Steve’s Shorts: The Piano Man…Part One of Two
Steve’s Shorts: The Piano Man…Part One of Two
[Note from Steve: This is the start of a series of short stories inspired by my favorite songs. Some you might know, like this Billy Joel classic; others are a wee bit obscure (and possibly no longer available). The stories are freebies for readers of this blog…until they appear in a short story collection, that is. Enjoy!]
The Piano Man – Part One
Copyright 2015, Steven M. Moore
“Hey buddy, are you OK?”
Through the fog of his hangover Walter Ellison stirred and then awoke as the flashlight’s beam fell on his face. “Go away. I’m trying to sleep.”
He saw the beam sweep over the contents of his van. Still hugging his keyboard with his left arm like his Angela, he pushed up with his right and saw a face in the penumbra behind the beam. Shadowy lips moved.
“You can’t sleep here, bro. The park closes at eight.”
Walter looked at his watch. “That’s five hours from now. I’ll leave by then.”
“Eight p.m., idiot, not eight a.m. Come on buddy, we don’t want to haul you in for vagrancy.”
“I’m no vagrant. I have a gig at the night club three blocks from here. It’s a regular job.”
“But you can’t park your van here,” said the closest voice.
“What do you want? Do you want me to drive around drunk so you can haul me in for DUI? Or cause an accident where I kill someone? FYI: I don’t like sleeping in jail. Let me sleep it off here in peace.”
“OK. Just this once. The park opens at eight. You’d better be gone by then. And don’t come back.”
“Thank you, officers. You’ll get your reward in heaven.”
Walter snuggled with Angela and went back to sleep.
***
Four hours later as daybreak neared, the flashlights were back. The van’s door was forced open. A burly cop crawled inside and roused Walter
“Out with you.” He dragged Walter out in his underwear and slapped handcuffs on him. Miranda rights were read.
“What’s all the commotion? Why the handcuffs? Do you fellows think I’m violent? I’m just a homeless piano man with a hangover.”
A woman stepped forward and flashed her badge. He saw a serious but good-looking woman with no perfume but maybe apple-scented shampoo. She brushed her hair aside as she stared him down. “Nora Peterson, homicide detective. After what you did to that little boy, we’d like to do a lot more than put handcuffs on you. But you’ll have your day in court.”
“Excuse me. What are you talking about?”
“Little Billy Hunter was found mutilated in his backyard. Let’s go.”
One uniform led Walter to a squad car and forced him inside. Peterson leaned into the driver.
“Be careful with him. I want to see this SOB get the needle.”
***
“Why are you still here? Haven’t they processed Walter Ellison yet?” Chief Monday had just arrived at police HQ. It was 8:10 a.m.
Sgt. Peterson raised her head from her desktop. “I’m having second thoughts, Albert. We might have the wrong guy.” She handed Monday several pages of computer printout. He grabbed a chair and began to read. She waited. When he finished, she said, “See what I mean?”
“Not really. So he was in Afghanistan and earned enough medals to put U.S. Steel back in business. He was drunk. He could have PTSD. Maybe he thought the kid was a ferocious ET about to attack him. You just never know. His wife must have left him for some reason.”
“Check the date. The divorce came through during his second tour. He was in combat, sure; homeless and living out of a van, sure; but he’s never been in trouble anywhere. The two uniforms remembered the van. They let it slide because he had pulled into the park to sleep it off instead of driving around drunk.
“Homeless vets out of work get desperate,” said Monday. “Case closed.”
“He has steady work. He has a regular gig in a night spot and makes a living moving from gig to gig. I checked. People at the bar like him. He’s a piano man: plays and sings using fake books.”
“What’s that?”
“Hundreds of songs with just lyrics, melodies, and chords. We found them in the van with a keyboard, but in the bar he uses a regular baby grand. The player creates the accompaniment using the chord indications and sings the lyrics. Standard piano bar stuff.”
Monday thought a bit. “OK. I guess I understand your second thoughts. What’s the ME say? Did the perp just start hacking on Billy? If not Ellison, who? And why? Even for Ellison that’s a valid question. It would help to have a motive. Was the kid molested?”
“We need to wait for the ME’s findings. But I don’t think this is the perp. Someone who saves his squad leader and two other guys while almost losing his leg sounds like an upstanding person, don’t you think?”
“Don’t forget the PTSD angle. You were military, right?”
“Marines, like Ellison, only Iraq. Not much combat. Mostly self-defense when our unit was attacked. I was com but had some training as an MP. Don’t look for logic in assignments from the Pentagon.”
