Thumb On The Mob (Part 1)

   Amongst the light foot falls of officers going about their tasks, one set stood out as it sounded louder through the precinct, heading from the entrance over to the holding cells.  The man to whom these foot falls belonged was tall; about six-four, and thin; not lanky, but like a bean-pole.  His black slacks danced on the top of his black shoes, his dark-blue tie wriggled ever so slightly under the slight heaving of the man’s chest, but his bluish-gray waistcoat held it to his faded sky-blue shirt.

    The man slowed himself down, actually stopping to tap his slightly damp forehead with his sleeve, before turning the last corner into the viewing side of the interrogation room.  He proceeded to enter the room, and did so with a certain swagger in his walk and a sly smile sitting in the corner of his mouth.  In the room stood a mid-twenties woman in work-place formal dress and an early-thirties officer in uniform.  On the left wall a window looked into the next room, which had simple tiled walls on a linoleum floor.  The adjacent room was bare, spare a rectangular metal table and two metal chairs, one on the far side from the window, one on the near side, and a man sitting patiently in the far chair.

    “About time you got here,”  The woman greeted the new comer, a tint of sarcasm in her voice, “I think if you’d waited any longer, he’d have asked for a lawyer.”  She smirked, holding out a folder for him.

    The man eased the folder from her.  “I’m only sorry I kept you waiting, Miss Alcott,” The man returned.  He opened the folder, glancing over its contents, and then proceeded to exit, but not before recognizing the other man in the room.  “Sergeant.”

   “Detective,”  Answered the uniformed officer.

    Miss Alcott and the Sergeant walked over to the window, just in time to watch as the detective entered the room with the patient man, and took the open seat.  “They told me you wanted to talk with me.  I would’ve thought you’d be a little quicker about coming if that were the case,”  The man who had already been in the room remarked, leaning back in his chair.  He was wearing a black-straw trilby with some metallic-colored stripes crossing the fabric around the base, a peacoat over a worn blue shirt, and, if anyone were so inclined as to look under the table, black denim and white sneakers with a big black swoosh on the side.  He was of the same hight and build as the detective, it was possible to tell even when he was sitting down, and he had at least a similarly suave demeanor.

    The detective sat down opposite the man, appearing to ignore him, placed the folder in front of himself, and reached into a pocket.  After a moment of fumbling, he pulled out a thin tape recorder and laid it in the middle of the table, hit a button and intoned, “Detective Gordon Stills interviewing Mister James Birch in relation to the murder of Mrs. Devon Williams.”

   Mr. Birch, who was indeed the man on the other side of the table, chuckled.  “Isn’t that a bit old fashioned?” He teased, pointing to the tape recorder on the table.

    “This is the Portland Police Department,” the detective answered dryly, not even looking at Mr. Birch,  “Not hollywood.”  He held the folder up and opened it so as to look at the contents without showing them to the man across the table.  He glanced over a few things inside the folder before closing it again, laying it back gently down, and finally turning his eyes over to Mr. Birch.  “So.”  He began, almost laboriously, “James.”

    “Please, call me Jim,”  Mr. Birch quickly insisted, smiling the whole time.

    “Fine.  Jim.  Interesting portfolio you’ve got here.”  Gordon tapped the folder.

    Jim leaned forward towards the detective and looked him in the eye.  “Listen, uhm, don’t take this the wrong way,” He began with a hushed whisper, “but don’t play poker with my friends.  Please.” James advised, speaking up.  “They’ll call your bluffs and take you for all you’ve got.  I know that can’t be much, given...” Mr. Birch gestured towards the detectives clothes, “But still.”
The detective just leaned back and answered, “I’d let them call my ‘bluff,’ and then I’d show them my royal flush.”  He reached into the folder and pulled out five photos, spreading them out so that they each faced Jim.  Each showed a face.  Four were men, the one in the middle was a woman.

