturally calm and cool. “Things are under control.” “What do you have?” Joe asked with a wink to Fielder. Fredericks was the Department’s inside joke, a symptom of not what you know but who your rabbi is. Fredericks was Chief Willie’s nephew on the wife’s side. “Sergeant Fielder filled me in on the basics.” “Between crying jags, the manager said her crew was putting out merchandise and straightening up as they do every day before opening. Hearing the four shots drew her out of the office. She’s lucky; the guy nearly took her head off as she ran down the hall.” “They keep the door locked before its time to open. How did he gain entry?” Joe asked. “Must have followed one of the girls in,” Fredericks postulated. “The dead can’t speak.” “Excuse me, Lieutenant,” Fielder interrupted. “If you don’t mind, I’m going outside for some air.” “No problem.” Joe turned toward the body of the male shooter. The shotgun was on the floor at the base of the display. A sign read—50% Off-All Sales Final. “He must have hidden the shotgun under the raincoat.” Fredericks moved two steps to the left for a different angle. “I guess so. Who but a pervert wears a raincoat on a sunny morning?” He handed Joe a plastic evidence bag with a blood-stained wallet. Joe opened the bag and removed the wallet. A driver’s license and a child’s picture were under the clear plastic window. “Roland Howard! I don’t believe it,” he said, circling the table, sidestepping a finger on the terracotta floor. He pulled back the collar on the raincoat. “You know this guy?” Fredericks asked incredulously. “Emily played soccer with his daughter. I was around him a lot. Always the perfect gentleman, never even a curse word. Anything else in his pockets?” “A ten dollar bill and a couple of coins.” “He always had one of those inhalers asthmatics carry. I wonder where it is,” Joe said, sounding surprised. Fredericks shrugged his shoulders. He held out a clear plastic evidence bag. “This is all that was in his pockets. If it’s on the floor, forensics will find it. I called the county. The unit should be on the way.” “Roland Howard. I can’t get over it,” Joe said, shaking his head in disbelief. “I’m going to talk to the witnesses.” He needed a smoke and a change of scenery. He hadn’t seen carnage like that since Vietnam. Fielder was crouched next to the male witness sitting on the curb, an oxygen mask over his nose. An EMS coached him to breathe and release slowly. Mrs. Gilbert remained in the police car. “Mr. Eisen, You okay?” Joe asked, lighting a cigarette. Grabbing the car’s door for support, Eisen pulled himself to an upright position and removed the mask. He used the sleeve of a blue Princeton University windbreaker to wipe his mouth. Under his right eye, a large contusion was turning eggplant purple. “Leaving my coffee and doughnut on the street isn’t my idea of a good morning. I’ve got trouble going into the meat section of the supermarket.” He stuck out his hand. “Call me Manny.” “Feeling better?” the female EMS asked. “Much,” Manny said, despite having the color of a Russian winter sky. She coiled the mask’s plastic line around the bullet-shaped oxygen tank and moved toward the ambulance. “Lieutenant Henderson,” Joe said shaking hands, suppressing an urge to burst out laughing. Eisen, was mid-to-late fifties, horn-rimmed glasses hugging wooly caterpillar eyebrows, with a physique tall as wide, made for a life-like cartoon character. “I felt sick to my stomach myself—nothing to be embarrassed about.” “I have to stretch my legz,” Mrs. Gilbert said, getting out of the car. Her Russian accent matched the length of her tanned glistening legs, running from black high heels to a pair of pink short-shorts that barely covered the secret to manly bliss. Raven hair cut in a New York Fifth Avenue salon accentuated chiseled features. A skintight black halter top emphasized Playboy breasts, highlighted by a jaw-dropping sapphire pendant nestled in a sea of satin cleavage. “You’re Jozef. Harry’s told about you.” Joe fiddled with Manny’s business card waiting for the stunner to begin snarling like a cheetah. Her heels brought steel gray eyes even to his. There wasn’t anything Westfield about Mrs. Gilbert. Thoughts of where Harry found her produced numerous theories in his overactive imagination. “You have the advantage. I didn’t know there was a Mrs. Gilbert. Harry shouldn’t have kept you a secret.” “It happened