The Theatre

            Officers cruised up and down the dim, empty rows, but Joe kept to the far aisle, skirting the wall, while they widened their search. Calculating, he licked his thin, dry lips. He reached for the whiskey flask in his coat’s breast pocket but recalled, too late, that it wasn’t there. Instead, he felt around for his medallion. His fingers tasted the coin’s cool metal in another pocket, tracing Saint Jude’s raised figure in a tactile prayer.
            Ahead, the stage itself was empty. In a way. Warm, yellow floodlights cast smoky shadows on the floor, while gray cigarette vapors curled outward from beneath the orange exit sign nearby. This combined haze conjured itinerant half-ghosts across the ornate, old-world set—ones that lingered in the burnished doorways, mingling in patterns of darkness and light, shadow and truth.
            With a grunt, Joe hastened toward the exit with authority. The uniform there quickly snuffed his cig, mumbling an apology. The exit light above them bathed the fellow’s face in scarlet. Nodding tightly in reply, Joe passed on, wiping a palm over his own ruddy, wrinkled brow.
            The mid-October wind laid into him when he stepped into the alley. Echoing sounds from the darkened city funneled down the manmade corridor, while Joe inhaled the chilly air. He watched it spiral dust, leaves, and scraps of paper between the sparse streetlamps, before it finally wove the wreckage up and out of sight. Joe imagined the errant chaff whirling past the cathedral spires peeking over the horizon, and up through the grim skyscrapers holding up the nighttime clouds, before at last dropping into the murky river, a meal for the channel’s lapping, hungry waters.
            Uniforms and detectives milled catlike about the alley, their octagonal badges winking at the blue-on-blue light-bars flashing atop the two police cruisers parked nearby. Joe fixated on an Asian officer taking notes next to another corridor leading alongside the theatre—one secured by neon tape. In his late twenties, the cop’s jet-black bangs hung just a bit too long for regulation. But, as the man went over his detailed notes, he exuded both competence and efficiency.
            “New to Chicago?” Joe asked.
            The uniform’s hand swept the hair from his face. “I have been here for two months, Detective. How did you know?”
            Joe pointed to the man’s heavy overcoat. “Look cold. Where you from?”
            “Houston. My uncle and his family emigrated from China to Chinatown, and they needed some help starting out. And, yeah, my balls are ice cubes, sir.”
            Joe blinked his languid, olive-colored eyes. “You’ll get used to it,” he said with a shrug. “It’s that kind of town. The name’s Kincaid. I’m with Homicide.”
            Recognition lit the younger man’s features. “I’ve heard of you. The doodler, right?”
            Joe produced his favorite pad and pencil. “The sketch artist,” he said.
            “I apologize,” the officer replied, bowing lightly. “I’m Lukas Yushida.”
            Joe nodded down the alley. “Great. Walk me through it, sport.”
            “Are you cleared?”
            “I’m with Buchannan’s team,” Joe lied.
            Yushida, the first officer on the scene, acquiesced and led Joe under the taped partition. They each avoided stepping on the neon-yellow markers set along the alley by the busy forensics boys. One female tech was digging through a nearby Dumpster, while six or seven others shaved particles off the puckered red-brick walls, or photographed obscure stains on the concrete. The headlights from a police cruiser projected enough light for the work.
            Two such CSIs were crouched about halfway down the alley—the outstretched legs between them catching Joe’s attention. He slowed his pace. His fingers flipped open his pocket tablet and dragged his pencil’s broadened point across its leading page on autopilot.
            Officer Yushida consulted his own notepad and read from it. “We received the alert from dispatch at oh-two-hundred. Officer Newman and I arrived at the scene approximately two minutes later. The two citizens who placed the original call were still on the phone with emergency services. They were taking a shortcut home when they found the body.”
            Joe steadied his breathing, but the pencil in his hand moved faster. Its soft tip dug into the firmer paper, outlining a pool of blood between two legs and shading it, the purple-red of life translating into almost black upon the page. “Where were they coming from?” he asked.
            “Some party a few blocks east. The other guests vouched for them at time of death.”
            “Which was when?”
            “Supervisor Moore’s early estimate puts it within the hour of the 911 call.”
            Joe worked his jaw, digesting the information. He barely heard Yushida's coming words.
