Cut to the Bone(35)
Both detectives smiled.
“‘Cause we can,” Burr said.
Danny’s belly burned as he stared at the Chicago Daily News. It was official now - mass murder the crime, electrocution the punishment.
“It wasn’t him they saw, Mom,” he said. “It’s a case of, uh, mistaken identity.”
“Oh, Danny,” Verna Monroe said, eyes filling. “You’re so smart, thinking up things like that. But you can’t help your brother anymore. None of us can. Not with thirteen dead.”
She untied her apron and smoothed her rayon dress. “I’m going to the hospital. I’ll tell Earl you love him and wanted to visit, but I made you stay away.” She hugged him so hard she thought he’d break. “If your father was alive, he’d tell you the same thing. So would Earl. You know it. You know exactly what they’d say.”
Danny stared, torn between spilling his guts and promising Earl he wouldn’t.
“Go back to Purdue,” Verna said. “That’s what they’d say. Return to that university life you love so much, that you’re so brilliant at. Leave today. Now!”
She clapped her hands, still unable to believe her bouncing baby was a college man, one year away from a master’s degree in electrical engineering. She was so proud.
“Once you have that sheepskin, the sky’s the limit,” she said, reaching for her keys. “You can join AT&T. Westinghouse. Lyndon Johnson’s space program. Go anywhere, do anything!”
“What’s the point?” Danny said.
Verna folded her arms around herself at the misery in his voice. She was desperate to keep the good son away from the doomed. Danny had always resisted the siren that lured the rest of her men into the rocks. It was her job to make sure he steered clear.
“You have a glorious life ahead of you, Danny,” she choked. “A house with a white picket fence. A wife. Adorable babies. Everything. Don’t let Earl’s choices make yours - I’ll be there for him no matter what. You have to walk away. Walk away from your brother. Walk away.”
* * *
“What on earth are you two doing?”
Rogan and Burr straightened to see a grim-faced young doctor stride into the room, stethoscope tucked neatly in his white coat.
“Questioning our prisoner,” Rogan said.
“Like Torquemada.”
“Who?” Burr asked.
The doctor wrapped his hand around Earl’s wrist. Weaker pulse than an hour ago. Chalkier face, sheets more rent with sweat. Bandages dented and spongy with red.
He increased the morphine drip.
“Prisoner or not,” the doctor said, “this man has the right not to be abused.”
Burr, forehead vein ticcing, shoved his face in close. “Tell that to the widows and kids,” he snarled. “If you got the stones.”
“This man is my patient, Detective,” the doctor said, refusing to back down. “He has any rights I care to give him. So get out of here, both of you.”
They didn’t move.
“Out!”
“Earl, Earl,” Verna sobbed, burying her face in her elbows. She’d driven as far as the sleepy, one-horse downtown before her vision swam so bad she had to pull over. “I don’t want you to die! Not in that awful electric chair!”
She cried so hard that she sucked tears into her lungs.
“Why did you do it, baby?” she gagged. “Why?”
“He was ready to confess,” Burr grumbled, spitting tobacco juice as they headed for the parking lot. “If that pansy doctor hadn’t stepped in, he woulda gave it up.”
“No, he wouldn’t,” Rogan said. “Earl’s a tough onion. Just like his old man.”
“That’s the one who was stabbed, right?”
“Nineteen times,” Rogan said. “By a crew from St. Louis. They wanted to expand up north, figured the quickest way to do it was whack the competition.”
“So they kidnapped the old man.”
“At high noon, walking to his car after installing a poker machine in a tavern. Six goons grabbed him, took him to a cornfield, beat him with ball bats. Then cut him up. They assumed he was dead. I would have too, given nineteen stabs and a broken skull.”
“He played possum,” Burr said.
“Yup. After they left, he crawled to a farmhouse on pure guts,” Rogan said. “Nobody was home, so he busted a window and found the telephone. Called Chicago and told his bosses who did it. Then he bled out.” He shook his head. “Poor farmer, coming home to that mess.”
“Be hard to live there after that,” Burr said.
“Farmer called the inhalator squad,” Rogan said. “Too late, though. It was a morgue job.”