    Jim, still leaning across the table, looked at the five faces with as much empathy as a penguin could have shown.  “Oh dear.  Five complete strangers.  You’ve got me.”  He mocked guilt, throwing his back to that of the chair.  “I talk to strangers.  Guilty as charged.”  He looked up at the detective with pleading eyes and asked, almost pitifully, “How much time is that?”

   Gordon just smiled.  “Talking to strangers?  No time at all.  Killing them, though...” He trailed off, replacing each face with a different picture.  The faces were the same, but the new photos showed their subjects dead on an autopsy table.  “That’ll cost you the hand.  Royal flush of spades.  All six feet under.  And one of these cards,” he slid the photo of the woman, the one in the middle, across the table.  “Has your name on it.  Your DNA.  Under her fingernails.”

    Jim flicked the picture back.  “La Puta!” he breathed.

    The detective was silent for a moment as he recollected the image, a perplexed look on his face.  “Are you... are you telling me she was a prostitute?”  He asked.

    Jim just shook his head.  “Ever played Hearts?”  The detective nodded his head.  “Well, then you should know.  The queen of spades.  Or, as those of us who played in the back of a spanish class called her, ‘La Puta’.”

    Gordon rolled his eyes in exasperation.  “How did you know her?”

    “I don’t.” Jim answered simply.  "Didn't."  When the detective didn’t respond, Jim added “She must have bumped into me in a crowd somewhere, accidentally scraped me or something.”  Jim never flinched, he didn’t break a sweat: he was as cool as if he’d rehearsed this scene a million times.

    The detective allowed his brow to furrow with annoyance for a quick second, before  he, noting the swift, practiced answer, returned to his equally cool demeanor.  “Awfully quick for an explanation.  Just how long have you been planning this conversation?”  Gordon smiled.

    Jim looked over at the clock by the door, quickly read it and answered “Three hours, twenty minutes.” Looking back to the detective, he continued, with a twinge of annoyance in his voice, “Coincidentally, that’s about as long as I’ve been in here.”
Gordon was just about to answer when he felt a slight buzzing in his pocket.  He pulled out the perpetrating device, his cell phone.  The screen was lit up: call incoming from The Captain.  “Excuse me.”  He quickly said, pausing briefly to grab the folder and the tape recorder from the table before walking out the door into the hallway.

    Jim just sat where he was, and announced to a suddenly empty room, “No I don’t think I will,” rolling his eyes.
In the hall, Gordon accepted the call.  “Yes, Captain?”  The Captain must have said something urgent on the other side of the phone, because the detective answered “Yes, sir.  I’ll be right there.”  He then pocketed the phone, and put his head inside the room with the Sergeant and Miss Alcott, quickly saying “I’m being called off: something urgent has come up.”

    Before he could pull his head out of the room, Miss Alcott spoke up.  “What do we do with this guy?”

    The detective gave a quick look through the window to where the accused man sat and replied “Well, we don’t want him to starve or die of dehydration.  Or wet the seat.  Beyond that... don’t let him out.”  And with that he was gone, back the way he had moments earlier ran to get to the interrogation.

    Miss Alcott followed him out the door, but entered the room with Mr. Birch and announced, pulling out her own phone, “If you need some water, salty snack, or to use the restroom, just let me know.”

    She had just started to do something on her phone when Mr. Birch asked innocently, “What if I need a sugary snack?”
Without drawing her gaze from her phone, Miss Alcott simply answered, “You’re out of luck, we don’t have anything with sugar.”
“You are a horrible liar, young lady.”  Jim responded.

    This took Miss Alcott by surprise, and it took her eyes from her phone.  They looked at Jim with a sharp stare that would have pierced most men.  “What makes you think I’m lying, Mr. Birch?”

    Jim sat back in the chair, leaning away from Miss Alcott, unaffected by her gaze, and answered “This is a police precinct.  A building filled with cops.  So surely there must be a few donuts here and there.”  He smiled, as if proud of himself for the deduction.

    Miss Alcott didn’t even bother responding.  She just returned her attention to the screen of her phone, and the little round smiley face jumping up and down on it.