            “Officer Newman remained with the witnesses to take their statements, and I entered the alley to…assess the situation,” he continued. “There were two individuals…one sitting…his back against the wall…"
            The pencil gradually moved upward, dressing the grainy figure on Joe’s pad in boots, in jeans, a flannel shirt, and in a Cubs jacket Joe remembered buying years ago. Then his fingers riveted two bleary holes across the coat—one to the chest and one to the gut. Beside the stocky torso, arms hung limp from slumped shoulders. Soon only the face remained.
            “…the other…face down…surrounded by…vomit…”
            Joe’s strokes across the pad grew deeper. The glow from a cruiser’s lights made the subject's skin even paler, even waxier than normal. Arthur had been Irish, after all. And yet, shock and anger marred the old laugh lines as the pencil painted milky horror in the eyes. It was then Joe felt the heat his knuckles made across the page, his palm and fingers tainted by the lead.
            Wincing, he stopped. He eased off his grip and sensed the accumulated warmth leave his body in the slow, steady breath he sent up the high and lonely alley walls. The air smelled like rain, and he could hear some thunder in the distance. Clouds drifted thick and dismal up above, and the stars hid their faces—heaven itself apparently shocked and ashamed by the night’s work.
            The male lab-tech near the body, camera in hand, spoke to his partner. “You know,” he said. “The feds gunned down Dillinger in this same alley back in thirty-four. He’d just seen a show. And the lousy bystanders, they dipped their hankies in his blood as souvenirs.”
           His supervisor, an older, darker woman nodded. “Nutmeg,” she said, her voice both deep and sugared, “when a town gets built upon a slaughterhouse, it’ll always be a slaughterhouse.”
            Joe shook his head. “What'd you say, Yushida?”
            “I said there’s no weapon on the victim,” the officer repeated. “Not even a holster. Even off the clock, it’s regulation to wear your duty weapon. Donahue didn’t.”
            Joe put his pencil away. “He musta thought he could trust whoever he was meeting.”
            Yushida shrugged. “We have yet to identify the other individual present.”
            “Your suspect?”
            “Our perp.”
            Joe scratched his perpetual stubble, closing his sketchpad and keeping his eyes off Arthur’s face. “Any chance a mob’s mixed up in this? The superintendent was tough on both the Irish and the Outfit.”
            The discoloring was faint, but there was no mistaking Yushida’s blush. “All his money is still in his wallet—just a few bills—so it wasn’t robbery. A gang could be involved, but…”
            “But what?”
            The older CSI pulled back from her work, studying Joe up and down. Her deep voice reverberated off the alley walls, hard eyes offsetting soft features. “Listen here, Mustard Seed,” she said. “You familiar with the term cadaveric spasm?”
            “Stiffening of the hands after death,” Joe said. He noticed Arthur’s fists were wrapped in brown paper bags, preserved for autopsy. He also noted the CSI’s name by the patch on her vest: Moore. “Person clutches whatever they were holding. Why?”
            Moore shifted her weight. “We recovered a condom from his left hand,” she said.
            Joe didn’t make a sound. He scrutinized the bag covering the appendage in question. Near it, a partial foot-print lay pressed, frozen, in the congealed blood, capturing what was obviously a man’s shoe. “So what is that?” he mumbled.
            The woman scowled up at Yushida. “You wanna explain that one,Wasabi?”
            Yushida lowered his head, a few rebellious hairs falling over in his face. He read from his canonical notepad again. “It was a result of my struggle with the suspect.” Then he turned an embarrassed expression on Joe. “I messed up.”
            Moore scrutinized the officer’s shoes. “At least those new ones fit your size,” she said. “You looked like a clown before we bagged your other pair.”
            Joe’s mind lay elsewhere. “So, according to you people,” he began, “the victim here was soliciting some woman—who you, kid, later had to restrain—before she shot him twice, fell on her face, and then puked across the pavement?”
            Yushida and the two lab-techs shared a shaded glance. Joe’s eyes shifted to each of them in turn, before setting firmly on the patrolman. Lukas didn’t flinch. He said, “Sir, the suspect I restrained was not a woman. We have in custody—a man.”
            Joe felt the hair on his neck begin to rise. “Say that to me again?”
            The officer lifted his notepad and was careful to make himself clear. “Examining the second individual, I found a weapon in his hand. Before he could pull himself together, I reached for the gun and disarmed him. I then secured his wrists and isolated him from the crime scene.” At that point he paused. “But, in the process, sir, I did step in the blood pool.”