very fast,” she said with a shrug. “Call me…Alenia.” “Lieutenant,” Manny interrupted, “If you don’t’ have any questions, I’d like to…” Joe snapped out of his trance. He re-read Manny’s business card. “The Princeton Gazette. One of those papers given away in a 7-Eleven?” “It’s a weekly, like your Leader,” Manny replied, checking his temper. Joe took a long drag on the Marlboro. “No offense meant.” “Jozef, do you have a cigarette?” Alenia asked. “I left mine at home.” Joe handed her a cigarette and held the burning Zippo. Alenia took her time lighting the smoke. She looked familiar, but for the life of him, he couldn’t place her. “What brought you to Westfield this fine morning, Mr. Eisen?” Manny licked his parched lips. “I had a nine o’clock meeting with the new owner of the Leader. I’m the president of a group of independent newspapers. Never knowing what the traffic on Route 1 is going to be like, I left early and drove the forty-three miles in record time. I didn’t realize that walking around your town would almost get me killed.” Joe flicked the cigarette butt into the gutter. “It’s like the bumper sticker—shit happens. What did you see?” “It happened so fast and yet it seemed like slow-motion, like a Sam Peckinpaw movie,” Manny said, wind milling his arms. “The police officer was standing…” “I came out of the Starbucks,” Alenia interrupted through a haze of smoke. “Me and Manny were side by side, walking toward this Gap. The cop in the yellow circle directing traffic was looking this way when the shooting started.” “No problem hearing the shotgun through the plate glass?” Joe asked. Manny shook his head. “Muffled, but still loud. The officer ran toward us.” “I saw the bad man turn toward the door and grabbed Manny just before the big bang. Glass flew from the doors,” Alenia said, coldly; her eyes empty. “The cop and the bad man shot at the same time.” “Do you have anything to add?” Joe asked Manny. “She didn’t grab me,” Manny corrected. “She knocked me out of the way. If it weren’t for Mrs. Gilbert, I would have been cut to shreds from the glass or worse.” Alenia took a final drag on the Marlboro. “It was nothing. When I lived in Moscow, this thing happens all the time. Bang-bang you’re dead. They step over you and go on their way.” A banana yellow Dodge Durango rolled to a stop in the middle of the street. Joe didn’t have to read the magnetic sign stuck to the driver’s door. The SUV belonged to Dr. Christian Murphy, the Union County medical examiner. Murphy flashed the thumbs up and then held one index finger in the air indicating he’d be along in a minute. Joe turned to Manny and Alenia. “This is pretty much an open and shut case. Sergeant Fielder will take both of you to the station to make formal statements. Mr. Eisen, sorry for your trouble. Mrs. Gilbert, welcome to the neighborhood.” “Under better circumstances, Lieutenant,” Manny said, getting into the car via the rear left door. “I hope to see you again,” Alenia said, resettling the sapphire into her cleavage. “I like Harry,” Joe said, holding the rear right passenger door open. “We should get together.” Alenia unfolded onto the seat, her shorts hiking toward the danger zone. “I don’t remember mentioning Harry.” Joe shut the door and left an ogle on Mrs. Gilbert, who didn’t discourage him. Fielder eased away. Murphy opened the hatch on the Durango and removed a silver metal instrument case. “Why does she look familiar?” Murphy was Joe’s kind of doctor. He smoked, drank, and was a fool with the ladies who, to Joe’s astonishment, loved his pudgy face smothered in freckles. Irish to the core, only a thick brogue and a shepherd’s staff were missing. After attending a forensics seminar held at the Hilton near Newark Airport six months before, Murphy accompanied Joe and a couple of detectives to a strip club. Joe snapped his fingers, “Gentleman’s Hotspot on Route 1.” That section of Elizabeth was flesh everywhere for anyone desiring a peek and a giggle. “Right you are—the pole dancer with the outlandish blonde wig,” Murphy chirped in with delight. Joe watched the cruiser recede down Broad St. “I think she called herself Karenina.” “It was Czarina. It cost me five twenties stuffed into her G-string,” Murphy sighed, placing his hand over his heart. “I would find doing a complete examination on that one, heavenly.” Joe pushed Murphy toward the blown-out door. “Examine the dead ones.” Continues...