The light goes on in the hallway.
“Herb!”
Bernice’s voice, panicked. There’s a grunting sound. Something breaks, sounds like glass.
Not Bernice please God please not my wife…
Herb crawls across the tile, desperate. Another light goes on, in the living room. He sees what the intruder dropped. A hunting knife, the blade over ten inches long.
Footsteps, getting closer. Herb raises the paring knife, ready to fight.
Bernice walks into the kitchen. She’s holding Herb’s gun.
“Oh my God, Herbert!”
Herb tries to speak. Can’t. Bernice reads the question on his face.
“He’s gone. He saw the gun and broke through the living room window.”
Herb coughs, blood bubbling from his lips. He collapses onto the floor and is conscious long enough to notice the note on the floor, next to the hunting knife.
CHAPTER 29
FOR THE SECOND time in twelve hours, the phone woke me up. I squinted at the clock in the darkness. One a.m. I’d been asleep for almost an hour.
The phone rang again. I slapped it to my cheek.
“Daniels.”
“Jack? It’s Bernice Benedict. Someone just broke into our house.”
I went from groggy to alert in record time.
“Are you okay? Where’s Herb?”
“He’s been stabbed in the chest.”
She sounded scared, but in control. Cops’ wives were tough.
“Have you called 911?”
“An ambulance is on the way. The man who broke in, he left a handwritten note. It says ‘All shall be punished.’ ”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes. If you’re already on your way to the hospital, leave the back door open.”
I threw on some jeans and a sweatshirt and made it to Herb’s place in nine minutes. Scores of squad cars jammed the side streets; cops took care of their own.
I parked on his lawn and caught Benedict being shoved into the rear of an ambulance. His pajama top was open, and an EMT pressed a large piece of gauze to his bloody chest. Herb’s face was literally gray, but he was awake.
“How you doing, partner?”
He rolled his eyes, which buoyed me with relief. The dying don’t bother with sarcasm. He whispered something, more a gargle than a whisper. I leaned over, my ear to his lips.
“… stabbed the guy… leg…”
“Description?”
“… dark… Bernice…”
“She saw him?
His eyes said yes.
“I’m going to check out the scene. I’ll visit you later.”
I patted his cheek, and he whispered something again.
“… crow wave.”
“What?”
“… microwave… don’t touch my rib roast.”
Bernice stood in the doorway, talking to three cops. She was in her midfifties, short and a shade too plump for this era. Her gray hair was in a bun, and she hugged her robe around her, cold or scared or both. I approached, and when Bernice noticed me she grasped my hands.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” Though I didn’t see how she could be.
“Did you see his face?”
“Yes. Short red hair. Acne scars. Chubby. I don’t know about height – he was limping and hunched over. In his late twenties or early thirties.”
“What was he wearing?”
“A black sweatshirt, black jeans, gloves.”
“Black leather?”
“White rubber. Like a doctor wears.”
“Tell me what happened.”
Bernice laid it out for me: waking up when she heard a noise, calling for her husband, hearing a man scream, grabbing the gun and coming downstairs, finding the suspect in the living room. When he saw the gun, he busted out through the window.
“Did you see which way he went?”
“No. I was in a hurry to find Herb.”
Something in her tone made me wonder if there was more. “Anything else, Bernice?”
“Yes. He spoke to me, before he ran off.”
“What did he say?”
Bernice didn’t flinch. “He said, I’ll be back, bitch.”
I left Bernice in the capable hands of Chicago’s finest and entered her house. The Crime Scene Unit hadn’t arrived yet, and the first-on-the-scene officer was reluctant to let me in, even though I pulled rank. He was worried about contaminating evidence, which wasn’t an unfounded concern. A few recent high-profile court losses due to compromised scenes had made many of the higher-ups unhappy.
I assured him I’d be careful, and wandered through the living room, mindful where I stepped, taking everything in.
The entry point was through a living room window. A hole had been cut in the glass, wide enough to accommodate an arm. Then the latch had been turned and the window raised. Silent and effective. It was an MO I’d seen before – the Gingerbread Man had used it.
The perp had exited through another window, smashing the glass. There was blood on the window frame, on the wood floor trailing up to it. I followed the blood into the kitchen, found the note and the hunting knife. The note seemed to match the first note left for us, and the hunting knife appeared to be the same one used in the Diane Kork video.
There was more blood here, Herb’s and the intruder’s, smeared around in a pattern that suggested a struggle. Two paring knives were slathered with the stuff.
I looked in the microwave, found the Tupperware bowl full of rib roast. I didn’t see how touching it would in any way, shape, or form hurt a conviction, so I put it in the refrigerator.
Careful to avoid the blood, I left the kitchen and followed the blood spatters, through the living room, up to the window. Hanging on a jagged shard of glass were three red hairs.
Caleb Ellison, who lived with Charles Kork for ten years, had red hair.
The CSU arrived. Pictures were taken. Video was shot. Samples were acquired. I left after an hour, heading to St. Vernon to check on Herb. He hadn’t come out of surgery yet. I sat with Bernice, holding her hand, trying to get my mind around everything.
It didn’t make sense.
The note and the hunting knife looked to be matches, but other than that, this crime didn’t seem at all related to the deaths of Diane Kork and Francis Mulrooney. There were too many discrepancies. The MO was all wrong.
Diane and Francis were abductions. No evidence had been left. Their deaths had been videotaped. Their killer wore black leather gloves. Everything pointed to him having a blond beard.
But in this case, the killer was a redhead who wore latex gloves, tried to kill his victims in their homes without recording it on tape, and left a truckload of physical evidence.
Why so many differences? Was the killer escalating? Or getting sloppy? Or was this a hasty attempt, thrown together at the last minute?
By four a.m., Herb was out of surgery, and his doctor came to see us. I didn’t like the fact that he appeared grim.
“We repaired the damage to his lung and inserted a tube to reverse the pneumothorax – the collapsed lung – but while on the table your husband suffered a myocardial infarction.”
Bernice’s only reaction was to blink.
“He had a heart attack?” I asked.
“We were able to resuscitate, and he’s in Recovery now. We anticipated this might happen. A chest CT before surgery revealed large amounts of calcium deposits on his arterial walls. So after closing him up I ordered an MRA and found evidence of coronary artery disease. He’s going to need angioplasty at the least – I need to run some more tests. There’s enough plaque to qualify for bypass surgery.”
Bernice began to cry, and I didn’t feel so hot myself.
“I want to see my husband.”
The doctor nodded. “One visitor only. He’s still in critical condition.”
Bernice hugged me, and the doctor escorted her out of the waiting room. I sat for another hour, pestered the nurse to visit Herb, got turned down, and went home, worried sick.
CHAPTER 30
SLEEPING WASN’T AN option, so I left for Indianapolis early, the rising sun in my face as I headed southeast. There was a little bite of winter lingering in the air, a frigid breeze that made a jacket necessary. I wore my three-quarter-length London Fog trenchcoat, black Levi’s, and a black and red blouse by Kathleen B that I picked up in a small boutique in Aurora. The blouse was made of material called poodle fabric, and had the thickness of a sweater without the bulk. For shoes, I went with Nikes – no woman likes to drive long distances in heels.