J King - Angel of Death

“Winning at the Wire.”

“Mother of God.”

The onslaught continued inside, where the dispatcher made her give a high-five through the bulletproof glass before buzzing her in. A gantlet of colleagues waited in the hallway beyond, their eyes bright, their cheeks shining, their hands reaching out to shake hers or pat her back or give her a thumbs up. And after greeting each and nodding and thanking them and assuring them that “it was a team effort” and “I couldn’t have done it without you,” she reached the case room. Another oversized bouquet waited on her desk, and above the smiling heads of the flowers hovered a plastic arch that declared “A Job Well Done! ” Worse yet, the night shift had apparently taken it on themselves to devise clever CNN-style crawls and print them out in landscape format in giant type on letter-sized paper and string them along the walls.

“LELAND TAKES DOWN SERIAL KILLER.”

“SERIAL MURDER WAREHOUSE RAIDED.”

“POLICE ESTIMATE OVER 75 VICTIMS.”

The farther down the wall she read, the worse the crawls became.

“BURLINGTON NABS HAND-JOB SLAYER.”

“OFFICER FRIENDLY? OFFICER KICK-ASS!”

“KILLER ONLY WANTED TO GET A HEAD.”

Leland pretended to like the hoopla only because her colleagues hovered around her in an eager throng and the two young authors of the crawls jabbed questions at her: “Did you read the fourth one down?” and

“Don’t you get it?” and “C’mon, that’s funny, right?”

“Very nice,” Leland said, pushing past them to reach her desk. Beside it stood her boss.

“Front page news!” Chief Biggs said, rattling a special edition of the Gazette. The main headline read, “LOCAL

COP NABS NATIONAL KILLER,” and the picture beneath it showed Detective Leland with her feet braced and her Colt leveled at the kneeling figure of Azra Michaels. A closet full of skulls leered faintly behind him.

“Wow,” was all Leland could muster, reaching to take the paper. The moment her hand touched it, ten flashes went off, and Blake Gaines stepped out of the crowd, lowered his camera, and grinned.

“Not just front page,” Gaines enthused. “Second page. Third page. Damn, it’s a whole eight-page special edition, with my copy and my shots and your perp!”

Sure enough, as Leland flipped through, she saw dozens of articles about the case. She was invariably described as a larger-than-life hero, a cross between Agatha Christie and Wyatt Earp. Likewise, the articles cast Azra as an absolute demon. The main headline might as well have read “ANNIE OAKLEY NABS

BEELZEBUB.” There were also plenty of interviews with sharpshooters and canoe men, sidebars about known victims, and even a contest asking readers to vote on the honorific that Leland should enjoy (including “Officer Kick-Ass”) and the horrorific that should be assigned to Azra (including “Dahmer Squared”). The pictures and articles focused solely on the case, though the paper did take the opportunity to plug some hot deals on cool cars and notify readers of seventy-five cents savings on Charmin.

“The story’s even gone national!” Gaines declared.

“AP’s picked it up. Your phone’s going to be off the hook.” He added quietly, “But don’t talk to anybody but me.”

“Um, chief,” Detective Leland said, laying the paper down beside her bouquet, “could we have a word in your office?”

He nodded, blushing a little, and then said to the ardent crowd, “Give us a second, would you? I have to confer with the hero.” Setting his hand on her shoulder, he guided her toward his office. Once within, he closed the door, asked her to take a seat, and circled around his paper-strewn desk. “So, what’s up?”

Leland almost laughed, but then she shook her head.

“Listen, I need some time off.”

“Sure! You’ve been working hard, I know that. Take a week – on the house.”

“No, I mean, more than that.”

“Well, I don’t know… You’re kinda central to this whole case.”

“That’s just the point. I-”

“We need you for the conviction,” he interrupted.

“You’re the one who tracked him down. You’ve got all the evidence the DA’s gonna need. You’ve been following him since Bohner’s Lake.” His bloodshot eyes glowered beneath aggressive black brows. Leland sighed. “I’ll get the evidence all in order in the next few days, get my paperwork done, instruct a replacement in all aspects of the case, but then I want off.”

“In God’s name, why?”

“I’m in love with the killer.”

There are some statements that can end an argument.

“You’re what?”

“I’m asking for administrative leave.”

Biggs chewed on the request, and his lip, for a while before responding. “All right. Of course. Administrative leave. However long you need. You just get all the evidence pulled together and give it to me and…”

A sudden smile came to his face, and he blushed again. “I guess, all of a sudden, I’m the lead.”

The counsel cell was cinder block and steel, glass fused with metal mesh. Once built, the room had been fastened into an eternal solidity with round-topped bolts as thick as a man’s middle finger. The speckled paint was rosy colored, something like a mixture of blood and milk, left from a time when pink was thought to pacify inmates. To John Doe, it seemed the room had experienced a swift volcanism that had melted every surface and galvanized all into a seamless whole. The rest of the Racine County Jail was the same – homogenized and impersonally antagonistic. Even the guards were fundamentally interchangeable, their eyes neutral and steely. They walked the catwalks and manned their stations with the silent menace of sharks. This was the joyless Sheol in which the Jews had once believed. Yellowish light. Milk-blood walls. Metal bunks. A steel table with a checkerboard scratched into its paint and scraps of paper as playing pieces. The everpresent reek of cigarettes. For a week now, this realm of the dead had been his home.

But into that homogeneous room of steel and cinder block came something unique: a black woman. Her hair had been straightened and then curled again into a feathery mound on her head. Her face was ageless, as are those of black women, though the mixture of caution, wisdom, and compassion in her eyes said that she had seen much. She wore a kente cloth vest over a shirt of shiny black fabric. A long black skirt finished the ensemble.

“Hello, Mr Doe, my name is Lynda. Lynda Barnett. I’m your state-appointed defender.”

John Doe nodded. His features were handsome despite the rings beneath his eyes and the slack hang of his cheeks. “I would rise, but they have attached me to the table.” He rattled his shackles.

Counselor Barnett nodded noncommittally to that, swung a leather attache to rest on her end of the table, pulled out a number of loose sheets and manila folders, and settled down on the chair.

“Now, I find it much easier to defend a man whose name I know. I’ve told you mine; how about if you tell me yours?”

“I have told the police and will tell you. The closest thing I have to a human name is Azrael Michaels,” the man said quietly.

“There is no Sergeant Michaels of the Griffith, Indiana, Police Department. The Social Security administration lists only five Azrael Michaelses who would be about your age. Two are dead already, and though the three others are alive and well – they aren’t you.” Her eyes flared. “No birth certificate. No green card. Who are you?”

“My true name is unpronounceable and unspellable.”

Counselor Barnett blinked once slowly. She tipped her head toward the documents she had brought. “That’s what this report says.” She looked up from the papers. “Already, the press is calling you the Son of Samael. Is that what you want them to call you?”