The October Five (A Military Murder Mystery of Crime and Suspense) Read online

  “Tony, what’ve you got?” Whaler said.

  Tony Dantony responded, “Looks like the lock was picked.” He was tanned and well built. “The pins have been raked.”

  Forced entry, Whaler thought.

  Tony then got down on his knees and pulled out some instruments from his toolbox. “I’m going to take the entire lock back for further examination.”

  Whaler went down the stairs. Dr. Debra Tenhouse was examining the victim’s hands. Tenhouse was in her late forties, with brownish-cropped hair, and sharp eyes.

  “He was tied, hands and feet,” she said, looking up at Whaler.

  Whaler saw the bruising around the wrist and ankles. He then turned to the door but found the leather belt missing.

  “David’s already bagged it,” she said.

  Whaler nodded. “Time of death?”

  She glanced at her watch. It was 8:02. “From an initial view I would have to say around two to three in the morning.”

  Whaler had guessed that too. Rigor mortis or stiffness begins in the head six hours after death, moving down the upper body by twelve hours. After eighteen hours the entire body is rigid.

  The victim’s head was stiff but the upper body was not.

  “Any post-mortem lividity?” Whaler asked.

  Post-mortem lividity was a dark blue or purple discoloration of the skin when blood ceased to circulate, and due to gravity resulted in the blood draining to the lowest levels of the body.

  Whaler had spent too much time with coroners and dead people not to become familiar with the jargon.

  “None that I can see,” she said.

  “Do you think he was strangled on the bed?” Whaler asked.

  “He could have been,” she said. “Lividity is on his lower back and legs.”

  Whaler nodded. “He could have been strangled in another room but moved quickly here.”

  “That’s possible.”

  Whaler was shooting off theories. He found it helped form ideas but also disregard them at the same time.

  Another person came into the room, holding a camera. Anton Minshruker was over six-five and close to two-hundred-and-fifty pounds, but somehow always carried himself gracefully.

  “I don’t do too well in basements,” he said with a smile.

  Anton was hunched over, his neck partially lower than his shoulders. Most basements aren’t made past six feet but with Anton’s luck this one was slightly over.

  Anton had a film camera around his already strained neck.

  Digital cameras were rarely employed as defence lawyers could argue that the images could easily be manipulated, so film was used.

  Anton looked at the camera and said, “I’m close to sixty shots. Not bad.”

  A forensic photographer would first take overview shots of the scene, the outside of the house, then the side path leading up the entrance of the basement and so on. Then mid-range photographs of the particular room, and the rooms adjacent to it, to show how each room fit inside the house. Finally, close-ups of any evidence and the victim.

  Anton was ready for the close-ups.

  Dr. Tenhouse was writing in her book and moved aside for Anton to do his job.

  Whaler walked around to the bathroom. David Messenberg, another forensics officer, was on his knees looking at the cabinet underneath the sink. On the floor, his aluminum case was open.

  Messenberg had curly hair and a neat trimmed beard. He was flashing his light inside the cabinet.

  “Our victim was a big fan of dental hygiene,” he said.

  Whaler leaned over.

  Toothpaste, cleaners, and whiteners by Crest, Colgate, Arm & Hammer, Life, and many other brands filled the tiny cabinet.

  “Obsessive, if I may say so,” Messenberg quipped.

  Whaler pulled out the five-by-ten of Mark Mansfled and showed it to Messenberg.

  Messenberg glanced at the photo and then at the contents of the cabinet. “All these products would make anyone’s teeth super white.”

  “He was working on his brand.”

  “You mean this?” Messenberg said, pulling out a bag from his aluminum case.

  The clear plastic held a tube of toothpaste. Red lettering circled the tube. Whaler squinted. They read—Finally Bright!

  “Where’d you find it?” Whaler said.

  Messenberg jerked his head to the room adjacent to the bathroom. “There are hundreds of these tubes and boxes in the closest.”

