Nerds Who Kill Page 2

  Jeff pulled himself up as high as he could in his chair and craned his neck to look. When the milling mass had passed, Jeff said, “That was cool.”

  Brian said, “I thought you didn’t like her.books.”

  “No, I used to like her books, just not so much anymore. But she’s famous. I want to see all the famous people here at the convention.”

  “What’s with the feather?” Ben asked.

  Jeff said, “The red ostrich feather is in her first book as a big part of the main character’s costume. She started wearing them to all these conventions. Then it became a big deal, like her trademark. She’s always wearing one in her pictures on the book jackets.”

  Bertram’s parents and Paul and Ben had worked out a system so that one set of parents would be present at the convention at all times. Paul and Ben would take Bertram, Jeff’s best buddy in fifth grade, home tonight and monitor activities on Sunday. Bertram’s parents had the day shift Saturday. Everyone would be present Saturday night.

  Ian was planning to attend several panels at the convention on gay sensibility in the field. There were also several graphic novelists who were trying to start a gay group. Ian said, “I’m supposed to be interviewing some guy who just had the third volume of his great gay space-opera trilogy published.”

  “How are you going to find him in this throng?” Paul asked.

  “He’s supposed to be this heavyset guy in a white beard.”

  Paul said, “Find somebody with a Santa complex and you’re all set.”

  Ian said, “I set it up to meet him at the third pillar from the left at Pierre’s.”

  “More intrigue than I care to know about,” Paul said.

  Paul had to work the next day and would have preferred a quiet evening at home. He saw Brian with three people, one in a Spider-Man costume, the other two scantily clad nymphets. He understood now why the boy wanted to attend.

  Paul walked around the convention. In the dealers’ room he saw people hawking posters and paraphernalia. It seemed to him that every second-rate television show that had anything to do with science fiction or fantasy had at least one booth trying to sell schlock souvenirs. There was another room with rows and rows of tables where people were demonstrating how to illustrate comic books to crowds clustered three or four deep. In another large hall, hundreds of people playing board games were gathered around octagonal tables. Paul was impressed with the level of seriousness and struck by the fact that the people all seemed to be intent and at ease at the same time.

  Mrs. Talucci stomped over. She was using a cane. She claimed it wasn’t for getting around, it was for moving slow people out of her way. She still walked to the store every morning for her daily papers.

  “Why did you come?” he asked.

  She smiled at him. “Never been to one of these. Thought I’d check it out. I haven’t worn a costume since Halloween of nineteen forty-five and I don’t get enough silliness in my life. Thought I’d try a little of that, too.” She pointed at his outfit. “Wouldn’t hurt you to unbend a little.”

  Ben said, “I tried to talk him into wearing leather chaps and a vest.”

  Mrs. Talucci said, “Hot as that would undoubtedly be, this isn’t a leather bar or your bedroom. I think you’d look great as one of those X-Men.”

  “You went to the movie?” Paul asked.

  “I’ve got cable,” Mrs. Talucci said.

  Paul said, “Ben’s not in costume.”

  “I don’t do sci-fi drag,” Ben said.

  They got home late. Jeff burbled happily for the entire trip. He discussed at length all the things he planned to do the next day He’d come in third place in his category of costuming—comic heroes. All those in first through fifth place in their categories would be finalists the next night at the banquet. Mrs. Talucci had come in first in the Star Trek subcategory. Brian had come in fifth in his. He said he figured several of the female judges and one of the male judges thought he was hot. He also said he’d gotten the phone numbers of several of the girls he’d met.

  Jeff said, “Aren’t you dating Jane?”

  Brian said, “We aren’t going steady, and how do you know about Jane?”

  “It’s too late for wrangling,” Paul said.

  “I saw a woman pinch Brian’s butt,” Jeff said.

  “Is that something that affects you in any way?” Paul asked.

  “No.”

  “Then it’s not something you need to tell me. We don’t gossip.” Recently, Paul had needed to remind both sons about the tattling rule and had done some clamping down.