            Joe set his jaw, defiant. “What’s the official line on this?”
            Moore answered. “We’re not calling it a hate crime, if that’s what you mean. Captain Buchannan is playing it quiet. Pressure from the top, I expect.”
            “Good,” Joe said, his throat tight. “Arthur was a family man.”
            “Deputy Superintendent McCoy spouted those same words when he trudged through my crime scene,” the woman drawled. “The man may be short in stature, but he sure rants like he’s a giant.”
            Joe jerked his hand at Yushida’s notebook. “What state was this suspect in?”
            “Groggy,” the beat cop said, flipping ahead. “With little balance or motor control.”
            “How’d he look?”
            “His belt was undone. Sir.”
            “Wallet? I.D.?”
            “Nothing.”
            “What did he say?”
            “Nothing at first,” Yushida said. “But, after a while, he became slightly lucid. He said…” Yushida searched his notes again, needing to recite the words exactly. “He said, ‘I know not why I am so sad. It wearies me.’”
            “I’ll bet,” Joe growled.
            “Also, before the other officers arrived, I heard him say: ‘And such a want-wit sadness makes of me…that I have much ado to know myself.’”
            “Sounds like Shakespeare,” Moore said from somewhere distant, deep in thought.
            Joe rolled his eyes. “Everybody’s got their little hustle,” he said, dismissing Yushida. “Thanks for all your help. I think I’ve heard enough.”
            The younger officer took the hint and drifted back toward his post. “You’re welcome, sir,” he said, before swiping back his hair again.
           Moore and her silent partner with the camera resumed their examination, turning their backs on Joe.  Ignored, he watched them work a moment. Then he said, “Mustard Seed?”
             Without turning, the woman answered up to him, her voice becoming familiar. She said, “And the disciples said to Jesus, ‘Tell us what Heaven's kingdom is like.’ He said to them, ‘It is like a mustard seed, the smallest of all seeds, but when it falls on prepared soil, it produces a large plant and becomes a shelter for birds of the sky.’”
            Despite himself, Joe smiled. “Matthew? Thirteen?”
            He heard her smile back at him. “Thomas. Twenty.”
            “Name’s Joe,” he said.
            “Cassandra,” she replied. “Be careful, Joe. Don’t let your notions get the best of you.”
            “I’m here for him.” Joe pointed at their fallen leader. “Not for me.”
            Moore stopped, tilted her head. “I guess he wasn’t a bad-looking man, was he?” she murmured. After a few more seconds, she said, “In that case, Joe, I have another passage for you. Though I won’t tell you chapter and verse.”
            “Lay it on me. And why not?”
            “‘Compassion is an attribute of God himself. And men on earth are most like him when kindness seasons justice.’ And because it’s better if you figure out the source-book for yourself.”
            “I’ll remember that. Thanks.”
            She nodded, and Joe turned away.
            The brown, tree-lined streets in Lincoln Park boiled with activity. Set against its red-pressed brick and terra-cotta white, the theatre’s marquee and all its glitzy bulbs, throwbacks to the thirties, both, lit up North Lincoln with a vengeance. Uniformed cops scurried about, keeping the loud, eager news crews and the local gawkers alike well beyond the security zone. Cameras flashed white, and the crowd buzzed, droning like bees. Over it all, Joe heard his name called.
            “Kincaid! What the hell are you doing here?”
          At just above six feet, with generous muscles, Captain Buchannan’s figure demanded attention. He approached, and Joe stopped, steeling himself. Henry’s face was set, his eyes betraying little. “Get lost, Joe,” he said, lowering his voice. “This whole thing is gonna hit the morning news, and the press is just dying for another blunder. How’d you get in anyway?”
            “Around the back and through the theatre,” he replied. “Knew you’d stop me otherwise.”
            “Damn right,” Buchannan said, the toothpick in his teeth soon flicking to the side.
            Joe put his hands in his pockets and eyed the crowd. “So how’s the swing shift, Henry?”
            The other man put a meaty fist up on his hip. “I should be in bed by now. How’s leave?”
            “I miss the bureau’s pencils,” Joe allowed.
            “You never mentioned why you left,” the other said. “And I’m your boss.”
            “But you aren’t nearly my confessor.”
            “Hey, we go back. I think I’ve earned a reason.”
            “For why I left, or for why I’m here tonight?”