    Meanwhile, Detective Stills booked it out of the precinct to his car.  He got in and drove away, heading out of the center of town.  It was only about ten minutes before he pulled the car over and got out, grabbing a pair of gray latex gloves from the glove compartment as he did so.

    He was in a residential neighborhood.  The houses weren’t huge but they weren’t small, either.  They seemed to have been taken care of with decent effort.  All in all, it seemed like a nice place.

    Nice, except for the five police cruisers, coroners van, and the yellow police-line tape surrounding one of the houses.  There were about six officers here or there, making sure no one crossed the police line.  Two other men were stood at a distance, looking at something hidden on the far side of the house that was surrounded by yellow tape.  The first man wore an In-and-Out t-shirt and tan cargo shorts, had short, neat brown hair, and a pair of aviators over his eyes.  The second wore a ball cap, a plain white t-shirt, jeans, and had a black hoodie slung over his shoulder.  Neither seemed to fit in to the scene, and both their faces suggested they would rather be elsewhere.

    Gordon showed his badge to one of the officers watching the line, who lifted the tape while he ducked below it, crossing into the crime scene.  The detective pocketed his badge and put on the gloves, all the while walking over to the two men not in uniform.

   “Hey Ralph.  Captain,”  He said, addressing first the man in the ball cap, then the man with the shades.

   “Gordon,”  The man in the ball cap answered.

    “Detective,”  The man in shades greeted him.

   Gordon turned his attention now to what had held the attention of Ralph and the Captain: A dead body lay against the side of the house, hidden neatly out of view from anyone not looking for it.  Gordon approached the body gingerly, almost as if he was afraid of what he’d discover.  He noticed the body was that of a woman, and was about to ask for some more information when, as if an answer to his thoughts, Ralph called out “Victim’s name is Patricia Hilton, not related to the french city of the same name, age 33, lived right here in this house.  Worked for...”

   “Damn.”  Ralph was interrupted by the out burst.  The detective had looked under the woman Patricia’s hair, at her forehead, and then her neck.  The forehead was faintly bruised, and there was a nick in her throat, right over her jugular, but no blood.  “It’s the same.  It’s the exact same.”  Annoyed, he got up and walked back over to Ralph and the Captain.  “When?”  He asked, clearly fearing the answer.

   “Two hours ago, approximately.”  A middle-aged man in a coroner’s lab uniform came forward and announced.  “I’ll take her back to the lab, see if I can get anything more from her,”  He told the Captain.  The man walked over to the body, followed by a younger man, and they began the work of getting her into a body bag, and then into the van.

   “Damn!”  Gordon repeated, his face wrought with what almost seemed like anger.

   The Captain took off his shades.  “Well, if I miss another dinner, my wife is going to kill me,”  He announced.  Realizing what he’d just said, he tried to correct himself, “Uh, well, you know.”  He didn’t succeed.  “You two do what you need to do, and, uh, I’ll see you monday at the office.”  With that, he walked off to a black SUV, got in, and drove off.

   Ralph and Gordon started walking over to Gordon’s car; a blue ‘90s Ford Crown Victoria, the car that just screams cop.  It was actually a nice car.  It drove well, got decent gas mileage, was comfortable, and just about never broke.  It also repelled car thieves: there are some dumb criminals in the world, but very few were so dumb or so brazen as to steal from a cop.

   As the two law officers crossed under the police line, a silver toyota, about 5 years old or so, pulled right up to the police line.  The driver must have pulled the key from the ignition, because the engine cut out and died, the driver’s side door opened, and a young girl got out and started running to the house.

   Seeing this, Gordon was able to put himself in the way of the young lady.  “Whoa now, I can’t let you past the line, miss,”  Gordon whispered as he put his arm out holding her back.

   The girl writhed free, but rather than running forward, she looked at the two men and asked, critically, “Who are you guys, anyways.  You better hope I don’t call the cops!”

   Ralph rolled his eyes a little and, gesturing to the police line and the cruisers, responded calmly “We are cops.”  Pulling out his badge, he continued, “I’m detective Ralph Donnelley, this is my partner, Gordon Stills.”