  “My butt’s fine,” Brian said.

  Paul said, “For which I’m sure all the females on the planet are grateful, but which I do not wish to discuss.”

  Brian smiled but refrained from further comment. The sixteen year old knew when to back off.

  2

  For Paul Turner, working on Saturdays was a pain in the ass. However, when it was your turn in the rotation, you did it. Saturdays were about the same as any other day. Original crime was rare.

  The problem with weekend work was time. On the weekend his family was more likely to be around to fix something with, have a quiet moment with, to talk to, to listen to. Before he left for work, he watched the costumed aggregation of his family and neighbor assemble in the family van for the drive to the convention center.

  This Saturday at Area Ten headquarters, Turner and his detective partner, Buck Fenwick, slogged though tedious follow-ups on their active cases. Most detectives had about twenty of these that they were working on at one time. Each hot new murder took precedence, then there was all the follow-up work on past cases. First thing that morning they showed pictures of possible suspects to mostly reluctant and usually unreliable eyewitnesses. After that they listened to crime lab people explain possibilities and probabilities but not certainties. Then the detectives wrote reports on all their activities.

  Just after eleven a call came in reporting a dead body on one of the top floors of the Greater Chicago Hotel and Convention Center. Turner and Fenwick were in line for the next case.

  Turner felt a pang of anxiety about it possibly being one of his kids. Then he remembered that they weren’t staying at the hotel, and there was no word that the person who was dead had any connection to the convention. Still. The detectives hurried over.

  Turner and Fenwick entered the massive complex, which was just west of the Kennedy Expressway past the Hubbard Street tunnel. While it couldn’t rival McCormick Place, few venues could; it was still one of the largest hotel/convention centers in the country.

  The halls to the elevators were thronged with people, several in outlandish costumes. Turner saw X-Men and Star Wars characters. He spotted at least three Hulk imitators. None of them fit the size or shape he imagined the creator of the character had envisioned. He knew his sons were somewhere in the throng. All of the revelers he saw seemed content and happy.

  Fenwick pointed at the crowd. “Nobody seems out of sorts.”

  Turner said, “They must not know. I doubt if they’re the kind of people who hear awful news and decide to party. Most people aren’t.”

  Fenwick said, “Maybe these are revels without a cause.”

  Turner said, “You want the corpse count to double before we even get to the elevator?”

  “You’re jealous because you didn’t think of it.”

  “I’m picturing the story of ‘Fenwick and the Fatal Pun.’” Fenwick said, “It would sell millions.”

  “Unfortunately, probably.”

  Fenwick leaned closer. “Most of these costumes are pretty ugly.”

  Turner scanned the crowd. “They look okay.”

  “Look closer.” He pointed discreetly. “That guy is only going to win a contest if there’s a category for the largest gut in a Tarzan costume. The woman next to him should not be wearing a gauzy fairy piece of chiffon; better she be covered by a canvas tent.”

  “You’re being prejudiced about the person, not th
e costume.”

  “Just aesthetic judgments.”

  Turner said, “No cop has ever said the word ‘aesthetic’ before.”

  “I still get bonus points from my eighth grade teacher when I use words such as those. She was hot. I’d have done anything for her. Did I ever tell you about the outfits she wore?”

  “Several million times. I’d prefer to examine a dead body than listen to the intricate details of your sexual awakening or another one of your puns. And no, I don’t want to hear about punishment.”

  Fenwick said, “You heard the old joke about the real aliens who happened to come to Earth and land in the middle of a Star Trek convention.”

  “Do I want to?” Turner asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe later.”

  David Sanchez, a beat cop they had worked with before, met them at the main elevator bank. They were not about to cause an uproar by a chance remark. They ascended to the twenty-seventh floor in silence. As they exited, Fenwick said, “We’re moving up in the world.” Sanchez and Fenwick ignored him.

  Once they were alone, Sanchez said, “We got a call at ten forty-six from the hotel. They said there was a body. When we got here, hotel security was on the scene. We moved them out and took over.”

