A Winsome Murder (11 page)

Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm?

Or were these just the foolish musings of his mind? Was he merely assigning a meaning to these obsessive thoughts of his?

What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it?

Or perhaps the nature of the mind was inherently larger than one's own self, and if so, these thoughts might be part of a larger collective conscience, part of the
deeper, faraway things
in Mangan,
the occasional flashings forth of the intuitive truth
, as Melville said, for that author's words were now tacking through his mind also. Or, if he were really honest with himself, this could actually be some mild form of insanity, a fluttering of the wings of madness. He entertained the thought … then scuttled it.

There is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will.

Mangan knew these works of literature so well that he couldn't tell if it was merely his memory correlating poetry with evidence—a sort of involuntary associative leap—or if the poetry was actually guiding his thinking, helping him to draw conclusions from the evidence he'd gathered. He really didn't know. And he really didn't care, because it quite often worked. Like a placebo that cures: if it works, who cares? The words that came to James Mangan's mind sometimes led him to the truth of things, and that's all that mattered,
for in this world of lies,
truth is forced to fly like a scared white doe in the woodlands; and only by cunning glimpses will she reveal herself.

Mangan had memorized those words. They were Melville's personal musings on Shakespeare, whom he'd called the master of
the great art of telling the truth, even though it be covertly, and by snatches.
That's how Mangan most often discovered the truth about murderers,
covertly and by snatches
. Mangan loved Melville's writing, yes, but Melville never seemed to lead Mangan to any conclusions. Melville was all questioning, all observations and fruitless graspings at something deeply inscrutable, always gathering evidence, trying to figure out what it all meant, but never having it add up to anything, like a frustrated detective whose life's work turns out to be one massive unsolved case. Shakespeare, however, was a little more ballsy. He took a risk and actually posed some answers. He took a shot at the truth.

And Mangan liked that.

Whenever Mangan was teased about this literary eccentricity of his, which was quite often, his stock reply was always, “If anyone knows about murder, it's Shakespeare.” And if anyone knew about Shakespeare, it was Mangan. He'd read all his plays, many of them a number of times, and had seen nearly all of them on the stage at one time or another. He'd traveled to Shakespeare festivals around the country, and also Ontario and London. He had a private goal to see all of the plays acted on the stage before he died. He'd seen thirty-three of Shakespeare's thirty-seven plays, if he didn't count
Two Noble Kinsmen
(questionable authorship). Mangan often told his water cooler hecklers about the fact that Shakespeare had written extensively about some of the most horrendous crimes imaginable: infanticide, patricide, mutilations, tortures, cannibalism, rapes, and beheadings, to name just a few. If people continued to razz him, he liked to rattle off the following stats, at which point they usually either shut their mouths or were left with them slightly agape: “In
Titus Andronicus
alone there are fourteen murders, six dismemberments, three rapes, and one live burial.”

Mangan's world.

This somewhat unorthodox connection between Shakespeare and police work started back when Mangan was a student at Strayer University. One of his law professors, using
Othello
as a case study, ran a mock trial in class. An actor from a local theater played the role of
Iago, who was put on trial for the murder of another character in the play, Roderigo, and also for inciting the murder of yet another character, Desdemona. There was a preponderance of evidence against Iago, but as it turned out, it was all hearsay. The plaintiffs were all dead. Iago also couldn't be compelled to incriminate himself after he'd said,
“From this time forth, I never will speak word,”
which was undeniably his right. There had also been verbal commands, witnessed and recorded, ordering the torture of Iago. So any confessions obtained by such means would be inadmissible. The witnessed stabbing of Iago's wife, Emilia (Iago killed her too), could be presented to the jury in a sympathetic light as a crime of passion, an uncontrollable burst of rage brought on by her false accusations against him. In today's judicial system, Iago would have walked on at least the first two counts.