  Earlier, Whaler had only done a quick sweep.

  Dr. Tenhouse came over. “I’ve got everything. I would like to move the body.” That wasn’t a request, per se.

  Whaler didn’t protest.

  He walked over to the adjacent room. It was like an office, a computer table with a Dell desktop at the corner, and a white table taking up most of the space on the left. Clippings of glossy advertisements of beautiful people with vibrant smiles were littered all over the table. Whaler’s foot hit something underneath. He checked. Magazines covered the area underneath the table. Whaler picked the top one from the pile—it was an old copy of Time magazine. Whaler flipped and found pages cut out.

  He replaced it and got up. On the table were drawings, sketches, and designs of different toothpaste boxes. He picked a sheet of laminated paper—it had a toothpaste box with the words in light blue saying Brighter than Bright!

  Another sheet had the same toothpaste box but this time with the words Pearl White Toothpaste. Whaler glanced at another—Stain Free Toothpaste.

  It looked like Mansfled had gone through several designs for his product, finally deciding on Finally Bright!

  Whaler preferred the Pearl White Toothpaste. But what did he know? He never whitened his teeth or used toothpaste. He preferred brushing his teeth with baking soda, something he learned from his father.

  He then went to the closet. There, reaching to the roof, were dozens of toothpaste boxes of Finally Bright!

  Whaler gently, without toppling it, removed one box. He opened it and pulled out the tube inside.

  He lifted the cap and sniffed. It smelled of mint. Then he squeezed a little bit of the paste on the tip of his finger. It was white and looked like any other toothpaste in the market.

  Whaler put the tube back inside the box and then the box into his coat pocket.

  He went out and saw two orderlies carrying a stretcher up the stairs, with the body in a black bag.

  “I’ll let you know what I find,” Dr. Tenhouse said.

  He nodded.

  “I’ll be doing it around two?” she said, referring to the autopsy.

  Whaler hated seeing an autopsy performed. No matter how many times he saw it, he never got used to seeing a human being cut open.

  FOUR

  Vince Crouch scanned the South Korean restaurant for the perfect place to put the motion detector. The Korean restaurant was in Uptown, near New Chinatown. Vince was an independent alarm systems installer. He had been an electrician but in the early nineties switched to the booming alarm security market.

  He stood at the entrance and surveyed the restaurant. The space was narrow, just enough on the left for table and chairs, but long enough to accommodate at least ten to twelve tables.

  The Korean owner spoke rapidly, which Vince didn’t understand.

  Learn to speak English before you come here, Vince wanted to say but held his tongue.

  The owner pointed to his watch. “Fast, fast, people come.” It was time to open the restaurant. This was the restaurant’s grand opening. Balloons had been put up along with other party materials.

  The owner was anxious.

  “Okay,” Vince said, a little too loud.

  It wasn’t the owner’s fault. Vince’d been scheduled to do the installation at eight-thirty in the morning but got held up with goddamn personal problems.

  He quickly found a spot, at the back just above the counter. The detector had to be placed in a way so that the radio energy would cover the front entrance and also a good portion of the restaura
nt.

  If an intruder ever entered, the radio energy pattern would be broken, enabling the alarm.

  Once the detector was firmly in place, Vince set up another one facing the back door.

  By now a crowed of customers were standing outside, waiting to come in.

  “You go. Come back tomorrow,” the owner said.

  “No, today. Tonight someone break the door and come in, then what?” Vince responded in the same accent.

  The owner shut up.

  Vince quickly placed the control panel at a spot hidden from the general view.

  Once the wiring was complete he entered the code 1-2-3-4. There was a loud beep, indicating the alarm was now on and that the occupants had 30 seconds to vacate the premises. He entered the code again and the alarm was disabled.

  He explained this to the owner, who half attentively listened and quickly nodded. “Yes.”

  Vince picked up his toolbox and equipment and moved passed the throng of new customers, who were eager to taste the offerings of this new establishment.