  Outside the elevator, the corridor was empty. Sanchez led them out of the small elevator hall and down a long corridor that branched at the end. They turned left. At the farthest end of this second long corridor they saw a uniformed Chicago cop standing in front of an open door. Two people huddled around him.

  A matronly woman in the group said, “Please, I’m with the convention. I must know what is going on. Muriam is scheduled to give the keynote address to the convention in a few hours. Right now we are supposed to go to a luncheon tea reception.”

  The beat cop nodded at Turner and Fenwick and said, “You need to talk to these two. They’re in charge.”

  “I’m Oona Murkle. I’m in charge of the speakers for the luncheon and tonight’s banquet and I’m a good friend of Muriam’s. They won’t let me into her room. She was supposed to join us over an hour ago. Can you please tell me what is going on? While the tea isn’t that important, she really does need to give the speech tonight.”

  Turner said, “Ms. Murkle, we’ll get information to you as soon as we can.” She subsided. The woman equaled at least two thirds of Fenwick’s bulk. She had gray hair and wore a navy blue pantsuit that shimmered and sparkled when she moved.

  Fenwick asked, “Who’s with hotel security?”

  A man about six foot two stepped forward. He wore a wellcut light brown suit. He had brush-cut hair. “Brandon Macer.” After handshakes, the two detectives and Macer entered the suite. They passed from a kitchen area into a living room. They joined a beat cop standing twenty feet away from the corpse.

  Macer pointed. “That was Muriam Devers.” The body had a broadsword transfixing the chest. A gush of blood had covered the weapon halfway to the hilt. Turner and Fenwick had long since given up gaping at corpses, but this one did give them pause. Fairly horrific stab wounds were more than commonplace in their line of work, but this was more grotesque than your average gangland dustup over drugs.

  “Who found what?” Fenwick asked.

  Macer said, “A man waiting for the elevator on this floor said he heard a scream.”

  Turner said, “Hell of a long way to hear a scream. Must have been awfully loud.”

  Fenwick said, “If somebody was ramming a sword through my chest, if I could make any kind of noise, it would be at the top of my lungs.”

  Macer said, “You can talk to him. The door to this suite was open.”

  “Nobody else reported anything?” Turner asked.

  Macer said, “If they heard anything, they didn’t report it. Middle of the morning on a Saturday, most people are out. A lot of the people are here with the convention. There’s a full schedule of events going on with that. Our guy says he came down the hall, saw this door open, called out, stepped in, saw what there was to see, got sick, and went to his room to call. He says he didn’t see anyone else in the hall. There’s a fire exit at the end of the corridor. Anyone could take the stairs up or down.”

  They thanked him. He left. The stink from the witness being sick hit their nostrils as they moved forward to begin their examination of the murder scene. Skirting the witness’s mess and being careful not to touch anything in the room, Turner and Fenwick approached the corpse. The rug on both sides of the chest cavity was black with blood. As they neared the body, Turner could see in the sword hilt a bright blue stone. His son Brian’s sword had a bright blue stone. He said, “Brian’s sword had the same kind of stone.”

  Fenwick said, “The killer would have to be pretty strong to be able to snatch it from your kid.”

  Turner certainly didn’t think his son had committed murder, but he did feel a twinge of anxiety over the coincidence. He did not like the idea of there being a remote similarity between this weapon and the one he’d seen strapped to his son’s back.

  The corpse wore boots that reached her knees, a short skirt, and a leather bodice contraption that clung to her torso. To Turner it looked like she was wearing a metallic bra.

  Fenwick said, “That’s a Xena, Warrior Princess outfit. I think she’s a little old for that.”

  Turner noted the sags and wrinkles on the arms and face of the corpse’s slender frame. The woman had to be in her seventies at least. He saw no Michelin tire effect, as Myra had mentioned.

  Turner said, “Brian always watched the show. I never got what was so interesting.”

  “Exactly,” Fenwick said.