Later, Mangan found Shakespeare's plays a great way to study the psychology of evil: power, jealousy, insanity, revenge, the motives of thwarted ambition and sexual jealousy. He also discovered that they were a great way to get laid. Women seemed to like the contradiction, the no-shit tough guy cop, classical theatergoer. A Mickey Spillane–type character twisting the cuffs onto bad guys while quoting
Twelfth Night
:
“And thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.”

He would never admit it himself, but James Mangan was a closet artist. Not in the fruity I'm-so-special-because-I'm-an-artist sense. There wasn't an “artsy” bone of that kind in his body, or in his family's: four boys, Timmy and Eugene were marines—like his dad—and Johnny was a construction worker. Not big men, but bulls, short and thick. Scrappers. In the city Mangan grew up in, you had to be. He was the smallest of the boys, and as a kid he learned quickly that he had to fight—and fight
first
—with the biggest guys he could find. Most of the time he got the shit kicked out of him. Sometimes he didn't. It didn't matter; everyone thought he was crazy. And crazy goes a long way on the streets.

Much to his own surprise, Mangan became friends with some actors, like Lou Ciccione, who had played Iago in his law class. Lou lived in Rogers Park and worked in most of the Chicago theaters. Back in the day, Mangan was more likely to meet up with Lou for a drink after work than anyone else. The last thing he wanted was to go to a cop bar. No, with Lou's crowd it was a lot easier for Mangan to forget
about work, forget about the horrible shit he dealt with every day, and besides, Lou loved Shakespeare. He and Mangan would talk nights away discussing the plays and arguing about what they meant. Some of the other actors were pretentious dicks of course—actually,
most
of them were—but Mangan just ignored them. A lot of the guys were gay, which Mangan took full advantage of because that meant a lot of rudderless women looking for direction come closing time.

After a while Mangan learned to tell the real artists from the bluffs. It was an easy tell: the laziest and least talented always talked the most about being
artists
. They were the angry ones, angry at the world for not having noticed them, for not having recognized their gifts. They were bitter and resentful and felt slighted and talked shit about everyone else and wanted everyone to know how great they were and to pay more attention to them.

Christ, Mangan thought, fucking serial killers think like that.

E
milio Flores was driving south on Sheridan Road, delivering his early run of bread to a long list of Chicago taverns and restaurants. A warm, foggy morning, the sun barely grayed the clouds blanketing Lake Michigan.

Traffic was already bad.

Emilio stopped for gas, bought a coffee and two packages of Ho Hos, hurried back to his truck, and pulled into the nearest alley to eat. A mist had rolled in off the lake, shrouding the Dumpsters and garbage cans in a soft milky haze. He rolled down his driver's side window and jerked suddenly, uncontrollably. He dropped his coffee and began muttering Hail Marys as he fumbled for his cell phone.

I
t was raining heavily when Detective Mangan arrived on the scene. The alley had been cordoned off with yellow police tape. Uniformed policemen stood guard, and a CSI team was hurriedly setting up a blue canopy of tarp above the body. Mangan and Coose got out of the car, neither bothering to grab an umbrella, and ducked under the tape. They joined the CSI team beneath the makeshift tenting, the rain smacking crazily on the plastic overhead.

“I'll see what they got,” Coose said, heading over to the officers on scene.

Mangan nodded, staring down at the body, awash in rainwater. It lay in a twisted heap beside a Dumpster. Female. Naked from the waist up.

Left hand cut off at the wrist.

The body.

The one he'd known was out there.

Mangan crouched beside the ash gray corpse.
What stern ungentle hands have lopped and hewed and made thy body bare?
The victim's face, partially submerged in a shallow puddle, was nearly indistinguishable as a face. There were slash marks on both her shoulders and sternum, as well as on her arms. Crimped in its odd pose of death, it flashed images of the plaster casts of the victims of Pompey across Mangan's mind, something he'd seen as a boy in a magazine somewhere, charcoal-encrusted bodies cradled into each other, seared together in death.

“Thirty-eight,” Coose said, coming up behind him.

“What?” Mangan asked, tugging on a pair of latex gloves.