  Enjoy your meal, Vince wanted to say. It’s the same crap everywhere.

  ***

  When the coroner and the forensics team were gone, Whaler stood in the middle of the empty basement. He eyed the interior. Small but spacious, he nodded. Up ahead was the bedroom, beside it was the bathroom, across from it were the kitchen and the office.

  In the middle, where he was standing, there was a small table, probably used for dining, and three chairs. The chairs were lined up neatly but there was room for four.

  Where was the fourth one? Whaler wondered.

  He found it leaning beside the refrigerator.

  Odd, he thought.

  He found nothing particularly interesting so he picked it up and placed it beside the other chairs around the table.

  He suddenly stopped, got down on his knees and looked at the chair.

  It was made of wood but had scratches on the front legs. He quickly looked at the legs of the other chairs but found no such scratches. He stood up. His eyes narrowed.

  The scratches on this chair looked as if…he paused. As if something was tied to them.

  He shoved one big hand into the inside pocket of his jacket and retrieved a small silver object. It was a Sony 4.1 mega pixel digital camera.

  He was going to record this and put it in his notes.

  He got down on his knees and began taking shots of the scratches on the legs.

  When he had taken the final shot something else caught his eyes.

  He pulled out his flashlight and shone the light at a spot on the carpet. There were four, perfectly separated, deep indentations on the carpet.

  The indentations were not round or squared; they were thin and rectangular.

  The legs of the scratched chair, particularly at the bottom, were rectangular.

  Whaler took half-a-dozen shots of the markings on the carpet for good measure and then grabbed the chair and gently placed it on top of the indentation.

  They aligned and fit perfectly.

  Whaler stood up and something began forming in his head.

  A theory.

  He turned and walked out of the basement.

  ***

  Mike Lantern stood looking down at the toilet. The water was brown with feces floating in it. His face tightened. He couldn’t count the number of toilets he had unclogged over his career, maybe in the thousands, but a man cannot get used to looking at shit.

  He was inside a house in South Commons.

  “What do you suppose got into it?” he asked.

  The woman standing at the door said, “Ralphie might have flushed one of his action figures. He has done that before.” The woman’s face blushed. “I didn’t know, and when I tried flushing it just wouldn’t.”

  “I’ve seen worse,” he replied. Truth was he had seen much worse.

  Mike took a bucket, filled it with water, and poured it in the toilet bowl. He then went out to his van and brought back a force-ball plunger. What most people didn’t know was that a normal suction-cup plunger rarely did the job, as it would work on a sink or drain but not a clogged toilet.

  Mike applied pressure with the plunger but the brown liquid did not go down. He tried several times more but still no success.

  As if on cue Ralphie showed up. “Mom, I have to pee.” He was holding his shorts. Mike glanced at the perpetrator. He was not even four, with golden hair and intelligent blue eyes.

  “Not now, Ralphie,” his mom said.

  “But I have to pee.”

  “How long will it be?” she asked

  “I can’t say for sure,” he squinted. “Looks like something strong is in there.”

  She turned to Ralphie. “Did you put your Batman figurine in there again?”

  Ralphie said, guiltily, “I wanted to see if he could swim.” He grabbed tightly at his shorts. “Mom.”

  “I’ll take you to the back,” she said, grabbing his hand and taking him away.

  Mike went to the station wagon for his plumber’s snake, a metal tube that could twist and turn inside the labyrinth of pipes.

  He inserted the snake into the drainpipe, rotated the auger, fed it in more, and rotated it again. He repeated this several times.

  Mike hoped this worked, or he would have to remove the entire toilet and that would result in a lot of work and mess.

  By now the snake was deep into the drain and when Mike rotated the auger he felt the crank tighten.

  He gave the snake a push. Suddenly there was a gurgling noise and the brown liquid swirled into the drain.

  Mike retracted the snake and flushed the toilet for good measure.