            Buchannan eyed him. “Both.”
            Joe swallowed. It was painful. “Arthur.”
            After a moment, Henry took his fist up off his hip and let it fall. “Hey, even if it turns out he was a southpaw,” he replied, “the guy didn’t deserve to strike out quite like this. He had too much sense, too much guts. Old men get some wild hairs, but, still.” Buchannan touched the badge pinned to his belt. He shook his head. “Too bad you gave up the whiskey, Joe. I think we each could down a bottle.”
            “Johnny ain’t no friend of mine, Henry. Not anymore.”
            The other nodded. “How is Mary, by the way?”
            “With Agnes.”
            “Not good, then.”
            “No. Yours?”
           Henry’s figure lost its granite. “Janet’s fine,” he said. “It’s the rest that bleed me dry. There’s always something needing fixed—some new shit the kids must have.” Buchannan’s face stiffened again. “Sorry, Joe. I forgot about Rachel. How’re you and Mary coping?”
            Joe checked the lead still smeared across his palm. “You know I don’t erase.”
            “If you need help, maybe Janet or I could talk to her.”
            Joe waved over at the alley. “This is what I need, Henry. To be here.”
            The toothpick danced between Buchannan’s lips. He put on his best poker-face. “Sure,” he said. “But first, tell me why you and Arthur parted ways—what happened with you two?”
            “We had a falling out. Few months ago. I got angry, and I shouldn’t have,” Joe said.
            “This ain’t your fault, you know.”
            “I still owe it to him. To look after things.”
            “Mary won’t like it,” Henry warned. “And neither will you, when the smoke clears.”
            Joe stood a little taller. “Justice is only we make of it.”
            Henry did a rare thing after that. He smiled. “Arthur’s slogan.”
            “Uh-huh.”
            At last, the other said, “Okay. I’ll keep yah in the loop. But not the case. We got the guy.”
            “So I hear. Where?”
            “No way,” Buchannan said. “You leave him be, you hear?”
            Joe smiled. “Just let me know how things progress, okay?”
            “Sure, Joe,” Henry said, and offered his hand. Joe shook it, feeling the pressure of the other’s grip. A camera flashed nearby, capturing the moment. “Good to see you,” Henry said.
            “Same to you, old friend,” Joe half-replied.
            Then Buchannan corralled a passing detective and lumbered off toward the crime scene.
            Joe, meanwhile, spotted two patrolmen guarding a sequestered cruiser well away from the reporters and the noise. A figure sat curled up in the back, obscured from veiw. Moving toward the unit, Joe said, “I never promised though…”
            Through the window-glass, he saw the department’s suspect huddled with his arms around his legs and his knees under his chin, his hands in cuffs. He was twenty, maybe twenty-one, at best—a kid. Of average height and lean, he wasn’t exactly muscular. More like compact. His clothes though were impressive: designer things for late-night clubbing, a brand new blazer, and a woman’s ring around his middle finger—a sapphire.
            The kid’s first guard, a deeply-tanned man with black hair, possessed the spindly frame and bearing of a wise-ass. His paler partner had a chubby, baby-face. Joe nodded to them both, flashed his badge, and stepped in for a closer examination of their charge.
            Aside from all the clothes, the boy himself was pretty much forgettable. Not a single feature was pronounced. Except for his eyes. They were well-shaped and kind of green, their size and their long lashes striking, but effeminate. His pupils, though, were overcast—almost foggy.
            The kid shivered, his teeth chattering.
            “You guys give him anything?”
            “’Course not,” the wise-ass said. “He’s just cold. There can’t be anything left in his system, anyway. Not after that puke-storm in the alley.”
            Joe grimaced, needing to memorize the boy’s every detail, every line. “Could be shock.”
            The other cop said, “Maybe. The sluff keeps talkin’ gibberish.”
            As if on cue, the young man lifted his head up from his knee. His voice was a little foreign, and deeper than Joe expected, and it came quite clearly through the glass. “I am to learn…,” the kid began, his face dazed. “How I caught it. How I—I found it. Came by it…”
            “See? It’s like the punk’s possessed.”
            “Quiet.”
            The suspect’s eyes drifted past Joe, their sea-green, somehow, shining blue. “You say it wearies you? But…but what it’s made of, where it’s born…I am to learn…learn that…that I have much ado to know myself.” Then he shivered again, and his head lolled back onto his knee.