   Gordon quickly pulled out his own badge, and, with his own unique suaveness that had been missing for a minute, asked “Is that your house?”  The girl nodded.  “How old are you?”

   “Sixteen,” She answered very solemnly, her bravado gone like a bullet from a gun.  “What happened?  What’s going on?  Are my parents alright?”  She turned the table, asking questions in rapid fire.

   “Your Mom, is her name Patricia?”  The girl nodded.  Ralph opened his mouth as if to say something more, but couldn’t find the words.  Gordon didn’t speak either, but simply put his hand on the girl’s shoulder.  She collapsed, sobbing and crying.  Ralph embraced her to keep her standing up while Gordon walked over to his own car, pulling out his phone.

   He selected a number from his contacts, and put the phone up to his ear.  “Hey, Alcott.  Let him go.”  A pause.  “We had another murder.  Same MO as all the rest.  While we had him.”  Another pause.  “Have Sergeant Lee escort him to the front doors.  Make sure we can keep tabs on him: I don’t want him to skip town.”  One last pause.  “Yeah, I know.  It sucks.  See you back at the office.”  With that, he pocketed his phone and got in the car.

   He sat in there for ten minutes or so, twiddling his thumbs and mentally going over the case before Ralph had passed responsibility of the girl off to one of the boys in uniform and had gotten in the car, tossing his hoodie in the back.  “What were you doing with a hoodie in July, Ralph?  And how did you get here?”

   “I was meeting a CI.  Nothing new or worthwhile, but it pays to keep up a good relationship with ‘em.  And I like to do it incognito, so I blended in with the crowd,”  Ralph answered the first part, “and I was only a few blocks down when I got the call from the Captain.  He picked me up.”

   Gordon accepted the answer, put the key in the ignition, fired it up, put it in reverse, and backed out.  He then turned around, and headed back to the precinct.

   Meanwhile, Laura Alcott, upon getting the call from Detective Stills, walked out of the interrogation room, up to the entrance to the holding cells, found the collection bin labeled “James Birch,” took the cell phone, took out the SIM, and put it in her own phone.  She flicked through her phone’s screen until she found the number for the SIM, and wrote down the number.  She then returned the SIM to the Mr. Birch’s phone, and picked up the only other thing in the bin, a wallet.

   Laura went to the room with the Sergeant, and briefly explained that the man was being let go, and then returned to the interrogation room.  “You’re being let go,”  She said flatly, clearly as thrilled about it as Gordon had been.  Miss Alcott handed the man his things, and then announced “Sergeant Lee will show you out,” pointing to the doorway where the Sergeant now stood.
Jim pocketed the phone and wallet, checking the latter first to make sure everything was there, and then silently followed the Sergeant out the front door.  As he entered the late-day sunlight, he pulled out his phone and sent a quick text: “Go time: I’ll be at the shop in ten.”

   With that, he peeled off his black peacoat, which he threw over his shoulder, and began a ten minute walk.  He only had a few blocks to go, but he took his time, ambling, enjoying the sights.

   Portland may be a thriving metropolis, but it has a beauty that most cities lack.  It has myriad parks, trees and greenery everywhere, and the buildings don’t seem as cold and boring as those in most cities.  The structures seem to have more of a living vibe, and there’s a sense of uniqueness about them that makes one feel alive just by looking at the towers from a layman’s perspective, standing on the streets.  And James wasn’t standing still.

   Ten minutes of gentle ambling found Jim standing at one of the corners of the block City Hall is on.  He crossed the road city hall opens up onto, and walked along until he was standing in the middle of the block, facing the grand building.  He stood there for a moment or two, before his gaze and thoughts were interrupted by someone tapping on the glass of the building behind him.
When James Birch turned around, he was looking into the window of a Starbucks, specifically at the man who had just tapped the glass.  He was a little shorter and stouter than James, with a stoic face and an expensive suit.  He showed his hand briefly, and James waved back and ran off into the front doors of the building.

