Rusty Nail

CHAPTER 20

GARY, INDIANA, LIES forty minutes east of Chicago. I filled Herb in while he drove, covering everything I’d done over the last few days. Rather than praise my heroics, Benedict latched on to the mundane.

“I can’t believe that asshole McGlade is getting married. She a hooker?”

“Haven’t met her yet. That sounds about right.”

“Currency must be changing hands. There’s no other way. Unless the woman has some serious mental problems.”

“I told you about the fire, right?”

“Twice. Hey, if Bud Kork’s our man, how does the rental car fit in?”

I shrugged. The other five Eclipses on my list had been found, their side mirrors intact.

“He could be working with an accomplice. Or Bud Kork might not be our man. Or maybe the fireman ID’ed the wrong car. Or maybe the car that lost the mirrors wasn’t driven by the killer – maybe it was just a citizen who panicked.”

He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “Lots of maybes.”

“Someone killed Diane Kork and burned down her house. Someone familiar with the Gingerbread Man case.”

“Could be a copycat.”

I made a face. “In the thirty years you’ve been a cop, have you ever encountered a copycat killer?”

“Not once. But it happens all the time on CSI.”

Herb took a box of orange Tic Tacs out of his ashtray and offered them to me. I declined, and he emptied the whole box into his mouth.

“Maybe,” he said, the candy clicking against his molars, “Diane Kork is the killer. She put a fake tattoo on the woman in the video, making us think she’s dead.”

“I don’t think so. The tattoo was hard to see in the video.”

“Still, we can’t rule it out. We haven’t found her body, and after what she lived through, maybe it pushed her over the edge.”

“Diane Kork was a schoolteacher. Whoever shot me missed my head by less than an inch.”

“Could have had lessons. Or could have gotten lucky.”

Herb called Dispatch on his cell, and had them check if Diane Kork had a FOID card. Illinois required all gun owners to have one. The info came back quickly.

“No firearm owner ID for Diane. But she could still have a gun.”

“Doesn’t feel right to me. It’s someone else. I told you about the suitcase.”

He frowned. “The guy’s keeping trophies.”

Thrill killers liked to keep little reminders of their deeds. The burned human hair probably came from a scalp. And I knew the curved piece of metal was the underwire from a bra, having been poked by enough of them in my time.

“If Diane Kork were the killer, I don’t think she’d keep a victim’s bra.”

“Could have been Diane’s bra.”

“Was it her hair too? We can call the Feebies, get a lecture about how rare female serial killers are, and how none have ever been found that take trophies from their victims. No, Herb, it’s someone else. Someone picking up where Charles Kork left off. Someone who knows the case.”

“That could be twenty million people, Jack. Maybe more. Is the movie out on video yet?”

“I hope not.”

Before Fatal Autonomy became a crummy series, it was a crummy made-for-TV movie about the Kork case. I’d been forced to watch some of it; Harry had co

“For verisrealityitude,” he’d said.

My input had been ignored, and the movie turned out to be a travesty. But it still had a lot of real facts in it. And after the case ended, there were the inevitable quickie true crime paperbacks, and that TV documentary.

Much of the world knew about the Gingerbread Man. It made me reconsider the copycat angle.

Herb slowed for the toll. We were about to get on the Skyway, Chicago’s largest bridge. It ran about eight miles long, and high enough to see deep into Indiana. Our view proffered a smattering of factories, their gigantic chimneys spitting copious amounts of smoke and filth, staining the overcast sky. Industry wasn’t pretty.

We drove in silence for a few minutes before Herb finally spoke.

“I’m scared.”

I reached over and touched his arm.

“You’ll be fine, Herb. Even if it is cancer, you’ll get through it.”

“That’s what Bernice says.”

“Smart lady.”

“I’m the homicide cop, and she’s stronger than I am.”

“People deal with death in different ways, Herb.”

Drizzle accumulated on the windshield. Herb hit the wipers, causing a dirty rainbow smear.

“Do you ever think about death, Jack?”

“Sometimes. I almost died yesterday, in the fire.”

“Were you afraid?”

“At first. Then I accepted it, and I was just sad.”

Herb’s voice, normally rock solid, had a quaver in it. “My father died of cancer. Strongest man I ever knew. By the end he weighed ninety pounds, had to be spoon-fed.”

I thought of my mother, steadily losing weight despite the feeding tube. I pushed away the image and tried to be jovial.

“Don’t get your hopes up, Herb. You’ll never weigh ninety pounds.”

My joke fell flat. Herb looked out of his side window. We passed a particularly ugly factory, its smokestack belching flames like the great Oz’s palace.

“What scares me the most is no longer existing. Everything I am, everything I think, everything I feel, all of my memories and thoughts and dreams – erased. Like I’ve never been here at all.”

“You’ve got family, Herb. And friends. They’ll remember you.”

Herb’s face was a mask of sadness. “But when I’m dead, I won’t remember them.”

We continued down I-90 east for another twenty minutes. The expressway was newer, and the asphalt better, on the Indiana side. It ran parallel to a train track for a while, and then we turned north on Cline and west on Gary Avenue, and we were soon on the plains, no buildings for miles.

I checked the MapQuest directions.

“We’re looking for Summit. Should be coming up.”

“Nothing’s coming up. Except some cows. Hey!”

Herb pointed to the right. I followed his finger to a large bale of hay.

I didn’t laugh, but at least he’d snapped out of his funk.

Summit turned out to be a dirt road, and it ended at a 1950s prefab ranch, the front yard overgrown with weeds. Ancient appliances and rusty old farm equipment peppered the property, and an old barn that looked like Godzilla had stepped on it sat behind the house.

“Is this it?” Herb asked.

“Has to be. There’s no place else.”

“It looks like the shack from The Beverly Hillbillies.”

“Or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”

Herb parked next to a Ford pickup truck that looked old enough to run on regular gas.

“Ready to meet the monster’s father?”

Herb nodded and we got out of the car. The closer we walked, the worse it looked. The roof was missing half its shingles. Several boards on the front porch had rotted away. So much white paint was flaking off the sides, the house looked like a paper birch tree.

I took out my badge, and noticed Benedict already had his in hand. Wouldn’t be smart to surprise the occupant. It was too easy to picture him crouched behind the front door with a shotgun, waiting for strangers to trespass.

Herb hesitated before getting onto the porch, eyeing it dubiously. I went first. The warped wood groaned, but it took my weight. Benedict followed, stepping gingerly.

I knocked, a thin, hollow sound.

“Bud Kork? This is the police.”

We waited.

No answer.

I knocked again.

“Mr. Kork? We see your truck outside. We know you’re home.”

A voice filtered through the closed door. “Come on in. I’m getting dressed.”

I looked at Herb, and we both put our hands on our holsters. He pushed the door open, and I went in fast and stepped quickly to the left.

The house was dark and smelled like something had died under the floorboards. A single fly buzzed around in the stuffy, fetid air. I located a switch on the wall and flipped it on, bathing the room in a sickly yellow glow from a bare forty-watt bulb hanging from the ceiling.