  “All done,” he said seeing Ralphie and his mother standing by the door.

  “Is Batman still in there?” Ralphie asked.

  No son, Mike wanted to say. Batman is on his way to Lake Michigan.

  ***

  Outside, Whaler saw Officer Moses Johnson standing and chatting with a group of uniformed officers. News vans from CBS 2, ABC 7, NBC 5, WGN 9, and various others littered the road. A spokesperson from the department was briefing them.

  Once Johnson saw Whaler he approached, but Whaler held up a hand and walked past him. He ducked underneath the yellow police tape and crossed the road to his car.

  The black Acura was parked at the corner. Whaler popped the trunk and from an icebox pulled out a can of diet cola. He gulped as much of the liquid in one breath as possible and then walked back to Johnson.

  “Have the neighbours given statements?” Whaler asked.

  “The neighbour on the left works nights at Lutheran General Hospital so he wasn’t home. The neighbour on the right said neither he nor anyone in his family heard anything. The neighbour across has a little dog, that barks all night, so that neighbour isn’t sure if she heard something.”

  “Do you still have the wallet?” Whaler asked him.

  Johnson produced the brown wallet. “I’ve notified Mark Mansfled’s parents and they’re driving to the morgue.”

  Whaler crushed the pop can and stuck it in his coat pocket along with one from earlier.

  “How’d you find his parents’ phone number?” Whaler asked.

  Johnson responded, “It’s in his wallet’s directory under M.”

  “M?”

  “M for Mom.”

  Whaler flipped the tiny pages to M and found amongst many names Mom. Whaler then flipped to G and found the name Guy Lomnadi.

  Whaler looked up at the house and then said, “Officer Johnson, there is a chair in the middle of the basement with scratched legs. I want you to tag it and send it to forensics. Be very careful with it.”

  FIVE

  In a concealed room Al Shorley quietly wiped the tables and swept the floor. He was a little under five-and-a-half feet tall, and extremely thin with his clothes hanging off him. Someone had once quipped that he looked like a human clothes hanger. Behind him, an old jukebox played classic rock tunes—All Along the Watchtower, Born to be W
ild, American Woman, Street Fighting Man, Who’ll Stop the Rain, War, and Ball of Confusion, amongst others.

  The room was spacious. A pool table, which at one time was the main attraction, lay pushed to the corner. A pinball machine, not used in over a decade, sat idle beside the pool table. Beside it was an old arcade machine, Frogger, which was broken.

  One side of the wall was adorned with framed photos of President John F. Kennedy and President Jimmy Carter; at the end of this wall were two large posters, one of Muhammad Ali with his fists high and his mouth wide open, and the other of Raquel Welch from One Millions Years B.C.

  The wall adjacent to this was completely covered in posters of the Dirty Dozen, The Great Escape, Platoon, Apocalypse Now, and Full Metal Jacket.

  In front of this wall was weight lifting equipment that was collecting dust. Near the equipment was a punching bag, as well as a speed bag. The punching bag was the most used equipment in the room.

  There was a large TV mounted at the top left corner of the room. On either side of it hung American and Canadian flags. Beside the flags was a dartboard, which was used sporadically.

  A chessboard sat in the corner. Al did not dare dust it as the game was still in progress.

  A round table lay in the middle with playing cards scattered on it. Al carefully cleared the table and then went to the other side of the room.

  Through his thick glasses he scanned the inside of the fridge. He removed a pad from his pocket and began making a list of all the things that he needed to buy.

  Everything had to be in order for tonight.

  Al was in charge of this establishment and he took great pride in that.

  ***

  Whaler went back to headquarters, on South Michigan Avenue. He got off the elevator to the Detective Division. The area was spacious, complete with grey dividers, desks, computers, huge filing cabinets, and overflowing brown cardboard boxes.

  He took off his jacket and sat behind a desk. He pulled out Mark Mansfled’s wallet director and began making telephone calls.