   Mr. Birch navigated the lobby, finding the doors that led into the small coffee shop, and took a seat at the table where thirty seconds ago his friend had been sitting.  Said friend had gotten up and collected a pair of drinks, and was now returning to the table.  He set one in front of James who promptly critiqued the man’s actions.  “You know I don’t drink coffee.”

   “Hot Chocolate,”  The man answered dryly, taking his previous seat, sipping his own beverage.

   Jim nodded his approval, taking up the drink and giving it a tender sip.  “Not bad,”  He judged.  “Now, onto business.”  The two men pulled out their cell phones and put them on the table.  “How’s the phone been?”  Mr. Birch asked plainly.

   “Fine enough,” the dry man answered, sliding the phone he’d pulled out over to James, who barely looked at it before pocketing it.  “And mine?”

   “The same.”  James answered, handing over the phone he’d pulled from his own pocket: the one with the number that Miss Alcott had decided to take note of.  Having exchanged phones with this man, a calm expression came over Mr. Birch.  “So, how did you do it, Steve?”  He asked casually.

   “Random person,”  Steve answered, still dry but now taking caution to make sure no one around was looking.  “Took ‘em by surprise outside of their home.  Did it just as you would have.  Same everything as the last woman you knocked, especially when it came to things that aren’t in the reports.”

   “Smart.”  James smiled, reaching over to pat Steve on the shoulder.  “It’s safe to say I’m above suspicion now.  This”  He raised his cup and took another sip.  “This is how smart people do this kind of business.  Come, let’s walk.”  He got up without giving Steve a chance to say anything, but Steve didn’t try, he just followed James out the doors.

   On the street, the two men stood gazing at city hall.  It was a moment before either of them spoke, and when Steve opened his mouth, his voice was solemn.  “You, uh, d’ you remember Peter?  Peter Fleming?”

   Jim wasn’t particularly emotive in his response to this; he just looked at Steve as though he were dumb.

   Steve wasn’t phased.  “Well,” He continued, the crusty ice of the subject now cracked, “He’s in town.  Room 1124 at the Marriott.”

   A passerby on the street wouldn’t have noticed anything.  Someone watching attentively from a distance could catch every word and miss James’ reaction.  Anyone who had been trained to, however, might notice the increased heart rate, and the tensing of his arms, shoulders, and neck.

   “Since when?”  Jim’s voice was dry, but Steve saw the anger brewing behind the boss’ eyes.

   “His flight landed four hours ago.  Just before the cops came for you.  He checked in about two hours later.  He’s been in the hotel ever since.”  This seemed to calm James a little, but Steve continued, “Edwin and Martin are in Tom McCall, right across the street.  They’ll tell you as soon as something happens.”

   Jim turned ninety degrees and started walking down the street.  “Then I’ll be getting a call in a half an hour.  Because someone very important is going to walk into that hotel,” he called back.

   Steve knew better than to follow this man, but before he was out of earshot he called out, “Ask for Joseph Collins.”

   Jim heard, but didn’t react.  He just kept walking.  He crossed the first street he reached, but at the second, he turned to his left and crossed 5th avenue, the road he’d been walking along.  Now he was walking along Columbia.  He followed it past 1st, all the way to Naito Parkway on the waterfront.

   As Jim had crossed fourth street, he had walked right in front of a blue Ford Crown Victoria.  The driver and his passenger wore solemn looks on their faces, but they weren’t silent.  The driver was wearing a grey waistcoat, the passenger, a white t-shirt.
“That’s the guy.  And we almost had him!”  Gordon lamented, only barely keeping his hands on the steering wheel.

   Ralph, the passenger, followed the tall, thin man in the black peacoat and trilby with his eyes, and cooly answered “Shame.  And he looks so classy, too.”

   Gordon’s eyes rolled in their sockets as they shifted their focus from the man in the peacoat to the traffic lights, which turned green right on cue.  As they started to pull forward, the detective tilted his head over towards his partner, and chided “Him?  Really, Ralph?”  Glancing over briefly, he continued. “He’s not even the best looking guy you’ve seen today.”