“Maybe you’re too close to this one then. Do I need to find someone else to take the case?”
“Not for that reason. If we pass this to the DA without sufficient evidence, though, I’ll withdraw on my own. I rushed to judgment. That printout creates a whole cloud of uncertainty.”
Monday shrugged. “I’m not so sure, but OK. Get the ME’s report and take it from there. Keep me in the loop. I can’t give you much time. People will get lathered up by this crime, the media will start screaming for justice, the mayor will be upset, and it will all come down on me.”
Peterson nodded. With the DA’s and mayor’s office alone, the Chief was always receiving flak. Add residents and media and it often became the perfect storm.
***
Nora Peterson was in her ninth year at Riverside PD, he fourth year as detective. Most of the time she loved her job.
She splashed water on her face, toweled off, and wondered about makeup. To visit the morgue? Hardly worth it. There would be the mutilated body of a little boy. No one would notice or care how badly she looked.
No, love wasn’t the appropriate word. Most of the time she felt good about the job because she could bring some scumbags to justice and give victims some closure. She had a good arrest record. She didn’t feel good about this arrest, though.
She decided to walk. Some of the humidity had lifted. It would be a nice day in the Pennsylvania hills. The walk would dispel the fog in her mind from lack of sleep. The labs were just around the corner, three blocks away in an old converted warehouse. The ME had a better office than she did. The conversion was a success and provided more spacious quarters than the previous ones in the station’s basement.
“You could have just called. Or downloaded the report.” Dr. Brendan Sullivan, a tall, heavyset man, motioned toward one of the visitors’ chairs. She dusted it off and sat. “I don’t recommend you see the body.”
“I’m here in case I need to. I’ve seen plenty. COD and TOD?”
“TOD is between one and four a.m., give or take a few minutes on either end. Error bars are a bit large—small body and cool night. COD was strangulation.”
“The mutilation of the body occurred after the strangulation?”
“Yes, thank goodness. To satisfy my own curiosity, what have you discovered?”
“Lab boys are still working in and around the house. There’s no signs of forced entry. No one knows how the kid got out. It was a bit ritualistic, as you know. Any signs of molestation?”
“No. Here’s something interesting, though. Scratched on the kid’s chest was GGGEb. The blood was fresh there, so it occurred as part of the mutilation.”
“Does that have any meaning? A gang symbol?”
“The only meaning I can give it is that those are the first four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.”
Music? Walter Ellison was a musician.
***
Peterson returned to HQ and began to prepare mentally for Ellison’s interrogation. How do you interrogate someone who’s probably crazy? She knew that it wasn’t just the battlefield that affected people’s minds. Ellison’s divorce might have put him over the edge. Maybe he was a closet sex offender, having remained out of the public eye all this time. She cupped her chin with her hands.
He’d appeared surprised at the arrest. It was dark, she couldn’t see him well, but she’d heard surprise in his voice. She looked at the pic in the file. He was in dress uniform and at attention. Maybe a proud mom snapped the pic? How’d the Pentagon get it? Her boot camp pic was a frontal and profile without makeup, more like a booking pic than a graduation pic. She thumbed through the file. There it was. So why the pic with the dress uniform?
She took a magnifying glass from a drawer and examined the details. Saw the medals. After the injuries. Probably taken for promo purposes when Ellison received the honors. It helped in recruiting to show recruits, that some returned, even with wounds and medals. I count myself lucky.
A large man entered the detectives’ area and headed for Monday’s small office. Mayor Sam Bradley, the bull in our china closet. He was followed by some aides and four reporters and photographers. He’s huffing and puffing and ready to blow our house down! The SOB was grandstanding as usual. She felt sorry for Monday. The mayor didn’t even knock.
She recognized that the mayor had a pretty good record for getting things done. But he wasn’t popular with underlings, and that included cops and firefighters. Although he was an ex-union boss and ran as a law-and-order man, he had become highly critical of Riverside PD and forced pension and health cuts down their throats. She knew that such antics were common across the land—most local property taxes were destined for schools. Tax relief in their city with so little commercial real estate had to be accompanied by cuts in city personnel and services to keep the school budgets intact.
She’d never met the mayor, but the charge through the detective area hadn’t set well with her or other detectives there that she could see. She wanted to be a turtle and crawl into her shell when several people crammed into Monday’s office started pointing in her direction.
She swept up the file on Ellison and left for the interrogation.
***
In elibris libertas….