  Turner asked, “Does Madge know you know what a Xena, Warrior Princess outfit looks like?”

  “You presume I didn’t buy her one as a Christmas present.”

  “I know you didn’t,” Turner said.

  “How so?”

  “You haven’t said anything about Madge chopping your nuts off. Which she would have done had you brought her such a thing.”

  Fenwick said, “You’re probably right.”

  Madge was Fenwick’s wife and one of Turner’s favorite people.

  Turner said, “So she’s in this full battle dress.”

  Fenwick said, “I wonder if she had time to say ‘tanks for the mammaries.’”

  Turner said, “Maybe when she said that she drove the killer over the edge. He decided he was never going to listen to one more hideous pun. I can certainly understand that.”

  “A Philistine, as are so many others,” Fenwick replied. He pointed at the corpse. “Killer must have gotten soaked in blood.”

  “Hard not to be,” Turner said. “Did the killer bring a change of clothes or did the killer risk running out into the corridor and being seen?”

  To look for bloody clothing, they organized several other uniformed cops into teams to examine every trash receptacle in the hotel.

  Fenwick said, “I’m going with a crime of passion. You don’t get people dressed in business suits in the Loop who also casually wear a broadsword as decoration or protection. Do you really plan to kill someone with a broadsword? It’s a weapon you go to a great deal of trouble to acquire.”

  “Maybe the sword was hers. It could have been here already and the killer used it because it was the first thing that was handy.”

  Fenwick said, “Which would be an argument for crime of passion, spur of the moment.”

  “We’ll have to find out how sharp it is,” Turner said.

  “What’s that glittery stuff on the hilt?” Fenwick asked.

  “I have been informed by those in the know that the technical term is ‘glittery stuff.’ I handled Brian’s earlier. The glittery stuff comes off.”

  “Easy way to find the killer,” Fenwick said.

  “Unless the killer wore gloves.”

  “That would complicate things. So, we’re looking for blood and glitter. Is it significant that there’s a broken red feather deal about four feet from the body?”r />
  Turner pointed it out to the Crime Lab team and made sure they included it as part of the evidence. Now that the immediate needs of examining the body were over, he began to inspect his surroundings. The pictures on the wall looked like average hotel art, kind of milky impressionists, designed to soothe and be faceless. The lamps were fake brass. He opened the curtains that covered the entire east wall of the suite. He got a spectacular view of midday lights in the heart of the city in a gray rain. It rivaled the view from the Ohio Street off-ramp on the Kennedy expressway. Because of the downpour, traffic was more than its usual snarl on all the streets that could be seen.

  Another of the red ostrich feathers lay on the bed.

  Fenwick said, “It’s another one of those damn red plume deals.” It was a twin to the broken one near Devers’ corpse.

  Turner added, “I saw her carrying one of them yesterday.” He explained.

  “Your kid knows this stuff?” Fenwick asked.

  “That and a great deal more. It’s frightening in an eleven year old.”

  Turner took Sanchez aside before he left. He said, “My kids and a few friends of mine are attending the convention. Could you find out where they are? Make sure they’re okay?” He said nothing about the broadsword at the moment.

  Sanchez said, “I’m willing to help out. I know they’re your family, but that security guy said there were a hundred thousand people at this convention. I’m not sure how I’ll find them.”

  Turner said, “Jeff’s in a wheelchair. Another older-lady friend is in a Tribble costume. They’ll stand out.”

  Bless the universality of Star Trek: Sanchez knew what a Tribble costume was without asking. Sanchez said he would do his best. Turner didn’t mention Ian. He figured that as an ex-cop, his friend could take care of himself. He didn’t want to deal with Ian switching from friend to investigative reporter, not right at this moment.

  As the Crime Lab team performed its work, Turner and Fenwick examined the rest of the suite.

  In the dead woman’s luggage they found several pairs of pantyhose, a pair of jeans, a pantsuit, and a pair of low heels. She also had a supply of the three-foot-long red ostrich feathers.