   “Who else have I seen?”  Ralph asked, a puzzled look on his face.

   Gordon pulled up to the next red light and looked over at Ralph as if he had just asked the stupidest question ever.  “Excuse me?”

   “Umm,”  Ralph started.  “That guy in director’s park may have been fun to pat down, but your serial killer is so much better looking.”

   “UGH!”  Gordon exclaimed as he turned his head back to the street and accelerated through two green lights and made two consecutive right turns before pulling over to the left between two City Police cruisers.  “Come on, we’ve got some work to do,”  The detective urged with more enthusiasm than is normally shown towards work.

   Ralph didn’t complain, he just followed Gordon into the building they had parked alongside.  Portland PD.  Down a few halls, here and there, and Gordon found himself at a pair of well fashioned desks in the middle of a rather decent office space.

   The two sat down at their desks, quickly gathered up a few things, fiddled with their computers for a moment, and then got up and headed out again, each going their own separate ways.  Ralph went and got in his own car, a navy-blue Dodge, and Gordon went back in his car, and drove home.

   The detective’s home was a nice one, slightly smaller than the ones where the dead woman, Patricia Hilton, had lived.  That woman was weighing on his mind significantly as Gordon drove.  She had him stupefied: Her death was a perfect match to the trends he’d been looking into, wherein the victim was knocked in the head, had their throat slit, and all the blood was collected and cleaned away.  Finally, her body had been tucked away in a place that was not out in the open, but where it was bound to be found eventually, just like the other five cases.

   But when examining the victims by who they were before death, this Patricia stuck out from the group like a sore, red thumb.  The other five had occupied jobs in high-paying and otherwise significant positions.  Two were lawyers, one was an upper management executive for a locally operated global sportswear brand, one owned a significant and expanding small business, and the last one, the one with DNA that tied to that James Birch character, had been a top doctor at a major research facility.  But this new woman, this Patricia Hilton, was a stay-at-home mom who’s husband was the manager of a Walmart.  The detective figured that if he was looking for a serial killer, this psychopath’s type seemed to be important well-to-dos who had plenty of power and money, but this woman had neither.  It was possible, one could suppose, that this killing had been to target the husband, but that still broke the pattern.

   The detective, though he got safely home, got nowhere with understanding this latest development.  He decided to leave these troubles with the car at the curb, however, and after pulling up next to his own house, got out onto the sidewalk and headed up the path to the front door.

   Gordon unlocked the door with keys he produced from his pocket, and swung the door carefully open, calling out “I’m home, honey!”

   “About time, too,”  A voice snapped from the kitchen.  “You’re a half-an-hour late.”

   “Sorry, sugar,”  The detective apologized as he headed into the kitchen, “case dragged on for a little longer than I’d’ve liked it to.”  He paused here to kiss the woman in the kitchen on the forehead: she was about average height and build, with long blonde hair, light pink lips and bright blue eyes.  “What’s cooking?”  The detective sniffed the warm, cozy air.

   “Lasagna,”  She answered, turning to face the stove. As the detective went to grab a drink from the fridge, she twisted her head and added over her shoulder, “Overdone.  Lasagna.”

   Gordon winced.  “Sorry.  Chasing down murderers doesn’t lend itself to quick wrap-ups.”

   The lady of the house, seemingly accustomed to such explanations, simply shook it off.  “So.  Tell me about your day at work.”  She pulled the food from the oven and put it onto a pair of coasters over on the counter, then turned to face her husband.  “I know you can’t talk about the details of the case, blah blah, but there must be something you’re allowed to talk to me about.  I get so bored when I’m talking with the ladies; I never have any good gossip!”

   Gordon draped his jacket across a chair in the adjacent nook before rolling up his sleeves and returning to the kitchen, chipping into the work that still needed to be done on dinner.  “Well, I can tell you I’m working on a serial killer; I thought I had him, but no dice.”