            “You been writing down what he says?” Joe asked.
            “Sure we have!” This from the darker cop.
            “We wrote down everythin’, just like Buchannan told us.” Baby-Face agreed. He handed Joe a notepad with some chicken-scratches etched upon it, scribbled in an unschooled hand. “But it’s like he’s a broken record. Keeps sayin’ the same bit over and over.”
            Joe noticed, with a frown, nothing on the pad he hadn’t heard already.
            Wise-ass wagged his thumb about the car. “Sir? We got orders to get the fairy here—”
            “Suspect,” Joe corrected.
            “Right. Sure, Detective. But Donahue had a condom on him, so I say—”
            “Listen,” Joe replied. “You two keep the details of this case down on the quiet, or I’ll dump you both in Boy’s Town wearing nothing but your britches. Then we’ll see who’s queer. You got all that, Laurel and Hardy?”
            Both patrolmen stiffened. “Yessir. We’ll get him to the captain’s station right away.”
            Joe thought a moment. Then he looked around again, factoring in all the people hanging around, all the cameras. “Yeah. You do that. But don’t set him up for interviews or process him just yet. Let him stew a bit, until I get there.”
            Baby-Face scratched his head. “Uh, you? Sir?”
            “I’m taking point on the first interview. Buchannan’s orders.”
            The officers nodded and ducked into their cruiser. As the engine came to life, Joe noticed movement in the back. The kid turned his head, his brown hair a tangled mess, and the older man caught that gleam set firmly in his eye again—a blue among the green.
            Joe remained rooted to the ground until the car drove out of sight. He stared off into the black after it, while the machine of routine police-work continued on around him. In the distance, an elevated train trundled along the red line, heading south. Joe, after a minute or so, opened his sketch-pad to its latest entry. He tore Arthur’s icon out with care, his mind soon drifting into memory. Then his feet began to move, and he ambled away.
            He skirted the pools of light cast by the streetlamps on North Lincoln, pulling his overcoat tighter about himself to combat the treacherous wind. The Red Lion pub glowered at him as he passed, its barn-like steeple set in haunting red and white. Then the farther south he walked, the dimmer and hollower the gray avenue became. He passed other darkened shops and noiseless basement bars without a thought, lonely pizza joints and nail salons floating by without a care—until something on the sidewalk finally tripped him up.
            At first he just ignored the flurried item and kept walking, thinking it was trash. But the breeze picked it up and knocked it up against his calf, insistent. He halted then and turned about. Around him, the buildings and their alleys bore no signs of life, only murmurs and shadows.
            Stooping over, with Arthur’s sketch still in his other hand, Joe picked up a flimsy thrift edition of some book. He read the title: The Merchant of Venice. On the first page, each line spoken by a character called Antonio was smeared with a pink highlighter. Idly, at first, Joe scanned the opening lines: ‘In sooth,’ they read, ‘I know not why I am so sad. It wearies me. You say it wearies you, but how I caught it…’
            The booklet soon snapped shut.
            Joe stood there a moment on alert, unmoving. A streetlamp died half a block away, and the trees that lined the road rustled their nearly naked branches all at once, inmates jangling metal spoons against their prison bars. Joe gazed back toward the crime scene. It struck him that the canvass wouldn’t reach this spot for another half-an-hour yet, at best. His lips parted, and something invisible made his skin itch, right between his shoulder blades. A memory crept across his face on padded feet. “You can run around all night,” he mumbled to himself, “and when you finally get a clue, you figure out it wasn’t even worth the search.”
            He deliberated a few seconds further. Then he located Saint Jude’s medallion among his pockets. Settling the coin onto a thumb and forefinger, he exhaled with care. At last, ready, he flipped the medallion up into the air. When the chip landed softly on his palm, the saint faced back up at him. Joe’d thought it might. Carefully, he slid Arthur’s sketch between the book’s opening pages as a marker and stuffed the script into the jacket pocket near his breast.
            Dawn shimmered faintly beyond the grim horizon. Feeling exposed, Joe pulled his coat about himself again and sped away. The booklet jostled against his holstered weapon, forcing him to adjust both. Continuing his march, he mumbled, “Mary’s not gonna be happy.”

SPECIAL NOTE: The above selection is an original work by the author, Jason Loeffler, and he retains all rights to its content. Publication requests can be made on the Jason's contact page.