“First officer on the scene found her purse and ran her license. She was thirty-eight. And get this, her name is Mara Davies. She worked for Kevin Lachlan.”

“Lachlan?” Mangan said.

“She was a submissions editor for the
American Forum
magazine.”

Mangan looked down at the body again. “What the hell is going on here?”

“I have no idea.”

“Call Eagan and Palmer. Tell them to get eyes on Lachlan right away, bring him in again. Start interviewing his employees. Let's get ahold of anybody that's got anything to do with these articles being written about that Wisconsin murder. Call Wesley Faber in Winsome. Tell him what we got going on down here. Let's find this writer too, whoever's writing these articles.”

Mangan leaned in closer and studied the corpse. Her face had been savagely beaten. There were contusions on the front of the neck and underside of the chin. The cheek, forehead, and left eye socket were crushed inward, giving the face a concaved look.
Let grief convert to anger; blunt not the heart, enrage it.
Superficial wounds could be seen on her wrists and chest, which Mangan thought at first to be defensive
wounds, but on closer examination there was too much symmetry to them. No, he was wrong. He saw it then: her shirt and bra had been cut from her body, leaving shallow knife wounds on the flesh beneath. The wrist had been cut clean through. Mangan assumed that the hand from Kevin Lachlan's apartment most likely belonged to this victim.

When the CSI team gave the okay, Mangan called Coose over. They knelt beside the body and carefully rolled it onto its side, the limbs limp, dead long enough that rigor had come and gone.

Coose noticed it first. “Look,” he said.

There was something in the corner of the victim's mouth. CSI moved in and photographed the facial area again. Mangan took a pair of tweezers and carefully removed a small balled up piece of paper.

There were words on it.

Another note.

Mangan carefully pried the wad of paper open. A single sentence:

H
e hadn't intended to cut off her hand.

She'd grabbed him that night and wouldn't let go, even after she was dead. She was the first. He thought that would be enough. It wasn't. The second one, he
had
meant to cut her hand off. It seemed the right thing to do. He had not been looking for her, though. No. He wanted the writer. He wanted to find the writer. He didn't want everyone reading about the other girl.

That was wrong.

He Googled the writer's name. Jillian McClay. He found her bio. Her résumé. He knew a lot about her. He could not find her address. He searched the magazine's website and found the staff directory. He found the editor's name. He wrote it down. He would remember that. Where he lived. He had a home. And an apartment. Jillian McClay wasn't listed with the staff. He was about to leave the website, when he saw a woman's picture. Mara Davies. Submissions editor. Mara Davies. It interested something in his brain. He fingered the computer mouse—
click
. The tab he tapped led him to the woman's résumé. Another tab—
double-click
—led him to a short bio.

And that's when it was revealed to him.

That's when the crack in his mind began to expand, and through the opening he now glimpsed the wide arch of the world before him, as if the horizon had suddenly extended outward a thousandfold, and he, rushing toward it, saw
the way
, the way was being shown to him. That's why he had been led to Mara Davies, that's why he had double-clicked the mouse that led to her bio. There was a reason behind all of it.

Something larger was at work.

He drove to the city. To the
American Forum
building. He had a plan for the editor and for Mara Davies. He waited for her. He had nothing else to do. He could not work, could not sleep, could not think about anything except the bad things. He got dressed up for the trip. He shaved. He combed his hair. He followed the Davies woman after work and took the “L” and sat far away from her, but close enough that he could watch her. He read a book while watching her, but he was not seeing words, he was seeing her face on the pages, her crushed dead face.

He followed her off the train. She went into a bar. He waited. He went in after her and sat in a far corner. Never looked at her. The music was loud. Very loud. She was with friends. And a man. Smiling. Happy. Touching the man—
drink, flirt, touch, drink, flirt, touch, drink, flirt
—she started walking his way, right toward him, and he heard her say, “Steven. Steven! I'm going out back for a cigarette. I'll be right back.”